Atlantic Crossings | Bhat Boy
My first crossing was when we immigrated to Canada, before I can remember. I was good as gold and slept in my crib the entire journey, or so my Mum says. When I was older we would watch The Love Boat together, marveling at old movie stars and the glamour of the ship. ‘What a pity you can’t remember our crossing. You used to sleep in your crib all the time. It was rough,’ she would say, taking a sip of her tea and opening our Saturday night bag of Sour Cream and Onion potato chips to share, then muse,’ the ship seemed empty out in the Atlantic, but when we got to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, all of a sudden the other passengers appeared.’
She went on to tell me, ‘Your sister was gone all day talking to the other passengers and riding up and down the elevators.’ She never mentioned my brother on the ship, although I know he must have been there. My father was not. My mother had wanted to come on a plane, but my father had insisted she come on a boat so she could carry all our stuff to Canada with our luggage.
When The Love Boat came back on, it was clearly too glamourous for us. Only necessity had allowed our passage in the distant past. We flew to Britain now, crossings were a distant memory kept only by Hollywood Stars and TV celebrities.
As an adult I discovered that you can, of course, still cross the Atlantic on a ship. Ships are not for everyone I know, but I love the beauty of sleeping on a rocking bed, and looking out at the window at the fierce Atlantic knawing on the horizon while I languish through another book at sea.
My most recent crossing, in January 2025, was the roughest I can remember. It was stormy for three days and on the fourth night our ship, the Queen Anne, was moaning and groaning while the hangers in the closet chimed and the contents of our drawers rolled back and forth. Filled with my childhood passion for the journey, I loved it and got up in the night to roam the empty corridors and listen to the long sounds of twisting metal and the staccato of cracking tiles. Every once in a while there would be a great boom, and the ship would shudder in the thrust of a great rogue wave and the sound of crashing china would ring unmistakably through the air.
The poor Queen Anne limped into New York 24 hours late (video) with minor injuries, including broken windows and doors, but my love for Atlantic crossings arrived undamped, and ready for another.
