Becoming a Shellback (Neptune Day), September 17, 2011

To become a “Shellback” one must cross the equator on a ship. This is a closely-guarded secret ritual (if anything is secret since Al Gore invented the Internet). The day started at 7:30 a.m. with a group of strangely-dressed people banging, shouting, and blowing whistles as they processed through the corridors. There was much satisfaction among the staff regarding the payback for the students who had spent the previous four days in Ghana staying up late and partying.

Later in the morning, virtually the entire ship gathered on the pool deck for the ritual initiation. This involves having fish guts dumped on your head, jumping into the cold swimming pool, kissing a dead fish, paying homage to her Highness Amphitrite and King Neptune, and finally being inducted as a Shellback with ceremonial (and, thankfully, optional) head-shaving by unskilled technicians wielding questionable clippers (think weedwackers). This is another great example of college students (both men and women) getting caught up in the moment as we now have a shipload of bad haircuts. The day was a strange mixture of the solemn and the ludicrous as we looked on at our distinguished Captain Jeremy dressed in little more than green paint and a grass skirt demanding that his subjects kiss his ring. (A few too many days at sea for our dear Captain?).

I think she's figured out that it's not a plastic fish!

It turned out that the timing of the induction ceremony was designed to fit the ship’s schedule. We did not actually cross the equator until 15:04 (3:04 p.m. in Pollywog-time, i.e. non-Shellback-time). We gathered the kids to commemorate the occasion and told them to look for the yellow line that is painted across the ocean to mark the equator. As we neared the equator Captain Jeremy alerted us to hold on because you often feel a “bump” as the ship passes over the equator. (What do they put in his coffee???) The kids didn’t buy it, but one of the adults asked Greg later in the day, quite seriously, whether he felt the ship lurch as we passed over the equator. The picture was taken at precisely the moment that we crossed the equator.