Word: boatswains
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...away from Korea for rest and relaxation in Yokosuka, Japan, it was Ramsey's idea to give his crew three extra hours of sleep beyond the normal 0600 reveille. At 0900, a dulcet announcement was piped over the ship's intercom: "Good morning. This is your friendly boatswain's mate. It's oh-nine-hundred and time to turn out. If you are hungry after your long sleep, there are coffee and sweet rolls waiting for you in the galley." Whereupon the ship's Dixieland band crashed into a rousing version of the reveille call...
...twin rescue jobs which followed will be long remembered among New England mariners. A Coast Guard boatswain's mate named Bernard Webber lashed himself to the wheel of a 36-ft. open power lifeboat and went out to the Pendleton. Eight men had been on the Pendleton's bow; all were lost. But in the light of flares, Webber and his lifeboat snatched 32 seamen on her stern from certain death. A 33rd was drowned...
After 17 months, Captain Gallery got command of a "jeep" carrier. She had a name to conjure with: Guadalcanal-and "I wouldn't swap my cruise as skipper for all the Admirals' stripes in the Navy." One of the Guadalcanal's few veterans was a chief boatswain's mate, with 15 years' experience. When Gallery asked him what he thought of the crew-80% of whom had never seen salt water before -the chief said: "Cap'n, I'd swap 'em all for a bucket of oily rags." But the kids (average...
...antennae which barely protruded from the drifts. But when I approached it I saw that the police had tunneled in their cute way to the right windshield wiper. Adding insult to injury they tied the tag to the rubber part of the wiper with a knot any boatswain would have admired. It defied knives and fingernails. Finally, I stripped it off and the rubber left the wiper like a peel leaving a banana...
More than 1,500 miles from landfall at San Salvador, the caravels came upon smooth seas, drizzling rains and a whale. Whales had always been seen close to shore for the same good reason boatswain birds had: men had never sailed far enough to see them elsewhere. On Sept. 25, after sandpipers and a dove-supposedly sure harbingers of land-were reported, an island was "sighted" and Columbus knelt down and gave thanks to the Lord. The "island" was a cloud on the horizon...