The Passing of the Torch

Buoyed by the happy memory of his recent last voyage aboard the ferry Cape Henlopen, and sustained by frequent visits from his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, my father spent his final months in quiet repose at Nashua Crossings, an assisted living facility near the family home.  The staff there took good care of him and kept him comfortable, well-fed, and safe.  In the summer, he enjoyed the great outdoors of the courtyard.  In the winter, he appreciated the warmth of the great indoors, thankful that cleaning up the snow and ice was no longer his responsibility.  In all seasons, he enjoyed the company of his family and took special delight in his three great-grandchildren.  They eased the loneliness and mitigated the infirmities of his old age.

But just as his time aboard the Cape Henlopen went by too quickly, so did his time with the family.  The debilitations of advanced age overtook him. He passed pleasant holidays at Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, but in this new year he required hospitalization and then hospice care.  Finally, on Friday evening, January 24, 2020, my father quietly rang up “Finished with Engines.”  Concluding an earthly voyage of 98 years, 2 months, and 22 days, he returned to the celestial sphere from which he had arrived almost a century ago.  There he joined our Mom and many other family members and old friends who had gone before him.  As the last of his siblings and cousins to leave this life, he has passed the torch on to a new generation that must now preside over the family.

A week later, on Friday the 31^st, I attended an interment service for my father at the Cemetery of the Holy Rood in Westbury, Long Island.  He had made his return to New York for this occasion not aboard a ship, but in a hearse.  I followed him on a bus.  In our last moments together as father and son at Holy Rood, the deacon intoned the customary prayers for the dead and, quoting Saint Paul, reminded us that “we have our citizenship in heaven” and that “we await the coming of our Savior” (both Phil. 3:20, NAB).  These good points remind us that all of our earthly voyages are temporary and imperfect.  The best is yet to come.

We who now carry the family torch in this life have the obligation and the opportunity to serve both the living and the dead.  This year, we plan to continue the temple ordinances for my Mom and several of her cousins.  Next year, we will start the temple ordinances for my father.  For many years, we will help with the temporal and spiritual needs of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  These family projects are “a sacred duty”[1] because “the family is ordained of God”[2] and is “central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children.”[3]

Now, two photographs from the family archives.   My Mom took this father-and-teenage-son portrait on the bank of the Penobscot River at Fort Knox in Prospect, Maine, in October of 1976.  In the background, an unidentified tanker was discharging cargo at the oil dock in the paper mill town of Bucksport.  Many voyages lay ahead of us when this picture was taken.

Finally, a closer view of the rusty tanker that we were admiring.  Regarding my choice of a career in the Merchant Marine, I recall my father remarking that there was more opportunity for advancement aboard ship than there was in his field of school administration.  Every ship had a Captain.  Every ship had a Chief Engineer.  If I worked hard and studied diligently for the license exams, I could make it to the top.  It didn’t quite turn out that way, but he did have my best interests at heart! 

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[1] “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, General Relief Society Meeting, September 23, 1995.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

The Last Train Home

In my present employment, I have the dubious opportunity to hear canned music for much of my workday.  Most of this stuff simply goes in one ear and then promptly out the other, but occasionally a line of lyrics becomes lodged in my mind.  One such verse is, “Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight.”[1]  Hearing this line repeatedly leads to memorizing it, but more significantly, it sets a train of thought in motion.

Many times in the last several years have I taken “the last train home tonight.”  This last train left Boston South Station at 9:30pm every evening, made most of the stops along the way, and arrived in New York Penn Station at 2:30am.  I rode this train several times each year when I returned to my childhood home to visit and check up on my aging parents.  After a long and busy workday, I rode the Boston Express bus into South Station and then got on the train, and this schedule worked out quite well.  The bus was always a great soporific.  When it left Nashua, I fell asleep, but I always woke up just in time as it neared South Station.  The Amtrak train was even more comfortable.  I slept most of the way to New York, but I always awakened briefly at key points along the Shore Line that brought back memories for me.

The first of these spots was along the shore of Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island.  As the train rushed along, I sleepily glanced out the window at the black sky and blacker water and momentarily remembered sailing on this great bay aboard the tugboat Charger as she hauled the gasoline barge Interstate 35 toward Providence.  Then I went back to sleep.

The second wake-up took place as the train stopped in New London, Connecticut.  Once again gazing sleepily out the window, I noticed most of the Cross Sound Ferry fleet tied up for the night at the floodlit piers.  The larger vessels  John H and Cape Henlopen always stood out because of their size, but after a moment the Susan Anne and the Mary Ellen and others came into view as well.  As the train loaded and discharged passengers, I recalled the many voyages the family had made aboard these vessels when driving between New Hampshire and Long Island.  Then, with my mind comfortably at sea, I went back to sleep as the train eased away from the station.

The third seaside wake-up spot was in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and this one was always very brief.  Following the station stop, the train rolled past the dock used by the Bridgeport and Port Jefferson ferry.  Often one of this line’s three ships was spending the night there.  I usually woke up slightly for a moment, just long enough to peer out the window and maybe see the Grand Republic or the Park City and recall the occasional voyages I had made on this mid-Sound route.  Then I quickly fell asleep again.

At last, after a quiet and restful journey, the train reached the Hell Gate Bridge in New York.  Wide awake at this point and getting ready to disembark, I took in the grand view of the East River from this landmark span.  To the west the water led to the skyscrapers of Manhattan; to the east it wended its way toward Fort Schuyler and beyond into Long Island Sound.  I remembered that I had sailed this route numerous times aboard the Charger-Interstate 35 combination many years ago  Next, and it always seemed too soon, the train pulled into the subterranean caverns of the Pennsylvania Station, and the peaceful and pleasant nocturnal railroad voyage ended.

Penn Station at 2:30 in the morning was everything the ride along the Shore Line was not.  Incessantly crowded and noisy, hot and humid in summer, cold and raw in winter, it always proved that New York really is the city that never sleeps, although a few passengers, myself included, sometimes dozed off between trains.  Fortunately, the wait for the Long Island train was never very long.  After an anticlimactic ride to Mineola, I usually disembarked amid a horde of late night party-goers.  Separating myself from this crowd and threading my way through the labyrinth of modern high-rises and parking garages that now comprise downtown suburban Mineola, I made the ten-minute walk to the old family home and usually arrived about 4:00am.  The odyssey of “the last train home tonight” was then concluded.

I always entered the house as quietly as possible through the garage and kitchen.  If the dog didn’t wake up and raise a rumpus, I went back to sleep for a while in the family room.  Eventually the dog always did wake up, though, and then my father, hearing the commotion, came out to investigate and then discovered me.  Usually, he had forgotten that I was coming.  Later, about 7:00am, my mother would wake up.  Mom never forgot that I was coming, and she was always elated to see her vagabond son again.  It was a happy way to start her day, and her enthusiasm always made the nighttime traveling worthwhile.

Typically, a visit of two or three days’ duration followed my early morning arrival.  These were always pleasant occasions.  With both my parents in their nineties, however, we all knew that their meters were ticking, counting down the limited time they had left.  When my visit with them ended, I usually took an afternoon train back to Boston.  The next day, I went back to work.

