Of Ships, Circuits, and the Written Word

In the grey dawn of postwar England, where echoes of history still lingered in the streets, a lad was raised with an eye to the horizon and a mind attuned to the hum of circuits and the whisper of the written word. The sea called first, as it ever does to those who listen, and so I answered, standing watch as a Radio Officer upon vessels that rode the swell of the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean, and the South China seas. The salt of distant waters mingled with the pulse of Morse, and the world grew vast before my eyes.

Yet the tides of fate are not always charted by the stars, and when the time came, I turned my hand to another craft. With degrees hard-won and a keen grasp of the workings of wire and code, I walked the lands of the Old World and the New, England, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, each place another page in the ledger of experience. But more than circuits and machines, my true pursuit was understanding: the weighing of governance, the measure of history’s repeating hand, and the study of the laws that shape nations and men alike.

Now, in the hush of retirement, I take my ease, golfing upon green fairways, feeling the wind fill the sails, and putting pen to paper so that others might glimpse the echoes of the past and the stirrings of tomorrow. For the journey does not end when the sea is left behind; it merely takes another course, with the written word as the wind in its sails.

John Shenton