Sailing Away

The cable ship Furman rested at her dock at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, on Saturday morning, March 15, 1986.  Two tugboats nuzzled alongside her forward and aft and waited patiently as the old ship prepared to get underway and go to sea.  Wisps of black smoke curled upward form her single stack into the gray overcast and light rain.  The deck crew hauled in the gangway and the mooring lines, and then the tugs tooted their whistles in response to the pilot’s commands.  Underway now on the Piscataqua River, the Furman eased away from the Navy Yard and headed downstream and seaward, bound for Guam.

 

Miss Patty and I watched the Furman’s departure from Prescott Park, on the opposite shore of the Piscataqua in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.  I had served aboard this ship from June 10, 1985, to February 11, 1986.  Most of this time had been spent slowly loading cable at the Simplex Wire and Cable Company pier in Newington, New Hampshire, a few miles upstream from Portsmouth.  This process was interrupted several times by visits to the Navy Yard and by sea trials following some engine room repairs.  When all of this was finished, a largely new crew came aboard to take the ship out to sea.

 

During her long visit to the Portsmouth area, the Furman served as a convalescent ship.  Several of us in the crew were recovering from serious illnesses, and this was a pleasant and non-strenuous job.  Many, like myself, lived nearby and commuted.  The Furman was a good ship in a nice port close to home, and so she grew on me.  I was sorry to see her sail away without me on that rainy Ides of March.

 

Memories of the Furman and my association with her have occupied my mind recently.  As I often do when such thoughts linger, I started composing an essay discussing the ship, my time on board, and her subsequent departure.  I had recorded some interesting information with detailed descriptions, and then disaster struck.  By accidentally clicking the wrong thing on the computer, my essay was in one split second deleted forever.   All attempts to recover the prose failed, and I had to accept the unpleasant fact that my composition, like  the Furman herself, was irretrievably gone.  How could such a thing happen?  Quite easily.  I’ve never been very comfortable with computers.  Instead, I’ve always felt more at home communing with the Cosmos by gazing into the heavens and taking navigational sights from the bridge wing of a ship at sea.

 

But not all was lost.  Several photographs of the Furman remained.  Kept in a separate file, these were unaffected by the fate that befell the essay.  So while I am unable to reconstruct my original writing, I am happy to present the pictures with some explanatory notes.

These first two photographs feature the Furman at the Simplex Wire and Cable Company pier in Newington, in July of 1985.  In the first, we are looking forward from the starboard bridge wing, and we see the foredeck and bow of the ship.  The metal channel that runs along the starboard deck edge is a guideway through which the cable traveled when it was being loaded into the cargo holds.

Next, from the after end of the midships house, we see the stern section and the somewhat makeshift gangway. 

Several months later, in February of 1986, and with the Furman realigned at the pier, we enjoy from shoreside a view of the ship from the midships house aft.

Now, from the stern of the Furman on a cold morning that same February, we watch the Sun rise over Kittery, Maine.  The steel arch bridge carries Interstate 95 over the Piscatqua between Maine and New Hampshire.

Departure day, Saturday, March 15, 1986.  With tugboats in position forward and aft, the Furman prepares to leave her berth at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery.  This view and the one following were taken from Prescot Park, across the river in Portsmouth.

 

Underway and outward bound in this broadside view, the Furman departs from the Navy Yard.

Finally, the Furman heads out to sea in this view taken from Fort Constitution, downstream in New Castle, New Hampshire.    Off the ship’s port side stands Whaleback Light in Kittery, one of the two lighthouses that mark the entrance to Portsmouth Harbor.

The Meeting of the Mates

Such a rendezvous seemed more typically the stuff of spy stories and mystery novels than the activity of retired merchant seamen.  Two middle age men, who had met briefly three decades earlier and who would not recognize each other today, were both traveling to a prearranged meeting point in midtown Manhattan for a discussion over dinner.  The thought of it made me smile, and also remember the first James Bond book that I had read many years ago.  It was You Only Live Twice, by Ian Fleming.  I bought this book in a small shop on a side street in Napoli not far from the Stazione Maritima when the Rigel was docked there one day in the summer of 1979.  Subsequently, I read all of Ian Fleming’s James Bond stories aboard ship.  At the time, I considered this to be an important part of my education in the humanities.

Silly thoughts like these filled my mind on Monday, March 28, 2016, as I rode the train westward from Mineola into Manhattan.  More seriously, I wondered how we would recognize each other after so many years.  For this purpose, I wore my Waccamaw hat, something I don’t often do.  I had previously lost my Furman hat, and I did not want to risk losing another irreplaceable item of memorabilia.  But today was a special occasion.  Arriving in Penn Station, I disembarked and walked the short distance to our meeting point, the Rare Bar & Grill at 152 West 26^th Street, just off Seventh Avenue.  I paused at the big sign in front.  After a quick exchange of text messages, my friend emerged from the restaurant and invited me inside.  Rendezvous accomplished.

