The business of docking the ship, mooring up at a quayside, un-mooring to leave . . . lots of manual handling of ropes, nothing high-tech involved . . . all this provoked great interest at every port we visited. The mooring crew at each place were skilled and competent; the ship's crew knew their end of the task. There is something deeply interesting and satisfying in watching skilled and vital work being done well. I was pleased to observe (this was Norway, of course!) how many women there were working dockside, doing these heavy manual tasks.
Sometimes a thin line would be tossed, or fired by some kid of projectile, onto the quay. The local crew would use this to haul up the heavy mooring rope. Sometimes the first (red or orange) fine line trailed a second fine (blue or green) line, still being held on the ship. The second line was then hauled back in, bringing the first line back with it, which was then used to send out a second rope. There was always more than one point of attachment both fore and aft. In Longyearbyen,where the ship was much longer than the quay, the mooring ropes had to be fetched by motor launch and ferried to a more distant mooring point.
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| two mooring ropes and three fine lines visible |
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| ferrying the ropes by launch, rope attached to a stick to be handed over |
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| the handling stick back on the launch |
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| rope hauled up by fine line |
Getting ready to leave - a heavy, wet rope at the moment of being tossed into the water, then to be winched back aboard:
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