My grandfather worked as a sailor for thirty years and never once took a photo. What he brought home was a small painting of every ship he sailed on. (11) In each one the ship is far away, a single tree stands on the shore, and the sea takes up most of the paper. I asked him once why the ships were so small. He said a sailor does not remember the ship; he remembers the water around it, (12) the water is never the same twice. (13), I keep the paintings in a row along my wall at home. Nobody who visits knows what they are, (14) each one is a year of somebody's life.
A plane crosses the ocean in twelve hours; a ship takes three weeks. (15) Nine out of ten things in your room came by sea. The reason is weight. A plane pays for every kilogram it lifts, (16) a ship sits on the water, and that costs nothing. One large ship can carry as much as eight thousand planes and use far less oil for each box. (17), the sea is still the cheapest road in the world. This is easy to forget because we never see it. The plane is in the sky above the city, (18) the ship arrives at night, at a place most of us have never visited.