From Book 2
We spent the next couple of months running up and down the Pacific Coast, mostly between Long Beach and Seattle. I noticed on the bulletin board a note from the Captain that we would be heading to Europe the next month and would probably be there for several months. That was OK with me, I had never been there and it would make a nice change of scenery. I picked up some new clothes and a top coat and hat as I had heard that most European men wore them. We took on stores and the fueling barge topped off our tanks before we headed for Los Angeles, where we were to take on a cargo of heavy equipment and saw mill machinery. There would probably be more when we got there, the schedulers are always sticking last minute freight onto our manifest. We got a new Second Engineer, he was an older man and seemed kind of stand offish, but only time would tell. We made an on-time departure from Oakland and headed out the Golden Gate. It would be nine months before I saw it again.
Chapter 1 - VIVA LA FRANCE
Our first port was Saint Louis du Rhone, it was an ancient city. I got to go ashore a couple of times as we were nearly a week off-loading cargo. There were no shore connections, so we had to leave one boiler and the generators running the whole time we were there.
I was surely glad for Pete Billings, the Fourth Engineer. The cargo winches were giving him fits, I had the first watch in port and the way the generators were jumping around, they must had had a herd of monkeys working the cargo!
I got off watch and Gil Freeson, the new Third Mate, had been my classmate at the Academy, asked if I wanted to go ashore with him.
It turned out to be a good deal, he spoke pretty good French and we hit a couple of bars before we found an inn that served meals. French beer was pretty good, but they loaded up their meals with sauces, I couldn't tell a pork chop from a rubber boot!
I had never been much of a wine drinker, despite having grown up in the Napa Valley of California, but I found the "vin du table" wines to be wonderful.
A taste I would continue for the rest of my life.
The weather was warm and pleasant in the south of France and Gil and I did a lot of walking, sightseeing and I burned up a dozen rolls of film in my camera.
Our next stop was to be Marseille, we rode empty for the day's sailing to Marseille. Again, there were no shore connections on the pier and we had to run the generators.
Gil and I palled around in Marseille, the beaches were like something out of a picture book. There were lots of people swimming and laying on the beach, there didn't seem to be any taboo against nudity and neither Gil nor I complained!
A guy could damage his eyes straining them on those beaches!
I managed to shoot up another bunch of rolls of film, although, I was careful not to take any pictures that the developer would find objectionable.
We found lots of places to eat, the shrimp and lobsters were out of this world, though I sure wished they would not load them up with sauces.
While we were ashore, the First Mate had an altercation with some of the longshoremen and they marched around the ship with placards and signs denouncing "evil Americans."
It didn't last long, but we all decided to stay on board while they were picketing the ship. It cost us a day on the schedule, but the Factor settled it for us and they continued working the cargo the next day.
We spent the next several weeks back and forth between Marseille and Leghorn, Italy hauling mostly large pieces of machinery. Leghorn was interesting and their port was very modern and up to date.
We were able to go "cold iron" for a couple of days and that gave us a chance to repair a leak in the generator condenser that had been troubling us.
We loaded out all three holds with crated cargo consigned to a forwarder in Scotland, so we said goodbye to sunny, warm Leghorn and headed for Scotland, it would be a voyage of 16 days and we met with a terrible summer storm off the west coast of France.
We were pounding so badly, we had to slow down in fear of damaging the ship. As it was, we lost two lifeboats to the pounding and my wiper, Carlos Montoya, was thrown against the feed water pump and suffered burns and a broken wrist.
That made my watch a bit shorthanded, but we managed and Carlos insisted he could do "light duty."
Our torment didn't end until we made the English Channel, it had been the roughest voyage I had ever been on, and even the tugs had not been that bad.
Chapter 2 - SCOTLAND FOG
We encountered fog as we headed north through the English Channel, I could hear the sonorous sound of the fog horn even in the noisy engine room. When I got off watch, I looked out the porthole of my stateroom and it was a solid white blank wall of fog, I couldn't even see the handrails on the deck outside the porthole.
As I was eating my lunch, the Fourth Engineer, Pete Billings, asked me if I had ever attended the Sperry Gyroscope School and I told him I had. He was fighting a problem with the ship's gyro-compass and it had him baffled. He asked me if I would give him a hand and I said I would.
