Thanksgiving 1983 (link added)

 

In 1983,  my ship, the USS Klakring, was commisioned in Bath, Maine, on August 20th.  I had been with the crew since the spring, either in Norfolk, Virginia or in Bath, where the ship was built and where we gathered to "man the ship".  As an engineer, I was one of the first aboard the ship being built in the Bath Iron Works shipyard.  After commissioning, my ship sailed to it’s new Homeport, in Charleston, South Carolina.  We were a new crew on a new ship and had a lot of training to do before we would be a real part of the Fleet.

We were in and out of Charleston for training a lot.  On one of our training cruises, we stopped in the Bahamas a few nights.  It was not yet the twilight days of the Cold War – Ronald Reagan was the President, and the USSR was The Evil Empire.  Our most likely opponent in a war situation would have been a submarine, so a lot of our training for that involved long, slow circles at sea – very boring stuff for an engineer.  Grand Bahama was glorious to see and stay in a few nights.  We weren’t the only ship in port – cruise liners lined the other piers.

The Soviet cruise liner Maksim Gorky was in port:

And we were given very strict instructions not to talk to anyone off that ship and to immeadiately report anyone who tried to talk to us.  We were not to go near that ship, not to even look at it.  Of course, the gunners and fire control techs aimed the radars and missle launcher and 76mm gun at them every so often, until that got old, and as far as I know, the people on that ship paid no attention to the US frigate in port with them.

The day after we left the Bahamas, we were out in the middle of nowhere, in the Carribbean, with azure skies and fleecy clouds above us and flying fish below racing the ship, when we found a 12 foot motor boat.  In that boat, four oranges rolled as the boat lifted and dropped on the waves, and a man huddled in the meager shade his windbreaker made, spread between the upright seats of the boat and the gunnel.  We tossed him a line and pulled his boat along side and pulled him aboard and fed him and called the US Coast Guard.

As an engineer, all this was going on without my knowledge – we just made the ship go, but when we started steering slow circles in the middle of nowhere, the Chief Engineer came down to Engineering and told us we were waiting for the Coast Guard to come and get the guy we’d rescued.  Apparently, he was escaping a drug deal gone bad, fleeing to Florida in an open boat with two gallons of gasoline and nothing but oranges to eat.

We heard other stories too – no one knew what he was doing out there in the middle of nowhere with no gas.

We steamed in circles until the Coasties came to get him… except, they hit something in the water and were taking on water.  They turned down our help, (and we were READY, after weeks of Damage Control practice) and so we steamed in slooow circles for a few more hours, standing by while they made repairs.  They took on our "guest" and took his boat in tow, and we never heard another thing about the guy we’d rescued.

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November, 1983 found me in Cuba, with the ship for advanced training and examinations.  We practised all the things we’d have to know and some we never would, and we were tested on them at Fleet Training Center, Guantanmo Bay, Cuba.  We steamed in and out of that harbour day and night on exercises for weeks.

While we were there, so was the USS Mars, an ammunition ship, whose crew had misbehaved on shore, and who were exiled to  anchor out in the bay, instead of tied up at the pier.  The Secretary of The Navy, John Lehman, came to Cuba for something or other, and it was quickly decided that the Secretary, who’d be eating in the Club on the hill, with a good view of the bay, couldn’t possibly grace his vison on a ship in trouble – no, not with a brand new Guided Missle Frigate in port, one of the largest class of ships built since WW2.

We took in our lines and got underway, anchoring out in the middle of the harbour, while the Mars was stashed in a corner of the bay, away from the eyes of the Secretary.  It was our first time, anchoring out like that, and I thought it was neat – a real Navy experience. 

It was facinating, the time I got sent ashore with a bucket of thermometers to get them calibrated.  This was make work of the purest kind – what we needed, apparently, were the initialed calibration stickers for the Inspection coming up.  The cool part of it was I got to ride on our ship’s boat, off the ship and across the bay, and back, when I finished ashore, with an astounding view of MY ship, set in the sparkling Cuban waters, with strings of lights fore and aft.  I felt such a surge of pride, seeing the ship at her best, and feeling like a part of the whole that the glorious sunset that night only amplfied.

The next day was Thanksgiving Day.  We were far from hom

e, in a foreign port, and away from our families.  Video tape cameras were set up on the mess deck, and the chow line, recording the Captain and Executive Officer serving the crew the Thanksgiving feast our cooks had prepared for the families to see.  All the high points were hit – turkeys roasted onboard, hams and sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce and yams and everything else that makes a Thanksgiving feast.

Pumpkin pie ala mode on the flight deck in the fading light of a Holiday in a foreign port, far from the USA.  A memorable time in my life – a Navy Thanksgiving in Cuba, 27 years ago.

 

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