A Summer in the Minor League - Part Two

On Wednesday, August 9, 1978, it was time to go back to work. And none too soon, I thought. Once again I rode the train from Mineola into Manhattan, and in Penn Station I caught the 7:30am Metroliner to Philadelphia. This delivered me to the 30th Street Station around 9:00, and from that point I took a taxi to City Dock, the Interstate and Ocean Transport world headquarters.

City Dock was situated on the west side of the Schuylkill River, near its confluence with the larger and better known Delaware River. A small and unpretentious facility, it lay just north of the Philadelphia International Airport and across the river from the big Gulf refinery in South Philly. Despite having such megalithic neighbors, City Dock was very much off the beaten path. Nonetheless, this small waterfront building and the adjacent dock space served as the operational headquarters for the Interstate fleet.

Once inside I met the man in charge, Mr. Richard Marvel. He decided who went where and when they went there. He made all the personnel assignments for the tugboats and barges of the Interstate fleet. I forget if I was early or if the Charger was late, but either way I had to wait. After a few idle hours spent reading Robert Massie’s Nicholas and Alexandra in a windowless room, I was called away and escorted to the just-arrived Charger. I went aboard and was warmly welcomed back by the Southern crew with whom I had sailed only last month. Unfortunately, however, I was not staying with the Charger this time. Just as she had been reassigned to work in the Philadelphia area, so I was being reassigned to work aboard the barge Interstate 50 in the same neighborhood. I would remain only long enough to collect my belongings and chat with my old crew.

I had mixed feelings about this change. I had hoped to return to the Charger, for I liked the boat and everything about it—the crew, the food, the itinerary, the work, and so on. The crew liked me, too, and appreciated my being with them. Captain Wilkins had several times remarked that “This young feller’s the best thing that’s happened to this boat. He’s gotten more painting done on here than’s ever been done before.” These accolades pleased me, of course, but it was a bit embarrassing when the Captain would hold forth on this subject in front of everyone else at the dinner table.

In this interval, too, I learned to my great disappointment that in my absence the Charger had made a voyage from Newark to Boston and back via the Cape Cod Canal. On the return, she stopped in New London, Connecticut, for a crew change. Then from Newark, she sailed on the broad Atlantic down the Jersey coast to the Delaware Capes, and then up the Delaware Bay and River to Philadelphia. This was so disappointing! How I wished I had made those voyages! But I realized how fortunate I was that my accident had been a fairly minor one. A broken leg would have kept me ashore for the rest of the summer.

I bade the Charger and her crew farewell, and then a company car brought me around the corner from City Dock to Hog Island. This facility, even smaller and more unpretentious than City Dock, lay on the west shore of the Delaware River and at the very edge of the airport property. Part of the land along the Delaware that became the airport had been an enormous shipbuilding complex in the time of World War I. The ships built there were known as “Hog Islanders” all around the globe. In my time at Hog Island some of the old wooden docks and railroad sidings still remained as vestiges of the long-gone shipyard. They were in poor condition and no longer used. Interstate maintained a modern concrete pier and steel plumbing for its oil operations, and it was there that I reported aboard the barge Interstate 50.

This vessel was crewed by two tankermen. One was in charge, and the other served as an assistant. Sonny commanded the Interstate 50, and he was rolling paint on the deck when I arrived. He had not been expecting me, and was in fact quite startled by my appearance. He wondered aloud why the office folks were sending me there to paint when most of the painting had already been done. I was dismayed to hear this, for I dreaded having nothing to do. As it turned out, there was work waiting for me, but not as much as on the Charger, so some down time became inevitable. Sonny’s assistant was Dave Steckel, a twenty-something fellow from Milmont Park, Pennsylvania. He and I became quite friendly. Sonny himself came from North Carolina.

At two in the afternoon, a tug came along and towed the Interstate 50 away from Hog Island. She went downstream a dozen miles and was moored alongside a large tanker anchored off Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania. Sonny and Dave quickly connected the hoses, and then the tanker started pumping crude oil into the little barge. This went on for several hours. Then another tug came along and pushed the now fully loaded Interstate 50 upstream to the Hess docks in Delair, New Jersey, about five miles upstream of central Philadelphia. Arriving in Delair at 4:00am on Thursday the 10^th, the Interstate 50 was left by herself to pump half of the oil ashore. At 9:30am another tug arrived and pushed the barge about a dozen miles farther upstream to Burlington, New Jersey, arriving at 11:00am. There the rest of the oil was offloaded. At 11:00 that night, still another tug came along and towed the Interstate 50 back downstream to the Big Stone anchorage in the Delaware Bay. There the process began again, lightering another deep-draft tanker and proceeding to an upriver port for unloading.

This nomadic life was markedly different from the wayfaring I had previously done. Unlike ships and tugboats and ferries, the Interstate 50 had no bridge, and there was no navigational work to do. This vessel was almost entirely a cargo operation. There was some linehandling and an occasional anchoring, but the vast majority of the work involved pumping oil either into or out of the barge. While this interested me because it was so different, it did become somewhat monotonous. I missed the bridge work, the voyage planning, and the navigating and maneuvering. The barge men displayed no interest in these aspects of sailing, and they did not need to. Someone else on a tugboat did all that for them. Because the work was so specialized, life aboard the Interstate 50 seemed in a sense quite removed from the rest of the shipping world. But this did not occur to me all at once. Only gradually did I come to miss the greater involvement that I had formerly known.

Anyway, at 10:00am on Friday, August 11, the tug delivered the Interstate 50 alongside another tanker anchored in Big Stone. This anchorage was located in the southwestern part of the Delaware Bay, near the shipping lanes and out of sight of land. Maybe from the bridge of a large tanker one could see land, but we couldn’t from the low-lying barge. The Interstate 50 spent the day taking on crude oil from this enormous tanker, and then at 8:00pm another tug started pushing the loaded barge upstream toward Hog Island.

