The Voyage of the Rose City

by John Moynihan

  I purchased a few things before heading back to the ship. I had better memories of this place from five years earlier.

  Sakai was all lit up that night; it seems there was a festival on. I delayed returning to the ship for one more walk of the town. The children were all dressed in traditional kimonos. They laughed and giggled, led around by the hands of their parents. In the central square there was a carnival set up for them. A little pool of goldfish attracted the most visitors, as you could scoop them up in a net and take them home. One child looked up at me and started to cry—I guess I looked like an angry Kabuki giant to him.

  Nearer to the dock there was a more subdued ceremony going on. I chanced upon it because I smelled clouds of incense wafting out of a side street. I worked my way through a sudden crowd of people, all dressed in traditional costumes. This chaotic swirl of people, smells, and smoke dispelled my unease with modern Japan: It was distinctly Asian. I bought some of the incense from an old man who squatted in front of a coal fire. Moving on, I came to a cemetery. The families of the dead were cleaning the graves and throwing sparkling water and flower petals before them. In the sky the full moon drifted in and out of the wispy clouds, and I returned to the concrete-and-steel maze of refineries.

  The steward and the Bosun both asked me every time I returned from shore if I’d gotten laid, and every time I hadn’t they were disappointed but still had a mischievous glint in their eyes. The two of them were alike in many respects. They were both big men who’d sailed the seas for years and had great tales to tell. Now, however, the Bosun was hamstrung by his health, and the steward by his color. The Bosun was the only member of the crew other than Pete and me to refer to him as “black” instead of “nigger.”

  That I hadn’t gotten laid was not held against me. No one had, except Spider, and that was attributed to the fact that he was Asian. As Joe explained it, Japanese women don’t like Americans because they think we tend to be too well endowed. The best part of his theory was that he believed it sincerely.

  We let go for Yokohama the next morning, after the shift to the docks. Again Jake and the Bosun worked the winch, and again Billy and I broke our backs towing and hauling the lines. The trip to Yokohama was only a day, and everyone took a day off, still drowned in a sea of booze. At least the new stores meant better food. When we reached Yokohama the next day, Jake and the Bosun worked the winch while, once again, Billy and I broke our backs towing and hauling the lines.

  The night in Yokohama was a classic. Miguel, Ned, Billy, and I got off duty at eight and grabbed the first taxi into town. This town was more like it—the military bases had warmed the place up, as it were, and hungry seamen could get whatever they desired just by asking.

  Our destination was the Seafarers Club. Merchant Marines are something of an international brotherhood. In every major port there’s bound to be a club; just show your papers at the desk and you’re in. Yokohama had an especially large establishment. In fact, the volume of shipping was so great in and out of Tokyo Harbor that there was an SIU hall nearby.

  We pulled up in front of a splendid Deco building (that seemed to be the required décor of the Merchants). On entering, we found ourselves in paradise: a diner, pool tables, an English bookstore, a post office with a bank of telephones that had direct lines to the States, and a bar that looked a mile long.

  Not being ones to dillydally, we set down to the business of eating real food and drinking as much as possible. Joining us was the new QMED from the Yokohama hall who had signed on as a replacement for our departed friend. He was a nerdy-looking fellow with big, thick horn-rims and a timid manner. Charlie, who had to work with him, seemed to think he was all right, but the rest of the boys didn’t take to his reserved manner.

  Tonight was no exception. While we were laughing it up, he sat alone, writing postcards. He was more out of place in this business than I was.

  Joe, Jimmy, and Jake showed up an hour later. Amid shouts, we collected at the bar, and all seven of us insisted on buying the first round. It was quite a problem; with all the money we had, no one would allow anyone else to pay for anything. Such stalemates, after many threats and much verbal fencing, usually resulted in everybody paying and leaving the extra as a tip. The waiters and hostesses thought this was all very unusual but did not argue with the ten-dollar tips for four dollars’ worth of drink.

