0 Degrees Latitude

In 1943, Ray Smith crossed the equator for the first time.  He was not quite 21 years old, the U.S. had been in World War II just over a year and he was in the Navy.  His ship was a few hundred miles off the coast of Brazil, near the narrowest part of the Atlantic Ocean.

When you cross the equator by ship for the first time, especially in the Navy, you must undergo a sacred ritual.  You must present yourself before King Neptune and his court, be inspected, submit to a dose of humiliation and be deemed worthy to become a “shellback”.

This is a ritual that is steeped in history.  Charles Darwin described his own initiation in 1832.  He wrote of being held below deck with other with other first-timers, then brought up on deck one at a time, blindfolded, made to kiss a fish, dunked with water and shaved amid general pandemonium.

On the morning of the day we were to cross the equator I was thinking about the rituals, the history and the generational continuity embodied in the tradition.  Seventy-three years after my father first crossed, in almost exactly the same spot but under very different circumstances, I was compelled to participate, both in his honor and in his memory.  And because it sounded like fun.  Technically, I was already a shellback, having crossed in the Galapagos, but there was no ceremony on board on that voyage, so I’m not sure it counted.

So, I went before King Neptune and his lovely wife, was harassed by pirates and magical sea creatures, kissed the fish, and drank the vile drink.  After having some kind of strange merangue concoction massaged into our hair and being hosed off on deck, I and my fellow supplicants were deemed worthy.  Another crop of polliwogs became shellbacks. Perhaps, somehow, my Dad smiled at this.  I don’t know.  At least I know the part of him that lives on in me did.