I did not record and I cannot recall the names of all the tugboats that hauled the Interstate 50 on her many journeys. There were several tugs, and their assignments varied. Besides the Charger there were the Driver, the Endeavor, the Voyager, the Voyager II, and so on. The names and the vessels and their crews grew familiar over time. The tankers we lightered were a different story. All of them were foreign ships delivering foreign crude oil to the United States. The Interstate 50 was always moored to the midship sections of these vessels, and from this vantage point the names painted on the bows and sterns were not visible. We therefore seldom knew what ship we were working with. We never had occasion to go aboard these ships, and most of the time there was very little conversation between their crews and ourselves. The language barrier was one reason for this. Another was the difference in size between these ships and our barge.

Fully loaded, the Interstate 50 had only two or three feet of freeboard. Light, she had much more, of course. Even so, to a barge low in the water the hull of a tanker seems like a giant steel cliff. A crewman on the main deck of such a ship appears very small and distant, standing at the top of this steel cliff. In that circumstance most communication took place by hand signals. At times when the tankers were still fully loaded and the barge was light, the disparity in height was less and the steel cliff seemed less formidable. But as the lightering proceeded, the ship floated higher and the barge floated lower, and the steel cliff grew. When fully loaded these foreign tankers drew much more water than the controlling depth of the Delaware River allowed. Often, two or three barges would be moored alongside a tanker simultaneously, all removing oil from the tanker to reduce its draft and enable it to go upriver to one of the oil terminals without running aground in the channel. That’s what the Interstate 50 did for a living.

With a full load of crude oil, then, the Interstate 50 was pushed overnight to Hog Island, arriving at 9:00am on Saturday, August 12. I spent the morning painting, but on a lark decided to take the afternoon off and go to Villanova University in Villanova, Pennsylvania. A friend from high school was a student there. While he was away during the summer, I nonetheless enjoyed visiting the campus for old time’s sake. I envied him the opportunity to attend a major university and get a first class education; he envied me the opportunity to roam the world and get another sort of education.

At 5:00pm the Interstate 50 was removed from Hog Island and brought to the Gulf tank farm at Point Breeze. This bucolically named location consisted of an industrialized tract of land adjacent to the western end of the Passayunk Avenue Bridge, a draw span that crossed the Schuylkill River. Bells, whistles, and sirens sounded regularly as this bridge opened and closed for the passing of tugs and barges through it. Once the Interstate 50 was safely moored at Point Breeze, Sonny ordered Dave Steckel and me ashore. We walked across the bridge to Sweeney’s, a neighborhood grill in South Philly. After a Saturday night out on the town, we returned to the barge to spend the rest of the night pumping oil ashore. The next afternoon, on Sunday the 13^th, the Interstate 50 was towed from Point Breeze fifteen or so miles downstream to Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania, arriving at 5:15pm.

It had been over a year since I had been to Marcus Hook, the home of the Sun Oil Company and the place where I had reported aboard the New Jersey Sun the previous summer. It felt good to be back! The Interstate 50 tied up at the BP refinery, just north of the Sunoco refinery. A dead end street, a few vacant lots, and an abandoned building separated the two large facilities. Once again Sonny ordered Dave Steckel and me ashore. His parents arrived in an automobile and drove us to their family home in nearby Milmont Park. A pleasant evening with dinner, family, and neighborhood friends followed. While this socialization was very enjoyable, it did seem like an odd way to be working aboard an oil barge. These folks all had the weekend off, though, and such a get-together seemed quite reasonable to them. Afterwards Dave’s parents returned us to the BP refinery in Marcus Hook. Returning to the Interstate 50, we found Sonny still out on deck but with little to do. Refinery workers were aboard and cleaning the oil tanks in preparation for repair work scheduled for the next day.

At 7:00am on Monday the 14^th, a tug brought the Interstate 50 upriver from Marcus Hook to City Dock. Arriving at 9:00am, the barge spent the day at company headquarters undergoing maintenance and repair work to its cargo tanks and piping systems. This job took most of the day. I did my painting and cleaning, but had a chance to visit the company office as well. One section of this office was filled with attractive young ladies, mostly secretaries and typists, who I quickly learned were a source of distraction to many of the male employees. Several other tugs and barges came and went during the day, and all the crewmen found some excuse to come into the office building and chat with the girls.

With the repair work completed, the Interstate 50 was hauled away from City Dock at 5:30pm. During the night at 2:30am she was nudged alongside a tanker in the Big Stone anchorage. After spending the rest of the night and the early morning loading oil, she was taken away at 8:45am and pushed north to Hog Island, arriving at 8:30 Tuesday evening. This was a typical round trip voyage.

For the next week and a half, the Interstate 50 made several such runs: Big Stone to Hog Island, Big Stone to Marcus Hook, Big Stone to Point Breeze, and Big Stone to Delaware City, Delaware. With a normal crew size of only two tankermen, and loading and unloading on anything but a fixed schedule, the on-board living arrangements revolved not around watch keeping but cargo pumping. When the barge was making a long transit, both tankermen slept regardless of the time of day or night. When there was cargo work to do, both were up and on duty. Once all the hookups were made and the oil was flowing, they usually painted, cleaned, and adjusted mooring lines as the cargo schedule and the hours of daylight permitted. Meal service was self-service and haphazard; crewmen ate when they were hungry and not busy. Cooking was done on a propane stove. What little electricity the barge had came from a diesel-recharged battery and needed to be conserved. Also, there was no hot water unless someone boiled it. This meant we took cold showers, not a hardship in August. The living quarters consisted of a kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom at the stern of the barge. Admittedly, it doesn’t sound like much, but it was clean, comfortable, and more spacious than the accommodations on the Charger.

On Thursday, August 17, the Interstate 50 arrived back in Marcus Hook and spent the day there unloading at the Sunoco refinery. I basked in the glory of the Sun Oil Company as I went about my painting. No Sun ships were present at the refinery that day, but in passing the plant on the barge’s transits of the river I kept watch lest I miss seeing any of my former employer’s fleet. Just as I had done aboard the Charger, I noted all the American oil tankers that I observed, and it pleased me to see at various times the Delaware Sun, the Texas Sun, and the Western Sun moored at the Marcus Hook refinery. I wondered if any of my former shipmates were sailing aboard these great vessels. Chances were good that someone I had known was there. In the afternoon I walked around Marcus Hook with Dave and he asked about my career of the previous summer with Sun Oil. Then at 6:00pm a tug arrived and removed the Interstate 50 from the Sunoco refinery and towed it back down to Big Stone.

