Sentimental Journey

In the earliest years of my seafaring career, the great city of Philadelphia and its environs loomed large on my itinerary.  I first arrived there as a cadet on the old State of Maine on Friday, June 11, 1976.  She spent three days docked at Penn’s Landing, a recently constructed center city waterfront tourist venue.  I wondered if this was really the site where William Penn had landed in 1682, but I never researched this point.  Next, on Tuesday, May 3, 1977, I traveled on Amtrak and then a local commuter train to Marcus Hook, seventeen miles downstream from Philadelphia, and there I joined the tanker New Jersey Sun as an apprentice.  She sailed for points south on Monday, May 9.  Finally, for three weeks in August of 1978, I sailed around Philadelphia and its suburbs on the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers as a deckhand aboard the oil barge Interstate 50.

In all these travels, my association with the Philadelphia area lay primarily with industrial facilities.  I was on intimate terms with the Sun Oil and BP refineries in Marcus Hook, the Gulf docks at Point Breeze, the Interstate tug and barge headquarters and repair shop at City Dock, the Pennsylvania Railroad coal pier (which also sported oil piping) in South Philly, and the big oil storage facilities across the Delaware in Eagle Point and Delair, New Jersey.  In the little free time that I had, I visited a friend at Villanova University and dined at Sweeney’s in South Philly.  When not underway on the water, I walked and rode trains.  By these methods, I came to know the “guts of the city,” as we called them, quite well.  I loved Philadelphia!

But I saw only a small part of the cleaner and more sublime side of the city.  One of the oldest and most important settlements in the United States, Philadelphia stands out as one of the historical, cultural, educational, and religious capitals of the country.  It is home to famous historical sites dating to the colonial era; major museums, libraries, and learned societies; world renowned colleges and universities; and a denominationally diverse collection of churches, cathedrals, basilicas, and temples.  Three of these structures commanded my attention on a recent return to this city of my vagabond youth.

On Tuesday, May 16, 2017, Miss Patty and I traveled on Amtrak to Philadelphia.  She was on her way to business meetings; I was on vacation.  On arrival at the Pennsylvania Railroad’s magnificent 30^th Street Station, we took a taxi to the Sheraton Hotel on North 17^th Street, our headquarters for the next two days.  From this location, everything I wanted to visit lay within reasonable walking distance.

On Wednesday morning, I set out.  My first important stop was Penn’s Landing, where my initial introduction to Philadelphia had taken place 41 years ago.  The old State of Maine was long gone, of course, her berth now occupied by the sailing ship Gazela.  Otherwise, little had changed.  The Delaware River stretched out placidly before me, and I thought of the many transits I had made of this great river aboard the Interstate 50.  I had passed by Penn’s Landing and passed under the adjacent Benjamin Franklin Bridge numerous times.  As the Interstate 50 plowed along, I painted her decks, fittings, and superstructure, often with the music from the hit film Saturday Night Fever blaring from the radio.  I was a teenager then.  Life was good, and it seemed to stretch out endlessly before me.  Little did I realize just how quickly it would all go by.  For some of us, it would go by much too quickly and be over much too soon.

From Penn’s Landing I walked a half-mile south to my next destination, a building that I’ve wanted to visit for a long time.  This was the Gloria Dei Church, locally known as the Old Swedes’ Church.  A colonial structure dating to 1698, it originally served a Swedish Lutheran congregation.  Today it is Episcopalian.  While this structure’s colonial and denominational history is very interesting, I had come primarily for its maritime significance.  Situated across Delaware Avenue from the Delaware River and the old break-bulk cargo ship piers, Old Swedes’ seemed an appropriate place to honor those “that go down to the sea in ships” (Ps. 107:23).  It was precisely for this purpose that I had come to visit.

Entering through the red-painted front door—red is the ecclesiastical color of welcome—I found that I had this small and cozy church entirely to myself.  Sitting momentarily in the rearmost pew, I looked around to get my bearings and noticed several memorial plaques on the walls.  I had come to see one of these in particular, and there it was.  On the back wall, under the balcony, and on the right-hand side of the church, was the large bronze plaque dedicated to the memory of the cargo ship Poet and her crew.  With a feeling of reverence, I approached it and read the main inscription:

In Memory of The 34 Men of The

U S Flag Merchant Vessel

S. S.  POET

Lost At Sea  October 25, 1980

Approximate Position

38 to 39 N Lat  63 to 66 W Long

The Serenity Prayer followed, and the next panel listed the crewmen’s names, ages, and hometowns.  One of these, Mark S. Henthorne, was a former school acquaintance of mine. I had known him slightly in Maine and aboard the old State of Maine.  He sailed as third assistant engineer aboard the Poet.  He left the girl he had planned to marry behind.  Very sad.

Another officer, Leroy A. Warren, may have known my grandparents.  As a young mate he had sailed aboard the American Export Lines’ passenger ships Constitution and Independence in the 1950s and 1960s.  My grandparents made ten voyages aboard these vessels between 1956 and 1968.  It’s possible that they may have sailed with and met this man on one or more of these voyages.  Aboard the Poet, he sailed as Master.  He left a wife and several children behind.  Also very sad.