  Billy jumped up and waved his screwdriver around, shouting, “Check this lineup out!” He was in one of his great trickster moods.

  Meanwhile, Jake was angry about union business. We had only just gotten our mail, and Jake was livid. Venting his frustrations, he drafted a letter to the company expressing his displeasure. He also made a carbon of it, which he had me post in the club bathroom as a warning to other seamen.

  The others nodded and agreed when Jake read it out in his exasperated whine, but they didn’t think much of it.

  After the bar, it was time to hit the pool tables, and Ned hustled us all. I came the closest to beating him, and he showed me respect for that. Out of the blue he bought me a pack of cigarettes and a beer. He’d forgotten the old animosity. We’d all gutted it out together, and this was the time to celebrate. He was one to follow Billy’s example, and now that we were partners in crime I was all right in his book.

  It was not one of those evenings when tremendous events shake the structure of the daily narrative. There were no major confrontations or outlandish escapades, other than Billy’s christening of the ship with his beer bottle. And that was just it. We were all out on the town and having a great time together. In his role as Mr. Roberts, Henry Fonda (it figures) hit the nail on the head. His ship hadn’t had liberty for over a year, and when at last they got ashore and tore up the town, he turned to his friend the doctor and said, “For the first time I’m working with a crew.”

  The doctor turned to him in surprise. “What do you think you’ve been working with?”

  “Sixty-two separate guys.”

  And that’s what that magic night in Yokohama did for the Rose City: It made us a crew.

  The next morning we were all eligible to be declared Federal Disaster Areas. Billy and I moaned and groaned together on the watch, and when the Chief wasn’t looking we drank some beers. I repeated Billy’s adage: “Nothing cures snakebite like a little bit of its own poison.” He smiled and we toasted each other.

  We let go from Yokohama that afternoon. Jake and the Bosun worked the winch, while Billy and I broke our backs towing and hauling the lines.

  In the evening the boys gathered for a good round of beer drinking. While in Japan, Ned had bought thirty cases of Asahi, insurance against running out again. There was barely room to move in his room, as he had used them to build a throne for himself.

  While in Japan I had bought a boom box from an oil official who had a black-market stereo business on the side. He’d come on the ship with catalogs of some of the latest electronic equipment and promised delivery that afternoon. I tentatively agreed to buy one, but when he returned he had a monster of a box, and I couldn’t resist. Charlie got even more carried away and shelled out $1,100 for a complete system. I borrowed some tapes from Tony and took the box to Jimmy’s room, where we were partying, and turned it on. It wasn’t long before we were breaking into a cacophony in accompaniment to the music.

  Billy was again in a good mood. We were on our way to Sumatra now, and it wouldn’t be long before we were on our way back to the States. He grabbed me by the shoulder affectionately and got the attention of the others.

  “You should’ve seen us on the bow. Four fucking shifts in four days! Jake wasn’t doing anything. We was busting ass! We were a team up there, a fucking team!”

  It was true: By the fourth day, Billy and I worked in such sync that the job could be done in fifteen minutes, where it usually took thirty. Over and done with, we moved at rapid-fire pace without a hitch. We were a team.

  The trip to Sumatra was only a week long and in that short time we had to Butterworth a
ll the tanks again. On Thursday the twenty-first, our second day out, we had just gotten started on the forward three. The Bosun sent me in to make coffee for the morning break at about nine thirty. I used this as an opportunity to rest my dogs in the lounge for a few before going back out on deck. The chief engineer spied me and sauntered in, saying, “Quite a bit of excitement out there, no?” I thought he meant the Butterworthing and shrugged.

  He raised an eyebrow and then realized I didn’t know what he was talking about. “No, I mean about the submarine. The Russian sub that’s on fire.”

  I stared at him and then jumped up and moved to the window. On the horizon were the dark outlines of airplanes circling over the open ocean. I ran out to the bow.

  At 9:19 the bridge had received an SOS from a Soviet sub that said it was on fire, but that no American ships were to come to her aid. This was sixty miles off Okinawa, and only half an hour from our present position, so we immediately changed course and headed for the disabled craft.