The next day, Friday the 18^th, saw the Interstate 50 anchor off Delaware City while waiting for a berth. I seized the opportunity to jump in the water and go swimming, something no one else dared to do. Using a length of heaving line, I tied a life ring to the barge and did my swimming inside the life ring, lest the river current carry me out to sea! The next morning, Saturday the 19^th, the barge weighed anchor and was pushed alongside the dock in Delaware City and spent the day there unloading. From this location we had a good view of the cargo ships transiting the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal on their way between the two great bays. I went swimming in the river again that afternoon, and that night another tug brought the Interstate 50 back to Big Stone.

It was with a new crew that I sailed south this time. Sonny and Dave left the vessel in Delaware City, and two other fellows came aboard in their places. One was a Virginian. The other came from New Jersey. They were decent enough shipmates, but after the jovial atmosphere of Sonny and Dave, the new crew seemed extremely serious, even somber. But I would not be with them long. My time was running out.

On Tuesday, August 22, the Interstate 50 returned to the Sunoco refinery in Marcus Hook. With some down time, I rode the train into Philadelphia and visited Penn’s Landing. This was the spot where the State of Maine had docked in June of 1976 while on her annual training voyage. Although this had only been two years and two months earlier, it somehow seemed much more distant than that from my twenty-year-old perspective!

I got back to Marcus Hook in ample time to make the 12:30am Wednesday sailing of the Interstate 50. Instead of going back to Big Stone, however, she was towed out into the Atlantic and eased alongside the tanker Scapmount, which had run aground. From 9:30am until 1:00pm the barge took on oil from this ship. By then the Scapmount was able to get underway again without scraping the sandy bottom, and both vessels then made their way to Big Stone.

While we were alongside the Scapmonut I got chatting with the pilot. He explained that the bridge watch had steered the ship on the wrong side of a buoy; hence the grounding. Furthermore, once aground, the crew hoisted the incorrect signal to indicate the ship’s predicament. The pilot made a point of telling me that all this had happened before he came aboard. In fact, the Scapmount was still well seaward of the pilot station. No oil was spilled, though, and no damage was done. The lightering continued in Big Stone that night, and the next day the Interstate 50 was brought back north to Delaware City to unload.

The barge’s next assignment was an odd one. On Friday the 25th, the Interstate 50 arrived at Pier 124 in South Philly. This pier proudly bore the inscription, “Pennsylvania Railroad Coal Pier.” Used primarily to load coal from railroad cars onto ships bound overseas, this pier also had an oil hookup. The Interstate 50 was moored alongside the petroleum piping and astern of large coal ship. While the barge loaded oil, this vessel loaded coal.

A skeletal steel beam structure held inclined railroad tracks high in the air. Loaded individual coal cars rolled down a track, continued uphill to a stop, switched tracks, and rolled downhill toward the ship. Caught by a dumping device next to the ship, each car was then turned upside-down, and the coal spilled out into a chute which guided it into the vessel’s cargo hold. An ingenious gravity-powered system, it was intriguing, even mesmerizing, to watch.

The rest of the South Philly waterfront was less impressive. Consisting mainly of finger piers with warehouses that were built to service the old fashioned break-bulk freighter fleets, it resembled the Manhattan and Brooklyn waterfronts. Most of these piers saw little use by the 1970s when containerization had taken over the freight business. Oil was the big product in Philadelphia. The region was dotted with dozens of oil docks with tankers alongside them discharging their cargos. Still more tankers sat quietly at anchor in the river waiting for their time to unload. Philadelphia was clearly an oil port.

At this point there remained little painting and cleaning left to do aboard the Interstate 50. I had finished painting the main deck, the cargo pipes, the anchor gear, the pump rooms, the house top, etc. I had thoroughly cleaned out the paint locker and the store room. I had a couple of small jobs to finish. Otherwise, I was running out of work.

While I was thus winding down, the Interstate 50 was towed away from Pier 124 at 8:00am on Saturday the 26^th. An hour and a half later, she was moored at Point Breeze to unload. At 10:30 on Sunday morning, she was taken away from Point Breeze and brought alongside an anchored ship near Marcus Hook. She spent the day lightering this vessel and at 8:30 that evening departed for Delair, arriving at 12:30am on Monday the 28^th. She remained there pumping oil ashore and then waiting for a tug until 10:30pm. I spent the day finishing up my work and putting things away.

At 12:30am on Tuesday the 29^th, the Interstate 50 arrived at a refinery in Paulsboro, New Jersey, across the Delaware River from the Philadelphia Airport. This spot was mistakenly identified to us as Eagle Point, but the real Eagle Point actually lies about five or so miles upstream, opposite the old Philadelphia Navy Yard. Anyway, the Interstate 50 took on oil there until 1:00pm, when she was towed downstream to Marcus Hook. I decided to return home from there, since it was convenient to public transportation and I had finished my work aboard the barge.

At 3:00pm the Interstate 50 was moored once again at the Sunoco refinery. I packed my gear, bade my shipmates farewell, walked to the gate, and hitched a ride with some refinery workers to the Marcus Hook railroad station. I took a local train to 30^th Street Station in Philadelphia, then Amtrak’s Bankers to New York, and finally a Long Island train home. My parents, themselves having returned from vacation, met their wayfaring son once again at the Mineola station.

And so my summer employment with the Interstate and Ocean Transport Company drew to a close. It had been a good experience and I had certainly enjoyed it, but it was not what I wanted for my future. Operating tugs and barges required a Merchant Marine license, but not the “big license” for which I was studying. Vagabonding along the American East Coast appealed to the nomadic inclination of my youth, but traipsing across the oceans to different continents remained much more attractive. These far-off places held, in Gatsby terms, the “wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.”¹ That was the future I saw—transatlantic, transpacific, Europe, Africa, Asia, the Panama Canal, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean!

I had big ambitions, and I wanted to fulfill them.

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¹ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925, p. 63.

