Ahoy.
A personal event directs my thoughts back many years, to boot camp where a lad's exposure to sea stories begins. He learns almost immediately the difference between a fairy tale and a sea story. One begins with "Once upon a time," the other with "Listen you guys, this is no s--t."
A kernel of truth embellished with all the literary art forms makes up the best of the sea stories, satire, parody, mockery, (especially self mockery), mild fantasy, wish fulfillment, and so forth.
Literal minded people are too quick to scorn the sea tale as just so much bull s--t. Winfred Blevins* had it right even if in a different context. Referring to the tall tales of the Rocky Mountain fur trappers (about 1820-1845) he observed: "What was wanted here was not fact but entertainment." He also notes that the yarn is a form of journalism even though a detail here and there requires heavy discounting.
The young sailor is well advised to listen with patience and appreciation -- or the best approximation thereof he can muster -- even to the banal ones he's heard before. It will make him a better ship mate in the eyes of his fellows, and that is one of the pillars of a happy cruise.
Of course, he may absorb so much that he'll wind up as an aging blogger. Never mind. That's just another one of the perils of the sea.
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*Give Your Heart to the Hawks ISBN 0-380 - 00694 -4, p. 76
2 comments:
I have found that by believing all these stories I hear, especially if they DO NOT require any money from me, I have had a far richer life than disbelieving them.
Some of them old Chiefs had good ones too!
Of all my ship mates, I miss the chiefs most. I suppose I dealt with 30 or 40 of them and can't recall one stinker. Even my boot camp company commander, MMC Goeffney, took an even strain for recruits who tried.
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