4 October 2005:

Early Morning:

We are approaching St. Johns. It looks like we really will make a port call and get to do our excursion…..so of course the sky has turned cloudy and there is a threat of rain. We are still a few hours out of port so maybe things will clear up before we get there. I was up walking around the ship early this morning…..at least earlier than normal….a little after 6am. The public areas were mostly deserted, but as I turned a corner and headed down one of the large galleries on the Promenade Deck I heard the sound of bagpipes. This seemed like an odd selection for the background music that plays in the lounges for this early in the morning. As I walked past the Explorer’s Lounge (one of the larger bars onboard), the bagpipes were louder. I looked into the lounge and there was a guy, in full Scottish Kilt, playing the bagpipes……all by himself….in a totally empty bar….not even any bar staff at this time of the morning. But he was proudly marching up and down the rows of empty tables just wailing away on the pipes.  I don’t know if he was a passenger, part of the crew or just an apparition….you can see strange things after this long at sea.

Since I was out and about the ship early, I decided to go to breakfast before the crowds came. I sat at a window table were I could look out on the still dark ocean and watch the ship’s bow wake. At the next table was an older couple chatting away….or I should say that the man was chatting away…non-stop…while the woman was mostly silent. So, I did what any person would do: I eavesdropped on their conversation. The guy started out with a long, detailed and pretty accurate description of the torpedoing of the USS Indianapolis at the end of WWII; including much discussion of the suffering of the survivors and the days of shark attacks that befell them. After that, he moved on to the sinking of the Andrea Gail off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland (Perfect Storm). And finally, as I left he was regaling her with stories of shark attacks from New England down to Florida.  Some people talk about the strangest things when they are on a boat.

Mid-Morning:

Land Ho!  I see land off the starboard bow! We may make it to land after all. We are saved!

It was a close call. After all these days at sea, the suffering and deprivation was about to overcome us. You, who are on terra firma, can’t understand the torment we have undergone and the continued scarcity of food and drink onboard….for the last two days there have been no capers available for my smoked salmon at breakfast….TWO DAYS, I TELL YOU!!  And the other night at dinner my first THREE choices of wine were out of stock. I was beginning to think that I’d have to settle for some anemic young blush wine until the wine steward finally found a nice Italian Pinot Grigio from Veneto for me. But, if we make landfall at St. Johns today there should be ample time to restock the essentials so that we can make it to New York.

Just a little advance warning about New York: While we will be stopping in New York, it will only be to disembark passengers who are ending there voyage in New York. The rest of us who are continuing on to Fort Lauderdale will not be allowed to get off the ship. We can only stand at the railing and gaze fondly at the metropolis. So, while we will make a port call in New York, we won’t get a chance to take a bite out of the Big Apple. This is why we are looking forward to the port stop in St. Johns….if we don’t make St Johns it will be a very long time at sea for us. 

Another Thing: It has been hinted at by at least one person that perhaps not everything in my emails has been 100% accurate…….Let me just take a moment here to assure everyone that in all of these messages: I AM NOT MAKING THIS STUFF UP.

Everything I write is fact…..or at least largely based on fact. I do allow myself a bit of ‘poetic license’ at times to make the narrative flow a little more smoothly. But all events have actually occurred largely as depicted…..at least as far as you know.

Evening:

Well, the ‘Death Ship’ rumor was true. This morning as we were getting ready to leave on our tour, we saw a hearse parked at the aft end of the ship and later it pulled away from the ship and headed into town.

The weather, for once, was surprisingly good. The winds were high, but there was sunshine and temperature was very mild. St. Johns is a nice, scenic little town. It is not a tourist destination and although about 20 cruise ships stop here each year, they are generally smaller ships. Our tour guide told us that our ship, the Star Princess, was the largest vessel to ever dock in St. Johns. He said that earlier this year a Norwegian Cruise Liner that was larger than ours visited St. Johns, but it could not maneuver through the narrows into the harbor, so it stayed out in the Atlantic and didn’t actually dock in the port. I don’t know if that is true or not, but I did notice several things that indicated that a visit by our size ship was not normal. First, there were people lined up on the sides of the mountains waving at us and taking our picture as be came into the harbor. Second, once we docked there was a steady stream of cars driving down the waterfront road stopping occasionally to take our picture. Third, there was a news article that led the news broadcast on the local TV station about our arrival in port. And finally, there were people lining the dock and the sides of the mountains on our sail-away from St. Johns waving at us.

The Newfoundlander’s or ‘Newfies’ as they sometimes refer to themselves are a different breed. They did not actually become part of Canada until 1949. Until then, they were a semi-autonomous part of the British Empire and probably more closely associated with the U.S. than with Canada. They think of themselves as the ‘Texans’ of Canada…..for a variety of reasons. Not the least of which is their tradition of Gibbet Hill. This is the place outside of St Johns where they used to exert social pressure to keep miscreants in line…..up until their merger with Canada.  If you did something to seriously offend the local civic virtue, you could be condemned by one of their judges. They would take you to Gibbet Hill and hang you. Then they would dip your body in tar and hang you on the hill for another week to ripen (and as an example to others). Then you would be cut down and placed in an empty cod-fish barrel. The barrel was then sealed and kicked down the hill, where after a bumpy ride down the side of the hill the barrel fell into “Deadman’s Pond” from which the barrels were never seen again.  It seems that the residents of St Johns did not have a high tolerance for deviant social behavior. 

Newfoundland has a rough, rocky coast with lots of small harbors and inlets. Most of the houses are small, simple, wood-frame structures that are brightly painted. But a few are quite large, elaborate affairs that indicate there is some affluence. Until recently the main industry, the only industry really, was fishing. But the once inexhaustible supply of cod-fish that fueled their economy is no more. Some hardy souls still try to make a living by fishing, but the real money is in oil…and servicing the oil industry. The giant Hibernia oil platform (the largest in the world according to the Newfies) is off the coast of St Johns. The platform has over 2000 workers onboard and operates 24 hours a day, so it requires a lot of supplies and services to keep going….the people of St. Johns provide most of the support for that platform and for the large Terra Nova oil field that is also near here.

We did a short tour of St. Johns followed by a drive out to Cape Spear and a visit to the Cape Spear Lighthouse (the eastern most point in North America); and finally toured a few of the smaller fishing villages on the way back to the ship. Our tour guide was an outgoing young fellow who was part of a local band that specialized in Newfoundland folk music…..and interestingly enough, he knew where Plano, Texas was….he had been there on a music tour with his band. He filled in any lulls in the tour by singing Newfoundland songs as we drove around. As near as I can tell, all Newfoundland songs involve fishing, death or drinking and often all three at the same time. 

OK, I guess that St Johns isn’t a real tourist destination, but it was an opportunity to get off the boat. And that counts for something.