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 I keep these in a safe place, too, even though they’re no longer valid for sea service.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.

Repeating the Past

The ferry John H accelerated away from her dock in New London, Connecticut, and hurried down the channel toward the more open water of Long Island Sound.  The newest and largest vessel in the Cross Sound Ferry fleet, the John H was making a routine voyage to Orient Point, the sandy spit of land at the eastern end of Long Island.  The required transit time was an hour and twenty minutes—too long for some people, but far too short for me.  Miss Patty agreed.  She loved the sea, too, and savored the time that we and the children spent aboard these ferries.

The employment situation in the traditional deep sea American Merchant Marine had deteriorated almost to the point of extinction..  There would be no more seafaring for me, no more vagabonding across the oceans aboard cargo ships to exotic seaports on the far side of the world.  My illness and the layup it entailed had been but a precursor to the dearth of shipping jobs and the permanent layup that resulted.  I had of necessity settled into a new life ashore, but the yearning to go to sea remained.  When enroute with the children to visit their grandparents, then, we often opted to take the scenic route which lay across the water.

The house in New York, where I had grown up, was separated from the house in New Hampshire, where I now lived, by a driving time of about four and a half hours.  Our sons never minded making this journey, but our daughter did.  As a baby, she raised the most strident and volatile objections to continued driving after about two hours.  Unwittingly, then, she gave us a wonderful excuse to alter our course and take the ferry instead.  This route involved a two hour drive to New London, then the voyage across Long Island Sound, and finally another two hour drive on Long Island.  It took six hours instead of four and a half, but was infinitely more pleasant and enjoyable.  Everyone liked it, the children as much as the parents, and so it became a habit.

The John H was our favorite ferry.  She had comfortable accommodations for families, large tables with ample seating next to big windows through which the children could watch a world of water go by as they ate.  The outdoor decks offered unlimited views in all directions, and I would frequently bring the children all the way around the ship so they could see everything.  They always had many questions about what they saw, and they drew heavily on my professional expertise.  An hour and a third of this always passed quickly, and all too soon it would be time to return to the car and resume driving.  On this last leg of the journey, the children were usually tired out from their little adventure on the sea, and they would sleep peacefully the rest of the way to Nana’s house.

Over the years, we made this crossing many times on all the vessels of the line, both in daylight and in darkness.  No two voyages were ever alike, but a few were remarkable.

On a particularly pleasant evening one spring, we made the crossing from Connecticut to Long Island.  The air was crisp, cool, and clear, with excellent visibility.  It was a busy night on the water, and my sons quickly became fascinated by the traffic.  Because of the darkness, all one could see of the other vessels was their lights.  Intrigued by these dots of red, white, and green moving swiftly through the blackness of the night, my boys watched them intently and asked many questions about them.  This became a teaching moment.  I had the opportunity to explain to my sons how the system of running lights worked, how they could discern from the color and arrangement of the lights on another ship what direction she was going, and how close she would come to our own ship.  The boys learned quickly in this outdoor laboratory; everything they heard explained was happening right in front of them.  After a while I became aware of numerous other passengers clustering around us, looking at the running lights of the passing ships and evidently listening to me as well.

On another evening, travelling in the same direction but with very little traffic on the water, we witnessed an electrical storm.  Standing on the bow of the ship and looking forward, we saw that all ahead of us was cloaked in blackness.  But there was rumbling in the sky and a mist hung in the air, and we knew from the weather reports that a storm system was moving eastward from New Jersey.  For a split second, streaks of lightning illuminated the world.  The distant landscape of eastern Long Island and Plum Island and the Plum Gut Lighthouse became eerily but briefly visible, and we could for that instant see that our trusty little ship was headed in the right direction.  Not that I ever doubted the radar, but some passengers would wonder aloud about such things.  Another flash of lightning a few minutes later revealed the same landscape again, only closer.  These streaks and clusters of lightning, repeated at almost regular intervals, captured the children’s attention and opened up a new aspect in the world of nature for them.

Through repeated voyages both in daylight and at night across Long Island Sound, my children came to understand through their own experiences why I liked the sea so much.  They saw for themselves

the beauty of the earth…

the beauty of the skies…

[and] the beauty of each hour

Of the day and of the night¹

from the unique vantage point of the sea.  As passengers and not crewmen, they—and I, too, for a change—could enjoy this supernal view of creation without the burden of shipboard responsibility.  Furthermore, as passengers, we were never exposed to the seamy side of life aboard ship.  The crews, in the limited contact we had with them, were always unfailingly polite and proper.        

Once at Nana’s house, we often called upon the resources of the city to entertain the children.  One of these was the ferry to Staten Island.  I always loved riding this and often took the children along for many voyages in succession.  The fare was free, which was always a good incentive, and everyone enjoyed the ride across the Upper Bay of New York Harbor.  The plethora of watercraft always captured the children’s attention.  They witnessed close up the comings and goings of passenger ships, container ships, tankers, tugboats, barges, and other ferries.  Even on a quiet day, something was always moving in the harbor.  There were plenty of stationary sights for the children to absorb as well, from the merchantmen reposing in Stapleton Anchorage to the Robbins Reef Light that marked the channel leading to the docks of my former employer.  We would typically make three or even four hour-long round trips between Lower Manhattan and Staten Island in one morning or afternoon.  As with the ferry line between Long Island and Connecticut, riding to Staten Island and back returned me in my mind’s eye to the halcyon days of my vagabond youth.  I was simultaneously raising my children and repeating my past.

