An Adventure.. Michael James

        The ocean liner Niew Amsterdam, flagship of the Holland-America line, came off the weighs in the shipyard in Rotterdam in 1937 and displaced 36,000 tons. The ship undertook sea trials in the North Sea, passing with flying colors, surprising all concerned by its performance. It was clearly going to be competing with the best, England’s Queen Mary, and the beautiful Ile de France  on the transatlantic run. Although the ship was not at all designed with troop carrying in  mind, she was appropriated by the allies when she sailed to the USA after Holland fell to the Germans, and she was so fast as to easily outrun any submarine, so was able to sail alone.

  In 1947 she returned to her shipyard, was refitted at a cost equal to her original construction, and rejoined the Atlantic trade  shortly thereafter where she performed most profitably to her owners until the aeroplane sent all liners either to the scrap yard or to the cruise business. The Niew Amsterdam met her end in Taiwan in 1974.

The side of the hull rose before me, as I stood on the dock, like an enormous black wall shutting out half of the sky. I craned my neck to look up at the gleaming white superstructure, the bridge from which the officers managed the ship, the rows of portholes for the cabins, the large windows of the saloons and dining rooms. Then I hurried back to the place where passengers entered through a sort of gateway up a flight of stairs. My ticket, purchased only two weeks before with money borrowed from one of my high school teachers, was for a second class cabin to be shared with one man. I had been too late for the less expensive third class, and as it turned out, I was happy about that. 

Boarding was orderly and steady, with quite a lot of excitement on the part of passengers, and I was soon following the stream of people into the cavernous interior of the ship, a place where several staircases met corridors from every direction. Crewpeople were glancing at our tickets and directing us to the corridors or staircases that would lead to our cabins, where we would find our luggage already in place.

When I arrived at my door, a young man several years my senior, introduced himself as my steward for the voyage; I should call him for anything I needed. He led me into the cabin, showed me my bunk, the lower of two to the right of the door, the lockers I was to use, and mentioned my cabin mate whom he expected momentarily. I unpacked rapidly, stowed my suitcase, and looked around the cabin. There was a small bathroom, a single bunk opposite mine, a couple of chairs at a small table between the bunks: functional, small, and home for the 

next week. 

A knock at the door and the steward entered with my room mate in tow. He was a burly man in the prime of life, average in height, close-cropped fair hair, who introduced himself as a Canadian returning home after a stint in the Middle East with one of his country’s consulates. He struck me immediately as genial and light-hearted and we soon got on well together. Some of the  joys of traveling second class, he pointed out, were the amenities offered: the dining facilities, the lounges, the bars, and the outside decks were well worth the difference in cost. At his suggestion we immediately went in search of the dining room which we found nearby; I marveled at its crisp table cloths, crystal ware, general air of luxury, and hoped my stomach would allow me to enjoy it all fully and continually for the entire voyage. As lunch was several hours away, our steward, who spotted us, mentioned snack food in a certain bar whither we repaired for my introduction to the world of mixed drinks. 

It wasn’t long before my inexperience with alcohol had me needing my sea legs at once, though they were unavailable; I remember sliding down the main staircase of the ship, giggling all the way, unable to find my footing in the increasing tilting of the floor. My roommate helped me up at the bottom and directed my steps toward the dining room where food helped me regain equilibrium, at least for the time being. But once the ship got out beyond Ireland, it encountered heavy weather and those of us prone to sea-sickness sought solace in our bunks. I soon lost the delicious dinner I had enjoyed so much and spent a miserable night retching.

In the early morning light of the second day all I could see outside was flying spume and rain. As the light increased, I wanted to go outside to clear my head and to walk around the deck but found the doors to the outside locked and was told it was too dangerous for anyone to be outside since waves were breaking clear over the ship. I could see the ocean through the big windows of the promenade deck and I tried to anticipate the ship’s rise and fall to prevent my stomach from being caught off guard. 

One day more, and though the weather got even rougher, I became well enough to be able to stand in front of a door at the end of the promenade deck overlooking the bow. There I stayed and began to enjoy the ferocity of the storm which was picking up waves so huge the ship appeared to be a toy boat caught alone on a windy sea. As the ship rode up the incline of the oncoming swells, whose crests looked like snowy mountain tops ahead, it would slow down appreciably. Then as it fell over the top, the propellers would lift out of the water and spin so fast the whole ship would shake. The fall down the back of the waves would be a giddying sleigh ride with an almighty crash at the end which threw up spray clear over the whole ship as the bow plunged into the another swell.

The next day, sitting in the recess of a big porthole in a lounge on the starboard side, I would look up to the crest of the wave ahead of us and wonder what it would be like as the captain on the bridge, with waves breaking against his plate glass window, responsible for the huge ship and for the well-being of hundreds of people. Later I got to see the damage that had been done to the balustrade around the first class lounge one deck below that bridge: it appeared to have been crumpled by a gigantic fist.

On the fifth day, shortly after breakfast, I found the door out of the promenade leading forward to be unlocked; I at last had access to the bow. Gauging the  plunges of the ship carefully, I timed my dash to the bow to avoid getting drenched by the spray it threw up as it hit the front of each wave, and I reached cover behind the tall balustrade almost dry. There I clung to the flat top of the hull and pulled myself up to look over the very point of the ship down to where it was cutting through the seas. Each time a wave top approached, I ducked down behind the balustrade and the water went over my head. I can’t say now what the distance was between those wave crests, but judging by the length of the ship, they had to be two miles apart.

Finally there came over the din of crashing water, the crackle of a loudspeaker advising the gentleman in the bow to go back inside. The voice was not unkindly, so as I reluctantly turned my back on the awesome spectacle to go inside, I looked up at the bridge and waved a cheery salute to the anxious face looking down. The crewman waved back and I went inside. 

       We had passed through the worst of the hurricane, which I Iearned later was among the first to be given the name of a woman, in this case Edna, spawned over the Lesser Antilles on September 14th, whose winds reached 115 mph as it passed just north of Bermuda on Sept. 18th. The storm dissipated west of Ireland after two more days, by which time I had landed in New York where I was to catch a train for the West Coast. I bade goodbye to the magnificent ship which had brought the nineteen year old boy to the new world.