When I was about four my father, a university professor, spent his sabbatical year in Brighton, England. We travelled there and back on the Arkadia, a Greek Line ship. (Our return voyage, I later learned, was the ship's last before it got scrapped.) I was too young to remember much, but I do recall swarthy Greek waiters serving tomato juice. (I've never liked tomato juice.)
The ship had a playroom for little kids, and I'm told that my sister Margaret staged a mass jailbreak from there, and the German governess was not pleased. My mother recalled German sailors singing songs, and as the voyage dragged on the songs became more and more sentimental.
When I was young and lived in New Brunswick we often visited Prince Edward Island in the summer, which meant taking a car ferry across Northumberland Strait from Cape Tormentine to Borden, and later the other way. Now they have the Confederation Bridge across the strait, but by the time it opened we'd moved to Toronto.
Twelve years ago my father and I took a cruise ship along the coast from New York to Montreal. It was September, so there was some nice autumn scenery. We noticed some passengers taking the elevator to go up just one floor. At one point in Cabot Strait I could see Cape Breton from one side of the ship--actually, an island off the Cape Breton coast--and Newfoundland from the other side.
I dream about ships a lot. In some of those dreams I've been on the Titanic, a subject that interested my even before the shameless Hollywood movie came out. In some I'm sailing near little islands off Newfoundland or in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. While I'm still alive, I'd like to cross the ocean by ship again. (I'd also like to visit Greenland.)
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