The Voyage of the Rose City

by John Moynihan

  Once a routine had been established I became sure of what my job was. My complete lack of experience and knowledge of the technical jargon made me something of a liability in particularly difficult operations. As a rule I simply shut up and watched, trying to catch on before my ignorance caught up to me. It was the small things, like the Bosun’s having to explain to me the difference between a hatchet and a crescent wrench, that annoyed the younger crew. The old-timers were pretty much disgusted with everything anyway, so my ignorance was only one of a shipful of gripes.

  At the end of the morning’s work the ship was suddenly overtaken by a rain squall, and the crew took refuge in the forepeak. Billy, Jake, Bud, and I stood in the hatchway, watching the waves of cold rain sweep across the water and over the ship. It was a welcome break from work, and one that we were being paid for.

  There was, as usual, little or no conversation apart from complaints about the job or the officers. Then Bud let go some comment about my father and the forepeak was suddenly filled with a dead silence.

  Billy and Jake, when they finally got it straight that, yes, my father was in fact a senator, were speechless for a moment. I silently nodded that it was true and turned away from the look of shock in their eyes and hurt on their faces.

  Joe was the first to react. No less awed than the other two, he was also very impressed. Meeting someone so close to the top, so near the power source, frightened him a little, and his composure mellowed.

  “Monahan, eh? He’s a good man.” I had caught him off guard: not a dumb-ass college scab, but a personification of the American class system.

  Billy and Jake, once over the initial shock, suddenly grew totally alienated. Billy’s face quickly darkened and became ugly.

  “Your father’s a fucking senator? What the fuck are you doing out here?” he screamed at me.

  Jake stared at me for a moment and then looked away and began muttering to the other collected crew members. He had taken to calling me his protégé, proud of the skills he had been teaching me. Now I had betrayed him, and he was unforgiving.

  Billy kept screaming at me: “What is it, senator’s son? Can’t your daddy find you a job in Washington?” Then it hit him why I got the job as opposed to Ned, who had waited in the union hall for three months, and he walked away in disgust. The rain had ended, but it was lunchtime, or close enough to it that the rest of the crew followed Billy back to the house. On the long walk back I spoke to no one, and no one spoke to me. Once again that sick feeling of adolescent anxiety reasserted itself. I was on my own until our return to America, more than three months from now. I filed into the washroom and, standing in the far corner, waited for the rest of the silent crew to finish at the sink. At lunch that afternoon Ned did not look up at me once while serving the stew. The word was out.

  The day after I was exposed I didn’t work any overtime. Holing up in my room, I attempted to escape the hostile stares on A deck. The cabin faced the stern, and as such let in no light. The principal dominating feature of the house was the chimney stack that shot up to a height some 120 feet above the main deck. Surrounding it was the stack deck, which connected to B deck via a small bridge that spanned the gap between the house and the stack proper. It was the alternative lounge where the crew drank, set up lawn chairs, and sunned themselves. The end result was that any cabin that faced the stern had but a single view—the stack. Its shadow made for perpetual twilight.

  All day I lay on my bunk, reading Dispatches. The immediacy of the writing overwhelmed me and I began to have serious fantasies of riding into battle with Errol Flynn’s son, Sean, on my Harley-Davidson 900, and grabbing the next chopper to Saigon.

  When Joe called me for the afternoon watch, I stayed in the lounge until five, thinking that since I wasn’t working overtime I wasn’t needed until my turn at the wheel. When the Bosun came up to see where I was, I caught an earful.

  “What the hell are you doing? You’re supposed to be down there with the rest of the guys!” He wasn’t mad, particularly; he knew I wasn’t aware of all the rules, but he didn’t at any cost want the Chief to find out someone had missed mandatory work. I wasn’t free to sit in the lounge until five. It was the way the company got its money’s worth: Only on the weekends were the men on watch not responsible for some sort of manual labor when they weren’t on lookout or at the wheel.

  I ran out on deck and met up with the rest of the crew in the forepeak. Billy was the first to yell at me.

  “What the fuck is this, senator’s son? Whatta you been doing, jerking off in your room?” and so on. I stood there dumbly and looked for something to do, but it was almost dinnertime and everyone was wrapping up. Billy didn’t let up for an instant. When he wasn’t razzing me, he was grimly going about his business in a raging silence. I had no choice but to take it.

  Meanwhile, the sun was setting before us. The days were growing noticeably shorter; the equator was fast approaching.

  The big event the first week out at sea was the pay raise. As of June sixteenth the overtime rate went up a good five percent. But though it was a breakthrough for the union, the increase did not bear close inspection. In addition to the minimum wage I was getting for standing watch, as an ordinary I would receive $4.86 an hour for weekly overtime. In other words, I wasn’t even making time and a half. Weekend overtime (which included the regular watch) was a little better: I was paid $7.67 an hour, but this still meant I had to work fourteen hours a day, seven days a week, to make more than the $876.77 monthly rate.

  For the old-timers the union was a favorite topic of debate. There was not a union official alive they didn’t accuse of some heinous crime or other. The beefs were, however, generally not without good reason. To make pension, the brothers of the SIU had to put in twenty years. Twenty years sea time. Thus it took an average of forty to forty-five years for a seaman to make pension. Peanuts, Dave Martin, Jake, Joe, and their comrades back in Philadelphia had all joined up before World War II and were only now becoming eligible for retirement. The years at sea had, on the one hand, been a relief from Depression-era America, and a way to make money and have a hell of a time doing it. On the other hand, it had become the only trade and way of life they knew. The good-time Charlies of the ’40s and ’50s were now stuck in a dead-end job with no alternative but to follow the union bosses.

  This was the main gripe the crew had with me. I was continually asked, “What the hell are you doing out here? Go back to college and make yourself a decent living.” They couldn’t see how someone who didn’t have to be a grease monkey all his life would leave college to become just that. At the time I didn’t dwell on the metaphysical nature of the question but concerned myself with not getting beaten by resentful and angry Merchant Marines.

  I had no choice but to work the best I could with the crew, so the next day I returned to overtime work. The Butterworth operations (named Butterworth for the man who invented the rotating high-powered nozzle) continued in their monotonous way. Every day for the next two weeks there was no change in the routine. Stand watch, eat breakfast, work overtime tending the machines, eat lunch, work more overtime, eat dinner, stand evening watch, and catch grief from Billy the entire day. At times it was a simple gesture, like flipping the finger at me through the window when I was on the wheel and he was on lookout. Other times it was a lecture in the lounge for all to hear.

  “You know what your problem is, Monahan? You’ve been fed on the silver spoon all your life. You’re a fucking prima donna. Why don’t you go back home where you belong?”

  One time he was strutting around the lounge during a coffee break, yelling at me, when someone told him to “lay off the kid.”

  He turned and looked at me with his caustic smile, and then, walking away, said, “I don’t give you too much of a hard time, do I, John?”

  I muttered something about him “fucking with me all the time.” He spun around and looked at me fiercely.

  “You wanna fuck with me? I’ll string you up from here to
the key post!” He got more violent as he went on. I shrank into my seat. So much for nipping it in the bud.

  On the fifth day of Butterworthing, the Chief had us begin as early as the light permitted. This didn’t trouble the 4–8 watch particularly, as dawn that day was at 6:30 a.m. and we’d be making extra money on watch. As Jake put it, “If you pick up an oily rag, mark it down as ‘Cleaning Oil Spill.’ ”

  After breakfast the rest of the crew joined the three of us on deck to begin the day’s work. The Bosun sent me off to get an Allen wrench, and when I returned the crew was standing around, talking in hushed and subdued tones.

  Billy, looking down the hatchway to the seventh starboard tank, said, “My mother didn’t raise no hero.”

  The others muttered their agreement and looked up uncertainly at the approaching Bosun. Being sixty pounds overweight and barely five-five, he took at least twice as long to walk the length of the deck as anyone else on board. When he finally waddled up to the hatchway he had to pause a minute before speaking in order to catch his breath and wipe away the rivers of sweat that ran down his red swollen face.