I studied the memorial plaque carefully and took several photographs of it.  I noticed the ages of the crewmen and realized that 29 of the 34 were younger when they perished than I am now.  A very disturbing statistic.  I also recalled that I had read the book about the Poet[1] and had written something myself[2] about the loss of this ship and its crew.  Sitting down again in the pew in front of the plaque, I spent several minutes in quiet contemplation.

This time passed quickly.  When I thought that I should leave and continue about the day’s activities, I found that I could not go.  At least, not yet.  An intangible but clearly discernible spiritual presence, for lack of a better description, seized upon my mind and bid me stay a little longer.  At first I dismissed this as imagination.  I had seen what I had come to see and done what I had come to do.  What was left?  But the feeling intensified.  I felt compelled to remain a while longer, and so I did.  More time for quiet meditation, and an opportunity to pray for the repose of these men’s souls and for solace for their families.  The old Roman incantation that I had learned in my youth came to mind:

Requien aeternam dona eis, O Domine,

et lux perpetua luceat eis.

In pace requiescant.  Amen.

In time, the intensity of the feeling that I must stay diminished.  A happier thought, that I was visiting with old friends, took its place.  This seemed strange at first, for I had known only one of these men, and just slightly at that.  But then I remembered Joseph Conrad’s famous lines, and I realized that I shared “the strong bond of the sea”[3] and the “fellowship of the craft”[4] with these seamen.  That explained everything.  With a sense of accomplishment, then, I rose to leave the Old Swedes’ Church.  I felt confident that these seamen were not “lost at sea” but were truly in God’s hands.  He was taking good care of them in “a state of happiness, which is called paradise, a state of rest, a state of peace, where they shall rest from all their troubles and from all care and sorrow” (Alma 40:12).

After nearly an hour in the Old Swedes’ Church, I returned to the center city area where I ate lunch and did some sightseeing.  This was very interesting, but another more sublime experience awaited me.

In the afternoon, with the Poet and her crew still on my mind, I visited two more churches: the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul of the Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia and dating to 1846, and the Philadelphia Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, built in 2015.  Situated across Vine Street from one another, these magnificent and beautiful buildings complemented each other very well architecturally.

I entered the cathedral initially to admire its artistic grandeur.  But then a staff member met me near the front door and explained that while I was welcome to visit, an ordination rehearsal was taking place.  Two young men would be ordained to the priesthood on Saturday, she informed me, and they with several seminarians and older priests were preparing for the ceremony.  Watching them rehearse for this important event was a fascinating experience.  It led me to consider the tremendous personal sacrifices these young fellows would make in order to fully dedicate themselves to doing the Lord’s work for both the living and the dead.  I found this very inspiring and worthy of my utmost respect.

Similar thoughts filled my mind across the way at the Philadelphia Temple.  Men and women with careers and families sacrificed much of their personal time in order to participate in ordinances of salvation for the living and the dead and assist them in their progression into the presence of God.  This, too, I found inspiring and deserving of the greatest respect.

In both of these sacred spaces, I thought of the crew of the Poet and others who have left this life prematurely.  I appreciated deeply the opportunity I had to visit their memorial plaque in the Old Swedes’ Church and to pray for the safety of their souls.  And I hoped that in the Philadelphia Temple the ordinances for their continued spiritual sanctification would be done someday soon.

In the meantime, as John Henry Newman prayed, “in His mercy may He give [them] safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last!”[5]   

Following are some photographs from my visit to Philadelphia:

The sailing ship Gazela moored at Penn's Landing, the site that hosted the State of Maine in June of 1976.  In the background stands the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, linking Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

The Gloria Dei (Old Swedes') Church and churchyard, a half-mile south of Penn's Landing.

 

Three views of the memorial plaque honoring the Poet and her crew inside the Old Swedes' Church.  A very sublime sight.

A pen-and-ink rendering of the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.  From a brochure provided by the cathedral staff.

The Philadelphia Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  From a brochure produced for the temple's dedication.

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[1] Robert J. Pessek, The Poet Vanishes: An American Voyage, Allston, Massachusetts: 1^st Books Library, 2000; biographical information on Captain Leroy Warren from p. 75-77 & 101-102; information on Mark Henthorne from p. 207-208.  Also, Mark’s surname is misspelled on the plaque.

[2] Included in my essay “The Dead.”

[3] Joseph Conrad, “Youth,” in Tales of Land and Sea, Garden City, NY: Hanover House: 1916, p. 8.

[4] Ibid.

[5] John Henry Cardinal Newman, “Sermon 20: Wisdom and Innocence,” in The Newman Reader, at www.newmanreader.org.

Still more pictures of ships and children.....

The U.S. Coast Guard sailing ship Eagle at sea between Bermuda and Newport, Rhode Island, on June 21 or 22, 1976.  This was the first of my many encounters with the Eagle.  In honor of the American Bicentennial, tall ships from around the world gathered first in Bermuda, then Newport, and finally New York.  The State of Maine carried news reporters and photographers and maneuvered around the tall ships so these guys could get their stories and pictures.  I took my own pictures, though.

A U.S. Navy P-3 Orion flies high over the State of Maine in the Atlantic, one day out of Norfolk, Virginia, on May 22, 1978.  My older brother flew P-3 Orions during his time in the Navy, but he was not aboard this aircraft.

