"Extreme Weather" Veteran's Contest entry

Getting this story barely in under the wire for @shadow3scalpel's Veteran's Writing Contest!!

source: Pixabay

Background

This story happened to my dad, who did 20 years in the Navy and was a Senior Chief (and plankowner) on the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt CVN-71 when she did her maiden voyage/deployment to Europe and the Middle East in the mid-1980's.

Twenty years later, I was now in the Navy as a brand new supply Ensign and was on a Persian Gulf deployment aboard USS Abraham Lincoln CVN-72. Needless to say, Dad and I got a kick out of comparing the ships, senior enlisted and junior officer life and perspectives, etc. He passed on sage advice about dealing with Chiefs and herding cats junior enlisted Sailors; and he cheered me up with sea stories :) Here is one of them, in his own words, from an email:

Extreme Weather Story

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Well, your mom read me some of your last e-mail where you mentioned the sound of water crashing in the hawse pipes up on the foc'sle and the sound of the anchors banging against the sides. She said she wasn't sure what you were talking about, so I explained some of it to her, but made the observation that if you're using terms like that, you must be making some headway on your warfare pin.

I always liked the foc'sle. It just really amazed me every time that I went up there, the massive amount of weight that was controlled up there. What's really funny, at least on the Roosevelt, is that this is a working space, but it's basically kept in a ceremonial status along with the cleanliness that accompanies such a space.

Anyway......so have you learned that the anchor is not really what anchors the ship, but rather the large amount of anchor chain that is payed out along with the anchor? And guess what? It doesn't always work either! We were anchored off of Italy and had a good size wind come up and we started dragging our anchor and chain. Deck department basically ran out every bit of chain that they could and we were still dragging it and headed towards shore. The Captain was ashore and the XO ordered Engineering to fire everything up and get us underway. But in order to really get underway, we had to creep slowly forward while Deck department reeled in all the chain. It was a little unnerving, especially since we were supposed to be at a ready standby to get underway, but Engineering had shut everything down. Plus, we were considered to be in a shallow anchorage. I think the water was only about 50 feet deep where we were and there's about 40 some odd foot of ship below the water line.

Needless to say, the Cheng lost a little bit of hide over that one. I'm not sure who dropped the ball as to being ready to get underway, but I'm sure the Cheng probably took more than a little hide off someone else down the chain of command as a result of his own hide loss! Ah, the fond memories!

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Thoughts

I wonder what Dad's understatement of a "good size wind" actually was, to cause a carrier to start dragging its entire anchor chain. An aircraft carrier on the loose is NOT something I want to imagine or experience. I also can't imagine being the XO and having to make the call to take off from anchorage and leave the CO and who knows how many other sailors temporarily stranded ashore.

The sheer power of water and weather become really apparent when you are on deck of something that massive--you're on something gigantic that man has made, and yet nature can batter it and wrest away control of it. It gives you a new sense of respect for nature, let me tell you.

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As of the writing of this story, I haven't been able to confirm with Dad whether this was the same incident as another one of his stories, in which the XO personally chopped loose a barge that was moored to the ship, in order to keep the barge from damaging it. It makes sense that it all happened at the same time. (The barge ended up crashing ashore somewhere and the opportunistic owner claimed it was worth some ungodly amount of money...because of course if the US Government is picking up the tab!...that's a rant I'll hold off on, but let me just say I experienced the exact same opportunism with some foreign vendors and a lost triwall of merchandise, so some things don't change over the decades.)

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Translations for the civilians
Foc'sle = forecastle/bow
XO = Executive Officer, second in command
Cheng = Chief Engineer

If you enjoyed this little story, please consider voting for my comment at the bottom of the original contest announcement, where I posted the link! :)