  “He really hasn’t been the same since he had that stroke,” one of the old-timers grumbled behind me.

  The Bosun looked around and began relaying the day’s orders. The crew, however, remained curiously hesitant to act upon them. Just then, Charlie, the QMED, showed up with a full complement of welding equipment. The word from the Old Man was that a crack in the superstructure between tanks seven and eight was to be repaired before we reached Cabinda, on the west coast of Africa.

  There was no more putting it off, and the Bosun was now forced to ask for a volunteer to go down in the tank opposite the welder and stand ready with a fire extinguisher. The crew refused. Billy and Charlie, having joined the union at the same time and being roughly the same age, had already established themselves as buddies. But now Billy was decidedly displeased with Charlie for agreeing to be the welder. As the Bosun stood there dumbly, Joe and Jake explained the situation to me more clearly. This was strictly a voluntary job, unlike most jobs the ABs were obliged by Maritime Law to perform. (Ordinaries, being by definition unqualified, were already exempt from many of the most hazardous jobs.) However, one would make triple time for going down there, and receive three standard hours’ wages in addition as a clothing allowance.

  So far as I was concerned that was enough of an enticement, and I told the Bosun I’d do it. The others almost sighed with relief that the issue was settled, and that they were free of the burden. The Bosun couldn’t think of an objection and gave me the go-ahead.

  Now established as the point man, I was outfitted and instructed by the crew. Charlie disappeared down into the adjacent tank and his gear was lowered to him on a long, stout rope. Over by tank seven, the fire extinguisher was likewise secured and made ready to go.

  “All you have to do is stand by the spot where they’re coming through and make sure no fire starts up,” the Bosun explained. “You know how to use one of these extinguishers?” I nodded. The Bosun, though sincere and having the best of intentions, was the master of explaining the obvious.

  Everything prepared, the Chief out on deck, and Charlie in position, I climbed down into the tank. Much like a standard fire escape, the stairs that led down to the floor of the tank zigzagged six stories alongside the massive steel bulkhead.

  The tank was huge, like three regulation basketball courts stacked up. Except for the entrance at the top of the stairs, the only light in the great holding vat streamed in through the hatches for the Butterworth machines. The broad beams of sunlight cut through the still steamy air and bounced off a surprisingly clean floor. It seems Mr. Butterworth knew what he was doing; the tank was completely clean of oil except for a quarter inch of residue that clung to the metal walls and floor.

  I shouted up to the Bosun and the others that I was all set and they lowered the fire extinguisher down to me. I positioned myself at the crack and, pulling out the pin, made ready with the fire extinguisher.

  The morning wore on, and I soon discarded my vigilant stance for a relaxed pose across from the crack. The fire extinguisher was still within easy reach; however, I no longer thought of heroically saving the ship. It dawned on me, as I sat on one of the three-foot-high pipes that ran through the tank, that not only was I making excellent money, but I was also being paid for doing virtually nothing. I was catching on to the seaman’s ways.

  At coffee time I was called out of the tank and joined Charlie and the first engineer, who had been supervising the welding. On the walk back to the house they debriefed me on the progress as seen from my side. The First was a grim silent man in his late fifties. Apart from our waiting in line for food together, the deck gang had little or no contact with any of the engineers. The First was a classic example of the distinctions between officers and men, and the deck and engine departments. He scowled haughtily at one and all and never uttered a word. The only time he was known to have spoken outside the engine room was to order breakfast. Not that any of the crew really cared.

  Charlie and I, along with the others on deck, collected in the lounge for coffee. Charlie was his usual animated self. As the 4–8 QMED, he was better known by Billy, Jake, and me than the rest of the engine crew, since he took his breaks in the lounge with us while the rest of the ship slept. Short and muscular, he had terrible skin augmented by elaborate four-color tattoos emblazoned all over his body. On one leg was a Mayan priest dancing in full regalia. On his arm a great bird of prey searched the skies for some undefined foe. And so on. Charlie was more up in body and spirit than the rest of the crew; he intended to stay on for a year in order to make enough money to buy himself a house and some property. To him a long voyage in the Orient was a blast.