One of the beauties of the sea.  Sunset in mid-Atlantic seen from the State of Maine while enroute from Norfolk, Virginia, to Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in May of 1978.

The tugboat Charger reposes at the dock in Newark, New Jersey, in July of 1977.

The fully loaded gasoline barge Interstate 35 is pushed ahead by the Charger, eastbound on Long Island Sound in July of 1978.  This view is from the bridge of the Charger.

The passenger liners America and Queen Elizabeth 2 docked on the West Side of Manhattan on July 27, 1978.  My grandparents sailed from France aboard the America in 1955.  This view is from the southbound Charger, enroute from Rensselaer, New York, to Newark, New Jersey.

The lounge area of the Interstate 50, northbound with a full load of crude oil on the Delaware River in August of 1978.

The tanker Scapmount aground in the Atlantic Ocean near Cape Henlopen, Delaware, on August 23, 1978.  Note the two black balls displayed in the rigging.  The correct signal for a vessel aground is three black balls.

Miss Patty poses happily with the drydocked Waccamaw behind her in Norfolk, Virginia, on April 2, 1983.

Karen, Steven, and James wear the souvenir American Export Lines shirts that my grandparents had bought for my brother and me thirty years earlier.  This is in Nashua in June of 1993.

James on lookout duty aboard the northbound Delaware between Lewes, Delaware, and North Cape May, New Jersey, on August 18, 1998.  Beyond him in the haze to the east lies the open Atlantic.

The four children crowd into the wheelhouse with Captain Steve Pond of the Champlain on an eastward crossing of Lake Champlain from Port Kent, New York, to Burlington, Vermont, on July 2, 2001.

The lightship Nantucket rests alongside a small pier in the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Park in Oyster Bay, Long Island, on August 19, 2009, prior to being towed to East Boston, Massachusetts, where she is now undergoing restoration.  I took my children to this park frequently when they were little.  The Nantucket was one of several attractions there.

Another beauty of the sea.  The whole family sailed aboard the excursion boat Iceberg Quest from Twillingate, Newfoundland, to see this iceberg up close on June 24, 2004.  It was a cold, damp, and overcast day on the north coast of Newfoundland.

The Nantucket at her restoration pier in East Boston, Massachusetts, on July 27, 2013.  Michael and I enjoyed this view from the ferry Island Expedition, enroute from Spectacle Island to Long Wharf in Boston proper.

A Day on the Water

The past and the present have an interesting way of intersecting. Shortly after 7:00am on Saturday, July 27, 2013, I met my son Michael in front of South Station in Boston. Our itinerary for the day included voyages across Boston Harbor, visits to historic ships, visits to historic shoreside locations, and many happy hours visiting with each other. Under the Creator’s clear blue and sunny sky, then, we set out for the Eagle Hill neighborhood of East Boston.

The historic marker on the low stone wall in front of the house at 78-80 White Street informed us that this was once the residence of the famous shipbuilder Donald McKay. A legend in his own time, Mr. McKay designed and supervised the construction of clipper ships at a shipyard in East Boston in the mid-1800s. The notation on his wall summarizes his career very briefly. Volumes on library shelves elaborate on it more fully. Between these two extremes, Mr. McKay’s name and work are immortalized in brick and stone elsewhere in East Boston. Clipper Ship Wharf still stands on the waterfront; Clipper Ship Lane abuts the old shipyard property; the Donald McKay School educates the rising generation; and Piers Park overlooks the Inner Harbor with pavilions honoring his work and memory.

Michael and I walked from the house to the park. A beautiful facility with immaculately manicured lawns and brick walkways, it commanded magnificent views of the harbor, the surrounding waterfronts, and the downtown skyscrapers. In the distance to the south, airplanes took off from Logan Airport and headed west over the city. Directly in front of us, tugs with barges made their way between the docks and the open sea. One tug and barge unit reposed at anchor slightly to our left. My son and I sat in the McKay Pavilion to have a snack, enjoy the view, and discuss shipping and history. He asked me many questions.

Had I ever come into Boston on a ship? Yes, I explained, on two ships, actually. The first was the old State of Maine in May of 1976. She tied up at the Commonwealth Pier in South Boston. Then I joined the Wilkes at the Braswell Shipyard, also in South Boston, in July of 1980. Braswell went out of business and shut down while the Wilkes was there. Like the McKay shipyard off to our right, it receded into the past and took many people’s livelihoods with it.

Did I know how tugs and barges work? Yes, I answered. I had spent the summer of 1978 working aboard the Charger and the Interstate 50 of the Interstate and Ocean Transport Company. As we watched a tug with a loaded barge pass in front of us, Michael asked about the operation. How were the two vessels lashed together? How does the crew steer the tug with the barge attached? What cargo do barges carry? Do they go out on the open ocean? And as another tug with an empty barge lashed to its starboard side came along, Michael asked about towing positions and freeboard. He wanted to know everything!

