Chapter 14: South America on the SS Cuzco
In late December 1934, I shipped out as a Freight Clerk on the SS Cuzco headed down the West coast for South America. It was a good crew and Captain Gilbert was the best skipper in the fleet.
My quarters were a lot better than when I was a checker but not quite as nice as those on the Santa Cecilia. It was a comfortable room and I had a very nice young fellow for a roommate, the Cadet. The boat had a dandy spirit with a decided air of camaraderie about it. The skipper dropped into the office now and again for a little chat, just as if he were one of the boys – real friendly.
The tempo of the work day was so much better. There was a sensible pace to it – we just kept plugging away with none of that mad pounding and rushing that gets you very little but a case of nerves.
The steward was a nice old German, though quite American in speech. He did everything he could to make things as nice as possible. The food was good and, though not as fancy as some of the passenger ships, we always had a choice of two dishes at meals – nice.
We had eight passengers and they all ate with us in the Salon where there were two tables –the Captain’s and the Chief Engineer’s. There was no formality about the place and the Officers were a bunch of fine fellows. The purser and I worked in harmony. He was a nice young fellow my own age, and since I knew the work, there was no necessity for him to boss me and we got along fine. Yes, everything was quite comfortable – nice room, warm bunk, good food and fine crew with the best skipper in the fleet on the bridge.
The ship traveled along at a nice easy speed making at her best 240 miles per day. We were loaded to the mark and the ship looked like a floating lumber yard with a million feet of lumber on deck and about as much more below decks. She was very comfortable and rode as steady as a rock with such a big deck load, though it made her a bit tender. We made the same stops going down the coast as far as Panama. Most of the lumber was due to go off in Callao, Peru, so we planned to be there about a week.
We also had three cows on deck aft. Now and then the gentle lowing of the kine could be heard above the noise of the ship as the breeze carried the sound over the stacks of lumber, from the stern. Then too, the faint cackle of the chickens sometimes drifted foreword, as we had a crate of them aboard also.
The first week out the purser and I worked about sixteen hours a day but after we finished up all the bulk work, we just had a few little odds and ends to clean up before we made each port. I was tired as the deuce when we made Manzanillo but the next couple of days we were at sea, which was much more restful. The sailors had to make everything fast on deck in preparation for sailing across the Gulf of Fonseca where it was very often rough. We were loaded so heavily that it wouldn’t take much of a sea for us to ship a lot of water.
The morning we made Champerico, Guatemala, I got up about 5:30 as we had made port during the night and had to receive the officials at six o’clock. It was dark but soon a faint glow in the East got brighter and the range of volcanoes that rise as a backdrop for the plains along the sea were silhouetted against the golden copper color of the dawn. The group of three huge peaks, the Tres Marias, had a faint column of smoke like a bloom rising over the southernmost peak and in the distance you could see about twelve other equally large and beautiful ones. Some of the peaks had craters far below the top and their smoke wreathed their summits in a soft grey mantle. All of this made up a beautiful panorama over a hundred miles in length.