Do you miss the sea?

[MattGough]

Hello again,

Not sure if this is in the right section of the forum (my apologies if it isn't) but here goes.

After many years spent at sea, was it easy settling into retirement?

I don't think it's easy for anyone in any long-standing employment but I wondered if the transition to land was particularly difficult for some.


Kind regards

[John Pruden]

I was only 3 years 40odd years ago but still miss the sea every day came ashore not by choice but duty to family{father terminally ill} but not a day goes by I don't miss it but that's life?? jp

[Captain Kong]

I did 45 years at sea, I do miss it, but every year I do cruising around the Pacific Islands and Australia and that eases the pain.
It is NOT an ordinary occupation, it is a way of life that shore people do not understand, you live on the job, you eat on the job, you work on the job and socialise on the job, you spend months with the same faces, night and day, you have to learn to live with and tolerate other people, even if you do not like them. sharing the same cabin with some one you do not like can be a strain sometimes and so on.
But the rewards are something no one ashore can imagine. To see the ocean in all its moods from a calm blue sea to a raging screaming storm with waves crashing over the ship up to 100 feet high, striking fear into the heart of the toughest man. then coming out of it, several days with no sleep. hardly any food, as it is impossible for the cook to make any meals. The Comradeship where you put your trust in a shipmate with your life in dangerous situations.
Leaping ashore in Buenos Aires with a sub in one hand and a Senorita in the other. or a beautiful Wahine in Tahiti. are just some of the rewards.
and then coming home after six months with a big Pay off in the back pocket and the first words the wife says when you open the door is, "When are you going back?"
That is Seafaring.
Cheers
Brian.

[j.sabourn]

Like Brian do miss the sea, unlike Brian I do not go cruising as would not sleep at night wondering who was on watch. My last few years at sea were similar and had good reason to worry in various cases. One only remembers the good times, but if sit down and think about it logically are well out of it. I still don't sleep much as have what they call sleep apbnia, to me it is a continuation of hours kept awake for the last 20 years or so at sea. Most good memories wound down in the late 70"s. After that it was a job first to find employment and then to force oneself to keep at it. To me conditions didn't get better they got worse, even if the job got easier due to all the modern aids some ships had and I repeat some ships. The sea if spend your working life there makes you in a certain sense incompatable with a shore person who knows no different. JS

[Charlie Hannah]

I spent the best part of my life at sea,40 years, came ashore injured and unfit to return.Do i miss it? Miss it at all times it never leaves your blood once you mix the sea and the human spirit it's a partnership for life!

[Ivan Cloherty]

I think its all been said in the previous posts, going to sea is not a job, its a vocation, to get the best out of it you have to 'want' to go to sea, it never was, for any of us old codgers ' a job' and all that those two words imply, we all wanted to go to sea and it breeds a brotherhood which this site so evidently portrays. Most of us have never met any others, a few of us have, but in general we are just faceless correspondents, but we are joined by a commonality that a landlubber (no disrespect meant to anyone) would not understand. We can insult each other with banter and hold no grudges, we are not all angels and neither were our shipmates, we sailed with some pure barstewards, but if in trouble ashore or afloat we would help them out, it was our calling and it was bred into us, there are no passengers on a working ship, everyone expects their shipmates to pull their weight, and you were soon brought to task if you didn't. Do we miss it, by hell we do, whether you spent just a few years or a lifetime in it the camaraderie and the respect for mother nature cannot be engendered in any other profession

[cappy]

###and what a great brotherhood to be a member of ivan...this site gives a great pleasure to all aboard....i would be bored to death without it.....cappy

[Doc Vernon]

More than anyone will ever know!
That it from me!
Cheers

[vic mcclymont]

I gave up the sea over forty years ago and I still miss it. It's all of the things mentioned in previous posts. A bond is formed, by working at sea that cannot be emulated by working ashore.
My first job ashore after leaving the sea was working in a factory, it felt more like a prison.
Cruising is a way of getting back to your roots.

Regards
Vic

[Captain Kong]

I remember in the 50s in Cunard on the old Franconia, A week at sea, a week in New York, a week at sea , a week in Liverpool and again and again. I would have worked for No Pay. it was that good.
In New York donate a pint of blood for $5 that would buy 50 glasses of beer at the Market Diner, 10 cents a glass, who needed wages.? and I sat next to Grace Kelly one night in there. I felt the seat when she left, it was still warm.
Even broke, to walk down Broadway and Times Square at night was like being in the movies.
Beer on the ship was eight old pennies a pint, of Wrexham Lager, = 30 pints of ale for £1, What a life that was.
My shore mates could not believe it.
A great life.
Brian.