The front piece over at Chant du Depart gave me a little flashback to some of the days and nights on my first ship. She was famously known as the Great White Ghost of the Arabian Coast on account of the fact that she was covered from bow to stern and from the upper works down to the waterline in very clean white paint. See here how she closely resembles Sarge's frontpiece.
It was my first ship and I had the privilege to be the great ship's Auxiliary Officer which meant that I was in charge of all the truly important things on that ship. I hear you sniggering. I can live with it. When the Shellbacks hauled my guilty butt in front of King Neptune I was charged with the very thing I used to harp about. 'Violating Air Conditioning Boundaries.' It was an intolerable charge!
When you pissed off the LDO LT who was the Electrical Officer he would send the electricians on a hunt for grounds outside your office or stateroom every single time you turned on your precious Commodore 64 computer. Up and down they would walk ruthlessly flipping circuit breakers causing the power to fail, selectively, until they heard screams of outrage.
Anger the Auxiliaries Officer beyond human endurance in the hot and humid waters of the Persian Gulf or the Red Sea and suddenly, for no reason at all, your air conditioner would stop working. "Waiting on parts" we would cleverly say and thus shift all the blame and ire onto the Supply Officer, and he deserved it.
While my nemeses were really just the Electronic Materials Officer (little villain), the real enemies of man and God were the First LT and the Ship's Bosun (Evil villain 1 and 2). Let us just say that when the Bosun received his follow-on orders on his departure from the ship he was off to be the Officer-in-Charge of the Correctional Custody Unit the Navy had in Texas and everyone onboard felt very sorry for those poor bastards. I don't recall what happened to the First LT. He was promoted to LCDR about 3 months after I reported aboard but I persisted in calling him Tim. He didn't like that.
Did I mention what happens when Evil Villains 1 or 2 pissed off the Main Propulsion Assistant? He and I were the only Line Officers in the Engineering Department. The rest of them were Chiefs or Limited Duty Officers. They tried to teach me everything they knew.
The Chief Engineer when I reported was named Sid and it was 1984 so he was of course referred to by one and all as Sid Vicious. He was a former Machinist and subscribed to half a dozen hotrod magazines and he'd have me come alongside periodically to point out a particularly spectacular chromed engine and ask why none of the 14 boat engines I had ever looked like that. Didn't I have an electroplate rig buried somewhere in the bowels of the Lower Vehicle Deck and couldn't I get the Chief to chrome the valve covers? That'd be a start he'd say. His replacement has been a Chief Boiler Tech before taking a commission.
Back to the MPA and the Boilers Officer. They were infrequent targets of the Deck Apes but something went amiss from time to time and perhaps one of the infinite number of useless Bosun's Mates Chiefs would get into it with the wrong guy and since the ship was white all over except for the Masts above a certain height, it was always being painted but you see there is a thing one has to do with Main Propulsion Boilers. It's mandatory. It's all about Boiler Chemistry and keeping the metal good forever. Every now and then you have to conduct a bottom blow or/and surface blows on the things and we usually did it at night because it makes a mess. I mean all kinds of soot-black sticky crap comes flying up out of the stack and settled affectionately on every single freshly painted white surface on the ship.
As I recall there was some serious rage the second time it happened in 3 days. It goes without saying that nobody in Main Control would undertake to bottom blow a boiler without first obtaining permission from, wait for it, the Officer of the Deck. Sometimes I'd take the deck at midnight and the Engineering Officer of the Watch would call me up on the 21 MC and request permission to blow tubes and of course, not being informed of the Deck Department's painting depredations, I'd cheerfully authorize it. Or the CHENG would.
We didn't achieve anything like the coal powered ships of the Great White Fleet but sometimes we tried our best.
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3 comments:
Hm. My recollection is that bottom and surface blows were of the boiler drums, and consisted of liquid which was expelled underwater. Blowing tubes, as you relate, was to clean economizer tubes in the stack, and could for sure make a mess topside if the wind wasn't right.
Nope. Just nope. When I was a kid in West Texas, we had a stocktank (home made pond to foreigners from outside West By God Texas). They usually held half water/half dirt just a bit before it could be called sludge. The windmill was beside it with various bits of steel pipe lying around. When I was about 6 I picked on up and threw it into the stocktank. I just disappeared in a flash, er splash. I thought "Boy, that's what the Navy builds those ships with! Nope, just nope". I preferred to play it safe and flew UH-1s in the Army. Perhaps Moma did raise a fool......
You hit the nail on the head there but we told them it was for the chemistry that was in it and how it was unbelievably necessary to do it just then just a few hours after the paint was dry but covered with its first evening dew. We were sciency that way.
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