Last Offices

I had to learn this term, but it fits here. I knew words for what’s depicted here had to exist, and it turns out that different places have their own word(s).  No, I’m not referring to this blog or myself.    This deceased has been that way for years, no pulse for more than a decade, no heat or respiration.

The names since 1912 have been many:  Gary, Green Bay, Oneida, Iroquois, Alaska, and on the blog, Grouper.  With that many names–and I know others have given her additional names– come that many chapters in her book . . . or tomes in her library.

Photos I got here last week spur reflection in my mind, if not in others’.   What’s the big deal, some might say, a rusty, homeless, ownerless boat . . . so what!???

Last Tuesday morning I got this whole set, my effort to preserve her at least in photos on this blog.  At daybreak she was on the cradles in this mostly empty dry dock, a slight lean into the wall for support. 

Cold gray skies add a mottled weariness to everything here.

What work by folks long gone was once performed on this deck.  Below this deck in the forepeak, what tales were told by weary mariners. 

The fires are long gone out.

All environments have their beauty.  Grouper‘s curves, her lines, without any hyperbole, are sweet without rival.   

But the reason for this title is . . .

that midmorning last Tuesday, flooding the dry dock wetted her hull until she rose off the cradles to float one last time, 

approximating her work trim from all throughout the past century.  The 2022 crew on board were there to ensure all was well with the vessel as the dry dock filled, the wintering fleet brought in, and then the basin

drained again, exposing her hull after immersing it quite possibly the last time, like bathing the body.

More Grouper soon.   All photos here, WVD, who’s aware that this is the anniversary week of this blog’s creation.  The first post went up November 26, 2006, depicting what my eye was drawn to, my choices of what to memorialize in these digital photos in this digital medium on digital machines I’ve only the slightest sense of how they work.  More reflection on all this this week.