Word: seamens
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Since the days of the three-masters, merchant seamen the world over have regarded New York harbor as by far the U.S.'s premier port of call. Now the tide is changing. Chronic labor strife, rampant pilferage and the rising cost of doing business are forcing many shippers to steer around the Port of New York, which is an 833-mile labyrinth of piers stretching from northern New Jersey to western Long Island. Less than 13% of the nation's ocean-borne foreign trade passes through the port, a drop of more than 50% in the past three...
...they do, the West Coast dockers have promised to join, tying up all U.S. ports. Such a crisis seems unlikely, given the workers' mood. Indeed, there is evidence of restraint elsewhere in shipping. Last month the National Maritime Union, which speaks for 15,000 merchant seamen, agreed to a three-year contract with increases less than half as big as the dockers collected. The seamen apparently know that if they do not rein in their wage demands, they may continue to lose jobs to foreign ships...
...companies have confronted pollution with great aplomb in their advertising, but they have taken little action to change actual shipboard procedures such as cleaning cargo tanks at sea. There were no black officers aboard any of the ships I was on, though there were many unlicensed black seamen. Gulf, Texaco, Esso, and other major tanker operators control the hiring of their ships' officers through their front offices, while the unlicensed crewmembers usually come at random from a union hall...
...closer to truth, it somehow discourages reflection upon the captain's tortuous character. Mixed in with the sheer fudge and swashbuckle, there was in Arnheiter the pathetic likeness of an honorable inspiration: drilling the crew in riflery to repel prospective boarders, trying to lay on the young seamen some sort of religious inspiration, holding sessions about the strategic purpose of the war. The disobeying of orders to get near the enemy, too - how often have such devices been tried, and forgiven afterward when they were successful, by such naval heroes as Robert Mitchum and John Wayne...
Sara's flowers and her food were exquisite distillations of the seasonal crops. Gerald's daily attire, bought at a seamen's supply store, became the resort uniform: white duck trousers, striped jersey, the sailor's work cap that Scott called a jockey cap in the novel. What set the Murphys apart was a special, large-minded devotion to each other and to their friends. Dos Passos called the marriage "unshakable-everyone was at his best around the Murphys." Though she was notably candid with them, Sara in particular doted on her friends: "It wasn...