Riding With the Pilots

The tanker New Jersey Sun weighed anchor after the pilot had come aboard early in the morning of Monday, May 16, 1977. A small motor launch had delivered him to the ship. From this vessel he climbed a rope ladder with wooden rungs which hung down the tanker’s starboard side. When he reached the main deck, he was welcomed aboard by the third mate and two able seamen. The third mate escorted the pilot to the bridge, and then joined the bosun on the bow. The two ABs stayed behind and hauled in the pilot ladder and stowed it away pending future use. On the bridge the pilot was greeted by Captain Jack Taylor and chief mate Joe Reilly. When the introductions were complete the mate recorded the pilot’s name in the bell book, the written record of the ship’s transit through the harbor. The pilot’s name¹ was Pizzatolla, and he had come aboard to bring the New Jersey Sun into the harbor of Galveston, Texas.

For Captain Pizzatolla, this morning’s arrival was a fairly routine operation. Standing on the port bridge wing next to Captain Taylor, he issued the engine and rudder instructions necessary to maneuver the ship out of the anchorage, into the channel, through the narrow inlet between the barrier beaches, and then through the port itself toward the Todd Shipyard on Pelican Island. This destination, a sprawling industrial complex across the stream from Galveston proper, would be the New Jersey Sun’s home for the next several weeks while she underwent an extensive overhaul. But getting the large vessel into this facility required some effort. Captain Pizzatolla called ahead on his walkie-talkie and arranged for a rendezvous with two tugboats as the ship approached the shipyard.

From his perch on the port wing, Captain Pizzatolla surveyed the scene before him and decided on his course of action. He explained his plan to Captain Taylor, who nodded and gave his consent, and then began issuing instructions to the tugboats via the walkie-talkie and engine and rudder commands to the chief mate and helmsman. With one tug pushing on the starboard bow and the other on the port quarter, with the rudder hard left and the engine going slow astern, the pilot turned the New Jersey Sun ninety degrees in the channel. She was now positioned so that she could back down into her berth with her port side to her assigned pier. But this was a tight spot. The pilot dismissed the tug on the port quarter. The second tug remained and held the New Jersey’s bow steady. Then, with the engine going slowly astern and the rudder amidships, the pilot eased the great ship into the narrow space between her pier and the adjacent floating drydock. There was no room for error here, and the operation had to be taken slowly.

The New Jersey Sun carried one rudder and one propeller. Rudders are simple enough tools, but propellers come in different varieties. They can be right hand or left hand, meaning they turn clockwise or counterclockwise when the ship is going ahead, and the propeller blades are shaped and pitched accordingly in order to get a good bite on the water and push it astern. A single engine ship like the New Jersey carried a right hand propeller. This was fine for going ahead, but when going astern, a right hand propeller caused the stern of the ship to “walk” to port. Likewise, a left hand propeller would produce a walk to starboard. By contrast, a ship such as the Waccamaw with two propellers would have one right hand and one left hand; they would be mirror images of each other, and when going astern, the opposite walking effects would cancel each other out.

As the New Jersey Sun backed alongside the pier, the walking effect produced by her right hand propeller became an important factor. Both Captain Taylor and Captain Pizzatolla eyed the stern carefully from the bridge wing as the ship eased slowly alongside the pier. Neither one of them wanted the propeller to walk the stern of the ship into the pier. When this motion of the stern toward the pier became evident as the ship moved farther into her berth, the pilot called for a quick burst ahead on the engine with the rudder hard left. The resulting propeller wash to port countered the walking effect and prevented the ship from colliding with the pier. In a backing move of over a thousand feet at slow speed, the pilot did this three times. Had there been no floating drydock moored to the next pier, a tugboat could have steadied the New Jersey’s stern and made the job much easier. The pilot really earned his fee on this arrival.

With the New Jersey Sun finally backed all the way into her berth, the crew tossed the mooring lines ashore, winched them in, and made her fast. Next they rigged the gangway. On the bridge, Captain Taylor ordered the engine rung off and the helm secured. He thanked Captain Pizzatolla for his services, signed his paperwork, and bade him farewell. The chief mate then escorted him down to the main deck and the gangway. The pilot stepped off the ship and into a waiting automobile. The driver would deliver him to his next assignment, most likely an outbound cargo ship. A routine day at the office.

For her part, the New Jersey Sun remained in the Todd Shipyard in Galveston for six weeks. When the time came for her to leave, another pilot was driven to the pier to meet her. He then performed the same duties as Captain Pizzatolla had, except in reverse. When the ship was safely outside the port, he climbed down the rope ladder with the wooden rungs to a waiting launch, and was whisked away to his next assignment, most likely an inbound merchant ship. And so the cycle continued.

This cycle of piloting merchant ships in and out of port goes on continuously in every harbor. Each port has its association of pilots, licensed Merchant Marine officers who are specialists in the waterways on which they serve. Possessed of an intimate knowledge of the port and everything in it, pilots know everything there is to know about the local tides, currents, weather patterns, navigable channels, shoal areas, anchorages, bottom topography, bridges, tunnels, and all aids to navigation including buoys, lights, and daybeacons. They know every pier and wharf and how best to approach and depart from them in all conceivable conditions. Pilots are expert shiphandlers. They simultaneously give instructions for engine and helm settings and tugboat positioning and maneuvering, often orchestrating solutions to the most complex situations so that it all looks like an art form. Their level of proficiency and the value of their services cannot be overstated. Outside of the seafaring profession, though, pilots rarely receive any recognition for their work.²

The Coast Guard examinations for pilots’ licenses are famously difficult. Many pilots already hold unlimited Master’s licenses from years of deep sea experience. While an unlimited license is valid over the limitless oceans, a pilot’s license is specific to a certain place. A man with pilotage for Galveston, for example, cannot bring a ship to Houston. There are also pilots who cover wider areas than single seaports. This would include pilots who bring ships through major inland waterways such as Long Island Sound or Chesapeake Bay. The transit times in such areas are many hours long, and typically at the end of the run a docking pilot comes aboard and relieves the original pilot. Sometimes called coastal pilots or bay pilots, they, like the harbor pilots, must also pass rigorous and demanding examinations, as well as complete a comprehensive apprenticeship. For a while I considered pursuing a pilotage endorsement for the port of Norfolk, Virginia. I thought this might be a nice addition to my license once I had reached the level of unlimited Master, and I had sailed in and out of Norfolk so many times on several ships that I came to know the port and the lower Chesapeake quite well. This idea never came to fruition, though.

