In the dungeons
A majestic ship with all sails set, carving a path through a choppy ocean. Blue and white sea, blue and white sky, even the white sails might have a hint of blue in them. These are the images of tall ships you find in paintings and photographs on posters, brochures and websites.
Behind these images, below decks, there is another world. Some of the spaces here should be familiar to just about everyone: places to lie down to sleep, places to eat and drink. New voyage crew will also soon discover the galley, the laundry room and the little poker corner which mostly serves as the source of toilet paper and clean towels. Closer to the bridge are the office and the library, full of dictionaries and handbooks and pilots and other reference material, and below a staircase is a tiny closet, not for aspiring wizards but for vacuum cleaners.
Over the last few days the voyage crew has also been treated to tours of many other hidden spaces even further below decks, through heavy watertight doors and down hatches into the mysterious realm of the engineer. They call it a dungeon tour, but at times it’s more like a dungeon crawl.
What once was known as a switchroom is now the witchroom as the letter “s” has gone missing. If it is magic that looks at celestial bodies, be they stars or satellites, and guides a ship across vast oceans towards distant shores, whatever happens below decks is witchcraft. The bridge high above sees the world around the ship while the witchroom is her nervous system. Switches, lights, buttons. Dozens of tools hand on the walls and a drawer labeled “plugs n shit” may or may not contain plugs n shit.
Down a nearby hatch is the engine room. Buttons you really should not press, revolving gears, dormant machinery. The two diesel engines from the 1970s receive plenty of love since spare parts are limited and newer engines aren’t much of an option.
Another hatch down the central aisle opens into a space with diesel tanks and numerous containers of all sizes and yet further down the aisle the next hatch leads to a dry store full of flour and spices and other necessities. There are labeled crates and bags scattered in every possible nook and corner. The dry store is almost a pleasant environment, where you are a little less likely to injure yourself.
In the galley a doorway under a counter is reminiscent of wardrobes leading to other marvelous worlds, but this instead leads to sewage tanks and water treatment facilities and oppressive heat. Rearrange things and you could fit a sauna in here to cope with the colder days in the Southern Ocean. The fresh water generator is a luxury sailors of old did not know, and had they known the inquisition would have condemned it as alchemy and sorcery.
Finally at the bow is one final doorway to explore. The door is always open, but the heat and constant humming from the generator alone are enough to keep most visitors at bay. The most claustrophobic of them all, and if there aren’t backups and extras of everything already (there are), there’s enough here to cope with a main engine room malfunction or two.
And hidden somewhere deep inside the dungeon is the pole of love, where only true loves are to be registered. A heart B. Whether true loves are limited to love between sailors is unknown to the author. Love between sailor and ship. Love between sailor and sea.
