Last of the Boom Ships
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In May 1962, I joined American Export Lines (AEL) as Third Mate on the SS Express, a seven-hatch C-3, sailing from their Hoboken, New Jersey headquarters to India. To fill jobs engineers had been Shanghai d from AEL s passenger ships, the Independence and Constitution. Because the ship hadn t been stored properly, we ran out of meat almost immediately. I remember lots of sandwiches of either catsup or peanut butter. The trip went as far as Chittagong, in Bangladesh. Under a new contract we loaded jute for carpet backing. In Madras, India the jute caught fire. We fought the fire by pouring water into the Express forward cargo holds. On the second day the weight of water in the ship caused her to roll fourteen degrees toward the dock. Our National Maritime Union crew reacted to this emergency by jumping ashore or overboard. The Purser and the Chief Steward tried to launch the offshore lifeboat. We officers continued to fight the fire in six-hour shifts for ten days. All but three crewmembers left for a hotel uptown. The fire knocked out electrical power to the forward cargo booms. On arrival back in Hoboken the water-damaged cargo was discharged using shore cranes. The Express went into a Wehauken, New Jersey shipyard for repairs. I had the option of staying on the Express or going around the world on one of the fourteen ships of Isbrandtsen Line, which had just merged with AEL. I jumped at the chance and have made twenty-three voyages around the world. Loading and unloading a ship three times in four months at sea is "steamboatin " at its best. My first Isbrandtsen ship was a C-2, the SS Flying Gull. The author was the other Third Mate. The Skipper was Captain John McLean, nicknamed "Iron John" because in North Atlantic storms he stood on the bridge for days at a time. At age fourteen he was a sandhog working with his father on New York s Holland Tunnel. As a Navy officer in World War II McLean had a couple of mine sweepers blown out from under him. The Chief Mate was Henry Lexius, like a character from a slapstick movie. The twelve passengers were a varied lot - quiet to boisterous, pleasant to whiny, and inquisitive to bored. They saw about fifteen ports in four months for $1,600. The most eventful part of the voyage was our collision with a Greek ore carrier, the SS Batus, leaving Kobe, Japan. I was on watch, relieving Second Mate Leo Valentius for supper. The Gull had the right of way. Instead of a Half Astern bell, the Batus got a Half Ahead bell on her turbo electric engine and headed for us. Captain McLean took the conn from the pilot and almost succeeded in turning the Gull away. Batus hit us on the port side of Number One hatch above the water line at the upper tween deck, pushing us over about fifteen degrees. As collision became imminent the Chief Mate and the Bosun ran back from the bow. A Mercedes stowed in the upper tween deck escaped damage by inches. After a week of repairs in a Kobe shipyard, the voyage continued eastward.
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About the Book
Fourteen men and one woman relate their experiences as Deck Officers on U.S. flag merchant ships -cargo ships in regular service, tramps, tankers, and the fastest passenger ship ever built, the SS United States. Carrying cargoes common as manhole covers, exotic as circus animals, dangerous as aviation gasoline, and dirty as coal, they sailed to travel poster ports like Rio de Janeiro, to war zones, and to ports like Mina al Ahmadi, Kuwait, where the 8 A.M. temperature is 120 degrees. Share an old Master's remembrance of the thrill of sighting land for the first time, in 1927 from the fore topsail yard. Cross the Atlantic in four days with the last Master of the SS United States, responsible for a 990-foot long ship, almost 2,000 passengers, and crew of over a thousand. Suffer the horrors of war with a Second Mate on a tanker torpedoed by a German U-Boat, and a Deck Cadet, later Second Mate, on cargo ships under German air attacks in the Mediterranean and on the fearsome run to Murmansk, Russia. Smell the oil on supertankers. Wear the dust on coal boats. Move alternative energy sources like natural gas from Sumatra and Borneo. Tramp for ore, grain, sugar, and fertilizer. Spend days in port handling cargo on freighters with cargo booms or sixteen hours completely discharging and loading a containership. Pilot a 500-foot long ship in flooded Brazilian jungle river. Wait in mid-Atlantic for a tow after losing the ship's propeller. Nearly capsize fighting fire in the forward holds at dock in India, or try to extinguish a fire in the open Gulf of Mexico. Feel the collision as a Greek ore carrier tears open the port bow in Kobe, Japan. Hold on as waves carry away lifeboats, while hove to in the eye of a hurricane, steering from the raised poop deck in drenching waves, or rolling thirty-five degrees with cargo containers stacked five high on deck. Grieve over deaths from lack of oxygen in a tank. Rescue escaping Cubans and Vietnamese Boat People. Laugh at the returning Master who kissed his dog and then shook hands with his wife. In their own words these officers matter-of-factly tell about doing their jobs - moving cargo and people safely and speedily all over the world.
About the Author
Jim Whalen grew up in the Bronx, New York and graduated from the State University of New York Maritime College at Fort Schuyler. He sailed as Third Mate aboard U.S.-flag cargo and passenger ships and worked ashore in marine operations. Jim also brings to this work the interviewing and reporting skills that he developed during thirty-two years as a Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. For the title of this oral history Jim chose the simile of the passing of ships using cargo booms to chronicle the changes in the U.S. Merchant Marine.