Jonah Watch

by Cady, Jack;

  Small Ships—Hurry Up Jobs—Lousy Weather—Even the Oldtimers Get Green Around the Gills

  —by Jack Cady, YN2

  [This article was published in the US Coast Guard magazine in October, 1956.]

  A searchlight bounces off a rolling pitching trawler. The white coil of heaving line stretches into her rigging. Towing hawser hisses out. A course is set for Portland, Boston, New York, Norfolk. Another notch is cut into the wheel.

  Nearly every Coast Guard vessel passes a line to someone in distress over the period of a year, the major portion of the lifesaving end of the service is borne by small vessels ranging from 64 to 165 feet, including the larger WAT class tug. The duty is good from the liberty standpoint most of the time. The duty underway can be, and usually is, a bitch. Suffice it to say that men coming aboard from weather duty are certain they won't get sick. They nearly always do. Time and experience are only partial insurance. Men with 18 to 20 years' service walk around giving phony belches on a bad day.

  Still, the job is what counts and the little ones can do the job. How much of a job they do and how often they have to do it can best be given by the example of one of them. She is the CGC Yankton, 110 feet, based at Portland, Maine, where she is currently pulling Able or patrol status one week out of three. The running to be described occurred between April, 1953, and April, 1954, a year taken from 18 months I served aboard her.

  The first few jobs were routine tows. Sometimes we were undermanned and ran, at least once, standing four on and two off. Towing watch, wheel watch, sack time and return. Very good, but very tiring experience. As summer came more men were assigned.

  The first big one was in June when Able status paid off for 11 men on the sinking trawler Vandal. The call came over 2670 around 2200 and the Yankton was underway in less than 10 minutes. The sinking vessel was about seven miles off the Portland Lightship and the sea, for once, was slick. As the Yankton approached the trawler, it could be seen going fast. When the pumps went aboard she had less than a foot of freeboard. The submersible and handy billy gained on the water until she was safe to two alongside. Fifteen degrees right rudder kept the course.

  We logged a run to Rockland with the Jeanne D'Arc in tow and a week or so later picked up Charles Holderness from the fishing vessel Thomas D. Holderness had made the near fatal mistake of leaning over a winch with a strain on it. When the cable parted, it slashed him from temple to temple and knocked out some front teeth. We had a corpsman from Base South Portland. The only space for him to work was the table in the mess deck. No one was hungry that day.

  ═

  Ever go boarding? The entire crew is in undress blues and only line handlers are at the rail. There are usually women in the yachts and some of them don't really seem to care about much. One we will always remember fondly was wearing a yellow blouse open in front, and with nothing on underneath. Disheartening in a sense, because what can you do?

  Late summer and we caught a job on Charlie 12. No one ever catches one on Charlie. That's the status you take the wife and kids driving, go to church, get drunk; depending on your inclinations. Still we got one and went out with two seamen, three enginemen and the captain. The seamen laid out the tow, stood the wheel watches out, passed the line, and retrieved it when we came in. We had a tough captain but he took the wheel all the way back with the tow. We wondered if perhaps we had him pegged wrong after all. Later developments proved that we had.

  The scalloper Black Diamond went high and dry on Clapboard Island Ledge and we shored and towed for two high tides before she was refloated. The inadvisability of running a six-foot draft through three feet of water was pointed out to the crew.

  Ever drag a body? No one really wants to find it.

  September, and the first real heller of the year whooshed out of the NE. A tug lost her tow of another tug off Alden's Rock on the Maine coast. The rock is the size of a hotel and is coiled off Portland Head and down the coast ready to kill anything that touches it.

  The dead tug with the two men aboard was drifting down on the rock as we overhauled her. The line was passed three times into the teeth of a 40-to-50-knot wind. First the messenger parted. The next time the line was aboard and the men on the tug were unable to secure it because of the weight. We recovered the line and with a touchy bit of seamanship, the Yankton was put alongside the tug in the heavy swell. The line was virtually handed aboard. The tug was snatched off just in time.

  We towed the Mary Rose to Southwest Harbor, water breaking against the bridge ports. Two miles good in four hours.

