From the ‘Black Gull’ to the ‘Sun’

I wrote this last month, in anticipation of Embarkation Day — which has arrived!

I’ve never been on a cruise and I don’t come from a family of ardent travelers. [Maybe I’m adopted?] But my father, whose boating experience was otherwise limited to a small boat with an outboard motor that took him fly fishing for trout once a year in Canada, once upon a time took a cruise of sorts from New York to England, in 1936. It was his graduation present from his Aunt Dorothea, his father’s sister. Dorothea, like my grandfather, though raised in Oregon had been born in England. She had studied music in Europe, met and married an Englishman and lived there. She offered my father a grand tour of England and maybe the Continent when he finished college. But he had to get himself from Oregon to London. Don’t know how he crossed the U.S., probably by train. When it came to crossing the Pond, having very little money, he picked a freighter over an ocean liner. He described himself as ‘super cargo.’ ‘So, at 7:50 p.m. and after a hectic job of packing followed by a traffic jam at the ferry terminal, I walked up the gang plank of the S.S. Black Gull.... My chief worry when I came on board was who would be on the boat with me. I soon found, however, that they were a fine bunch.’ Hope I can say the same!