My last journey aboard the last train took place on the night of Tuesday, October 31, and Wednesday, November 1, 2017.  I arrived promptly on Mom’s 99^th birthday.  My son Michael arrived by air from Europe for the occasion, too.  That was a very special day for Mom, truly a very happy last birthday for her.  Now, with her gone, the house sold, and my father in assisted living, it’s doubtful that I’ll ever take “the last train home tonight” again.  These journeys are now memories, as were the shipboard voyages that I always recalled while on the train.

The highlight of these railroad journeys, whether made by day or night, was always the sight of the sea and the vessels that plied it.  My voyages aboard ship, first as an employee and later as a passenger with my family, were important events.  Now they are important and precious memories.  Likewise, the memories of family gatherings, special family occasions, and deceased family members are important and precious, too.  While we cannot repeat the past, we can relive it in memory and share the happiness we find there with others.  As the scriptures counsel us:

                        Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations:

                        ask thy father, and he will shew thee; thy elders, and they will tell

                        thee (Deut. 32:7).

But simply remembering and hearing oral histories often prove insufficient in the long term.  Thus we have the more recent scriptural injunction to “continue writing and making a history of all the important things” (D&C 69:2).  Since going to sea was—and still is—very important to me, I took both notes and pictures along the way.  Now I’m glad I did.

There is so much here to be thankful for: the memories of shipboard voyages and families, the writing and photographs that preserve them, and a random line of canned music that releases a flood tide of these magnificent memories.

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[1] Al Stewart, “Time Passages,” 1978, found at www.azlyrics.com.

The Ship Shrine

My daughter coined the phrase, but it’s really more of a display than a shrine. I had the idea several months ago of buying some inexpensive plastic frames for enlargements of a few of my favorite photographs of ships and children. Nothing fancy, just a few showpieces for old time’s sake. I selected the pictures, bought the frames, and set everything up on the dresser in Miss Karen’s old bedroom. I admired this little gallery every day. She saw it when she came home for Thanksgiving and laughingly called it my ship shrine.

Starting on the left and proceeding in chronological order, I have a picture of the ferry Orient at the dock in Orient Point, Long Island, in August of 1976. I was still a teenager then. After my first voyage aboard the State of Maine and before I returned to school, my parents and I took a road trip out to the East End of Long Island. We visited the lighthouse at Montauk Point and the state park at Orient Point. We also stopped to admire the old ferry loading passengers and automobiles for transport to Connecticut.

The Orient was quite a sight. An old landing craft from the Second World War, she had been repainted in civilian colors and now sported a gray hull with white superstructure. Her age showed in her battered bow, her rusty shell plating, and her squat, box-like hull. She was not a graceful looking vessel, but with the bright afternoon sun shining on her port side, she was quite attractive in a difficult-to-describe sort of way. Little did I realize that this chance encounter with the aged Orient would prove to be a harbinger of voyages to be made with children yet to be born. When I stood on the adjacent beach and took her photograph I was unmarried and childless, still just a kid myself, and unable to even imagine the many voyages I would make aboard the Orient’s successors with my family in the years ahead. The picture I took of her has since become one of my favorites, and it holds first place in the ship shrine.

Next come two photographs of the tanker New Jersey Sun in drydock at the Todd Shipyard in Galveston, Texas, in May of 1977. Then follows a portrait of the tug Charger docked in Newark, New Jersey, in July of 1978. These pictures represent many happy memories of my formative adolescent years when I was learning the craft of the sea and working toward my license. Those were the good old days!

Next in line is the cable carrier Furman departing Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and passing the Portsmouth Light in New Castle on Saturday, March 15, 1986. This picture represents a turning point. My seagoing career was drawing to a close, but the proverbial new day was dawning. The following year the first of our four children was born. Henceforth in my photography the ships would share the limelight with the children.

And so the next picture shows Miss Patty with a very young James and an even younger Miss Karen standing on the beach at Orient Point watching the new ferry John H arrive. It was Friday, August 17, 1990. The same place where I had looked upon the old Orient now became the younger generation’s viewing platform, and over the years all the children have enjoyed many happy hours both on the beach at Orient Point and aboard the ferries between Long Island and Connecticut.

They travelled elsewhere, too, though. Accordingly, the next photograph in line shows the whole family—all four children with their Mommy and their Nana—in Battery Park in Lower Manhattan, watching the transatlantic liner Queen Elizabeth 2 depart from New York on a voyage to Southampton, England. That was a special day, Monday, August 19, 1996. Besides providing an exciting time for the children, it brought back memories for my mother and me, memories of watching my grandparents sail from New York for Europe in the 1960s when I was a small child myself.

The next photograph portrays James diligently scanning the horizon with a pair of binoculars aboard the ferry Delaware on her namesake bay enroute from Lewes, Delaware, to North Cape May, New Jersey, on Tuesday, August 18, 1998. Finally, the lineup of pictures concludes with another favorite—all the children assembled with Captain Steve Pond in the wheelhouse of the ferry Champlain enroute from Port Kent, New York, to Burlington, Vermont, on Monday, July 2, 2001.

On two small shelves higher up and next to the mirror on Miss Karen’s dresser, I have two additional pictures. One shows James, Miss Karen, and Steven on Sunday afternoon, June 20, 1993, all dressed up in the vintage American Export Lines souvenir tee shirts that my grandmother had long ago brought home for my brother and me. The second is a photograph taken of a painting aboard the cruise ship Nieuw Amsterdam. This depicts the Holland-America Line’s earlier Nieuw Amsterdam passing the lightship Ambrose on her way outbound from New York. I had become enraptured by this painting during our voyage aboard the new Nieuw Amsterdam following James’ wedding in February of 2012, and I regretted that I could not bring it home with me! This little copy seems the next best thing.

Not part of Miss Karen’s ship shrine but nonetheless relevant are three professionally done portraits that I did bring home from the Nieuw Amsterdam. The first of these portrays the newly married couple, James and Sarah, radiating happiness on their shipboard honeymoon. The second shows our younger sons, Steven and Michael, also looking very happy, and perhaps even a bit mischievous despite being dressed in their formal attire. The third is a family portrait. In commemoration of the wedding, Miss Patty and I posed together with all the children and our new daughter-in-law in the grand atrium of the Nieuw Amsterdam. The ship’s photographer created a family heirloom appropriate to the occasion. All three photographs are now framed and displayed together in Miss Patty’s sewing room in what we may perhaps call a wedding shrine.

There remains one more to examine. In my family history room I have another portrait taken by another photographer aboard another ship. While enroute from New York to ports in the Mediterranean aboard the Independence in November of 1966, my grandparents, Robert Burns and Julia Murphy, posed for the cameraman in their evening attire at the Captain’s cocktail party. An exceptionally good likeness of them, this heirloom holds a place of honor in my family archives. I look at it often.

I look at the portraits from the Nieuw Amsterdam and the snapshots in the ship shrine often, too. But I think this collection is not so much a shrine to ships; rather, it is a mini-archive of our family history. Ships have played important roles in our family’s history, serving as transportation for business meetings, vacations, family reunions, and sometimes just plain joyriding. Also, for many years they provided a career and livelihood for me. But while they serve the family’s needs, these vessels are not part of the family. Like other inanimate objects, they are discarded when no longer useful or profitable. Inevitably, they end their careers in a scrapyard. Occasionally a famous ship may be preserved as a museum piece, such as the Queen Mary in California or the Cutty Sark in England, but this is rare. Most of the time the old ships are refashioned into razor blades and automobile parts.