  ═

  Fire! More fire than the Portland fireboat and fire department could handle. Yankton returned from a run to Rockland to fight it. The Acushnet pumped hundreds of thousands of gallons. The Cowslip fought the fire alongside the cg-5004-d from Base South Portland. For two days the blaze continued at the Pocahontas coal wharf, Portland, in freezing January weather. Ice formed on the wharf and on the ships. Ice formed on the men's jackets. After it was whipped everyone settled back and congratulated each other. They had the right.

  The Yankton wound up the year breaking ice in the Penobscot River, guiding coastwise tankers to berth and keeping river traffic moving. Her propeller was bent by the ice and until yard time in the spring she swam like a ruptured duck.

  So it was a good busy year. Counting the three men we brought in after a two-day search in dense fog, we had saved 15 lives for sure and had some probables. We had towed more than 20 vessels. We had worked the coast, and off shore, from Southwest Harbor, Maine, to New Bedford, Maine. The Yankton was a tough one to cut sometimes, but she was a tougher one to beat. They never sent her on a job that she didn't do. At least I don't know of one.

  Editor's note. The Yankton was named after a Native American tribe, one of the seven primary divisions of the Dakota. Built by Ira S Bushey & Sons, out of Brooklyn, New York, she was launched on April 29th, 1943. A 110' cutter, she was commissioned on January 26th, 1944 and served out of Philadelphia as part of the 4th Naval District. After World War II, she was transferred to Portland, Maine, where she served until 1984 when she was finally decommissioned.

  Sold to a commercial operation, she went through several names (Russell Jr and Roger Stahl, to name two) before becoming the M/V Cetus as part of Constellation Tugs' fleet. Foss Maritime acquired Constellation in the mid-2000s. Yankton became the Mike Azzolino when she was sold to Vinik Marine. Apparently still in service, but Vinik's website is a bit outdated.

  A Sailor's Pay

  Only the sea remains the same. The city of Portland grasps its way toward the surrounding hills of Maine where once stood the cold green of conifers. The port hums with offloading of goods from container ships where once floated only trawlers and lobster boats. I return to a place where darkness is old, if not ancient. I carry a worn claspknife, one blade broken, but with a small marlinespike that is still intact.

  The past compels me to deal with shades. Curious matters are reported in the press. I am the last man alive who understands them.

  And, the coast of Maine is no wrong place to look for specters. Ships have passed the Portland Head for three hundred and fifty years. This harbor has recorded a thousand wrecks, but it has not recorded wrecks that happened in darkness when the sea swallowed hulls in one enormous gulp. At Portland Head the sea builds during northeast storms. Waves vacuum the bottom.

  Expiation is played out in hideous resurrection. A Coastguardsman named Tommy pilots a steel hulled forty footer, twin diesels screaming wide at twenty-two hundred rpm. An engineman named Case dies horribly. A seaman named Alley fails a task, and an engineman named Wert turns coward; while a madman howls.

  The newspaper reports that fishermen report ghosts. It does so tongue-in-cheek, inferring that the fishermen are drunk. I'll allow they may be drunk, but that doesn't mean their vision is unclear.

  My name is Victor Alley. Immediately after WWII, I was stationed here, doing harbor patrols from the Coast Guard base in South Portland. I was a very you
ng man, and this is a young man's story.

  When you are young, and when the world asks you to go into action, mistakes happen. Unseasoned men ride the great urgency of action and emotion, responding to feelings of duty and feelings of guilt. They do not have words or balance in emergencies. Sometimes people die in order for young men to learn how to handle themselves. Two days after my 19th birthday our story went like this:

  ═

  Winter darkness shrouded the inshore islands, and enclosed the harbor and channel and buoy yard at the Coast Guard Base in South Portland. I shot pool in the barracks and hoped my girlfriend would phone. We had already made our evening harbor patrol. The boats were secured. When the call came over the p.a. to proceed with our boat I did not even rack my cue. Just laid it on the table and ran. Our Cap got fussy when those boats didn't move quick.

