Aboard at Last: Berth 8, Garden City Terminal

She is, first of all, absurd. Twenty four thousand containers, four hundred metres of steel, and a bridge you can only reach by walking the length of two football pitches and then climbing eight flights of stairs. Photographs do not prepare you for it. Nothing prepares you for it. The gangway is much steeper than it looks in photographs, and photographs already make it look, frankly, aggressive. I climbed it slowly, with a duffel on one shoulder and a MacBook bag on the other, trying very hard to look like a man for whom this is routine. At the top, a young man in a spotless white jacket introduced himself as Marco, took the duffel out of my hand without asking, and said, "welcome aboard, sir, do you take sugar."

I said two.

He said, "of course you do."

The cabin

Small, tidy, and clearly designed by someone who has strong opinions about wasted space. Bunk, desk, porthole, tiny shower, a life jacket on a hook that I hope I will use only recreationally. A folded card on the desk reads, in what I would describe as deliberate handwriting:

Passenger, meals at 07:00, 12:00, 18:00 sharp. Bridge open to you, when quiet. Please do not touch the buttons.

I have decided, on principle, that I will never touch the buttons.

The introductions

Elena, the cook, met me in the passageway outside the galley, sized me up in about a second and a half, and said, "you eat everything." It was not a question. I said yes. She nodded once, as if a small administrative matter had been settled, and disappeared back into a haze of onions.

Then, on the bridge, I met the Chief Officer.

I had been warned about the Chief Officer, in the sense that everyone I spoke to in Savannah over the last three days, upon learning which ship I was boarding, had said some version of "oh, Priya's ship." No one elaborated. It appears no one felt they needed to.

She looked up from a chart, took me in over the top of a pair of steel framed reading glasses, and said, "so. You're the passenger."

"I am."

"Mm."

I have now been mm'd twice in three days. I am starting to suspect it means something specific in this part of the world, and that I will not be told what.

She handed me a laminated card. "Muster station. Read it. There will be a drill tomorrow. If you are late, I will find you." She paused, very slightly, and added: "I will find you either way."

I am choosing, for the moment, to interpret this as operationally reassuring.

Tonight

We sail tomorrow on the tide, which someone will tell me the time of when they feel I need to know. Until then I have a bunk, a porthole, a mug of unreasonably strong coffee that Marco brought unbidden, and the low, constant hum of a ship being loaded around me.

Somewhere below decks, an engine is being coaxed awake by a Polish man in a Hawaiian shirt. Somewhere above decks, an Indian officer is, I suspect, quietly adding my name to a list.

I am exactly where I meant to be.