Walter Burke and I had last met 32 years earlier aboard the oceanographic survey ship Bartlett in Port Everglades when I relieved him as second mate.

On Friday, October 12, 1984, I departed from La Guardia Airport in New York aboard an Eastern Airlines A-300 and flew over the Atlantic Ocean to Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  It was an uneventful nonstop flight, and it landed at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on time at 3:00pm.  Boots James, a former shipmate from the Waccamaw who was now posted aboard the Bartlett, met me at the airport and drove me to the ship in a rental car.  The Bartlett rested alongside the wharf on the east side of the Port Everglades basin and adjacent to Burt and Jack’s, the famous high-style restaurant that overlooked the harbor.  I had a 45-days-old chief mate’s license, and I felt very fortunate to be getting a job as second mate so soon after passing the license exams.

Once aboard the Bartlett I was duly logged in and introduced to the shipboard luminaries.  Captain Kim L. Giaccardo was the Master.  Richard Carlson was chief mate.  Walter Burke was second mate.  Joe Bogusis was third mate.  Boots James was the purser.  Walter had been on board for a year and had travelled to South America and back.  Soon he would head home while I took his place.  I spent Friday afternoon and a large part of Saturday with Walter.  He showed me around the ship, told me what my new job would be like, and introduced me to everyone else on board.  It was a very pleasant occasion, filled with good food, amiable conversation, and high hopes for the future.   

Five days earlier, I had reached the age of 27.  I had just under three years left to achieve my goal of receiving the Master’s license before turning 30.  Despite the gradually deteriorating employment situation in the Merchant Marine, the future looked bright enough for me to have every expectation of realizing my goal.  To this end, I planned to remain aboard the Bartlett for a good long time and possibly relieve Mr. Carlson as chief mate when he went home on vacation.  If someone with prophetic capabilities had told me then how the future would really turn out, I daresay I would have dismissed his predictions as sheer nonsense.

My time with Walter was limited to these two days.  Then he left for his vacation.  He and I had crossed paths once previously.  When I had joined the Waccamaw in Augusta Bay, Sicily, in June of 1982, Walter was third mate on the Rigel with my classmate Owen Clarke as chief mate and Captain Rigobello as Master.  The two ships were tied up directly across the pier from each other, which made for easy visiting.  This served as a common memory for us during our brief acquaintance on the Bartlett.  Then, with the business of relieving him concluded, Walter went his way and I went mine.  I spent the next five and a half months as second mate aboard the Bartlett.  The ship made oceanographic survey voyages in the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.  Besides Fort Lauderdale, the ship made port calls in Key West, Florida, and Gulfport, Mississippi.  After experiencing some initial nervousness about beginning a new assignment, I became quite comfortable in my position.  The Bartlett was a good ship with a good crew, and I enjoyed sailing on her.  Now, many years later, I have happy memories of this time.

Such memories were what brought Walter and me together again.  Discussing the good old days at first via email, we found much common ground.  In many cases we had sailed on the same ships with the same Masters and the same mates, but at different times.  We had never sailed together, and our paths crossed only twice.  Like me, Walter had served aboard the Mercury, the Rigel, the Kane, and the Saturn.  Additionally, he had sailed aboard the Vega and the Truckee, two that I had missed.  He had also sailed with several of the great men of the fleet, including Captain Rigobello, Captain Iaccabacci, and the tragically late Captain Linardich.  And finally, we had both sailed aboard the Bartlett, one after another, with the now also sadly deceased Captain Giaccardo.

Unlike me, Walter had left the shipping business voluntarily in 1986 to pursue his second career on Wall Street.  I hung on to the end, when my illness and the failing job market combined to put me ashore in search of my own second career.  Now our ships are gone, many of our shipmates are gone, and our company headquarters in Bayonne is also gone.  But the memories remain.  And so, over a sumptuous dinner in a quiet corner of the Rare Bar and Grill in midtown Manhattan, we shared our memories and reminisced about the good old days.

They really were good days, too, although I recognize that more now than I did at the time.  Ironically, with the deteriorating vision that accompanies middle age, hindsight becomes twenty-twenty.  With this clear retrospective, Walter and I ate and talked.  The recollections transported us back through time and across the seas.  We talked of voyages we had made, places we had visited, colleagues we had known, and ambitions we had shared.  The people, the places, and the ships sailed back and forth across the table.  Two men in their fifties, who had known each other only slightly when in their twenties and who had not spoken to each other in three decades, discussed enough to fill a book.

