eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780520947092 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of California Press |
| Publication date: | 01/05/2011 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 328 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Docks
By Bill Sharpsteen
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Copyright © 2011 The Regents of the University of CaliforniaAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-520-94709-2
CHAPTER 1
Valet Parking
A SHIP ARRIVES
Most people board a cargo ship on a gangway, a safe, though perhaps steep, ramp that goes from dock to ship's deck with just enough metallic, rickety sounds to make it feel unique and even romantic in a nautical sort of way. Then there's how I'm about to board a ship with port pilot Captain Ron Rogers: we'll do it, like pirates, by climbing up a ship's hull on a wet rope ladder dangling above a sloshing ocean 2 miles from shore. And, oh, by the way, I'm told it's kind of dangerous.
This has me a little distracted when I walk into the port pilots dispatch office. As busy as the Port of Los Angeles is on paper, I'm a little surprised at the sleepy calm here. I had expected the chaotic charm of an air traffic controllers' tower—after all, the office oversees the six thousand ships that enter the port each year, sending out its cadre of fifteen captains to guide the vessels into their appointed berths. But on this day it might as well be a doctor's waiting room.
Dispatcher Beth Adamik, a tall, middle-aged woman with a friendly, grandmotherly voice, stands to shake my hand and then sinks back in her chair before a computer monitor that displays a jagged graphic of the California coast, the port, and a constant line of rectangular ship icons stuttering through a designated shipping lane. Instead of being made to feel like an intrusion, I'm told to relax, as if I'm a guest in Adamik's living room and we're here to hang out over coffee.
Sitting between two sets of living quarters for pilots, the two-story dispatch office looks through a wall of windows over the entrance to the port's Main Channel, a bright, glary view that's less informative than it first seems. Even on clear days such as this, the air has a translucent quality, so Adamik and the other dispatchers instead watch their monitors for the ships entering the harbor and look out only if they have a moment to check the weather while listening to the Sirius Radio Love Songs channel that plays off a television in a back corner.
The port requires all deep-draft vessels (any ship needing 55 feet of water to float) to be guided from open water to final docking by a port pilot. Nearly all ports in the world do this, and the reason is simple: for someone in a large ship accustomed to navigating the open seas, approaching the unfamiliar Port of Los Angeles is like driving a bus from an empty stadium parking lot into a narrow, dark alley full of unknown, hidden obstructions. Without a port pilot's local expertise to direct the ship through the harbor's unique currents and park it at the correct dock, the world's fleet would probably be dented and mangled (and the world's ports in far worse shape). For this expertise, port pilots are paid $150,000 to $300,000 a year.
Adamik points at the computer monitor and tells me that they've chosen the Wan Hai 312 as the ship I'll be boarding. It's going to the back end of the port, she says, and that'll give me a long ride to soak up all the details I can. At the moment, the Wan Hai 312 is easing down the California coast at 9.5 knots. We know this because information on each vessel is radioed from the ship via a mandatory Auto Identification System to the Marine Exchange, a nondescript building on a hill above the harbor, and then relayed to the dispatch office. On the computer monitor, each ship icon jerks in short steps down the grayed-out shipping lane, the traffic sometimes so heavy that vessel names overlay one another. Adamik can select any ship on the screen and with two mouse clicks determine its speed and distance from the port.
Just then, the captain of the Wan Hai 312 radios to the dispatch office as required when the ship is 25 miles from the port entrance.
"Please prepare ladder on the starboard side," Adamik says crisply into a large microphone, referring to the Jacob's ladder constructed of rope and wooden rungs that Captain Rogers and I will use to board the ship. "Starboard side ladder one meter above the water, and call us again as soon as you enter the Precautionary Area." The captain repeats the instructions.
"Also, are your bow thrusters in good working condition?" Adamik asks. The Wan Hai 312 is small enough that it will need only one tugboat to steer it through the port complex if the bow thrusters (water jets used for maneuvering) are operational.
