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Orleans in June of 1925 and ship out, which we did. Keith's stepfather, a mining engineer, had a friend with Lykes-Ripley Steamship Company, and he had arranged for two jobs on their flagship, the AQUARIUS. When we reported for work we found that only one of the jobs was ordinary seaman - the other was mess boy. Keith agreed to take the mess boy's job, but as luck would have it, a young man from Loyola University wanted to trade his position as ordinary seaman for Keith's job. Keith accepted, so we ended up with bunks in the deck gang's forecastle.
The AQUARIUS was a 12,000-ton turbine-driven, west coast, flush-decker freighter with a speed of twelve knots. As flagship of the Lykes-Ripley line, she was staffed with their best officers.
We sailed from New Orleans before the middle of June, bound for Bremerhaven. After a delightful cruise we arrived there on the last day of that month. Next day Keith and I were successful in getting two beachcombers to work in our place for a few days. We caught the train for Bremen, which I believe to be one of the most historical cities in Europe. We arrived at Bremen in the afternoon and found a nice little hotel in the middle of the city. We freshened up and went out for a stroll which led us to a most interesting and historical place, Rathskeller. As we entered we noticed three great wine casks. The largest of the three had a hand-carved figure of Bachus mounted on the top. There were three more carved figures, one on the front of each cask, representing the three stages of wine drinking - the beginning, the late evening, and the morning after. This was a place where emperors and kings had met and settled the fate of nations under the all-seeing eye of the International Bankers. A Michelangelo graced the ceiling of the Rose Room.
After supper we dressed and walked down to the Corso Cabaret. Arriving early, we were seated immediately. We ordered a bottle of sparkling wine. There were perhaps four or five other persons in the place at this time. One of them sat down at the piano and began playing. As more visitors arrived, another and yet another instrument would be added in the same fashion. When the show started we had a ten-piece orchestra and a packed house.
Two very attractive women joined us at our table and Keith ordered a bottle of champagne, confirming their conviction that
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we were a couple of wealthy American tourists. In about an hour our friends asked to be excused, we assumed they had gone to the restroom. Certainly we never dreamed they would appear later as the top act of the floor show, but they did just that! Later, they joined us for the rest of the show and we had another bottle of champagne. After the grand finale the girls got up when we did, making it quite plain that they expected to be our guests for the late late show. Not being able to afford such luxury, we took our leave with a few German epithets ringing in our ears.
It was about 10:00 a.m. when I awoke next morning. I bathed, shaved, dressed, and ordered a bottle of wine before I awakened Keith. The.wine arrived while he was having a bath and was delivered by the manager of our hotel, a lovely little lady about twenty or twenty-one who could speak very little English, even with the aid of her violet eyes. When Keith entered the room I was sitting at the table drinking wine, for which he was mighty grateful because he needed a drink worse than I did. We finished the wine, went down to the dining room and ordered ham and eggs. The young manager Dorothy, joined us while we breakfasted and made us understand that she would be delighted to act as our guide on a tour of Bremen. We accepted and were quite impressed wtih her knowledge of art and European history. We were able to communicate nicely with the occasional aid of an English-German dictionary. On the way back to the hotel, Dorothy showed us her home, a neat little flat where she and her father, a sea captain, lived. We met the old gentleman, whose ship was in Bremerhaven also. He spoke excellent English so we invited him to have dinner with us at our hotel that evening. The captain and Dorothy joined us at eight and we spent a wonderful evening together. We listened to sea stories featuring settings from Singapore to London and from the Black Sea to the South Pacific. We talked and drank until midnight and finally sent the captain and Dorothy home in a cab. Keith, with his sound knowledge of history, thoroughly enjoyed our visit with them.
Dorothy was on duty next morning and told us at breakfast that her father was leaving for Bremerhaven on the same train with us that afternoon. When we left the hotel for the depot, Dorothy accompanied us and we joined her father there. Keith and I
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