CRUISING ALASKA

By Ray Chatelin

Photos By Toshi

It's not that people who sail the S.S. Universe are smarter or more worldly. It's just that they know more about Alaska than passengers from the sexier, newer, more sophisticated vessels.

Take the Red Dog Saloon in downtown Juneau, for example, whose floor is a mix of sawdust and peanut shells. We knew that Wyatt Earp drank there, once.

His gun - the one he forgot to take with him aboard the S.S. Senator two days after checking it at the Juneau Marshall's office on June 27, 1900, now hangs on the wall among the beaver and ermine pelts.

A red-vested pianist plays saloon music on a honky-tonk piano. Waiters dress in period uniforms. A 300 pound Halibut hangs from the ceiling and a stuffed bear chases the figure of a man up a pole towards the second floor, near the wooden staircase.

This is the Alaska of cruise ships, where restored bars and red-light districts from Ketchikan to Seward trace the voyages of mariners and the life-styles of miners as accurately as the books of scholars. And it's a popular history lesson. Last year 450,000 people sailed the 1,000 mile route from Vancouver, British Columbia to Glacier Bay National Park and then along the outer coast to Valdez, and Seward in the north aboard 24 ships from 11 cruise lines. But the S.S. Universe is a ship different than the others. Ask around at the various ports and locals acknowledge that the 550 passengers from the Universe grasp more about local history, customs, and economy. That's no accident. On board is a faculty of professors in the fields of geology, anthropology, botany, history, and art. They are augmented by entertainers and lecturers in port who provide insight into history, folklore, and modern society. Passengers are entertained on the 14 day cruise - not the seven or eight days of other vessels - by lectures on fauna, flora, valley and galloping glaciers, Humpback and Orca whales, the history of the Gold Rush, native cultures. Frankly, the ship isn't pretty to look at, sticking out like a pigeon in a flock of eagles. At a cruising speed of 15 knots she's slow. And the large bow-crane is a vivid reminder of her cargo vessel origins. At 564 feet in length and 18,000 tons it seems diminutive compared to today's luxury liners. Still, it works well enough. The restaurant is elegant; there are a fitness center, youth center, meeting rooms, a gift shop, a 200 seat movie theater, beauty salon, barbershop, a free launderette, masseuse, a full medical staff, two bars and seven lounges, and food available on the promenade deck during the day. By the end of the two weeks there's hardly a passenger not in love with the ship even though a couple of days out of Vancouver some of us dubbed it the Flying Dutchman. The name stuck, but the image of an endless voyage slowly melted away like an Alaska iceberg exposed to the warm sun. We soon came to know her as a ship with a heart and soul uncommon to contemporary liners.

Physically, Alaska is defined by towering snow-peaked mountains, miles-deep bluish glaciers, never-ending evergreen forests, countless whales and eagles, and a hard edged beauty that defies even the most determined attempts to subdue it.

To the first-time Alaska visitor, it's a heady mix of nature and small pockets of humanity clinging to the edges of the wilderness.

The clientele at the Red Dog is more polite than a century ago, but you do get a taste of the times. It's the same in Ketchikan where Dolly's infamous house along the plank-road red-light district has been made into a Historic Museum.

In Skagway, once the entry to the Klondike gold fields, the Red Onion Saloon has changed little since it was built in 1898. The girls looking down from the second story windows are mannequins, now, not the working gals of nearly a century ago.

And in Sitka, past the Russian Orthodox Saint Michael's Cathedral built in 1848 and housing priceless icons, is the old Russian cemetery where the young Princess Maksoutoff lies buried.

Oddly, the Universe bridges the time gap that exists at these ports. When you come back on board, you're not jarred by a clinical separation between two different worlds. That has a lot to do with the nature of the ship.

For nine months of the year the S.S. Universe is a floating university cruising the Far East, South America and the Caribbean, and Africa on 100-day cruises co-sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh.

On the Alaska cruise the Universe visits Ketchikan, Juneau, Glacier Bay, Yukatat Bay/Hubbard Glacier, Valdez, Seward, Sitka, Skagway, Wrangell, Victoria via the outside of Vancouver island, and Vancouver from where it begins its voyages.

And during the two weeks it has a university feel. On board is a 12,000 volume library where passengers find an endless supply of Alaskan information.

The dress standard - except for sports jackets at the Captains welcome and the farewell dinner - is jeans, sweaters, and sport shirts, even at dinner.

Entertainment is provided by light-opera singers, classical pianists, and chamber ensembles, providing a mix of Verdi, Chopin, Mozart, South American music, and Andrew Lloyd Webber. The staterooms are in keeping with dormitory living - functional.

The ship was built in 1953 as a freighter, christened the Badger Mariner and was rebuilt in 1958 as a passenger vessel, the S.S. Atlantic. It became a university ship in 1971, when purchased by C.Y. Tung and the Seawise Foundation. Six years later, World Explorer Cruises became affiliated with the foundation and began using the ship for passenger cruises to Alaska.

The passenger schedule is outlined in the "Daily Explorer", a charted itinerary that quickly becomes the bible of Universe life - listings of lectures, movies, meals, excursions, and entertainment.

At 6:30 a.m., when the muffins and pastry comes out on the Promenade Deck, the fitness class struts by on a multi-kilometer fast-walk led by Francine, a diminutive 50-something, dark-haired bundle of brightness and cheer.

Some fitness instructor. During the academic year she's a professor in aesthetics specializing in Asian cultures at the University of Pittsburgh.

You learn quickly which of the ship lectures to attend, to avoid intellectual overload. Most talks relate to the 42 shore excursions available in port.

The trips range from shooting the rapids outside Valdez to visiting Totem Bight State Park, once an Indian campsite that now contains awesome Tlingit totems rising alongside Hemlock trees. Nearby is the ceremonial Clan House built of massive logs.

At the port of Wrangell, visitors hike to Petroglyph Beach and make rubbings from rock carvings thought to be 8,000 years old. No-one seems to know why the carvings are even there.

For spectacle, many ride helicopters across the ice field northeast of Juneau. The pilots touch down for walks on the 5000 square-miles with glimpses into deep fissures. Fall into one and you'll be spit out in 500 years. Glacier Bay, four days into the trip, is what all passengers wait for. At the park entrance the ship is boarded by two rangers, Kelly Vandenberg and Chris Durniak, who tell the collected passengers that 200 years ago, the bay didn't even exist. It was solid ice when Captain George Vancouver and his crew explored the region in 1794, more than 4,000 feet thick, up to 20 miles wide, and extended more than 100 miles to the St. Elias range of mountains. But by 1879, naturalist John Muir found that the ice had retreated 48 miles up the bay. By 1916, the Grand Pacific Glacier was 65 miles from the inlet entrance.

The water is calm and the weather is clear - a relatively rare occurrence - exposing a backdrop of mountains. The deeper we penetrate the bay the more the tranquility deepens.

The ship closes onto Margerie Glacier, one of 16 tidewater glaciers that ride down to the waters of Glacier Bay. The air erupts in a violent blast of cracking ice as part of the glacier front breaks off in chunks - called calving - and falls into the water. Puffins rush in for small sea food forced upward by the ice.