Book Review: Steaming to Bamboola: The World of a Tramp Freighter (1982) by Christopher Buckley

 

The cover of the paperback edition of Steaming to Bamboola, by Christopher Buckley, 1982. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

The ship Transcolumbia, renamed Columbianna in Steaming to Bamboola. Built in 1945 as the USS Marine Lynx, it was scrapped in 1988.

Christopher Buckley in the early 1980's.

I could have told you before reading Christopher Buckley’s book Steaming to Bamboola that I was 99% sure I wouldn’t want to work on a cargo ship, and now that I’ve finished the book, I can say that I’m 100% sure I wouldn’t want to work on a cargo ship.

Steaming to Bamboola: The World of a Tramp Freighter, chronicles a late 1979 Atlantic crossing of the cargo ship Transcolumbia. (The ship is called Columbianna in the book, as a way of protecting the identities of the ship and crew that Buckley was writing about.) The Transcolumbia was built as the USS Marine Lynx during the waning days of World War II, and it saw service as a troop ship during the Korean War. It was mothballed by the Navy in the late 1950’s, and in 1967 it was purchased by the Hudson Waterways Corporation, converted to a cargo ship, and renamed the Transcolumbia.

Steaming to Bamboola was Christopher Buckley’s first book, and it came out in April of 1982, when Buckley was 29 years old. Life aboard a cargo freighter is an unusual choice of subject matter for a first book, and certainly not what readers who are now familiar with Buckley’s political satire would expect if they ventured to explore his back catalogue.

Buckley spent a year in the Merchant Marine when he was 18, after graduating high school and before attending Yale. I would venture to guess that Buckley was the only member of his Yale graduating class to have spent time on a Norwegian freighter. Buckley has written about his year in the Merchant Marine in several of his essays.

Buckley keeps himself out of the narrative of the book, and I think that was the right decision to make. Steaming to Bamboola doesn’t read like a typical first book, where the author feels compelled to tell us absolutely everything they know about x, y, and z in order to impress the reader with their brilliance. Buckley is smart enough to simply let the narrative reveal itself to us. Information that gives the reader additional context for understanding shipping is well integrated into the book.

There is humor in Steaming to Bamboola, but it isn’t the focus of the book. Buckley still gets off some clever lines, like this description of Congressman John M. Murphy: “He was understandably anxious, inasmuch as it is inconvenient to campaign for public office while the nation is watching videotapes of you accepting a bribe from an undercover FBI agent posing as a sheik.” (p.90)

A line that wasn’t funny in 1982 but will now raise a chuckle is one describing the many jobs that the Chief Mate on the ship has held: “He’d taught O.J. Simpson how to type at a business school in San Diego.” (p.109)

The book paints vivid sketches of the crew, and the reader witnesses the mounting tensions as personalities clash. On the journey to Bremerhaven, the ship almost hit a mine left over from World War II in the English Channel. Yikes. On the return voyage, the ship must battle through a storm that is a category 12, hurricane force storm on the Beaufort wind force scale. Buckley reminds us of nature’s power as the 523-foot-long ship is battered about by the wind and waves.

Steaming to Bamboola isn’t a travel book in the traditional sense, but what it has in common with many great travel books is the message that the voyage is ultimately more important than the destination. It’s an interesting journey, and I would recommend it to anyone fascinated by the ocean.