Another pavilion in Piers Park honored the various ethnic groups that had immigrated to the United States and settled in East Boston. Many of these folks had found work in the McKay shipyard. Appropriately, then, a painting of one of the yard’s masterpieces, the clipper ship Flying Cloud, stood prominently on display. At the time of her construction in 1851, the Flying Cloud was the largest and fastest merchant ship ever built, more ambitious even than the previous McKay masterpiece Stag Hound. On her first voyage the Flying Cloud set a new speed record on the New York to San Francisco route, then continued transpacific and eastward via the Cape of Good Hope and returned to New York with a load of Chinese tea. She paid for herself in this one round-the-world voyage, an unparalleled commercial and technical success. About three dozen clipper ships followed the Flying Cloud from the East Boston shipyard. Many of them, including such luminaries as the Lightning, the Great Republic, and the Sovereign of the Seas, became world-famous in their time and have been remembered for their achievements ever since.¹

From Piers Park Michael and I walked to the nearby Boston Harbor Shipyard and Marina. At the end of a medium-sized wooden dock the lightship Nantucket lay in repose. With her white-lettered bright red starboard side facing away from the dock, she was plainly visible clear across the water from downtown Boston. She was designed to stand out in the distance, and she did. The product of an era vastly different from the clipper ship years, the Nantucket had long stood guard over the treacherous Nantucket Shoals, warning merchant vessels away from danger as they traversed the traffic lanes leading to and from New York. Retired and withdrawn from service for many years now, the Nantucket had been acquired from the government by the privately owned United States Lightship Museum and was undergoing restoration for preservation as an historic vessel. My children and I had seen her previously in Oyster Bay, Long Island. She had been parked there for a time while her fate was being decided. Then she was towed to East Boston on May 10 & 11, 2010, and has remained there since.² It was good to see her again! I had the feeling of revisiting an old friend as Michael and I stood on the dock admiring this great ship and reminiscing about happy times in Oyster Bay.

Leaving the Nantucket behind, we doubled back past Piers Park and walked along Marginal Street toward Maverick Square. This route took us past some of the dilapidated old docks of the East Boston waterfront. Long a busy shipping site, these docks have now lain in ruins for decades, a sad waste of valuable urban real estate. With its views of the harbor and downtown skyscrapers, this land seemed to have tremendous potential for residential use. Happily, though, at the foot of Lewis Street, a new building was under construction.

Long before railroad and motor vehicle tunnels connected East Boston with downtown, ferries carried the passengers and freight across the harbor. Much discussion about reviving such a service and even expanding it to connect East Boston with South Boston and Charlestown has taken place, and the federal government has committed money toward building new vessels.³ Michael and I wondered, then, if this new building would be a ferry terminal. It was certainly in the right place for one. Until ferries started crossing the harbor again from East Boston, however, we would rely on the subway. And so returning to Maverick Square, we rode through the Blue Line’s subaquatic chambers to Aquarium station, walked the short distance to Long Wharf, and boarded the ferry Rita for Charlestown.

The voyage aboard the Rita through the Inner Harbor to the former Navy Yard in Charlestown took maybe fifteen minutes. But it was a very pleasant fifteen minutes, with the sun bright in the mid-morning blue sky. The Nantucket’s white-lettered red hull stood out prominently on the East Boston shore line, and as the Rita approached the docks in Charlestown two other historically significant vessels came into view. The Constitution, of course, has long been a special feature of Boston Harbor. This weekend, though, she had a neighbor. The Coast Guard’s famous sailing ship Eagle shared the dock with the Constitution. She was open over the weekend for public tours, and Michael and I were going to visit.

My first glimpse of the Eagle took place at sea in June of 1976. I was embarked on the old State of Maine which was following the tall ships’ race from Bermuda to Newport, Rhode Island, and carrying the press corps for this event. To enable these newsmen to take photographs of the various sailing ships and write stories about the race, Captain Hill deftly maneuvered the State of Maine from one tall ship to the next, always maintaining a safe distance between the vessels and remaining downwind of them so as not to spill the wind from their sails. Since that occasion, I had seen the Eagle many times in Boston, New York, and her home port of New London, but I had never gone aboard.

I knew her history pretty well, though. Built in 1936 in Hamburg, Germany, she began her long career as the Horst Wessel, a training ship for the German Navy. Taken over by the United States in 1945, she became the Eagle for the next phase of her career, training personnel for the United States Coast Guard. In June of 2011 she observed her 75^th birthday by returning to Hamburg where she was received as an honored guest by both the city and the German government.⁴

Under less auspicious circumstances, Michael and I enjoyed a wonderful time aboard the Eagle in Charlestown. We puzzled over her extensive rigging, studied her elaborate woodwork, and admired her military orderliness. A Coast Guard officer engaged us in conversation and tried to interest Michael in attending the Coast Guard Academy in New London. On the pier again, I pointed out aspects of the Eagle’s hull structure to Michael, most notably the elaborate curvature of the fantail stern, an artistic feature of ship designs of a bygone era.

From Charlestown we sailed once again aboard the Rita and returned to Long Wharf. Another short but very pleasant voyage. As we had done earlier, Michael and I sat in deck chairs on the stern, away from the more crowded cabin and with open views of the harbor. As the Rita passed the North End of Boston, I showed Michael the Coast Guard building on Commercial Street, the place where I had taken the exams for the chief mate’s license in the summer of 1984. Almost thirty years ago! Tempus fugit, indeed.

