All posts by Jim

A Tale of the Sea and Me: Forced Draft Blowers

October 23, 2024Sea StoriesJim

i found happiness in the firerooms even before i became CHENG* on the Hollister. As a midshipmen, my time in those two dark, white heat hot, sweltering caves below the main deck was an escape to earlier times in the heart of a magical, Rube Goldberg dream of a power plant.

During my 1963 third class middie deployment* i spent almost three weeks on the 04-08 and 16-20 watches in the after fireroom. It was an education all by itself.

As CHENG, i marveled at the work of the BTs and found it thrilling to be in fireroom on a full-power run with those boilers seeming to be a pounding heart pumping out the steam to drive the turbines and shafts to their maximum.

On one of the two full-power runs that were made during my tour, Hollister was running in excess of 35 knots and still was increasing when the run was cut short in order to make another commitment. i think she would have gotten close to 40 knots if we hadn’t had to quit the run.

During a DESRON* 9 group underway period, the commodore created a 5-mile race of the ships. All of the ships, except Hollister had been converted from black oil, the old fuel for steam ships after coal to “Navy distillate,” a much clearer burning fuel. i once again was in the fireroom on the 1JV sound-powered phone system.* As we gathered speed and the two 600-pound boilers were again pulsing, i learned Hollister was nosing ahead. i climbed up the ladder to the main deck and walked out on the port side weather deck. Hollister was clearly head by two ship lengths as we reached the five-mile “finish line.”

(A lesson here. You can lose some advantages by worrying about environmental or other concerns rather than your mission to have the most effective battle platform.)

As noted, i was enchanted with firerooms in the old Navy.

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One of the blessings i had as CHENG was a BTCM* who didn’t leave during the great exodus when the ship went reserve. As i write, i am struggling with his name and will eventually remember. He was a wonder.

As the never-ending bunch of contractors poured onto the ship as we approached our overhaul, one group was to assess our forced draft blowers in the firerooms. The forced draft blowers forced the air into to boiler to complete the combustion of the fuel oil to heat the water to steam. The forced draft blowers were massive. Hollister had a total of eight, two for each boiler. The contractors would attached all of their high-faluting electronic marvels to the blowers, run the blowers up to their operating speed, check and record all of their readings, and create a report at ginormous expense to determine which of the forced draft blowers required an overhaul.

Before the contractors arrived, my BTCM had the forced draft blowers turned on to operating speeds. He then placed a nickel, standing on its edge, on each of the blowers in turn. If the nickel fell flat, the master chief assessed that blower required an overhaul. If the nickel remaied upright on its edge, the master chief pointed out, the blower did not require an overhaul.

The BTCM was 100% accurate. The expensive report agreed. But the BTCM’s method only cost a nickel if we lost a nickel in the bilges during the process.

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When the Hollister was in Pearl Harbor, we were tied to the quay wall on the base. There was an FF astern of us. A tanker came along side to transfer JP5, an aviation fuel, which we carried for fueling some pumps and in an emergency transfer to an aircraft.

As our auxiliary gang was connecting the fuel hose to our pipeline to the fuel tanks, the hose experienced a hole ( i think one of our machinist mates stepped on it). About 10-20 gallons spilled over the side.

i made the mistake of reporting the spill to the Command Duty Officer, who dutifully told the XO. The XO came out to the DASH* deck where the fuel transfer operation was back in progress. He was red faced, excited, and in distress. He immediately told me to throw fuel soaking pads over the side and execute a number of other procedures and reports to appropriate authorities. He was flying off the handle.

i finally quieted him down, convinced him the master chief and i had it under control. He returned to his stateroom. The master chief directed the fueling team to put the pads back in their stowage. He and i stood at the port side hand rail and watched the barely visible film of JP5 float on the tide aft of us to the FF.

You see, if anyone reported the spill, it would to appear it came from the FF. Hollister burned the old black oil fuel and that was floating to the surface all of the time as it was released from spills during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1944.

The BTCM mused, “I don’t know what the XO is all flustered about. If the spill, which doesn’t amount to anything here in Pearl, was reported, it would look bad. He, the CO, and you might get fired, but he and the CO would still get to retire. You wouldn’t make lieutenant commander and be kicked out of the Navy. If you weren’t sweating it — before the XO came on the scene, the BTCM and i had decided what to do — there is no reason he should.”

i learned a lot from that man.

