Not so long ago, I had the same outlook on the ocean as most of my landloving counterparts. It was fun to swim in, slow to travel on, wondrous to look at, irresistible to read about and easy to ignore except on Sundays, holidays and vacations. As a source of food, it had represented to me at an early age a possibility of choking to death, and ay a later one, an opportunity for costly self-indulgence that could be equally deadly if taken too seriously. (I have lived for many years on France, where Vatel, the Prince of Conde's chef, ran himself through with his sword because the fish for Louis XIV wasn't fresh.) As a mode of transportation for anything not measured by the kiloton, its future seemed mainly as a wide open space where there was no one to complain about sonic booms.