On 03/28/2021 08:52 PM, Ed Pawlowski wrote:


Anyway, even in the early '70d he was sailing on container ships. That
sort of put the end to the romantic see the world thing since what you
mostly saw was a container port for a few hours in the middle of the
night when they swapped your containers and then you were gone again.

He was just on the wrong ships. Some will stop for a week in places so
you can study the local history, visit the Pyramids and such.

He had one voyage where he got some time in port in India, but in the
'70s you took what you could get, including Great Lakes runs. It hasn't
improved. In high school I was interested in the merchant marine, the
engine, rather than the deck department. Fortunately I took another path.

I believe I mentioned in another post that the northeast is heavily
dependent on LNG. The US has plenty -- in Texas. However the 1920 Jones
Act requires cargoes being transported between US ports to be carried on
US flagged vessels. afaik I know there are no US flagged LNG tankers so
the north east buys their LNG from Russia while the US tries to shove
its LNG down the German's throats.

The Jones Act is one of those things that sounded good at the time but
did nothing to preserve the US maritime industry and had unintended
consequences.