This past summer our home city of Nashua undertook two noteworthy construction projects. One involved the tearing up and repaving of Pennichuck Street, which provided an excitement and entertainment extravaganza for the grandchildren. The other was the rebuilding of the boat ramp near Greeley Park. This primitive facility, located in the woods at the end of a badly beaten up dirt road, has long enabled recreational boaters to launch trailered boats into the Merrimack River. This year the launching ramp was rebuilt with better materials, the access road and parking area, though still dirt, were enlarged and improved, and a small trash dumpster and porta-potty were added Otherwise, it remained a bare bones set-up, with no electricity, no illumination, and no running water.
Situated within the city limits yet far from the madding crowds of busy streets and noisy neighborhoods, the boat ramp had an atmosphere of peace and quiet in the early mornings and thus offered a respite from the commotion and confusion of life. Located about a mile from our house, it lay within easy walking distance along the largely untrafficked Boston and Maine Railroad and dirt access road. I went there once or twice each week, and I always arrived in the pre-dawn darkness, well in advance of the boaters.
Perched in quiet solitude on a large rock or fallen tree trunk, I gazed eastward and watched the dawn break over the farmland of neighboring Litchfield. The only artificial lights came from a farm house directly across the river and from a residential neighborhood a mile downstream. Otherwise, Nature lit the scene with several stars, the occasional Moon, and the soon-to-emerge Sun. The scattered clouds reflected the Sun’s light in pink, orange, and purple, and these colors were in turn reflected on the unrippled surface of the river. With its water as flat and undisturbed as a mill pond, the Merrimack, like a mirror, reflected all the colors of the sky above and the rows of trees along its banks. As the light grew brighter and culminated in sunrise, the effect was sublime and spiritual. The still small voice carried clearly through the cool dawn air over the tranquil Merrimack, and this pristine natural setting became supernatural. A perfect way to start the day!
I usually had at least half an hour before the first boaters arrived and broke the silence. In this interval my mind wandered to other locales of peace and quiet and solitude. I have known several such places over the years, but here at the boat ramp one in particular stood out in memory, and my wandering mind eventually settled on it.
The South Atlantic between South America and Africa is a calm, quiet, and lonely ocean. There has long been commerce on it, of course, mostly between the European nations and their former colonies, but this has never rivaled the volumes of traffic that have plied the North Atlantic. Ships would go for many, many days without seeing another vessel on the South Atlantic. Vast stretches of this great sea have always been and still remain isolated from the outside world. For the seaman who likes solitude and wants to make a quiet voyage on a calm sea with mild weather, the South Atlantic is the ocean of choice.
My first encounter with the South Atlantic occurred not aboard ship, but on an airplane. In the mid-afternoon of Wednesday, September 12, 1979, and accompanied by five other crewmen, I left Patrick Air Force Base near Melbourne, Florida, aboard a military cargo aircraft bound for Ascension Island, The airplane made a stop for dinner and refueling at Antigua, and then travelled overnight across the equator to Ascension, arriving early in the morning on Thursday the 13th.
A British colonial outpost located at 7° 56’ south latitude and 14° 25’ west longitude, Ascension Island was a dormant volcanic mountain used mostly for military purposes by both the United Kingdom and the United States. It was also a port of call for the range instrumentation vessel General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, which my five new colleagues and I joined when she arrived from Recife, Brazil, on Saturday, the 15th. The ship anchored off Georgetown, the main settlement, in the late morning. We and several pallets of freight and provisions were delivered alongside in a cargo launch at 1:00pm. Four hours later, the Vandenberg weighed anchor and got underway again.
The two and a half days of enforced leisure while waiting for the ship on Ascension Island had not been popular with all of the new crewmen. I rather liked it, though. Ascension had a nice library, great food, unique scenery, and enticing beaches. We were free to roam pretty much as we wished, and I naturally gravitated toward the beach. I was all set to jump into the beautifully inviting, clear, warm water of the South Atlantic, when a hammerhead shark appeared right in front of me. I quickly changed my mind about going swimming!
After two and a half days, though, it felt good to see the Vandenberg arrive. I needed to be going somewhere, getting on with my career, upgrading my license, and so on. These things were very important to me then. And so that Saturday evening, with the ship on a southeasterly heading and making about eleven knots, I stood my first 8 to 12 watch as the new third mate.