  As I grabbed foul weather gear, Wert still searched for his. Then he followed, trotting, not running. His rating called him a third class engineman, but nobody ever saw him get his hands dirty. He was football-player big, with a moon face.

  Case, our first class engineman, had the engines cracking and stuttering as I made it to the boat basin. Beneath the floodlights of the boat basin the forty footer seemed more like a tiny ship than a big boat. It was painted white as snow on mountains, and it carried a high bow, a real wave buster. It sported low rails and plenty of working room aft. When we jumped aboard, and I cast off, our bosun mate, Tommy, sapped it hard.

  Those engines could scream like animals. The stern grabbed deep, digging in with the twin roar of diesels as the boat moved out. Those engines were still cold. Tommy knew better. He cleared the end of the pier and cut through shallow water, crosscutting flooded tideflats to the channel. Spray rose luminescent in the darkness. I climbed up beside Tom. He was hitting it just way too hard.

  "You'll drag the bottom out," I yelled. I could feel fingers of rock reaching toward the hull. Tommy looked kind of crazy. Tall and skinny with thick black hair like a Portuguese. Just crazy. He muttered a name. He stood at the helm totally concentrated, and motioned me away.

  I stepped aft. The engine ran at least two-thirds. Tom pushed it that way until we made the channel, and then he ran the engines full. They screamed in overspeed, the bow high and rock steady in the hard hand of the water. Case tapped my shoulder, and we both moved forward to be away from the scream of engines. We did not know that Wert tagged along behind us.

  "The Portland cops called. We're after a boat," Case told me. "Guy who stole it killed his old lady with a knife. He's got their kid in the boat with him. They think."

  "Who thinks?"

  "The cops didn't find a kid's body. The kid and all of her clothes are missing."

  Tommy did not let up. He held it wide open in the middle of the channel, heading seaward. Distant lights of Portland and South Portland started looking fuzzy, the way they do just before winter fog arrives.

  Wert interrupted us. The All-American Boy. His voice practically bubbled with excitement. "This beats towing in broken down fishing boats. A murderer."

  "Get back to those engines," Case told him. "Don't take your eyes off that oil pressure for a second."

  "If we're going to have a murderer, we'd ought to have a gun." Wert acted conversational.

  "You want a gun, join the Army," I told him.

  Wert just asked for it, leaving those engines at those rpms, and then refusing to hurry when Case gave an order.

  "You done it this time," Case told Wert. He literally turned Wert around and gave him a shove aft. Then he turned back to me. "He lies better than I tell the truth. Waste of ink to put him on report." Case was tense, and that was unusual. He was mostly easy going, a guy without enemies. Wert even liked him. He was the kindest man I ever knew. I'd learned a lot from him. Case had broad shoulders, broad face, a nice smile and not much of a beer belly.

  "I gotta talk to him." Case motioned at Tommy.

  "The engines?"

  "Sure," Case said, "and some other stuff."

  I figured the engines were either okay, or wrecked by now. "What are we doing?" I asked Case.

  "We're hurrying to put the cork in the bottle. We're blocking the seaward side. The killer can't escape through the harbor mouth. At least that's part of it."

  "What's the other part?"

  Case looked like he wondered if I would understand. "Tommy's acting weird," Case said. "He sorta gets his beanie unscrewed in emergencies. This ain't just about some nut and a stole boat."

  I almost understood. I knew the story. During the war Tommy served on a cutter escorting convoys. On a dark night a freighter was torpedoed. There were survivors in the water. Tommy had the deck on the fantail because the gunnery officer was forward.

  It was an awful story. Tommy spotted the survivors, and sonar picked up the German sub at the same time. The sub hovered a hundred feet down, directly below the freighter's surviving crew. The captain of the cutter made a command decision. He depth charged the sub. Men struggling in the water turned to bloody pulp. A few survivors on the outskirts of the explosions did not die. The captain made the decision, but Tommy gave the order to drop the charges. It was one of those things that nobody talks about, and everybody seems to know about.

  "Tell him not to get too weird." I didn't know what else to say.

  "C'mon," Case said, "let's talk that poor fella out of wrecking those engines."

