MVAnastasis.com
The Mercy Ship Anastasis Final Sail Scrapyard
The Final Sail of the Anastasis
The Anastasis served as the flagship for
Mercy Ships from 1978 until 2007.
In June of this year,
thirty-eight of us took it from it's last port of call,
Monrovia,
Liberia, to it's final resting place. This
page is my record of that historic
voyage.
Thank you for your interest in this page, and for all those
who served on the
Anastasis throughout the years, thank you for your service, and God bless you.
*
28 June-On the morning of
the sail, Deck & Engineering Departments joined
for one last devotion. Departmental devotions are held almost every morning
on board, and once a week, Deck & Engineering have always joined together
on the aft deck for devotions together. Today was the last time for that, and
an open invitation for all other departments was extended, and they took
us
up on it. It was loud, it was joyous, & it was long. Nobody wanted it to end,
but with a sharp, "OK, we got work to do!", from The
Africa Mercy's bosun,
Laurence Adjai, the crowd scattered and we began getting her ready for sea.
Of course, a good part of the morning was
spent saying goodbye to everyone. Hardest for me was saying goodbye to
Durga, Ragav, Rabi, and all my other friends from the
Nepali camp next
door, Jon & Terry Leischner, and my three
Gurkha's- Ganesh, Min, & Khim. The Leischners and the Gurkha's both left
for the airport about twenty minutes later
as the ship was departing. The Leischner's are bound for Oregon, and the Gurkha's, of course, for their native Nepal.
*
By 1000, we were ready to depart. With a
helping hand from
Marcel Eveleens ( who can never resist helping ) the gangway was removed and we
singled up all of the lines. The crew of the Africa Mercy lined up along the dock to see
us off and they were joined by Liberians, Ghanaian UNMIL
troops, and my friends, the Nepali soldiers. So, we manned the rails and waved
goodbye to everyone, many of whom we would never see again.
And so, we backed out and to the port, turning
anti-clockwise until we were
facing the breakwater, using the tug
for assistance. The crowd on the dock grew smaller and smaller as we steamed
towards the entrance of the harbor.
As always, Monrovia's tug, the Bushrod
Island, was there to offer Mercy Ships it's assistance. As the Pilot Boat
sank last year, making
it Monrovia's twentieth (!!!) wreck, the Bushrod Island doubles as Freeport's
pilot boat, as well. On board the tug was a contingent of
Mercy Shippers, who had the best view of the operation, especially those who
braved the tugs exhaust to watch from atop the bridge.
All too soon we were at the breakwater.
The tug broke loose, we hit the throttle and away we went, India-bound. After
getting the lines stowed, the loose items secured and all of the various
workspaces ready for sea, everyone disappeared.
It had already been a long day (compounded, no doubt, by the fact few had slept
the night before), & we were all tired.
*
What struck all of us right away was the silence. If you've
been onboard, you know how lively (some would say chaotic) the ship can
be; with people constantly on the move, going from place to place, working,
walking, talking, yelling and laughing. Even when you
were on the night shift, there was always somebody else up and around working,
talking, or just unable to sleep. The first few days
of the Final Sail found a completely quiet ship, and the silence was eerie.
The term 'ghost ship' was uttered a few times. With only
three dozen on board and most of those either working or sleeping, no
matter where you went on the ship, you were greeted with
dead silence, the only sound being the distant hum of the engines. Back
when the ship was operating, if you were feeling lonely or
bored, you headed to the Med Lounge or the dining room, knowing there'd be a
table full of people there, chattering away...maybe
even a card game or two. Now, we found ourselves wandering, subconsciously
wondering where everyone was. The lack of activity
was strange...but being a seasoned Mercy Shipper, I wisely used the time
to do my laundry-before anyone else had the same idea!
*
We quickly fell into our daily routines of watch keeping, daywork, cooking and cleaning. Deck and engineering worked standard Four
on/Eight
off schedules, while the galley and housekeeping worked during the day. Audrey, Mike, Alberta and Theo made
up our galley staff,
while Dan
Connors and I were in charge of deck day work, lashing down loose cargo,
tightening the hatches, and making sure that the dozens
of empty
cabins, offices, holds, & storerooms were ready for the long voyage ahead. Here
are some pictures of the ships' crew members at work...