  On the bow the sight was clearer. Four planes and a helicopter circled over a small, dark silhouette. A British LNG (liquid natural gas) tanker—the most specialized and dangerous of ships on the seas, the gas having to be kept in massive holding tanks at subzero temperature to keep it from exploding with the force of an atomic device—had arrived on the scene a few minutes before and had weighed anchor, in accordance with the law of the sea.

  As we steamed closer, the sub came into view. It looked small in comparison to the two supertankers. On the deck were the shrouded bodies of nine crew members who had died in the incident. Men in radioactive protective gear were running around the deck, shooting flares at the planes overhead in an attempt to keep them from photographing the ship. In the water, frogmen hovered about its screw, tinkering with it and diving under the hull.

  Tony, Billy, and I stood on the bow and witnessed the spectacle. Something was not quite right, and it was obviously no small fire that had called out the nuke patrol. On the radio Pete heard reports of a mutiny, but it looked like something in the reactor to us.

  When we got within two hundred yards, I yelled out, “Do you want any blue jeans?” and that started us laughing and offering Marlboros and silk stockings. But Billy quieted us down. It was a grim sight, and not one to joke about.

  The British captain radioed that if there were any contaminated men he didn’t want them. The Russians remained deadly silent. Two days later a Russian tug arrived and towed the crippled ship back to an undisclosed port on the north coast. This created a diplomatic incident: The tug had entered Japanese waters on its way home and outraged the Japanese. It was a nuclear-powered vessel, and the nation was still observing a state of mourning for the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

  Today we finished Butterworth and passed a picture-postcard view of Bataan. We sailed due west for Dumai (Sumatra). It’s Ned’s birthday.

  A lone swallow flew by, making me sad to see it so stranded. Squalls pass us from underneath monolithic and gargantuan rain clouds and thunderheads. Saw a double rainbow. Today we passed a deserted boat off Vietnam.

  —8/22/80

  CHAPTER 14

  BOAT PEOPLE WERE still pouring out of Indochina at this time. Some of the crew had been on ships that came across floundering old tubs loaded with refugees and had taken them on board. As a rule, refugees were malnourished, suffering from exposure, and disease ridden. I shivered at the thought that the lone boat I had seen was a ghost ship, the haunted remains of a desperate flight to freedom that had fallen prey to the Indonesian pirates who combed these waters. I mentioned this to the Old Man, who replied that he wasn’t going to take “any fucking boat people” on his ship.

  Saturday night was the date of one of the gala events in the voyage of the Rose City. We were still overflowing with booze, and as it was such a warm and beautiful night out we decided to have the party on the stern. Billy, Ned, and I, joined off and on by Jimmy and Charlie, brought some chairs, a cooler of beer, and my boom box out on the deck and rechristened the Rose City the World’s Largest Yacht.

  We sang and joked unabashedly. Ned, on his own, took care to wrap my box in towels so the salt air wouldn’t get to it. They were like that—clean, quick, and efficient. “An SIU ship is a clean ship,” I was often told when someone would inspect the disarray of my room.

  Jimmy was a master at pacing the party. He first had us play a Jimmy Buffett tape as a warm-up. The Florida hipster was a lover of the sea and sang about drinking, whores, and being out on the ocean. In a word—perfect. Jim also had a tape of Irish drinking songs that he wouldn’t break out until we were all properly inebriated.

  Tony was always one to improvise a tune. He joined us briefly and broke into an encore of his favorite work song, a little ditty about the officers.

  We took turns singing and making up our own appropriate lyrics. Tony was making a name for himself with the boys. He’d been out of it for the most part, a strange, silent giant, but lately he’d been joining us, and the boys took a liking to him. It was a sense of self-preservation that had kept him from hanging out earlier; he knew better than to shoot his wad too soon. Now, however, we were a crew, and in these last few weeks, when we’d be getting ashore, it was all right to let loose once in a while.