We talked about coming ashore, our second careers, our families, and our homes.  Like so many of our shipmates, we had made the transition from the sea to the shore and had done well in our new professions.  We discussed the sad times, too.  Walter had been at work on Wall Street during the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. We also mourned the loss of the freighter El Faro and her crew in 2015.  Graduates of both our schools lost their lives in this tragedy.

One thing which in hindsight particularly impressed us was the level of responsibility that we had borne aboard ship.  Our employer placed great faith in us and in many other young mates just like us.  We were so young then, not long out of our teens, and on watch aboard a ship at sea we carried a burden of responsibility largely unmatched by young men in jobs ashore.  A single mistake on our parts could have produced devastating results.  But our superiors had confidence in our capabilities and entrusted millions of dollars’ worth of ships and cargo as well as many men’s lives to us.    

Like a scene in a Conradian novel, our private party took place on a island surrounded by seawater and in a city that had once ranked as one of the world’s busiest seaports:  

This could have occurred nowhere but in England, where men and the sea

interpenetrate, so to speak—the sea entering into the life of most men,

and the men knowing something or everything about the sea. . . .We were

sitting round a mahogany table that reflected the bottle, the claret glasses,

and our faces as we leaned on our elbows. . . .Between the five of us there

was the strong bond of the sea, and also the fellowship of the craft.[1]

Despite the non-English location, I felt that we and the sea interpenetrated quite intimately; after all, we had come together because of the sea  And while we were two and not five, we certainly knew something of the sea and shared the “bond of the sea” and the “fellowship of the craft.”  These intangible qualities, incomprehensible to the layman and unheard of by the mainstream of a large and mostly inland country, unite in spirit men spread literally around the world aboard the ships that carry the world’s commerce.  United physically for the first time in decades, two of these seamen, like characters in Conrad’s novels, swapped stories, shared memories, and philosophized on the ways of men, ships, and the sea.  It was a very pleasant reunion.

After dinner Walter and I returned to Penn Station and boarded a train for the ride home.  He went to Huntington; I left him halfway there in Mineola.  Our conversation continued to the last possible minute.  Then we bade each other farewell, shook hands, and I disembarked.  Once again, he went his way and I went mine. 

On the walk home from the station, my mind raced with everything that had just taken place.  Thinking again in Conradian terms, I reflected on Walter’s kindness in inviting me to dine and toast the good old days with him.  I was very happy to have met him all those years ago, but sorry that I had never actually sailed with him.  Nonetheless, we belong to the same fraternity, having known the “exactions of the sea”[2] and having endured its “elemental furies.”[3] We had both “made many voyages,”[4] gained “a thorough knowledge of [our] duties,”[5] and had each “become chief mate of a fine ship.”[6]   Decades later, these experiences and memories are precious, even sacred, to both of us.

As I thought back upon this happy reunion I recalled the scriptural injunction, “I exhort you to remember these things. . .” (Moro. 10:27), for these voyages were “ordered for the illustration of life, that might stand for a symbol of existence.”[7]  This is most definitely true.  I simply cannot imagine going through life without going to sea.

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[1] Joseph Conrad, “Youth,” in Tales of Land and Sea, Garden City, NY: Hanover House, 1953, p. 7-8.

[2] Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim, Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., p. 6.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Joseph Conrad, “Youth,” op. cit., p. 8.

The Alumnus

As the Waccamaw rested alongside the pier in Norfolk at the conclusion of her shipyard overhaul, new crewmen started to report on board.  Among these fresh faces came the new cargo mate, Thomas Cassidy.  He filled a position that was unique to the ships that carried out the underway replenishment of the naval fleet.  Tom held a chief mate’s license, but came aboard to serve in a specialized capacity.  Sailing as neither third mate nor second mate nor chief mate, his duties as cargo mate revolved entirely around the cargo oil that filled the Waccamaw’s hull and which would be transferred to naval vessels at sea.

Soon after Tom reported on board, I thought that there was something different about him.  He had sailed in our fleet only for a short while, but it was obvious that he had long experience with tankers and that he knew them very well.  Still, there seemed to be more.  When he mentioned that he had previously sailed with Sun Oil, it all made sense.

Tom Cassidy was an alumnus of Sun Oil.  He had sailed on all the tankers in the Sun fleet and had worked his way up through the ranks from ordinary seaman to chief mate.  He knew many of the men with whom I had sailed during my stint aboard the New Jersey Sun, including Captain Taylor and Captain McKnett and Slim Cushman.  He had accrued a great deal of seniority at Sun by virtue of his having worked there for so long, but unfortunately, it was not long enough.  When the layoffs came, he was let go.  It was then that he went to Bayonne looking for work.  When the office folks there saw the extensive tanker experience on his resume, they hired him right away.