As the children grew older and we travelled farther from home with them, we took them on more distant voyages.  Several times on the way to their Uncle Robert’s house in Virginia, we followed the scenic route across the Delaware Bay.  Always a pleasant alternative to the interstate highways, this route conveyed us between Cape May, New Jersey, and Cape Henlopen, Delaware, at the edge of the open ocean.  Back in New England, we would occasionally drive to Burlington, Vermont, and make a round trip across Lake Champlain, a beautiful and quiet inland sea nestled in between mountain ranges.  And in Canada, where entire provinces were accessible only by ship, the children made their longest voyages yet between New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland.  These were happy occasions, times of discovery for the children, and times of reminiscence for me.

On display in the passenger lounge in Channel-Port-aux-Basques, Newfoundland, were several very large and extremely detailed models of merchant ships.  These were beautiful specimens, real works of art.  One time when we had a long wait because of a delayed sailing, these ship models became distractions for the children, something on which to focus their attention instead of thinking about the long delay.  This strategy worked wonderfully.  All the children became thoroughly interested in these models, and they asked many questions—very involved and probing questions, too—about the structural details of the vessels portrayed.  They had never seen the hull configuration of any of the ferries they had sailed on, of course, so when they saw a scale model of it, they naturally had questions.  This became another teaching moment.  Instead of running lights, this time we covered rudders, propellers, bilge keels, hull plates, hawse pipes, anchors, and side ports.  Once again, in the course of this lesson I became aware of other passengers gathering around us and listening in.

Every time I stepped aboard a passenger ferry and went to sea again, it was with a great sense of gratitude.  I was, of course, very happy and very thankful to be at sea again, even if the voyages were too short.  I was also very thankful that I had been able to sail professionally in the Merchant Marine, that I had had the incomparable opportunity to make much longer voyages across the wide expanse of the oceans to distant countries and different cultures.  Whether aboard the John H or any other vessel, I thought of my past experiences “with prayer and thanksgiving” (D&C 46:7).  As I gazed once again upon the simple yet majestic grandeur of the sea I thought of the words of the psalmist, “O Lord, how great are thy works! and thy thoughts are very deep” (Psalms 92: 5).

I liked the sea so much that I wanted to share it, as much as possible, with my family.  Miss Patty had seen it before, of course, but it was all new to the children when they were little.  This is a typical human reaction.  Some things in life are so good that we cannot keep them to ourselves but need to share them with others in order to be made fully happy by them.  The blessings of the Gospel are like the sea in this respect.  It only seems natural to want to share this good life with others.  What has made us happy can make others happy as well, and we often derive much of our own happiness from seeing our loved ones happy.  Hence the joy in missionary efforts and temple sealings.  Both by their very nature involve other people.  No one can be a missionary unto himself or be sealed to himself.  The Gospel does not reside in a vacuum.

After I left the sea and took up my new life ashore, I became better able to research my genealogy.  The more I pursued my deceased ancestors and relatives, the more I came feel a sense of urgency about the project, a sense that this work absolutely needed to be done in order to satisfy some ulterior purpose.  But I had no idea what this purpose could be.  I only knew that I often felt inexplicably obsessed with acquiring as much material as possible about my family members and their personal histories.  To this end, I corresponded and travelled far and wide, eventually filling a collection of large loose leaf binders with information and photographs.  Yet it still seemed that there should be something more.

Then I started to learn about the Church.  When I learned about the temples and the ordinances done on behalf of the deceased, my obsession with genealogy suddenly made sense.  From the research that I had done, I came to know some very interesting people in my lineage through writings they had left behind or through their recorded participation in important historical events.  Either way, I came to feel that I knew them personally, and I developed an affection for them even tough they had died long before I was born.  In a sense, they came to be like my children.  I loved them and cared about them and felt a responsibility for them.  And so, I wanted—indeed, felt honored and privileged—to do their temple work for them.  Just as I had loved the sea so much that I wanted to share it with my family, so also did I come to love the temple so much that I wanted to share it with my family.  Both the sea and the temple were too good to keep to myself; they had to be shared.

For a time I regretted that I had never been able to upgrade my license to Master.  I had risen as high as chief mate, but first my illness and the layup it entailed and then the deteriorating employment situation in the Merchant Marine prevented my attaining “the big license.”  Now, however, it hardly seems to matter.  We believe that “sacrifice brings forth the blessings of heaven.”²   For the sacrifice of a Master’s license, I’ve received the blessings of surviving cancer, my four children, my genealogy, the temple, and an eternal family, among numerous others.  Not a bad trade off.  I never reached the top of my profession, but I did reach the top of the temple, and I’m content there.  No mere sheet of paper, not even one inscribed with the magical phrase “Master of steam and motor vessels of any gross tonnage upon oceans” can compare to the blessings of Heaven.

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¹ Folliott S. Pierpoint, “For the Beauty of the Earth,” Hymns of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1985, p. 92.

² William W. Phelps, “Praise to the Man,” op. cit., p. 27.

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.