*
It wasn't all work, of course. A lack of
crew means a lot of empty spaces. It also means that there's a whole lot of
extra furniture
lying around. Within the first couple of days, I dragged the chairs in the book shop out onto
the promenade deck and threw us
together a little 'prom deck nook', then copied it on the starboard side. Bowie
found a couch in the CDS office & plunked it down
next to the pool, which we'd kept full of water. The family room (and only TV)
got a little crowded, so we turned the International
lounge into a second TV lounge, using one of the four TV's I found poking around
the ship and a VCR that Dave had found in his
room. The promenade deck 'lounges' were a big hit, and were in constant use; to
watch sunsets, study the bible, or just to sit and
relax. The Africa Room became Rodrigo's 'dart room' & the Med Lounge usually had
about three puzzles going at any given time.
*
With the heat being what it was, and
not having air conditioning, many of us opted to sleep in the ward or the OR, two spaces
that kept the a/c running. People marked off their spaces quick, and all the
rooms soon had things like 'Micah
Eaby's house'
or 'Reserved for Richmond- Don't even think about it'!
scrawled on the doors. Most enterprising was Chief Engineer Pete
Johnson, who dragged a bunk bed, rocking chair, & AC unit into the eye exam room
next to his office and made himself a cabin.
But these makeshift sleeping arrangements lasted less than a week. Within
four days, the temperature had dropped enough for
us to sleep in your own cabin. Three days later, we were all closing our
portholes and doubling up our blankets against the cold.
The cold weather lasted almost three weeks, & only began warming back up when we
had a week to go to reach our destination.
By that time, some had grown bored with sleeping in the spaces provided and
chose their own places to sleep, all over the ship.
*
We passed over the Equator at 0649 on July 6th. I was
sitting on the promenade deck reading quietly when the
word came on the overhead from Chief Officer Tim Trethaway. He announced
that we were now passing over
Equator right now, and if anyone would like to see
the Equator line, they should look outside before we passed
it. I chuckled to myself and went back to my book. Just then a door burst open
and a crew member (who shall
remain nameless) hurried over to the rail, scanning the sea left and right,
frantically trying to spot it. He turned
to me & asked, "Where is it?? Where is the
line?" . It took
me a couple minutes to explain the joke to him.
*
From an engineering standpoint, it wasn't one of the
better trips. We broke down a half-dozen or so times, drifting for a
total of nine days.
At
54,
the
old ship was already a couple decades past the age most ships have outlived
their usefulness, & it showed. Despite
the hard work
by
a very capable engineering staff, we were plagued by mechanical problems for the
entire voyage, many of which stemmed from a load of
bad fuel. Our engineers labored the whole trip, having to rebuild six
high-pressure fuel pumps, replace twenty-eight fuel
injectors, repair the
boiler three times, changed one of the cylinder heads and removed water from the
fuel, among other things. The piston rings were over-worn,
fuel leaked into the lubricating oil of one of the generators, while bacteria
began growing in the lubricating oil of another one. The last 2 weeks
and 2000 miles we were forced to finish on one engine, as the starboard fuel
pumps simply quit working. At bottom left is a picture of the port
turning gear housing, which cracked a week after leaving Monrovia. The skill and
devotion to duty of the engineers was unmatched on this trip.
*
Although the engineers had got the boiler going, we'd
already ordered some light oil to run the ship with, just in case. So, we
drifted
for a little while longer, as the tanker 'Oceanview' was on it's way to us. At
around 0900 on the morning of the fifth, it came alongside
and we took on around 250 tons of light oil. Instead of coming alongside of us,
the Oceanview actually passed us an 80 meter length
of line which we put over our front bitts. They then passed a line with
the hose attached back to us. After hooking up the hose at the
starboard bunkering station, we gave them the go-ahead. We both crept
ahead, connected by only a three-inch line and a 4-inch hose.
We stayed like that for the six hours it took us to load the fuel. Not
surprisingly, there was a fair amount of water mixed with the fuel.
Tankers can pump in tons of water which is easily hidden; the fuel
floats on top of the water, which will settle at the bottom of the
tanks. If they add in 5% water, that's an extra 5% profit for them, and by the
time you realize, it's already paid for & on your ship. It's
not uncommon, as these type of vessels tend to work the West African fishing
fleet. Boats they service are generally made up of foreign
crews (usually Chinese or Korean), thousands of miles from home, and aren't
really in a position to argue about the fuel they receive.