Tom was a good shipmate and a very competent tankerman.  Sun had trained him well, and it showed.  For these reasons we were all happy to have him with us.  I was happy to sail with him for another reason, though.  He brought back happy memories of my teenage sojourn aboard the New Jersey Sun.  In fact, he was the second such reminder of Sun Oil during my time aboard the Waccamaw.  The first took place on November 18 and 19, 1982, when the Waccamaw had gone to Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico.  Anchored a short distance outside the harbor and clearly visible from the Waccamaw as she arrived and departed was none other than the New Jersey Sun herself!  The sight of this grande dame of the Atlantic stirred my sentimental side.  I did not realize it then, but that was the last time I would ever see this great ship, for her days were numbered.

In my brief time with the company, Sun Oil operated seven ships.  The twins New Jersey Sun and Delaware Sun entered service new in 1953.  In 1983, when Tom Cassidy joined the Waccamaw, these two ships were thirty years old and reaching the ends of their lives.  Late in that year, the New Jersey was sold as scrap metal and sailed to the ship breaking yard in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.  The Delaware followed her in 1985.  Two of the remaining ships in the Sun fleet that I had known were also scrapped in the 1980s.  The Eastern Sun was killed in Kaohsiung in 1984 at age 29, and the Pennsylvania Sun followed her in 1986 at age 26.  Four ships gone in four years.

In this same time frame two new and larger ships were built for the Sun fleet.  These were the New York Sun and the Philadelphia Sun which entered service in 1980 and 1981, respectively.  A third tanker, the Tropic Sun, arrived second-hand from Gulf in 1982.  It would seem that there were still jobs for seamen, but with the new ships came increased automation, reduced manning scales, a slump in the petroleum industry, charters to other operators, and therefore, layoffs.

Three of the vessels dating from my time with Sun survived longer.  The Western Sun, built in 1954, sailed until 1990 when she was broken up in Alang, India.  The Texas Sun, built in 1960, lasted until 1995 and then went to her death in Alang.  Lastly, the America Sun, built in 1968 as the largest of the seven and the pride of the Sun fleet, served the company until 1989 when she was sold to another operator.  She died in 1993 in Alang.

Of the new ships, the New York and the Philadelphia were sold off in 1997.  Ten years later, aged 26 and 27, they also died in Alang.  The Tropic, already an older vessel when Sun bought her, died in Alang in 1995.¹

Tom Cassidy was an alumnus of this once-great fleet.  During both his and my time with Sun, the conventional wisdom held that a good employee would always have a job there.  If one did his work diligently, stayed out of trouble ashore, and didn’t run into anything at sea, then he would always have a job at Sun.  After all, the country needed oil, and someone had to deliver it.  Thus there was job security.  But this changed as ships were sold and scrapped.

When Tom Cassidy joined us on the Waccamaw, the conventional wisdom there held forth even more generously.  Even those employees who didn’t do their work diligently and who couldn’t stay out of trouble ashore would always have a job.  After all, this was the government, and the government never laid people off or went out of business.  But here the conventional wisdom was slow in catching up to real life.  Seagoing employment was getting scarce everywhere.  Captain Rigobello, who had seen it all before, summed it up succinctly: “We are all very lucky to have a job here.”  He was right.  But this changed, too.

As Tom had learned the hard way, and as I would soon learn, anything and everything that we have in this world can be taken away from us.  Our livelihoods, our professions, our careers can all seem safe and secure one day and be gone the next morning.  In a world that often defines people by the work they do and the professional status they achieve, one’s employment can be a terrible thing to lose for psychological reasons, in addition to the obvious financial hardships.  To go from working as a licensed officer aboard a merchant ship to accepting the dregs of shoreside jobs is a bitter pill to swallow.  A supportive family can ease the pain and make the situation more bearable, as many seamen with good families can attest.  Still, to the newly unemployed seaman, sleeping in an abandoned automobile and digging discarded food out of a dumpster can loom as frightening possibilities on life’s horizon.  Some of the guys really end up like this.  To generate at least some revenue, they loitered in public places like the Granby Mall in downtown Norfolk.  Equipped with signs that read, “unemployed merchant seaman—please help,” they begged alms like mendicants.  

Men very often treasure their careers.  Many merchant seamen whom I knew treasured their careers.  They loved their work; they loved their ships; they loved to sail.  When all this was taken away from them, what were they to do next?  The lucky ones like Tom Cassidy found other seagoing jobs.  But his luck would eventually run out when his new employer initiated cutbacks, too.  Eventually, almost everyone ended up ashore in an element that often felt alien and in employment that was usually a letdown.

Perhaps the Lord foresaw the demise of the American Merchant Marine when he taught his disciples:

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will be your heart also (Matt. 6:19-21).

