Voyage to Somewhere, page 2
When all the seabags were piled on the dock the men formed a line and started swinging them aboard. One bag almost fell in the water, and there were loud cries of alarm.
“Lose that and I go naked for the rest of the war,” a tall, thin seaman said.
When all the bags were piled in a forward corner of the well deck, the men filed aboard over the gangway. The steel decks of the ship trembled under their feet and the air resounded with their voices. “It’s like blood seeping into a dead body and giving it life,” I thought. “She’ll never be quiet again—till she sinks or is left, after the war, to rot in some quiet creek. I wonder when she will be quiet again.”
Mr. Rudd came aboard last of all and we greeted each other like old friends. The j.g. came up and introduced himself as Mr. Crane, the executive officer. I told him to tell one of the chiefs to have the men stow their gear in the forecastle, then come with the other officers into my cabin for a conference.
Five minutes later we met in my cabin. I sat in my desk chair, Mr. Rudd and Mr. Crane sat on the bunk beside me, and Mr. Warren, the ensign, stood. I took a good look at all of them. Mr. Rudd was as grossly fat, yet as strong-looking as I remembered him. Mr. Crane was a medium sized, white-skinned man of about twenty-eight; he looked like an office worker. Mr. Warren, the ensign, was not older than twenty-one or two; he was tall and slender, and there was something about his face which made him look as though he were always thinking intensely about something. For a moment the four of us said nothing. This meeting was so obviously the beginning of something, it was so obviously a time of importance for all of us, that no one knew quite how to begin.
“It is a time-honored custom,” I said at length, “for commanding officers to say some choice words at a time like this, but we have so much to do and there are so many questions on my mind that I think we better start right in on business. The four of us have to get this ship and crew organized into a working unit as soon as possible. To do this properly I want to find out what each of us is best qualified to do. Mr. Crane, what sea experience have you had?”
“I’ve never been to sea,” he said. “I was stationed in the district office.”
“How about you, Mr. Warren?”
“I’ve never been to sea either, except for my cadet cruise. I was just commissioned.”
I glanced at Mr Rudd. His face was expressionless.
“Well,” I said, “Mr. Rudd here is a Regular, and has been to sea fifteen years, and I have had enough experience, I think, so we’ll probably make out all right until you learn. To begin with, however, you, Mr. Crane, take care of all the administrative duties; make up a watch and quarter bill, make up watch lists, divide the crew into the proper departments—in short, get the whole thing figured out on paper and show it to me. Mr. Rudd, of course, will organize the whole black gang. We won’t have to worry about that. Mr. Warren, you will be the supply officer. Get together a list of all the equipment that is actually aboard, show it to me, and I’ll tell you what you’ll have to get.”
I paused. I was thinking of all the things that had to be checked—sextants, charts, food supplies, spare parts. My mind became confused.
“How about the crew, Mr. Crane? Do you know anything about them?” I asked.
“I just rode down on the truck with them. Never saw them before.”
He spoke in a calm, capable-sounding voice. In spite of the fact that he had never been to sea, he did not seem flustered by his new job.
I said, “You better get them mustered on the well deck and we’ll see what we have. Get them lined up and give me a call.”
A few moments later he came in and said the crew was mustered. I went on deck and saw two rows of men standing at attention. The first impression I had was of their extreme youth; the stem expression which at attention they endeavored to impart to their faces was incongruous: they looked like children who have been told they must not laugh. Unconsciously my eye searched for some faces which looked older and more experienced. The two chief petty officers were more than boys; they appeared about thirty years of age, but one of them bore no hash marks upon his arm and the other boasted only one. That meant that one of them had been in the service less than four years and the other less than eight. The men were in two rows, and in the back row I saw one man with grey hair. All the others looked as though they had been taken directly out of high school. As I walked down the ranks of the men I saw that they were scrutinizing me with as much interest as I was them. Again I had the feeling that this was a meeting so important that it was impossible to say or do anything that would really live up to it. I stood for a moment looking at the men and letting them look at me.
