Shipping Out on Fresh Water

This is the second in a series of six sea stories based on the author's experience in the merchant marine. John is forced off one of the prototype container ships, running between Seattle and Alaska, by the start of what turned out to be the longest strike of West Coast longshoremen in U.S. history. Desperate for summer income with which to pay college tuition, so that he can keep his student deferment and avoid being sent to Viet Nam, the author hitchhikes to the Great Lakes to try to get a job. The job he got was in the engine room of an ore carrier like the Edmund Fitzgerald -- later immortalized in a song by Gordon Lightfoot after she sank in a storm while on the same run. The S.S. Kinsman Independent was built in the early 1900s and powered by hand-shoveled coal. Thrown into what he had thought was a bygone era, John had to learn the art of correctly shoveling coal into red-hot furnaces. His challenge was to last long enough at the job, without being fired or getting injured, until he can go back to the University of Washington and reclaim his student deferment.