  I followed Case, and he climbed up beside Tommy who leaned way out around the spray shield. The engines screamed, and the bow rode so high at this speed that he could not see a thing. Case put one hand on Tommy's shoulder, grinned at Tom like Tom had just told a pretty good joke, and then Case eased the controls. Speed came off, the bow dropped, and the boat skidded a little sideways. We'd come far enough that we could see the lighthouse at Portland Head.

  "Take a strain," Case said. "Guy with a wild hair crossways can't figure anything out."

  "The police boat is out checking the islands," Tommy said. "If that guy gets in behind the islands we've lost him." He did not even hear Case.

  "Get it figured," Case said. "What you're doing ain't working." He paused as he figured the next move. He looked toward the misty lights that told of fog. "At best we've got an hour. Go up to the Head along the edge of the channel, then double back along the other side. He won't be riding the middle of the channel."

  "I want a piece of that clown." Tommy's voice sounded in control, but it still sounded a little crazy.

  It came to me, watching him, that Tommy had been quiet for too long. Been holding everything in. I figure he didn't care about the murderer. He just wanted to hit something that needed hitting.

  "Cruise it slow," Case said. "Use the searchlight, because he'll be running without lights."

  It's a big harbor, nearly as big as Boston. You could hide two hundred lobster boats in this harbor, and the odds on finding even a dozen of them would be pretty long.

  "Because the guy's crazy," Case said. "He's runnin', but I doubt he's going to hide. If he hides we won't find him."

  The radio crackled. Then the crackle blanked as one of the cutters gave its departure message. I could not figure out why headquarters decided to send a cutter. That cutter would do no good out here. It drew maybe twelve feet of water, and where we were going there was only wading room. Maybe the radar on the cutter would help.

  We cruised the starboard side of the channel as far as Portland Head, then turned around and cruised the other side coming back. Fog gathered. An occasional horn or whistle sounded. Fog settled from above until it finally pressed against the water. It was thick above, thinner at the waterline.

  A thousand-to-one shot, but there seemed nothing else to do except search the islands. Dull, freezing work. As the ice fog gathered the searchlight became useless. The fog did not lift after nearly five hours. It looked like it was going to be another one of those cold and futile nights.

  Wert's teeth chattered. "It's cold."

  "It's November."

/>   "Take us home, Tommy."

  "Go sit on an engine."

  We traded off watch—standing in the bow. Tommy kept the engines barely turning. He searched along the beaches of the dark islands. Didn't use the searchlight. We just stood in the bow and listened, hoping to hear the sound of a lobster boat's engine. It was about 0330 when the cutter called, reporting a target on its radar. A small boat moved along the South Portland side of the channel.

  "Got him," Tommy said. "Let's get him good." Tommy had sort of settled down, but now he started to get all ruffled up again.

  We were all tired, cold, and we had taken some spray five hours back. Nobody was wet, but nobody was exactly dry. Tommy shoved the rpms ahead, then lowered them a little as he realized he was being stupid. That boat was forty feet of steel hull. Not something to shove through fog at high speed.

  The cutter talked us across the harbor and through the fog. We moved too quick, taking radar readings from the cutter. I don't trust radar, and I sure don't trust a set I'm not looking at. I always trusted Tommy.

  As we overhauled the cutter we could see its searchlights swallowed by fog. Just beyond the lights, right on the edge of the lights, the lobster boat looked like a little ghost. It was weaving in and out past the rocks.

  It's a cliff along there. High-walled and granite and straight up. The lobster boat made its way toward a notch not big enough to be a tiny cove. It was just a place where the rock face was broken away and guys moored sometimes. We ran past the cutter, taking off speed, and coasted alongside the lobster boat. We were maybe twenty feet away.

  The guy was hard to see in the dark and fog lying beneath that rock face. This close in our searchlight helped. I ran it over the boat and the numbers checked. This was the man.

  The guy stood behind the wheel. He turned when our light hit him. He shook his fist and yelled, maybe daring us to come in. The lobster boat edged nearer the rock. I did not believe the guy was insane. He ran the boat too well, discounting the fact that he was where you shouldn't run a boat.