From Book 1
One day, I had enough and I told Chief Demming, "If that snot nosed bastard comes down on me one more time, I sure hope he knows how to swim!" Chief told me not to do anything rash and, I guess he and the Skipper had a talk because for the next couple of weeks, the Mate didn't even speak to us. After that, it didn't matter to me, I had gotten notice that the job on the Amelia was mine! The Skipper and the Chief took me out to dinner, it was kinda sad, I thought the world of both of them and they had gotten me started. Two days later, the Amelia was in port and I walked over to introduce myself. There were a couple of guys on board who I already knew and, like the Percy, it was almost family. I hated leaving Billy, he and I had become fast friends, it was a friendship that lasted for many years, he was finally killed in an automobile accident nearly 50 years later. I gathered all my belongings and made my goodbyes, especially to the Skipper and Chief Demming. They had both taken me under their wings like surrogate fathers and made sure that I was on the right track. I was more than a bit sad as I walked up the pier with my duffle across my shoulder, but I was just shy of 19 years old and the whole world was my oyster.
Chapter 1 - HEADED FOR MEXICO
I reported on board the Amelia, she carried two Engineers and two Firemen/Oilers. There were three wipers and that comprised the Engine Room Crew.
The Chief, Mr. Clarence, put me on his shift, I guess so he could watch me. I had a good reputation and the information that I could run engines in an emergency and that I kept a "cool" head during problems, had followed me from the Percy.
The Amelia had a single main engine, it was a huge Sun Doxford engine, laid out flat like an old Volks Wagon engine. It had a central crank and three cylinders on each side.
I would find out later, the bore on that beast was twenty-six inches and each cylinder head weighed as much as an automobile!
The A/C generator ran from a small Volvo Diesel and the DC generator that powered all the winches and tow tensioners, ran off a belt drive attached to the main engine just ahead of the oil coupling. DC power could only be used when the engine was running in the ahead direction.
Like the Percy, all the controls were in the wheel house, but there were local controls in the Engine Room in case of emergency. My burns were recent enough to remind me to search out all the local controls in case I should need to use them.
I had been on board less than a week when we picked up a tow of five large barges from Freight Forwarders for delivery to Consolidated Copper in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
The Skipper, Captain Danny Moran, had laid in a food supply and the fuel tanks were topped off. We had full water tanks, although we did have a small compression distiller, making it work was like bathing wildcats to operate the darned thing.
We worked six hour shifts - six on and six off the whole trip.
The Skipper took us out beyond the current to find smooth water and we started to chug our way south. It was kinda boring, the Amelia was pretty new and we weren't spending all our time patching and pasting to keep the tug on TOP of the water.
The two firemen/oilers had a bunk room just for us and, on that rotation, only one of us would be sleeping at a time.
That big Sun Doxford engine was slow moving, we sailed south at 90 rpm. I didn't hear each cylinder fire, but I sure FELT the thud of each one.
The seas cooperated and the weather was mostly mild all the way south, we made Puerto Vallarta in only nine days. The other Fireman/Oiler, Johnny Vallargas, had the first port watch, so I was going to go ashore and try out my high school Spanish.
The Chief stopped me just as I was going ashore, he put his arm over my shoulder and asked if I had some money and told him I did. He them looked down at his shoes and asked, "Eeerr ahh you got your pros?"
My face turned bright red, but I nodded yes and beat feet for the pier!
Mr. Clarence looked on us younger guys like we were his children. He was always making sure we had a few dollars in our pocket if we were going ashore and whatever else he thought we might need. He would warn of places to stay away from and things we would be better off not doing.
Yeah, I know, but it WAS nice to know that somebody cared.
I walked around the small town, there wasn't much there. A couple of cantinas selling beer that was not quite cold and there were venders selling grilled fish and shrimps.
The beer was fine, if a little warm, but the fish and the shrimps were out of this world. For one American Dollar, I bought two beers and enough shrimp to make Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco go bankrupt!
The man who sold them to me kept asking if it was enough, did I want more.
Yea Gods, where are the Rolaids when you need them! I ate so many, I hurt!
There were a few pretty girls walking near the beach, but they were all accompanied by some old harridans who looked like they should be riding brooms. I found out later the old witches were called duennas and were usually old maiden aunts.
I could certainly see why!
I walked around for a while, the main part of the town only extended a few blocks in either direction and Mr. Clarence had warned me to stay out of the barrio.
It was getting towards time I had to relieve Johnny so he could get some dry land time before we set sail, so I returned to the tug and relieved Johnny a little bit early. I told him to snag himself some of the shrimps and a couple beers.
A couple hours later, when he returned, he looked more like he had snagged a bunch of beers and only one shrimp!