The family, however, always maintains its integrity. As the Proclamation on the Family tells us,

The divine plan of happiness enables family relationships to be perpetuated beyond the grave. Sacred ordinances and covenants available in holy temples make it possible for individuals to return to the presence of God and for families to be united eternally.¹

When I consider the five generations of my family that I have known in this life—my great-grandmother, my grandparents, my parents, my wife and myself, and our children—this sounds like a great idea! When I consider the extended family that I have known here and the deceased family members for whom I have done research and temple ordinances, this great idea seems even better. But of all these folks, the four for whom I admit to having a special soft spot are my own children. I realize that they’re all adults now, but they’ll always be children, even babies, to me.

Unlike discarded merchant ships, my children will never end their careers in a scrapyard and be transformed into something else. They will remain my children and I will remain their father. The ships I sailed on in my youth provided me with a livelihood, but my children have given me far more. This includes both happy and sad memories, both restful and sleepless nights, both great responsibility and great pleasure, both worry and relief, but above all an abiding and transcendent feeling of satisfaction that is difficult to describe.

As I look at the photograph of the aged ferry Orient in the ship shrine and think of the many voyages that I made on that route over the years with my children, I feel the sense of satisfaction that comes from having given them life and raised them from infancy to adulthood. President Gordon B. Hinckley expressed it very simply and succinctly when he told Mike Wallace:

Look, when all is said and done, you as a parent have no greater responsibility in this world than the bringing up of your children in the right way, and you will have no greater satisfaction as the years pass than to see those children growing in integrity and honesty and making something of their lives, adding to society because they are part of it.²

This is true. As important as ships have been in my life, my children are infinitely more important. The photographs of my favorite ships on Miss Karen’s dresser may comprise a ship shrine, as she calls it, but these vessels’ significance is eclipsed by my children and also by my grandparents and new daughter-in-law. Thus, it is not really a ship shrine but a family shrine.

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¹ In Gordon B. Hinckley, Discourses of President Gordon B. Hinckley, Volume 1: 1995-1999, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 2005, pp. 32-33. This Proclamation was included in an address made at the General Relief Society Meeting on September 23, 1995.

² Op. cit., p. 486. This statement is an excerpt from an interview of President Hinckley by Mike Wallace on the television program 60 Minutes on December 18, 1995.

The Nautical Library

A political phenomenon of the late twentieth century is the presidential library. After the torch is passed to the new head of state, the one just retired builds a library. In theory a repository of presidential papers intended for use by scholars and historians, the imposing new edifice usually seems as much a monument to a still-living and still self-aggrandizing great man as it does a research facility. The exception to this, of course, is the Library of Congress. Bequeathed to the nation by President Thomas Jefferson, it enjoys universal recognition as one of the greatest, largest, and most diverse collections of research materials in the world. My home library is not as ambitious as this, however, nor does it commemorate my political glory. Instead, it houses a very modest general collection and two more extensive specialized collections.

The first of these specialty areas supported my career in the Merchant Marine. Professional volumes such as Bowditch’s American Practical Navigator, Donn’s Meteorology, and Tate’s A Mariner’s Guide to the Rules of the Road line the shelves. While of little interest to a layman, these and other such tomes are critical components of a mate’s collection. I spent many intense hours with these and other volumes while studying for the various license exams. My favorite was George’s Stability and Trim for the Ship’s Officer. Filled with esoteric prose, complex technical diagrams, advanced mathematics, and applied physics—not exactly light reading—this book successfully saw me through the most difficult part of the chief mate’s exam, and for that I was very grateful. Subsequent to that, I consulted all these volumes regularly for license renewal exercises. To this day, I still refer to these resources, either to refresh my memory or to look up points of curiosity.

In addition to professional and technical books, I have several works on the history of seafaring, plus histories of famous ships. And as a library is not a collection of books only, I have an assortment of pictures—photographs, paintings, and pen-and-ink drawings—of all the ships that I sailed on, of the transatlantic liners that my grandparents sailed on, and of various historical vessels. A few of these are framed and on display; most are filed away for safekeeping, but hopefully, display at a later date. Then, there are my licenses. I keep these in a safe place, too, even though they’re no longer valid for sea service. I treasure them for the knowledge and the experience which they represent, and I admit to feeling somewhat sentimental about them. Finally, there is my sextant. I used this instrument many times aboard many ships to take sightings of the sun, moon, and stars, one of my favorite duties on long transoceanic voyages. Every so often someone asks if he may look at my sextant, and I’m always happy to show it off.

The second specialty area supports a more ongoing project in family history and genealogy. In addition to my interest in seafaring, I’ve long been collecting genealogical documentation and family-historical items. In the process of researching ancestors and relatives, I’ve amassed reams of documents that identify all the folks in the extended family. Who they are and how they’re related is the genealogy; where they lived and what they did is the family history. The two dovetail together naturally. The result is an ever-growing collection of official certificates, ecclesiastical records, written histories, newspaper articles, cemetery maps, and photographs. This assortment covers generations long deceased as well as the generation recently born. In what was perhaps an overindulgence with pen and camera, I’ve assembled dozens of photograph albums and almost as many notebooks depicting and detailing my children’s activities since their births. Some people may find this a bit much, but I like it. On a practical level, this collection always proves its worth. Whenever family members want to know when something took place and who was involved, they come to me as the authority on the matter. If I don’t have an event photographed or written down, then it didn’t happen!

This paper part of the family history and genealogical collection is organized into diverse volumes such as picture albums, binders, notebooks, and a few actual books, too, and this assortment occupies significant shelf space. But neither is this a collection of books only. Framed portraits of family members both living and deceased line the walls above the shelves and in several other rooms as well. Professional memorabilia and personal mementos from several of the deceased line the top shelf and fill several boxes. Once again, I admit to feeling sentimental about much of this material. One of my favorite items combines both seafaring and family history: a portrait of my grandparents in tuxedo and evening gown at the Captain’s party aboard the American Export Lines’ Independence at sea between New York and Casablanca in November of 1966.

In retrospect, I think their departure on this voyage aboard the Independence got me started in family history. I remember the day they left. Back then the passengers’ families were allowed to visit the ships prior to sailing. Armed with my first camera at the age of nine—a cheap kid’s toy that took very mediocre black-and-white photographs—I succeeded in getting on everyone’s nerves in a relentless picture-taking quest. Now, despite their dubious artistic value, these humble first attempts at family portraiture have become family heirlooms.

In addition to the genealogical, family-historical, and nautical materials, I have a modest humanities collection, chiefly in the areas of history, literature, and religion, as well as over fifty years of National Geographic. This includes many of the classics of our Western world, the scripture, both sacred and secular, bequeathed to us by our Greco-Roman Judeo-Christian heritage. These writings, from some of the best minds in history, enable us to acquire a broad spectrum of knowledge and wisdom and thereby raise our own minds to a higher level. Authors with names revered through the ages rank among our best friends and most interesting companions. Their ideas have shaped human history and thought for so long and to such an extent that it seems impossible to even imagine a world without them. These writers, while long dead, “whisper to us out of the dust” (2 Nephi 26:16) with “the words of them which have slumbered” (2 Nephi 27:6). Though dead, they continue to speak, as Professor Jastrow, a scholarly character in a contemporary classic describes:

There’s something personal and alive for me in this room.