After lunch we both went up to the bridge and walked into the compass room, he had parts spread out on canvass and we sat there inspecting each component. I finally noticed a burned place on a slip ring. We tracked it down to a short in the log room repeater that was overloading the system and causing the breakers to trip.
There was no way we could open up the repeater, so we pulled the wires for the repeater and reassembled the compass.
After it was started up, the compass oscillated a couple of times, before it settled out and the Second Mate was able to compare it with the magnetic compass and he felt it was reading reliably.
I sure hoped he was right, I didn't relish the thought of swimming in the English Channel!
We finally arrived at the port for Edinburgh. We were told we would be there a week, so a bunch of us made plans to do a little sightseeing. First on our list was Edinburgh Castle.
The afternoon we were there, the Pipers were practicing, my Mother always thought bagpipes sounded like yowling alley cats, but I rather liked it. The pipers were all Clan Gordon and they were very colorful in their kilts and silver buckles and broaches.
The whole town was something out of a history book and I tried to single handedly keep Kodak in business by buying film!
A couple of us went to a distillery and were given samples of Scotch Whiskey, yuck, tasted like burned motor oil to me! Maybe it was a good thing when I saw the prices on the bottles.
We finally were loaded out and headed for Liverpool. We spent the next month back and forth between Liverpool and Edinburgh. It was a long way around, but the shipper was paying the freight bill, so it was his problem. All the cargo was stoutly crated and looked mostly to be machine parts.
Liverpool was a big dirty industrial city and after one trip ashore, I decided I could do without it. After a day in port, my handkerchief was black from soot. Yuck, that stuff was in my lungs!
I got a couple of letters from home, my Mother was a confirmed letter writer!
I did run ashore one trip to go to Barclay's Bank to cash a paycheck, I was getting a little low in cash money. I had a stack of un-cashed paychecks in my room safe.
Our last trip back to Edinburgh took us on to Denmark and Sweden and we would stay in the Baltic for two months.
Chapter 3 - SWEDISH SUMMER
We arrived in Copenhagen during the summer solstice celebration, the Tivoli was lit up and it was an around the clock carnival. I spent my off-watch time enjoying the sights and the colorful festivities. I shot enough film that I was becoming concerned about the fire hazard in my stateroom!
I already had a whole box of exposed film, and I added a bunch more.
Every street corner had a stand selling beer and sausages and we tried them all, Gil and me. One evening we both had a little too much beer and not enough sausage, and we attempted to dance with the street entertainers. The cobblestone street pavement left a bruise and a dent in my "sit upon"!
I was lucky that I did not break my ankle when I hit the pavement!
That was enough dancing for me, the rest of the time I just watched from the nearest bench.
We spent the rest of the summer between Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm before heading to Amsterdam. All the cities on the Baltic seemed to me to look alike, colorful buildings, with little shops and lots of stonework. I did buy a beautiful watch in Copenhagen as a gift for my Father. The jewelry store was fascinating, it had all kinds of clocks and watches, some of them were antiques several hundred years old.
Dad and I had made up our differences and I wanted to give him something that told him I really did appreciate all he had done for me. Happily, it was a gift he treasured for the rest of his life.
As we departed Oslo, we hit something in the water and the screw began vibrating something fierce. At any speed over 40 rpm, the vibration was so bad, we feared we would either loose the propeller or snap the shaft.
We turned back for Oslo and had divers go down and determine the damage. One-half of a blade was missing, a jagged tear across the remaining stump.
There was no help for it, we had to go into dry dock to repair the damage and according to the divers report, it wasn't safe to go any further.
We had to wait two weeks before we could get dry dock time, the Chief Engineer was driving himself crazy worrying about damage to the stern tube and bearings and the Captain was in a "tizzy" about the schedule.
We finally got into the dry dock and after we were down on the blocks and all the water had been pumped out, we went down to look at the damage. A ship's propeller is a huge thing, fully thirty feet across. One entire blade was missing all the way down to the root and the other blades all had nicks and chips missing.
It was a foundry job to repair.
Amazingly, the dockyard crew had the propeller off the shaft and hauled up on a special flatbed trailer in less than two days!
They had their own foundry on-site and, after obtaining the metal specifications from the original manufacturer back in the United States, they constructed a sand mold around the propeller. After trimming and cleaning what remained of the blade root, they poured a new bronze alloy blade fused to the original root.