*
The engine room wasn't the only part of
the ship that experienced problems. As we went along, it seemed more and
more
problems kept popping up. Maybe it was the age of the ship (54) or the length of
the voyage; at over 8000 miles, it was the
longest trip the ship has seen since it's days as a cruise liner. We had
more things falling apart this trip than I've seen since
I've been on board. The wind tore off the plastic sheeting roof on the aft deck,
a section of the nursery deck roof fell down,
much of the wallpaper began peeling off, and the ship many leaks bled
rusty streaks onto the bulkheads all over the ship.
*
Unbeknownst to us, Africa Mercy had
declined to take a large number of books that were donated. They'd already
filled their library with the thousands of books that had been donated to them,
and took only a fraction of the books
that had lined the shelves of our ships library. I found them in the school all
boxed up, over a hundred boxes in all.
A rough count put the total number of books left behind at around five
thousand. I spent a couple days re-boxing
them and pulling out a couple hundred or so of the more popular ones. We put six
boxes worth on an empty table
in the galley, and the 'Final Sail Library' was born. It proved to be an instant
hit, as we found ourselves with little to
do after hours and plenty of time to read. Fiction ranged from classics such as
Shakespeare, Orwell, & C.S. Lewis to
recent paperbacks from Grisham, Clancy, & Nora Roberts. The non-fiction
books covered every subject imaginable,
running the gamut from self-help books to history to cookbooks. I found some
funny, musty old paperbacks written
by missionaries dating back over fifty years, with such titles as 'Ten Years
Among The Pygmies' and 'God's Love On
The Amazon'. I even found some antique books, including a bible from 1878. The
oldest find was a book from 1872
entitled 'Good News For Young & Old', which I kept. The strangest
find was entitled "How To Defend Yourself From
Alien Abduction", and it told you just how to do that. Many of us
found ourselves reading like crazy, devouring 2 or
3 books in a week. I read a dozen or so myself, taking advantage of the
down time as well as the extensive library.
In addition to books, there was also a couple hundred VCR tapes left
behind, and their range was as varied as the
books; from classics to blockbusters, from westerns to science fiction to, of
course, a couple tapes of the inevitable
Veggie Tales, as well. Shelves stacked with a couple hundred tapes kept
the TV lounge busy at all hours of the day..
*
The oceans always seem to have the best
sunrises and sunsets, and being out to sea gives you a prime opportunity to
witness them. It seemed whenever the old ship was sailing, there was a handful
of crew members on deck at every
sunrise and sunset photographing the event, and this trip was no different.
When the bible says, in Psalm
107;23-24,
"They that
go down to
sea in ships, that do business in great waters, these have seen the works of the Lord-",
I've often wondered if its the sunsets and sunrises that the author was writing about. We saw many
beautiful sunrises
and sunsets all throughout the final sail. In addition, the weather was
generally favorable
to us for most of the trip, too-
the only exceptions being a few rain showers & a few days of strong winds. The
first morning, I went out on deck and
saw a light out of the corner of my eye. I turned, wondering why the heck the
sun was rising in the west instead of the
west, only to realize that I was looking at the moon, bigger and brighter
than I'd ever seen. I took a picture but it didn't
turn out that good. Pictures of such things never seem to turn out as you
like, showing only a fraction of their beauty,
whether its a sunrise, a sunset, or just 'pretty clouds'. Who knows, maybe
it's just God's way of reminding us to stop
and marvel at His creation. These particular pictures don't do justice to the
many amazing sunrises and sunsets we saw
while on this trip. Some of the colors were so rich & vivid it seemed like the
sky itself had been set ablaze. Nonetheless,
I hope you enjoy them. The constant time zone changes had us continually
guessing when sunrise and sunset would be.
*
At around 1300 on July 7, we received a report of a distress
call given about 18 hours south of us. It wasn't far off
our course, and by 0700 the next morning we were at the last known location. The
South African Coast Guard was
receiving hourly signals from an
EPIRB, but it was unregistered & we had no way to know what kind of ship it
was.
We'd all volunteered to stand lookout, but despite 8 hours of sweeping the
area that the signal was coming from,
we saw no signs of any other ship having sunk other than a small oil slick &
what looked like an old cardboard box
floating around. At around 1500, we turned the ship back towards the southeast
and continued on with our voyage.