At the now crowded and noisy Long Wharf, Michael and I signed up for our next voyage of the day and then had a light lunch while we waited. At his suggestion we took the ferry Island Expedition to Spectacle Island in the Boston Harbor Islands chain. About 200 other people had the same idea, so it was a full boat. Nonetheless, it was a lovely 25-minute voyage from the downtown area past the working piers of South Boston and into the cluster of small green islands at the entrance to Boston Harbor. Within sight of the downtown skyscrapers yet seeming a world apart from them, Spectacle Island offered hiking trails and scenic lookouts laid out amid lush verdant hills. It was an oasis of peace and quiet surrounded by calm and restful blue water. It soothed the soul. Michael and I followed a trail partway around the island and up one of the hills and enjoyed spectacular views of the expanse of water and additional islands in all directions. Recreational boats dotted the adjacent seas, and ferries hurried to and fro within the archipelago. In this beautiful location time seemed to stand still. The unfailing westward movement of the afternoon sun clearly indicated otherwise, though, and all too soon we needed to hike back to the dock. We agreed that with a picnic lunch and a set of binoculars we could have done a full day’s outing on Spectacle Island. Perhaps next summer!

Returning again to Long Wharf aboard the Island Expedition, I positioned myself in the best possible photographic vantage point and with the newfangled digital camera recorded the principal shipping activity around us. There was the Nantucket, of course. Also the Roseway, a two-masted, red-sailed school ship for high school and junior high school students gliding gracefully into port. And then there was the Cosco Genoa, a 900 or so feet long container ship of the China Ocean Shipping Company, moored and working cargo at one of the South Boston piers. After another very pleasant and thoroughly enjoyable 25 minutes on the water, the Island Expedition arrived back at Long Wharf, and it was time for us to disembark.

During our absence on the water and ashore on Spectacle Island, the city had become very hot, crowded, and noisy. People milled around everywhere. No doubt many of them had come into town to see historical sites. Michael likes to call Boston “America’s cornerstone” because of the city’s richness in history, particularly colonial and revolutionary history. This is borne out in the North End neighborhood where he had attended school.⁵ Tourists parade through the North End to see the Old North Church, the statue of Paul Revere, and the Copp’s Hill Burying Ground. From these sites, it’s a reasonable walk over the Charlestown Bridge to the Navy Yard where the visitors would then tour the Constitution.

While this is very commendable, I daresay few if any of these same tourists would venture across the harbor to East Boston and visit the Donald McKay house, the site of the clipper ship building yard, the Nantucket, or Piers Park. Yet all this is historical, too. I like to think of it as history off the beaten path. In a city that is practically saturated with history, the out-of-the-way shipping history stands out as the most fascinating of all. Great historic ships like the Flying Cloud, the Eagle, and the Nantucket not only connected Boston with the rest of the world but also connect the past and the present. Likewise, humble ships like the State of Maine and the Wilkes connect the family’s past with its present. Similarly, ferryboats like the Rita and the Rookie, aboard which Michael commutes daily to work, connect the family’s present with its future.

As I rode the bus back home to Nashua later that afternoon, I stared out the window but saw in my mind’s eye the events of my day on the water. A special day spent in a unique setting with—best of all—a beloved son. I liked it so much that I wanted to do it all again!

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¹ A.B.C. Whipple, The Clipper Ships, Alexandria, Virginia: Time-Life Books, 1980, p. 55 & 61. Chapter 2 of this book, comprising pages 46 to 71, contains a wonderful capsule summary of Donald McKay’s career, the Flying Cloud’s initial voyage, and a vintage photograph of the East Boston shipyard. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_McKay for a roster of clipper ships that he designed and built.

² For complete information see http://www.nantucketlightshiplv-112.org.

³ Jeremy C. Fox, “BRA approves ferry plan to connect East Boston, Charlestown, South Boston,” Sept. 18, 2012, available at http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/east_boston/2012/09/bra_approves_ferry_plan.html; and Edward L. Glaeser, “A bridge to East Boston—via ferry,” Boston Globe, available at http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/05/16/bridge-east-boston-ferry-form/EN76EOgYm5L6J0RyHSsUZJ/story.html.

⁴ Dirk Langeveld, “Coast Guard Eagle Visits Birthplace in Hamburg,” in New London Patch, June 6, 2011, available at http://newlondon.patch.com/groups/editors-picks/p/coast-guard-eagle-visits-birthplace-in-hamburg. For historical and technical information about the Eagle without the ethnic and political vituperation that permeates most American accounts of the ship, see www.uscga.edu/eagle.

⁵ Michael attended the North Bennet Street School, where he studied woodworking and furniture building, starting on February 7, 2011, and graduating on May 31, 2013.

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.

A Summer in the Minor League, Part One

Sometimes it’s fun to just reminisce. During the summer of 1978 I had the opportunity to work for a tug and barge company called Interstate and Ocean Transport, colloquially known as Interstate or sometimes as IOT. Compared to the big-ship, deep-sea operations which were my primary interest, Interstate was a minor league fleet that operated small vessels mostly on inland waterways. But it was both fun and educational, and a great way to spend July and August before going back to school.

I had returned to the United States from Europe aboard the State of Maine on Thursday, June 29. The job with Interstate was set to begin shortly after the Fourth of July holiday. During a few days’ interval at home, I received instructions from the operations office in Philadelphia to report aboard the tug Charger in New Haven, Connecticut, on Thursday morning, July 6. The Chargerwas scheduled to sail at 6:00am, so I needed to get there early.

