by Liz Bastos

Gaze at a receding land through a porthole

Tie someone to the mizzenmast

Be tied to the mizzenmast

“Discover” “new” lands & trade 

 Dance the hornpipe at Capt’n’s command 

Wear at Breton-stripe with cute, wide-legged white pants, as a man

Be cured of my fear of heights by standing way up high on the ropes as an iceberg noticer

Enable my parents to brag  about my good job  inwhale oil futures 

Confuse a manatee for a mermaid. Say,“What? That tubby marine mammal is not a total smoke show?” 

Ration grog

Earn an A+ in observin’  whale mothers nuzzling their newborn babes, earning a nod and kind word from the ship’s surgeon/naturalist who says, “Aye, boy, thou hast a kind heart, and as if twere made for observin’ Leviathan’” 

Also earn an A+ in whale calf butchery, working alongside the ship’s surgeon/naturalist who says to me, “’Tis God’s own truth! Ye knowest ye blubber”

 Tattoo myself with a stick 

Say spermaceti in the context of paid work

Move up the ranks from cabin boy quickly

Refer to “the doldrums” not as a euphemism for the modern calamity of a lack of meaning and atomization in our super-online lives, but in reference to the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone, “a belt around the Earth extending approximately five degrees north and south of the equator,” according to NOAA

Scrimshaw something for my darling girl, Bess 

Locate New Bedford

Correctly place the apostrophes in the word fo’c’sle. 

Speak in Dutch-inflected English

Swab

Have a baller shell collection 

Count bosuns among my friends  

Name at least 3 famous clippers involved in the China tea trade (not including the Cutty Sark, becauseeveryone knows that one, duh)

Dead reckon

Run before the wind

Sail