The Extraordinary Journey of Harry Forth

Harry rode in the first bus to depart for the pier and when it pulled up near the ship, he took his camera out of his travel bag and stepped down from the bus. He saw the ship gleaming white in the late afternoon sun and towering above him. It would be his home for the next ten days and convey him and hundreds more across the North Atlantic.

As he marveled at the ship’s size next to the pier he had yet no idea of its history. He would learn something about it during the voyage. He stood on the pier below the ship and looked up at her bridge, the life boats, and the crewmen moving about her upper decks. He felt a sense of pride and wonder. He had come far from the windswept mesas of New Mexico and was about to travel even farther across the Atlantic to Europe. At that moment it all seemed like a dream. The arduous Greyhound bus ride, the many stops at depots with varying qualities of food, the several interesting passengers he had met, and the breakdown on the final leg of the road trip to Montreal all now seemed like ancient history as he finished taking photographs and started walking toward the shed.

He proceeded inside and through the passport and customs check and then walked up the covered gangway onto the ship. It was the first time he had boarded an ocean liner since his childhood when his parents had taken him and his brothers up the gangplank of the U.S. Army Transport General Greely in the harbor at San Juan, Puerto Rico. He had been six years old.

He followed an AFS official onto the ship then turned and walked along the railing so that he could observe others arriving and coming aboard. The area below filled with hundreds of people from many families who had come to wish their sons and daughters bon voyage. Harry felt a little sadness that his family was so far away.

Now he stood at the railing of the MS Seven Seas. As he watched the scene below a young woman came along and stood next to him and began waving to her family. He watched her and smiled. She was so intent that she hardly noticed him. Then another young woman came along and stood on his left and began waving to her family. More people gathered along the railing. This made him feel lonely and he wished that he had someone to wave to. The first young woman turned to him and pointed to her family below. He waved in a perfunctory way, not knowing them. The crowd below was full of energy and many were shouting to their children on deck. The scene struck Harry as if it were from a movie – Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers preparing for a grand voyage to South America.

He watched the young woman on his right waving to her parents. They kept shouting “bon voyage Rachel. Write to us soon. Bon voyage!” And she replied that she would write as soon as the ship reached Rotterdam. He was impressed at their lively interaction and wished that his parents and brothers also stood below so that he could bid them farewell. His family had not been so emotive in their farewells at the Albuquerque bus terminal. The young woman to his left was waving frantically to her parents and siblings and shouting that she would write as soon as possible. She asked them to send her greetings to several girlfriends. She struck Harry as the cheerleader type.

He felt a certain smugness watching and listening to the two women. It seemed to him that they were more anxious about leaving their families than he had been when he had climbed aboard the Greyhound bus in Albuquerque. He had moved around all of his life and felt that this was yet another move, if only a temporary one. He walked inside.