Set in Stone

This past summer Miss Patty gave me a book.  This gift did not mark any special occasion such as a birthday or anniversary, so it arrived unexpectedly.  She had found it at a local bargain shop, thought that I would like it, and then surprised me with it.  For two reasons, I liked it very much, and so I was pleased to receive it and add it to my library.  First, it concerned a sublime and uplifting subject, and second, it brought back memories of a special event that had taken place during my time aboard the Rigel in the Mediterranean.

 

The Rigel sailed from Norfolk, Virginia, on Tuesday, May 22, 1979, with me on board as a brand new third mate.   She transited the Strait of Gibraltar during the midnight hours of Saturday, June   2, and docked in Malaga, Spain, the following morning.  She then spent the summer hauling military cargo around the Mediterranean.  A busy ship with a crowded itinerary, the Rigel made many short voyages and visited many ports.  Opportunities to go ashore and see the sights abounded, but usually for only brief intervals.  Occasionally, an exception arose, and one of these yielded an especially remarkable experience.  Over the weekend of June 16 and 17, the ship rested idly at the Stazione Maritima in Napoli.  With no work to be done other than basic watch standing, most of the crew seized the opportunity to enjoy a weekend off in sunny Italy.  Early on Saturday morning, then, four of us boarded a train at the big Neapolitan station and set out for Rome.  On arrival at Roma Termini, we took a taxi to the Hotel Bramante on the Vicolo delle Palline, a quiet side street near the Vatican.

 

Long acknowledged as one of the premiere cities of the world, Rome was a truly fascinating place.  Saturated with centuries of history, magnificent art and architecture, and of course, Christianity, the eternal city offered more to see and do than we could possibly fit into one short weekend.  Undaunted, though, we took in as much as we could in the limited time that we had.  On Sunday evening, we returned to Roma Termini and took the last train back to Napoli.  Monday morning found us all back at work aboard the Rigel.

 

Of all the artistic treasures in Rome, one marble statue in particular stood out because of its tremendous beauty and simplicity and its unique historical and spiritual significance.  This was Michelangelo’s masterpiece, the Pietà.  Perhaps the best known and most admired statue in all Christendom, the Pietà caught my attention, drew me into itself, and held me there for a very long time.  It stood silent and sublime, radiating spiritualty and witnessing to the atoning sacrifice of the Savior and the eternal truth of the Gospel.  A reverent isolation surrounded the statue, which was remarkable in a building otherwise filled with visitors.  I thus gazed in quiet solitude at the Pietà and studied it undisturbed from every angle.  Even my shipmates had disappeared for a while and left me to experience the Pietà on my own.  

 

And what an experience it was!  The Pietà appeared so life-like that I had to remind myself that it was, in fact, marble.  Mere words in pedestrian English cannot describe the marble Pietà’s ability to convey human emotion, to speak silently to the human heart, and to testify infallibly of the divine work of salvation for all people.  For me, it was simply an ineffable experience that left little to say but so very much to quietly contemplate.  Forty-one years afterwards, I found these lines in the book that Miss Patty gave me sufficient to the occasion:

 

There is so much in the Pietà that if you lived a thousand years and

wrote a thousand books you can never express it.  In other words,

there is a divine quality in it.  It must have been inspired, because

how could a boy, twenty-four years old, create a work like that?

You can’t imagine how.  It was a special grace from God.  It is true,

he had to be an artist, but art alone could not have made the Pietà

 

The Pietà transforms you inwardly.  A prayerful spirit comes over

you.  It changes people.[1]

 

This book, a collection of photographs with only limited text, contained striking black-and-white images of the Pietà which were so detailed and life-like that studying them almost became a second visit to the statue.  Thus, the inward transformation and change wrought by the Pietà were renewed, resulting in a second epiphany.  Beyond acknowledging this, any attempt to express something so supernal in human language would prove meaningless.

 

And so I returned to my ship, changed and transformed.  The Rigel remained busy in Napoli for a week.  She loaded and discharged cargo, shifted berths twice, and finally sailed for Souda Bay, Greece, on Saturday, June 23.  She returned to Napoli several weeks later, but without the leisure time for a second Roman holiday.  A unique opportunity at the time, my weekend in Rome and experience of the Pietà is now a treasured memory, and my new book of Pietà photographs helps me to remember and relive this special occasion.