"They're in good working condition, over."
"Thank you for that, captain."
I don't want to seem too concerned about this rope ladder business, so I ease into the subject as if I'm talking about the weather. Adamik plays along and implies that this is like a rite of passage for some at the port. Board a ship by scampering up its hull, and you've got the kind of minor bragging rights that impress just about everyone outside of the Coast Guard. That it has that kind of cachet has me a little worried.
I'm here for one main reason: I want to see what it's like for a ship to enter the Port of Los Angeles, slowly sailing past the dozens of piers and docked ships. I figure if I'm writing a book about the country's largest port, I need to know what a ship captain sees for the first time as he (not many women captains out there) leaves the comfortable open water off the California coast and snuggles into a berth for two days. The experience should give me a picture to paint that involves people and not just tons of steel.
Unfortunately, the carriers—the companies whose ships take cargo from point A to point B—weren't interested in letting me ride for awhile on one of their ships. Come to think of it, just about everybody in the ultra-competitive shipping industry, from the carriers to the shippers (those who hire the carriers to move their cargo) to the railroads who haul the cargo to the rest of the country, stiff-armed me every time I humbly asked for a little access. Seems they were worried I might inadvertently reveal to their competitors some profitable technique that had saved them a penny or two in costs per container. If that sounds like a flimsy excuse, they also threw out the security rationale, which these days seems to trump all else. While no one accused me of wanting to enter a restricted area (pretty much the entire port) with explosives strapped to my body, they politely treated the request for a visit as though as I were indeed a terrorist. In truth, most companies rarely give access to reporters unless there's a commercial or public relations angle, and apparently neither need jumped out at them when I called.
Finally, with help from the Port of Los Angeles communications department—which indeed saw a PR angle—I was able to arrange to ride with a port pilot and get the sailor's view of entering the world of the port. Attaching myself to Captain Rogers gave me an end-around on all the secrecy, and, for a few smug moments, I felt like I had sneaked past the gatekeepers.
As more ships enter Adamik's screen, she writes their names and estimated arrival times on a whiteboard behind her and then slides a magnetic name tag for one of the port pilots opposite each ship name. The list grows from five ships to a dozen, the last one arriving after dark. For the Wan Hai 312, Adamik fills out a green dispatch slip that goes to Captain Rogers, indicating where he's taking the ship—in this case, berth 139 in the West Basin, an odd-shaped parking lot for ships off the Main Channel.
Bringing in a cargo vessel is a complex, coordinated effort between the ship's agent and dozens of entities. Tugs are ordered. Longshore linesmen are scheduled; they tie up the ship to the dock. A longshore lashing crew, charged with unlocking the containers from the deck, as well as crane drivers and all the other workers required to unload and load a ship, are scheduled through the union's Local 13 dispatch hall. Clerks, who manage the paperwork and oversee the cargo operation, are brought in through the Local 63 dispatch hall. Chandlers, who supply ships with fresh food and other supplies, are told when to arrive at the docks. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may be called if a crew member is sick. Captain Jim Morgan, manager of the Los Angeles Pilot Service, tells me later that he once counted all the steps involved in bringing in a ship and came up with two hundred phone calls.
Because time spent idling in port is costly, most ships try to arrive so that they're at the dock and ready for the longshoremen's 8:00 a.m., 6:00 p.m., or 3:00 a.m. shift start time. Getting in too early or too late can mean sitting for money-eating hours before the unloading and loading begin. As for the Wan Hai 312, it's headed for a 2:30 p.m. arrival, in time for the longshoremen's night shift, or so the captain hopes. The ship, capable of holding some thirteen hundred 40-foot containers, was built in early 2006 in Singapore's Jurong Shipyard for Wan Hai Lines. As it has done for most of the sixty-six ships in the Wan Hai fleet, the company gave it a prosaic name, Wan Hai 312 (the one built before it was the Wan Hai 311). With a maximum 23-knot speed, the ship took eleven days to cross the Pacific Ocean from its last stop at Pusan, South Korea.