While “rust” can certainly be applied literally aboard ship, it is easy to see the metaphorical value of “moth and rust” in this situation.  Substitute, for example, corrupt business practices, political expediency, union busting, hostile labor relations, outsourcing, etc., and the resultant scourge of people losing their employment becomes readily apparent.  If one’s treasure is aboard ship and one’s heart is there with the treasure, one will inevitably suffer heartbreak when the ship is taken away.

A ship is a tangible thing.  Built of solid steel to withstand the rigors of the sea, it invites us to place our faith and trust in its size and strength.  Religion, however, is abstract, but it also invites our faith and trust.  The secular world would advise us to entrust ourselves to the tangible, concrete, and substantive thing.  The Lord, however, calls upon us to do the opposite.  He counsels us to place our faith in something that seems completely abstract and ethereal, but also something that he solidifies and that lasts forever: “Build upon my rock, which is my gospel” (D&C 11:34).  The fact of the matter is that the gospel was there long before all the merchant fleets in the world were built, and it will still be there long after the last ship has been sent to the junkyard.  In this sense, then, the gospel is as solid as a rock.

Just as the Sun Oil ships were all sold off and scrapped, most of the vessels in our fleet were disposed of similarly.  A few of them, such as the Vandenberg and the Comet and the Furman, went into long term layup, but that’s usually just a stepping stone on the way to the scrap metal heap.  Only the Vandenberg was given a new lease on life.  She was sunk as an artificial reef and fish haven several miles off Key West, Florida, in 2009.² Either way, all these ships are long gone now, as is the promise of job security that they once offered.  Tom Cassidy, the alumnus of Sun Oil, did well to find a new position aboard the Waccamaw.  In the end, though, this merely postponed the inevitable and final job loss.

The gospel, however, is still in business, and it always will be.  Unlike a berth aboard ship, our knowledge and testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ can never be taken away from us by anyone else.  The gospel is available to everyone and offers more security than any employer ever could.  The Lord himself is in command, and he invites us to build not just our careers but our entire lives on his gospel, his rock.  “I am in your midst, and I am the good shepherd, and the stone of Israel.  He that buildeth upon this rock shall never fall” (D&C 50:44).  Unlike a shipping company divesting itself of its fleet and its crews, the Lord will always have ample berths for all the alumni of the sea.

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¹ Ship data from www.fleetsheet.com.  This website, constructed and maintained by former Sun Oil seamen, is dedicated to the history of the Sun tanker, tugboat, and barge fleet, and bears the name of the employee newsletter, Fleet Sheet.  This newsletter ceased publication in 1998, when the last vestiges of the Sun fleet ceased to exist.

² See Stephen Harrigan, “From Relics to Reefs,” National Geographic, February, 2011, p. 84-103, photos by David Guttenfelder. 

The Commander

Commander Hersel A. Whitten served aboard both the Furman and the Hayes in the twilight of his career.  Recovering from heart surgery and of reduced strength and stamina, he had been assigned to these semi laid-up ships in order to facilitate his recovery.  He was already there when I reported aboard the Furman, and he was quite surprised to have a young mate like myself joining him.  He was even more surprised to learn that I had been sent there for the same reason he had been.

Commander Whitten did not command either the Furman or the Hayes.  In fact, he did not hold a Master’s license.  He was a chief mate, like myself, but there the resemblance ended.  The Commander had first gone to sea as a teenager in the early 1930s.  He sailed as a coal passer in the engine room of a freighter.  This job involved shoveling the coal out of the bunkers and into wheelbarrows, transporting it to the boiler room, and then shoveling the coal into the fires in the boilers where it was burned to make steam.  After a four-hour watch of this strenuous labor in the hottest parts of the ship, the coal passers were all covered in soot and sweat and coughing up black phlegm from having breathed in too much coal dust.  After doing this for one voyage to Europe and back, the Commander decided that he’d had enough of the engine room and applied for a position in the deck force.  That was still hard work, but it was not brutal and the air was clean.

Commander Whitten went to sea for almost all of his adult life.  He made many voyages across all of the world’s oceans and had visited nearly every country that had seaports.  During the Second World War he sailed in the North Atlantic convoys.  He described the way the freighters in the convoys were loaded beyond normal peacetime safety standards.  Cargo was stacked so high on the main deck that it blocked the view from the bridge windows.  The mate on watch had to stand on the house top in order to see over the cargo.  From this perch he called engine and rudder orders through a voice tube to the helmsman on the bridge below.  In the winter this job was a nightmare because of the cold and wind.  It had to be done aboard all the ships, though, to prevent them from colliding with each other in the convoy.

