A ship that I have scarcely thought about until recently is the old State of Maine. She was the training ship at the school I attended when I was young and aspiring to become an officer in the U.S. Merchant Marine.
Built by the New York Shipbuilding Corporation in Camden, New Jersey, in 1952, the State of Maine began life as the Upshur, a combination passenger and cargo ship owned and operated by the federal government in support of military operations. For many years in the 1950s and 1960s, she carried soilders, their families, and cargo between the United States and Europe and between the United States and the Far East. She became the State of Maine when she began her second career as a school ship in 1973.[1] In this capacity, she remained at her dock in Castine for most of the academic year. Thus, she came to be called “the gray ghost of the Maine coast.” She ventured to sea in the summers, carrying cadets and their instructors on training voyages. Occasionally, she went to a shipyard for drydocking and overhaul.
While she remained parked in Castine, the State of Maine served as a floating laboratory, dormitory, and tourist attraction. In my first year at the school, I lived aboard the ship for several months. I spent copious hours studying her design, structure, bridge, engine room, cargo holds, and mechanical systems. There was a lot to learn. I also spent many hours removing rust, painting, cleaning, and assisting with repairs. This was often dirty work, but necessary to maintain the ship in her best possible condition.
The first of my two voyages aboard the State of Maine took place in the summer of 1976. As part of the American Bicentennial celebration, the ship visited historically significant Boston and Philadelphia. In addition, the ship called at Norfolk, Virginia, for fire fighting and damage control training. Then, she visited St. George, Bermuda; Newport, Rhode Island; and Bayonne, New Jersey, in support of the tall ships extravaganza for the Bicentennial. Following the Independence Day festivities in New York, she returned to Castine.
While we could go sightseeing ashore when in port, there was always ample work to do aboard ship. Everyone was busy. As an underclassman I was assigned work everywhere—on deck, on the bridge, in the engine room, in the galley—and usually under supervision. The upperclassmen tried to cram as much navigation and engineering work as possible into their schedules. In less than a year, they faced the daunting prospect of license exams, and after that, seagoing employment with serious responsibilities.
My second voyage aboard the State of Maine took place in the summer of 1978. By this time, I had become an upperclassman. Now I felt the compelling need to seize the opportunity and do as much as possible to prepare for the license exams. This included navigation, radar training, weather reporting, radiotelephone licensing, anchoring, maneuvering, emergency drills, docking and undocking, lifeboat maintenance, and more. I spent seemingly countless days and nights practicing celestial navigation, at that time a critically important skill.
On this voyage the State of Maine sailed transatlantic and visited Rotterdam, the Netherlands; Portsmouth, England; Nantes, France; and Funchal, Madeira. With the exception of Bermuda, which hardly counted because it had been full of Americans, this was my first time sailing overseas to different countries. It was an eye-opening, educational experience. I liked it very much, and I wanted to do more of it.
A year later, to my great satisfaction, I did do more of it. In May of 1979, as a brand new third mate, I joined the Rigel in Norfolk when she was preparing to sail to Southern Europe. But first, and by a happy coincidence, the State of Maine was also in Norfolk then, and the two ships were docked within walking distance of each other. As a graduate, I had open gangway to visit the State of Maine, and I took full advantage of this opportunity when I wasn’t busy aboard the Rigel. I visited the ship daily for several days, each time chatting with instructors, crewmen, and younger cadets that I had known. I remember one such meeting as particularly significant.
Professor Captain Louis S. Hathaway had been one of my instructors both at school and aboard ship. He taught meteorology, seamanship, mathematics, and license preparation. Additionally, as a guest of the Sun Oil Company one summer, he had sailed aboard the New Jersey Sun, the ship I had sailed on as an apprentice in 1977. A professionally demanding and rigorously conscientious Merchant Marine officer of the old fleet, he maintained an exceptionally high standard of performance and had been revered almost as a god by my entire class. Affectionately calling him “Hap” behind his back, we both loved and feared him. We knew that everything he said and did was for our benefit, and we respected him enormously. Aboard the State of Maine on Wednesday, May 15, 1979, someone suggested that I go topside and knock on Hap’s door to say hello.
Finding Hap’s door open, I timidly addressed him. He turned around in his desk chair, saw me, and responded very enthusiastically. “Well, well, look who’s here! Come right in! Come in and sit down!” And he motioned me to a chair. We had a great visit and chatted for an over an hour about the State of Maine, the New Jersey Sun, the Rigel, my school days, his upcoming retirement, and much more. Hap shed his stern magisterial formality and spoke with me as if I were his equal. It was very, very pleasant, and I saw a side of him that I had never seen previously as his student.
This occasion left a lasting impression on me. Later, when I told a friend about it, he explained, “You’ve made it. You stayed the course and graduated with your license. Hap saw you accomplish what you set out to do. That’s why he’s so friendly now.”
Well, yes, I had made it through school and aboard the State of Maine. Next, I needed to make it aboard the Rigel and subsequent ships, and also through the second mate’s and chief mate’s license exams. There was plenty of hard work behind me, and plenty more of it lay ahead of me!
As I remember my formative years aboard the State of Maine, looking back beyond the times of trial and tribulation that full adulthood provided later, I see that
A marvelous stillness pervaded the world, and the stars, together with the serenity of their rays, seemed to shed upon the earth the assurance of everlasting security. The young moon recurved, and shining low in the west, was like a slender shaving thrown up from a bar of gold.[2]
The golden stillness and security of a sojourn aboard ship without full responsibility but with the hope of a bright future eventually became a happy and treasured memory. Of course, it was not perfect; life never is. But it had a certain ineffable quality, a particular uniqueness, which only the mates and engineers who graduated from the State of Maine can truly understand and appreciate.
Now, let’s look at some photographs of the Gray Ghost:
