by Mark Bouman
And all of that space needed to be fixed.
The ship had been underwater for years, so every room was a maritime disaster area: thick, sticky mud caked the ceiling, dried on the walls, and covered the floor; the wood was so waterlogged you could press your thumb into it; and dead fish in various states of decomposition were wedged into countless nooks and crannies. And added to all that was the feeling that you were inhaling tiny, damp bits of the ship whenever you took a breath. Dad left a portable heater running inside the ship day and night.
Mom had taken one look at the ship and shaken her head. “I’m not living on that thing. No one can live on that thing. It’s disgusting.”
“It’ll be fine,” crowed Dad.
“No, it won’t.”
“The ship’ll be fine.”
“No, it won’t. Look at it!”
Dad looked, and it looked fine to him. “I need the kids every day to help me fix it up. It’ll be great. You’ll see.”
Mom didn’t wait around to see and declared that she would be living at home and doing actual work. And thus began our summer vacation. At first Jerry, Sheri, and I made day trips with Dad to the Patrol. We spent weeks using individual buckets to carry everything small to the rail of the ship—scraped mud, garbage, fish carcasses—and tossing it overboard. Dad told us to make sure we didn’t let people see what we were doing, though the polluted Grand River wasn’t a sparkling gem to begin with. Little by little, the ship became less like the water it had been stewing in and more like a place people might actually be able to live.
When the ship started to dry out, however, that presented its own set of problems—problems which Dad chose to view as opportunities to put us to work. Without the mud and sludge coating every surface and with the heater running, the wood finally began to dry in the warm summer air. As the wood hardened, however, things shifted. Doors shrank out of alignment with their jambs. Closed windows couldn’t be opened, and open windows couldn’t be closed, and everywhere we looked there was paint peeling and bubbling off, sometimes in tiny patches and sometimes in great wide swaths.
One afternoon Dad took a deep breath and declared, “Smell that dry air? Time to move in.”
My stateroom had a single bunk, a single porthole, and a tiny lightbulb hanging from the ceiling with a small pull chain attached to it. Jerry and Sheri got the same setup, while Mom and Dad got the largest stateroom.
The next day we helped Dad carry what seemed like hundreds of gallons of white paint up the gangway and onto the aft deck. After lunch, Dad found us in the galley.
“Bought you something,” he stated, tossing a paper bag our way.
Jerry reached inside and pulled out three new paint scrapers. Without a word he handed one to me and one to Sheri. Dad pulled his own well-used paint scraper out of his back pocket and walked to the nearest section of rough, bubbling wood. “Like this,” he said, and scraped a patch of paint down to the bare wood. Paint flecks floated down like snow.
Then Dad walked off to another part of the ship, leaving us in no doubt about what was supposed to happen next.
“I can only reach halfway up the walls,” complained Sheri. “This is the worst summer ever.”
“Just scrape the low stuff,” Jerry said, “and I’ll get the parts you miss. Mark’ll help too, right, Mark?”
“Right,” I grudgingly agreed.
“Look, if we finish fixing the boat, we can play. Like at home. Dad will eventually run out of chores for us.”
And so scraping decades of paint from a foul-smelling ship became our life for the following weeks. Sometimes the wood was so rotten that it scraped right off with the paint. Every morning Dad would tell us which part of the ship to work on, and we’d trudge in and begin scraping. The walls all had multiple layers of paint, some so thick that I could see down through the years like I was a geologist looking at a canyon. White, gray, red, gray, dark gray, black, green, more gray.
“Who would paint a door so many times?” I asked Jerry. “And why would they switch colors each time?”
He answered with a question of his own. “And what was so gosh-darn great about gray?”
We scraped until our arms ached. We breathed in time with the back-and-forth motion, and paint flakes slowly covered us from head to toe. We inhaled some of the smallest flecks and tried to blink others out of our eyes. Our shoes were constantly transformed with new colors, and a fine grime of paint chips gummed up the knots and twists of our shoelaces just as thoroughly as the sandburs back home.