The Vandenberg headed for a special operations area a few hundred miles off the coast of South Africa and arrived there on Sunday, September 23. She remained on station there until Thursday the 27th, and then proceeded to another special operations area in mid-ocean, about a thousand miles south of Ascension Island. On station at this new site from Monday, October 1, through Friday the 5th, she then returned briefly to Ascension on Tuesday the 9th. I reached the ripe old age of 22 at sea on Sunday the 7th.
To call this voyage peaceful and quiet would be a masterpiece of understatement. In this entire time, the Vandenberg came upon one other ship and sighted one island, Saint Helena, on radar. Otherwise, this large tract of the South Atlantic remained devoid of human intrusion. In addition, the weather was consistently mild with warm air, excellent visibility, a mostly clear sky, and a calm sea. After spending the summer aboard the Rigel in the hustle and bustle of the Mediterranean, this voyage on the placid and remote South Atlantic seemed like a vacation!
Since the Vandenberg provided such an easy life, and since I was young and ambitious, I used this leisure time for professional development. On the 8 to 12 morning watches, I took hourly sun lines, worked up running fixes, calculated local apparent noon, and worked out a latitude by meridian altitude. On the 8 to 12 evening watches, I studied the constellations of the Southern Hemisphere and selected the Southern Cross as my favorite. Frequently around dinner time, I returned to the bridge to observe the green flash at sunset. In my off-duty hours, I studied oceanography and meteorology, particularly ocean current circulation, surface wind patterns, and tropical cyclone formation. Even though my third mate’s license was only five months old, it was never too early to prepare for the next round of exams for the second mate’s license. For more recreational reading, I had brought along a history of Christianity.
During this voyage in the South Atlantic, the Vandenberg carried a contingent of technicians who worked with sophisticated electronic equipment in carrying out the ship’s national defense mission for the federal government. We Merchant Marine crewmen sailed the ship for them and took them where they needed to go. When the ship arrived back at Ascension Island at 6:00am on Tuesday, October 9, the technicians’ work in the South Atlantic was finished. On sailing again that afternoon, the Vandenberg went north to Monrovia, Liberia, and arrived for a weekend visit early on Friday the 12th. Along the way, she crossed the equator and left the South Atlantic behind.
I, too, left the South Atlantic behind and returned only twice, in February and May of 2016. I did not join a ship on these occasions, but traveled to Brazil to visit my daughter and newborn granddaughter. I encountered the South Atlantic fleetingly from airplanes, from the coast road on the east side of Salvador, and from the lighthouse and promenade at the southern tip of Salvador. About 400 miles up the coast stood Recife, the city where my daughter was married in July of 2014 and the port from which the Vandenberg had sailed for Ascension Island 35 years previously. After such a long time, it felt wonderful to gaze upon this magnificent sea of tranquility again. I could have remained at the South Atlantic oceanfront indefinitely, but the baby needed attention.
I thought I could have remained at the Nashua boat ramp indefinitely, too. But after the Sun rose over the Merrimack River, this inland sea of tranquility always lost some of its idyllic peacefulness when the first boaters arrived and noisily launched their boats and revved their engines. At this point, it was time to walk home again. A busy day awaited me there, a day filled with household chores, tumultuous street repairs, and very excited grandchildren.
No matter how busy and tumultuous the day, however, my dawn retreats at the waterfront enabled me to “Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence,”[1] and thereby to “be at peace with God.”[2]
Next,
I am happy to present two photographs of the South Atlantic from our family
archives. In the first, we see Ascension
Island, including the principal settlement of Georgetown. I took this picture on Saturday, September 15,
1979, from the starboard bridge wing of the General Hoyt S, Vandenberg. I thought that I might never return to this
uniquely beautiful island, so I seized the opportunity and took several
photographs of it.
In
the second picture, taken four decades later on Monday, March 30, 2020,, the majestic
South Atlantic Ocean stretches out to the horizon from the beach and lighthouse
of Itapuã on the east side of Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. My daughter took this photograph, which
features my granddaughter Miss Lydia Elizabeth gazing seaward from the beach. Such attraction to the ocean seems to run in
the family!
Thank you - these always make my day better.
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