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.

Flying High

Lest anyone get the idea that I dislike air travel, I don’t. But I do need to clarify a few points.

In the early days, I often travelled by air between my home in New York and school in Maine. Afterwards, most of my airplane rides have taken place because of ships, usually either going away to join a ship or returning home from a ship. The science of flight—airmanship, navigation, and the principle of physics that makes it all possible—I find fascinating. The idea of holding a heavier-than-air object aloft by a difference in air pressure on the upper and lower wing surfaces is intriguing, a wonderful example of a highly abstract concept yielding very tangible and practical results. Aeronavigation, similar by nature and in practice to shipboard navigation, is also very interesting, as are the mechanical means by which a solid object is maneuvered through a fluid medium, whether air or water. The laws of physics and mathematics govern it all, hence both ship and airplane operations are rigorously logical disciplines.

What I dislike about air travel is not the travel itself but some of the human factors that have become part of it. I don’t like mob scenes at airports. I don’t appreciate being treated like a criminal by megalomaniacal security personnel. I don’t like the cattle car atmosphere of some airlines. And I don’t enjoy the company of seat mates who talk incessantly about nothing or who can’t keep their elbows out of my ribs. Otherwise, I really do enjoy flying, and I always have. With a window seat in the non-smoking section and fellow passengers who behave themselves, an aerial journey can be very pleasant indeed.

Some of my favorite flights took place with Bar Harbor Airlines in the 1970s. This company, now long gone, operated a fleet of small commuter airplanes between Boston and various points in Maine and Quebec. The mainstay of the fleet was the Beechcraft 99, an unpressurized, low-altitude, dual-propeller aircraft. It carried perhaps fifteen passengers in small single seats on each side of a narrow central aisle. It also had big windows and a cockpit open to the passenger cabin. Visibility was thus excellent. On takeoffs and landings, I could look out the front and share the pilots’ view of the approaches and navigational lights and runways ahead. Bar Harbor also named all its aircraft, which I thought was a nice personal touch. I travelled aboard airplanes with locally exotic names such as State of Maine, City of Bangor, The Portlander, Aroostook Flyer, La Ville de Quebec, and La Ville de Sherbrooke proudly emblazoned on their tails

I rode on these aircraft several times between Bangor and Boston, usually but not always with a stop in Augusta. My most memorable of these journeys took place on Friday, December 16, 1977, aboard The Portlander. This flight ran nonstop from Bangor to Boston in an hour and five minutes. After flying overland from Bangor to the coast, The Portlander then flew over the ocean parallel to and only a short distance from the shoreline. I had a seat on the starboard side, and with a clear sky and excellent visibility enjoyed a truly magnificent view of the coast line from about Wiscasset all the way to Boston. All the harbors, beaches, and rocky outcroppings of Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts were visible in detail. As the plane flew past Bath, I could with ease pick out my brother’s old house on Wesley Street in back of the Methodist church. He had lived there a few years previously when stationed at the nearby Brunswick Naval Air Station, and it had been the site of several family gatherings. As I contemplated these memories, The Portlander flew on and finally landed at Boston Logan Airport, a tiny speck of an aircraft amid a sea of sprawling concrete runways and taxiways.

Less scenically interesting but more ambitious were a few long flights over the Atlantic Ocean. I’ve made a total of two and a half transatlantic flights. The two were commercial runs aboard 747s operated by Trans World Airlines, the old TWA, which is now long gone. On the first of these I was returning to New York from London after leaving the Wilkes in Southampton, England, on Friday evening, January 23, 1981. On the second, I was going overnight from New York to Italy to join the Waccamaw. This one left JFK on Tuesday, June 22, 1982, and arrived in Rome early the next morning. On both occasions it felt quite disconcerting to get across an ocean so quickly—too quickly, really—and be suddenly disgorged onto another continent with a different language, culture, monetary system, time zone, etc. But that’s another story.

The half transatlantic flight was really just that; it went halfway across the Atlantic. Enroute to join the General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, I travelled aboard a Air Force C-5 cargo airplane with four or five other new crewmen. This flight was operated by the Military Airlift Command from Patrick Air Force Base in Florida to Ascension Island with an intermediate stop in Antigua. The pilots, navigator, and engineer were commissioned Air Force officers. The passenger and cargo attendants were enlisted men.

I arrived at Patrick in mid-morning on Wednesday, September 12, 1979, many hours in advance of the flight’s departure time. No one would tell me when the plane was scheduled to leave, just “Be back here around 3:00 o’clock.” With about six hours to kill, I went to the beach, went to the base library, and went out to lunch, all of which were within walking distance of the air terminal. At 3:00pm I returned to the check-in spot for the flight and met the other fellows who were going to the Vandenberg. We got in line, turned in our paperwork, emptied our pockets, and put our suitcases up on tables where they were opened and inspected thoroughly. When they were repacked, we were led outside and across the tarmac to the waiting aircraft. The flight crew then directed us up the steps and aboard the airplane.

I realized quickly that I was not travelling first class. The passengers’ seats were situated just behind the cockpit. They did not recline. They faced backwards. There were no windows. The only view was of containers of cargo lashed to the deck and the fuselage. I had known that passenger airplanes were often referred to as cattle cars in the sky, but this was a baggage car! I discovered that if I turned around in my seat I could with difficulty see up the small aisle and out the windows in the front of the airplane. At least the pilots have windows, I thought. But even this small luxury did not last. At departure time they closed the cockpit door. The next daylight I saw was in Antigua when they let us off the plane for a break.

From the airstrip in Antigua we passengers were bused to a little village where we got a free dinner. It felt nice to dine al fresco in the tropics after being cooped up in the sky for so long. After a while we were bussed back to the airplane and it took off for the long haul to Ascension Island, midway between West Africa and Brazil. Since it was an overnight flight, I curled up as comfortably as possible and went to sleep. I didn’t have anything else to do anyway. After I woke up, at some point over the Atlantic, my fellow passengers expressed their envy of my youth and ability to sleep so soundly. They had been uncomfortably tossing and turning in their seats while I merrily slumbered on! The crew then distributed box lunches to us. In all fairness to the much maligned airline food, these were actually quite good.

Soon afterwards, the aircraft started its descent for Ascension, and it landed on time at 8:00am, Thursday, September 13. Emerging from the airplane once again, I beheld the looming brown mountains, all extinct volcanoes, of Ascension Island. I also felt very grateful that we’d had a good, competent navigator in the air crew. He had successfully found this tiny speck of an island in the midst of the vast blue reaches of the Atlantic. He knew his business and it showed!

I travelled only this one time with the Military Airlift Command. Closer to home, a company that I flew with regularly was Piedmont Airlines. Styling itself “The up and coming airline,” Piedmont connected the mid-Atlantic states with New York, Boston, and other major cities. It’s long gone now, though. I rode on Piedmont’s fleet of Boeing 737s going to and from the Rigel, the Mercury, and the Waccamaw. A few of these journeys were scenic standouts.

I recall several occasions when I took Piedmont between Norfolk, Virginia, and either LaGuardia or Newark Airports in the New York area. The nonstop flight took just over an hour and passed over the Delmarva Peninsula between the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays. From a window seat on the appropriate side of the aircraft, I gazed down upon the rural landscape that turned first to wetlands and then to sandy beaches interrupted by inlets. Then the broad Atlantic stretched eastward. It was always a very lovely sight, bracketed by Cape Charles to the south and Cape Henlopen to the north. It was also a calm and peaceful view, a quiet and sparsely populated area sandwiched by bays and far from the urban commotion of Norfolk, New Jersey, and New York. I followed this route about ten times between 1979 and 1983, and I never grew tired of it.

One evening, I did something different. During the Christmas and New Year’s holidays of 1982-1983, the Waccamaw remained idle at the Naval Supply Center piers in Norfolk. Able to take a few days off, I flew home for a brief family visit. I returned to the ship on New Year’s Day, 1983, on connecting Piedmont flights from Boston to Richmond to Norfolk. The first of these took off from Boston about 8:00pm, travelled southwest over Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Long Island, and then went out over the Atlantic toward New Jersey.  I had a window seat on the starboard side. Through the crystal clear night sky I beheld in magnificent illumination the western half of Long Island, New York City, and northern New Jersey. The ocean and harbor waterways contrasted in black with the incandescence of the city and its suburbs. It was a truly spectacular view, beyond comparison to any other view of New York. Unfortunately, it receded more quickly than I would have liked as the aircraft sped on toward Richmond. The rest of the journey, while comfortable and pleasant, was anticlimactic after this breathtaking sight.