  The crew didn’t like the welding, so that morning they weren’t concerned with Charlie’s plans; they were more than a little angry with him for offering to weld the crack. I hadn’t realized it, but when a tanker is light, the danger of igniting volatile fumes is at its greatest. Our captain, it suddenly occurred to me, was not only violating Coast Guard law by welding on deck, he was sending us down into vapor-filled tanks with an open flame. It also came out that the radar on the bridge had gone out the first full day at sea, and instead of stopping off in South Africa to have it repaired we were going to wait until we got to Japan. It didn’t matter that we’d be going through the Straits of Malacca in typhoon season: Business is business, and the insurance will pay off anything that might go wrong. For Billy this was too much. He didn’t say more than the usual bitter innuendoes at coffee, but inside him it was building up.

  The welding in the tank went on for two and a half days. As each session began, the descent ritual was repeated and the heightened tension returned. The dark isolation inside was blissful relief from the manic arena of the lounge. The silhouetted figures of Billy and the crew were pleasantly distant, and they were looking out for me rather than razzing me.

  But the threat of disaster quickly manifested itself. The afternoon of the second day, the sounds of the welding grew noticeably louder. I looked up from my reverie to find great molten sparks shooting out of the crack and dancing across the oil-soaked floor. The Chief looked down impassively through the haze of smoke and vapor that hung trapped in the air between the hull and the deck.

  The atmosphere in the lounge did not improve following this. At afternoon coffee the Bosun, leading the usual roundtable discussion of the day’s work, questioned me on the progress of the welding. When I told him what had gone down, the gathered crew shuddered involuntarily. Billy jumped up and went into a heated, impassioned tirade.

  “Those no-good motherfuckers! They don’t give a shit about what happens to us! They send some kid down there who doesn’t know better, and expect him to keep the ship from blowing the fuck up with a fire extinguisher?” He went on for a minute or so, pacing back and forth among the men, pausing only to gesture or suck on his cigarette.

  The others sat qui
etly, agreeing with him but afraid of his violent temperament. Charlie squirmed in his seat and made limited attempts to defend himself. Ultimately he didn’t have to. The officers wanted the job done, and he was willing to do it. It was too early in the trip for union pressure to keep him from working. In short, he didn’t really give a damn if the crew didn’t like his volunteering to weld; they couldn’t do anything to stop him.

  The old-timers started talking about other ships that had gone down under similar circumstances. Peanuts went into one particularly vivid account of an Indian ship he’d seen catch fire in San Francisco harbor. It had all started in the engine room, but by the time anyone realized something was wrong, men could be seen running down the deck, writhing and throwing themselves overboard in a futile attempt to extinguish the flames that had engulfed them all.

  Jake frowned and growled. “They give us copper hammers so we won’t create any sparks, and they take away our papers if we smoke on deck, and then they go and start a fire in the tanks.”

  On the final morning of tank welding, Charlie and the first engineer came down into my tank to put the finishing touches on the crack. The First looked around the tank in wonderment. On the bulkhead by the crack, I had sketched with my fingers classic pirate scenes in the caked layers of oil that clung to the steel. I could see in his eyes that he felt as though he’d entered the cell of a prisoner who had been locked up in the Bastille just a little too long.

  The violence of the welding, when I finally saw it up close, amazed me. The blue gas flame sent a cascade of sparks out in a six-foot radius. When I ran up to stamp out the smoldering bits of metal, the engineer held me back and told me not to worry about them. Then he casually stepped on a few of the larger coals nearest him, seemingly as an afterthought. His apparent coolness was augmented by his smoking a cigarette in the tank. Charlie may not have cared, wanting to establish an in with his superior (and so minimize his hassles); I, on the other hand, was shocked, but was in no position to start telling a longtime seaman—let alone an officer—how to conduct himself on a ship. But before we were done, when I found myself alone in the tank, I did take out my silent revenge on Texaco and the Seven Sisters by pissing in the tank, hoping that somewhere, six months later, some stockholder’s Cadillac wouldn’t start as a result.