Norfolk was a short pilotage run, about two hour’s transit time from the Virginia Capes. By comparison, Baltimore was a twelve hour transit from the capes. On my next-to-last day aboard, the New Jersey Sun travelled this long route. She picked up a pilot from the Maryland Pilots’ Association at the Chesapeake Bay entrance at 12:00 noon on the Fourth of July, 1977, a bright sunny day with excellent visibility. Both the Eastern and Western Shores of the bay were clearly visible as the ship headed north. The bay itself was punctuated at intervals by lighthouses that were built on steel skeleton foundations, webs of metal that rose up out of the water. After darkness fell, brightly colored fireworks shot up at many locations along both shores. Through this festivity the pilot brought the ship almost the length of the Chesapeake to the Francis Scott Key Bridge on the outskirts of Baltimore. There a docking pilot came aboard. He and two tugboats conveyed the New Jersey Sun the remaining distance to the Hess pier. She was made fast at midnight. A long day’s work for the Chesapeake Bay pilot. He had taken his lunch and dinner on the bridge and ate as he worked. After the docking pilot relieved him, he slept on a settee just aft of the bridge until he was able to go ashore.

Another pilotage run of twelve hours that the New Jersey Sun made took her between the Gulf of Mexico and the oil docks of Garyville, Louisiana. She went upstream on June 28 and 29, spent seventeen hours alongside the pier, and returned downstream on June 30 with the oil that she subsequently brought to Baltimore. Two long runs on a winding and curving river channeled between high levees. Except for New Orleans and the delta, most of it looked the same. The pilots knew all the subtle differences in the riverscape, though, and hence always knew exactly where we were.

Several years later the Comet rode the Mississippi to New Orleans from the Gulf. This was a pleasant transit on a warm Saturday, January 7, 1984. Arriving at the entrance to Southwest Pass at midday, the Comet proceeded up the narrow channel to Head of Passes, the meeting point of all the tributaries of the Mississippi River Delta. She changed pilots at nearby Pilottown. The first pilot left the ship there and would subsequently take another vessel down to the Gulf. The pilot who relieved him then took the Comet the rest of the way upstream to New Orleans. A peaceful and picturesque place, the marshes of the Mississippi Delta stretched for miles in all directions, bisected only by the dredged channel and its low bordering levees. These pristine wetlands contained vast acres of low-lying lush green foliage interspersed with brownish river and gulf water topped by a leaden gray sky that stretched to all horizons. It was very pretty, but in an unusual way. And it was very peaceful. 

This serenity was breached only on arrival that evening in New Orleans. One very brash young officer looking for adventure demanded, “Hey, Pilot, where’s the action in this town?”

The pilot, far older and wiser than his interlocutor, advised him to be extremely careful about looking for action in New Orleans. “Y’all kin git yahself killed raht outside the gate heah,” he cautioned. Explaining that he knew the city as well as he knew the river, this gentleman counseled the young mate to be careful and avoid the vice dens of the city. Following the scriptural injunction that “every man should take righteousness in his hands. . .and lift a warning voice unto the inhabitants of the earth’ (D&C 63:37), he provided moral as well as navigational direction.

The Comet herself had to be careful on her way back down the river three weeks later. Caught in a blinding winter rainstorm with dense fog six hours below New Orleans, she anchored off Duvic, Louisiana, at 2:30pm on Thursday, January 26. Unable to see more than two hundred feet, she remained at anchor sounding fog signals until 10:30 the next morning. After listening to the Comet’s fog signal for twenty hours, the residents of quiet little Duvic must have been very happy to see her leave!

As the Comet transited the Southwest Pass enroute to the open Gulf, her pilot did something unusual. In a very narrow stretch of waterway, he stepped over to the helmsman and said jovially, “Why don’t you take a break for a few minutes, young man?” Then the pilot himself took the helm and personally steered the ship down the center of the channel for the next ten minutes or so. With a look of intense concentration on his face, he deftly handled the wheel, making short, sharp corrections to keep the ship on course. When the pass widened out again, he relinquished the wheel to the helmsman, who seemed very grateful to have his job back. By way of explanation, the pilot mentioned to both the mate and the helmsman that no one had done anything wrong; it was just a very tight spot in the pass and he always found it easier to steer the ship himself than to be constantly calling for minute corrections in the ship’s heading.

During my time on board, the Comet made several long pilotage runs. On each of her two transatlantic voyages she picked up an English coastal pilot off Brixham, England. These pilots assisted with navigation through the English Channel and the North Sea and rode the ship to Trondhein and Bremerhaven in November and December of 1983. Local harbor pilots then maneuvered the ship in and out of both these ports. Returning westward, the coastal pilots again assisted in the traffic lanes until they disembarked off Brixham.

In Panama, an American canal pilot brought the Comet through the locks, across Gatun Lake, and through the narrow confines of the Culebra Cut. This transit took eight hours on a very hot Tuesday, January 31, 1984. In the cut, with the ragged edges of mountains rising out of the water on both sides of the ship, the pilot turned to the bridge watch and remarked, “This is the part that God did not intend to be a canal!” In between helm instructions, he then described the difficulties encountered in digging through this mountain range during the canal’s construction. Partly inspired by this man’s casual conversation, I later read the great book about the Panama Canal in my leisure time on the Bartlett.³

On the other side of the world, the Comet made a very long pilotage run first through the narrow strait that separates Honshu and Kyushu, and then through the Inland Sea of Japan enroute to Iwakuni. Three separate pilots came aboard for this long route: the first for transiting the strait, the second for the nearly nine-hours-long voyage through the heavily trafficked Inland Sea, and finally a docking pilot. This operation, along with a six-hour period of loading cargo in Iwakuni, filled the entire 24 hour cycle of Tuesday, March 13, 1984.

Such long runs are exceptional, though. Most pilotage routes take up only a fraction of these transit times and cover much shorter distances. The shortest in my experience is Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Typically, the passage from arrival at the sea buoy to mooring at the pier took only 45 minutes. Furthermore, the weather was always good. This was not always the case elsewhere. Holy Loch, Scotland, stood at the opposite extreme. The pilotage run there took perhaps an hour, but the weather made it feel much longer. The anchor detail and the linehandlers on the Victoria always dressed for drenching rain, thick fog, and cold winds, and they often got all three. The Scottish pilots were always completely unfazed by these conditions.

