One of four Naval Academy
Four 42-ft. Yachts of the Naval Academy Sailing Squadron visited Rockport this past weekend, and the town rolled out the welcome mat for them.
Roger Lesch, a 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.
For someone who graduated from the Naval Academy 54 years ago, when I meet these Mids it invariably brings on little discussions and comparisons.
These Mids were born about 1990, three years after I had retired from the Navy.
If I had run into similar old NA grads when I was sailing around as a Midshipman, they would have been from the Class of 1900!
While the boats and Mids were in town, we take 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 usually are eager to do it, and clamber down the gangplank and lift themselves on board.
The Rockport Navy Committee had a whole schedule for these 40 Mids and their advisors, including volleyball and softball games, cookouts, a lobster feed, breakfasts at the First Baptist Church and at Brackett's, and many local merchants and citizens helped offer Rockport's hospitality.
The Navy Committee has done this for visiting warship crews in recent years, as well.
When I had my "watch" on T-Wharf last weekend, Amanda and Brittany were the Midshipmen with the duty 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, meet new people, especially those of the opposite sex.
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 2011 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, June 1954
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.
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
And now, The Personal Navigator offers these books and papers:
American Brig Commerce: Journal Comprising An Account of the Loss of the Brig Commerce, of Hartford , (Con.) James Riley, Master, Upon the Coast of Africa , August 28th, 1815; Seventh Edition by Archibald Robbins, 1818. Hartford , CT Sahara ; . Includes many Arabic words and meanings. Catching and eating locusts. . 275 pp. 11 x 17 cm. Calf on board, very scuffed and worn, text block detached; Only part of map of author's travels, showing western Africa , remains. Poor condition. (4820) $60.00 Nautical/Travel/History
Bluejacket's Manual, United States Navy, 1940, Tenth Edition 1940 Annapolis , MD : United States
Fighting Fleets, The: Five Months of Active Service With The American Destroyers and Their Allies in the War Zone by Paine, Ralph D. ©1918 Boston, MA Houghton Mifflin Co. 393 pp. 15 x 21 cm. Account of actions of U.S. Navy and allies at sea in World War I. Includes photographs and facsimile of telegram. Cloth on board, cover shows slight rubbing and fraying. Very good. (1660) $22.00. History/Nautical/Naval.
Aboard USS Monadnock, ca. 1900
Gun and Torpedo Drills for the United States Navy, prepared under the direction of the Bureau of Navigation, Navy Department by Lieutenant Edward W. Eberle, U.S.N. 1901 Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute. Author Eberle (1864-1929) graduated from the Naval Academy
Hudson-Fulton Celebration, Official Program, September 25 to October 9, 1909 New York , NY
In the Swamps of Albania
In Fjord und Mittelmeer Fahrten eines Kleinen Kreuzers [In German] von Richard v. Stosch (author of "Vom Seekadetten zum Seeoffizier") 1914 Berlin , Germany Istanbul Mediterranean Sea . Photos of sailors and ship at Swinemünde (now in Poland), then in Valetta, Malta and Port Said, photos of Beirut and Baalbek, Bucht von Smyrna, photo of Der Scheich der tanzenden Derwische, (Sheikh of the Whirling Dervishes); expedition to Skutari, Albania and photo of Serbische Maschinengewehre and ruins at Skutari, photo of earnest looking sailors and officers in very tall grass (In den Sümpfen der Bojana) in wilderness between Montenegro and Albania. This account, all in German, may give some clues to the hazy history of combat in this area at the end of the Ottoman Empire , when Austro-Hungarians and Germans supposedly fought the Serbs at Skutari. 162 pp. 11.8 x 19.6 cm. Decorated paper on board, worn, paper on spine is gone. Inscription on dedication page is dated "Kiel
Jane's Fighting Ships, 1942 [Issued June 1943] Founded in 1897 by Fred T. Jane, 46th Year of Issue 1943McMurtrie, Francis E., A.I.N.A., Editor. New York , NY Battle Exeter Battle of the Java Sea Pearl Harbor (Dec. 7th, 1941), even noting changes to them as result of repairs after the attack. Also with 62 pages of advertising for everything you need to outfit a warship. 582 pp. + 62 pp. adv. 31 x 20 cm. Light blue cloth on board with gilt lettering. Edges worn, tiny white paint spots on cover, good. (6985) $106.00. Naval/World War II
Contact me at scoulbourn1@verizon.net
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