Off the Page, Into the Port

The other day, as I was crossing the Willamette River in a Yellow Line MAX train, I noticed a shipping vessel docked at the Albers Mill spot, just north of the Broadway Bridge. The ship was somewhat larger than most that dock there, large enough to grab my attention for a moment. First, how strange that a massive ship like this could possibly venture so far inland, some 80 miles of river inland from the ocean, the kind of sight that reminds you there’s a reason this town is called Portland (other than the famous coin flip, of course). Inland ports are nothing unique, of course. There’s the Port of Sacramento, a city that’s even farther from the seashore. Ports dotting the Great Lakes whose ships come and go from the Atlantic, itself hundreds of waterway miles distant.

But the point is, this ship I saw, its massive red hull above water while it awaited whatever heavy load would be spit into its holding tanks or bins or whatever you call them, had a name that struck me: Thalassini Kyra, a cargo ship sailing under the Maltese flag.

Nearly every day a ship floats idly in that same spot, either recieving or depositing cargo that I assume is food-related: grains, mostly. I have no proof of this other than a large, seemingly rickety conveyor belt, and the six-pack-of-silos look of the building on shore, which as far as I know is a vestage of times past. So the appearance of the Thalassini Kyra didn’t strike me per se, but rather the ship’s name.

Kyra was the initial name I gave to the love interest in the book I’m writing, a girl who’s now called Thalia. And cargo ships play a large role in the underlying anxiety of the book — along with freight trains, diesel fuel, open mines, logging. Staples of the Pacific Northwest and of America’s most muscular years of growth. Intimations of both World Wars, Manifest Destiny, on and on. And Anson, the main character, is obsessed with the Italian city of Trieste, a city whose history is critical in the advent of global shipping lines, international trade, the efficient distribution of post, and is itself a torn place that lies across the international border between Italy, its current flag, and Austria, its home during the heady days of Osterreichischer Lloyd — the Austrian Lloyd — and the birth of steam navigation.