More Bering Sea Tales

From: Jack R. DeWitt

The last paragraph of Glenn Duncan's story "memories of Spinax" reminded me of the mysterious cruise to Hawaii that ended up in the far reaches of the Bering Sea. So here is another tale to add to Glenn's. This was in September of 1951. We had a young red headed seaman on board who had extremely high ARI/GCT scores. So high that Capt. Lundgren was considering recommending him for Annapolis. We were about half way to Pearl. I, being new to the ship, was on the bridge as JOOD. The Captain came to the bridge and remarked that we should heave to for swim call. The red headed seaman, duty messenger, asked permission to lay below. TMC Rich, the COB, was on the foredeck with the escape hatch open with some of the deck force. We were still doing about 16 knots when the redheaded seaman came up the hatch in his swim trunks and immediately dove over the side. Captain Lundgren said "What the hell was that?". Needless to say, we performed the Williamson turn evolution to pick up a man overboard. The sea there was 2,000 fathoms. We did have a great swim call.

In regards the storm that Glenn mentioned: Coming back south, through the Aleutions, out of the Bering Sea and into the Pacific we encountered a huge storm coming from the southwest. On the bridge we wore some survival suits that we were evaluating. Green water came up thru the deck boards as we headed into each wave. On OOD bridge watch at that particular time, no lookouts, the hatch to conning tower closed and a line lashing me to the radar mast, I felt pretty small. The waves were huge. I believe that heading into the sea we lost 5 miles per day for about 3 days. The crests of the waves were 1,800 feet apart on the radar scope. I later heard from a Norwegian sailor on a troop transport on its way to Korea with a load of Marines, in that same storm, that he had never seen such seas in his 45 years at sea.

To finalize the tale of the redheaded seaman. When we were operating off of San Diego, Capt Lundgren was up on the bridge. He mentioned that a mug of coffee would be good. The redhead, again as messenger, laid below to fetch coffee. When he brought it up, the Captain took a swallow and immediately spit it out. Red had picked a mug out of the galley sink that had some pine oil in it and topped it off at the coffee urn. Needless to say, he was assigned to the tender when we came back in. Red was given the duty as coxswain of a 40 foot liberty launch which he promptly ran under the dock at Fleet Landing (With a full load of passengers from the tender.) As this did not help his popularity on the tender, he was further assigned to shore duty. Likely not at the Naval Academy.

Crew members on that cruise North will also remember the recording often played over the announcing system "Cool, Cool, Water" by the Sons of The Pioneers, I believe. As the sea temperature was near freezing, the temperature in the boat was at 40F for a month. (Except in the engine rooms when charging batteries.) There was an extra air conditioning unit between the tubes in the forward room. The crew up there had down comforters for their bunks. It got a little frosty in those bunks most forward. The A/C was needed to dehumidify the air in the boat and minimize condensation in the electrical equipment.