Disappearing Hams?
By: William M. McCurrach
Take a U.S. Naval Ship filled with 390 men and get it ready for deployment and you run into many things to do. Such was the case in the summer of 1982 for the U.S.S. Dahlgren DDG-43. I was a young sailor on that ship at the time and part of the process on a ship leaving for deployment is ordering and loading of new supplies for the missions, which can last six to nine months a year.
I remember one morning at Quarters, the Chief Petty Officer standing in front of us Boiler Technicians and telling us we were due to get underway in a day and we would be loading supplies. Chief Darcey, was a young man for his position, and a decent Chief, but he also knew, because he had come up through the ranks, Boiler Techs as they called us or BTs, were some of the craziest sea dogs on a ship in the Navy; so were the MMs (MachinistMates). On the Dahlgren, we were called the boys in the pits; without us BTs and MMs, the Navy can stayed tied to the pier and never go!
Of course, we had our duties to fire up the engineering plant, but we could also fabricate almost anything out of nothing. We would do things no other division onboard would do, especially for ourselves. We had imagination, guts and crazy characters among us.
Some of the funnier ones, who joked and pushed one another, became great buddies and many ended up on the same watch teams in the Hole. The Hole is the Boiler room at sea and on the Dahlgren it included two fire rooms, one forward and one aft. To enter a Boiler room, unless you were an officer, could be dangerous, especially since we were noted for being pranksters. We would catch someone down in the pit, and do all kinds of crazy tricks to them; even initiations of greasings were not out of bounds. As to what greasings were, well, I will not expound on that one, except to say it wasn’t an expected thing, for the person receiving it
Fire rooms consisted of two levels of machinery and pipes. Always under fluorescent lights and fans blowing when the plant was not steaming, you could hear the air compressors chugging away. When the Boilers were lit you could hear the feed pumps, fuel pumps, forced draft blowers going loudly and feel the heat rise. The temperatures down in the pits could reach well over one hundred degrees at sea
A mistake many Supply Officers made, happened aboard the Dahlgren that year, and to this day, I still laugh about it and so do my fellow engineers I am sure. The thing is, many times, Officers don’t think about how they do things; they only think of what to do and getting it stored away.
When a Supply Officer calls for a team to load supplies he contacts all divisions aboard ship and asks that all personnel man the line to load the supplies. And we did, but all of us BTs and other engineers did so in places in the line the Supply Officer, wishes we didn’t. They let us line up going right by the engineering spaces, which included the two fire rooms and engine rooms. As we lined up to load the supplies, I remember one big guy, Ennis I will call him, he looked at us and grinned with his big funny face, he said “shopping time”. We all knew what that meant. And we all looked at the newbie BTs and MMs and had two of each stand inside the doors to each space and wait.
It was like a shopping spree for us engineers and no one knew until later.
The Supplies start from the pier as they load them aboard passing everything hand to hand up the ladders, down the ship and through the inner corridors to the supply storage rooms and freezers. As we passed the supplies along each of us in the engineering department would read the boxes and labels to each other and as the supplies went by, some disappeared. Ennis would go “here’s the juice” at one end of the line and by the time it got to the doors to the pits, we knew what kind of juice we wanted and it disappeared too. The spaces got juice, pies and hams and cheese. A little bit of anything we liked ended up in the engineering spaces before each cruise, I know it sounds crazy, but, hey, we were engineers, we deserved to eat!
All was quiet that night, all the loading of the supplies completed. But of course the supply officer, didn’t inventory his supplies, until, we were underway the next day. Count when you receive, not afterwards, big mistake. Afterwards, Mr. Supply Officer, you get the blame for what is missing, not anyone else!
The fun began the next morning after we had lit off the boilers, brought them up to speed and pressure and got underway in the Norfolk, Virginia bay. As we steamed out there was the normal rushing around by each watch team in each engineering space, checking readings and pressures and more. It is all part of a watch team’s job of course to be sure all equipment runs correctly. Each watch team in each engineering space was set up basically the same .Starting at the lowest rank and position the teams consisted of a messenger, who took hourly readings on all equipment and oil samples once a day, a burner man to man the burner front and watch the flames and light and extinguish burners as needed, a lower level man who ran the booster pumps, fuel service pumps, fresh water pumps and bilge pumps, a upper level man who ran the DFT, forced draft blowers, feed pumps, and watched the water level and the air compressors too, which fed the BT of The Watch’s console board, air powered controls for the boilers. The BT of the Watch ran the watch team, and supervised it all. Similar duties were taking place in the engine room.
Once out to sea in the Atlantic Ocean and steaming in the proper direction, it started. As we all stood our morning watch which ran from eight to twelve, we had visitors down in the engineering spaces. The Chief Engineer, LCDR Walden came down and in tow he brought a team of Master at Arms and the Supply Officer all starched and clean and BTC Darcey. When asked what they were doing in our engineering spaces, the Chief Engineer said “The Supply Officer here is missing hams that were loaded yesterday; he believes they are here in the engineering spaces and the Captain said we have to check.” We looked at Chief Darcey and he shook his shoulders and smiled.
We just looked at all of these people crowding our space and shook our heads. We knew if they searched they would never find one ham. One thing an engineer can do is hide stuff in an engineering plant. And we were good at it, so the search began; they looked high and low for the missing hams that day, the search took eight hours, but they never found one ham in any of the engineering spaces. All we kept hearing was how the hams had disappeared from the supply line and where were they? But we knew where all of those hams were of course. But no way we were telling anything, it was an enlisted versus officers. Plus no engineer was going to snitch, we knew that.
That search was funny as hell to watch really we did things to officer’s hats we shouldn’t have. Engineers use bluing which is a paste you spread over a metal surface to check for, nicks, chips or damages. One of the men blued the inner rim of both officers’ hats, and put them back in place. When the officers, soaking wet with sweat, left that day with their hats on, we all stifled smiles and laughs and waved then goodbye as they went up the ladders. They looked funny for a while, with blue stripes on their foreheads.
That cruise we ate all that food; it was stored up under the foundations of each pump and piece of machinery that was running that day. On the late watches and early morning watches, we engineers ate like kings. We cooked things on the main steam stops; the MMs did theirs on the main steam stops to the main engines.
Navy days and times; what more can a sailor want?
The End
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