Main Characters: Captain Bobbie Lee Sample, Ensign Troy Jones & Me Approx date: Summer-Fall, 1975.
Introduction. This is the third segment in the Sea Story Series and the second sea story by me. Last week we had a great story by Robert Thome and next week will be one by David Besch – both 3rd Company Classmates.
I have shared the tale about dropping anchor near a sea cliff with a couple of dozen naval officers including Troy Jones who was my co-star on that endeavor. No one has told me, “David, that’s BS. Windlasses have brakes on them, anchor chains are 900′ long, there is no way that Captain would have just cut the anchor loose and let it drop hoping his rookie Navigator made the right call.” Or something like that. Well, it’s the way I remember it from a half century ago and I remind you again that this is a Sea Story so I will preface it with, “And this is no s__t.”
My first sea story was “Meet the Jonas Ingram” and it ended with our ship leaving the Charleston Naval Shipyard and heading to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba with me as not only the Communications Officer but also as the ship’s Navigator. This was necessitated because the Ingram was supposed to be supplemented by Naval Reserve officers that the Navy never sent us and therefore, we were short two officers. I was one of the two officers chosen to carry two full time billets.
In the previous story, I said that we had only spent about two weeks underway from the time I arrived on the Ingram until Charleston. As I thought about it, I realized that did not give the Captain enough time evaluate me at sea and make the call to make me Navigator. I dug through my files and found a letter I wrote my parents which indicated that we spent nearly six weeks operating in the Caribbean before Charleston. Perhaps the Captain picked me for the job because I was one of the few Academy graduates on board. One of the trades the Academy teaches well is navigation. Therefore, he could be confident I had the needed skill set. Plus, we had a competent Chief Quartermaster. Even so, within three weeks after arriving in GITMO, I gave Captain Sample reason to think he had overestimated me.
When a ship completes a major overhaul as we had done, the crew naturally gets rusty. So to get rusty crews up to speed, the Navy sends ships to GITMO for “Ref-Tray” (refresher training) – sort of like bootcamp for warships. There is an extensive series of exercises and tests that the ship must go through and pass in order to be certified as seaworthy. As I remember, the fastest possible time to complete everything was 4 weeks. When we got there, we learned that some ships had been there for over two months. Bobbie Lee let it be known that he fully expected us to be out of there within five weeks. (Again, the reserves never showed – we were at 80% complement.)
Confusing a 9 with a 4.
There were various communications tests that were run at all times of the day and night. By and large, we did well on those thanks to my senior radioman, RM1 George Shumaker. (Who just this week I connected with on FB.) Several times each week, we would go out on different operations. It was up to me as navigator to chart the courses of where we were to be and when. The daily operations reports used an alphanumeric chart to assign rendezvous points. One afternoon, I plotted out the courses to the various chart coordinates and to my surprise, the second exercise the next day was at G-9, nearly 50 miles from the first rendezvous point and we were only allotted an hour and half to get there. I went to see the new XO who had replaced CDR Chadwick, and apprised him that we would need to average over 30 knots to get in position on time. This XO was nice but not nearly as sharp his predecessor. He said, well this is clearly a test of our propulsion system so let the Chief Engineer know. When I broke the news to Big John Taylor, the Chief Engineer, he went into a tirade on this heavy demand being put his exhausted men. Now, did either one of these much more seasoned officers even raise the question that perhaps this lowly doubled dutied sleep deprived ensign may have misread the operations report? Nope. I guess up to that point I had fooled them into thinking I was more competent than I really was.
So, the next morning the engineering crew brought all four boilers online – something we almost never did. The ship could go 27 knots on three boilers and our normal cruising speed was 20 knots which we could do with two boilers. To pick up those last 3-4 knots, we needed all four boilers cooking steam.
Keep in mind that there were multiple exercises we were being graded on. So, we had 6 or 8 different graders from Gitmo on board the ship with us. As we were cruising along at top speed throwing up a rooster tail behind the ship, they were conducting various tests and drills on us including some for my radiomen. Not one of the graders gave so much as a hint that we might be on the wrong course. An hour later and 15 miles out from the rendezvous point, we broke radio silence with our red encrypted UHF radio phones. To our surprise, no one responded. Our lookouts had their binoculars out looking for the five other ships that we were to do our exercises with. Nowhere in sight. Captain Sample came up on the bridge. “Where’s the operations report?” I handed it to him. “Where are you taking us Navigator?” “D-9, sir”. “Well, well, well, that ain’t a 9 Mr. Treppendahl, it’s G__ D____ 4!!!” We were 40 miles from the rendezvous point and therefore we flunked about 8 exercises scheduled for that day. As a result, we were delayed by nearly a week leaving Gitmo. Thereafter, I was double checked on everything I did. Oh well, the bloom was off the rose.
