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first apprehension of the ungovernable. We had no idea how safe we were.
    The Captain cannot count the storms he has seen and does not reminisce about the giant waves he has rolled over. His monsters are supertankers forging through seas of fond recollection.
    â€˜October the eighth 1973,’ he says. ‘You will never forget your first voyage.’ He was an apprentice on a supertanker. They sailed her to the Persian Gulf in the middle of a war. ‘Three hundred and thirty thousand tonnes of crude oil. A big bomb! We anchored by islands so we were harder to see – we travelled at night.
    â€˜We used to have to go in there,’ he says, his finger on the chart some way north of Le Havre. ‘But not on supertankers. Too big! We had to anchor in Lyme Bay and pump the oil on to smaller ships.’ (One of our Danish Captain’s irresistible traits is his pronunciation of this crucial English word. He has risen to the heights of his profession as a master of ‘sheeps’.)
    Le Havre resolves through binoculars into towers, quays, steeples and cranes. Chris unclips the radio handset.
    â€˜Le Havre pilot, Le Havre pilot, this is
Gerd Maersk
,
Gerd Maersk
over . . .’
    There is an answering crackle and a woman’s voice, French-accented:
    â€˜
Gerd Maersk
, Le Havre pilot, good evening Captain, what is your ETA, over?’
    â€˜Le Havre pilot
Gerd Maersk
, good evening ma’am. Our ETA at the pilot station is 1915, repeat 1915 over . . .’
    The language of the sea is English and its mode of address is a charming courtesy. Men on the radio are ‘sir’; women are ‘ma’am’. When shores speak to ships they often pay the officer of the watch the compliment of calling him ‘Captain’. On board, as well as good morning, afternoon and evening, there is ‘Good watch!’ which you say when you leave the bridge, and no meal passess without multiple wishes of ‘Good appetite!’ bestowed on diners by those entering or leaving the saloon. These formalities are of a piece with the swept and mopped corridors, the washed decks and the laundered overalls. No feminine touch, patience or perseverance, no matriarch nor stooping maid could make this ship cleaner, tidier or better ordered; no female presence could make her crew more polite or more gallant. The rules, roles and customs of the sea seem to have erased half the stereotypes of our gender.
    A gannet dives for fish, its black wing-tips and lemon-coloured head emphasising its white plumage; the bird appears a plunge of luminous speed. We search the sky beyond it for our pilot. While most ports use pilot cutters, Le Havre uses a helicopter.
    â€˜You will see him on the radar,’ the Captain says. ‘There!’
    In port after port he will be the first person to spot the buoy, the pilot boat, the hazard. He wears glasses but he always seems to know where to look. The helicopter is a smart green and silver thing which hurtles out to us, arcs round behind our funnel, stops dead above the bridge and lowers the harbour pilot. The pilot wears shades like a movie star. In moments he is off the roof, on to the bridge and shaking hands with the Captain. In we go.
    A great port, which Le Havre once was, shows its best face to the sea. The city looks calm and philosophical this evening, gazing westward. Our pace up the buoyed channel affords a scrolling view of the fishing fleet and the docks. The Captain brings us alongside under the cranes of the container port so gently that arrival is imperceptible.
    â€˜The ship is so heavy you cannot bump at all or you will dent her. You cannot do that! No, no . . .’
    The Captain deals only in absolutes.
    The stasis of arrival generates a sort of panic, as though somehow you have fallen behind with work. The constant motion of the ship through every yard of sea, every nautical mile, is achievement; every wave shouldered aside is a victory.