Chapter 21
USS Tippecanoe
[For Patrol Wing One the
1941 voyage from San Diego to Pearl Harbor was peculiar from start to finish.]
She
lay at a pier so far out on Point Loma that it would be more than a thirty-minute
bus ride into downtown San Diego.
Tippecanoe was an oil tanker but she was surely the dowdiest old frump
in the Navy fleets of auxiliary and support ships.
The
old girl was an oiler of World War I vintage.
She had a tall single stack that towered above a large after deck house
and fantail, a deckhouse structure just forward of amidships topped by the
bridge, and a raised foc’sul deck—all connected by an elevated walkway that spanned
the main deck clutter of cofferdams, oil transfer houses, and faked-down manila
hawsers.
The
bow hook in the whaleboat had been right—she was a rusty old bucket. Ocher streaks soiled the Navy grey of her side
plates although there were sailors working with paint scrapers and paint
buckets on scaffolds and boson’s chairs over her sides. The upper works appeared to be fairly
recently painted; however, the first impression was “she don’t much give a damn”.
The
Tippecanoe was empty of cargo and riding high in the water. The Coxswain did not take us to the pier but
laid the whaleboat alongside the platform at the foot of the steep sea accommodation
ladder. It was difficult to negotiate
the ladder carrying our heavy seabags with the hammocks lashed around
them. No one offered to lend a hand
except that the how hook and motor mac heaved the seabags onto the platform as each
man disembarked. After the snide
remarked about “Airedales” of the coxswain we were determined to make it on our
own—and somehow we did.
Once
we had achieved the main deck and had properly saluted the colors aft and the
officer of the deck, a burly CPO identified himself as the boson, Larzenarski,
and took our orders. He left us sitting
on the cofferdams in the hot sun for more than thirty minutes before a seaman
appeared and let us to our quarters.
The
ship’s crew was berthed aft below the after deck house which contained the mess
deck and galley; however, the berths for temporary ship’s company aboard for
transportation were in a compartment in the forecastle just aft of the anchor
chain locker. It was strictly primitive
and bare bones. There were three-high
steel bunks welded to stanchions where hammocks had once been slung at
night. In a clear area at the foot of
the entry ladder there was a single mess-type table with a bench on each
side. Beside it was a trash can. This would be our home for the next four
weeks.
Across
the compartment from the entry ladder, an open door led to the head, such as it
was. It was a narrow compartment lined
on one side with eight brass wash basins each having a small mirror. Along the other bulkhead, the sanitary
provisions consisted of a mental trough at sitting height through which sea
water was circulated. Cut out seat
boards for eight had been installed over the trough as a gesture at comfort.
We
selected our bunks and unlashed our gear.
Just as we were laying out our hammocks and horsehair mattresses on the
steel bunk frames, Chief Larzenarski came down the steep entry ladder. (Note: In Navy terminology, stairways are “ladders”,
floors are “decks”, ceiling are “overhead”, walls are “bulkheads”, and upstairs
is known as “topside”.)
Larzenarski’s
weathered round Polish face was set in a perpetual scowl. He growled, “Listen up, you people. You goddam Airedales (a derogatory cognomen applied
by men of the surface fleet to anyone in Naval Aviation) ain’t in for no
pleasure cruise to Hay-wa-yee! You are
temporary ship’s company of Tipsoo assigned to the deck division of which I
happen to be the chief.
“Your
division office is Lieutenant Williams who is one mean s.o.b. that goes
strictly by the book. Watch, Quarter,
and Station Bill is posted on the bulletin board aft by the mess
compartment. Check it out.
“Uniform
of the day is dungarees unless otherwise posted so get out of them whites
before evening chow. As long as you are
aboard, you are in the working Navy!”
Langford
and I looked at each other and shrugged as the CPO disappeared up the ladder
without further comment. As we were
changing to our dungarees, the P.A. system came alive with the whistle of a
boson’s pipe and a voice boomed in a bored chant, “Now hear this! Sweepers starcher brooms—clean sweep-down
fore and aft!”
It
was sixteen hundred hours, the end of the work day. We finished setting our gear and stowed our
seabags in a rack along the bulkhead (no lockers were provided in our austere
compartment) then, not knowing what we were expected to do, went topside to
check out the ship.
The
late afternoon was beautiful, the wide bay calm beneath a blue sky studded with
white cumulus clouds. Gulls circled
overhead and flights of pelicans winged ponderously past. We made our way aft along the raised catwalk
above the cluttered main deck, noting as passed around the bridge structure
that a brass plate above a watertight entry door read “Officers Country”.
At
the stern we found the mess compartment and the bulletin board the CPO had
mentioned. Beyond that was a wide wood
fantail deck scored clean by holystoning and above which a white canvas
sunshade was stretched. Some of the ship’s
crew were lounging there.
I
saw the dour coxswain of the motor whaleboat sitting against a bulkhead stropping
his wicked looking belt knife on the leather of his shoe. The name stenciled on his blue dungaree shirt
was “Sullivan” and there was the badge of a second class petty officer in stencil
on his left sleeve. I dropped down beside
him.
“Hi,
Sullivan—some ship.”
He
eyed me sharply but some of the antagonism went out of his sour face. “Yea—some ship! This here old bucket just been reactivated
from the reserve fleet—Standard Oil had her.
She’s a pile of junk and you’ll find out most of the crew are either the
dregs of the Navy or are reserves. Only
thing worse than an Airedale is a reserve!”
“Chief
Larzenarski doesn’t seem very friendly,” I said.
Sullivan
snorted bitterly, “Friendly?! Bastard is
the meanest sonabitch on the ship. Wasn’t
for him, I could make chief and be the boson’s mate myself. I was first class and he got me busted! Ten year I got in his canoe club and he gets
me busted for bringing a little booze aboard.
I’d like tosee the sonabitch go over the side some dark night!”
Sullivan
tested the keen edge of the knife by shaving some hairs from his forearm while
I said, “Larzenarski says Lt. Williams is a mean s.o.b.—how about that?”
The
coxswain sheathed the knife. “He is and
he ain’t. Regular Navy ring pounder out of Annapolis, but he must have fouled
up somewhere or he wouldn’t be on this old scow. Yeoman says he been passed over once for promotion
to lieutenant commander. Hard man and Navy
regs is his bible, but he don’t seem to have many friends. He’s the ship’s first lieutenant and division
officer of the deck gang. He’ll ride the
hell out of you just like Larzenarski and you won’t like him, but you gotta respect
him.”
Our
conversation was interrupted by the ubiquitous P.A. system. The boson’s pipe shrilled and the bored voice
said, “Now hear this—chow down.”
Sullivan stretched, and walked off toward the mess compartment.
The
food was surprisingly good on Tippecanoe and was plentiful. After supper, not wanting to go back to our
dismal quarters right away, we once more lounged on the fantail. It was a languorous evening—the sunset was
fading beyond the point and a nearly full moon was in the east. In anticipation of our destination, Hawaiian music
was coming over the P.A. system.
I
lay back on the scoured wood with my hands behind my head and looked up at the
canvas gleaming white in the soft moonlight while I listened to the strains of “Lovely
Hula Hands”. That music was known as “shipping
over music”. It was totally peaceful and
I was content. A whole new life of
adventure awaited me out there somewhere.
The rusty barbed wire fences and dusty little country roads of the hot
Ozark hills seemed a million miles away—a distant past.