Occasionally Dad poked his head into the room to check on us, and that was our signal to sweep everything into a bucket and throw it overboard. The current in the Grand River was minimal where Dad was docked, but the sluggish water was so dirty that our paint chips hardly seemed to make a difference. No matter how much paint we dumped overboard, there was always more scraping to do—until one day we finished. We had scraped every surface that could be scraped, from the crow’s nest down to the bilge.
The next morning Dad brought us something new: a paper bag with three paintbrushes in it.
“Doors, doorjambs, ceilings, window frames, chairs, stairs, railings, chain lockers, hatches, porthole frames, decking,” Dad listed. “If it isn’t brass or glass, paint it!”
At first we tried to paint the right way, but we quickly discovered that slopping on paint as thick and fast as possible was the best technique. When the paint was thick enough, it filled in the cracks and gaps in the old wood, and we only had to apply a single coat. Sheri painted low while Jerry and I painted high. All Dad’s paint was oil based, so by the end of each day we stank of thinner—which we used to wash the brushes—and gasoline, which we rubbed on our skin to remove the paint.
Hour after hour, day after day—until one day Dad declared the painting finished.
Once the Patrol had been bathed in white and Dad was starting to think about taking it out onto the Lake, I was given my first taste of bilge duty. Sheri was exempted because Dad declared it a “man’s job,” and Jerry was exempted because he was terrified of the dark, confined space, forcing me to do it alone. After putting on my swimsuit, I climbed down to the lower deck, lifted the access hatch, and lowered myself through, splashing into a dark and claustrophobic canyon. Dad lowered a five-gallon bucket after me on a rope, inside of which were two Folgers coffee cans.
“Get whatever might foul the pump,” he instructed.
In the light of a single bulb, I sloshed around in search of something solid to fill my cans. I discovered gummy sludge that was stuck to the hull, along with fish, oversize snails, and frogs, all of which were in various states of decomposition and mummification. Whenever I filled the five-gallon bucket with my Folgers cans, I called up to Dad, and he disappeared for as long as it took him to dump it over the deck rail. I waited for him in the bilge, hearing the slow slap of water on the sides of the ship, listening for Dad’s returning footsteps. Several bucketfuls of gunk satisfied Dad that the pump would run again, and I was granted permission to climb back out.
“Now, into the river!”
Covered head to toe in filth and slime, I leaped over the rail and into the water. Some of the stuff I’d just scraped out of the bilge was floating there, waiting for me, but Dad tossed me a bar of Ivory soap before striding away.
The repairs were mostly finished, but they were a means to an end. Dad didn’t want to anchor in a harbor somewhere and set up a lounge chair on deck. He had arranged to dock the ship near the coal quays on the Grand River—actually a small peninsula. Great piles of coal surrounded the city’s main power plant, but not much else besides a few marshes, a scattering of small ponds and meandering waterways, and the water discharge channel from the plant. But it was a short sail down the river to Lake Michigan, and Dad wanted everyone to marvel at the Patrol, which meant taking it out on the open water.
“You ready to go out to sea?” Dad asked Mom when she came to see the progress.
“I suppose. Once or twice, anyway.�
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“You’ll change your tune,” Dad said, but Mom frowned in reply. I suspect the only thing worse than being cooped up with Dad at home was being cooped up with him on the boat.
Out on the water, Dad was king, and he played his role to the hilt. Squinting from beneath the brim of his captain’s hat, which he donned whenever he took the helm, he would man the ship’s wheel like he was a born mariner. Compass, throttle lever, gauges for fuel and oil pressure, running lights, air horn, UHF radio console—he loved everything about running that mighty machine. The Patrol gave him the chance to be 100 percent in charge. While he was driving the tank or shooting guns, life might suddenly inconvenience him. Mom might yell at him about money or a neighbor might come over to complain about something or he might have to go to his job. On the water, though, Dad was truly the captain of his own ship.