Less dramatic and more routine were the domestic flights I made on Delta Air Lines in the 1970s and 80s. It was often aboard Delta 727s that I travelled between New York and Maine. Later on, I rode with Delta while assigned to the Victoria, the Comet, the Saturn, and the Bartlett. I always liked Delta, probably more for sentimental than sightseeing reasons. My very first airplane ride took place with Delta in January of 1976, from JFK to Bangor with a stop in Boston.¹ I recall my astonishment at arriving in Boston in about fifty minutes. Three weeks earlier, I had ridden the all-stops overnight train from Boston to New York. That had taken five hours.

Delta got me off to a good start, and in the end I made more flights on Delta than on any other airline. Many of these took place at night, and on a variety of airplanes including the Lockheed Tri-Star 1011, the largest aircraft in their fleet. I rode this one from Atlanta to New York to Boston in the midnight hours of Saturday, October 31, 1981, the night before Halloween. During the stop at JFK at about 3:00am, it seemed that the pilots had to taxi the plane all over the airport to reach the terminal. During this joyride I saw the British Airways’ Concorde for the first time. A sleek and elegant looking aircraft, she reposed under a battery of floodlights and was indeed an impressive sight. Years later, my children would take a liking to both the British and French Concordes when they would see them fly over their grandparents’ house while preparing to land at JFK.

Finally, I rode the famous Eastern Shuttle a few times between Boston and New York. In its day the shuttle was an aviation icon, but it’s been gone for a long while now. I remember one flight in particular, on a brilliantly clear and sunlit Sunday afternoon, May 25, 1985. I had a window seat on the port side as the plane took off from LaGuardia and headed east over Long Island. This gave me an unlimited view of the North Shore of Long Island, of Long Island Sound, and of coastal Connecticut and Rhode Island. It was truly beautiful. In about twenty minutes the aircraft reached Orient Point. Then it turned slightly northeastward and soon afterwards flew overland toward Boston. As I gazed down upon the Island, the Sound, and southern New England, I thought of how often my family and I had traversed this area by automobile, by train, by ship, and by airplane. In the future, my children would also traverse this area many times while going to and from their grandparents’ house. They would come to especially enjoy crossing Long Island Sound on the ferries between Connecticut and Long Island.

But while this family tradition still lay far in the future, the future had a way of coming very quickly. This Eastern Shuttle flight to Boston passed much too quickly, as did all the journeys of my vagabond youth. So many years have come and gone. So many airlines have come and gone with them. Delta has survived, but Piedmont, Eastern, Trans World, Bar Harbor, and numerous others have vanished. Likewise, many shipping companies have come and gone. Iconic names like American Export, American President, Moore-McCormack, United States Lines, and many others have disappeared. The passage of time has not always been kind to the transportation industry.

Nonetheless, it has been a privilege to travel across the vast globe by both sea and air, to see first-hand “the beauty of the earth”² on which we live as well as “the beauty of the skies.”³ While professionally I have no future in the transportation business, I can still happily sign on as a passenger from time to time and enjoy the benefits without the responsibilities!

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¹ This probably took place on Sunday afternoon, January 11, 1976, but I can’t say with certainty because I had not yet learned the virtue of meticulous record-keeping!
² Folliott S. Pierpont, “For the Beauty of the Earth,” in Hymns of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1985.
³ Ibid.

The Screamer

Screaming Pete, as he was called behind his back, commanded the Victoria for a time.  It was his last assignment before he retired, and it seemed that he wanted to go out with a bang.  When I joined the ship someone warned me, “This Captain screams at everyone a lot.  It doesn’t mean anything, so don’t take it personally.  He just likes to scream.”

This fellow was quickly proved right.  Screaming Pete lived up to his nickname, especially in port.  The Victoria was a fairly busy ship, so something was always going on during port visits.  Loading and discharging cargo, repairing machinery, training of new crewmen, shifting between berths, scaling and painting the decks—the Victoria did it all.  With all this activity and a multitude of contractors streaming on and off the ship, it was inevitable that things would get mixed up once in a while.  Whenever this happened, Screaming Pete let loose.  Those who did not know him well either cowered in fear or ran away in terror.  Those who did know him responded by telling him what he wanted to hear and continuing with their work.  This method always restored peace.

