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Recently, I took a tour of the San Diego Maritime Museum and while I walked the decks of a frigate and schooner and crawled through the belly of a Soviet era Foxtrot-class attack submarine, I found myself imagining what it must have been like to those who actually sailed the high seas in these astonishing vessels.
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First of all, there’s not a lot of room for comfort. Unless you were the captain or high ranking officer, you practically lived the entire day rubbing elbows with all those around you. Second, when you put out to sea, you were confined to that vessel for months. And third, I could only imagine how these conditions bonded everyone on board, giving them plenty of reasons to get to know one another, to communicate with each other (remember, there was no TV or Internet connectivity) and most especially, to depend on one another to safely and successfully reach the port of their destination. I took some photos aboard the Star of India, the HMS Surprise and the Foxtrot B-39, and you can see them all at Shutterfly.
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Today, however, such voyages have taken to the open sky and the comfort of airships flying at 550 mph and offering frills like reclining seats, XM Satellite Radio and Direct TV. Albeit, passengers are still crammed into a very confining space, but the tendency to bond with others making the journey has given way for the most part to where we now exchange only a brief glance and possibly only a few words, like, “Excuse me, but that’s my seat.”
It’s no wonder then, that when we hear someone say, “We’re all in the same boat,” we have difficulty truly appreciating all that it might imply.
Yet, wouldn’t you agree that all of us associated with credit unions are in fact, all in the same boat, together?
