Friday January 28, 2005 – Setting Sail on My Second Cruise

Friday January 28, 2005 – Setting Sail on My Second Cruise

Life aboard ship during my second cruise the first week of September 1965 had become a very predictable routine. We spent several days traveling to a destination in the Pacific where the scientists on board had determined. Once on site, the ship would make a sonar sweep across a square area several nautical miles on a side, much like a crop duster sweeping across acres of farmland laying a stripe of insecticide, only we were drawing a precise map of the ocean bottom. Once constructed these maps could be used by submarines to navigate the ocean without ever having to surface. In an era of highly precise global positioning systems that can be had for a few hundred dollars, our effort appears naïve and so passé.

The vast majority of our cruise was spent going up and down one square area of ocean after another, the most tedious part of the trip. The most enjoyable part was the outbound and return leg of the cruise. During these times, the ship was moving at a good ten to fifteen knots, ten outbound and fifteen on the return as the Master was anxious to return to port. Each day had a routine. The duty of the sailors on board ship was to stand watch in three eight-hour shifts: 800 hours to 1600 hours, 1600 hours to 2400 hours, and then 100 hours to 800 hours. Those doing the day shift or the graveyard shift typically ended up in the mess hall after dinner, smoking and swapping stories, something we did a great deal of to pass the time.

The first day or two out of port the stories recounted drinking in Yokosuka bars or recounting a trip made to Yokohama or Tokyo and the bars frequented there. Later the stories got around to personal confessions that revealed startling intimacies into each sailor’s private life. The chief confessed to throwing the covers over his wife’s head and farting in bed. Tall petty officer second class Hank confessed his infidelity with a fellow sailor’s wife and how easily she had an orgasm and then reveled in helping him achieve his. Sam another petty officer second class in his late twenties with a build similar to Hank and sporting a slight beer belly, too, recounted his attempt to engage in anal sex with his wife and the grief he received as a result. These testimonies seemed to be attempts to relive the pleasure or expurgate the pain each memory produced.

Butch the steward for the enlisted men’s mess was one of us and he would join in our conversations after the meal was finished and he had cleared the dishes. He was a solid, muscular guy with no hint of a spreading paunch. He had the attitude and physical appearance of a boxer, a middleweight, with arms and hands better suited to trading blows than neatly serving our meals, a task he did with considerable skill and grace, almost as if he had once been a waiter at some fancy restaurant. His speech had the quality of a fighter’s, a cadence that suggested each word was measured before being delivered. This made him appear slightly slow, but no one would ever mock him for it. Though he seemed mild mannered and harmless, you got the sense that Butch had done his share of standing up for himself. I took an immediate liking to Butch. I suspect the act of bringing food to me every day elevated him in my eyes—a nurturer, a provider. I must confess though that he and I would have little in common once off the ship.

On this trip out Butch was happily explaining how he had set up housekeeping with one of the hostesses in the Mickey Maru’s bar. I had remembered seeing him sitting with the hostess he was describing, a young thing with a sad, vulnerable look on her pretty oval face, tinged with European features. I had suspected she had been hurt and Butch had come along in time to catch her as she was falling. He was over the moon describing how great it was to be living with a woman in a place of their own. He had moved some of his personal belongings off the ship into the new place, mostly clothes, books, records, and small collectables he had picked up during his travels. On the last day of shore leave she had taken him to Kamakura to see the Great Buddha that had survived typhoons and Earthquakes since 1252. Perhaps she was seeking a blessing for their new union. He confessed to how he missed lying all night with her curled up beside him. I got the sense that Butch had a real affection for his young companion. I wondered what it would be like when he had to leave her.

After I had my fill of stories, I would often go out on deck and enjoy the night. On board ship at night in the middle of the Pacific Ocean you can look up in the sky, especially on moonless nights and see so many stars it would make my head spin. The majesty of that endless expanse of sky and the realization from the ship’s movement of being completely alone hundreds of miles from land gave me a sense of being completely insignificant. For the rest of the world, the Mickey Maru and its crew had ceased to exist when it sailed out of Tokyo Bay. In fact, most of the time we were at sea, no one knew where exactly we were. Our mission gave the Navy some idea of the where in the pacific we were, but we were outside of the consciousness of most everyone who knew us casually or intimately. Perhaps, that was why all my shipmates with wives and girlfriends somewhere in the states or in Japan were continually reliving the memories of their time ashore. They wanted some connection to that land we had left behind. For a single guy like me, the ship was where I belonged—the land was where the ship took me. The ship was where I was from and for the next fourteen months, it was where I would be going as well. I was having that adventure I had read about during my high school years.