At about 1:45 p.m., Adamik calls Captain Rogers and tells him it's time for us to leave. He and I walk a short distance to a 52-foot boat with a two-man crew that will shuttle us 2 miles to the ship. As the boat approaches the Wan Hai 312, Rogers zips up his dark blue port pilot jacket and comes out from the cabin. He leans against the portside railing to get a better look, occasionally gripping it when the boat hits a chop, while the pilot boat circles from bow to stern.
Wearing slightly tinted aviator prescription glasses, he squints a bit on this bright, hazy day as he inspects the hull for any damage that could compromise his ability to pilot the ship into port. He also checks the depth markings on the hull to ascertain how low in the water the ship is riding. This isn't as important for a smaller ship such as the Wan Hai 312, but the larger, heavily loaded vessels can come scrapingly close to the minimum 1.5-foot keel clearance the port requires between the ship's underside and the bottom of the Main Channel. (The Main Channel, which is the port's major arterial but isn't a natural body of water, was dredged with even sides and bottom to make it as simple as possible to navigate; pesky currents aren't a problem.)
Maybe it's because I'm not a mariner and don't know how to appreciate a ship's attributes, but the Wan Hai 312 isn't much more to me than a big truck piled high with 40-foot containers. The red, green, and blue containers are crammed onto the deck as many as six high, looking like shoe boxes from a distance; and the ship itself, while as sleek as it needs to be to efficiently cut across the Pacific Ocean, looks so utilitarian that its only remarkable feature is its size. The Wan Hai 312 is a monster, a metal mountain the length of two football fields that has no business floating. And yet, in today's shipping world, it's half the size of the current behemoths that are too large for some ports.
Rogers says little after he eyeballs the Wan Hai 312. He's a wiry sixty-six-year-old, and he comes across more like a grandpa hanging out with one of his grandkids than a man responsible for parking some of the world's biggest ships. He's almost serene in the wind and spray, a man so comfortable after fifty years on the water that he's like a veteran shortstop confidently strolling onto the ball field, ready to react to anything hit his way but also pleased just to be there. He casually mentions retirement as though it's something he should do eventually, like eating more vegetables, but he exudes such joy and energy for his job that I can't believe he's serious. Indeed, port pilots are known to work into their seventies or eighties. One octogenarian Japanese pilot is famous for being so frail he has to be carried up the gangway when he boards a ship.
Rogers started his maritime career in 1958, when he was sixteen, working on Island Boat Service passenger boats that made their summer runs to Catalina Island, a resort 22 miles off the coast from Long Beach. I'm tempted to romanticize this as some childhood passion to be a sailor, but Rogers doesn't get so carried away. It was just one of those happy accidents that plop into people's lives like a winning lottery ticket. Three years later, he more or less stumbled into tugboats after he checked into the longshoremen's hiring hall looking for work and saw a notice for a relief deckhand. He ended up working for Red Stack, which eventually became Crowley Tugs. "No one ever said, 'You're a permanent employee,'" he tells me. "I spent twenty-nine years, ten months there. They never told anyone they were permanent in those days."
In 1990, Rogers decided to leap from tugs to the maritime world's top spot, port pilot. That meant starting at the bottom and training for two years with established pilots, gradually going from smaller ships to bigger ones. Rogers, even with his experience, had to complete one thousand ship moves before he could graduate from trainee to port pilot II. Now a senior pilot, he's required to attend a training course every two years. He seems especially proud that he just came back from Port Revel, a tiny lake in the French Alps, and the location of perhaps the most elite course for port pilots, where captains drive 40-foot models designed to handle like real tankers and container ships.
