A BRIEF STOP FOR FUEL IN EUREKA

A brief stop for fuel is called a BSF in the U.S. Navy. It is what ships do when they cannot replenish their fuel by going alongside a tanker of some sort while underway. They date back to the first days of the machinery powered navy and explain part of the rush to colonize the rest of the world's seacoasts. The navies and maritime fleets of the day needed a safe place to accumulate and store fuel and then to refuel ships that came into port.

Sometimes a BSF is more dangerous than expected and you get tragedies like USS COLE in Aden. The ship was easily targeted and blown up by muslims who placed a lot of explosives in a boat and then drove the boat into the destroyer's port side causing it to sink at the pier. The explosion killed a number of sailors and the muslims on the attacking boat.

USS COLE after its Brief Stop For Fuel in Aden

There was a little interest in a navy ship that stopped in Humboldt Bay to refuel the other day. The coastline between Los Angeles and Seattle is justly famous as the most dangerous bit of coastline ever to make an impact on the U.S. Navy. In 1923 the Honda Point Disaster claimed 7 nearly new destroyers and the lives of 23 sailors. The waters teem with Great White Sharks and Killer Whales but the real sharks are found ashore all along the west coast.

Destroyer Squadron 11 after running aground north of Santa Barbara in 1923

When I was a young Chief Engineer I once sailed to San Francisco and moored at Fisherman's Wharf. We had an easy time getting there from San Diego and enjoyed a fairly relaxing week ashore, but there was one thing I refused to do while in that place and that was to refuel. In San Francisco at the time, the most lethal critters alive were running the place and woe betide the man who spilled so much as one drop of fuel into the Bay for death would be too good for him. (Mayor Diane Feinstein said so.)

I figured we had enough fuel aboard to make it back to San Diego. You can imagine my dismay when my Chief came up to me on the bridge while we were abeam Honda Point to inform me that he couldn't get any fuel out of the last fuel tank. Nothing came out of the purifier but water. I asked the skipper if he could relieve me of the Deck and he answered that he was free and very interested in anything I learned while absent and took the Deck while I moseyed down to the engine room to have a look at this amazing crisis for myself.

The U.S. Navy's newest class of warship was spotted in Eureka, California taking on fuel.

USS INDEPENDENCE gleaming in the bright sun in Eureka, CA January 2014

The good people of Eureka had another Navy warship in that close once before.

USS MILWAUKEE, flag still flying, washes ashore in Eureka, CA in January 1917.

It didn't end well for USS MILWAUKEE. She broke in half after running aground while attempting to rescue a submarine that had gone ashore earlier.

The people of that area take their pacifism very seriously and will go to any extreme of violence to make the point about how much they are in favor of non-violence. I once had the opportunity to send security forces to that neck of the woods to protect some ships and suggested that instead maybe they should go somewhere peaceful and calm, like Aden. There is something about the air on the northern California coast and the Oregon and Washington coast that brings out the worst in people. People like us in Canada and Alaska though so that's something.

I can only imagine the terror of the men and women on the USS Independence as they refueled in that nest of vipers. They probably figured they were lucky to make it out alive. It's bound to be much worse there than San Francisco. Only the most dire necessity would force me into that place to take on fuel.