Power and Empire

The massive ship moved through several squalls as it reached the halfway point of the journey. Then, for the next three days, Captain Leong watched the radar above his helm as a giant blob of low pressure brought cooler temperatures and confused seas. Exposed to the westerlies of the open Pacific, the strait offered little protection from the wind and waves. By the time they crossed the 124, gusts were forty knots and sustained winds had reached thirty. Waves were three and four meters high, but that was okay. Leong’s ship was big, and cut through four-meter waves like they were barely even there. It was too dark to see the shore of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula or his starboard side, but he could almost pick up the hint of sawdust and sap from the endless mountain forests. He liked the Pacific Northwest. There was a quietness to the place that calmed him, even in heavy seas.

Safely tucked inside the heated bridge, the captain yawned in spite of the nasty blow outside. Any fool could drive a boat on calm waters. It took a real seaman to save fuel in a storm, aboard a box carrying boxes that were filled with boxes.

Leong Tang supposed boys in every country that was bordered by a sea were somehow beckoned by the lure of salt and wind and adventure. But there was no lure in boxes. The captain hardly even noticed them anymore. They were merely gray or blue or red blobs that he looked over and around to try to catch a glimpse of the horizon or the lights of the next port.

He had no idea what was in any of the containers. There was, of course, a manifest, but the modern ship’s master found himself buried under mountains of paperwork between ports, and Leong simply didn’t have the time — or the inclination — to read it. Dangerous goods were noted, refrigerated containers were stowed together — and, unless another dozen Fujianese stowaways had hidden themselves away in one of the TEUs as they had the year before, there shouldn’t be anything alive in any of the containers.

While the TEU had changed the nature of shipping, progress had changed the inside of the modern seagoing vessel. Orion’s helm was not the beefy wooden wheel of Leong’s seafaring forefathers, but high-impact plastic — and most of the steering was done through the computer and a small bump lever. A bank of screens above the helm displayed the radar, the EDCIS electronic charts, a depth sounder, radio frequency, a tachometer, and the AIS. This Automatic Identifications System broadcast the ship’s name, speed, and heading to port authorities, passing ships, and if they were savvy enough to have the app for their smartphones, pirates.

Fortunately, Seattle had no pirates, but for the company that pumped the shit from the ships’ holding tanks. Their prices were outrageous.

With all the soulless plastic, the only nod toward a more traditional helm was the half-sphere compass, its magnetic correction noted on a metal plate affixed to the plastic beside it.

It cost just over one American penny to ship a can of beer across the Pacific, but with that efficiency came the loss of soul. Lightning-quick unloading and loading made it impossible for Leong to give his men liberty in all but a very few ports. And even then, most of them would not be able to make it past the razor-wire fences that cordoned off the MARSEC area of the docks.

It seemed to Captain Leong that he’d sailed out of one port when sailing had provided him an exotic life of adventure, and then, over the course of that single voyage, while he was not paying attention, it had become a job. Storms like this at least made him feel like a sailor.

And still, the job did have its good points. He did have a few quiet moments to read. The Chinese government frowned on organized religion, but a decade earlier, a zealous dockworker in the Philippines had gifted him a small copy of the King James Bible — and he’d read it many times.

“Better to dwell in the corner of a roof than in a wide house with a brawling woman,” the Proverb said. And when Captain Leong thought about his sniping wife, his life at sea seemed less like the corner of a roof than it actually was.

• • •

Leong heard the squeak of the hatch behind him and turned to see Goos, the Balinese steward, enter with a platter of fresh doughnuts. At seventeen, Goos — short for Bagus, meaning “handsome” in Bali — was by far the youngest pair of hands on the ship. In Leong’s estimation, he was also the brightest.

“Captain,” the boy said in English, giving him a polite nod.

“Goos,” Leong said, toasting the air with his Dallas Cowboys mug.

The boy spoke passable Mandarin, but he was attempting to learn English — the international language of commerce — and it helped Leong and his first officer to try to teach him. It was good practice for the times they needed to communicate via the radio with VTS.

Goos held up the doughnuts. “Mr. Hao… cook… doughnut,” he said.

“Good English,” the captain said. “I like doughnuts.”

Goos smiled. “I like doughnuts.”