At sea, Screaming Pete was much quieter.  He seldom raised his voice, and he was clearly more relaxed and less stressed than he was in port.  The sea soothed him, even when it involved a rough North Atlantic crossing.  Only on one occasion did he do any serious screaming, but strangely, he screamed about something that had not gone wrong but was normal procedure.

On the first leg of her voyage from Charleston, South Carolina, to Holy Loch, Scotland, the Victoria rode the Gulf Stream.  This current always added a few knots to the ship’s speed, improving fuel economy and putting the vessel a bit ahead of schedule at the outset.  Getting ahead of schedule early in the voyage was good, because anything could happen subsequently to cause delays.  One afternoon on the twelve to four watch Screaming Pete came up to the bridge and examined the chart with me to see where we were and how we were doing.  Dismayed that the ship was not as far ahead as he wanted her to be, he started looking for a reason.  Glancing in the logbook, he noticed that the recorded propeller revolutions were slightly lower on the four to eight watch than on the others.  Deciding on the spur of the moment that that was the cause of the problem, he threw a screaming fit.

“What’s wrong with that second engineer?!” Screaming Pete shrilled.  “He’s dropping turns!  No wonder we’re losing speed!  He’s dropping turns!  What’s he thinking?!  What’s wrong with him?!  Why ever would he do this?!  I’m gonna have a word or two with the Chief about this!”  And he stormed down the stairs shrieking, “Chief! Chief!  We’ve got a problem!” as he went.

Unable to get a word in edgewise, and in fact knowing better than to even try, I could not remind the Captain that the second assistant engineer had to blow tubes twice each day.  Screaming Pete knew this very well, and had he been reminded, he would have immediately understood.  In the boilers, soot built up on the banks of water pipes, called tubes, that carried the water which would be boiled into steam and then used in the turbines.  Blowing tubes involved diverting a small amount of this steam, which reduced the propeller revolutions very slightly, and using it to blast the soot buildup off the boiler tubes.  If this were not done, the soot buildup would eventually become large enough to constrict the flue and prevent the combustion gasses from escaping.  They would be trapped in the combustion chamber and prevent sufficient oxygen from reaching the fires.  Left uncorrected, this condition could eventually shut the whole ship down.  Neither Screaming Pete nor any other Captain would want that to happen.

Screaming Pete’s voice trailed off as he hurried below to chase down the Chief Engineer.  After a few minutes, both men came up to the bridge, and Screaming Pete showed the Chief the logbook entries that indicated the average propeller revolutions for each watch.  Very calmly and patiently, the Chief explained the necessity of blowing tubes twice a day, especially on an older vessel like the Victoria that carried less than state-of-the-art machinery.  Screaming Pete listened quietly.  When the Chief finished his explanation, Pete authorized him to blow tubes as often as necessary.  Then he and the Chief thanked each other and went their separate ways.

Screaming Pete had been going to sea all his adult life.  He held an unlimited Master’s license, and he most certainly knew all about blowing tubes.  The rest of us also knew about blowing tubes, and we knew that Screaming Pete knew.  Why all the commotion about such a routine thing, then?  Some of the guys speculated that the old man was dreading retirement.  Whatever the reason, the rest of the crossing was peaceful.  Once in port again, though, the screaming resumed at full volume.

In all fairness to Screaming Pete, he was not the only screamer in the fleet, and neither was the Victoria the only ship to reverberate with such din.  A few other examples come to mind.

