http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/travel/talking-ships-with-sting.html 2014-11-14 20:45:06 Talking Ships With Sting The artist, who wrote the music and lyrics for the new musical, “The Last Ship,” talks about growing up “in the shadow of a shipyard,” performing on the S.S. Oriana and more. === Sting was breaking a promise he had made to himself. Back in the ’70s, when he was earning his wages performing nightly for passengers aboard the S.S. Oriana, he swore he would never set foot on another ship. That is, he said, “until I owned the thing.” Yet there he was on the Queen Mary 2, docked that bright October afternoon in New York Harbor. It seemed the boy in him, who grew up in the industrial northeast England town Wallsend — “in the shadow of a shipyard,” as he put it — couldn’t pass up the chance to perform on the world’s largest ocean liner. “It’s not every day you’re invited aboard the Queen Mary 2,” he said. That such an invitation could still flatter a man who, at this point, might very well be able to purchase the vessel is a testament to just how large ships loomed in his childhood. Shipbuilding, in all its grit and glory, is the stuff of the new Broadway musical, “The Last Ship,” for which Sting wrote the music and lyrics. That afternoon, against the twinkling backdrop of the ship’s Royal Court Theater, he performed a few of its numbers before a crowd of 200. Though dressed in his usual rock-star attire — black leather pants, a denim shirt, a loosely wrapped red scarf — he inhabited some of the musical’s characters, belting out anthems and waltzes in a northern brogue. For the tender ballad “August Winds,” though, his voice returned to its natural, silvery tenor. For his encore, he set aside “The Last Ship” to play a few Police hits. The strongest applause came from the crew in the balcony. “I’m sending out an S.O.S.” Sting sang, adding, “C’mon, Captain, you know how to do it.” Afterward, on the ship’s bow, Sting talked about his hometown, the inspiration he drew from its landscape and his days as one of the crew. Following are edited excerpts. Q. Was your family in shipbuilding? A. Did you think about becoming a shipwright? ­That was the last thing I wanted to do. I want to escape from there, and I did. But a few years ago I decided to seek inspiration from my community in an attempt to honor it because I’m proud. There was a theatrical aspect to it, the sheer scale of where we lived. They built some of the biggest ships in the world. And there was a sense that what the shipwrights were doing was important, bigger than normal scale. But all of that is gone. What’s there in its place? ­Not much, by way of industry. The houses where we lived are destroyed now. They found a Roman army camp underneath, so now it’s an archaeological dig. It’s called Did you see any of that loveliness growing up? ­No, we were stuck in the town. But once I learned to drive, I figured out that just outside of that was this beautiful countryside. The moorlands, it’s really spectacular. When you played on the S.S. Oriana, was that your first time seeing the world? ­Yes, it was, actually. It went to the Mediterranean, but you were trapped on the ship and you worked a lot, had to do three or four shows a day. We’d do rock ‘n’ roll, ballroom, cabaret, basically a working musician playing anything, just to earn a crust. The most fun shows were entertaining the crew in the galley. Very colorful group of ­people. You had some fans among the crew this afternoon ­I still have my seaman’s card, so I still feel I’m one of them, in a way.