When returning to the United States from Europe, these same freighters often transported captured German soldiers.  The Commander liked them.  He described them as friendly and pleasant but also very disciplined, very well-behaved, and very clean, even more so in these respects than their American counterparts.  Whenever it rained, the German soldiers would come out on deck, undress, and passing bars of soap around take showers which were otherwise unavailable to them.  Luckily, the Commander made it through the war without ever being torpedoed.  He was very grateful for that.  After the war he resumed peacetime sailing, as it were.  This included making foreign aid deliveries to third world countries and carrying military supplies to Korea and Vietnam.

By the time I met him, then, Commander Whitten had accumulated a wealth of seafaring experience.  For some reason that I never understood, though, he never took the exams for the Master’s license.  Instead, he sailed as second mate and chief mate for many years.  Out of respect for his age and experience came the honorary title of “Commander.”  He was the oldest man aboard the Furman, but without the big license he could not be called “Captain.” No one used his first name.  Captain Nick the Greek called him “Whit” or sometimes “Mr. Whit.”  Captain Freiburg addressed him as “Mr. Whitten.”  To everyone else, though, “Whit” seemed too familiar and “Mr. Whitten” seemed too pedestrian.  Then someone thought of “Commander” as the next most respectful appellation to “Captain,” and it stuck.  He remained “Commander Whitten” aboard both the Furman and the Hayes, and a socially awkward situation was relieved.

The Commander was very modest about this title, though.  One day aboard the Hayes a young engineer was showing his fiancé around the ship.  When he introduced them to each other he proclaimed with great enthusiasm, “This is Commander Hersel Whitten.”

The young lady shook hands politely and asked with a trace of confusion in her voice, “Oh, are you the Commander of the ship?”

To this Commander Whitten replied, “Oh, no.  I’m not really a Commander.  That’s just something they like to call me.  I’m just a night mate.”  After the engineer and his fiancé left, Commander Whitten turned to me and exclaimed with mock severity, “You guys and this Commander business!”

Commander Whitten’s life experience extended beyond the sea and included some significant connections ashore.  A widower of numerous years, he had eventually remarried and was happy again.  His new wife was several years younger than he was, and she took care of him during his illness and called frequently to check up on him.  The Commander occasionally spoke of his first wife.  It had been a good marriage, although the long separations while he was at sea were not always easy.  He was saddened by her passing and he missed her, but he recognized that this was a normal part of life.

But there had been one terrible event that he could not recognize as normal.  The Commander and his first wife had a baby girl.  Because of his sailing schedule, he could not see her anywhere near as much as he wanted.  Nonetheless, he loved her very much and he regarded her as the most magnificent little girl that ever walked the face of the Earth.  When she was ten years old, however, she became seriously sick.  It was determined that she had a cancerous brain tumor.  The medical knowledge of the day was insufficient to save her, and after several months of painful deterioration she died.  The Commander remained home from the sea during this time to take care of her.  When the end came, he was upset but relieved—upset that an innocent child had suffered so much, but relieved that it was finished and that she was now in Heaven with God.  The Commander told me about this with a very distant look on his face.  He said that he did not like to talk about it, but that he thought of this little girl every day of his life.  He couldn’t help it; she was just always on his mind.  I was initially surprised that he told me about her at all, but then, he knew that I was recovering from cancer myself.

Commander Whitten was a deeply religious man.  While he was often unable to attend church, he did read the scriptures and pray every day.  By his own admission he had not always been so devout.  He owned up to having been a good time Charlie as a kid, but added that life had taught him “a thing or two” over the years.  He became a morally conservative man, and could be outspoken in his viewpoints and his disapproval of some of the standard shipboard nonsense.  He would often shake his head and mutter, “When will these guys learn?”   

The Commander and his wife belonged to a Pentecostal congregation where they lived in Florida, and he attended with her when he was home.  He held all the Christian denominations in high regard, though, and was respectful of all the world’s religions.  This was a not uncommon viewpoint among merchant seamen.  Many men who had sailed all over the world and had seen so much of the myriad cultures and religious expressions of the world’s peoples maintained the highest respect for them, even if they were not particularly religious themselves.  They admired the search for Truth and the moral values taught by religions generally.  For his part, Commander Whitten subscribed to a very high moral standard.  In this respect, he would have made a good Latter-day Saint.  But for all his exposure to the diverse cultures and religions of the world, he had had no contact with the Mormons.  Perhaps the bulk of them lived too far inland and were therefore beyond his range of contact.  Whatever the reason, the opportunity to learn of the restored fullness of the Gospel eluded him.

Bishop Lance Spencer of the Nashua 2^nd Ward was fond of saying, “There are good people in all faiths.  If they knew there was one more thing they had to do—go to the temple—I’m sure they’d all say, ‘Yes, of course I’ll go.’”

