A veteran of the sea.
It was a very tired ship. His machts, cargo arrows, and his body seemed to say, “I’m old! Why do I continue to be tortured and forced to crawl from one port to another?“!”
In the ship itself, despite the consequences of numerous repairs and modernizations, it was still possible to guess the original silhouette of the legendary "Liberty" - the most mass transportation of World War II. At one time, U.S. shipyards made these steamers an incredible number, bringing the total production of all types of such vessels to three units per day by the middle of the war. The quality of the swiftly made ships was disgusting, especially in the early series. In essence, the Liberty type steam, officially designed for five years of operation, was single-use and paid off its construction in the first flight across the Atlantic, delivering its "land leasing" cargo from America to Europe.
It was even more surprising to find such a historic specimen in the suburban Caribbean port at the very beginning of the twentieth century.
Under his steam ship was his captain-mechanic: the daughter of the burning fat man of early retirement age in shorts, a souvenir captain's feather and shorts on the "boss foot". He introduced himself to Victor and told us his story.
In the distant eighties some year Vitya worked as a mechanic on this, the Soviet ship. Capitalism, which began in Russia, picked up an old steam boat and dropped it with the crew into the hands of a new shipowner from Greece. Gradually, the crew on the ship changed, becoming more and more international. Victor, as the only remaining specialist who thoroughly knew the device of the rare ship, the new owner did not want to let go.
As soon as the last remaining Russian sailor rushed to write off to the shore, he was immediately doubled his salary and he remained on the steam boat for another six months. The ship changed owners, countries of registration and ports of assignment, but not mechanics. At some point Vitya realized that Leningrad has long been St. Petersburg, and no one is waiting for him at home. His wife divorced him, his daughter grew up and got married to an Italian.
Without regular docking and major repairs, the once proud "Liberty" rapidly stumbled and stopped allowing it: first to decent ports, and then to almost all the others.
Cabotage flights in the Caribbean Sea are not as profitable as transatlantic, so the next shipowner, realizing the irreplaceability of his ship mechanic, decided not to pay him a salary, but took a share, making him his partner.
Having obtained the rights of the owner, Vitya reduced another expensive position on the ship - the captain, and, having assigned these duties to himself, moved to his cabin. “It’s still good,” he added to his story, “that we don’t have to go to civilized ports, and in these tropical suburbs, where we are ‘cabaret’, the local authorities do not have the habit of carefully conducting ship documents.”
After finishing his narrative, the old sailor took a bundle of keys from his pocket and, showing them, said: “These are the keys from my apartment in Petrogradka. I don't know what's there now."Then he breathed hard and asked, "How do you think I'll ever be there again?"