One afternoon when the Waccamaw was undergoing overhaul in the shipyard in Norfolk, I came across a fire station on the main deck that was gushing water.  Someone had left the valve in its fully open position, and the water just poured out and flowed all over the deck collecting sandblasting debris and making a muddy mess as it went.  Not finding any evident reason for this, I figured that it must have been an oversight before the water pressure was restored to the ship.  No sooner had I closed the valve than the first assistant engineer materialized out of nowhere and started screaming.  “What do you think you’re doing?!  Who do you think you are?!  Who said you could touch that valve?!  Since when do we need your help?!  Why can’t you mates mind your own business and leave the rest of us alone?!”  He stomped his feet and shook his fists as he shrieked these interrogatives at me.  Then he quieted down and mumbled for a brief moment.  Regaining his breath, though, he continued even louder and shriller than before. “Get outta here!! We don’t need you!!  Get outta here right now or I’ll take this fire axe and cut your arms off with it!!”  He turned toward the axe on the bulkhead and started to reach for it.  Two shipyard workers who were standing nearby exchanged horrified looks.  I didn’t wait to see if he would really use the axe on me.  I found the chief mate and told him that one of the engineers had gone off the deep end.  The altercation was later resolved in Captain Rigobello’s office.  Denying everything, the engineer asserted that I should take up a second career as a writer of fiction.

On another afternoon when the Saturn was undergoing an overhaul in Mobile, Alabama, a shipyard worker with an acetylene torch was about to burn an access hole in a steel bulkhead.  He had the torch fired up and was just about to apply it to the steel when Captain Aspiotis happened to come along and asked him what he was doing.  The yard guy explained, and then Captain Aspiotis asked him, “Did you look on the other side of this bulkhead to see what’s there, to see if it’s safe?”  The yard guy had not.  The Captain went with him, and they both found that the other side of the bulkhead was a linen locker.  Shelves filled with towels, tablecloths, napkins, sheets, pillowcases, aprons, and mess jackets ran from the deck to the overhead on the other side of the bulkhead.  If the yard guy had started in with the acetylene torch as he had been poised to do, all of this would have gone up in flames and could possibly have set a large part of the ship ablaze.  Captain Aspiotis blew up like a torpedo.  He screamed in Greek and English, called the yard guy more terrible names than any of us knew existed, and made himself heard all over the ship and on the pier as well.  He outscreamed Screaming Pete, and with good reason.  If he had not come along at just that moment when the shipyard worker was about to start in with his torch, a disaster would have resulted.  Besides the obvious property damage, people could have been seriously injured or even killed.

But that was an extreme case.  Most of the screaming that took place aboard ship was prompted by lesser causes such as mess hall disputes or poker games gone bad.  Only Screaming Pete screamed about everything and anything, and none of that was life-threatening.  Furthermore, most of the screaming sessions took place in port.  At sea, things were different.

I think the main reason for this was that being at sea was just different from being ashore.  The water had a soothing effect on almost everyone aboard every ship.  There were a few exceptions who would not be soothed by anything, but only a few.  The vast majority in every crew were glad to get underway and escape from shoreside entanglements that often cost too much money and produced unpleasant results.  Some of the fellows said that they felt safer on the ocean than they did ashore, often meaning that they were safe from themselves and their impulses when they were at sea and away from temptations.  Besides that, however, peace and quiet reigned at sea.  There were no man made distractions; there were only the basic elements of the sea and sky.  These elements with their atmosphere of peacefulness combined to form a place that was set apart from the everyday noise and commotion of human activity.  Even in heavy weather with the ship taking a mauling from the wind and waves, the sea remained a place set apart. 

There are places on land like this, too.  Often, one must travel far from the populated areas in order to find such peace and quiet or to find a natural setting unsullied by human hands and thus set apart.  Mountain ranges, river valleys, forests, meadows, and lakes often serve as places set apart for people seeking relief from the noise and commotion of life.  Many people report that they can engage in quiet and reverent meditation and feel the Spirit in such locations.  For me, however, the great waterways of the world were, and still are, the places set apart for quiet reverence and feeling the Spirit.

But there are exceptions.  The most obvious one, of course, is the temple.  Special events take place in the temple, and it has been my family’s great privilege to participate in hundreds of temple ordinances for deceased ancestors and relatives.  We could not avoid meditating in quiet reverence and feeling the Spirit during these ordinances.  Furthermore, we experienced the ineffable sense of accomplishment that comes from getting something extremely important done.  This was always particularly so in the baptistry, where the ordinance work started, and in the sealing room, where the ordinances were concluded.  The peace, the quiet, the serenity, and the sense of being in a place set apart from the outside world all contributed to the sacredness and specialness of the temple ordinances.