From what I knew of the man, I’m sure Commander Whitten would be one of those saying, “Yes, of course I’ll go.”  He was one of those of whom the Prophet Joseph Smith wrote,

For there are many yet on the earth among all sects, parties, and denominations, who are blinded by the subtle craftiness of men, whereby they lie in wait to deceive, and who are only kept from the truth because they know not where to find it (D&C 123:12).

Commander Whitten was a good man who led a good life. He was a committed Christian who took his beliefs seriously and governed himself accordingly.  He was neither a graduate theologian nor a recipient of the restored fullness of the Gospel; nonetheless, he did well with the religious knowledge that he had.  Furthermore, there were many like him; he was by no means unique.  It is people such as these, represented by the Commander, who inspire the ongoing temple work for all the good people who loved the Lord but were never able to attend the temple themselves.  As Bishop Spencer also remarked, “It would be a sin if their temple work went undone because of neglect on our part.”

The scriptures speak of turning the hearts of the children to the fathers and turning the hearts of the fathers to the children (D&C 98:16, 110:15).  While it is natural because of family ties to want to perform the temple ordinances for our deceased ancestors and relatives, there is a yearning to see this work done for our friends, neighbors, and colleagues, too.  We can turn our hearts to them as well.  After all, the temple ordinances are for everyone.

The Zealot

The zealot served as a messman aboard the Furman during her time in the Portsmouth area.  He was a good person and a diligent worker.  He spoke both English and Spanish well, and he routinely sent money home to his relatives in Puerto Rico.  He was also very religious, and he read the Bible every day.  I was never able to determine to what denomination he belonged, or if he even belonged to any real denomination at all.  He had acquired his belief somewhere, though.  One shipboard critic dismissed it as “storefront religion run by a self-appointed holy man with dubious credentials.”  Admittedly this sounded harsh, but there may have been something in it.

One day when I was eating alone in the mess hall, the zealot cornered me.  He wanted to talk about religion.  He knew that I was young, that I had an even younger wife, and that I had recently been sick.  He wanted to help me and hopefully save my soul.  Conceding that he had good intentions, I listened and asked questions.  I realized that this fellow had very little formal education and that his logical reasoning skills were weak, so I took everything he said with the proverbial grain of salt.

As he described his beliefs, they sounded reasonable enough.  He was a serious Christian of obvious sincerity.  This had long shown in his behavior and was confirmed by his remarks.  He longed to reach out to his shipmates and help them to see the light and be saved, but, he admitted, he was often unsure of how to do this.  He seemed comfortable with me, though, and he spoke at some length.  When I mentioned that besides himself several fellows aboard the Furman were church-attending scripture-reading Christians, his comfort level seemed to diminish and he became quite agitated.  “That no good,” he asserted.  “They go to wrong church.  They all going to burn in hell.”

This response startled me.  With his demonstrated sincerity of purpose, he hardly seemed like the type to arbitrarily consign fellow Christians to eternal hellfire on account of their denominational affiliation.  Yet he did, and very emphatically and repeatedly.  We had colleagues who were Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Presbyterian, Lutheran, and Episcopalian.  I protested that they were good men and good Christians just as he himself was, but to no avail.  “That don’t matter,” he reasserted.  “They still go to hell because they go to wrong church.  They need to be born again.  Then they go to right church and go to Heaven.”

Wow!  This uncharitable attitude towards fellow believers was more than I had expected from a casual lunchtime conversation.  I could not help but wonder, who taught him this?  Where did he acquire such a skewed and judgmental version of Christianity?  How can he believe this and be happy?  Then I recalled what the other fellow had said about storefront religion and dubious credentials.  Sadly, this good-intentioned man had fallen for it and was taking it seriously.  Then I wondered, if he’s relegating other Christians to eternal hellfire, what would he say of the Jews or the Muslims or of nonbelievers?  I really didn’t want to find out, and I didn’t dare ask.  I reckoned I’d heard enough already.

Such a belief system flew in the face of the Lord’s remarks to the contrary:

I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:  And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die (John 11:25-26).

And furthermore,

God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.  For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved (John 3:16-17).

Why would a loving God create the human species and then sacrifice his son to save people from their own imperfections only to sentence millions of them to the eternal torments of hell for the capricious and arbitrary reason that they attended the “wrong church?”  The inconsistency and irrationality that this man’s belief imposed upon God were incompatible with much that the Lord had taught in the New Testament.  I did not understand how anyone could take such a belief seriously, yet obviously someone did.  This belief led me to think of the Lord’s caution about such an attitude:

Judge not, that ye be not judged.  For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again (Matt. 7:1-2).

The Joseph Smith translation of this injunction is a bit more clear, especially in a society wherein we are called upon to make judgments of one kind or another almost daily:

Judge not unrighteously, that ye be not judged: but judge righteous judgment (Matt. 7:2 JST).