When it came time to sail, Dad would start up the Kahlenberg, and the noise and heat it generated were almost unbelievable. Each of the four pistons was as tall as Dad and thicker than my body. The engine shook the entire ship, and we could feel the vibrations through our shoes until it seemed even our teeth were in motion. Then we’d pull in the gangway, release the mooring lines, and off we’d go, plowing down the river toward the Lake.
When we were under way, Dad would often ignore us. Once, when I got tired of watching Dad steer, I went looking for Jerry. I checked the main cabin first and found Sheri. She was playing with her dolls and had them scattered, along with their various accessories, across the carpet Dad had hastily laid down to cover the floor.
“Where’s Jer?”
“I don’t know,” she answered, not looking up. “I haven’t seen him in a while.”
I searched the rest of the ship before I thought of one place I hadn’t checked: up. Standing on deck and craning my neck, I could see him far above in the crow’s nest. It was the tallest point on the ship, but a quick hand-over-hand climb took me the thirty feet to the top.
“Move over a bit,” I said, squeezing onto the small platform next to him. It was really only made for one person, but we figured out how to place our feet so we could both fit.
“Seen anything?” I asked.
“No, it’s pretty quiet.” He had Dad’s binoculars with him. A large strap around his neck kept him from dropping them onto the deck below—the crow’s nest could sway more than ten feet from side to side.
“No ore carriers?” At many hundreds of feet in length, they were the largest ships on the Great Lakes, and Dad’s boat looked like a toy next to one of them. The land was a distant glimmer on the horizon, but when I took a turn with the binoculars, the high bluffs that lined Lake Michigan were clearly visible.
“I’m going down, move over,” Jerry said, and he scampered down the ladder. I stayed for a time, enjoying the view. Everything was blue to the horizon, save for the white propeller wash trailing behind the ship.
Being at sea started out as an adventure—the lure of wide-open water and endless possibilities. The Patrol was a world away from the sandy hills at home, and the water never infested our socks and shoelaces with sandburs. Most of our chores at sea involved operating the boat, and that tended to be more pleasant than what Dad came up with at the house. The galley usually had a supply of Wonder Bread, jars of peanut butter, and a sack of apples, which was plenty to get by on.
It wasn’t paradise, though, and the ship quickly got small after a few days at sea. We played card games and board games, but we were still antsy kids. The great part about living on eleven acres was that at least you always had eleven acres. There was really only one way to exercise when we weren’t docked, and that was to play hide-and-seek. The ship was filled with hidden places, and Dad had given us so many chores that we knew them all. Some of them were so small that our little bodies would barely fit.
Jerry instigated. “Hey, let’s play hide-and-seek.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “Sheri, me and Jerry will hide, and you find us.”
She covered her face and began to count, while Jerry and I ran back to the galley and down the stairs.
We wedged into a dark, narrow crack, silently congratulating ourselves. Soon we heard the sounds of Sheri’s search, and it was all we could do not to laugh or call out to her.
The minutes stretched. We couldn’t hear Sheri anymore. And I didn’t know about Jerry, but I was starting to lose feeling in my legs.
“Come on,” I said, “let’s give up.”
We wandered upstairs, only to discover Sheri back in the main cabin, playing with her dolls.
“Hey, why’d you give up?” I reprimanded her.
“I couldn’t find you, and it’s dark down there. I got bored.”
I got ready to retort, but then I heard Mom’s voice in my head. You boys need to play with your sister. You have each other, but she has no one.
Living on the ship was getting worse and worse.
Dad had expectations for us too. I loved to stand at the rear rail when we were under way, watching the propeller churn the water into foam. The Patrol’s wake would unwind itself behind us like a forever snake, and I could stare at it for hours. Dad, however, had a radar for boys who were doing nothing—and the ship was too large for him to operate entirely on his own. Dad taught us to navigate so we could share the workload.
“Take the helm, boys,” he’d say, and Jerry and I would jog off toward the wheelhouse.