These books speak to me. The authors are all my friends

and colleagues, though some of them crumbled to dust

fifteen centuries ago. I shall leave the villa with no regrets,

but it will hurt to leave these books behind.¹

Just as, for example, Plato and Augustine and Shakespeare, though dead, continue to speak to all who will listen, so also do my kin, though dead, speak to me. Through what they wrote and what others wrote about them, through their vital records, their photographs, their memorabilia, and the inscriptions on their gravestones, I have come to know them. I often feel a special unity with them. Their spirits, I believe, guide me in my research, and they are my friends and colleagues as well as my family. I treasure the time that I spend with them in my little library.

I also treasure the hours I spend with the rising generation, recording the children’s activities, compiling their photographs, and organizing their school memorabilia. While many others of my age are building large-scale political and business empires for themselves, I prefer the cloistered life that my library affords. I often think of Prospero, the Shakespearean character who fell out of political favor and lamented not the loss of his office but the loss of his library:

Me, poor man, my library

Was dukedom large enough.²

As is mine today. In my youth the sea was my dukedom—and it was plenty large enough—but now my library suffices. While my library naturally contains material concerning my career in the Merchant Marine, which is now part of our family history, I see it not as a monument to myself like a presidential library, but as a monument to all the members of my family. It commemorates their lives by archiving their histories, displaying their portraits, and enabling the present and future generations to know those of the past. It is bequeathed to the family of the future, to my children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren ad infinitum. My hope is that through this legacy the past generations, though dead, will speak to the future generations just as they have to me.

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¹ Herman Wouk, War and Remembrance, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1978, p. 198.
² William Shakespeare, The Tempest, I:i:109-110.

Fleeting Glimpses

On a rare Saturday off from work, I stood on a short stretch of sandy beach in Rockport, Massachusetts, and gazed eastward through a light mist and an intermittent rain at the great Atlantic Ocean. The horizon was only faintly visible; mostly it just blended with the overcast sky. It was neither a good day for a navigator taking celestial sightings and plotting sun lines nor for a summer tourist tanning in the sun or frolicking in the surf. Weatherwise, it was a bland day, no doubt a disappointment to many. I saw it differently, however. For any day that one can stand at the water’s edge and enjoy the privilege of looking upon the sea is very good day.

Normally, I work every weekend. It came as a very pleasant surprise, therefore, to unexpectedly be given a Saturday off. Wanting to make the most of this fortuitous opportunity, Miss Patty and I left the house early and drove away to the waterfront. We gazed upon the sea in Salem, Gloucester, and Rockport, and we visited the famous Fishermen’s Monument in Gloucester. It was a lovely day, far from the madding crowds of weekend shoppers, but it passed by much too quickly. Even though we spent hours at the seaside, this time was but a fleeting glimpse.

Life contains many such fleeting glimpses. Some of my favorites involving the sea take place aboard trains. Several times each year I ride Amtrak between Boston and New York in order to visit my parents. Aptly named the Shore Line, this stretch of railroad follows the coastline through Rhode Island and Connecticut into New York. It affords magnificent views of Narragansett Bay and Long Island Sound from a succession of vantage points. From East Greenwich, Mystic, New London, Niantic Beach, Rocky Neck, and Old Saybrook, I savor the sight of salt water, albeit briefly, as the trains hurry along toward their destinations. Rarely do they stop between stations. On one journey, though, I enjoyed a bonus as the train halted for several minutes at Niantic Beach because of track work. As the engineer awaited the signal to proceed, I watched the ferry John H sail placidly across the sound from Long Island to New London.

On Long Island, there are many waterfront sites where one can gaze upon either the open ocean or its estuaries. Family favorites include Captree, Fire Island, Point Lookout, Oyster Bay, and Port Jefferson. All beautiful locations, the times spent there are always much too short—mere fleeting glimpses. Once per summer we sail aboard the excursion boat Moon Chaser between Captree and the Fire Island Light, a round trip of an hour and a half. This also passes too quickly—another fleeting glimpse. Even a prolonged duration spent in the company of the sea is, in the end, too short. The week that the family spent aboard the Nieuw Amsterdam in February illustrates this perfectly. Everyone agreed that the voyage ended too quickly. Furthermore, accustomed as I had been to spending several months at a time aboard ship, seven days felt like nothing. It seemed that I had barely unpacked and settled in when it was time to disembark! Another fleeting glimpse.

All my life I have had an affinity for the sea. For me it is a creation of unsurpassable natural beauty, a place of peace and tranquility, and a source of inspiration. The sea possesses an intangible but unmistakable other-worldly quality that sets it apart from the secularized land masses. It seems more a part of the divine realm than the human one. When I gaze out to sea, whether from the deck of a ship or the edge of a continent, I feel that I am in a sense looking into eternity. But eternity is very large, and my time is very small and tightly scheduled. Sooner or later some compelling need calls me away from the sea. All I can achieve, then, are fleeting glimpses.

Most of my life I have had an affinity for family history and genealogy. Like the sea, these intimately interrelated subjects possess intangible but unmistakable other-worldly qualities that set them apart from our secularized society. Whether in a library, a municipal archive, a church office, a cemetery, or at home, genealogical and family-historical research opens windows into both the human past and the divine eternity. As the sea has a compelling quality that draws one in, so does this research. It is commonplace to completely forget the present while becoming engrossed in the events and personalities of the past and discovering new things that happened and new friends who lived many decades or even more than a century ago. But then, just as at the seashore, some urgent human need calls us rudely back to the present, and our fleeting glimpse into the higher realm is suddenly over.

Hunger, for example, is a compelling intruder. On one occasion Miss Patty and I were visiting the public library in Babylon, Long Island, and printing copies of microfilmed newspaper articles concerning my grandparents’ youth. Having gotten an early start, we spent all morning and part of the afternoon on this project, completely losing track of the time in the process. Suddenly feeling incredibly hungry, we looked at the clock and were astonished when we saw how late it had become! Still, for all those hours spent examining my grandparents’ formative years in an era now gone, we felt as though we had just scratched the surface, just glimpsed their youth wherein there must have been so much more that had gone unrecorded.

As wonderful as it has been to discover our ancestors and learn of their life experiences, there is an inherent frustration in the process, too: whatever we find in our research, it is never enough. While our grandparents’ lives are quite well documented, some gaps do remain. Of their parents, however, we know precious little. Going back in time, we have less and less information about each successive generation. The glimpses into the past become smaller and smaller until finally there are no more. In each case, though, whether we have full biographies or just names and dates of death, these views of past lives remain only glimpses. We always wish that we had more information and more photographs, as well as more time to do the research. Just like the view of the great Atlantic Ocean, the view of our ancestry is but a fleeting glimpse.

For that matter, life itself is a fleeting glimpse. In our family, the longest known lifespan is 97 years. In the history of the world, however, this is miniscule. It may sound like a long time, but it is still a finite window of opportunity. Just as the hours spent visiting the seashore and the hours spent researching family history are short and precious, so is life itself. Hence the need to use the time that we have wisely, for once used up it remains forever irretrievably gone.

Carpe diem, asserted the ancient Romans. Seize the day. Every day may be our last, and we would be wise to not waste the tremendous but limited opportunity of life on things of no value. Contemplating eternity and searching for eternal truth, whether at the oceanfront or the family history center, lead us to the things of ultimate value: to truth, light, knowledge, family, everlasting life—in short, the things of God. And when we have achieved this goal, it will not be just a fleeting glimpse but a permanent state.