 

While I was in Rome, I bought two postcard depictions of the Pietà.  These are much better quality than any pictures that I could have taken, but still only a substitute for actually seeing the statue.  Nonetheless, I’m happy to share them here: 

 

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[1] Charles Rich, quoted in Robert Hupka, Michelangelo Pietà, New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1975, p. 80.

The Seas of Tranquility

This past summer our home city of Nashua undertook two noteworthy construction projects.  One involved the tearing up and repaving of Pennichuck Street, which provided an excitement and entertainment extravaganza for the grandchildren.  The other was the rebuilding of the boat ramp near Greeley Park.  This primitive facility, located in the woods at the end of a badly beaten up dirt road, has long enabled recreational boaters to launch trailered boats into the Merrimack River.  This  year the launching ramp was rebuilt with better materials, the access road and parking area, though still dirt, were enlarged and improved, and a small trash dumpster and porta-potty were added  Otherwise, it remained a bare bones set-up, with no electricity, no illumination, and no running water. 

 

Situated within the city limits yet far from the madding crowds of busy streets and noisy neighborhoods, the boat ramp had an atmosphere of peace and quiet in the early mornings and thus offered a respite from the commotion and confusion of life.  Located about a mile from our house, it lay within easy walking distance along the largely untrafficked Boston and Maine Railroad and dirt access road.  I went there once or twice each week, and I always arrived in the pre-dawn darkness, well in advance of the boaters.

Perched in quiet solitude on a large rock or fallen tree trunk, I gazed eastward and watched the dawn break over the farmland of neighboring Litchfield.  The only artificial lights came from a farm house directly across the river and from a residential neighborhood a mile downstream.  Otherwise, Nature lit the scene with several stars, the occasional Moon, and the soon-to-emerge Sun.  The scattered clouds reflected the Sun’s light in pink, orange, and purple, and these colors were in turn reflected on the unrippled surface of the river.  With its water as flat and undisturbed as a mill pond, the Merrimack, like a mirror, reflected all the colors of the sky above and the rows of trees along its banks.  As the light grew brighter and culminated in sunrise, the effect was sublime and spiritual.  The still small voice carried clearly through the cool dawn air over the tranquil Merrimack, and this pristine natural setting became supernatural.  A perfect way to start the day! 

I usually had at least half an hour before the first boaters arrived and broke the silence.  In this interval my mind wandered to other locales of peace and quiet and solitude.  I have known several such places over the years, but here at the boat ramp one in particular stood out in memory, and my wandering mind eventually settled on it. 

The South Atlantic between South America and Africa is a calm, quiet, and lonely ocean.  There has long been commerce on it, of course, mostly between the European nations and their former colonies, but this has never rivaled the volumes of traffic that have plied the North Atlantic.  Ships would go for many, many days without seeing another vessel on the South Atlantic. Vast stretches of this great sea have always been and still remain isolated from the outside world.  For the seaman  who likes solitude and wants to make a quiet voyage on a calm sea with mild weather, the South Atlantic is the ocean of choice. 

My first encounter with the South Atlantic occurred not aboard ship, but on an airplane.  In the mid-afternoon of Wednesday, September 12, 1979, and accompanied by five other crewmen, I left Patrick Air Force Base near Melbourne, Florida, aboard a military cargo aircraft bound for Ascension Island, The airplane made a stop for dinner and refueling at Antigua, and then travelled overnight across the equator to Ascension, arriving early in the morning on Thursday the 13^th.

A British colonial outpost located at 7° 56’ south latitude and 14° 25’ west longitude, Ascension Island was a dormant volcanic mountain used mostly for military purposes by both the United Kingdom and the United States.  It was also a port of call for the range instrumentation vessel General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, which my five new colleagues and I joined when she arrived from Recife, Brazil, on Saturday, the 15th.  The ship anchored off Georgetown, the main settlement, in the late morning.  We and several pallets of freight and provisions were delivered alongside in a cargo launch at 1:00pm.  Four hours later, the Vandenberg weighed anchor and got underway again. 