I felt a sense of pride: Dad was putting me in charge of steering the entire ship. He’d told me that the Kahlenberg cranked out more than 250 horsepower, and I imagined I could feel every bit of that power vibrating up through the throttle lever and the brass wheel. He never let us steer the ship into port, of course. He wanted to be seen at the wheel. But in open water, he was content to trade our lack of expertise for his comfort. Dad might be gone for a minute or an hour, but either way, steering the ship would be up to one of us kids. We had a hard time giving navigation the attention it needed, and more than once we got up close and personal with navigation buoys and fishing nets, but that sort of marginal navigation seemed to be good enough for Dad.
In fact, once we’d taken a few turns at the wheel without causing a serious accident, Dad realized that we were an untapped source of nighttime labor. Why should he, or his diving buddies who tagged along for the ride, steer the ship when there were perfectly capable children on board? Dad began giving us overnight shifts, allowing us to use the bunk in the pilothouse.
“Share the shift with your brother if you need to,” he told me one night, “but just don’t leave this heading.” He tapped the wide face of the compass for emphasis. “South by southwest at one-nine-five, got it? Do not leave that course. I’ll relieve you at oh-seven-hundred.”
That was a long nine hours. The dim light on the chart table reflected from the inside of the darkened pilothouse windows, making it impossible to see anything beyond the ship. The time passed like this: look at the compass and make sure it was pointed at 195; adjust the wheel if needed; grab the brass handle that controls engine speed, then release it since I wasn’t allowed to change speed anyway; look at the compass again. When it was my shift, I longed to sleep but didn’t dare. Although I grew more and more groggy and I allowed the ship to wander off course several times, I never actually fell asleep, and by the time the sun crept up over the edge of the Lake, I made sure we were smack-dab on course.
Jerry and I learned later that our overnight course corrections had cost the trip more than an hour of sailing time, but that was how things tended to go on the Patrol. You had to be ready for the unexpected—and you had to make it seem like the unexpected wasn’t your fault.
22
THE SHIP WAS A PERFECT platform for Dad’s scuba diving. The Lake was littered with wrecks—everything from modern fishing boats that had gone down in storms to massive, three-masted vessels that had been resting beneath the cold water for more than 150 years. Since Dad had a huge boat and an unlimited amount of free time, he had no trouble getting in touch w
ith the right people who knew things or who knew a guy who knew things. Dad’s posse knew things even the Coast Guard was in the dark about.
Finding the wrecks was like following a spoken treasure map. Once Dad heard that if he lined up with a particular pair of smokestacks at the power plant, then eased along until a certain tall tree on the shoreline was exactly opposite the starboard beam, and finally turned perpendicular to shore and motored out to a depth of exactly eighty feet, he’d find a wreck. Sure enough, the depth finder pinged a moment after we first hit the target depth, showing that the bottom jumped up where the bulk of the sunken ship rested. We’d hit it dead on—and that kind of thing happened all the time. There was Walter L. Frost, a lumber hauler that had gone down in a storm, and Westmoreland, nicknamed the “Treasure Ship” for the old coins scattered around its hull. Montauk, Flying Cloud, Rising Sun, Three Brothers, Francisco Morazan—we heard all the names over and over, like they were the names of distant relatives we were going to visit that summer.
Sheri and Mom didn’t want anything to do with Dad’s diving, but Jerry and I would come out on deck to watch him don his gear. He wriggled his way into his black wet suit first; then came twin tanks—the color of a canary—hooked to a single-stage breathing regulator, face mask, waterproof flashlight, dive watch, and a nine-inch survival knife strapped to the underside of his left forearm. Once he was ready, he’d walk to the rear of the Patrol to a gate, through which he would leap into the water feetfirst while pressing his mask to his face. We’d watch his bubble trail until we got bored and then wander around the ship until we heard him clamber back on board.
One day when Jerry was off somewhere by himself, Dad asked me if I wanted to learn to dive, and I jumped at the chance.
“First thing you need to learn is buddy breathing,” he said, “in case you run out of air and need to come up with the help of another diver.”
