Navy days 2

I was assigned to a frigate, a small escort ship designed to escort convoys and replenishment groups.  The Perry class (the type of ship) was the largest class of ships built since WW2.

Almost 60 of these ships were built in Maine, Missouri, and California.  Some of the ships were built for the Royal Australian Navy, so some of the people I met in training for these ships were Australian sailors, and boy, did they know how to party!

My ship was built in Bath, Maine, a town with a looong history of building warships for the navy.  There was space for nearly 200 people, but we usually only had about 180 on board- the extra space being for the crews of the two helicopters we we equipted to carry.

Bearthing space (where we slept and bathed ect. was very tight:

There are six racks in this picture.

The racks were in sets of three- top. bottom, and middle.  I had a bottom rack.  These were called "coffin racks" since they are about that size.  The bed portion lifted up and revealed a locker under the matress where we stored our uniforms and etc.  Each rack had curtains to it, it’s own light above the head of the mattress, and each had it’s own A/C vent.

These ships rolled like a toy boat in a bathtub at times, but the only time I nearly got seasick and barfed in the bilges was the day after an engineer’s party at a club on Roosevelt Roads Naval Station on Puerto Rico and I had a SERIOUS hangover.  Some people would hit their racks seasick as soon as "Underway!" was called out over the intercom.  There were always boxes of crackers opened on the mess decks for us to grab – I used to fill pockets with crackers on my way to the engine room.

This was my position in the engine room, the Local Operating Panel for our two gas turbine engines:

From here we could start, stop, and run the engines, but control was usually held by the Central Control Station or by the Bridge.

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