  The night was warm and splendid. The sea rolled by in smooth swelling waves, the moon reflecting off it like silver. It was a benevolent sea, warm and relaxing. We leaned against the rail, our heads back into the wind, and drank in the pleasure of it all. We were almost home free.

  At midnight we shifted into the lounge because Jimmy had first standby. I brought the trusty box along and Jim deemed it high time to put on the Irish songs. They were an instant hit.

  I’m a rambler and a gambler,

  I’m a long way from home,

  And if you don’t like me

  Then leave me alone.

  I’ll eat when I’m hungry,

  I’ll drink when I’m dry,

  And if the whiskey don’t kill me

  I’ll drink till I die.

  The other big favorite was “The Wild Rover.”

  In our drunken glee we started wrestling and dancing Irish jigs to the sounds of the music. ’Twas merry. I did notice, though, that when he sang the first song Billy unconsciously changed the last line to “I’ll live till I die.”

  Reentering the Straits of Malacca, we made our way along the north coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, to the mouth of the river that snaked its way inland to the port of Dumai. Once we made the big turn, the clear, blue water of the ocean yielded to the sickly-brown silt of the freshwater way. On the shore the dense rain forest stretched across the horizon like a thin vibrating wire. There was not a hill to be seen—just hot, vast jungle. On the banks of the muddy water we could occasionally glimpse settlements, crude grass-and-driftwood shanties that housed dozens.

  We waited patiently as the ship lumbered slowly inland. For a river not much wider than half a mile it was astoundingly deep. We traveled up it for the better part of a day, not reaching Dumai until mid-afternoon.

  It could hardly be called a town—a mud hole amid the steamy miles of swamp and jungle perhaps, but not a town. There were a few large holding tanks, a small refinery and pumping station, and the crumbling remains of an unfinished dock. Farther in there was supposed to be a town, but it didn’t look likely. We’d have plenty of time to investigate, however; we were going to be there a week.

  Indonesia meant only one thing to me: Djarums. I craved them, I needed them, I hadn’t had one in months and I was going crazy. The oil execs pulled up alongside our anchorage (until there was room for us at the dock, we were to remain on the hook in the river) and boarded the ship. Yes, we were clear for customs, and yes, we could go ashore. I jumped at this and hitched a ride with a fellow within fifteen minutes of our getting there. Bud, who was on watch at the gangway, was impressed by my eagerness.

  The fellow with whom I was riding was a bit of a slickie-boy. He dressed in the same postmod
way as every Asian from Bangkok to Taiwan who thought himself Joe Western Cool (that is, a cross between James Bond and Al Capone gone a-go-go). He had the Brylcreem hair, the cool dark shades, and the hipster jacket with open shirt and fake patent-leather shoes. He said he’d be returning to the ship in an hour and that I could go back with him.

  We got out of the launch and walked down the boardwalk, past the discarded oil drums and occasional lazy locals to the guardhouse at the main gate. The exec said something to the two dusty soldiers, and I was waved on. There were upward of sixty people there to greet me, all wanting nothing more in the world than to fulfill my every desire. At once I realized I was back in a familiar Asia.

  I waved them out of my way, smiling and joking with these Friends of the American Seaman. Arbitrarily I decided upon a young long-haired fellow and his less bright-eyed friends. They showed me to their bicycle rickshaw and ushered me up and in. To my surprise, one of the fellows climbed in with me. They explained that one rests while the other drives, and vice versa. Being a good ordinary, I did not point out that the one driving was now forced to move twice as much weight.

  And in the sleepy sunlight the village purred. Dirt streets with echoing abysses for potholes, scrawny dogs and cats with broken tails running around between the goats and pigs that roamed the streets, naked children waving for baksheesh. I asked my friends, whose names were Ali (the longhair) and Tom-John, where I could get cold beer and some Djarums. At this they raised their eyebrows and smiled in surprise. “You like kreteks, yes? We show you good place.”