Don't Start Seafaring Life If You Want to Get Married, Says Edward Bell, July 13, 1923

This Man’s Job Is No Life for a Benedict. . . Don’t Go to Sea If You Ever Expect to Get Married, Says Elizabeth City Boy

“Never start a seafaring life if you ever expect to get married, young man,” says Edward S. Bell, former Elizabeth City boy who is back home for a 30-day visit to his mother, Mrs. Ellen Parker on Road Street. Edward S. Bell is 30 years old, and started his seafaring life 10 years ago. In seven years he got his chief engineer’s ticket, and is now qualified before the customhouse officials to take charge of the engine room of anything that floats. During the war he was a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy and never got a scratch although two ships were torpedoed behind him.

“This old home town looks pretty good after a fellow has been on the ocean for many months, going from place to place, among foreigners of all lands who don’t give a darn about you,” says Mr. Bell. “|The only trouble with Elizabeth City during the first part of the visit is that there is very little amusement, for one who is idle after having been in contact with the best entertainment in the big cities where seafaring men visit from time to time.

While young Mr. Bell has landed himself into as good a berth as most young fellows who leave the old home town, he feels that he has almost thrown away 10 years of his life—that is, if he should take a notion to get married. No seafaring man should be married, in Mr. Bell’s estimation, and a sailor can’t treat a woman right if he is a sailor, any more than a woman would be treating a man right if she married him and then left home for months at a time.

Mr. Bell is a brother of Louis S. Bell of The Independent force, and George W. Bell, also of this city. In the past years he has made many visits back home. Since the first of January he has been running a 5,100 ton steamship in the sugar trade between Porto Rico and New York. In the time he has been away from home, he has visited every port of importance in the countries of England, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Japan, China, Sweden, Denmark, Philippine Islands, Hawaii, Egypt, Madeira Islands, Canary Islands, West Africa, Turkey, Asia Minor, and of course he has been to Port Said in Egypt, which is said to be the wickedest city in the world. Nuff said!

From the front page of The Independent, Elizabeth City, Friday, July 13, 1923