Closer to home, New York has long been one of my favorite seaports. In the 1970s and 80s, I sailed in and out of there on the State of Maine, the Charger, the Vandenberg, and the Comet, and served as night mate aboard the Vanguard and the Hayes. Additionally, I always enjoyed riding the ferries between Manhattan and Staten Island. After the children arrived, they joined me on these short voyages across the harbor. One of the greatest shows on Earth, New York almost always had something going on. Merchant ships of all descriptions dotted the water and the shoreline, filled the anchorages, shifted between berths, passed beneath the bridges, and arrived and departed through the Narrows between Staten Island and Brooklyn. This great movement of commerce called for pilots to bring the ships into, through, and out of the port. Aboard the ferries, more pilots wended their vessels’ ways through the traffic. The children always found this activity fascinating. They watched carefully and asked many questions. One day, something very special took place.

On a warm and hazy Friday, August 23, 2002, James, Steven, and Michael sailed with me from Manhattan aboard the ferry Governor Herbert H. Lehman. As the ferry got underway from the city, we gathered at the bow and spotted a large container ship inbound in the Narrows. A few minutes later, we saw a large tanker emerging from the Kills, the small channel that separates Staten Island and New Jersey. Estimating that they would meet off St. George, our ferry’s destination on the northeast corner of Staten Island, we watched and waited. Then the northbound ferry Andrew J. Barberi got underway from the St. George terminal and quickly crossed ahead of both ships. Through the binoculars we identified the inbound container as the Zim Mediterranean of Valletta and the outbound tanker as the Falcon of Piraeus. The Governor Lehman approached closer to both of them as their course changes carried them to the now-obvious meeting point in front of the St. George ferry docks. The binoculars were no longer necessary. Even using the camera proved awkward as both ships became too big to fit in the viewfinder.

James, Steven, and Michael watched closely as the shipping drama played out in front of them. The Governor Lehman maintained a steady course but cut her engines to reduce speed as both the Zim Mediterranean and the Falcon adjusted their courses to pass safely port-to-port in front of the ferry. The Lehman coasted to a stop with the Zim’s starboard side perhaps 400 feet in front of her and the Falcon less distance than that from the Zim’s port side. The Falcon became momentarily obscured from our view by the larger Zim. From where we stood on the Lehman, the Falcon and the Zim were first bow to bow, then side by side, and finally stern to stern as they passed each other on their reciprocal courses. No sooner did water open up where their sterns had been than the Governor Lehman rang up full ahead and resumed her voyage to St. George. The Zim turned more to port to enter the Kills, evidently enroute to the big container docks in Newark and Elizabeth, New Jersey. We gained a clear view of her broad transom stern piled six-high and thirteen-across with containers which would soon be off loaded onto trailer trucks and freight trains. We had a similar view of the somewhat smaller but still impressive Falcon as she turned to starboard to pass beneath the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and into the Ambrose Channel. With these two vessels now safely past and well on their way, the Governor Lehman eased anticlimactically into her berth in St. George.

All these vessels’ movements in this congested situation were carefully controlled by pilots. No doubt they had all spoken to each other on channel 16 on the bridge-to-bridge VHF radio and had agreed upon a safe and convenient place to meet. With their intimate knowledge of the harbor, their expertise in shiphandling, and their years of experience, these pilots were eminently qualified to direct these large merchant ships worth hundreds of millions of dollars in circumstances where there was almost no margin for error. A routine day at the office.

James, Steven, and Michael were suitably impressed. They seemed to intuitively recognize that bringing such massive vessels around sharp corners and into narrow channels and through congested harbors required an expertise above and beyond the ordinary. Unfortunately, this goes largely unnoticed and unremarked by those with no connection to the sea. Once in a while, though, word does get out.

The new Queen Mary 2 of the Cunard Line arrived in New York on her maiden voyage on a misty Thursday morning, April 22, 2004. Because of the historical significance of the Cunard Line and the Queen ships, the city took notice. The following day, The New York Times reported on this event with special attention to Captain Robert D. Jones, the harbor pilot who brought the new Queen Mary into port:

Standing on the ship’s bridge with a walkie-talkie in one hand and a pair of binoculars within reach of the other was Captain Jones. He is not the captain of the Queen Mary 2, but the harbor pilot who guided it on the last few miles of its maiden voyage to New York.

Through it all, Captain Jones never touched the throttles, never turned the wheel. But his was the last word on where to steer the ship, how fast it could go, and where the trouble spots lay in the harbor’s complicated underwater geography. He long ago memorized where the navigational buoys are—knowledge that helps when, as was the case yesterday, he cannot see them for the early-morning fog.

So he knew when and where, off Brooklyn, the ship had to make two crucial turns on its way to Manhattan.⁴

The Times noted that Captain Jones had previously piloted the Queen Elizabeth 2 in and out of New York, one of over 8,000 ships he had boarded in his long career. Additionally, the paper recorded his assessment of both Queens’ maneuvering capabilities and acknowledged the tremendous efforts required for safely docking the new Queen Mary. Alluding to the risks inherent in such an operation and the ever-present possibility of something going wrong, the Times graciously left the last word to the pilot:

After 45 years as a harbor pilot, Captain Jones, 69, will retire today. “You’re only as good as your last job,” he said, “and this was pretty good.”⁵

In the early evening of Sunday, April 25, 2004, the Queen Mary 2 and the Queen Elizabeth 2 sailed from New York in tandem, bound for England. Darkness had just fallen as the two ships were piloted down the Hudson River from their midtown piers. As they approached the Statue of Liberty, fireworks erupted into the sky and cascaded downward onto the surface of the water. The sky and the sea sparkled in celebration of these grand vessels. My sons and I watched from Battery Park in Lower Manhattan, and we all agreed that it was “pretty good.”

But the Queen Elizabeth 2 was embarking on her last transatlantic voyage. Soon afterwards, she would be withdrawn from service and retired. On the night we saw her, she was crossing the bar for nearly the last time. Likewise, all the ships of my youth had also crossed the bar and put to sea for the last time, most of them bound for dismantling in a scrap yard. All of us, too, will metaphorically cross the bar and put to sea for the last time, bound for the grave yard, no doubt hoping as we depart that it was all “pretty good.”