The two and a half days of enforced leisure while waiting for the ship on Ascension Island had not been popular with all of the new crewmen.  I rather liked it, though.  Ascension had a nice library, great food, unique scenery, and enticing beaches.  We were free to roam pretty much as we wished, and I naturally gravitated toward the beach.  I was all set to jump into the beautifully inviting, clear, warm water of the South Atlantic, when a hammerhead shark appeared right in front of me.  I quickly changed my mind about going swimming! 

After two and a half days, though, it felt good to see the Vandenberg arrive.  I needed to be going somewhere, getting on with my career, upgrading my license, and so on.  These things were very important to me then.  And so that Saturday evening, with the ship on a southeasterly heading and making about eleven knots, I stood my first 8 to 12 watch as the new third mate. 

The Vandenberg headed for a special operations area a few hundred miles off the coast of South Africa and arrived there on Sunday, September 23.  She remained on station there until Thursday the 27^th, and then proceeded to another special operations area in mid-ocean, about a thousand miles south of Ascension Island.  On station at this new site from Monday, October 1, through Friday the 5^th,  she then returned briefly to Ascension on Tuesday the 9th.  I reached the ripe old age of 22 at sea on Sunday the 7^th. 

To call this voyage peaceful and quiet would be a masterpiece of understatement.  In this entire time, the Vandenberg came upon one other ship and sighted one island, Saint Helena, on radar.  Otherwise, this large tract of the South Atlantic remained devoid of human intrusion.  In addition, the weather was consistently mild with warm air, excellent visibility, a  mostly clear sky, and a calm sea.  After spending the summer aboard the Rigel in the hustle and bustle of the Mediterranean, this voyage on the placid and remote South Atlantic seemed like a vacation!

Since the Vandenberg provided such an easy life, and since I was young and ambitious, I used this leisure time for professional development.  On the 8 to 12 morning watches, I took hourly sun lines, worked up running fixes, calculated local apparent noon, and worked out a latitude by meridian altitude.  On the 8 to 12 evening watches, I studied the constellations of the Southern Hemisphere and selected the Southern Cross as my favorite.  Frequently around dinner time, I returned to the bridge to observe the green flash at sunset.  In my off-duty hours, I studied oceanography and meteorology, particularly ocean current circulation, surface wind patterns, and tropical cyclone formation.  Even though my third mate’s license was only five months old, it was never too early to prepare for the next round of exams for the second mate’s license.  For more recreational reading, I had brought along a history of Christianity. 

During this voyage in the South Atlantic, the Vandenberg carried a contingent of technicians who worked with sophisticated electronic equipment in carrying out the ship’s national defense mission for the federal government.  We Merchant Marine crewmen sailed the ship for them and took them where they needed to go.  When the ship arrived back at Ascension Island at 6:00am on Tuesday, October 9, the technicians’ work in the South Atlantic was finished.  On sailing again that afternoon, the Vandenberg went north to Monrovia, Liberia, and arrived for a weekend visit early on Friday the 12^th.   Along the way, she crossed the equator and left the South Atlantic behind. 

I, too, left the South Atlantic behind and returned only twice, in February and May of 2016.  I did not join a ship on these occasions, but traveled to Brazil to visit my daughter and newborn granddaughter.  I encountered the South Atlantic fleetingly from airplanes, from the coast road on the east side of Salvador, and from the lighthouse and promenade at the southern tip of Salvador. About 400 miles up the coast stood Recife, the city where my daughter was married in July of 2014 and the port from which the Vandenberg had sailed for Ascension Island 35 years previously.  After such a long time, it felt wonderful to gaze upon this magnificent sea of tranquility again.  I could have remained at the South Atlantic oceanfront indefinitely, but the baby needed attention. 

I thought I could have remained at the Nashua boat ramp indefinitely, too.  But after the Sun rose over the Merrimack River, this inland sea of tranquility always lost some of its idyllic peacefulness when the first boaters arrived and noisily launched their boats and revved their engines.  At this point, it was time to walk home again.  A busy day awaited me there, a day filled with household chores, tumultuous street repairs, and very excited grandchildren.

No matter how busy and tumultuous the day, however, my dawn retreats at the waterfront  enabled me to “Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence,”[1] and thereby to “be at peace with God.”[2]

 

Next, I am happy to present two photographs of the South Atlantic from our family archives.  In the first, we see Ascension Island, including the principal settlement of Georgetown.  I took this picture on Saturday, September 15, 1979, from the starboard bridge wing of the General Hoyt S, Vandenberg.  I thought that I might never return to this uniquely beautiful island, so I seized the opportunity and took several photographs of it.

