The Navy Comes to Rockport,
2013
Three Naval Academy
Three
42-ft. Yachts of the Naval Academy Sailing Squadron visited Rockport this past weekend,
as did sailors from Portsmouth , NH and Newport ,
RI
Roger Lesch, a retired local police
officer, and Sharon Grandmaison, who runs a child care service, are the driving
force behind the Rockport Navy Committee, which also includes people connected
to the American Legion, local fishermen, the Sandy Bay Yacht Club, the Rockport
Country Club, Navy veterans, friends of the Navy and old Naval Academy
graduates who live here.
It
is fascinating to see how Rockporters, and visitors, are attracted to these
sharp young men and women sailors and Midshipmen.
While the Navy was in town, we took
turns standing “watch” down on T Wharf where one of the boats was open for
visitors. Visitors to
Rockport strolled down the wharf to look at all the boats, and we offered them
a chance to visit the Naval Academy
They’re usually eager to do it, and
clamber down the gangplank and lift themselves on board.
The Rockport Navy Committee had a whole schedule for these 30
Midshipmen and their advisors, including volleyball and softball games,
cookouts, a lobster feed, breakfasts at the First Baptist
Church
The Navy Committee has done this for visiting warship crews in
recent years, as well.
Northeast Regional Navy Pops Ensemble as
they play a New Orleans
Roger
and Sharon always do a spectacular job of organizing all the events of the Navy
Weekend, and this means getting families to sign up to house the midshipmen and
sailors, and organizing for feeding all these hungry young people, including a
lot of lobsters.
This
year the Northeast Regional Navy Pops Ensemble came, and Roger and Sharon set
up to give them all a fine lobster dinner before they played.
The
band with some 38 members, is a brilliantly professional organization, based at
the Naval War
College in Newport , RI
USNA Adult Advisor shows
visitors Academy Yacht
When I had my "watch" on T-Wharf last weekend, Advisor
and Skipper Hight Spencer, an adult with more time under canvas than most naval
officers, joined two of his Midshipmen crewmen
to show off their boat, and they showed off the cramped spaces for ten
midshipmen aboard the boat, and usually there was a conversation about life at
the Academy, and the Navy.
It’s interesting to talk with visitors
to Rockport, and Rockporters, who stroll down and go aboard the Navy
sailboats. They come from
all over the world.
USNA boat at sea
Summer cruises at the Academy have
always been very serious training events, with a little time squeezed in for the
Mids to see new lands and meet new people.
Midshipmen
spend their first summer at the Academy learning about the Navy, and getting
ready for four years of rigorous physical and academic life. From the day that they are sworn in,
their lives are a continuous whirlwind of marching drills, obstacle courses,
trips to the rifle range, swimming tests, whaleboat rowing, academic work,
running, hiking, sports, more marching, and lots of sweating.
The second summer is such a relief,
because Plebe year, and all the harassment and questions and drilling and
memorizing, sitting on an invisible stool at meals, and other forms of
“character building” are done. The
year of academics is done, and it is time to go to sea.
Today, some Midshipmen spend part of
that summer in these 42-foot sailboats, and they practice navigation, and learn
the finer points of handling a real sailing craft for several weeks. After that, they’ll fly to some base
in the United States
On that ship they’ll learn what
enlisted men and women do that makes the ship operate and able to fight. They’ll learn how to make torpedoes or
missiles ready for firing, how to stand deck or diving station watches, how to
inspect tanks, how to charge batteries on a submarine, how to fuel ship, how to
navigate, and how to clean a head (crew’s toilets). This cruise as sophomores or
“Youngsters” is intended for them to get to see the Navy from the point of view
of enlisted men and women. The
next times they go to sea they’ll be studying the role of officers.
That “Youngster Cruise” of 2013 is not
much changed from the one we took aboard a battleship in 1954. (At least, from my point of view!)
As soon as the graduating class had
received their commissions and diplomas, we boarded troop transports from Annapolis down to Norfolk
Four
Battleships Rendezvous off Norfolk
As soon as we were aboard, we sailed
out of Norfolk New Jersey ,
there were the Battleships Iowa, Wisconsin and Missouri Missouri
When this historic event was over, New Jersey and Missouri , two cruisers, many destroyers, a small carrier,
and some auxiliary ships, started our way across the Atlantic .
All the way across we worked, and
studied, stood watches, and worked at the jobs usually designed for enlisted
men, like cleaning compartments and washrooms, painting, loading stores,
assisting in taking on fuel, and much, much more.
The Jersey crew had just returned from
duty off Korea
In the evening there were movies
topside on deck, and once on the cruise a “Smoker” when men gathered on the
large teak deck aft, the fantail, to watch boxing matches between sailors, or
between midshipmen.
Crew
toilets in battleships resembled the bottom half of a large pipe, or
trough. Sailors sat on toilet seats across this half pipe, and sea water
flowed through the pipe, and then carried the waste overboard. At busy times, there might be a
dozen or more sailors all sitting on this half pipe.
At some
time or other, a wise guy would take a wadded up newspaper and set it afire,
and let it float in the halfpipe, upstream of the men sitting there. You can imagine the surprise as the
fire passed beneath the bottom of each man, and each popped up, in sequence.
Holystoning
Each Saturday at sea was Field Day,
with meticulous scrubbing from stem to stern, and midshipmen learned how to
holystone. This was a
long-observed job of lining up sailors, barefoot, on the teak decks of the
battleship and scrubbing those decks with soapy water until they shone. The device for scrubbing was a mop
handle stuck in the hole of a boiler fire brick. In a row of Mids, we rubbed the brick
back and forth on the deck, sliding and sloshing in the soapsuds, until a
senior Chief Petty Officer decided the deck was sparkling clean. Here’s a
video of sailors holystoning the decks of USS Missouri:
After
about two weeks of this life at sea, the ships arrived at their first liberty
port, and ours was Vigo , on the northwest (Atlantic) coast of Spain
This part of Spain
They were poor, but Spaniards showed
the sailors and midshipmen aboard the battleship and other ships a marvelous
welcome, with dancing in the streets, a street fair, and loads of booths
selling all kinds of Spanish food and drink. I
recall a bottle of Spanish “champagne” sold for about one U.S. dollar.
We had tours of the town, and trips
just a few miles north to the very picturesque and historical city of Santiago
de Compostela
Our next port was Cherbourg , France
I grew up in a non-drinking home in
Texas, and I had not really been exposed to people who routinely got very drunk
and fought with each other, using fists, feet, knives and firearms to maim and
kill each other.
Battleships were big in every way, and
with a complement of 2000 officers and men, there were always a few
troublemakers.
The Cherbourg
I’ve seen spectacular drunks quite a
few times in my thirty-four years in the Navy, but that was my introduction.
Ashore in Cherbourg, ten years after
the D-Day Invasion there against bitter Nazi opposition, there were still signs
of bomb and artillery damage, and graffiti about the then current war of French
troops fighting at Dienbienphu, in French Indo-China.
After a wonderful trip to Paris ,
we were all back aboard New Jersey , and then sailed to Guantanamo , Cuba
[NOTE:
This Blog first appeared in July, 2011.
It has been updated for this Navy visit.]
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