NOTES:
* CHENG – Chief Engineer or Engineering Department Head on a Navy ship.
* BT – Boiler Tender, later termed Boiler Technician…i liked “tender” rather than “technician”
* third class middie deployment – third class midshipman, or NROTC midshipmen after their freshman year went on a two-month cruise on ships
* The midshipmen were in three sections while the BT’s* were in 4 sections. Consequently, the watches were not “dogged,” which meant the 16-20 watch was not split into two, two-hour dog watches. Ergo, the midshipmen did not rotate through the watches.
* DESRON: destroyer squadron normally consisting of five or six destroyers under the command of the destroyer commander or “commodore.”
*sound-powered phone system: a system of communication with headsets requiring no electricity. On Navy ships, the. “1JV” circuit was the primary engineering circuit for CHENG to communicate with the major parts of the steam plant (engine rooms, fire rooms, etc.
* BTCM: Boiler Tender Master Chief Petty Officer, an E-9, the highest pay level for enlisted personnel
* DASH: Drone Anti-Submarine Helicopter. These unmanned helicopters were designed to be flown out over suspected submarines and drop a pinging torpedo to find and destroy a submarine. The program, which had numerous failed exercises, most of which lost the expensive drone, was abandoned in the late 1960’s. The DASH deck on the 01 level aft, remained.

Eleventh Law for Naive Engineers

October 23, 2024Murphy's Law desk calendarJim

If more than one person is responsible for a miscalculation, no one will be at fault.

Marty Tales: Golf and His Back

October 21, 2024A Pocket of Resistance, Sea StoriesJim

Many politically correct folks will become infuriated with this post. It violates all of their rules.

We are curmudgeons, old men who will make fun of anything. If we are the target of some impolitically correct prank, joke, or supposed bullying, we will laugh right along with the others.

The reason is quite simple. It’s funny.

This story is a classic example, one of the best.

My great friend, Marty Linville, was a hero, as i have noted, for his service in Vietnam, which earned him the Army’s Silver Star. He suffered from that service with several conditions. The one that struck him earlier than the others was angiospapgelitus. This is a condition that grows bad bone on the spine. It fused most of Marty’s spine and created the inability to turn his neck and his head was thrust forward and down. It caused him a great deal of pain for almost thirty years. Yet, he remained a very good golfer up to the very end of his life. Marty was amazing.

Twenty-five years ago or more, Marty had been over-medicated by several of his specialists. Consequently, he could not hit a golf ball very far (he finally managed to get his specialists coordinated and the problem did not go away, but the treatment lessened his pain a bit and increased his flexibility somewhat for at least twenty years; he was still limited in distance on hitting shots, but it was tolerable). Before, he resolved that distance problem, he had a problem on one specific hole.

The 12th hole at Sea ‘n Air, the Naval Air Station, North Island’s golf course, is a 528-yard, par 5 hole. There is a water hazard about fifty yards in front of the green that requires a tee shot to clear about 150 yards without landing in the water. With Marty’s limitations at that time, he just couldn’t clear the hazard, but he tried, tried, and tried.

Then on one Friday round, we were playing with my old shipmate, Al Pavich, and my neighbor, Ralph LaVage. As we approached the tee box, Marty announced he was going to lay up short of the hazard so he could clear it on his second shot. We thought this was a good idea.

Marty pulled out his sand wedge, and hit. The ball was just a bit off-line to the right. It hit the cart path and bounced high and long. The excessive bounce took the ball an extra twenty yards or so and into the water with a big splash.

When Marty turned around with that look only Marty could give, Ralph was doubled over in laughter, Al and i were rolling on the ground laughing. Marty got that great grin of his and started laughing along with us.

As noted after the meds were corrected, his distance problem was somewhat resolved for a long time. The story became a must to tell to anyone who joined our golf game who had not heard the story. Marty was often the one that told it.

Yep, Marty was a legend. He, like the rest of us, just wasn’t politically correct.

Sister Nancy

October 18, 2024A Pocket of ResistanceJim

It’s taken over a week for me to write this. It has been difficult for me to put down my thoughts about losing a sister.

She wasn’t really a sister. She was two years my older cousin. She lived with her parents about a four-hour drive from our home. But my family was very close. My mother and her older sister Evelyn loved to spend time with their nephews and nieces. When i was an infant, my mother and grandmother would board the train and ride to Paris where Aunt Evelyn, with Nancy and Johnny, were there for her first teaching job. The men of the family were away, occupied with a small disturbance we call World War II. So, from the first thoughts i had in my head, we would spend at least one month a weekend together until we approached the end of high school.

