It’s the job of a passenger ship to carry people—and give them a good time on their journey. But passenger ships also carry cargo. That’s true of big ones and little ones, such as the City of Norfolk which belongs to the Old Bay Line, the oldest American shipping company.

The City of Norfolk goes on short trips back and forth between Norfolk and Baltimore on Chesapeake Bay. She takes on cargo during the day and sails at night. Although she’s an old ship, she has radar to help guide her through the busy waters of the Bay. All around are fishing craft, ferries, ocean-going vessels—endless traffic through which the officers must steer a safe course. In the dark wheelhouse, soft small lights hold the key to safety—the sea-green light by which the man at the wheel sees the markings on the compass, the yellow pips and the revolving blue line on the radarscope.

In the hold below are automobiles, piles of second-hand truck tires, crates holding all kinds of things, copper sheets by the ton which have come by train from Utah, and will end up in some eastern factory.

Passengers stroll all over the decks. Some are travelling on business; some are just sailing for fun. A group of school boys and girls on their class trip dance to phonograph records. Their staterooms are air-conditioned, but the inside of the ship looks almost as it did in their grandmothers’ day, with balconies and big living-rooms called saloons.

The City of Norfolk—and many other ships like her on bays and rivers and lakes—is really a sort of combination ferry boat and hotel. Most ferries, of course, have much shorter runs, and they are built to fit the needs of their own special work.

Many ferries look exactly the same fore and aft. They have propellers, rudders and wheelhouses at both ends, and there’s a good reason why. A double-ended ferry makes quick trips back and forth. She can save time if she doesn’t have to turn around in the water when she goes in and out of her dock which is called a slip.

The big ferries carry automobiles, trucks, and as many as three thousand people at a time. Some of them, on long runs, have up-to-date snack bars so passengers can get quick meals. For safety, they carry lifeboats and life jackets, just as ocean-going vessels do. But a ferry could never go to sea. She is built very broad, with very little of her under the water and a great deal above. Big ocean waves would tip her over.

Men have used ferries from the earliest times. Hundreds and even thousands of years ago people and animals were ferried across rivers on rafts. Even today there are raft-like ferries which men guide across our rivers by steel cables.

Train ferries take loaded freight cars across harbors where there are no railroad bridges. In some harbors, the cars travel on flat-bottomed barges which tugboats shove along.

Long ago, barges were quite different. They were elegant vessels in which kings and important people travelled on rivers. And fancy barges, towed along behind paddle steamboats, once carried passengers up and down the Hudson River, too. At that time the steam boilers on paddleboats often exploded. Many crewmen and passengers were killed. So, in order to attract customers, some steamboats towed “safety barges” behind.

Nowadays barges are plain cargo vessels that do heavy work. Most of them have no power of their own. They must be towed or pushed. The seaman who handles a barge is called a barge captain. He must be an AB to get the job, and on some barges he lives in a house at the stern. If he has a family, they may make their home there the year round.

Before the days of railroads, a whole system of canals joined many of the important American cities. Along these waterways horses or mules pulled barge-loads of freight. Many a canal boatman started before he was twelve years old, driving a mule on long trips all by himself. There are still some canals in use, and powerdriven barges carry cargoes on them.