I don't think Mr. James, the Assistant Engineer, was very happy with him.
We made ready to get underway, all the machinery on the barges had been replaced with huge ingots of red copper, called anodes and were to be delivered to the ASARCO Smelter in Crocket. The ingots were stacked nice and even, I could tell the difference in the load even down in the engine room.
The return voyage was as boring as the way down, except, now we had moldy bread. Cookie did his best, but sometimes the food was only a means to prevent starvation.
Off the coast of Santa Barbara, a MAYDAY came in on the radio in the wheelhouse, we changed course as the law requires but after about an hour, we were released to continue on our way.
We got back to our home pier in mid-afternoon, it was raining, but then, in San Francisco, that is the norm. We had gotten paid, so I took a quick run up Market Street to the bank and cashed my check. I held out some cash and deposited the rest.
My Academy Fund was growing nicely.
Chapter 2 - COLD SEATTLE
We were assigned a tow of a complete lumber mill for Willamette Industries in Port Angeles. It was a large tow, there were six heavily loaded barges and, for added protection, the Mate ran out a second tow wire.
We could tell down in the engine room right from the start that we had a heavy load. The engine was running at seventy rpm and it was really laboring.
We could feel the turn northward and every time the mate adjusted the tow wires, the DC generator groaned.
The weather was not really bad, but the seas were rough and we were making heavy work out of the trip. We hit fog before nightfall of the first day out and the air compressor was hard put to keep up with the compressed air demand of the fog horn.
Unlike the Percy, the Amelia had two air compressors. One was low pressure compressed air that was used for service air and the fog horn. The high pressure air compressor served only to start the main engine. The little Volvo engine-generator used batteries to start.
It was a long, slow trip, we didn't make the turn into the Straits of San Juan de Fuca until our tenth day out of San Francisco.
The pier that served Willamette in Port Angeles was not big enough to handle all six barges at once, so we docked three barges and then moored the Amelia with the last three barges still on the wire. It took the crane boys two days to offload the first three barges and then we had to do some fancy footwork to swap out the empty barges for the three that were still loaded.
There was a little donkey boiler for heat, but, without the DC generator, that ran off the main engine, running we darned near froze to death in the Bunkroom. All the heater fans ran on DC! I swear, my breath made fog in that iceberg room! Cookie's grill and stove ran on the DC too, so it was cold meals all the while we were there.
It was a relief when we could get underway and head for Seattle.
We tied up at Pier 4 in Seattle where they had a DC shore connection that we could tap. That commercial, "Oh What A Relief It Is" came to mind as I bedded down after my watch!
Some small harbor tugs took our empty barges away and started delivering fully loaded barges of cut lumber; we were consigned five barges of stacked lumber and one barge of mixed freight.
I took a quick run ashore, the Chief again grilled me to make sure I had everything I needed and we both had red faces before I could make my escape.
I didn't go far, there was a fish market up at Pier 1 and I stuffed myself with fresh halibut and a couple of beers, before I groaned my way back to the Amelia.
A few other things happened, but they were something I wouldn't tell my Mother, so I am not gonna tell here either!
Anyway, Johnny was happy to see me and he headed ashore for a couple of hours.
We were scheduled to depart that evening, but for some reason, Captain Moran did not get clearance until the next morning. We sailed on the outgoing tide and made good time going downriver.
The Straits were terrible rough and we bounced around down in the engine room like some beans in a mason jar. My Wiper, Carl Evans got himself a good clout on the head when he got thrown up against the lube oil tank. I checked Carl out, other than a big goose egg on the side of his head, he seemed to be ok. I asked Chief Clarence to put Carl's injury in the Engineering Log, just in case he had problems later.
The weather continued bad and by our next watch, Captain Moran had to slow us down, the Amelia was fighting the deckhand as he tried to keep us on course.
We slowed to 40 rpm on the shaft and that helped, but it was still risking injury to cross from one side of the engine room to the other, it was gonna be a long trip home.
When we finally made our turn to cross the reef and enter San Francisco Bay, we were all relieved.
We dropped our tow at Bay Construction Corporation and headed for our home pier. We had all taken a beating on this trip, we had bruises and sore shoulders from being thrown around and one of the deck hands, Robbie Moore, had to go to the USPHS Marine Hospital for crushed fingers.
We had no mechanical problems in the engine room, but the tensioning winch on the tow line had a smoked drive motor that required rewinding. We helped pull the motor and we were told it would be three days before we had it back. That guaranteed us three days to get our laundry done and give our bruises time to heal before we were up for another tow.
Chapter 3 - COLDER ALASKA
We got the Amelia put back together and tested before Captain Moran reported us ready for sea.
