Christmas Eve at sea

Last week I sat at a Christmas concert with a choir and a brass band. The music was beautiful, but I couldn’t really enjoy it with the image in my mind of children in Gaza, sitting hungry and cold in wet tents, as masterminded by an occupying force which keeps committing war crimes. The so-called ‘truce’ in Gaza is a dead letter. From Gaza the mind switches to Ukraine, where another rogue state terrorises the population by bombing the energy supply in the cold of winter. And we know even less of the continuing cruelties in Sudan and East Congo.

 

flooded tents in Gaza, December 2025. Source: CNN.

My Christmas therefore is one of mixed feelings, and as much as last year, I had great difficulty thinking of something hopeful to write for Christmas. Until I remembered a coastal trip at sea in a cargo vessel in the German Bight in the middle of winter, fifty years ago, and decided to turn it into a Christmas tale, adding a little bit of fiction.

A bright star at sea

It is 5pm, Christmas Eve 1975, in the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Hafen in Hamburg. The loading is done, the harbour cranes are deserted and stand as silent sentries along the dark quay. In a few places there is a lonely spotlight illuminating the warehouses. There is a frost, there is snow in the air and the wind is in the north, a biting force 7 or 8 with insidious gusts that chill me to the bone. I have only been on deck for an hour, but I don’t feel my toes anymore.

I go along the hatches as the boatswain is busy pulling them shut. The heavy steel pontoons tumble over the hatchway with the sound of thunder, and roll into place, each connected to its neighbour by chains. Others are busy lowering the cargo derricks.

Against all expectation, we will be in harbour  for Christmas in Bremerhaven. A day off for the entire crew! I am eagerly anticipating the Christmas dinner we’ll have tomorrow night. But the short stretch at sea from the Elbe to the Weser doesn’t spell much good - there will be a swell outside just where it meets the raging ebb from the Elbe and becomes a succession of steep rollers. The boatswain has already secured the cargo in the holds.

 

The pilot is ordered for seven o’clock. I go for a quick meal before I have to prepare the bridge for departure, pull the battledress over my sweater, on my shoulders the narrow gold band of a fourth officer, the junior in rank aboard. By now it is six o’clock, I unlock the wheelhouse, check the navigation lights, the air horn in the foremast and the compasses, I switch on the radar and lay out the river chart in the wheelhouse. I ring the engine room to test the telegraph. The pointer follows whatever I order on the telegraph, so all is well. The Old Man comes up and studies the charts, then the First Mate.

The Captain glances at me. ‘Number Four, will you fetch the pilot at the gangway? He is due any moment.’

‘Yes, Captain.’ I descend the stairs to the main deck and wait, stamping my feet against the cold. A taxi appears on the quay, a civilian with a briefcase and a German skipper’s cap gets out and comes up the gangway.

‘Guten Abend, Herr Lotse.’

‘Guten Abend, Steuermann. Zeigen Sie mir den Weg, bitte.’ Show me the way, please.

Two men haul up the gangway as we go in, through the corridor and up the stairs to the bridge. Meanwhile in the accommodation the call goes out: ‘fore and aft stations, fore and aft.’ The third mate comes running down, walkie-talkie in hand. Up on the bridge the Captain welcoms the pilot. The inky black water outboard mirrors the lights of the pair of tugs we have ordered. The Third and his men hasten forward, the Second aft.

The First, using his walkie-talkie, orders to single up - remove all the warps until we’re tied up with nothing but a headrope and a spring fore and aft. The tugs give out their hawsers, the wind pushes us against the quay. The cold draught creeps into my trouser legs as I am at my station near the engine telegraph.

‘Vorne und hinten los,’ the pilot says out on the bridge wing. He talks to the tug skippers through his own radio. The tugs gingerly tighten their hawsers as the crew casts off all remaining warps. Slowly the dark harbour cranes recede.

‘Engine stand-by please,’ the pilot says.

‘Stand-by,’ I reply, pushing the telegraph handle to stand-by. The engine room answers.

‘Langsam voraus.’

‘Langsam voraus.’ Slow ahead - I move the telegraph to the correct setting. Through the open door I hear the blasts of compressed air starting the main engine. I watch the rev counter over the centre bridge window obediently turn right to forty-five revolutions. We begin to crawl ahead.

