20,000 Leagues over the Bounding Main: The Log of a Sailor

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© 2014 by Arthur Merrill Brown III. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse 01/09/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4918-2720-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-2719-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013918232

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LOG KEEPER

Arthur Merrill Brown, Aye, Aye, Aye

LOGS

Acknowledgements

Ahoy!

A Sailor’s Song

Godspeed

I   How?

II   Your Captain (Author)

III   On to Reserve Officer Training

IV   Logs, Knots and Bows

V   Eggs in the Crow’s Nest

VI   Nautical Nuts

VII   In Port

VIII   Anchor’s Aweigh!

IX   Where Are We?

X   The Compass

XI   It’s About Time

XII   Reporting On Board

XIII   My Captains

XIV   Duties, Duties, Duties

XV   The Great Artichoke Disaster

XVI   Underway for Pearl Harbor

XVII   Memories

XVIII   Remember Pearl Harbor

XIX   Observing Oahu

XX   Midway Mishap

XXI   Midway to Yokosuka

XXII   Yen for Yen

XXIII   The Sasebo Situation

XXIV   Toko-Ri Travails

XXV   WesPac Wanderings

XXVI   Subic Situations

XXVII   Destroyer Disaster

XXVIII   Neato SEATO

XXIX   Beware the Typhoon!

XXX   Final Farewell

Epilogue

A Final Lament

Hail And Farewell!

Crews’ Logs

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Your Captain (the author) cannot express enough appreciation to my Captains on the U.S.S. McDermut (DD 677) who had the confidence in me to assign me so many responsibilities, and to its crew, especially the Engineering and Quartermaster/Signalman groups, whose knowledge and support were invaluable. I also want to convey my gratitude to Nicholas Warrillow, an Art Director nonpariel (760) 576-7805, who designed the provocative cover!

As respects our ship’s name, your Captain wishes to acknowledge the heroism of Lieutenant Commander David A. McDermut, killed in action against Confederate forces in April, 1863. Finally, your Captain desires to express his admiration to all those brave individuals, both present and past, who have served in our military protecting even those who would rather be red than dead.

AHOY!

The Captain (the author) wishes to express his gratitude to his crew (readers) for having the curiosity to acquire this book.

I marvel at the fact that any of you under 50 years of age was not born when I started my becoming part of the 20,000 Leagues Over The Bounding Main!

With this in mind, and before we go on board, I will, get my crew’s feet wet, by making Log Entries that will relate to ship’s vernacular which sadly, in many cases, has become almost obsolete, or has given way to robotic electronic identities.

For example, the word, Ahoy.

Originally, the English word, hoy, meant, cry used to attract attention. A, of course, is an adjective, so A hoy, was A cry" to attract attention.

Your Captain hopes his crew will enjoy the in-port and at sea Logs!

Let the memories begin!

A SAILOR’S SONG

by John Masefield

A WIND’S in the heart of me, a fire’s in my heels,

I am tired of brick and stone and rumbling wagon-wheels;

I hunger for the sea’s edge, the limit of the land,

Where the wild old Atlantic is shouting on the sand.

Oh I’ll be going, leaving the noises of the street,

To where a lifting foresail-foot is yanking at the sheet;

To a windy, tossing anchorage where yawls and ketches ride,

Oh I’ll be going, going, until I meet the tide.

And first I’ll hear the sea-wind, the mewing of the gulls,

The clucking, sucking of the sea about the rusty hulls,

The songs at the capstan at the hooker warping out,

And then the heart of me’ll know I’m there or thereabout.

Oh I am sick of brick and stone, the heart of me is sick,

For windy green, unquiet sea, the realm of Moby Dick;

And I’ll be going, going, from the roaring of the wheels,

For a wind’s in the heart of me, a fire’s in my heels.

Godspeed to all of you

on this memory-filled voyage

Over the Bounding Main

LOG ENTRY I

How?

In my four years’ active duty on the destroyer McDermut, it is most likely that we travelled 20,000 Leagues Over The Bounding Main.

At the same time, your Captain has read Jules Verne’s famous book, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

For any of my crew who do not know the distance of a league, it is about three miles!

This means that the sea under which Captain Nemo voyaged in the submarine Nautilus was at least 60,000 miles deep!

Just think! The diameter of our Earth at the Equator is a mere 7,962 miles!

So just how BIG is this humungous Nemo Nautilus planet?

For comparison’s sake our deepest sea is located in the Marianas Trench in the Western Pacific. It is 36,028 feet deep; just 7 miles! To get to 60,000 miles, you would have to multiply 7 miles by 8,570!

Using the ratio 7/7,962 = 60,000/x, the answer to what is the diameter of Planet Nemo, is 68,245,714 miles!

It is provocative to observe that the total of the diameters of all the planets in our Solar System is about 250,000 miles!

Even our Sun is a paultry 93,000,000 miles in diameter!

If the center of this giant planet was placed over the center of our Sun, the eclipse would extend out over the planet Mercury!

Now, your Captain will return to the original heading and log back onto our voyage.

LOG ENTRY II

Your Captain (Author)

Your Captain wishes to say a few words to his crew regarding his background before my involvement in the Navy.

My great-grandfather came around Cape Horn from England to San Francisco in 1846 as an agent for Lloyd’s of London to develop the insurance business for ships, railroads and bridges.

My grandfather (A.M. Brown, Sr.) told me of his being sent out to investigate railroad bridge collapses. Prior to 1910, the Bessimer process was used to convert pig iron into steel, but by 1910, the open hearth method had replaced it.

Unfortunately, the cast iron process could leave small empty holes in the iron which had to be filled with more iron, and unscrupulous manufacturers would fill these holes with beeswax and paint them over with lampblack! This weakness resulted in many railroad bridge collapses. My grandfather investigated these disasters. If beeswax was found in the bridge debris, Lloyd’s didn’t pay the claim—the manufacturer did!

It might sound peculiar, but my great grandfather’s last name was originally O’Brien. He was Irish. Where did the Brown come from?

The reason was that he was not the only O’Brien immigrating to the United States at that time. There were lots of them!

However, to board a sailing vessel bound for our country they had to travel to an English port. Historically, the English and the Irish have never gotten along with the Irish. So, to avoid problems in England, many O’Briens changed their names to Brown!

Perhaps that is the reason that, today, there are so many Browns in the phone book!

My grandfather and father followed in his footsteps, although their given names were Arthur Merrill, Senior and Junior. That is why I am III."

Since they both graduated from the University of California in Berkeley, California, being a San Francisco traditionalist, I enrolled there in 1949. I majored in Business Administration.

At that time, there was a fear that Communism might become a real threat to our society. So a Federal law was passed called the "loyalty