The pilot boat continues around the Wan Hai 312 to the starboard side. We approach this way so that any wake the speeding boat creates on the port side will be muffled by the ship's hull. Also, this is the lee side, where the day's gentle breeze is blocked by the ship, making the seas calmer than on the opposite weather side. The water needs to be as still as possible for one good reason—to keep Rogers alive. The only true danger in the job is boarding the ship, which requires that Rogers, then I, step from the (ideally) steady pilot boat to the ladder without falling into the cold ocean.
The boat slows to match the ship's 5-knot speed, and in the surreal moments when our relatively tiny vessel bangs up against the ship's massive hull, it seems as though we're not even moving. With two members of the ship's crew peering over the railing and the mate of the port pilot boat standing behind him, Rogers casually but quickly grabs onto the rope ladder, curls his fists around the rope, and then lightly steps off the boat. He has about 15 feet to climb. He's not wearing a flotation device, but no one seems to care; if he fell, he could be crushed between the two vessels before he had a chance to drown. In the past year, four pilots in other ports have died after slipping off the ladder.
The pilot boat continues to bump against the ship's hull while Rogers, wearing black, rubber-soled shoes, scampers up the ladder, his back slightly arched while he tries to keep his chest as close to the hull as possible. He hits each wooden rung with just his toes, and he struggles for a moment when he hits the top, where a chunk of deck railing has been removed to accommodate the ladder. He briefly straddles the top before saying hello to a crewman in dirty coveralls and a third mate sent to escort him to the bridge.
Now it's my turn. I stuff everything but my camera into the pockets of my fleece jacket, hang the camera around my neck, and step up to the ladder. The pilot boat's mate can't really do much to help me, and before I have a chance to get a close look at the ladder, he yells at me to grab it and climb without stopping. The rope is rough, almost too thick to grip tightly, and slickened with seawater. Immediately I feel the ladder pulling away from me. The rungs bang against the hull, and I wonder if I'd be able to grab the rope and stop myself from falling into the water should my foot slip from a rung. I pause about 5 feet up to make sure my fingers aren't sliding on the wet rope, and I can hear the mate screaming to keep moving. While Rogers scurried up the ladder with what I now understand to be as much survival instincts as seventeen years of practice, I deliberately, slowly haul my butt up, hyperaware of every slippery surface I'm touching, how my tennis shoes slide from side to side. I ease over the side onto the deck trying to look like that was no big deal, but the two crew members are barely paying attention.
The third mate escorts us up a steep, narrow, steel stairwell to an elevator not much bigger than a refrigerator box, which takes us to the ship's bridge. Captain Shen Kuo Chung greets Rogers with a broad, stained-teeth smile and then amiably shakes my hand. Rogers routinely uses this moment to gauge a captain's comfort with a stranger coming on board to control his ship as it moves into the port. While Chung is still ultimately in command, he seems momentarily tense until Rogers, a gregarious fellow who's both professional and relaxed, engages him as if they're longtime associates, even though they haven't met before this moment. The captain answers Rogers's questions about his trip, whether he had any troubles along the way, and whether the bow thrusters are working properly. When I ask about his eleven-day trip across the Pacific Ocean, Chung shrugs, "Not so bad."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Docks by Bill Sharpsteen. Copyright © 2011 The Regents of the University of California. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
List of IllustrationsPreface
Introduction
1. Valet Parking
2. A Carpet of Containers
3. Moving Cans
4. The Landlord
5. The Diesel Death Zone
6. The Union
7. The Employers
8. The Importer
9. The Shipper
10. Los Troqueros
11. The Hold Men
12. The Women
13. The Clerk
14. Security
15. The New Normal
16. Hawse Piper
References
Index
What People are Saying About This
"Wildly enlightening . . . Skillfully teases out the port's role within the global economy and how every American depends upon the people who make it work."—Zyzzyva
"Provides an engrossing tour of the place where your easy chair, your children's toys and the shirt on your back most likely came ashore."—Wall Street Journal
"A fine-grained view of how the world's trade is kept flowing."—Onearth
"Beautifully illuminating."—Santa Barbara News-Press
"An excellent and entertaining book."—Bookloons Reviews