This is a sad short story about a ship. Her name was Equator and she was once a proud schooner, 81 1/2 feet long and sturdy as a redwood tree. Her prow had felt the splash of phosphorescent waves in the southern sea; her keel had a knifed through the blue lagoons of Papeete, Pago Pago and Apia. King Kalakaua had swilled champagne on her deck and in her cabin, Robert Louis Stevenson had written lasting words:
”Glad did I live and gladly I die,
And I laid me down with a will."
Today, the remains of this proud vessel lie in a graveyard of rotting splintering hulls; part of a break-water opposite a posh yacht club at Everett, Washington, at the mouth of a murky river named Snohomish. Built in 1888 with two tall spars and a full spread of white canvas, she served Robert Louis Stevenson with dignity and grace through Polynesia until finally he came upon Upolu, the Samoan island where he lived out his remaining year. There, Stevenson died, but his ship sailed on. Her masts were up-stepped and steam was put in her hull. Eventually she worked her way to Puget Sound, there to end her days towing logs and garbage scows. At the end of this ignoble toil, when she could sail no more, she was canted against the jetty and left with the other wrecks; left to the tides and the swirl of the river. If you pass her today, you'll see her name still visible on her bow. She holds it high against the waves as if proud of the greatness of her past. If you're a man of the sea, shed a tear for the Equator. She serves today, even in death, as does Robert Louis Stevenson who left the world a literary legacy, not the least of which is the haunting "Requiem", a fitting epitaph for both the vagabond and his ship.
“Home is the sailor, home from the sea.
And the hunter home from the hill.”
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