A Challenging Navigation Problem
After our ship completed its Ref-Tra (in about 6 weeks) we still had a few more training exercises to do before we headed back to our homeport at Mayport, FL. One of my most memorable experiences in the Caribbean was an open ocean fishing adventure. Captain Sample wanted to have fresh seafood for the crew.
That day we had conducted gunnery practice on the Island of Vieques in the morning and followed that with torpedo firing drills using a dummy torpedo. On one of the drills, I volunteered to put on snorkel gear and swim out and hook the cable to the torpedo so it could be retrieved. When I was underwater about 100 yards from the ship, I looked back and the Ingram seemed to be suspended in the air like Ming’s palace – the water was so incredibly clear. It is a sight I will always remember.
Captain Sample called me to the bridge after I got back to the ship and said that he wanted me to find just the right spot for us to anchor so that we could catch fish. He said the ideal place would be one where the water was 50’ or 60’ deep that was right on the edge of an underwater cliff. I studied the charts and found a location about 10 miles away. The objective was to have the front of the ship – the forecastle (pronounced “folksol”) where the anchor was located, on the shallow side and the fantail (rear of the ship) hanging over the cliff. Had the ocean floor been smooth, we could have approached the underwater cliff, dropped the anchor 4-500 yards out, turned the fantail toward the cliff and reversed the screws until the fantail was beyond the drop off. However, there was a lot of coral on the seafloor. Where the anchor dropped was where the ship would be. So, I did not have much tolerance to work with. If we came up short, we would have to lift the anchor and move. If we came up long, the anchor would plunge down the side of cliff and we would lose it. Either way would be embarrassing for me.
It was up to me to say when to “Drop Anchor!”. There was a cross wind, so we could not just slowly float along – the ship’s speed needed to be about 8 knots (12 feet per second) according to Captain Sample. It was not overly difficult to calculate how long it would take for the ship to go from where we were (or where I calculated us to be) to a spot 250’ before the edge the cliff. The added challenge was to account for the delay from the time I gave the command “Drop Anchor” until the anchor hit the ocean floor. I had to be up on the bridge. The crewmen handling the anchor were 100’ away standing next to a steel clamp that had to be knocked loose with a big hammer to release the anchor. The guy with a hammer would get the signal to hit the clamp from a deck ape standing next to him with headphones connected by a wire to another sailor on the bridge next to me. How long would it take from the time I gave the signal until the man with the hammer actually knocked the clamp loose and then how long from that point until the anchor actually hit bottom and dug in? That was the question.
Troy Jones (also Class of ’74) was the First Lieutenant. He and I discussed this and agreed on the time. I don’t remember what the number was, but I would guestimate now we calculated about a 5 second delay. Now keep in mind, we are out in the middle of the ocean. There are no landmarks anywhere. I was getting fixes using Loran every few minutes. But when we got about 10 minutes out, it was a matter of dead reckoning from the last good fix based on the ship’s speed plus factoring in the current. I announced when it was 5 minutes, then 2 minutes, 1 minute, 30 seconds and did a 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5 4,3,2 DROP ANCHOR!. The sailor on the bridge relayed this to the one next to the anchor who notified the hammer man. The hammer came down and hit the clamp, once and then a second time before it released. The anchor chain went whirring through the hawsepipe for what seemed longer than I had expected. I held my breath knowing that if we overshot, the entire chain and anchor would disappear into the depths of the ocean. The chain stopped. How far were we from the cliff?
The Captain was on the fantail with his rod and reel as we swiveled the ship around the anchor chain. He looked down into the abyss and then up at me on the bridge and gave me a thumbs up. That evening Captain Sample and crew caught over 1,000 pounds of fish – mainly cobia and red snapper. What a feast the crew had.
No doubt I felt good about getting it right. But, I did not feel nearly as good as I would have felt bad had we lost the anchor.
Postscript. I had some misgivings about my memory on this. Did we really just drop the anchor and let it rip or was there a brake on the windlass that would control the anchor as it went out? I got in touch with Troy and below is his response:
From: T Jones <oviedo321@yahoo.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2022 10:00 PM
To: David Treppendahl <david@gib.management>
Subject: Re: Anchors on the Ingram – could you control its descent with a windlass brake?
As I recall, the anchor was supposed to be let go and to run until it hit bottom. The weight of the anchor falling helped pull the anchor chain out of the chain compartment. If it was lowered slowly there was a good chance that the chain would get kinked and held up in the compartment, preventing the anchor from hitting bottom and causing the navigator to look bad when he didn’t hit the appropriate mark. The brake was used after the chain went slack to keep the rest of the chain from running out. The brake would probably not have held the weight of the anchor and all that chain running furiously into the ocean before the anchor hit bottom. Yes, the anchor and chain could have been lost if it was too deep, and caused considerable damage as the bitter end of the anchor chain went whipping around just before it disappeared through the hawse pipe and into the ocean. Yes, trying to anchor on the edge of an underwater cliff was chancy and potentially dangerous.