*
While we had planned on stopping in
Durban, it became apparent we'd have to stop before that, so on June 14th,
just before dawn, we pulled into
Cape Town. I hadn't been there in two years,
when I originally boarded the ship
at the
V & A Waterfront in September of 2005. It was good to be back, though we
were on the other side (and a
45-minute walk) from the V & A, where all the shops are. Nonetheless, at around
0800, Matt, Theo, and I headed
out the shipyard and to the road. We passed what is probably the largest drydock
I've ever seen, large enough to
hold both ships (and maybe half of the CBM, as well!).
We poked around the Victoria & Albert Waterfront for a
few hours, eating lunch, watching the street performers, checking our email at
the internet cafe, and shopping for
all the folks back home. One by one, we all ran into each other, as everyone
knew the V & A was the place to go.
We saw harbor seals, acrobats, street musicians, and who knows what else...a
feast for the eyes, especially after
being at sea for a couple of weeks ( and being in West Africa for months before
that! ). I even ran into Doug and
Katie Henderson, ex-crew members both and newly married. They'd happened to be
surfing the web that morning
and clicked over to Bowies website to see what he was up to. By funny
coincidence, he'd just posted pictures of us
coming into Cape Town on his website. Katie was shocked to see today's date on
the pictures and they raced down
to the harbor to see where the old ship was. Our remote location behind a
moored oil rig kept us hidden from
them, so they strolled over to the V & A to see if they'd run into to someone
they know. They caught me as I was
getting into a cab, and we spent a half hour catching up. Good thing they saw
me, I was one of only a half dozen
crew members they'd remember. We all hoped the food, oil, fuel, parts, or
new crewmember we were picking up
in Cape Town would be delayed, but no such luck. We were ready to depart
by early afternoon. The captain was
gracious enough to grant us an extra few hours liberty. So, we were all back on
board by 8 pm, & left soon after.
*
As exciting as the V & A Waterfront is, even that gets old after a few hours,
and I wanted to pack as much in as I could. I rounded up some of the others
and we headed over to Table Mountain. We were blessed with clear skies and good
weather, and after a 5 minute cable car ride, we were on top. Ludovic,
Micah, Theo, Bernard and I spent an hour on top of Table Mountain, seeing the
sights and taking pictures. It wasn't as thrilling as hike up the mountain I
made two years ago, but it was still a welcome relief. The view was as
stunning as I remember, and it was hard to leave. My only regret was not
seeing
any dossies this time around. Dassies (or hyraxes, as they're officially known),
are small rodent-like mammals that live on the mountain. They're about the
same size and shape as rabbits. they even look like rabbits minus the ears.
Some of them are so used to tourists they'll actually eat out your hand, and I
saw no shortage of them last time I was here. There were at least three times
the amount of tourists around this time, which most likely kept them away.
If you look closely, you'll see the ship hidden behind a
4-legged oil rig above & to the right of my left shoulder on the top right
picture. As you can see,
we're quite a ways up from it, but believe it or not, the hand-held
radio that I was carrying with me worked from all the way up on top of the
mountain.
*
If we didn't see dossies', we saw plenty
of other wildlife, starting with rats. Soon after our departure from Liberia,
crewmembers began to see a couple of rats
in the vicinity of the galley. We laid out some rat traps in the form of contact
paper and waited. We never caught a rat, but we did snare a mouse one morning.
We also managed to catch a baby seagull, who somehow got into the galley and
went for the bacon I'd placed in the center of the paper. We saw plenty of the
usuals, like pods of whales and dolphins, and no shortage of onboard pests like
ants, spiders, lizards, and, of course, roaches. One day, some of the
engineers
found a young gannet floating around & fished it out of the water. It had run
into some oil and it was a mess. It stayed on the aft deck for a few days,
cleaning
himself, seemingly oblivious to anyone who approached him. We brought him
down to the riposto and tried to clean him up using several different cleaners
and
degreasers, but nothing seemed to do the trick. The most exciting creature
we saw was a manta ray, which spent a few hours swimming around the stern
while
we were drifting. It's markings were quite striking and it was a good
sized ray, too- the wingspan (finspan?) was around three meters across. We
all gathered
on the aft deck and watched him go back and forth, looking to feed on the fish
that were nibbling on our barnacles. You can see a two foot long remora on
his
back, as well. Finally, at bottom right there's a picture of a long-haired,
red-bearded Oregonian sapsucker onboard that showed up on the bridge twice a
day,
but spent most of it's time hibernating. Long-haired red-bearded Oregonian
sapsuckers are known for their booming laugh as well as their prodigious
offspring.
