This Month

“Now there is really something,” said the Coast Guard skipper, picking up his binoculars. “That’s the way to go to sea, no doubt about it.”

It was a bright summer morning, a decade ago. and the cutter was idling along, some fifty miles off Boston Harbor. Coming up from the south was a handsome black freighter — big, competent, and looking like a specimen of calendar art with her glossy hull and snowy upper works. She had two separate superstructures. “They’re putting out quite a lot like that now.”the skipper remarked.

“That forward house is for passengers — twelve of them.” The freighter, he judged, was Norwegian, not more than two or three years old.

He handed me the glasses. I could see Chinese ideographs on the bow and, as she neared, in small letters, the name Tai Yin. I could see, too, the sparkling windows of a miniature promenade deck, the glint of polished brass here and there, a yacht-like standard of paint and perfection. She was bound for Boston and we watched her out of sight.

I do not read the ship news columns. It struck my interest, consequently, to find myself, on a winter evening in the following year, looking at a heading “Arrived Yesterday” and underneath it: “Tai Yin (Nor.), Far East Ports via New York.” It was fairly late and a bad night, a Boston February, but I wanted to go aboard the Tai Yin and show her to my wife.

All we had to do in those innocent times to drive out on the Army Base pier at ten P.M. was to tell the watchman at the gate that we were looking for the Tai Yin. “Out at the end of the pier,” he said. “Just keep going, can’t miss it.” It was high water, and we parked the car when the towering black hull came up in our headlights.

At the head of the gangway was the watch, a young seaman in a parka, heavy mittens, the stoutest kind of cold weather boots and trousers. I asked him if we could go through the ship. He had no English but he was wonderfully polite and escorted us inside out of the weather: he left us, reappearing shortly with a steward and the First Officer. I remember the steward especially: he was wearing a starched wing collar, a bow tie, a shepherd’s plaid vest, and a white jacket. They both made us feel that they had been hoping for just such nameless sight-seers.

The First Officer was a terrier-like little man with a big voice and an immense flashlight. Courteous, hospitable, he was proud of the Tai Yin; it was impossible to keep a ship clean in port, he said, as we stepped out on deck, but I noticed, when he turned his big light up and down the scuppers, that they were painted white and that not so much as a burnt match was there to litter them. After we had gone up a ladder to the enclosed promenade deck, the First Officer did not hesitate to throw his beam on the deck itself and I could see that he was expecting comment. The pale buff of the wood was distinctive and I tried a long shot. “Teak,” I said to my wife. “What a beautiful deck.” The First Officer was delighted. Yes, it was teak but — as he hastened to apologize — the deck was in terrible condition, always the case when a ship lay in port. My own guess was that the deck had been scoured daily ever since it was laid.

The quarters for the Tai Yin’s passengers consisted of eight or ten two-berth cabins, all outside and with large oblong ports, plenty of light and ventilation, and for that matter, an amazing amount of room. The furnishings, showers, baths, were about like those of a first-class hotel only they were cleaner. The décor was in the modern Scandinavian manner with light, honey-colored woods and simple designs. From the main lounge, a handsome room which fourteen knots would aerate comfortably even in the tropics, occupying roughly the forward half of an upper deck, one looked out over the bow.

Rates for passengers, the First Officer told us, worked out to a little less than $5 a day — a matter of some $500 if one stayed with the Tai Yin on her shuttle to Hong Kong and return. At a 10 per cent higher rate, the ship offered a tiny suite. As I recall these values, I can hardly believe what could have been ours for the taking — so pleasant an adventure, in such fine company, at so modest a cost.

The Captain would be disappointed if we failed to look in on him, the First Officer said. So, we all sat down with the Captain, and the steward produced Danish beer. The Captain was a six-footer, and he must have weighed well over 225 — a blockhouse of a figure, with huge hands, a barrel chest, gentle manners. Like the others, he was pleased to see any visitor who admired the Tai Yin. Yes, the passengers always seemed to enjoy the ship, he said, and as soon as the Tai Yin got below Norfolk on the way out, he rigged a canvas swimming pool on the bow. He kept the pool rigged except when he encountered a typhoon. The ship was in a typhoon after leaving Shanghai some weeks back.

The Japanese were bombing Shanghai at about that time, and my wife asked the Captain if he had any trouble there. He construed her interest as the master of a fine ship would, and not as one concerned with entanglements between the diplomats and generals who live ashore. “No, I never have any trouble getting in and out at Shanghai,” the Captain replied. “There is always plenty of water in the river at Shanghai.”

The Tai boats stopped coming to Boston when the war broke out. I never heard again of Captain Axelson and the M.S. Tai Yin. I hope they are still afloat and that some day I shall go to sea with them. C. W. M.