They did much the same to repair the other damaged blades and spent several days annealing the entire propeller.
They even managed a cobalt source x-ray of the repairs as proof the new blade was completely fused to the blade root.
They then machined the surfaces smooth and contoured them. After the blade had been completely annealed and cooled down, they moved it back to the dry dock and lowered it down to the floor. It was nearly impossible to see where the repairs had been made. We all stood at the top of the dock watching, as they upended the propeller and jacked it onto the shaft.
To watch them work, it would have seemed the propeller was not over thirty tons and, from the top of the dry dock, it did indeed look small.
When all the work was completed, they flooded the dock and we checked for leaks at the stern tube. Everything seemed tight and there was no leakage beyond that which was normal for lubrication. As soon as we floated free from the blocks, we were winched out of the dry dock and a tug took us to a nearby pier, where we spent another day and a half getting ready to go back to sea.
After carefully running the shaft up and down the speed scale, while checking for vibration and leakage through the stern tube, we finally left Oslo Bay and headed for Amsterdam.
We were far behind schedule now and winter was beginning to close in on us, the Captain ran the turns up as soon as the Chief told him it was ok.
Amsterdam was to be our last port before returning home, with planned stops in Savannah, New Orleans and The Canal Zone.
Chapter 4 - HOLLAND THEN HOME
I must admit I was uneasy about the repairs to our propeller and I checked the stern tube and shaft alley more often than I used to, all the way to Amsterdam.
Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary and I learned that the First and the Second Engineers were doing the same as I.
It was an easy trip to Amsterdam, even that late in the year, the weather remained calm and the seas smooth. The waterfront of Amsterdam was quite small and was as colorful as a picture book, their facilities were very modern and they worked around the clock to get us unloaded.
There was, however, a problem with our loading, the freight from Germany had not arrived. It was supposed to be coming by rail and the Factor was burning the wires with telegrams trying to locate it.
We sat there for another four days before the load mysteriously appeared.
The flat cars were run right down on the pier and the Port's cranes dropped the freight into our holds.
While we were waiting, a couple of us toured the city. The tavern food was kind of bland, unless there was a little sign saying "Indonesian Style" in Dutch. That stuff was fiery as hell itself! Their beer was thick and foamy and it took lots to put the fires out!
Besides, it tasted good!
The Captain was getting antsy to get away, as soon as the last load was dropped into the cargo hold, the deck force was putting down the hatch covers and dogging them solid, we got our first bell and we started leaving Amsterdam.
We had fueled in Oslo and we topped off the tanks before saying goodbye to Amsterdam.
By now, it was late in the year and crossing the Atlantic was as rough as a cob.
We made one stop at Madelena in the Azores, where we offloaded several diesel generator sets. We were there for only a short time, but I did get ashore to try their famous Paella. It had all sorts of shell fish and shrimp in it, had I not been concerned about looking foolish, I would have licked the plate! It was very good and maybe someday, I can get back there again. (I did get back there in 2009 with a dear old friend from my Navy Days, who since has passed away.)
The people were very friendly however, Gil found out it was dangerous to try his Spanish on Portuguese speaking people; some of the Spanish words have very different meanings in Portuguese!
We sailed the afternoon of the third day, headed for Savannah. It was a boring trip across, the seas were rough, making sleep uncomfortable and eating at the table with any grace at all, was almost impossible.
It was a relief to enter the protected channel to the port of Savannah. We were all tired, it had been a long voyage and it was good to hear our own language spoken again, even with a y'all accent!
The stevedores took their own sweet time off-loading our cargo and there seemed to be some problems scheduling flat cars to receive the freight. We sat there for a week getting off-loaded; the Captain was fit to be tied. Every day, it seemed there was another problem, even the Chief was getting grumpy and he was the most even tempered man I have ever known!
A few of us went ashore, but the town was huge and the waterfront areas were dirty and grubby. Even buses did not run after dark.
Like all of the American South, Savannah was segregated at that time, many buildings said, "Whites Only", and my Oiler was Hispanic, so he was denied entry to places the rest of us were able to go. He was a good guy and I hated to see him treated so, it kinda took the enjoyment out of being ashore away from the rest of us.
We were finally offloaded; the loading seemed to go faster than the offloading. I don't know what the cargo was, it was all crated.
