Ghost Ship

            “Of all the conveyances invented by the hand and mind of man, none captures the imagination as firmly as the ship, ancient or modern. We bless ships and give them names; we endow them with human attributes. They have courage, strength of will, pride, resoluteness, and nobility. Their character is often described as faithful, honest, good, or brave according to the quality and tenure of service. When ships die, we mark and remember their loss.”

                                                                           - I don’t remember who, to my shame.

            This week the battleship USS Iowa was towed from the mothball fleet in San Francisco Bay to L.A. Harbor (San Pedro) where it will be permanently moored as a floating museum.  The Iowa, an Iowa Class battleship strangely enough, has a long and both honorable and less than honorable history that started on August 27^th, 1942 when she was launched.

            The honorable came in moments like when she transported FDR to Casablanca for a meeting with Churchill and Stalin in 1943.  An elevator was installed on the ship so the President could travel between decks, making her possibly the first ship to that would have met the Americans with Disabilities Act had it existed.  And like when she served as Adm. Halsey’s flagship during the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay.

            The less than honorable moment came in 1989 when the number two turret was destroyed by a massive explosion.  The Navy in their original investigation put the blame on a gun crewman whose homosexual relationship with one of his shipmates, they said, went south.  That investigation suggested that the crewman deliberately set off the explosion as a suicide.  Later investigations cleared the now deceased crewman and an apology was made by the Navy to the crewman’s family.  The actual cause has never been determined.

            How much of both histories will be part of the tour when the ship opens for business this July 4^th?  We’ll see.

            A couple of years ago I toured the USS North Carolina, which to the untrained eye like mine, looks very much like the Iowa.  When I toured it I was taken back by the smallness of the compartments on such a big ship.  Even the bridge seemed little more than a standing room only place from which to command the great vessel.  I entered one of the 16-inch gun turrets and was hit with such a strong wave of claustrophobia that I immediately turned around and climbed back out. I can’t begin to imagine what it was like to the men sealed in there with the explosive force to launch 2,700 pound shells up to 25 miles resonating in the breaches and barrels around them.  One compartment that I found most interesting was After Steering.  It was there that the great posts to which the rudders were attached came up through the hull.  There were huge wheels that could be used to manually turn the rudders should the hydraulics fail in an attack.  On the deck in one corner were large wood blocks that crewmen and brought down so they could be jammed into the mechanism to keep the rudders in place so as to spell the men.

            The time when I was stationed on a ship was when I felt the most intense esprit de corps in any fellowship before or since.  Sure there were rivalries between departments; the deck force (Deckies) and the engineers (Snipes), but when it came down to it we realized we were all in the same boat, literally.  The bridge was (is) bigger than those on battleships and the engine room while smaller, still afforded you a view from one end to the other.  And that was with four engines.

Like suggested in the quote above, ships get into their sailor’s minds and hearts, and acquire human-like traits that leave a long lasting impression.  The ship I was on had a rubber expansion joint in the middle that would creak and groan in heavy seas as she bent like an arthritic knee joint, she had a port side door on the bridge that wouldn’t seal all the way, allowing water in, especially when heading north into the Pacific weather patterns, that would slosh on the deck making watch-standing a challenge.  Supposedly the port side was also haunted by the ghost of Freddy Swartz, a yard worker who, as the story goes, fell from mast to keel while the ship was being built.  His stomping grounds are pictured above.

            I checked on the Internets and found that my old ship is still on the job; patrolling the Bering Sea and even going through a dry dock overhaul in San Francisco.  She’s 42-years-old and younger cutters can sail circles around her.  But I’m sure the men and women, who maintain her engines, slap paint on her bulkheads and decks are as proud of her as their counterparts on the sexier ships in the fleet.  Just like the men who served on the Iowa from WWII on.

While there are many ships out to pasture from the Constitution in Boston to the Arizona in Hawaii, the vast majority of ships end their days in yards where they are scrapped. I think when a ship gets cut up like that, although it’s economically and perhaps ecologically smart, it’s a stab at the heart of her sailors.  There should be only two finalities for ships; as a lovingly maintained memorial or to be given up to the sea.  I hope I’m aware when the my ship (I consider it mine) is finally decommissioned.  It will likely be cut to pieces by men who never walked her decks, worked her engines, or slipped and slid while standing those late night Aleutian bridge watches.  Perhaps when the last few feet of cabling is wound up and hauled away, the davits and winches are sold off, and the steel down to the keel itself is melted down, the she will be gone from my memory as much as from the physical world.  Or maybe she will occasionally haunt me until I’m “scrapped,” like Mr. Swartz supposedly roamed the boat deck on crisp, Alaskan nights.