A few other locations of this nature also come to mind.  First is the Sacred Grove.  My initial visit there took place before I joined the Church, actually, before I had any intention of joining the Church.  I had previously read about the First Vision that had taken place there in 1820, and I believed in it.  When I walked into the Grove, a sensation which at the time I could not describe came upon me.  I received the impression that the Grove was a very special place, a unique place, hallowed ground, and that I was extremely fortunate to be able to go there and visit it.  I came to understand later that I had felt the Spirit there.  I did realize at the time, however, that the Sacred Grove was the perfect place for quiet and reverent meditation.  Seizing this opportunity, Miss Patty and I gathered the children on a bench near the entrance to the Grove, and she quietly read the Prophet Joseph Smith’s account of the First Vision to them.  The children were all very young then, and they found this fascinating.

Outside the Sacred Grove, of course, life went on.  Occasionally we could hear traffic noise on the local roads and the whistles of trains as they sped through Palmyra.  These sounds were very distant, though, and they did not seem at all intrusive.  Something about the acoustics in the Sacred Grove had a mitigating effect on these outside noises.  A much more prevalent sound was that of birds chirping—a cheerful, uplifting, and musical sound that added to the ambiance of the Grove.

Another such set apart place is the nearby Hill Cumorah.  Just as in the Sacred Grove, peace, serenity, and an overriding calm sensation reigned there.  Like the Sacred Grove, the Hill Cumorah is hallowed ground, a special place that filled a unique and critically important role in human history.  It also lends itself to quiet and reverent meditation, to a contemplation of the singular events that occurred there and their significance for the entire human family.

Finally, several sublime sites that are set apart from the secular world and serve a purpose above and beyond the commonplace are the various cemeteries my family and I have visited in the course of our genealogical research.  All of these are oases of peace and quiet, plots of hallowed ground dedicated to the repose of our deceased ancestors and relatives.  Visiting these cemeteries is like entering a temple.  An atmosphere of quiet reverence prevails.  People follow a certain code of conduct.  They pray.  They converse quietly.  They place flowers on the gravesites.  They show courtesy to each other and deference to the grieving.  They are on their best behavior.

The one cemetery we visit most often is Holy Rood in Westbury, Long Island, in the suburbs of New York.  My grandparents are interred there.  A fairly large property, one end of Holy Rood borders on downtown Westbury, which is always busy.  The other end borders on an even busier six-lane traffic nightmare that connects suburban shopping centers.  Ironically, this street is named Old Country Road.  When turning off this road to enter Holy Rood, it always feels like we are entering a different world.  Holy Rood is always peaceful, quiet, and serene.  It is also a house of order.  Designed and maintained to the highest standards, it is immaculately clean.  Tall trees and strategically placed shrubbery blot out both the sight and sound of most of the traffic.  Flowers decorate many of the grave sites, and a carpet of thick green grass seems particularly inviting after driving on acres of ugly pavement.  It is truly an oasis, a place set apart from the noise and commotion of the secular world.  Like the Sacred Grove, the Hill Cumorah, or any temple, Holy Rood is an ideal place to engage in quiet and reverent meditation.

In a world that is all too often filled with noise and commotion, the opportunity to escape from it all, even for a short time, raises us to a higher spiritual plane.  As President Boyd K. Packer has remarked,

There are few places now that offer an opportunity to meditate in quiet reverence.  What a privilege it is to sit quietly without conversation and direct the mind to reverent and spiritual thoughts!  It is a refreshment to the soul.¹

A long voyage across an ocean which by its very nature is set apart from the mainstream of human activity is one of the best situations that offer such an opportunity.  The sea repeatedly demonstrated to me its ability to calm even the most hot-tempered and hard-headed personalities.  It even had the power to settle Screaming Pete down.  Unfortunately, it’s not readily available to everyone.  What a shame.  The majority must then look elsewhere for this refreshment.  But such set apart places that invite quiet meditation and reverence do exist; one need only search out a site that resonates with one’s spiritual leanings.  Wherever that may place be, it will serve as a refuge from the noise and commotion that the secular world constantly screams at people.  It will be an oasis of peace and quiet that even the most strident screaming cannot penetrate.  It will prove the prophecy of Isaiah:

In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength (Isa. 30:15).

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¹ Boyd K. Packer, The Holy Temple, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1980, p. 58.

Five Ships and Family History

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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