The cargo for New Orleans was loaded in the forward hold and, as soon as the hatches were dogged down, we made tracks for the open ocean.
As we rounded the tip of Florida, we lost the storms and it was smooth sailing all the way to the mouth of the Mississippi. We had to wait a half day for the pilot before heading upriver about 90 miles to the City of New Orleans. We docked across the river in Tangiers and we were scheduled to be there for several days.
I grabbed Gil and we took a taxi over to Bourbon Street and had supper at the Court of Two Sisters. Like the last time I had been there, it was wonderful and the service was perfect.
Both of us overate and were walking slowly as we left the restaurant.
We walked up and down Bourbon Street for a while before heading back to the ship, it was very colorful and, even though it was cool weather, there were a lot of folks out on the street.
We finally hailed a cab and went back to the ship, as we would move berths as soon as the cargo was offloaded.
We were loading the forward hold with beer from the Jax Brewery for delivery to Roosevelt Roads in Puerto Rico, before heading through the Canal.
The loading of the beer was very slow because they really didn't have the facilities to load a cargo vessel.
Gil told me the Captain was stomping around the bridge in frustration.
At long last, we were loaded and we backed away from the Jax Brewery pier. I was on watch when we hit the Gulf, I could feel the sea surge as we left the Mississippi River behind.
Roosevelt Roads was a short trip, it was just a tiny port with only one pier big enough to take us.
They had no lights, so all cargo handling had to be done during daylight hours. It was mostly a Naval Base and Navy Sailors did all the cargo hoisting. Some of them were pretty darned good, but it still took three days to offload one cargo hold.
The harbor was very shallow, so we were taking cooling water from the high suction. I guess I was a little gun-shy, my last experience in a harbor taking cooling water from high suction was pretty bad, including finding a dead body plugging my sea water pumps! Nothing of the sort took place, but I was mighty glad when my watch was over.
It was another short hop to the Canal Zone, where we had a short cargo for delivery to Fort Sherman on the Colon end of the Canal. It looked to be military cargo and they made short work of offloading it.
We were ready to get in line for transit through the canal. Since we were a cargo ship, our priority was down at the bottom, and we had to wait six days before we could make our transit.
We entered the locks early in the morning and made it all the way across before the direction changed.
As we headed north, I could feel the excitement in the crew, we were headed home. I have to admit, so was I, it had been a long voyage and I was ready to see San Francisco Bay.
We made one stop at Long Beach for a day and a half, then it was on to San Francisco and we would be there in time for Christmas!
Little did I know of the "present" I was to receive!
We passed under the Golden Gate Bridge and headed across the bay to Oakland and our terminal.
As the Third Engineer, I had the maneuvering watch as we docked, I was a happy man when the bridge rang down, "Finished with Engines"!
I went out on deck as they were letting down the gangway and I spotted my Father standing on the pier.
That was unusual, what in the world had happened that he came down to meet the ship?
I had all sorts of fearful thoughts, had someone died, was my family alright? Terrible possibilities raced through my mind as I went down the gangway to meet Dad.
We hugged each other and then he dropped his bombshell on me, he told me I should not come home! There was a draft notice in the mailbox for me, I was being drafted into the Army!
I guess I should have felt lucky, I had escaped that long, I was supposed to have a draft exemption for being in the Merchant Marine. I was about to turn 24 years old and had few worries anyway.
He and I went to dinner in The City (San Francisco is always just The City to Californians of the Northern Persuasion) and he advised me to hot foot it down to the 12th Naval District Headquarters first thing Monday morning and go on active duty.
I had a Navy Reserve Commission and that would be better than packing a rifle in the Army. As usual, Dad's advice was good. I did just as he advised me and, for the first of two times in my life I repeated the words, "I DO" as I was sworn in as a Navy Officer.
It was a sad thing for me to say good bye to my comrades on the Peter John. We had been through good times and bad, almost like a family.
The Chief gave me a letter asking that I come back when my Naval Service was completed, I have that letter put away and still look at it occasionally, even a bit more than 50 years later.
I celebrated Christmas with my Family and January 2nd saw me on an airplane out of Travis Air Force Base, headed to Pearl Harbor.
TBC
This story will be continued in the very different environment on aboard a US Navy Destroyer Escort out of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.