Like a Character from Moby Dick
Nov 28, 2011
We have permission from The Ensign™ to share in this space one of his stories of high adventure on the high seas. As many of you have already heard, he is currently deployed on the USS Ingraham, a navy frigate patrolling the Pacific off the coast of South America.
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Happy thanksgiving!
Last week, we caught a drug smuggling ship disguised as a fishing vessel, which is awesome. However, there is a down side; having the prize vessel means that we have to send a crew over there to man the fishing vessel [and] what this means for the rest of us is ... we get even less sleep than we did before.
I stand watch, get a break just long enough to take care of my DIVO stuff and eat and if I'm lucky get two hours of sleep before I have to go back on watch again.
Eyeing an opportunity to get off the ship and do something interesting and new, I asked the captain if I could go be part of the captured vessel's crew for one of the shifts. She smiled at my excitement to get over to the other ship but said no. So the next day I asked again, citing the fact that it would be a good "learning" experience for me. She thought about it for a short time, but once again shook her head. Third time's the charm. I approached her stateroom the next night after dinner. "Captain," I said, "what an adventure this could be for me! A chance to be the executive officer on board a captured drug smuggling vessel would make this deployment for me!"
Finally, out of being annoyed by my Stein persistence more than anything else, the captain shrugged her shoulders and picked up her phone. "Go ahead and put Ensign Stein on the watch bill for tomorrow morning, uh huh, okay, thanks." She looked up at me and smiled. "Well, go pack a backpack, Electro, you're on the 0600 small boat transfer tomorrow morning."
And my adventure began.
All I packed was a book, my board shorts, my flip-flops, and a water bottle.
The next morning I was transferred over to the fishing vessel early. The first thing I noticed was an incredibly putrid smell. I gagged even before I stepped foot on board. These drug smugglers really went all out in making it appear that they were a legitimate fishing ship; they even had actual fish in the icebox below deck. ... only I'm sure all of the ice has melted by now. It was one of the worst smells I have ever been exposed to. One of the other guys started throwing up immediately.
I spent most of the morning down in the bilge with the resident engineer while a Coast Guard guy and an LT drove the ship. We finally figured out how to rig the electric pump and got the bilge flooding down as much as we could. The engine died a couple of times, too, but we were able to get it up and running after some sweet engineering magic.
After everything was set down below, I changed into my board shorts and flip-flops, grabbed one of the cots, brought it up to the roof of the pilot house, took out my book (Moby Dick), and lounged out and read for an hour. The sun was shining, the ocean had a nice breeze, it was awesome!
After a short lunch consisting of a pop tart and a peanut butter sandwich, we made a startling, disgusting discovery: cockroaches. At first we just saw one, and there was a bottle of Raid, so we quickly took care of it. Then another came out, and we killed that one too. Then another. What the hell was going on? The Coast Guard guy noticed that they were all coming from behind this one crack in the bulkhead, so we decided to spray some Raid in that crack. We hit the mother lode! All of a sudden, cockroaches started pouring out of there like the mass exodus from a movie theater after someone pulled a fire alarm. Big ones, small ones, fat ones, fast ones. It was unnerving, to say the least. We sprayed the ones we could, but the others made fast to another crack and were gone. For the rest of my time on board the prize ship, my head was on a swivel.
I was John Wayne in a classic western movie, only [with] a can of Raid instead of a 44 magnum, and in a fishing ship floating in the Pacific instead of a western frontier town.
After the cockroach scare died down a little, we got a call from the Ingraham. There were some buoys way off in the distance that were suspicious, and they wanted us to investigate. We left our stationing spot off the Ingraham's port quarter and headed for the buoys. Well, these buoys did not have any drugs in them, but the lines around a buoy had wrapped tightly around a poor sea turtle's left front leg. Feeling bad for the turtle, we decided to pull up close and cut it free. The turtle was so funny up close; it had zero expression on its face, it didn't even say thank you! It felt good to save the turtle's life, though.
All of a sudden, after the turtle swam away, the buoy started pulling really hard from us. Apparently, there was something really strong caught in the net below the buoy. What happened next was all at once terrifying and amazing: A twelve-foot manta ray–twelve feet no exaggeration– wrapped all in the net, exploded from the depths of the ocean. It started splashing about vigorously in the sea and pulled the buoy out of our hands and then dove back down underneath, temporarily pulling the buoys down with it below the surface. We couldn't believe it! Watching a sea monster splash around so close to where I was made me feel like a character from Moby Dick.
After the experience with the turtle and manta ray, the engine died and we were dead in the water until our reliefs came that night. I went back to the Ingraham smelling like long-dead fish, but filled with tales to tell. About how I fought a war against an army of roaches. About how I saved a life. About how I came face to face with a sea monster from the deep. It was so much fun. I was tired, sunburned, I had to stand watch on the Ingraham's bridge from two in the morning until seven in the morning, I smelled awful, but I was happy!
Hopefully this message finds everyone with full bellies and in good health. Tell people I miss them and that I wish I could be there.