In the second picture, taken four decades later on Monday, March 30, 2020,, the majestic South Atlantic Ocean stretches out to the horizon from the beach and lighthouse of Itapuã on the east side of Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.  My daughter took this photograph, which features my granddaughter Miss Lydia Elizabeth gazing seaward from the beach.  Such attraction to the ocean seems to run in the family!

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[1] Max Ehrmann, “Desiderata,” 1927, found at www.desiderata.com. 

[2] Ibid.

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.

Reunions at the Rare

On the day after my father’s service at Holy Rood, I returned to New Hampshire.  Traveling first by train into Manhattan and then by bus to Nashua, I had a few hours’ layover in the city.  With the weather unusually mild for the first day of February, I took this opportunity to walk around and revisit some of my favorite spots.  Even though I hadn’t actually lived in the area for a long time, I remained a native New Yorker, and I still felt very much at home there.

From Penn Station, I went first to the Franciscan church on West 32nd Street and spent some quiet moments there.  Next, I walked six blocks south with the intention of briefly stopping by the Rare Bar and Grill for old time’s sake.  Located on the first floor of the Hilton Hotel at 152 West 26^th Street near Seventh Avenue, the Rare was an easy walk from Penn and has been the site of several happy meetings with my friend and former colleague Walter Burke.  I had happy memories of the Rare, just as I had of many places in the city, and I thought it might be nice to stop by for a moment and reminisce.

When I arrived, something didn’t seem right.  The signs were gone.  The outside menu was gone. The inside was dark.  No one was there.  A notice on the door revealed that the hotel was seeking a new tenant for the restaurant in order to improve the dining service for its guests.  Then I realized, to my utter astonishment, that the Rare was closed!  Not closed in the sense that it just hadn’t opened yet for the day, but completely shut down and out of business!  I was shocked and disappointed.  How could this be?  I had been there with Walter only the previous May, although admittedly, that was now eight months ago.  I walked away feeling very dejected.

This dejection soon turned into sentiment and nostalgia.  I remembered the first time I had met Walter at the Rare.  That had been by his invitation on Monday afternoon, March 28, 2016, and it was an exceptionally happy and truly memorable occasion.  That first reunion after so many years proved to be so enjoyable that we met at the Rare again several months later on Wednesday, November 2, and then again a year afterwards on Wednesday, November 1, 2017.  Most of these meetings took place when I was in New York visiting my parents; thus, their timing was very convenient.

The Rare was a great place for two alumni of the sea to meet and dine and remember the voyages of their youth.  It was a quiet and uncrowded restaurant with great food and attentive service, and it was very convenient to Penn Station.  Also, in a neighborhood that was practically saturated with sports bars and fast food joints, it was neither of these.  It was a cut above the ordinary, but not so fancy that two merchant seamen wouldn’t know how to behave there.  Furthermore, since the Rare formed a link to our past seafaring careers, it was easy to start feeling some attachment to the place.  I’ve never felt sentimental about any other restaurant, but then, the Rare was different.

Dinner alone at the Rare would not have been any fun.  The enjoyment lay in the companionship and camaraderie even more than in the food.  With the palpable common ground of the fraternity of the sea, and with a shared outlook on life formed by the rigors of going to sea, our conversation flowed as freely and as strongly as a flood tide.  There was always so much to talk about!  The time seemed to stand still as we recalled ships and shipmates, voyages and destinations, adventures at sea and in port, and so very much more.  But of course, the time did not stand still at the Rare any more than it had all those years ago aboard ship.  Always too soon, we needed to return to the present day and walk back to Penn Station.

Our last reunion at the Rare took place on Tuesday, May 28, 2019.  Almost a year ago now.  It never occurred to me then that the Rare would be shut down and that our reunions would never take place there again.  But “time marches on,” as Walter remarked, “whether we’re ready for it or not.”

Indeed, time has been marching on relentlessly since the very beginning.  Everyone and everything have lasted only so long.  We recognize the brevity of our own lives, of course, but even grand creations that were built to last for centuries, such as the World Trade Center and the original Pennsylvania Railroad Station, have lived only for brief moments of time.  So, too, did most of the ships that Walter and I sailed on.  To my knowledge, all but two have gone to the scrap yard.  Only the Mercury and the Comet remain, moored in the reserve fleet on the West Coast.