“At ease,” I said.
There was the small shuffling sound of mass relaxation that always come after that order.
“Starting at the left of the front line,” I said, “call out your faces.”
“Widen,” the first man called out. “White.” “Whysowitz.” “Wigly.” “Willis.”
It dawned on all of us at the same time that all the names began with “W.” The personnel officer had simply taken them all in one block from an alphabetical list! As the last men called out “Wenton,” “Wright,” and “Wortly,” they were all smiling. The situation did not, however, appear humorous to me. It meant that no effort had been made to fit together a harmonious crew, no effort had been made to make the proper blending of experienced and green hands, of men with exceptionally fine records and men with medium and bad records. We had just been given pot luck from the alphabetical list. I wondered about their picking Mr. Warren. Probably that was just coincidence, for the officers were kept on a separate list. Nevertheless I didn’t like all the names beginning with “W.” It gave me a funny feeling.
When the last man had called out his name, I paused. “Well,” I said finally, “you can see there has been no favoritism in picking this crew.”
The men laughed dutifully.
“How many of you have had sea duty?” I asked. “Everyone who has had more than two years of sea duty, put up his hand.”
Out of the twenty-six men two put up their hands, the chief machinist’s mate, who was a tall, thin man with a mustache, and the gray-haired first class boatswain’s mate.
“Everyone who’s had more than one year’s sea duty, put up his hand.”
The chief boatswain’s mate put his hand in the air. No one else moved.
“Anyone who has had any sea duty, put up his hand,” I said at length. One hand went up. It was that of a quartermaster, a dark young man of about twenty-three years. He left his hand in the air uncertainly a moment, then put it down. The men shifted uneasily on their feet. Only four of them had been to sea at all! Twenty-two absolutely green hands out of a crew of twenty-six! For a moment a wave of panic swept over me. I was trying to think of something to say when a truck arrived on the dock beside us.
“Stores for the SV-126,” the driver called.
“Well, men, let’s hustle these stores aboard,” I said. “Chief, use all hands to get stores aboard.”
The men broke from the ranks and in a moment were rolling, lifting, and passing the contents of the truck aboard the ship.
There were coils of line half as high as a man, bundles of sweepers, bales of toilet paper, cartons of canned beans, an instrument box marked “fragile,” and cases of fifty-calibre ammunition. In less than half an hour the deck was such a mad clutter of miscellaneous gear that it was impossible to find standing room.
“Mr. Crane,” I called, “get the Chief to have this stuff stowed properly before more comes aboard.”
“Where shall I have it stowed?” Mr. Crane asked.
“Oh, the ammunition goes in the magazines, the toilet paper goes in the lazarette …” I paused and wiped my brow. As I did that a seaman wearing a pistol came up to me with a message. I signed his receipt book and opened the envelope he handed me. It was an order from the district office.
“Make ready for sea and sail before 1500 of May twenty-four for Milne Bay, New Guinea. Routing Instructions will be supplied.”
I didn’t read any farther. That gave us just three days, seventy-two hours, to get ready. I glanced up and saw Mr. Rudd standing near me. Without a word I handed him the dispatch. He read it and handed it back. I glanced around the cluttered deck and at the seamen who were increasing rather than diminishing its disorder.
“Well, Mr. Rudd,” I said, “what do you think?”
He gave me a sardonic grin, and walked away.
CHAPTER FOUR
I MADE AN appointment to speak to the Commander and ask him for a delay on our sailing time. After waiting three-quarters of an hour in an anteroom I was led into the Commander’s office. The Commander was a thin, very small man whose three heavy gold stripes seemed to weigh down his arms.
“I’ve come to speak to you, sir, about the SV-126. We’re supposed to sail in forty-eight hours. The engineering officer and I and four of the crew are the only ones who have ever been to sea at all. We have been aboard only twenty-four hours, the ship has had no shakedown cruise, and half the equipment isn’t aboard. I feel I need at least a week to make her ready for sea.”
