Horizon lines - cruise ships - How To Forget The Election

National Review, Nov 25, 1996 by Quentin Letts

TO JUDGE by the activities offered on cruise ships, my notion of what a cruise provides is not shared by many other people. Eating, drinking, dancing, floor shows, karaoke, eating, swimming, viewing midnight exhibits of butter sculpture, eating -- it all strikes me as madness. I live in a place where I can do all these things (except possibly viewing butter sculpture). Why should I go on a boat to sample them?

The thing to do on a cruise, which cannot be done anywhere else, is to watch the horizon. This requires a chair on the upper deck. The chairs at the bow get too much wind, the chairs amidships are too close to the activities. Usually there is a suitable chair aft. Bring a book -- something rococo, whimsical, unreal: P. G. Wodehouse, Raymond Chandler, Trollope. It must be artful enough to divert the mind, but not so engaging that it holds it, because the purpose of the book is only to rest the eye from its main activity, which is to stare at the line where sea and sky meet. Sometimes another ship passes in the distance, or a cloud, which serve the same eye-resting function. Then it is back to watching the line. All day.

A friend of mine in the academy told me that in the Sixties, the era of altered consciousness, he was collecting blue books after an exam, and one of his students assured him that this was the best essay he had ever written. When the professor opened it, he found that his student had simply inscribed a straight line, over and over, on every line of every page of the blue book. The horizon is this line. But on a cruise ship, there is no test. The only thing that's blue is water and air. You never have to hand them in.

The other thing to do on cruise ships is stargaze. When we look at a night sky on land, we and the stars are still; only the wind moves. A ship at night surges along, but the stars are still just the same. Sometimes the ship will offer a telescope and some knowledgeable employee. This is the only activity I allow. I earned an astronomy merit badge at Boy Scout camp, but I have forgotten a lot (where is Cassiopea's husband?) and there are constellations over the Caribbean that never visit the Adirondacks.

Periodically the ship docks, and again almost everybody does the wrong thing. The ports of the Caribbean (which is where I have cruised) are stuffed with stores selling jewelry, perfume, cigarettes, alcohol, Lladro figurines -- all of it available at home. Why sail hundreds of miles to shop?

The easy-living approach to shore leave is to get away from the main streets. Nothing has happened in these places since Alexander Hamilton and the Empress Josephine left. Why buck the trend? The music helps set the mood. Steel drums are aimless as rain. It is pleasant to hear the rasta poses of reggae painlessly assimilated to "Yellow Bird" and "Marianne."

Happily, every port in the Caribbean is so tiny that getting off the main drag is easy. Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas was laid out in a grid pattern by Danish engineers who had never been there, so streets shoot straight up steep slopes, sometimes ending in staircases. On one of those hills, behind the Lutheran Church, is a Greek restaurant in an old house. The food is decent, the view is nice. Next door is an old hotel with a dark bar. No view, more drinks.

When that's done, take a cab over the hill to the other side of the island where there is a beach in a park with a small bar. If you take your drink out onto a float, a waitress in a bikini will wade out to replenish it. Or just lie in the water all by yourself, under the sky. In the line.