It's Fleet Week in New York. Fleet Week centers around the US Navy but involves all kinds of other ships and boats, a general maritime celebration. Wednesday the week kicked off with what's called the Parade of Ships, when the huge navy ships sail into the harbor. It was cold, windy and pouring rain. I went down to the river to watch; usually the riverfront is crowded for this but this time I was one of very few. Usually, also, the navy ships are accompanied by hundreds of small craft: sailboats, including huge 3-mast ones which are tiny against the navy ships; speedboats and yachts and even kayaks. Everybody with a boat sails up the river together, and just the variations in scale make it a great sight. But the weather on Wednesday was so bad that no other ships except the fireboats came out. The warships came one after the other, separated by eight or ten ships' lengths and very slowly. They were all gray, like the water and the sky, and traveled in and out of fog banks. Sailors stood at parade rest all long the edges of the decks; they must have been getting soaked. The last ship to come in was an aircraft carrier. I could just see the uniforms of the crew as they stood: two sailors, a flier, two sailors, a flier, all around the deck. As it passed, a voice boomed from the ship's loudspeakers. It was clearly giving orders to the crew, and I couldn't make the words out; but it sure had that "Surrender, puny earthlings" quality.