Going Home to the Sea

The view took my breath away.  From the Crow’s Nest Lounge on the uppermost enclosed deck of the cruise ship Nieuw Amsterdam, I beheld Port Everglades for the first time in 27 years.  Moored to the same wharf that my diminutive Bartlett had occupied in the mid-1980s, this flagship of the Holland America Line was the largest vessel on which I had ever set foot.  With a week-long voyage to the Caribbean islands ahead, I would have ample opportunity to explore this great ship.  For the moment, though, I studied Port Everglades.

Much had changed over the years.  There were new cruise ship terminals, new parking garages, new airport-style security checkpoints, and of course, new ships.  Much had also not changed.  The artificial basin that comprises the port looked the same.  So did the industrial landscape to the west, the high rises of downtown Fort Lauderdale, and the waterfront condominiums that flanked the harbor entrance.  But one landmark in all of this was missing.  Burt and Jack’s, a fancy restaurant owned by the actor Burt Reynolds that had occupied the point of land separating the basin from the intracoastal waterway, had been deemed a threat to national security and removed by the federal government.  Gone were the broad lawns and stands of palm trees and the parking lot full of Mercedes, Rolls-Royces, and Jaguars.  Their places were taken by bland concrete and a blander warehouse.

To the east, however, the great Atlantic Ocean—my ocean—remained the same.  A gentle onshore breeze came out of the east, as it almost always did.  In plain view just beyond the narrow barrier beach, the deep blue water capped by the lighter blue sky speckled with tufts of white altocumulus clouds beckoned the exiled son of the sea to come home.  I would, in a few hours’ time, when the Nieuw Amsterdam sailed.  But first, I needed to reacclimate myself.

Port Everglades was alive with activity.  In addition to the Nieuw Amsterdam, four other cruise vessels were loading passengers—the Westerdam, the Carnival Freedom, the Celebrity Solstice, and the Allure of the Seas.  Across the basin the tanker High Energy discharged petroleum ashore while the tanker Pula took in her lines, left her berth, and headed seaward escorted by police boats.  From the cargo docks along the intracoastal waterway the container ship Melbourne Strait emerged and passed through the inlet to the open sea.  The sight of all these vessels going about their business brought me back in time.

On October 12, 1984, I had reported aboard the oceanographic survey ship Bartlett at this very dock.  With a brand new chief mate’s license in a deteriorating employment situation, I was very fortunate to join ship as second mate.  I made several voyages from Port Everglades aboard the Bartlett.  She did survey work in the Caribbean and the Gulf, passed along the Keys and through the Bahamas to her operating areas, called at Key West, Florida, and Gulfport, Mississippi, and late one night rescued a shipwreck victim, a mysterious figure whose story did not quite add up.  Toward the end of February, 1985, the Bartlett was once again in Port Everglades, preparing to go into the nearby Tracor Shipyard for her annual overhaul.  When she was safely in the yard, I took a few days off and travelled north by air to visit family.  Not included in the itinerary were the medical checkup that diagnosed my cancer and the subsequent surgery and radiation treatment.  I never did return to the Bartlett.  And until James signed the family up for this voyage aboard the Nieuw Amsterdam, I thought that I would never return to Port Everglades, either.

Like a child with a new toy, then, I merrily reminisced and enthusiastically pointed out all the sights of Port Everglades to my children from the upper deck of the Nieuw Amsterdam.  It was Sunday afternoon, February 5, 2012, but I had completely lost track of the time.  At length, Miss Patty came along and reminded me that we were not there to sightsee, but to attend our oldest son’s wedding.  Leaving the Crow’s Nest, then, the entire family went outdoors and up to the highest deck on the ship.  There, in a lovely ceremony under the canopy of the open sky and surrounded by merchant shipping at the edge of the great Atlantic, our son James married Miss Sarah Ruth Marchand.  Steven and Michael served as ushers, and Miss Karen as a bridesmaid.

If ships could speak, I mused, what tales they could tell!  As our son and his fiancé prepared to exchange vows aboard this Nieuw Amsterdam of the Holland America Line, I thought of my grandparents.  In June of 1957, shortly before my time, they had sailed from New York to Le Havre aboard an older Nieuw Amsterdam of the Holland America Line.  On other occasions they had also sailed aboard the Noordam, the Westerdam, and the Statendam.  Little could they have known that their great-grandson would work for Holland America, meet his fiancé there, sail aboard the Zuiderdam, and marry aboard the new Nieuw Amsterdam—a unique family history connection!  I trust that they were watching the day’s events from their celestial vantage point with smiles on their faces.

Following the wedding ceremony Holland America hosted a reception one deck below in the Crow’s Nest lounge.  Elsewhere on the ship, passengers were boarding and the crew was preparing to go to sea.  At 4:30pm emergency drills were held, and promptly at 5:00pm the Nieuw Amsterdam quietly took in her lines and eased away from the dock.  Gathered on the promenade deck, the entire family watched in fascination as the great ship left the port behind and sailed through the inlet and out to sea.  As she did so, I called my parents on Long Island on the cell phone.  For the first time in the family’s history, three generations were able to converse by telephone while two of them were at sea.

The Nieuw Amsterdam sailed eastward from Port Everglades into the Atlantic and then through the northwestern Bahamas overnight.  The next day she steered southeast past Eleuthera, Cat Island, and San Salvador.  Her first port of call would be Grand Turk in the Turks and Caicos Islands on Tuesday.  Then on Wednesday and Thursday she would visit San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Philipsburg, St. Maarten.  Friday and Saturday would be spent entirely at sea, and early next Sunday she would return to Fort Lauderdale.  A tourist itinerary, to be supplemented by fancy dining and entertainment aboard ship.  My principal interests aboard the Nieuw Amsterdam, however, were threefold: my son’s wedding, the ocean, and the ship itself.  Tourism took a lower priority, although I have always found the history and geography of the Caribbean fascinating.  With James and Sarah married and the ship now at sea, I turned my attention to the ship and the sea.

It felt so good—so ineffably good—to go to sea again aboard a merchant ship.  The sights and sounds and sensations of a ship at sea were marvelous beyond description.  The east wind driving the low swells, the rippled surface of the water, the endless circle of the horizon, the sun and clouds by day, the moon and stars by night, the swishing of the water alongside the steel hull, the churning of the propeller wash, the gentle rolling of the ship, the soft vibration of the decks—all of these and more combined to produce the supernal experience of once again being at sea.  The exiled son of the sea had come home and was partaking of “the magic monotony of existence between sky and water”¹ that only the most eloquent of writers with experience at sea can begin to articulate.

I spent many hours of every day and night simply looking at the sea and sky.  It had been many years, and I felt that I needed to make up for lost time.  As I had done on watch long ago, I analyzed the weather conditions and the sea state and concluded that the semi-permanent Azores high pressure system was producing the east-southeasterly wind which in turn was the driving force behind the waves and the swell pattern into which the Nieuw Amsterdam was heading.  A very gentle combined pitching and rolling motion resulted, just enough to let everyone know that we really were at sea.  I watched as the sun gradually dropped from the sky to the distant western horizon and colored in pastels the towering cumuliform clouds that are so typical of the lower latitudes.  In the predawn hours I gazed at the stars and tried to pick out my old navigational favorites through the intermittent cloud cover.  The nearly full moon illuminated the horizon sufficiently to facilitate an accurate star plot, although in this technological age a loran-c fix would be just as good and require a lot less effort.  That’s very practical, of course.  Still, few things in life can offer the sense of satisfaction that comes from working out a round of stars and plotting perfectly intersecting lines of position on a chart.