As family members, former shipmates, old friends, and even great ships and iconic buildings leave this life and return to dust, it becomes easy for one remaining to think as the Psalmist: “I am a stranger in the earth” (Ps. 119:19).  As everything that was familiar becomes lost, one can feel out of place in the world as it changes incessantly and becomes increasingly different and even strange.  The demise of the Rare Bar and Grill has come to symbolize for me the loss of so much more.  With it closed, one of the last links to my irretrievably gone seafaring past is now itself irretrievably gone.  I will miss the Rare just as I miss going to sea.

But as the deacon asserted in the service at Holy Rood, “we have our citizenship in heaven” (Phil. 3:20 NAB).  No longer will we be “strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God” (Eph. 2:19).  On an earthly voyage that by its very nature is fraught with uncertainty, change, loss, and sorrow, there can be no better future than to ultimately return to our celestial home port.

Now, we have photographic documentation of a reunion at the Rare.  A member of the wait staff took this portrait of Walter and me after dinner on Wednesday, November 1, 2017.  Walter stands on the left, and I’m on the right.  It was a wonderfully happy and festive occasion.   

The Passing of the Torch

Buoyed by the happy memory of his recent last voyage aboard the ferry Cape Henlopen, and sustained by frequent visits from his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, my father spent his final months in quiet repose at Nashua Crossings, an assisted living facility near the family home.  The staff there took good care of him and kept him comfortable, well-fed, and safe.  In the summer, he enjoyed the great outdoors of the courtyard.  In the winter, he appreciated the warmth of the great indoors, thankful that cleaning up the snow and ice was no longer his responsibility.  In all seasons, he enjoyed the company of his family and took special delight in his three great-grandchildren.  They eased the loneliness and mitigated the infirmities of his old age.

But just as his time aboard the Cape Henlopen went by too quickly, so did his time with the family.  The debilitations of advanced age overtook him. He passed pleasant holidays at Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, but in this new year he required hospitalization and then hospice care.  Finally, on Friday evening, January 24, 2020, my father quietly rang up “Finished with Engines.”  Concluding an earthly voyage of 98 years, 2 months, and 22 days, he returned to the celestial sphere from which he had arrived almost a century ago.  There he joined our Mom and many other family members and old friends who had gone before him.  As the last of his siblings and cousins to leave this life, he has passed the torch on to a new generation that must now preside over the family.

A week later, on Friday the 31^st, I attended an interment service for my father at the Cemetery of the Holy Rood in Westbury, Long Island.  He had made his return to New York for this occasion not aboard a ship, but in a hearse.  I followed him on a bus.  In our last moments together as father and son at Holy Rood, the deacon intoned the customary prayers for the dead and, quoting Saint Paul, reminded us that “we have our citizenship in heaven” and that “we await the coming of our Savior” (both Phil. 3:20, NAB).  These good points remind us that all of our earthly voyages are temporary and imperfect.  The best is yet to come.

We who now carry the family torch in this life have the obligation and the opportunity to serve both the living and the dead.  This year, we plan to continue the temple ordinances for my Mom and several of her cousins.  Next year, we will start the temple ordinances for my father.  For many years, we will help with the temporal and spiritual needs of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  These family projects are “a sacred duty”[1] because “the family is ordained of God”[2] and is “central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children.”[3]

Now, two photographs from the family archives.   My Mom took this father-and-teenage-son portrait on the bank of the Penobscot River at Fort Knox in Prospect, Maine, in October of 1976.  In the background, an unidentified tanker was discharging cargo at the oil dock in the paper mill town of Bucksport.  Many voyages lay ahead of us when this picture was taken.

Finally, a closer view of the rusty tanker that we were admiring.  Regarding my choice of a career in the Merchant Marine, I recall my father remarking that there was more opportunity for advancement aboard ship than there was in his field of school administration.  Every ship had a Captain.  Every ship had a Chief Engineer.  If I worked hard and studied diligently for the license exams, I could make it to the top.  It didn’t quite turn out that way, but he did have my best interests at heart! 

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[1] “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, General Relief Society Meeting, September 23, 1995.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.