FullReads

We ourself, just as much as Shelley, enjoy visiting ships, and have had some surprising adventures in so doing. We remember very clearly our first call upon William McFee, when he was First Assistant Engineer in S.S. Turrialba. But getting aboard vessels is a much more complicated and diplomatic task than it was in Shelley’s day. Even when armed with Mr. McFee’s autographed card, it was by no means easy. We went dutifully up to the office of the United Fruit Company at Pier 9, to apply for a pass, and were surveyed with grim suspicion. Why, we asked gently, in these peaceful times is it so difficult to visit a friend who happens to be in a ship? Prohibition, said the candid clerk, and a whole province of human guile was thereby made plain to our shrinking mind. Mortals incline readily to sin, it seems, and apparently evil and base men will even go so far as to pretend a friendship with those who go down to wet territory in ships, simply for the sake of–well, we cannot bring ourself to mention it. “How do you know Mr. McFee wants to see you?” we were asked. Luckily we had Mac’s card to prove it.

We had long wanted to see Mr. McFee in his sea-going quarters, where he writes his books and essays (so finely flavoured with a rich ironical skepticism as to the virtues of folk who live on shore). Never was a literary sanctum less like the pretentious studios of the imitation litterateurs. In a small cabin stood our friend, in his working dungarees (if that is what they are called) talking briskly with the Chief and another engineer. The conversation, in which we were immediately engulfed, was so vivacious that we had small chance to examine the surroundings as we would have liked to. But save for the typewriter on the desk and a few books in a rack, there was nothing to suggest literature. “Plutarch’s Lives,” we noticed–a favourite of Mac’s since boyhood; Frank Harris’s “The Bomb” (which, however, the Chief insisted belonged to him), E.S. Martin’s “Windfalls of Observation,” and some engineering works. We envied Mac the little reading lamp at the head of his bunk.

We wish some of the soft-handed literary people who bleat about only being able to write in carefully purged and decorated surroundings could have a look at that stateroom. In just such compartments Mr. McFee has written for years, and expected to finish that night (in the two hours each day that he is able to devote to writing) his tale, “Captain Macedoine’s Daughter.” As we talked there was a constant procession of in-comers, most of them seeming to the opaque observation of the layman to be firemen discussing matters of overtime. On the desk lay an amusing memorandum, which the Chief referred to jocularly as one of Mac’s “works,” anent some problem of whether the donkeyman was due certain overtime on a Sunday when the Turrialba lay in Hampton Roads waiting for coal. On the cabin door was a carefully typed list marked in Mr. McFee’s hand “Work to Do.” It began something like this:

Main Engine Pump-Link Brasses
Fill Up Main Engine Feed Pump and Bilge Rams
Open and Scale After Port Boiler
Main Circulator Impeller to Examine
Hydrokineter Valve on Centre Boiler to be Rejointed

The delightful thing about Mr. McFee is that he can turn from these things, which he knows and loves, to talk about literary problems, and can out-talk most literary critics at their own game.

He took us through his shining engines, showing us some of the beauty spots–the Weir pumps and the refrigerating machinery and the thrust-blocks (we hope we have these right), unconsciously inflicting upon us something of the pain it gives the bungling jack of several trades when he sees a man who is so fine a master not merely of one, but of two–two seemingly diverse, but in which the spirit of faith and service are the same. “She’s a bonny ship,” he said, and his face was lit with sincerity as he said it. Then he washed his hands and changed into shore clothes and we went up to Frank’s, where we had pork and beans and talked about Sir Thomas Browne.