I made frequent visits to the Nieuw Amsterdam’s library.  This was an ideal spot to sit down and write letters describing the voyage to the folks at family headquarters.  I also consulted the National Geographic book of atlases.  Not having traversed these waters in a while, I felt the need to refamiliarize myself with the neighborhood.  Memories of vessels and voyages long past came to mind as I studied the shipping lanes through the Bahama and Virgin Islands.  James and Steven looked on several times as I pointed out where I had gone before and where we were going now.  In addition, a flat screen monitor mounted on a nearby bulkhead provided continuous updates of navigational and meteorological information.  I consulted it often.

The Nieuw Amsterdam had many such state-of-the-art features.  Built in Italy, she entered service in 2010.  She was 936 feet long and 106 feet wide; carried 2,106 passengers and 929 crew; measured 86,700 gross tons; was powered by six diesel generators, four producing 16,000 horsepower and two producing 11,000 horsepower; was driven by two azipod electric-drive propeller units, each with an output of 17.6 megawatts; had a maximum speed of 23 knots; and carried three bow thrusters for maneuverability when docking and undocking.  Her port of registry was Rotterdam, the Netherlands.  Her Master was Captain Edward van Zaane, and her Chief Engineer was Pieter Kesteloo, both of the Netherlands.²

Additionally, the Nieuw Amsterdam was a floating art museum.  Gracing the landings in the midships stairway were magnificent original paintings of historically significant Holland America Line vessels.  My favorite depicted the earlier Nieuw Amsterdam, on which my grandparents had sailed, at sea eastbound from New York and passing on her starboard side the lightship Ambrose.  I practically fell in love with this painting and wished that I could take it home with me!  One deck down hung an equally impressive port quarter view of the old Nieuw Amsterdam entering port.  In the Crow’s Nest, the brass bell from this ship was prominently displayed behind a plate glass window.  Nearby stood a ten-foot-long scale model of this earlier Nieuw Amsterdam.  In her era, 1938 to 1973, she had been the flagship of the Dutch Merchant Marine.

The landings in the forward and aft stairways were decorated with varied artwork of a colonial theme.  This included pen-and-ink drawings of the Dutch settlements in Lower Manhattan, a painting of Captain Henry Hudson’s famous ship Halve Maen,³ and a portrait of Governor Pieter Stuyvesant.  As history has always been one of my favorite subjects, I appreciated these displays of historical material.  Much of it focused on New York.  It was all very attractively and graciously presented, yet I wondered if the Dutch were subtly reminding the English, “We were there first!” 

Lining the bulkheads in all the passageways leading to the passengers’ staterooms were vintage black and white photographs of all the Holland America Line ships over the years.  Some were portrayed at sea and others in various ports.  Most notable was New York, where the Manhattan skyline in its various stages of development loomed large behind vessels underway on the Hudson River.  A few of the most recent of these photographs showed ships passing the twin towers of the World Trade Center.  Whether we like it or not, this is history now, too.  The Dutch, with a long and not always easy history of their own, demonstrated a profound respect for both countries’ heritage in this extensive gallery.

The history continued in the ports that we visited.  Miss Patty and I learned a lot about both Grand Turk and St. Maarten on the cultural and historical tours.  My favorite port of call, however, was San Juan. 

Steeped in both natural beauty and colonial history, San Juan, like Port Everglades, brought back memories for me.  I had been there before in November of 1982, when I was embarked on the tanker Waccamaw as second mate.  This ship docked briefly in Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico, on a few occasions.  During one of these intervals a few of us drove to San Juan in a borrowed automobile and spent the midnight hours wandering through the streets of the old colonial city.  I saw San Juan in the dark, never in daylight.  Even so, it was clearly a beautiful city, and I have long wanted to return to it in the daytime.

The Nieuw Amsterdam docked in downtown San Juan at 1:00pm after passing the famous El Morro fortress that has for five centuries guarded the harbor entrance.  With Miss Patty I again wandered the narrow blue cobblestone streets of the colonial city.  Reaching El Morro, we gazed upon the beautiful north coast of the island where the sun-lightened blue sea turns white as the surf crashes ashore on the narrow strip of sand and rock that borders both the old and new cities of San Juan.  Multicolored Spanish architecture melds into white stucco high rise as one looks eastward along the shore.  It was truly a magnificent sight to behold, and one that I had only previously beheld from the bridge of the Waccamaw several miles offshore.  From El Morro we walked through the old city back to the piers.  Along the way we passed through neighborhoods filled with beautiful Spanish Mediterranean style buildings painted in vivid Caribbean hues.  My favorite stood opposite a small park on the aptly named Calle Cristo: the Catedral San Juan Bautista, a colonial outpost of Roman Christianity and the spiritual center of the old city.  With its white arched façade and its front steps intersecting the slope of the street, the cathedral stood out as the architectural magnum opus of the city.  I remembered it fondly from the nocturnal meanderings of my youth.  I had sat on those front steps in the middle of the night.  I had been awake and busy for far too many hours.  Nonetheless, I stayed awake to see this beautiful city and then returned to the Waccamaw and went to work again.

This time, though, Miss Patty and I returned to the Nieuw Amsterdam.  Enroute back to Port Everglades, she had one further stop to make, at Little San Salvador Island in the Bahamas.  Situated between Eleuthera and Cat Island, Little San Salvador is the site of Holland America’s  resort called Half Moon Cay, so named in honor of Henry Hudson’s ship.  The cruise ships anchor a short distance offshore there, and the passengers go ashore by tender.  By the time the Nieuw Amsterdam arrived, early on Saturday morning, the weather had changed.  A thirty knot wind blew from the southwest onto the island, and this generated large waves that made the tendering operation much too dangerous.  Speaking over the public address system, Captain van Zaane explained the situation and announced his decision to cancel the visit to Half Moon Cay.  Instead, the ship would continue through the Bahamas toward Port Everglades at reduced speed and arrive as scheduled early Sunday morning.

I had to laugh at this.  Of course, I fully understood and respected the Captain’s decision.  The amusing part was that during my years at sea I had sailed through and between and past the Bahamas many times on several ships, but I had never stopped and gone ashore there!  The Vandenberg, the Mercury, the Waccamaw, the Comet, the Bartlett—all these ships had carried me within sight of the Bahama Islands, but none of them had stopped there; they had all been going elsewhere.  After that, I had been eagerly looking forward to finally going ashore and actually setting foot on one of the Bahamas, only to have it cancelled at the last minute!  And so I gazed longingly at Little San Salvador Island as the Nieuw Amsterdam sailed away on a northwesterly course and left it far astern.  Miss Patty made it the family joke.  She claimed that with my history I had jinxed our visit to Half Moon Cay!