“If we all waited until we were really ready,” the Commander said, “not a battle would be fought.”
“This is not a fighting ship, sir,” I replied. “The main thing we have to fight for the time being is just lack of knowledge and lack of preparedness.”
The Commander cleared his throat. “Those little supply ships are needed right away,” he said. “I’ve got orders to get them out as soon as possible. I know your crew is inexperienced, but they’re not going to get experience lying at the wharf.”
“No,” I said, “but at least I can get the equipment I need. Not only is much of the authorized equipment undelivered, but I want to try to get authorization for lots of other equipment. We have no gyro compass, no azimuth circles, no radar, and only two fifty-calibre machine guns. The guns fire only over the stern. If anything attacked us over the bow we couldn’t fire a shot.”
The Commander held up his hand. “You’ve got to realize that these small supply ships are being mass produced,” he said, “and we don’t have enough fancy stuff to go around. These ships are made to carry small amounts of cargo, and, if necessary, to be sacrificed. Don’t try to get more equipment authorized. And meet your sailing date if you possibly can. That’s important. There’s nothing you can gain waiting around here, and I get dispatches every day asking for more supply ships.”
Somehow the Commander made me feel guilty about asking for either time or equipment. At the same time I felt angry. It was so obviously absurd to sail such an ill-equipped, ill-manned ship anywhere, yet I was begging and feeling badly about it.
I got up. “We’ll sail her if we can,” I said, and went out. I hurried back to the ship.
That night all hands worked until midnight. The more we worked the more work was uncovered. Every inventory we made disclosed more gear lacking. In the navigational department there was no nautical almanac, and the chronometer was discovered to have no steady rate. The cooks found that there were not enough plates and cups to go around, and in the engine room Mr. Rudd found that the testing blanks in the pipelines had not been extracted. When everyone was so tired that further work was impossible and when the men had finally turned the floodlights off on deck and retired to their quarters, I knocked on the door of Mr. Rudd’s stateroom to have a talk with him. I found him at his desk poring over the ship’s blueprints. I sat down on his bunk.
“I asked for another week,” I said, “and the Commander talked me out of it. I asked for equipment and he talked me out of that.”
“Well,” said Mr. Rudd, “let’s bundle the whole damn mess together and take it to sea.”
“You don’t seem very disturbed,” I said.
“I’m not. It amuses me.”
“Your amusement doesn’t help much,” I said.
He grinned. “You make sure you have everything you need to navigate,” he said. “Tell Warren to make sure we have food and water. Tell Crane to fix up some kind of a paper organization that will at least look good, and I’ll guarantee the engines will run. It won’t be so bad.”
“Stop being funny,” I said. “It’ll be like taking a tenement house to sea. Everybody running around, everybody sceaming, complete disorder …”
He grinned again. “All the closer to nature,” he said.
“And we don’t have a damn thing to work with,” I groaned. “We’ve got to sail this bucket with just about the same equipment Columbus had. No fathometer, no gyro, no radar—just a magnetic compass, one sextant, and one crazy chronometer. What’ll we do if anything breaks?”
“Trust in God,” said Mr. Rudd piously.
“Just what Columbus had,” I said again, “and I bet we don’t get half the credit.”
I got up to go. Mr. Rudd sat at his desk grinning at me. “It’s a hell of a mess,” he said. “It couldn’t be worse. You’re a citizen of the richest nation in the world and you’re sailing a ship the Swiss Navy would be ashamed of. We’re a great seafaring nation, and you’ve got just six men, including yourself, that have been to sea. You’ve got eight thousand miles to sail and forty-eight hours to start. Before you’re through you’ll get shot at and go through typhoons. You’ve got to be ready for all that, you know. You’ve got thirty men aboard this split watermelon, and if she sinks thirty Western Union boys will deliver thirty telegrams telling how the Navy Department regrets. All the telegrams will be addressed with a, name that begins with W, except Mr. Crane’s, yours, and mine, and those will probably be misspelled. Yours will go to ‘Warton’ and mine will go to ‘Wudd.’ But don’t worry about it—it all is just at is should be. Everybody has everything all figured out. It’s all written down somewhere. Don’t worry about it. When the time comes to sail just take the lines off the dock and sail. It will be fun to see what happens!”
