Maine Maritime Academy - Tricks End Yearbook (Castine, ME)

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MEIQCHANE Mfsulmi H1511-gui It is with a certain reticence that we turn over in our minds the words utomorrow's merchant marine. Like 'Ltomorrow's worldf' the words carry with them a more hopeful than sure meaning. Any illusions we may have of keeping in working commission the vast fieet of today's Sleek merchantmen seem strangely troubled by the course of past history. Illusions like these have been prevalent before, notably during and at the conclusion of the last world war. But for reasons which only recently we have felt and known, the last War's merchantmen were allowed to rot and rust into virtual uselessness, and the dreams of a great American merchant marine were frustrated by an about face in political thinking. So that we can 'attempt to appreciate what seemingly happened, it be- comes necessary to pass momentarily over a decade we have since chosen to dismiss as un- worthy of a great nation, namely our return to unormalcyf' 'LNormalcy presumably meant a return to the plush eras of prewar America, a return to a frame of mind when we could forget most of the world and concentrate on our own fortune. That this return to 'gnormalcyu was an entirely natural reaction for a young nation and that superficially at least and for a time it was immensely successful hardly justifies it in the light of time. Unfortunately, most of the world neither attempted to return to normalcy or even thought it vaguely possible. Some of the countries returned to an underground and cushioned rearmament program, and this in- f' 'T eluded thousands of tons of shipping to engage in productive trade and careful studied patrol of strategic wate1's. We didn't seem to believe that concentrating on our own fortune entailed much active and competitive concentration on the entire world and its riches. We were by nature a great and expanding nation, and our first big game with internationalism frightened us back to within our borders, choking a. chance to be worldly great. This past ugly history bears such direct rela- tionship to us as the war generation and as sea-going men that it falls unremittingly to us, if only for our own well-being, our problem. Perhaps it is so naturally a responsibility of ours that we pass it off too lightly or even fail to consider it at all. Perhaps in its closeness is lost its significance. Indeed, very few of us bother our heads about tomorrow's merchant marine, for this to us is a plush era, and we are spoiled beyond clear thinking by the hundreds of Liberty ships sliding down the ways, the ship's agents snatching at our academy graduates, and the handsome bonuses of every able-bodied seaman who delivers the gods at Murmansk and Dakar. Our minds are unfairly distorted by the accelerated pace of wartime shipping, and although we know full well that it cannot last forever, there are some things we simply refuse to imagine. Essentially, of course, tl1e merchant marine is a tough, grinding existence, suited only for the hardest of men who know how to buck the

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nature of mountainous seas and endure the strange landless existence of the ship s wander- ing life. In solne ways, it will not satisfy the needs of certain men, but basically it is a job and a full-time one. It is merely in the perpet- uation of this job that the problem of tomor- row's merchant marine is dropped at our feet. It can be ignored as it was before - this is the easiest way to handle it. Or we can see to it that this giant fleet we have assembled and put into active service against the enemy continues to sail the seas after its immediate usefulness is gone. The allow of this problem is lost in tl1e fact that we cannot properly foresee the outcome of this war and therefore the part we are to play as a nlercantile nation. The allow not,7, however, we have behind us and step by step we can trace the mistakes and misconcep- tions which led us into the bleak a11d bitter decade just past. life know how l1Ot to abandon a bleeding world after having a part in the infliction of its wounds. XV e know how not to abandon a priceless Heet when it might have bound us closer to the world of whiph we are unavoidably a part and brought us, through an exchange of trade, a more stable prosperity. Finally, wc know how not to grasp at the nar- row security of our own borders when our part in international politics has twice been shown great enough to drag us into conflict. ' Rf. 1 .1 it x V ,gawk 'NW -1 - nf:-Url, g -2 Y N x 6 VW' U l? ' A' ' , K 'K ' , A x - L ii' - - V do QDQJE