In the predawn hours of Sunday morning I watched from the Crow’s Nest Lounge as the Nieuw Amsterdam approached the Florida coast.  The lights of Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood shone clearly in the darkness, and I searched diligently for the entrance to the inlet that leads into Port Everglades.  At 5:15am the pilot boat came alongside to port.  A minute later, with the pilot safely delivered on board, the launch scurried away, soon to deliver another pilot to another inbound ship.  The sky lightened as the Nieuw Amsterdam eased through the inlet and then slowly backed into position alongside the wharf.  By 6:00am, it was all finished. 

It had been a voyage of accomplishment.  Our little family—Miss Patty, myself, James, Karen, Steven, and Michael—had enjoyed a wonderful week-long reunion.  We had seen James and Sarah marry, both of them radiantly happy, and we had met her family.  In this way our family had grown.  And I had gone back to sea with my family.  This enabled them to see me in my element, and they came to understand, up to a point, why I liked it so much.  Miss Patty maintained that I was “obsessed with the ship and the ocean.”  That gives me two obsessions now: seafaring and family history.  The Nieuw Amsterdam combined them very nicely on this voyage.  But now it was time to reluctantly go ashore.

Numerous poets have written about the seaman’s return from the sea.  Two of them even shared the famous line, “Home is the sailor, home from the sea,”⁴ which one of Great Britain’s most revered merchant seaman later used as the title of his memoirs.⁵  Well, I have been “home from the sea” for a long time.  Aboard the Nieuw Amsterdam, however, I felt as if I had truly come home after a long absence.  As soon as I stepped aboard, I felt a sense of having returned.  In fact, it all made me feel at home—the collection of merchant ships in Port Everglades; the transit outbound through the inlet with the leaving of a continent behind; the voyage through the Bahamas and on the open Atlantic; the arrivals and departures at the ports of call, especially the visit to San Juan.  Most of all, though, I felt at home on the open decks of the Nieuw Amsterdam in the very early morning hours when the stars peeked through the scattered clouds and the moonlight reflected on the rippled surface of the water.  Simply put, a seaman is at home at sea.

But he is not alone there.  I had my family with me this time, but beyond that, the night sky over the open ocean always exudes a spirituality that is unmistakable.  The Master and Chief Engineer of the universe stands watch over the sea and makes his presence known through the sight, sound, and feel of the sea and sky.  How can anyone look at this, I mused, and not believe in God?  “The world is charged with the grandeur of God,”⁶ as one devout poet exclaimed.  The supernal creative genius of a Supreme Being stands as self-evident when viewed from the deck of a ship at sea, a view that is always uplifting, edifying, and inspirational.

In one of my favorite verses of scripture, Nephi asserted after a long voyage, “he hath preserved me upon the waters of the great deep” (2 Nephi 4:20).  I would make the same assertion after a short voyage.  I came ashore from the Nieuw Amsterdam preserved and also improved by the voyage, and very thankful for the privilege of having returned, however briefly, to the sea where I belong.

---

¹ Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim, Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1920, p. 6.
² Information from Holland America Line.
³ In English, Half Moon.
⁴ Robert Louis Stevenson, “Requiem,” in The Harvard Classics, v. 42, New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1910, p. 1261-1262; and A. E. Housman, “R.L.S.,” in The Norton Anthology of Poetry, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1970, p. 901.
⁵ Captain Sir Arthur Rostron, Home from the Sea, New York: The MacMillan Company, 1931.
⁶ Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J., “God’s Grandeur,” in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 5^th ed., v.2, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1986, p.1581.

Five Ships and Family History

The cable ship Furman remained at the Simplex Wire and Cable Company pier in Newington, New Hampshire, through the summer, fall, and winter of 1985 and 1986 and sporadically loaded cable into her holds.  Occasionally, she shifted berths when another cable ship with a higher operational priority entered port.  Sometimes she stayed at Simplex and simply moored to the offshore side of the other ship, and at other times she tied up temporarily at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in nearby Kittery, Maine.  Either way, the Furman never went far.  Her most ambitious sortie took her a few miles into the open ocean for a sea trial of the engineering plant following a series of repairs.

For all practical purposes, my seafaring career ended when I was diagnosed with cancer.  I did go back to sea briefly aboard the Furman and later aboard the Kane, but these miniature voyages served more as the last gasps of a dying career than as progression toward the next license.  But it was a happy time.  Even if my career was dying, the rest of me was recovering and my outlook on life was changing.  That was one of the benefits of cancer.  It led to a paradigm shift in values.  Many things that had once seemed of crucial importance afterwards became insignificant, and other aspects of life that had previously been taken for granted afterwards assumed a much greater significance.  After life itself had been threatened, health, family, faith, education, and the limited time one had to enjoy these took on a new importance.  Leading a good, happy, and useful family life became more pressing than pursuing an ambitious career.

Such were the thoughts during the many idle hours I spent aboard the idle Furman.  Yet I still wanted to go back to sea.  That yearning has never completely left me.  The management of our fleet did not concern itself with such romantic aspirations, however.  These folks dealt with operational and medical realities.  Thus, when the finally fully loaded Furman was ready to leave port, they decided that she would do so without me.  And thus I stood on the shore with Miss Patty and waved good-bye to this good ship as she sailed out of Portsmouth Harbor on that rainy morning in March.

I reported to company headquarters in Bayonne to undergo a medical checkup and convince the powers that be that I really could go back to sea.  They were skeptical, though.  Until they became convinced, I was on an extended vacation.  Fearing that this vacation might easily become too extended, I took a side job washing dishes in a computer company cafeteria to supplement my vacation pay.

This was a typical strategy in the mid 1980s.  Shipping jobs for merchant seamen were becoming scarce, and many seamen took vacation jobs because they simply did not know when or even if they would be able to sail again.   I both knew and heard about fellows who worked as dishwashers, janitors, delivery drivers, night watchmen, gas station attendants, and so on—anything that could quickly produce a paycheck.  The men who took these vacation jobs were both unlicensed seamen and licensed mates and engineers.  Dishwashing was my second such vacation job, actually.  Prior to joining the Waccamaw, I had worked as an evening janitor in another computer company for a couple of months.  After spending a similar amount of time washing dishes, I was assigned to the oceanographic survey ship Kane as chief mate.  A big step up from second mate and third mate, joining a ship as chief mate was both an exciting and intimidating experience.

The Kane was concluding a shipyard overhaul in Wando, near Charleston in South Carolina.  She was a mess.  With minimal time for cleaning up, she took on a contingent of survey technicians and went to sea.  Shipyard wires, air hoses, and sandblasting debris littered her decks.  As the Kane went to sea she looked like a floating slum.  She was the filthiest ship I ever sailed on.  I set the deck crew to the task of cleaning it all up, but the Captain objected that this was a waste of time.  Others felt differently, however, and several individuals surreptitiously cleaned up large areas of dirt that had gotten on their nerves.

The Kane demanded long hours.  Because of the employment situation and a new competitive bidding program in which prospective ship operators were proposing to take over crewing, the Kane’s manning scale had recently been reduced as a cost cutting measure.  As chief mate, then, I stood the 8:00 to 12:00 bridge watch morning and evening, supervised the deck crew and did administrative work after lunch, and helped with survey work after midnight.  The overtime pay was good, but for a person recently sick, this schedule was a killer.  Exhausted and not well, I consulted a physician in Charleston on the Kane’s return to port.  He recommended a less strenuous shipboard assignment in addition to the medicine he prescribed.  I had already requested relief, and a new chief mate soon arrived on board to take my place.

