Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - II. The White City
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Scandinavian - mostly Norwegian, but some Danish and
Swedish - engaged in foreign carrying trades. The
flag is dipped three times! A greeting to these
nameless northerners who here in foreign service earn a
scanty sustenance for their wives and children, and
some pickings besides for exacting shareholders at
home - and in return enjoy the privilege of looking in
at home again every three or four years and begetting
a new mouth to be fed with the others.
In little floating colonies of some twenty men each,
they move about over the seas, tidying up the ship by
day, taking their watches by night, and ready to turn
out at a moment’s notice; in this lies all the romance
of sea life. Sometimes they discharge and take on
new cargo all in one day, and sail by night; discharge
and take on again the next day - and they keep this up
all the way around the Mediterranean. They rarely
go ashore, and when they do, it is likely to be at night;
their incursions seldom extend beyond the seamen’s
resorts along the water front and the little abutting
streets.
“Tell me something about the country in there,” a
sailor said to me one day. “I have been sailing the
Mediterranean for eighteen months and have not been
on shore once!” When he had taken to the sea, he
had believed that sea life was vastly more than an
eternal round of watches and tasks in quiet weather,
and unending day and night watches in storms and
gales. Any young man who goes to sea for adventure
soon finds that he faces only the regular grind,
interrupted by an occasional rough spell. The forty-five or
fifty kroner in wages which he gets each month are
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