Container ships: Ancient and modern mariners | The Economist
▻http://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21636687-romance-high-seas-age-quantification-ancient-and-modern-mariners?fsrc=scn/fb/te/pe/ed/ancientandmodernmariners
MAGINE the beginning of a sea voyage, and you probably picture something like the frenetic preparations that Herman Melville describes in “Moby Dick”: “There was great activity aboard the Pequod. Not only were the old sails being mended, but new sails were coming aboard, and bolts of canvas, and coils of rigging…the men…were working till long after nightfall.” Boarding a ship in that state was a perilous obstacle course.
Boarding a modern container ship, by contrast, is a simple and subdued process. You walk up a steep, narrow ladder, hand your passport to the officer on duty and follow him to the ship’s office—which, on Maersk’s giant, Danish-flagged vessels, is as clean and screen-stuffed as any on land. At most you pass one or two crewmen: modern ships are huge but their crews small. A short walk down a broad, fluorescent-lit hall and a brief ride in a lift—festooned, as on shore, with safety regulations—brings you to the bridge, a long, glassed-in eyrie ten storeys above the deck.