Then we will meet our Pilot, the One whose navigational instructions during the voyage of life we will have hopefully followed. Like the pilots who board our ships, the Supreme Pilot holds all the necessary and detailed knowledge that we need for a safe transit. All we need do is consult him, for we are assured, “Ask, and it shall be given you” (Matt. 7:7). Our Pilot will give us moral guidance, just as the Mississippi River pilot on the Comet gave to the young mate looking for “the action” in New Orleans. He will be completely unfazed by adverse conditions, like the Scottish pilots aboard the Victoria, and his calmness will soothe our souls. Like the Panama Canal pilot who knew the intent of God concerning the isthmian mountains, he will not leave us to wander aimlessly through an artificial world. But we must first take him aboard:

Draw near unto me and I will draw near unto you; seek me diligently and ye shall find me. Whatsoever ye ask the Father in my name it shall be given unto you, that is expedient for you (D&C 88:63-64).

Our Pilot will convey his directions to us via the Spirit, through the still small voice, through inspiration, and through the leadership of the Church, not only when we are transiting pilotage waters, but throughout our long voyage. In the end, we may anticipate a happy conclusion to our travels when we meet our Pilot in propria persona:

For though from out our bourne of Time and Place

The flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my Pilot face to face

When I have crossed the bar.⁶

And when we meet our Pilot we will find that it is not just “pretty good,” but very, very good.

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¹ I regret that I cannot remember the names of many of the pilots who boarded the ships I sailed on, but for some odd reason I recall Captain Pizzatolla’s name and perhaps a half-dozen others with particular clarity.

² See Matt Jenkins, “Running the Bar,” Smithsonian, February, 2009, pg. 62-69. This is a very informative description of the work done by the harbor pilots serving Portland, Oregon.

³ David McCullough, The Path between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914, New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1977.

⁴ James Barron, “A Queen Arrives in New York, and Even in the Jaded Big City, Jaws Drop,” The New York Times, April 23, 2004, available at www.nytimes.com.

⁵ Ibid.

⁶ Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Crossing the Bar,” in The Norton Anthology of Poetry, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1970, p. 756.

First Impressions

In every seaport in the world, pilots direct merchant ships into and out of their harbors at all hours of the day and night.  In fact, the crew’s first human contact in any port is with the pilot.  Climbing aboard from a launch, he is greeted on deck by a mate and one or two unlicensed seamen.  The mate then leads the pilot up to the bridge, where he meets the Captain.  As the Captain and pilot consult with each other about the transit of the ship through the port, the pilot’s name is recorded in the logbook, the legal record of the ship’s movements.  The pilot then begins directing the vessel’s course and speed and coordinates with the tugboat crews as the ship makes her way through the harbor. Naturally, this system requires the ship’s officers to place a great deal of trust in the pilot, who is often a man they’ve never met before.  Seldom does anything go wrong, however.  Over the long history of commerce by sea, pilotage has evolved into a tried and true method of ensuring that the freight, the mails, and the passengers depart and arrive safely.  So much is this the norm that the great seaman and author Joseph Conrad once described a pilot as “trustworthiness personified.”¹

Following a voyage of fifteen days’ duration across the Pacific from the American West Coast, the Comet arrived in the Orient.   The craggy landforms of the Japanese islands came as a welcome sight after two solid weeks of water.  These dark and rocky outcroppings of the Far East seemed to beckon the ship onward, as it were, into a new and enchanting world.  They very manner in which they abruptly appeared and reached upward from the sea seemed a tacit indication that everything would be different here.

Many things were in fact different in the Orient, as the Comet’s crew would soon learn.  As always, the first impression of the place came from the pilot who boarded the ship to direct her into port.  Over the last several months the Comet had taken on numerous pilots in numerous seaports, and all of these men displayed personal styles that reflected the cultures of their countries.  For this reason, picking up the pilot and watching him go about his work was always an interesting study in contrast, a good way to “become acquainted with languages, tongues, and people” (D&C 90:15). 

In England and Norway, for example, the pilots came aboard dressed in naval-style uniforms with brass buttons and white peaked hats.  They appeared very professional, and they conducted themselves in a very proper and dignified manner, especially the Englishmen.  The Norwegians were a bit less formal than the English, and the German pilots by comparison were downright jovial, making friends with everyone aboard ship right away.  They also dressed in civilian clothes, not suits exactly, but usually a mismatched collection of a jacket, slacks, shirt, and tie.  This was the standard dress for pilots in the Northeastern United States as well.  In the American South, however, as well as the Caribbean and Southern Europe, the pilots dressed much more informally—no jackets or neckties in these hot climates.  This informality extended to their work styles and speech patterns, too.  They were all competent men, of course, and each of them unfailingly brought the Comet in and out of port safely.  They simply represented cultures and ways of life that were often vastly different from one another.

In Japan, however, where just about everything is so very different from the West, the pilots made the strongest first impression.  When a Japanese pilot reported to the bridge of the Comet, it was an occasion.  He was always immaculately dressed in a black business suit with a white shirt and a black necktie.  He went first to Captain Ray Iacabacci and bowed and introduced himself.  He then went to the mate on watch and bowed.  He spoke fluent and grammatically flawless English, without exaggeration better English than any of the Americans on the ship spoke.  He then went about the business of directing the movements of the vessel in a very calm, dignified, and highly professional manner.  He did not engage in a lot of small talk, but he was not unfriendly, either.  He never became flustered, even in extremis. 

I recall one night in the traffic lanes on the Inland Sea when the Comet was cut off by another cargo ship that crossed our bow illegally from port to starboard at close quarters.  The other ship’s bearing had remained steady as the distance between the two vessels decreased rapidly.  At this rate a collision was inevitable.  The other ship failed to respond to radio calls and flashing light signals. At this point I thought it prudent to wake the Captain.  When it became clear that this other vessel had no intention of obeying the rules of the road, the Japanese pilot aboard the Comet said to the helmsman, “port twenty.”  His tone of voice contained only a slight indication of the urgency of the situation.  The helmsman hurriedly spun the wheel to the left as Captain Iacabacci sleepily wandered out from his bunk immediately behind the bridge to see what was going on.  The Comet passed very close but safely “under the stern” of the other ship, narrowly avoiding a collision.  The pilot then redirected the Comet back onto her proper course in the traffic lane as if nothing out of the ordinary had taken place, and the voyage continued peacefully.  All in a night’s work.