Right out of the hat, we were headed north again. We had a four barge tow to Port Whittier in Alaska. The Alaskan Railroad had ordered four new Diesel Locomotives and six domed passenger cars.
They were delivered to the Southern Pacific Marine Terminal and put on special barges that belonged to Southern Pacific. Each barge was longer than normal barges, but the passenger cars were lighter than normal barge freight.
We picked them up first thing in the morning and the Deck Apes (shhh, we don't say that very loud!) seemed to take forever playing with the tensioning winch.
We were finally on our way at noontime and headed out through the Golden Gate.
The seas had not calmed down any during our short stay in port and we were tossed and hossed right from the git-go. The best speed we could make was 45 rpm on the shaft, anything faster tossed us around like a rubber ducky.
Every watch, someone had a burn, or a bruised shoulder, or even worse. Mr. James, the Assistant Engineer took an awful wallop when he was tossed against the donkey boiler. Only his heavy shirt saved him from terrible burns and his entire right side was bright purple and black bruises.
I slipped on a slick place on the deck plates and found myself wrapped around a stanchion, looking down into the stern tube pit. My boy parts barely missed the stanchion and a terrible bruising.
It was that way for the next two weeks as we clawed our way north. It was not until we were well inside Prince William Sound before we found smooth sailing.
The Skipper had already refused to haul the empty barges back in that weather, they would have likely fought us all the way home. We dropped the barges off and the overhead cranes were offloading the locomotives and cars as we departed.
Captain Moran ordered us underway as soon as the tow wires had been retrieved, cold weather was predicted and he had no desire to fight ice. The minute we cleared the harbor, he ordered the speed increased to 90 rpm on the shaft.
With the waves crashing around us, we felt like we were leaping from wave top to wave top. The wheel house was covered in ice and the open decks were as slick as wet glass. One of the deck hands told me the outside temperature was 30 degrees below zero and still falling!
A tugboat is not a speedboat, but we were flying down the Inland Passage, the weather did not moderate until we were well south of Vancouver Island.
We had a return tow waiting for us at Astoria, and we crashed across the Columbia River Bar, rolling from side to side, deep enough that we took water down the air inlets up on the stack!
We sat in Astoria for two days while our tow was made up, there was still ice on the deck machinery from our late season tow to Whittier.
It was a trip none of us was likely to forget for a very long time.
Fortunately, the remainder of the trip was fairly calm and we made good time back to San Francisco. I turned 19 years old just before we arrived in San Francisco, Cookie cobbled a birthday cake together for me and there was a radio message from my parents wishing me Happy Birthday.
I had become a man among other men and I felt quite proud of myself. I was supporting myself and I had a goal, I WAS going to go to the Maritime Academy and I had a good start in saving the money it was going to take.
We spent the next several months on tows to Los Angeles, Long Beach and San Diego, they were mostly hum-drum ordinary voyages except for one coming home from San Diego.
We took a heavy roll coming out of the Catalina Channel and Mr. James, the Assistant Engineer, took a header down the ladder and knocked himself out.
We were sitting to supper when Johnny Vallergas, the Fireman/Oiler screamed up the fiddly that Mr. James was hurt.
He complained that everything looked "wavy" and he was seeing double. There was no way he could stand his watch and the Chief knew I had handled myself in a like situation on the Percy, so I found myself in a temporary emergency upgrade to Engineer!
Johnny promised me his full cooperation and the senior wiper took my place as Fireman/Oiler on a temporary basis.
I was a bit skittish the first watch, but we all settled down and it became routine.
Fortunately, it was a peaceful tow and 5 days later, we entered the Bay. We dropped our tow at Freight Forwarders and headed for home.
After all the "smoke" had cleared, Chief Clarence sat me down and entered a notation on my "ticket" that I had held the position of Assistant Engineer for Emergency Reasons.
We were scheduled to go into dry dock for 3 days for a hull inspection, cleaning the sea growth off our hull, and painting the bottom with anti-fouling paint. It ended up another 2 days when they found a broken bearing follower on the stern-tube.
Mr. James came back to work, he still felt a bit shaky, but we weren't going back to sea for a few days and he thought he could handle it. We all watched out for him and took as much load off his shoulders as we could until he got to feeling better.
Chapter 4 - WARM CABO SAN LUCAS
The US Navy issued us an order to retrieve a small destroyer that had suffered main engine failure and was at anchor at Cabo San Lucas on the southern tip of Baja California.
The entire Navy crew was still on board and would "ride" the ship back to Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco. The Skipper was not enthused as he had worked with Naval Officers before and was not impressed.
We departed San Francisco Bay and headed south, the seas were calm and the Skipper ran the throttle up 110 turns on the shaft. We were pounding a little, but we knew he wanted to get this over with.