Considering this man’s lack of education and obviously skewed religious training but good intentions, I was disinclined to judge him harshly.  He meant well, even if he did come across in an unchristian manner towards other Christians.  The real villain was the preacher who taught him this outlook.  He was one of the “false prophets which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves” (Matt. 7:15).  How sad that the Christian teachings of love, kindness, forbearance, and charity could be so perverted.  This unauthorized alteration of doctrine defied the stated purposes of God:

For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man (Moses 1:39).

So much kinder, more reasonable, and more consistent with the teachings of Christ is the missionary invitation to all members of the world’s faiths:

We love those of other churches.  We work with them in good causes.  We respect them. . . .To these we say in a spirit of love, bring with you all that you have of good and truth which you have received from whatever source, and come and let us see if we may add to it.¹

This naturally raises the question, what would we add to what others already have? The answer is plenty.  The Furman was full of morally good and decent Christian men who through no fault of their own knew nothing about the restored fullness of the gospel.  The world at large is likewise full of such good people.  Rather than consign them to an eternity of torment that they have not merited, it seems infinitely more in the spirit of Christ to add the good that we have to the good that they have.  Sharing such good as the temple ordinances, the eternal nature of the family, additional scripture, ongoing revelation, the Word of Wisdom, the Aaronic and Melchizedek Priesthood, etc., is so much more constructive and uplifting than condemning people to “burn in hell” because “they go to wrong church.”  By adding “the plain and most precious parts of the gospel of the Lamb which have been kept back” (1 Nephi 13:32) to the Christian backgrounds of others, we are steering them clear of misguided preachers who would burden them with perverted doctrines and we are helping them to achieve the fullness of eternal life.

Had the zealot aboard the Furman known that so much could have been added to faith that he already had, I think he would have been a much happier person, and with his enthusiasm for sharing the gospel, he would have made a great missionary.

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¹ Gordon B. Hinckley, General Conference address, Oct. 6, 2002, in Discourses of President Gordon B. Hinckley, vol. 2, pp. 198-199, Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2005.

Pictures of Ships and Characters in the Stories

Below are photographs of some of the ships on which I sailed and which figure into my stories.  I took several of these pictures myself.  Those from other sources are so noted.  Click on the photos for a larger view.

The tanker New Jersey Sun in the floating drydock at the Todd Shipyard on Pelican Island, Galveston, Texas, on May 28, 1977.

The school ship State of Maine moored at the Commonwealth Pier, Boston, Massachusetts, between May 24 and 28, 1976.

The freighter Rigel secured alongside the Molo Carlo Pisacane in Napoli, Italy, on June 22, 1979.  It's early morning with the sun shining from the direction of nearby Mount Vesuvius.

Yours truly hard at work aboard the General Hoyt S. Vandenberg.  Ordinary Seaman Ray Flynn took this picture from the pier in Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico, in early November of 1979, about a month before I met Miss Patty.

Miss Patty at Jones Beach, Long Island, on January 13, 1980.  She came to New York for a visit while the Vandenberg was undergoing a shipyard overhaul in Brooklyn.

The oceanographic survey ship Wilkes at the Ocean Terminal in  Southampton, England, on December 21, 1980.  This historic pier hosted the famous transatlantic passenger liners, including the original Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth.

The freighter Victoria reposing alongside Pier Q at the US Naval Station in North Charleston, South Carolina, some morning between August 2 and 9, 1981.

The tanker Waccamaw in a historic but undated postcard view.  The vertical steel and hose structures were used for the refueling of military vessels at sea.  By the time I joined the ship on June 24, 1982, the one such structure forward of the midships house had been removed.

The freighter Comet engaged in cargo operations in Port Hueneme, California, over the weekend of February 11-12, 1984.  I don't know who took this picture, but Captain Icky, as we affectionately knew him, liked it and had copies made for the whole crew shortly before the ship was taken out of service.

The oceanographic survey ship Bartlett in an undated file photo from the fleet headquarters in Bayonne, New Jersey.  I was able to collect portraits of several of the ships I had sailed on before I left the Bayonne office for the last time.

The cable ship Furman departing Portsmouth, New Hampshire, without me on March 15, 1986.  We see her passing Portsmouth Harbor Light in New Castle, New Hampshire.

The twin-hulled oceanographic survey ship Hayes in an undated file photo.  She was not in this good condition during my time aboard her.

The ferry John H approaching the dock at Orient Point, Long Island, on August 17, 1990, with Miss Patty, Miss Karen, and James watching.

The entire family on the bridge of the Joseph and Clara Smallwood enroute from North Sydney, Nova Scotia, to Argentia, Newfoundland, on June 21, 2004.