Traveling in the 60s

Subject: Traveling in the 60s

One of the things about the supposed romance of travel is the ambiguity of who you are and what you stand for. Released from the straight jacket of social conformity you are transparent to others as you pass through the sights and sounds of a great city or pause before some natural beauty. You have cast off that cloak of social respectability, so important back home now superfluous in a land of strangers. 

Casting off from the quayside the ship inched slowly away from the land, separating you from the strictures which had tugged at you daily.  Now released, the ship swings around under the guidance of the fussy tugs, a mournful blast from the fog horn as the hawsers drop into the water to be drawn quickly back on board the tug boat. "Slow ahead", "two degrees to starboard" comes the command from the pilot and repeated by the man at the wheel as he flicks over the engine telegraph to slow ahead, replicated by the telegraph in the engine room. The. Throttle is eased on the engineers platform down below to acknowledge slow ahead and compressed air released into the cylinder to kick the piston over and create the compression which fires the fuel.
Out on deck the farewells and the streamers part as the gap between the ship and the people standing on quay widen. There is a tension in the air as loved ones part, sometimes for ever, those on the ship looking to new experiences, those on shore content with what they have. Slowly the ship begins to pick up speed as the wake becomes more pronounced and she heads out through the breakwater out into the open waters of the sea. The tremble of the engine as it picks up speed, full ahead is mirrored by the pitching motion as the swell begins to exert  its force. The navigating officer lays a course to our destination and we go happily in search of our cabin.
The ship for three  weeKs or more is our oyster, our world of isolated irrelevance, no bills, no cooking, no traffic, other than the stalwarts walking their daily routine around the promenade deck. You can practice your sloth or search around for things to do and people to do them with.  The famous shipboard romance starts from here as you eye the pretty girls stretching out around the pool deck, laying on their towels each fully aware  of their attractiveness,  like a coming together of seals, they gaze doe eyed, attentive to their next catch, who knows, it might be you !