Glug, glug.

 

The Yankees are...let us say...a ship.

We like to think of them as a great ship—a Yankee Clipper, even. One of the original "skyscrapers." All sails up in the worst of gales, skysails and moon rakers on the masts, and studdingsails on the booms. Doing 24 knots around the Horn, making our 50-50 in seven days—the fastest, finest ship afloat.

But in fact, the ship we're used to is more of a creaky old wreck, trimmed and lacquered up nice to fool the paying customers. 

Oh, it usually makes it out of the port all right: bands playing, pennants from years past flying in the breeze. A grand sight.

But then, out there on the high seas, something always goes wrong. 

Often, the crew is just too small for a ship this size—but the owner likes his economies. Increasingly, the crew is too old—but they've signed long contracts with the owner, indentured themselves for life, and he's determined to get every drop of sweat and blood he can out of 'em. 

It's always something. The captain and the pilot were removed years ago, and replaced by an automatic navigational system, operable from the owner's Florida home. It doesn't work too well, despite the incredibly life-like robot the owner's shipping agent has installed at the helm.

Sooner or later, our ship veers off course, gets stuck in the doldrums, comes to grief on reefs clearly marked on all charts but which the shipping agent told everybody to ignore. There was a gaping hole in the hull we forgot about, or a mainmast that looked rotten from the day we sailed.

But the order came from Tampa: sail on!

Usually, the problem lies in those areas of the ship we old sea dogs know as "the bullpen" and "the bench."  The shipping agent believes that these don't matter much, and can be manned by any landlubber press-ganged or shanghaied off the streets. But somehow, the ship never makes it back to port.

There are those who think the owner has some other scheme going—that he's primarily interested in raking in the insurance money. That's hard to say. No one's seen him down at the docks for years. At most, we get a glimpse of him on the widow's walk of the family mansion, scouring the seas with his telescope—a weird little look of satisfaction on his face, and glittery red boots on his feet.

Not that it much matters. We all knew where this voyage ends, before it commenced.