My parents were somewhat less than thrilled when I told them I needed to get a train at the Mineola station at two o’clock in the morning. But it had to be. In Penn Station I boarded the trusty Night Owl. That left Manhattan at 3:00am and after several stops delivered me to New Haven about 5:00am. A taxi then took me to the Charger at the Arco docks across the water from downtown New Haven.

Reporting aboard the Charger, I found that I was unexpected but welcome nonetheless. Most of the crew of seven were Southerners, and they extended their Southern hospitality toward me generously. Promptly at 6:00am, the Chargergot underway, made herself fast to the barge Interstate 35, and departed for Newark, New Jersey.

I was in seventh heaven as the Charger and Interstate 35 sailed through Long Island Sound, into the East River, across the Upper Bay, and then through the Kill van Kull and Newark Bay to Newark itself. I was cruising “home waters,” the waterways that make New York a seaport and Long Island an island. These waterways delineated my home area, yet even with a childhood of sailboating on the Great South Bay and numerous voyages aboard the Staten Island Ferry behind me, I had never ventured upon the local waters as much as I would aboard the Charger. Plowing through these waterways aboard a fairly small craft combined two normally disparate elements, being home and going to sea. Besides, the size of the Charger yielded a different experience of the sea. Being closer to the surface of the water made everything look, sound, and feel different. The motion of the vessel and the rush of the water past the hull became more intimate than they could be aboard a big ship. Because of this I also felt closer to the sea metaphysically.

The Charger arrived at the oil docks in Newark at 2:00pm. A relief crew of more Southerners was waiting to take over the vessel, and the men I had just met were leaving for home. The new group expected me. I introduced myself to Captain Alford Wilkins of North Carolina, and he outlined my duties for me. That first day I spent mostly familiarizing myself with everything. It was all very different from the State of Maine and the New Jersey Sun!

The Charger carried a crew of seven, plus me. There were the Captain, a mate, two deck seamen, two engineers, and a cook. The crew stood six-hour watches, both in port and underway. The Captain, one engineer, and one deck seaman had the 6 to 12 watch, and the mate and the other engineer and seaman took the 12 to 6 watch. Meals were served at the change of the watch. Rooming space was cramped. The Captain enjoyed the privilege of a private room. Otherwise, the engineers shared a room, the deck seamen shared a room, and the mate shared a room with me. Despite the crowding and tight scheduling, an informal and congenial atmosphere prevailed. The food was superb. The cook, a crusty old codger of the old school named Ira D. Sawyer with political opinions ranging from violently vituperative to the mildly vitriolic, took a liking to me. Fond of my adolescent appetite for good food, he piled my plate higher than everyone else’s. When I finished one serving, he would whisk away the empty plate and replace it with a full one before I could even think about asking for more. Once a week inch-thick steak was on the dinner menu. I understood that each crewman was allotted one such steak. Without asking for anything extra, though, I found myself being served steak after steak after steak until our cook would finally bark out, “Ain’t you full yet?!”

My duties aboard the Chargerconsisted principally of painting and cleaning. This was officially billed as work, but as it had a year ago aboard the New Jersey Sun, it seemed more like fun than labor. I started promptly after breakfast, about 6:15am, and with a few breaks worked until dinner time. The hours and the break times were flexible as long as the job got done, which it did. In three weeks I painted almost all the outside decks, bulkheads, and superstructure of the Charger. I got some help from the two seamen, but they had other duties to perform, such as linehandling and housecleaning. I helped with the lines sometimes, too, once I’d seen how everything was done with the barge. I enjoyed that, too, of course, but my main job was painting.

What the Charger did for a living was haul the barge Interstate 35 from the loading docks in the Newark area to different ports in the Northeast. The barge carried gasoline, and it was sent where it was needed. In my time on board, the Chargerand the Interstate 35 made four voyages to New Haven, three to Providence, Rhode Island, and three to Albany and Rensselaer, New York. While the barge was being unloaded in these ports, the tug would tie up nearby and wait. When the barge was being loaded in Newark, the tug often waited close by, but just as often was sent on errands to nearby points.

When the new crew came aboard in Newark on Thursday afternoon, they settled into their places quickly. At 12:30 that night, the Charger was lashed up to the stern of the fully loaded Interstate 35 and the duo set out again for New Haven, arriving there fourteen hours later at 2:30 Friday afternoon. I spent the day painting the upper deck and occasionally looking in on the bridge. Late in the afternoon I went ashore again in New Haven. At 10:00 that evening, the Charger took the now-empty Interstate 35 in tow astern and started back toward Newark.

Once underway the Charger’s instructions were changed. Bypassing Newark, she made for Gulfport, Staten Island, instead, and left the Interstate 35 at the big Gulf refinery there for partial loading at 6:00am Saturday. Then the Charger moored across the Arthur Kill at Tremley Point, New Jersey. Later in the day she retrieved the barge from Gulfport and delivered it to Newark. Finally, at 7:00pm and with a full load of gasoline, the Charger and the Interstate 35 set out together for Albany and Rensselaer. I spent the initial part of this voyage on the barge as the Charger pushed it through Newark Bay and past Bayonne. Looking around, asking questions, and taking notes, I considered this exploration part of my overall professional training. The two tankermen were glad of my company, and they told me everything I wanted to know about their work and more. They had a lonely job and were interested in anyone who was interested in them.