She was the first daughter in my mother’s Prichard generation. Here, she is with our Aunt Bettye Kate Prichard Hall.

She was the leader in the Prichard offspring. Johnny, her younger brother was between Nancy and me. Then there was Martha and Joe, and the Florida Prichards, Butch. Tim, Pam, Mike, Patrice, and Mary Colleen, when they could get to Tennessee or we could get to Florida.

Nancy was always very special to me. She and my sister, Martha had a very special relationship.

Since i learned of her passing last week, memories keep popping up at unexpected moments:

The side yard of our home, probably 1950 or 1951: We played cowboys. My cousin Johnny shot me with his cap pistol. i dropped my six gun and fell to the ground. The other three children stood around me. i recalled the final words of a hero on one of my oaters and emoted with the best of them, finally expiring playtime, closing my eyes, and rolling my head to the side. Dead cowboy.

Nancy was caught up in the moment and began to cry. Even when i jumped up and cavorted to show i was alive, she kept crying. Even when we declared the game was over, Nancy cried at the dead cowboy. It was a good ten to fifteen minutes before we finally got her to wipe her tears and return to being a normal child.

She cried because she cared.

When our grandmother, “Granny,” chopped of the head of a garter snake in our backyard, Nancy cried.

When Granny preparing for supper mid-morning, she twirled a chicken by the neck, snapping the head off. The headless chicken was running frantically around the yard. The other children were laughing at the sight. Nancy cried.

After Thanksgiving in 1954, we took off to Nashville on Saturday for the movie at the Loew’s Theater on Church Street. The area was our most frequented spot in Nashville. We shopped at Harvey’s, Cain-Sloan, and Caster-Knott. This outing was strictly for the movie. The family women all wanted to see “Three Coins in a Fountain.”

After many twists and turns in the romantic comedy drama, the three women (the coins) end up with their men, and Frank Sinatra croons the title song.

Nancy cried all the way home.

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About five years earlier, the two families had gathered on our great uncle’s farm on the corner of Hickory Ridge Road and Blair Lane. “Papa” and Aunt Corrine Wynne had a picnic dinner in the front yard. The adults went into the living room and began to talk about important things. The five children, tired of their usual activities of chasing chickens, playing Red Rover, etc. wandered into the pasture bordering Hickory Ridge Road.

Nancy became enthralled with the abundant prickly pear cacti, which were blooming at the time, amidst the grasses.

Wishing to collect some, she picked them and put them in the back pockets of her jeans. By the time we got back to the farmhouse, the barbs of the prickly pears were sticking through the jeans and lodging into Nancy’s rear end.

We spent the rest of the afternoon in the living room. Nancy lay across Aunt Corrine’s lap in the chair by the side window (more light to see). With her mother hovering over the two, Aunt Corrine, with her tweezers poised, was picking each barb from Nancy’s rear end.

She cried then from pain, but we laughed a lot about that incident later.

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Nancy was legendary for wrapping presents, whether it was Christmas, birthday, or other special events. The decorative exterior was not out of the ordinary. But inside, ahh, inside, was a puzzle. Nancy used more scotch tape than most people keep in their household goods. Every seam, every flaw in the packaging, even the tape itself had been covered with scotch tape. It would take extra time just to get inside.

Her scotch tape was a family legend.

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i wish everyone could have seen Nancy and her brother dance. When we visited Red Bank while we were in high school, i went to several of their school sock hops. The two of them could do any dance together. They flowed across the floor. They danced at the hop and were often the center of attention. i wish i could have danced like that.

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i have a special first with Nancy. She had married and moved to St. Augustine, Florida where her husband worked for the telephone company. i was a junior at Castle Heights Military Academy. On spring break, i chose to take a bus to Jacksonville to spend the week with my aunt and uncle. But one day, i went to Cape Canaveral for a day with Nancy and her family.

She cooked her first meal for a guest. Me. It was a six-course extravaganza. She was learning her timing on how to have a meal: first course, the salad; second course, the bread, it had not been ready for the salad, and the rest of the meal wasn’t cooked yet; third course, the potatoes and beans, the meat wasn’t ready yet; dessert was served without a hitch.

It was all delicious. i guess she had grown up. She didn’t cry. But we did laugh that evening and many times afterwards.

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When her mother became ill with Parkinson’s Disease and eventually dementia, Nancy was a saint. She took care of that wonderful woman in spite of many in conveniences to herself. She was with her whenever she was needed. She loved her mother.

There are many other Nancy stories that are part of our family’s lore. i will keep paving those pop into my head at unexpected moments.