Word: seamans
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Slight, grizzled Hugh Mulzac, ex-seaman, ex-mess boy, was catapulted front & center last week to become a Symbol of Negro participation in the war. When the Liberty freighter Booker T. Washington goes into service from California Shipbuilding's Los Angeles yard in mid-October, the Maritime Commission decided, she will be commanded by a British West Indies-born Brooklyn man, the first Negro to hold a U. S. master's certificate and the first to command a 10,500-ton ship. Captain Mulzac not only promised that he would be able to get qualified Negro officers...
Almost lost in the rush of symbolic "firsts" was studious, bespectacled, 56-year-old Hugh Mulzac. In 1907 he was an ordinary seaman in full-rigged British ships. He climbed to able seaman, boatswain, quartermaster, became a U.S. citizen and got his second mate's papers in 1918. Within two years he had the only U.S. master's certificate ever issued a Negro, a double-riveted whole-hog "any ocean, any tonnage" ticket. Still going up, he got a command: the British registry Yarmouth in the West Indies-Central America trade. Not much of a ship, perhaps...
...carpeted staircase of the Seaman's Club at Archangel was pounded smooth by feet from many lands. Cheerful, blue-bloused, smoking, joking, swearing lads greeted each other in universal monosyllables, sang the songs of home, danced with Russian girls. War, even in Russia, had its interludes...
...Seaman Kelly from London summed it up: "Hold on. We are with...
Aboard the carrier two carpenter's mates and a petty officer were trapped in a compartment five decks below. There was water all around them, a seaman said, and it was hopeless to try to get them out. The telephones were still working. Somebody called down: "Do you know what kinda fix you're in?" "Sure," they called back: "We know you can't get us out, but we got a helluva good acey-deucey game goin' down here right...