In The Navy (On the Boat), Part 28

While in Dry Dock, everything is supplied by the shore connections. All of the water, electricity, food, everything comes from the tender/shore. It’s worse than just being tied up to a pier, even the connection to pump out sanitary and bilges goes through the Dry Dock.

One very nasty night, I was on topside watch and I noticed that the hose tied off at the end of the dock (feeding into the Thames River) had come lose. Whatever they were pumping overboard was making the hose jump around like a viper.

Dyke wound up having to go down and secure it. I don’t know why they didn’t stop pumping whatever tanks they were working on while he went down to do this. Dyke went down and wrestled the hose into position and re-secured it to the side of the Dock.

When he came back topside to come on board the Boat, the smell preceded him. Someone had aligned a valve wrong and Dyke had wrestled a hose spewing atomized shit and piss. He was covered in it and smelled like a latrine. To this day I tell the story and use the phrase “Wrestling the Shit hose” whenever I am talking about a crappy job to do. That was the worst, but we were able to laugh later.

One other thing I will mention about Dry Dock, was the deck crew having to replace hundreds of bars of Zinc that were bolted to almost every free flood part of the Boat. These were placed in locations where corrosion would/could be likely and were meant to attract the free ions in the water, which would minimize corrosion impact to the actual Boat. Never thought about that, have you? Nasty work that is.

We only made a few more runs after that point. One of the more memorable ones was a burial. We had someone’s ashes to dedicate to the sea (which is how I want to be buried, but not by Submarine though). We headed out to sea, but never submerged. The COW had us line things up to ventilate, which was pretty normal stuff.

The parties involved in the ceremony were crowded into the Bridge at the top of the Sail. All of us below were doing our usual business in the Control Room, tracking targets and where we were. Then a dusty mist started blowing into the room through the ventilation ducts. It was everywhere.

When the Priest had said his words and dumped the guy’s ashes, they were promptly sucked into the open snorkel mast and distributed all over the Boat. Whoever the guy was, he was now a permanent part of the crew for all time. An honorary “plank owner”, which is normally only given to the crew that first takes a ship to sea. It was pretty disgusting to be breathing some dead guy’s ashes. I held my breath as long as I could for a few minutes.

We tied back up and had another priest get a tour one Saturday when I was on below decks watch. I saw the guy and entourage come through the control room, escorted by a Lieutenant JG (Junior Grade). They left and I waited a bit there, taking my log readings, which is all the watch really consists of (that and giving other people a piss break).

After I figured the coast was clear and I was the only one in the Control Room, I grabbed the 1MC microphone (which again, broadcasts all over the Boat) and in my best Exorcist impersonation yelled “Get Out! Get OUUTT!!!” Then I hung up and went about my rounds. I heard laughing from the Galley below, but did my best to stifle a laugh. Everyone got questioned about the infraction and the beautiful thing was there was no way to tell who did it or from what part of the Boat. J Dyke was the only person I told, that I was the one who did it.