A quarter of an hour later we are on the river, the tugs have cast off, it is high water and the ebb will start in a minute. It is eight o’clock and the Old Man glances at me. 

‘Number Four, you’d better go and turn in. You’ll be on at midnight together with the Second.’

I wish everyone a good watch and find my cabin. I never succeed in sleeping this early in the evening, but after an hour’s tossing and turning I drop off after all…

…the telephone rings, insistently and not to be ignored. Dazedly I clamber from my bunk, it is pitch dark. The phone rings again, I find the light switch.

‘Fourth Mate.’

It is the Old Man. ‘Number Four, it is quarter to twelve. Will you come up?’

‘Aye aye, Captain.’ I find the toilet, brush my teeth, dress quickly and go up. The door of the cabin is left open, as it always is at sea.

In the chartroom I let my eyes adjust to the darkness - there is just a red reading light above the chart table. The can of coffee is horrible to behold - it has been left on the warming plate for hours and now smells like liquid tar. Brrr. I open the door to the wheelhouse. It is pitch dark - the lights of the rev counter and the steering compass are dimmed. Vaguely I make out the shapes of the people on the bridge. It is freezing with the door to the bridge wing open, a cold draught swirling around my legs. The lookout outside on the bridge wing stamps his feet.

 

‘Merry Christmas, Number Four.’

‘Merry Christmas, Captain.’

‘We are abreast of Neuwerk. The pilot will disembark shortly. We have reduced speed already,’ the third mate says to me. He is ready to hand over the watch. ‘The pilot cutter waits ahead to starboard, the pilot ladder is lowered. Will you take him down in a moment? Ten more minutes.’

Fifteen minutes later we are stopped in the water after disembarking the Elbe pilot. The Weser pilot climbs aboard on the swaying ladder, I steady him as he steps across the rail. It is past midnight, Christmas is here.

‘Frohe Weihnachten, Steuermann.’

‘Frohe Weihnachten, Herr Lotse.’

The Captain invites him for coffee in his cabin, so the next hour the Second and I have the bridge to ourselves. We are moving again, turn to port into the direction of the Alte Weser approach buoy, and begin rolling mercilessly. Everything rattles and creaks, the chart slides off the chart table in the wheelhouse. It is icy cold, and far away at sea the radar shows a flurry of snow.

As I look to port to take a compass bearing on the Neuwerk lighthouse, suddenly the cloud cover in the southeast breaks. 

 

Like a miracle, low over the horizon a bright light penetrates the clouds: Sirius, the brightest star in the expanse. As if ordained from above, it remains visible for minutes, so bright that I see the reflection on the waves, a bright swathe of light. All that fails is angels singing.

Christmas Eve at sea.

The watch continues, the Second has arranged a tin of pea soup and a pan from the Chief Steward. The soup goes into the pan and we heat it up on the warming plate in the chartroom. Three mugs and spoons materialise from a drawer. Pedro, the Spanish lookout, comes in for a moment.

‘Feliz Navidad, Pedro.’

‘Feliz Navidad, Mr Mate.’

Together, Pedro, the Second and I, we eat the hot pea soup with slices of bacon on rye bread. Slowly we begin to thaw. We give way to a coaster coming down from the shipping lanes north of the islands, rolling in the swell like a pig. 

Half an hour later the Captain and the pilot come up. The Old Man sniffs the lingering scent of the pea soup. ‘Mmm,’ he says. ‘I’d love soup myself.’ 

Luckily there is a second tin of soup in the locker in the chartroom. I go down to fetch more mugs and spoons from the mess on the boat deck. Down there the rolling seems to be worse - the TV set is balancing on the edge of the dresser, so I lift it and put it on the deck to prevent worse. Back on the bridge I make soup for the Old Man and the pilot.

Alte Weser lighthouse

It is two in the morning as we pass the Alte Weser lighthouse on our way to Bremerhaven. The swell is reduced, in a few hours we’ll tie up, being in harbour on a feast day, against all odds.

In Bremerhaven we find the cargo in the #5 tweendecks has come adrift after all.

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This is a story of seafaring half a century ago. But I hope it is familiar to those of you who are at sea right now. If you read this, whether at anchor or underway, I wish you a safe voyage and a Merry Christmas.