May 28
The Port of Antwerp isn’t smack dab on the North Sea, but 50 miles inland on the Scheldt River. It takes three different harbor pilots to guide us to our berth.
At 10AM, the first pilot zips over in his Zodiac— a souped up inflatable raft with a powerful motor— and clambers up a rope ladder onto the ship. A harbor pilot’s career depends on a lot of things— a knowledge of the shipping lanes, for instance, and the various hazards of the harbor— but I figure his most important skill is to make climbing a rope ladder lashed to the side of a freight ship while dressed in business casual look like no big deal.
The first pilot takes us as far as the mouth of the Scheldt. Then the river pilot climbs aboard. The river pilot is a beanpole of a guy in a white button-down shirt and blue polyester slacks. He’s escorted to the bridge by the Second Officer. The Second Officer on the Independent Venture is a burly tattooed Ukrainian guy who looks like a real sailor man. Think Bluto, not Popeye. A guy who, if you saw him at the bar you just walked into, would make you reconsider walking into a bar like that. The river pilot, on the other hand, looks like a guy who’d like to talk to you about your cell phone plan. At first, I think the river pilot is miscast for his job. But on second thought, maybe it’s the Second Officer who’s miscast. Thanks to automation, and satellite navigation, and all sorts of freight management and logistics software, sailing a freight ship is becoming a desk job, only the desk is located at the other end of a rope ladder.
At the river locks, the third harbor pilot hops aboard. The third pilot is dashing with his shock of silver hair and his dark blue naval uniform. Cool and confident, he strides onto the bridge and gives First Mate Christoph a snappy salute. Then he sidles up to the helmsman and with his hands clasped behind his back, he softly croons navigation instructions while keeping his eyes fixed to the river. We’re in the port now. Outside, the air is full of the sound of idling truck engines and the beep-beep of forklifts, while huge cranes swing freight containers through the sky. As we near our assigned berth, the pilot calmly narrates his parking instructions. It’s a complicated maneuver that involves a pirouette in the middle of a very narrow ship channel, then a kind of lateral lunge into a tight spot between the Contaz from Istanbul and a coal barge. When the lines are finally tied, the pilot gives Christoph a nod. Then he glides down the gangplank and hops into shiny silver Mercedes parked on the pier and zooms away, James Bond style.
“Impressive!” I say to Christoph.
Christoph gives me a sour look. It turns out the pilot had us going way too fast as we approached the pier, so the ship engines had to be thrown into hard reverse which practically gave Werner the Chief Engineer a heart attack. Then the U-turn in the ship channel was much trickier than it had to be because the pilot refused to let an oil tanker in the opposite berth get out of the way first.
“This pilot—” Christoph begins, then rolls his eyes, which is the First Mate’s way of saying the guy was an idiot.