As a maritime writer, I follow two cardinal rules. One is to write sincerely. The other is to be brief. “Brevity is the soul of wit”, Shakespeare wrote in his play ‘Hamlet’. It’s a sage advice which writers sometimes ignore when they are seduced by the sound of words.
I have made up my mind to stop writing about seafarers’ rights and allied issues after my post of 25th October. This was no spur-of-the-moment decision. It was the result of an epiphany.
Why would any writer advocate seafarers’ rights for years when there’s no money in it for him? I can give three good reasons for my doing so, and none of them has to do with the fact that seafarers man the ships that transport 80% of global trade
Becalmed for weeks, Marine Café Blog is sailing again. I had to leave the old ship temporarily to focus on book writing?something I had always wanted to do but kept putting off. While blogging gives one the pleasure of expressing oneself spontaneously, it is ephemeral by nature. Blogs come and go, but books stay.
Prepositions can be tricky. Should one say “in a boat” or “on a boat”?
The samurai had their bushido, a code of conduct that guided the way they thought and acted. If one considers writing a noble profession, why shouldn’t writers have one, too? After years of wielding pen and pounding keyboards, I finally got down to crafting my personal credo as a maritime writer.
Salty water covers much of the earth’s surface, and salt has been a part of the diet of humans since time immemorial. So why wouldn’t the word “salt” find its way into the world of English idioms?
When should one use the adjective “marine” and not “maritime” or “nautical”? This is a tricky question. All three words are connected with the sea and often applied interchangeably without people noticing the difference.
It should not matter whether one uses “female” or “woman” as an adjective for a ship captain or some other person. Both are grammatically correct. But in this age of political correctness and fragile sensitivities, some rabid feminists may object to the use of “female”…
British English has a certain flavour that can make it quite pleasant to hear. The plural noun “docks”, for example, means the man-made structures for the mooring and loading/unloading of boats and ships. But when Brits say “I’m going down to the docks,” they refer to the area of water where the docks (quay walls, piers or wharves) are located and the offices and warehouses around them.
Bay or harbour? These two terms can be a source of confusion for writers and even for some mariners. Official names help to some extent — e.g., “New York Harbor” and “Manila Bay”. But one may well ask: what is the crucial difference between the two given that ships regularly come in and out of both places?
The APA (Amercian Pschological Association) Dictionary of Psychology defines empathy as “understanding a person from his or her frame of reference rather than one’s own, or vicariously experiencing that person’s feelings, perceptions, and thoughts.” Clearly, there should be empathy if seafarers are to be treated more kindly by those who profit from them. So why is this word not used more often by advocates of seafarers’ rights?