I left the Kane with mixed feelings.  That I was not fit for such a job was obvious, yet I was pleased that I had actually sailed, however briefly, as chief mate.  In the end, though, it worked out well for me.  Not long after my departure, the Kane suffered an engine room fire while at sea and was disabled.  She was subsequently towed to New York for repairs. 

I left the Kane at the end of May. In early June I returned to Bayonne for another medical checkup.  Then I was sent to Mobile, Alabama, to join the Saturn as second mate.

This was a good job and I liked it, but unfortunately, it only lasted nine days.  The Saturn was a freighter designed to carry military supplies, and she was undergoing a shipyard overhaul in Mobile.  Captain Stephen Aspiotis, formerly of the Waccamaw, was in charge and happy to see me again.  Because the shipyard work involved alterations to the crew’s accommodations, we were all housed in the Riverview Plaza Hotel, a high-class high-rise structure in downtown Mobile.  I especially enjoyed this.  An oversized room, a soft bed, an outdoor swimming pool, and excellent food—all within ten minutes’ walk of the Saturn.  I worked mostly at night, from midnight to 8:00am, which was the shipyard’s quiet time.  I spent most of those hours cleaning up and organizing all the navigational materials in the chartroom and bridge.  This part of the vessel had undergone some remodeling, and the shipyard guys had simply piled all the charts, publications, sight reduction tables, supplies, and related items in a big heap.  Most of the delicate instruments like the chronometers and sextants had been locked up for safekeeping, but everything else needed attention.  I enjoyed this work, though.  I was by myself, the ship was quiet, and the job was not overly strenuous.  At the hotel I could sleep uninterrupted and spend afternoons at the pool.  What a great life!

It did not last long, though.  One evening the third mate and I went to dinner at a local restaurant in downtown Mobile.  I’ve never been a fan of seafood, but this one time I tried the shrimp at the salad bar.  They tasted delicious, which enticed me to eat more of them.  Big mistake.  At the hotel afterwards, I became so violently sick that I was taken by ambulance to the University of South Alabama Medical Center.  After assorted medical examinations and procedures, the diagnosis was probable food poisoning.

The next morning, the hospital staff in Mobile called Doctor Horton, the company physician in Bayonne, with questions about my medical history.  Soon after that Captain Aspiotis received instructions from the crewing office to pay me off and send me home.  I protested because the ailment was clearing up, and he called Bayonne back and protested on my behalf.  But it was to no avail.  The decision had been made and no one would reverse it.  In mid June, then, I left the Saturn and returned to Bayonne.

After yet another medical checkup at company headquarters, I was assigned locally to the Vanguard as a night mate.  Doctor Horton wanted me to stay close by so he could keep an eye on me.

The Vanguard was a range instrumentation ship similar to the Vandenberg.  She had come to the New York area for the festivities involving the relighting of the torch on the Statue of Liberty on the Fourth of July.  As a night mate, I was temporarily assigned to night watches aboard the ship while she was in port.  This allowed the second and third mates to take a few days off in turn and go home.  Interestingly, the Vanguard was moored along Furman Street in Brooklyn when I reported aboard.  After a few days she shifted berths, and then she stayed in Bayonne for the remainder of her visit. 

Night mating aboard the Vanguard was an easy job.  There was no cargo to load or discharge, no repair work going on, and no shipyard-generated mess to clean up.  One interesting benefit was watching the Statue of Liberty festivities on the Fourth of July.  A few days after this event, the Vanguard sailed for Florida with her regular crew and left me behind.

While at the Bayonne headquarters, the Vanguard was moored adjacent to the Hayes.  On the day of her sailing, I stood my last midnight to eight watch aboard the Vanguard, slept for a few hours, and then stood my first four to midnight watch aboard the Hayes.

The Hayes was an oceanographic survey ship, but she had been parked and doing nothing in Bayonne for a few years.  Long overdue for a major shipyard overhaul that would essentially be a rebuilding, the Hayes waited patiently while the wheels of fleet administration and finance slowly turned.  A small crew of caretakers looked after her.  Most of them lived in the New York and New Jersey area and commuted to the ship.  One exception to this was Commander Whitten, formerly of the Furman, who now took up residence aboard the Hayes.  Except for the loading of cable and shifting of berths that were done on the Furman, my new assignment aboard the Hayes was similar to my previous one aboard the Furman.  It lasted nine months, from shortly after the Fourth of July until the following April.

During this interval, as I had whenever I was in the area on business, I lived with my parents and grandfather in the house on Long Island where I had grown up.  I commuted by automobile to the Hayes in Bayonne for my late afternoon and evening shift.  Even with the long hours aboard ship and the time-consuming commute, I found ample free time to undertake the family history project at the house.

Little did I realize it then, but this project started “turning the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to the fathers” (D&C 27:9).  I had long maintained a dormant interest in family history and genealogy.  Going to sea afforded me little opportunity to pursue it seriously until I reported aboard the Hayes.  With several months of this assignment ahead of me and with several free hours available every day at the family headquarters, the prospects for finally accomplishing something improved tremendously.

This became a three-generation effort.  My mother and I collected photographs, papers, negatives, and artifacts from all corners of the house.  Using an old kitchen table and some dilapidated chairs, we set up an informal family history work room in the basement.  It was a humble arrangement, but it sufficed.  Tapping my grandfather for information about events of the distant past, we took copious notes.  We labeled and dated hundreds of photographs and organized them into albums.  We had several damaged and antique photographs redeveloped and enlarged.  Also, we had several important documents such as diplomas, licenses, and certificates, professionally dry-mounted and framed.  On a few occasions when Miss Patty came to visit, we went on field trips to sites of family historical significance in the area.  Like archeologists, we took notes and photographs, and these added to the knowledge base of our family’s history.  It was a very productive time.

When the Hayes was finally towed away from the pier in Bayonne in April of 1987, the family history project had yielded some impressive results.  But that was just the beginning.  Long after the Hayes had left, the family history project continued.  Once started, it could not be stopped.  There were sources outside the family headquarters to consult next, and they brought to light a steady stream of information about previous generations.

Now, over twenty years later, the family history and genealogy project does not occupy a makeshift work space in the basement, but a finished library with built-in shelves filled with family history volumes, paneled walls bedecked with family portraits, and a computer corner with compact discs containing scanned images of everything.  It’s been a growth industry.

All of this got its start from my last-resort assignment as a caretaker aboard a dead ship waiting to be hauled away to a shipyard.  In retrospect, the year of the five ships Furman, Kane, Saturn, Vanguard, and Hayes looks like a comedy of errors that led to a bonanza, a genealogical pot of gold not at the end of a rainbow but at the end of a failing career fraught with illnesses and abbreviated shipboard assignments.  We often remark that the Lord works in ways that we find strange.  I don’t know how involved the Lord was at the end of my career in the Merchant Marine, but I’m certain that he had a hand in bringing to pass our family history and genealogy efforts.

Finally, while this research served initially as a hobby and produced knowledge for its own sake, it took on a new and much greater significance when Miss Patty became interested in the Church and learned about the ordinances of the temple for the deceased.  In large part because of the Hayes, then, many of our kin on both sides of the family have received these ordinances.  A dying career aboard a dead ship thus yielded new life for many spirits in the temple.  A small price to pay for the blessings of eternity.