Philadelphia to Antwerp - Grounded: A Down to Earth Journey Around the World - page 2

WE have no tickets for our freighter. Just a piece of paper I printed out at home so I'd remember the name
of our ship—the Independent Endeavor —and the address of the terminal. The travel agency assured us our
arrival would be expected.
A few decades ago, we wouldn't have needed a travel agency at all. Back then, you could walk out onto
a shipping dock and talk (or buy) your way aboard a freighter. All you had to do was convince the captain
to give you a bunk or a spot on the floor. Maybe you'd work for your passage by swabbing decks. Maybe
you'd just slide the captain a wad of cash. Whatever the arrangement, it was not unusual for a cargo ship to
accept last-minute passengers.
Those days are long gone. The golden era of freighter hitchhiking came to an end sometime around the
mid-1970s. Nowadays, you can't get on a container ship without making reservations weeks in advance.
(Unless you secretly stow yourself inside one of the containers. Which I don't recommend. You could
die that way. Even if you survived, you'd endure spooky darkness, brutal heat, and unbreathable air. A 1994
New York Times story about a group of stowaways from the Dominican Republic featured the evocative
subhead “Three Days at Sea in Foul Box.” The stowaways were discovered when a deckhand heard des-
perate shouting and banging coming from a container perched forty feet above the ship's deck.)
As with all great adventures, casual freighter travel stopped the moment the lawyers showed up. Ship-
ping companies decided that, due to some pretty glaring liability and security issues, it would be insane for
them to continue allowing their captains to take on random passengers. What if, for instance, one of those
passengers experienced a health crisis while at sea, requiring immediate attention? If the captain diverted to
the nearest hospital, he'd delay the cargo and lose money for the company. If he refused to divert, and the
passenger croaked, hello, lawsuit. Either way, it was the sort of hassle the shipping lines could do without.
Enter the freighter travel agencies, which blossomed in the 1980s. The agencies' insight was that, be-
cause of increased automation, it took fewer crew members to operate a cargo ship. As a result, some of-
ficers' quarters were going unoccupied at sea. These cabins were private and spacious—just comfortable
enough to be marketed as a cruise ship alternative. The agencies convinced the big shipping lines they
could bring in added revenue by running a small, carefully regulated side business renting out the empty
cabins to upscale passengers looking for a novel travel experience. And so freighter tourism was born.
To ride a freighter these days, you need to book your passage through a travel agency approved by the
shipping company. You'll be required to sign a thick stack of release waivers. And you'll have to present
a health certificate signed by your doctor, as well as evidence of an insurance policy that covers medical
evacuations. If you're over eighty, even if you clear all these hurdles, you likely won't be allowed aboard a
ship. There's too much risk involved when arthritic bone-bags wander around on slippery decks.
IN the corner of the shipping terminal, there's a shed that houses administrative offices. We knock on its
door, and an oil-stained dockworker answers. As promised, he's been expecting us. He tosses our back-
packs in the bed of a pickup and drives us a few hundred yards to the ship's berth. It's not far at all, but
walking this stretch isn't safe for civilians. The docks here are teeming with heavy equipment. One wrong
turn and we could get impaled on the hook of a crane.
After slowing the pickup to a stop, the dockworker hops out, retrieves our bags from the back, and speeds
off again. We find ourselves standing next to a wall of blue metal that blots out the sun. Closer inspection
reveals this is the hull of our freighter.
The boarding process for your average cruise ship—one of those big, white Caribbean gluttony
tubs—begins with thousands of passengers in a snaking velvet rope line on the pier. A squad of cruise ship
workers, all fake smiles and elaborate epaulets, will load piles of luggage onto bellhop trolleys. They'll lug