I Think She’s Gone

The Sammi Crystal has been around for a little more than 30 years. For a cargo ship, I understand that's a very long time.

Having noted her absence for a couple of months now, I started hunting around for traces of her.

STX (her parent company) no longer shows her on the roster.

I'm no expert at these things, but I searched in various other ways to find traces of her, perhaps plying other routes.

But I haven't come up with anything.

I have a feeling that she's in the process of being dismantled and recycled somewhere.

I've written of my accidental fascination with the ship before, and so I won't recount all of that. But if she doesn't return, her uniqueness will be missed.

Who knows? Her crews might be saying "good riddance". But from here on shore, there's one fewer immediately identifiable character on stage out there on the river.

I shot this on an astonishingly calm, beautiful evening (afternoon, really) in February of 2008, before I realized that this really was the only ship on the river that looked like that.