Complex Numbers

Ships in the Night

A ship is safe in harbor, but that is not what a ship was built for. - William H. Shedd

I like bars.

This should come as no surprise to anyone.

One of the reasons I like bars - besides the obvious - is that I sometimes get to meet interesting people. I was sitting at a bar in my town once when I overheard the woman two seats down from me say something to the bartender that indicated that she - the customer, not the bartender - was in the Navy.

So of course I butted in; the seat between us was empty. "You're at the JAG school?" (UVA is home to the Judge Advocate General school, and there's little other reason for Navy officers to be around.)

"That's right. I teach there."

The officer was a slim woman, perhaps in her forties, with short-cropped dark brown hair and the kind of steely eyes you only get if you're in the military.

"That's cool," I said. "My dad was Coast Guard."

Now, I'm not the type to pick up sailors in bars, but I do like chatting with fellow drinkers, so we got to talking about ships and boats. "Something I've always wondered," I told her. "And my dad never really explained it. What's the difference between a ship and a boat?"

She laughed. "That's a big thing in my classes," she said. "Every once in a while I'll show a picture and ask, 'Ship? Or boat?'"

"Not always easy to identify, then?"

"Well..." she went on after ordering another beer. Navy people can drink, let me tell you. "Sometimes it is. Anything that stays on a river? That's always a boat."

The bar was starting to get busy, so I shifted to the seat between us so I could hear her better. I don't regret a single rock concert, but they haven't done wonders for my hearing.

"Huh." I thought about this. "Yeah, I've never heard of a ship on a river."

"Unless it's a ship that's sailing to or from a harbor on a river."

"...Oh. Yeah. What about on the Great Lakes, like the Edmund Fitzgerald?"

"That was a ship."

"Because it had cargo?"

"Yep, but not all ships have cargo."

"I think I need another beer." For the record, the connections between many of the Great Lakes are known as rivers, and yet the Fitzgerald was a ship. That's why I needed another beer.

"Also, a ship can carry a boat, but a boat can't carry a ship."

"It can push one, though," I noted, thinking of tugboats.

She nodded.

"I've been thinking about it like: A ship travels between ports, but a boat always returns to its own port."

"That's not a bad distinction," she acknowledged. "Oh, and a submarine is always a boat."

"My head hurts."

"You could always just Google it."

And so, later, I did.  

Now, it's been a few months, so the conversation didn't go exactly like that, but I think I covered the gist of it. I keep going back to that bar, but I haven't seen her again. I guess you could say that ship has sailed.