The further south we went, the warmer the weather became, a welcome change over what we had been through the last two tows.
Mr. James was still having an occasional headache and blurred vision, the Chief asked me and Johnny if we would switch, so I could be there if something happened to the Assistant Engineer. I had no problem with it and neither did Johnny Vallargas. We made the switch as we departed, I liked Mr. James so we had an easy going shift.
That twice damned compression distiller was fighting us; on a trip like this, the Chief wanted the water tanks kept filled. I had just come on watch when the stupid thing blew the circuit breakers again. Every time I reset the breakers, ten minutes later they were popping out again. I finally pulled the head of the compression chamber and found pieces of the piston rings jammed between the piston crown and the head.
Everything was going OK, Mr. James said I could work on the junker. I found a new set of rings in the spare parts box and had to fight the cylinder off the crank box so I could pull the piston and clean it up. Our shift was nearly over before I got the blasted thing reassembled and running.
At least, I hoped it would stay running, I swear it was the most cantankerous machine I had ever dealt with, before OR since!
As we headed up the ladder from the engine room to get some rest, I noticed Mr. James rubbing his head, I didn't think much about it at the time, but it would come back to haunt me.
After a pretty good meal, I hit my bunk to get some shut eye time before having to go back on watch.
The distiller was still working when I relieved Johnny, so I guess I did it some good.
The wheel house had backed the shaft down a bit and we were running at an even 100 rpm. I made my rounds and found the DC voltage a little low, so I adjusted the field voltage and it came right up.
The next two days were repeats, nothing out of the ordinary took place. As we were rounding the Cabo Rocks, I came up for lunch. The sea was smooth and bright blue, I could see miles of dazzling white sand beaches and there were a few fishing boats working the coastal waters.
We found the Navy ship, the USS McGinty, I guess the Skipper was on the radio talking to them, I heard him shout, "The Captain of the towing vessel is in COMMAND!"
He sounded ticked off, so I just scooted into the mess and got my lunch quietly and then headed for some shut-eye.
While I was asleep, we had received the messenger line the sailors had shot down to our afterdeck and they had pulled the tow wire (actually, a wire braided cable about 6 inches in diameter) up through the hawse and made it fast on the foredeck of the ship.
We slowly took a strain on the wire and the McGinty upped her anchor. The Skipper told the McGinty's Captain to put his rudder amidships and we would do all the steering. The wheel house slowly raised the turns on the shaft until our stern began to bounce and jump, then they backed off until the squirm stopped. I looked at the tachometer, it was reading 87 rpm. We settled into a routine and Johnny relieved me right on time.
Cookie had put out some snacks for those of us getting off watch at midnight. I was more tired than hungry, but I grabbed me a PB&J (peanut butter and jelly) sandwich to hold me over until morning. I made a quick dash through the shower and was asleep by 12:30!
Our watch started out ok the next morning, the Skipper called down on the bitchbox to tell us there was weather brewing and he was going to slow down a bit.
I learned later he had another set to with the Captain of the McGinty about that.
About 9 am we started tossing and pounding and the wheel house further reduced speed to 65 rpm.
About a half hour later there was a tremendous crash and water came pouring down the fiddly. I got the bilge pump started and looked around for Mr. James, the wiper screamed, "Mr. James is hurt!"
I hurried over to where the wiper was waving his hand. Mr. James was out cold, lying on the deck plates. I told the wiper to watch over him, but DO NOT try to rouse him. I had no idea what had happened, but, if he had a concussion, trying to rouse him might kill him.
I hollered into the bitch box about what I had and in short order, the Chief showed up in shoes and his skivvies.
He and the wiper worked Mr. James up the fiddly and put him in his bunk.
The Chief came back down and asked me if I could handle the shift. I told him I would, as long as I had another wiper to help. He sent down the day wiper to help and I was back to being a watch engineer again.
Mr. James never came back. I ran our watch all the way back to San Francisco, six days later.
When we had dropped off the McGinty at Hunter's Point Navy Yard and moored up to our home pier, Mr. James was taken off by an ambulance and we never saw him again.
While we were doing some housekeeping and upkeep, a new Assistant Engineer reported on board, he was hardly older than me, but he had a pleasant personality and he certainly knew his stuff.
His name was Glenn Doyle and we were destined to become lifelong friends.
The Chief left me with the new Engineer and that was fine with me, he was easy to get along with and I learned a lot of things from him.
We spent the rest of the winter and into the next spring on local runs up and down the California coast.
I figured in another year, I would have enough saved up to pay my tuition at the Academy.
TBC
Our young Fireman/Oiler gets a taste of Waikiki and the life of the Hawaiian Islands of 1956.