# Where are you, Michael Lindstrom.



## Cpt Dick Brooks (May 13, 2013)

My second engineer put his head round the mess-room door, when I was eating breakfast with my crew. He said there was a beautiful old sailing-ship motoring down Pago Pago Harbour. Her tanned sails were being lashed down and her gaffs lay snug in their lazy-jacks. She was steel, or even iron, with a vertical straight stem and an elliptical counter. Protruding from her bow was a pole bowsprit, complete with side-whiskers and a dolphin-striker. She was a hundred or so feet long and flew the white cross on a red background from her mizzen. Scanning her through my binoculars, I read the name, Gallery of Kobenhavn. Wonderful, wonderful Kobenhavn, I sang out. The crew stopped in the middle of their labour to look at me. I sang the three words again, and they joined in the next line. They waved at us and the moment was past. The Gallery continued on down the harbour. 
I was in high spirits at the Seaside Garden Club, as I'd just landed a charter for my ship, to carry a group of American tourists through the remote and exotic Cook Islands. A group of blonde strangers came into the bar and sat down at the next table. A young boy recognised me and invited me to join their table for a drink. He was Michael Lindstrom, a deck-hand from the Gallery. He told me that she was a prison-ship, for young offenders in Denmark. He'd been arrested in Kobenhavn for possessions of narcotics, with intent to supply, and sentenced to five years in prison, or spend two years as a deck-hand on Gallery, on a voyage around the world. He'd just completed his sentence and had secured a deck-hands job on an American super-seiner bunkering at the fuel dock. He asked if he could hang out on my ship, until she was ready to sail. He worked the super-seiner for several months, staying on board my ship when they were in port, or ashore with Murray, a Kiwi friend of mine. He lived near the Pago Bar, with its selection of nubile young ladies looking for a date.
During the first week in February, the South Seas was hit by a vicious cyclone, wrecking 12 of the 14 yachts riding out the cyclone season in Neiafu Harbour, Tonga. By the end of the month, Rekus, my chief-engineer, and Michael returned to Pago Pago, hoping for a charter for Debut, so we could all sail together again. During a reunion get-together at Sadie's Thompson's Bar, at The Rainmaker Hotel, I was approached regarding carrying 265 tons of cyclone relief to Neiafu. I was hoping for a salvage contract once we got there. Michael sailed with us as the third mate, bringing along his new girlfriend, Anne-Banana, one of the bar-girls from the Pago Bar. 
On our return to Pago Pago, my ship was put on stand-by to be requisitioned to fight in the Falkland war, so we prepared the ship for battle, painting the hull black, and the accommodation-block and forward and aft whale-backs storm grey. At night, the ship was invisible in the harbour without lights. I notified the harbour-master that Debut was now a British privateer, and would bring any Argentine vessels as war-prizes into his harbour.
Luckily for us, we were never called upon to serve, so prepared the ship for our second voyage around the Cook Islands, with a group of American tourists. Michael served as mate on the voyage, learning how to navigate a ship. He later flew back to Denmark over a family problem, and I never saw or heard from him again. Where are you, Michael? Get in touch so we can talk over old times. All the best, Cpt Dick Brooks.


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