*
After leaving Cape Town, we received word that the ships
purchaser would like a complete inventory of items on
board. The list of items to be inventoried
was pretty extensive, ranging from
'nuts & bolts' to miscellaneous scrap
steel. So, we set about the task of counting every pillow, every tool, every
piece of
furniture, and, as you can see,
every lifejacket. The engineers had their list, the electricians had theirs, and
even the galley counted out every fork & spoon
they had. Deck was responsible for everything that didn't fall in
those other categories, and it was a lot. Dan Connors & I spent two full weeks going over
everything on the list,
checking and rechecking rooms, offices, and storage spaces. Some of the
items we collected together in the cabins for easy counting,
such as the pillows and
lifejackets. Inventorying the ship was like going back in a time machine. We
found every sort of item, some going
back decades.
Photos of people we didn't know, pictures of places we never went,
echoes of outreaches we were
never part of. Ghosts of the past spoke from every nook
and corner, it
seemed. We had fun poring over some of
the old photos and promotional materials with those onboard who'd been with
Mercy Ships for five
years or more, as it invariably turned into a game of "Guess the
Person/Port/Outreach". They'd pass the pictures around to each other with
comments like,
"Yeah, he was a Dutch guy, worked in CDS-I think his name was
Jan or Johan" or "I remember that
sunken blue tugboat in the picture...which port was it
that had the sunken blue
tugboat? Lome? Freeport? Banjul?" We found pictures of people, places & things that they hadn't though of in
years. Many of the
items we found were
were useful, like tools, office supplies, and appliances. Bowie found a receiver
from the 1970's, attached it to one of the ships original
speakers he salvaged and put together a decent radio, catching Indian radio
stations from1500 kilometers away. When the signals faded, he
rigged it to fit
his MP3 player and had a 'ghetto stereo'. Many items we found were too ancient to
be of any value, and some were just
bizarre, like the plastic chicken we
found, normal on one side, but some sort of medical cut-away (with
removable intestines, no less) on the other...used to teach 'chicken anatomy', I guess.
*
The part we had ordered never showed up in
Cape Town, and we were forced to re-order it; to be picked up in Mauritius,
about a week away.
Nine days later, on the morning of July 23rd, we passed the southernmost
island in the Seychelles chain, Reunion Island, just as the sun was
coming up. We passed on the south side, which was comprised of wide sloping
plains dotted with small white structures clumped into villages
scattered here & there. It reminded me of the Aleutian Island chain in Alaska,
or even the highlands of Scotland. Although we never got closer
than six miles, we still had a beautiful view for the four hours it took to
pass. Twelve hours later found us in Mauritius, the most well-known of
the chain. While Reunion remains a protectorate of France, Mauritius
is a country in it's own right, consisting the large island of Mauritius and
several smaller surrounding islands. Mauritius is a popular resort for Europeans
and South Africans, known for high-end shops, expansive reefs
scenic hiking up volcanic mountains, duty-free diamonds, and beautiful
beaches...none of which we got to see, of course. Pressed for time, we
weren't able to dock and only planned to stay long enough to get the parts
we needed. We came within a mile of the port and circled around
for an hour, waiting for our parts to come out to us. We were close enough
for those with mobiles to call home (or just text a quick greeting),
but not close enough for those with laptops to get a wireless connection, as in
Cape Town. I'd wanted to post this, but never got a chance to.
At approximately 1830, a tug carrying our parts came out and we hauled them up
in a bucket. After signing their receipt, we were on our way.
*
Before the ship served God as a ship
of mercy, it was a ship of pleasure, sailing between Venice, Italy and Hong
Kong. Known as the m/v Victoria back then,
the ship belonged to the Italian cruise company Lloyd Trestino, along with it's sister
ships, the Asia, the Oceania, the Europa, and the Africa. Below, you can
see
some photos taken in the 1950's and 1960's, the era that it operated. I've taken
some of the photos and put them alongside more recent pictures so you can see
the comparison. Not all of these pictures are of the Victoria; many of them come
from her sister ships I've named above. I'd thought about taking some pictures
of some of the cabins then and now, but they don't really look that much
different....I'm sure that comes as no surprise to anyone who ever stayed in
them.
Venice, 1961
Unloading a Fiat
Old promotional materials
Port Promenade Deck, looking
forward
Starboard Promenade Deck, looking aft
The Tourist-class 'writing room' is now the
library
Badminton on Hatch Four!
