"Takin' Twenty" with the Virginian Brethren by Skip Salmon

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We or course discussed the rescue of the miners in Chile, even as we were having supper. This led to a discussion by Wis Sowder and Ken McLain about unloading coal at Sewells Point. Ken had the job of ordering the hoppers from the yard to "blend" the coal for incoming ships. Wis and Ken remembered that a lot of the ships were from Japan. Ken said that most of them had two names and the second part of the name was "Maru or something similar". He said that a Japanese ship named the "Maru" once made a very perilous journey, so they named all of their coal ships after that one.

I've forgotten the source, but someone told me in Japanese, "Maru" means sea.  Of course, it didn't
matter at Lamberts Point because any ship flying the "rising sun" was called a "Jap".  N&W stationed
several employees on board the colliers as they loaded -- to make sure coal was being dispersed to
all corners of the bunker. It's possible to load a ship with coal without filling up the corners.  These
employees would occasionally go to the galley for snacks during down time.  In loading a "Jap", one
foreman told his associate, "You gotta try the lobster tails."  He responded, "that's not lobster; it's squid."
                                                                                                    Harry Bundy     
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