The Chargerand the Interstate 35 arrived in Albany and Rensselaer at 2:30pm Sunday. I wasn’t required to paint on Sundays, so I spent the day sightseeing on the bridge of the tug as she pushed the barge up the Hudson River. This was always a beautiful ride. The two vessels passed along the West Side of Manhattan with its famous finger piers, in the shadow of the New Jersey Palisades, through the widest part of the Hudson that the Dutch had named the Tappan Zee, past my father’s home town of Nyack by the Tappan Zee Bridge, through the twisting channels amid the Catskill Mountains, past the dramatic Catskill landmarks of Bear Mountain and Anthony’s Nose, and around West Point and the United States Military Academy. It was all truly breathtaking scenery! North of West Point the river widened and straightened again. The remainder of the route northward was less intense but still beautiful. On arrival the Charger nudged the barge alongside the oil docks in Rensselaer for unloading. Then she tied up alongside a wharf in the south end of Albany and waited.

At midnight on Sunday the Charger took the Interstate 35 in tow astern for the downstream voyage back to Newark and Tremley Point. After spending the next night in New Jersey, the two vessels were bound for Providence on Tuesday, and they arrived there at 7:00am Wednesday. After unloading the gasoline, the two vessels got underway again at 2:00pm Wednesday, arriving back in Newark at 7:30am Thursday. The return voyages with an empty barge always went faster than the outbound voyages with a full barge.

On these voyages I spent most of my daytime hours painting and watching the world pass by. On the New Haven and Providence runs, the Charger and the Interstate 35 transited the East River between Brooklyn and Queens and Manhattan and then between the Bronx and Queens before reaching the more open waters of Long Island Sound. This great inland sea carried both commercial and recreational traffic in considerable quantities—sailboats, motor boats, ferries, freighters, tankers, and tugs and barges. At the Sound’s western end lay the land formations of Great Neck and Manhasset Neck, the famous West Egg and East Egg of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Offshore of West Egg stood the diminutive lighthouse on the rocks called the Stepping Stones. Offshore of East Egg lay the Execution Rocks. The site of another lighthouse in the Charger’s day, this tiny island was the place where condemned criminals had been brought to be executed during the Colonial era. Farther along, the Cable and Anchor Reef and the Stratford Shoal interrupted the otherwise deep water of the middle Sound. At the eastern end lay the Race, a naturally narrow and very deep channel with strong tidal currents, tricky to navigate at maximum flood and ebb, and delineated by the well-situated Race Rock Lighthouse and Valiant Rock bell buoy.

On a typical day at sea, after dinner when my work was finished and while it was still daylight, I would go up to the bridge. I studied the charts and the radar, watched the maneuvering, learned the routings, and chatted with the Captain. Like the cook, Captain Wilkins was a man of strong convictions. His lively discourses covered a wide range of topics, including why the Civil War should never have been fought. He asserted that the North should have minded its own business and left the South alone in the 1860s. Both the North and the South would have been better off that way, and hundreds of thousands of lives would have been saved, he argued. Since this discussion I’ve heard more Southerners, and a few Northerners as well, make similar remarks.

Such was life aboard the Charger, a succession of voyages along the inland waterways of New Jersey, New York, and New England. I loved this vagabond life! I was always going somewhere. I had a great outdoor job in good weather. I had a good crew, good food, minimal dress code, no haircut regulations, and an office with magnificent views of everything.

One of my favorite aspects of these voyages was passing under all the New York City and Hudson River bridges. If as Fitzgerald wrote, “The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time,”¹ then the city seen from beneath the Queensboro Bridge must carry even more weight. A unique way of seeing the town, there’s a certain thrill in sailing under a bridge that driving over one just doesn’t have. I had passed beneath bridges before, but never as many or as frequently as I did aboard the Charger. Besides the famous ones like the Brooklyn Bridge or the George Washington Bridge, the one that intrigued me the most was the Hell Gate Bridge. This is the railroad bridge that crosses the East River and connects the Bronx and Queens. It is used every day and night by the Amtrak trains that run between New York and Boston. As often as the Charger sailed beneath it, though, I never did witness the passing of a train over it.

But I did witness—and wait for—several freight trains crossing the Arthur Kill and Newark Bay. Long trains routinely crossed Newark Bay between Newark and Jersey City on the Lehigh Valley span, and the Charger waited patiently until the trains had passed and the bridge was raised. Occasionally a passenger train crossed Newark Bay between Bayonne and Elizabeth on the old Central Railroad of New Jersey span. The lives of both this bridge and its trains were drawing to a close. A year later the trains were discontinued, and the bridge itself has since been dismantled. Not far from this crossing stood the old Baltimore and Ohio Railroad bridge between Staten Island and New Jersey. This structure delayed the Charger only once, but for what seemed an eternity as the longest freight train imaginable rumbled across it going west.

As blissful as my time aboard the Charger was, it almost seemed too good too last. And it was going by very quickly. On Thursday, July 20, the crew changed again, this time in Albany. The first group which I had met two weeks previously in New Haven returned, and Captain Wilkins and his crew went home. Two weeks on and two weeks off—that was their schedule. Once aboard again, the returning crew brought the Charger and the Interstate 35 to Port Socony, Staten Island, for tank cleaning, arriving there early Friday morning.