“Thanks.” I said. “Thanks for cheering me up.”
I was about to go out the door when he stopped me.
“Seriously,” he said, “I wouldn’t worry. This ship is no different from any other. At bottom they’re all that way. After a few weeks she’ll be clean and all the boxes will be in all the right places and everyone will talk as though they knew exactly where they were going. She’ll be a good ship, a taut ship but a happy one, as they say. Small ships and big men. We don’t have to worry in the engine room—all American youths have innate mechanical ability. You can read that anywhere. You don’t have to worry. We’re all brave, courageous, loyal and true. The boys in blue will pull us through—shall I make a poem of it?”
“No, damn it, things aren’t as bad as that. We will be all right,” I said defiantly.
“Sure we will,” he said. “Sure we will. That’s the funny part about it. That’s the part I’ve never been able to understand.”
CHAPTER FIVE
THE DAY BEFORE we were to sail a string of trucks came down and loaded our holds with a cargo of canned pineapple. As our first stop was Hawaii and because the labels on the cans clearly read “Grown and canned in the Hawaiian Islands,” it was a little discouraging. I took it upon myself to telephone the cargo officer and ask him about it. He explained that the pineapples were grown in Hawaii and shipped to the United States for distribution to the armed services all over the world. Our shipment was consigned for New Guinea; the fact that we were to pass through Hawaii on the way was insignificant. Yes, the pineapples would make a useless voyage from Hawaii to the States and back to Hawaii, but that couldn’t be helped.
I said all right, and went back to the ship.
“If we sink,” Mr. Crane said, “just write on my tombstone, ‘He died in a vain attempt to bring pineapples to Hawaii.’”
“It’s not that I mind so much,” Mr. Warren contributed. “It’s just that I’ve always loathed pineapples. They’ve always made me ill.”
By the night of May 23 the ship was loaded, the hatches were battened down, and I saw it was possible to sail the next day as planned. An order came down from the district that no liberty could be granted the men on the last night in the States. This was a common practice I knew. Last nights in the States had too often resulted in frantic telephone messages home, breaks in security, wild parties, and AWOL. Nevertheless it was difficult to tell all hands that their last night must be spent aboard ship. Some of them had their wives in town and nearly all of them had girls. To tell them they had to spend their last hours sitting on a ship alongside a wharf was a lot to ask. When the word was passed, however, there were no audible complaints. The men went about their work, and, if anything, the ship was quieter than usual. For the first time I saw a very serious look on the faces of the younger seamen.
At supper that night there was little conversation in the wardroom. After the soup had been eaten in silence and the main course had been brought in and carried away almost untouched, Mr. Crane and Mr. Warren excused themselves and went into their staterooms. I stirred uneasily in my chair. It seemed to me that we were already at sea; the tie with the shore had already been broken. The streets of the city of Wilmington were not far distant from the wharf alongside which we were moored, and the sounds of traffic were clear, but the honking horns and occasional sounds of voices seemed removed from us.
On the bulkhead outside the wardroom we had hung a mailbox, and from time to time I could see through the open door a seaman or a petty officer come and drop a letter in it. As the evening wore on this occurred more and more frequently, and the performance carried with it always the same little pattern of sound. First I heard footsteps coming down the passageway; then the seaman appeared, reached up to the mailbox, and I heard the gentle sound of the letter dropping inside. Next, more than usually, the seaman knocked with his knuckles a little against the side of the box to make sure the letter had fallen all the way in. After that there was a pause, and I heard footsteps walking up the corridor again toward the forecastle. These repeated sounds and the distant clatter of traffic were the only noises to be heard.