Pool (the lifeboats were removed in 2005)
Suez Canal, 1966 / Indian Ocean, 2007
Reception, then and now
Hair salon then, Operations Office now
First Class Lounge then, International Lounge now
The Gift Shop became our Communications Office
First Class Dining Room became Forward Dining, and the Tourist Class Dining Room
became Aft Dining, where the families ate.
What we call the Mediterranean Lounge was once the Tourist
Class Lounge
*
What's a sail without emergency drills? We
had plenty of them, doing both a fire drill and an abandon ship
drill every week for the duration of the sail. One week, Captain Jon even threw
in a 'grounding drill', which
consisted of checking the water depth at points around the waterline with a lead
line, while simultaneously
inspecting all of the cargo holds for incoming water, then simulating shoring up
the breach we found. The
way the machinery kept breaking down, the regular drills helped to keep us
prepared for any eventuality.
*
In addition to mealtimes, we gathered together regularly. Most Sunday afternoons, we had a weekly worship service
on the port promenade deck,
singing hymns out of the deck songbook, praying
together for a safe passage (and our
brothers and sisters on the Africa Mercy), and taking turns
sharing the message.
On the northbound leg of the voyage,
as we neared the equator, we planned an 'Equator Crossing Party', but alas,
continuing
engine troubles left us adrift for another couple days. We turned it into
a 'Moonrise & Sunset Party', complete with soft drinks, snacks & fellowship.
We had it on the starboard bridge wing to be able to watch the sunset, but the
ship's drifting caused it to be on the port side. No matter,
it's a short
walk. However, in the end it turned out to be a good choice on the date;
that sunset turned out to be one of the nicest we would see the entire trip.
*
August 10- After 45 days and
8000+ miles, we pulled into our destination. The purchasers came aboard
that evening to inspect the ship. We spent Saturday & Sunday 'closing up
shop' and packing all
suitcases.
We boxed up all the materials that would be returning to the IOC and marked some
of the larger items to
to be shipped back. By Monday, we were ready to go and we began preparing
for departure. It seems like
the collective luggage of thirty-eight crew covered most of the promenade deck!
Unfortunately, there was a
slight delay in the purchase that caused us to be postponed for 24 hours, and we
would have to spend one
more day on the ship, and wouldn't get to spend a day in Bhavanagar as
we'd been hoping to. Still, if it's
one thing you learn in West Africa, it is 'God's Time Is Best'. We were
now scheduled to leave the next day.
*
Final Thoughts- As
melancholy as it was, it was a relief to depart the ship. What was intended as a
one month trip had turned into over a month
and a half, and we were ready to go. We had spent almost fifty days saying
goodbye to the ship, and there was nothing left to say. We had spent a
long while away from home, and we had wives, children and families waiting for
us. Many had never been away from home for so long, and were
eager to get back. Those of us returning to Liberia...not so much.
But despite the desire to leave the ship, it was a bittersweet departure. There
was
much from this voyage we would miss. We would miss the beautiful sunrises
and sunsets and all of the sea creatures we had witnessed this trip. We
would miss the many quiet times we'd had alone, and the times we gathered to
worship together. We would miss walking around once-noisy areas on
a now silent ship, hearing the echoes of it's past and we would miss the
memories that were brought back, like ancient spirits that had been waiting to
to be released from their resting places. We would miss the excitement of the
the ships last, grand adventure and we would miss the small piece of
history that thirty-eight of us had been so blessed to be a part of.
We would miss the 'Steve Wargo Dinner Hour'.
In
our last worship a day before we left, we read from the book of
Ecclesiastes, third chapter. It speaks of an appointed time for everything
and a
time for every affair under the heavens...a time to be born, a time to die. A
time to seek, and a time to lose. This ship has served us for thirty years
and served others in the twenty years before that. It would be no exaggeration
to say this ship has seen all that Ecclesiastes speaks of. Weeping and
laughter, rending and sewing, mourning and dancing, keeping and casting away,
birth...and death. It has even seen it's own resurrection, and bears
the name of such. Now, there was only one time left,...one last step to
take, one last chapter to write. And so, in the early evening of August
14th,
the ships crew gathered their luggage, boarded the starboard lifeboats and
headed for the beach...and the ship was laid to rest.
"This is not
the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. It is, rather, the end of the
beginning."
-Winston Churchill