At Anchor Today in Stumptown

For me, shipspotting started with the names.

I'd be crossing the Steel Bridge, and some hulking ship would be taking grain at the eastbank, and the name of it is what would hit me. It would be my oracle for the day. They don't call ships things like Huge Disaster and Grave Humiliation, so the oracles were usually pretty good: Summer Fortune, New Eminence, Global Endeavour all sounded hopeful.

I started looking the names up four years ago. Some ships had stories, and even the ones that didn't--well, they're ships. They sail the ocean blue. They call at ports with exotic names. They're cool.

But inexorably, as the tales became repetitive, and the glamorous ports of call morphed in my imagination into the global shipping version of strip-malls, I started thinking about what the ships mean.

( A dirty business. )

At anchor today in Stumptown: the Samjohn Amity, an oracle of anachronism, showing no inclination to change.