Jaunts to Newark, Gulfport, Tremley Point, and into Sandy Hook Bay followed as the Interstate 35 was cleaned and loaded and as the Charger was fitted with a new radar. These were fascinating voyages along the back shore of Staten Island with its oil refineries, dumping grounds, and the ship graveyard at Smoking Point. There lay the beached and half-sunk remains of tugboats, barges, scows, and ferries that years ago had proudly plied the waters of New York Harbor. One tug, bearing its emblematic dignity even in its demise, still sported the insignia of the New York Central Railroad on its tall, slender funnel. A sad sight, these abandoned hulks, but an historically accurate one that reflected the decline of the port, the railroads, the passenger ferries, and the Merchant Marine’s role in American civilization.

Happily, though, the coastwise tanker fleet was still doing a brisk business. Taking my cue from my experiences aboard the New Jersey Sun the previous summer, I noted all the oil tankers I saw in the various oil ports that the Charger and Interstate 35 visited. Where there were refineries and tank farms, there were tank ships delivering the product. Texaco had a big facility in Bayonne. Gulf and Mobil had even larger establishments on Staten Island. And scattered along the shore line from Perth Amboy to Newark were several oil terminals of lesser renown. Tankers belonging to the major American oil companies were docked at these facilities, and I relished the sight of them. Their names read like a roll call: Gulfpride, Gulfoil, Exxon Bangor, Exxon Chester, Texas Connecticut, Texas Montana, Louisiana Getty, and my favorite, the Pennsylvania Sun. This ship in particular brought back many pleasant memories of my time the previous year aboard her fleet mate, the New Jersey Sun.

As with many things that seem too good to last, my sojourn aboard the Charger came to an abrupt and unexpected end on Thursday, July 27.

It was the proverbial bad end to a good day. The Charger and the Interstate 35 had left Albany and Rensselaer at 1:30am. After a busy but peaceful voyage down the Hudson River, I had the singular honor of seeing the passenger ships America and Queen Elizabeth 2 moored on the West Side of Manhattan. My grandparents had sailed on the America from Le Havre to New York in 1955. Back then she belonged to the United States Lines fleet. Since then, however, she had been sold to a foreign company and had fallen on hard times. I was elated at seeing these two grandes dames of the Atlantic, and my spirits remained buoyant as the Charger delivered the Interstate 35 first to Port Socony and then to Gulfport. As the barge was filled with gasoline, the tug went to Tremley Point to wait.

After dinner, while the Charger was still tied up there, I slipped and fell as I was stepping through a hatchway from a ladder onto the upper deck. My right leg came down hard on the steel hatch combing. This impact cut the skin open and left a bad bruise. Fortunately, though, the bone was not broken. With some assistance from the cook and the engineer, I applied some goo to the wound and taped it shut. The bleeding eventually stopped, but we all thought the injury would require stitches. In a consultation with the Captain, we decided that I should go home and have it professionally examined and treated. When I was able at a later date, I would rejoin the Charger.

Leaving most of my belongings on board, I took a taxi from Tremley Point to the Pennsylvania Railroad Station in downtown Newark. I caught a train into New York, called my parents to explain the situation, and then boarded the next train for home. My parents met me on the platform at Mineola. They were very worried, and they wasted no time getting me to the emergency room at the nearby Nassau Hospital.

The most painful thing about this accident was the fact that it happened. It was an extremely inconvenient and even stupid occurrence. Everything had been going splendidly for me aboard the Charger up to this point. I was having so much fun, merrily painting the tugboat and vagabonding along the various waterways of the Northeast. I was expecting to remain aboard the Charger and sail with her through the rest of the summer until it became time to return to school in Maine. I was sorely disappointed to have to leave the tug because of an accident. But I had no choice.

The emergency room at the hospital was not very busy.. The Doctor on duty examined the wound and decided that stitches were in order. My parents waited and worried as he sewed me up with seven stitches. Afterwards, he instructed me to rest with the leg elevated for the next several days.

Well, I rested on Friday and passed the time chatting with my grandfather about my recent travels. That morning the Captain of the Charger called the house via the radiotelephone. He was hoping that I would come back on board soon. Unfortunately, I had to tell him otherwise. On Saturday, I felt better and went out. After this, my parents insisted that I follow the Doctor’s instructions to the letter; consequently, I remained quite idle for the next several days. By the first week I August, I was getting really tired of resting!

On Thursday, August 3, I went to Doctor Lemonides, our family physician, to have the stitches removed. He took some out, but left some in, and he called for more rest while the laceration continued healing. I had other ideas, though, and I called the Interstate offices in Philadelphia and said that I would be ready to return to the Charger very soon. On Saturday the 5th, Doctor Lemonides removed the remaining stitches. That evening my parents went away on vacation, something they had planned and paid for in advance. This left me more or less on my own.

After a few telephone calls with the folks in the Interstate offices, I received my instructions for returning to work. I would go to Philadelphia on Wednesday, August 9, and meet the Charger there. I would collect my belongings and then begin a new assignment aboard the barge Interstate 50 operating on the Delaware River and Bay. And that is another story!

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¹ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925, p. 63. This was one of my favorite books when I was young. I read it and reread it more times than I can count!