Story - "Superstition"

I don't know why I was called to watch in the Wheelhouse, I didn't have the experience to handle the wheel in the storm we were in. It had been a tough afternoon, mostly trying to keep things from being destroyed (eg. lifeboats) and we were all dog tired. The bridge was tense, even the so-called "old salts" seemed apprehensive, scared. The Captain paced around, getting on his own and everyone else's nerves. The waves, huge grey-green water were certainly the highest I had ever seen, and some of the older crew said they hadn't seen anything bigger.

You looked out toward the bow and then this enormous wall of water came luming up, and up, and up some more, and then it passed over us, the wheelhouse, the stacks, everything, and the shudder was truly frightening in itself. Everything was tied down, and the Executive Office stayed below in his cabin; we thought it just as well with the Captain roaming around and giving orders some of which seemed to us to be meaningless.

One of the people from the Black Gang showed up to try and fix a broken something or other, a man from the engine room, who seldom came above deck, I saw him only in waterfront bars. He was huge, tattooed all over, and was seeing something he had never seen before. This was the biggest scared man you ever want to see. He kept working, but couldn't keep his eyes off the forward port holes, and was completly distracted from his work, dropped his tools several times.

He got done what he set out to do, I guess, and fled below, probably to his bunk (in which he would have to be strapped in). The Captain came back up, cursing and wandering around. The entire trip had been beset by weird happenings, and being the Captain's last voyage before retirement, and feeling extremely superstitious about it, it seemed that this voyage created its' own problems, its' own reasons for fear and dread; the Great Northern Route icebergs (with ailing 2nd WW radar) and last the lobster pot field we found ourselves plowing through near Noval Scotia (again, no radar), the broken line in Bremerhaven, etc. Even our ultimate tying up in Staten Island had some strange problems as I recall.

As the Skipper was piped off for the last time, and we all stood and saluted him as he went down the gangplank, it was fitting and somehow predictable that he didn't look back, nor acknowledge our work in getting him through the last days of his final command. As a man who had been through the Second World War, even been an Admiral for a time, and then got stuck with the Korean "Conflict." Capt. O'Daniel had paid his dues. My hope is that he didn't have to face anything like those huge walls of grey green water again, even in nightmares driven by superstition.

I found out later that the giant mechanic who had come to the bridge was on one of his own last trips before retirement, and had shared the superstitious feelings of the Captain. He didn't have to face another storm like that and left the ship before we went through the Caribbean to the Panama Canal, and the Pacific. He was from Iowa and intended to return with his Navy pension to farm to live out his days there. Bless his huge, tattooed heart, and I hope too that he is not bothered with stormy, wintry sea tale nightmares.