The Comet took on several Japanese pilots in diverse places—Sasebo, Iwakuni, Naha, the Shimonoseki Strait, and the Inland Sea.  All of these gentlemen presented themselves in the same way.  They made excellent first impressions and they represented their country and their culture very well.

The importance of making a good first impression has long been universally recognized.  An old proverb truthfully asserts that “a first impression is a lasting impression.”  This is true in all walks of life, not just aboard ship.  But aboard ship, there is a larger audience, so to speak, for when a ship registered in one country makes a port call in another country, different cultures meet and must work together.  The pilot, then, becomes an unofficial ambassador, representing his nation and its culture to the visitors.

The missionaries do the same thing.  For that matter, so does every member of the Church.  I recall my first meeting with the full time missionaries.  I was home one morning tending to four little children.  In fact, when the missionaries knocked on the door, I was in the middle of changing diapers.  With my hands full, I dispatched my oldest son to tell whoever was at the door that I would get there in a minute or two.

Not realizing that it was the missionaries who had come calling, I went to the front door prepared to get rid of a pesty salesman.  I was pleasantly surprised, then, when I saw these two young fellows, Elder Pierce and Elder Stevenson.  Miss Patty had been meeting with them in recent weeks in the evenings when I was at work, and she had had very good things to say about them.  But this morning’s meeting on our front steps was my first contact with them.  It was thus the missionaries’ opportunity to make a good first impression on me.

This they did.  First of all, unlike most door-to-door sales people, these missionaries were well dressed and well groomed.  The white shirts, neckties, conservative haircuts, and name tags spoke volumes about them.  Their dress and grooming clearly indicated who they were and why they were there.  Next, they spoke with me in a very pleasant and friendly manner.  They explained briefly why they had come and what they could do for my family.  More significantly to me at the time, they did not want any money, nor did they ask me to vote for them.  This set them apart from everyone else who had ever knocked on my door as much as their dress and grooming did.  In a neighborhood where people have only come to my front door because they wanted something from me, these two missionaries were truly a breed apart.  At the time of their visit, I knew almost nothing about the Church.  I became agreeable to learn about the Church, however, largely because of the good first impression these two young Elders made on me.

As Miss Patty’s interest in the Church grew, I eventually decided to go with her one Sunday to see for myself what it was like.  As we entered the chapel and sat down, I noticed three men dressed in suits and ties sitting up front. I recognized one of them from work, although I had not known of his Church affiliation.  He and I nodded and smiled at each other, and then I sat down with my family.  After Sacrament Meeting was concluded, the colleague whom I had recognized came down from the stand towards us with one of the other fellows in tow.  As we greeted each other, I addressed him as “Doctor Burgess,” just as I would at Rivier College where we both worked.

“Oh, no,” he replied, waving the appellation away with his hands.  “I’m not a doctor here.  In fact, most of these people wouldn’t even know I have the PhD.”  Then he introduced us to Bishop John Cole, with whom he had been sitting on the stand.  Both Brother Burgess and Bishop Cole welcomed us to the Church and spent several minutes chatting with us before continuing with their duties.  Like the missionaries before them, they made a very good first impression.

That Sunday was the first of many that I spent at the LDS Church with Miss Patty and the children.  Over time, I came to see many things about the Church and its members that impressed me favorably.  But as my father has always said, “There’s one in every crowd.”  One Sunday morning I was invited to attend Elders Quorum.  I didn’t know quite what to expect, but I went anyway.  Unfortunately, this did not make a good first impression on me.  In a startling and completely inappropriate digression from the lesson that was under discussion, an elder who was new to the quorum spoke up and let loose a vicious stream of invective against the Catholic Church.  He had escaped from Cuba, he explained, and asserted that he was very fortunate to be alive and residing in the United States, but somewhere along the way he had a falling out with Catholicism.  He did not clearly say what the problem that caused this had been; on the contrary, his background remained vague and most of his long remarks amounted to nothing more than the hate speech of a bigot.  I felt very uncomfortable listening to him.  I thought of speaking up myself and refuting his comments, but decided against it.  After all, I was not a member but a mere guest in someone else’s church.  As such, I did not want to make a scene.  However, I did notice several other men exchanging sidelong glances and squirming uncomfortably in their chairs.  Evidently, this fellow was not making a good first impression on them, either.

Had this Elders Quorum meeting been my first experience of the Church, I would never have returned.  Fortunately, by the time this fellow spoke up, I knew better than to take him as representative of the Latter-day Saints as a group.  He was the exception, not the rule, although his unchristian outspokenness could be damaging to subsequent investigators were it to go unchecked.  When our home teacher, Brother John Carl, a fine gentleman of Italian-Catholic heritage, learned what had happened that morning, he was horrified—and extremely apologetic.

The Lord has told us very clearly, “I give unto you a commandment, that when ye are assembled together ye shall instruct and edify each other” (D&C 43:8).  He has further clarified, “And that which doth not edify is not of God, and is darkness” (D&C 50:23).  An errant member who publicly denigrates another religious organization does nothing to edify anyone.  On the contrary, he does the Church a serious disservice by alienating potential converts who need to hear truth and not vitriol.

A pilot boarding a merchant ship at a harbor entrance often brings several local newspapers with him.  These he shares with the ship’s crew who have been away from the activities of life ashore.  It is a gesture of hospitality and welcoming, a small act of service to fellow seamen completing a long and possibly difficult voyage.  Likewise, the missionaries bring reading material to share with investigators who have been away from their Heavenly Father.  There again it is a gesture of hospitality and welcoming, an act of service to fellow children of God who are still engaged on a long and possibly difficult voyage through life.  The seaman aboard ship will leave again when his port visit is complete.  The investigator will likewise leave when the Sunday services are complete, but we hope he will make the Church his new home port.  In both situations, the first impressions made by the pilot and the missionaries will always be remembered and may make the difference between the voyagers wanting or not wanting to return.

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¹ Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1971, p.1.