before a voyage is completed. This is a long time to pass in a small restricted. community, and the only break they get is shore leave in a foreign port. It is their only chance to escape from those around them, or to meet new people.

Life on a liner is rather different from that on a tramp or a tanker. In a liner, some at least of the crew can make contact with passengers. Lots of the liners have their concert parties which gives the female impersonators an opportunity to demonstrate their talents, to the enjoyment of passengers as well as crew. But luxury liners with their short voyages and ever changing passengers. and crews are impersonal things. It is in the cargo ship with a small crew and no passengers that life is more intimate. As a rule there is no entertainment on these ships apart from what the boys make for themselves. Dancing to radio or records is the most popular entertainment, and the fellows have to dance. with each other. Mostly it's jive, or rock 'n roll, but the sight of two men dancing with each other does not raise anyone's eyebrows, as it would ashore, and men dance with each other with pleasure and abandon, but usually with. no thought of sex.

Close friendships develop, and also enmities, and though these friendships and enmities sometimes have a sexual basis, it does not necessarily follow that they must have. Friendship may be deep or casual. One remembers them, or forgets. To stand in the ship's bow at night as she ploughs through the ocean with stars above and dark white-topped waves all around and wind and spray in your face cannot help but engender a warm feeling of intimacy towards a man standing beside you, though no words may be spoken.

When they land in a foreign port, most sailors lose no time in heading for the beach. Some go sightseeing, alone or in small groups, but nine out of ten make for a bar, for after a few years at sea one feels one has seen all the sights worth seeing, and the nicest thing to look at is a row of bottles, and ice in a glass, and the nicest thing to do is to find someone new to talk to. Sailors are lonely people, and that is why they emphasize their loneliness. Probably all of them are a little bit crazy, more or less, because no sailor can ever explain why he goes to sea, and why he never leaves it.

Most of the bars around the big waterfronts of the world are in actual fact, bar-brothels. The women who pretend to be so glad to see a sailor have only the end in view of relieving him of whatever money he has, with a little dispassionate lovemaking if he insists. And they fall for it, because at the time it seems worthwhile, just to talk to someone new. Sailors talk to anyone. Sailors usually have money when they go ashore and like to get rid of it as quickly as possible. So many times, though, pleasures on the beach are just dead sea fruit, and it is often with a real feeling of relief that they get back to the ship and under way again, trying to make themselves believe they've had a wonderful time. As a rule, it is only the younger members of the crew who mess about with prostitutes; those who have been at sea for a few years generally do not bother.

No, sailors are funny people. They have a mentality all of their own and only a sailor can understand how the mind of another sailor works. They are happiest among their own kind. Life on shore is too restricted to satisfy the demands of a man used to the freedom, disciplined though it may be, of seagoing life.

Reprinted from DER KREIS/LE CERCLE

STORNOWAY.

21