The ocean was smooth and appeared to be completely calm. There were no swells, waves, or turbulence as far as the eye could see. The sky was the color of a newborn baby’s eyes and reflected in the crystal-clear water.
The sea looked like glass.
I gazed out over the water on this beautiful September morning.
I was looking forward to diving in and washing the gunk off my body. Having just crossed the Equator and fulfilling the ceremony approved by both regulation and Naval Tradition, I was in serious need of a rinse.
For the last few days, the USS Southerland (DD-743) had traveled through the tropics toward the Equator with beautiful weather, snow-white seabirds in tow. Exotic ocean life including flying fish occasionally landed on the deck much to our delight.
The Flying Fish were strange looking fish, with elongated fins that stretched out to allow them to glide over long distances when they were threatened. A glittery silver thin body, huge eyes and those long fins gave them a weird, otherworldly look.
There were hammerhead sharks, very few of which were the monsters we expected. Most of these strange looking fish were no longer than four feet long and maybe nine inches thick. The assorted fishermen on board, having caught a few of these weird looking sharks demonstrated how they seemed to be pure muscle and sandpaper skin. With their eyes spread out to the ends of their radically shaped heads they looked like something out of a Dali painting.
An hour ago, I was a “Pollywog,” but now I was a loyal subject of King Neptune. Now I was formally called a “Shellback” as any equator-crossing sailor was called. This assumed the ceremony was adequately carried out with just the right amount of ceremony and fun.
Cargo nets were hung over the side and gunner’s mates were stationed around the main deck to watch for sharks, sea snakes or any other dangerous sea creatures. As we were at latitude of 00000, on the equator, and a longitude of 105.58.5 where the sea was shallow, and the bottom was less than one-hundred feet below us although considerable deeper than my five-foot-five-inches.
On this September 22nd, a Wednesday, we arrived at our temporary destination.
Late the previous night our Captain had informed PACCOM “I’m going to take an extra day to head south and fill this ship with Shellbacks.”
The Captain, a Polliwog himself, had the same ceremony to look forward to as the rest of us and took it all like a man…or Honored Shellback.
PACCOM agreed and resulted in the situation we were currently in. Due to the “ceremony” we were disgustingly dirty, covered with grease, food garbage and assorted gunk. Our bodies stunk and our hair clung to our heads in a skullcap that made us all temporarily glad for a military haircut.
After our ceremony we were initially allowed en masse to climb down the nets to the water. After a few slips and falls from several other greased-up sailors, most of us took the plunge by diving ten-feet from the quarterdeck into the bathwater-warm ocean.
The sea looked as smooth as glass from the deck of the ship. Upon entering the water, we quickly realized that powerful swells continued to roll underneath us. They moved in a lazy motion that still raised us a good five feet or so above the trough.
As the swells were so long and slow and there was not a breath of air turbulence, the surface had appeared to be flat to the horizon. That was, until finding yourself immersed in the trough of one of these swells.
The salt stung our eyes as we washed, laughed, and played and performed general horseplay. After an hour of fun, swim-call was called to an end. This brought an end to our swimming party.
As I climbed over the rail and grabbed a towel, I heard someone exclaim, “Hey, someone is way out there! It looks like they’re drifting with the swells! I think it’s Louie!”
Turning, I saw one of the seamen in my department a good distance away from the ship. A slow insidious current continued to move him away from the ship. He was about ¼-mile away and moving further away as we watched.
As the senior enlisted man in my department, outside my chief, who was still dressed as King Neptune, I felt responsible for Louie. He had been apprehensive about swimming in the middle of the ocean. Everyone he spoke to assured him it was safe. Including me.
Confident and a good swimmer, I immediately volunteered to swim out to Louie and retrieve him before he was too worn to continue to tread water. I had gotten my lifesaving certificate years before when I was a scout. I was trained and ready. Several others joined in volunteering for this job. We dove into the sea and began stroking in Louie’s direction.
Though there were six sailors in our little company, Jimmy had to turn back when he realized the distance was simply too far. We were at the halfway point. I broke off Pat and asked him to accompany Jimmy back to the ship.
We four continued to stroke as fast as possible toward Louie. As a swell approached, he disappeared into a trough but always appeared at the crest a moment later.
After a little while we arrived to find Louie out of breath and terrified. Barely treading water, he was getting weaker and weaker – a condition with which we all sympathized. After a short period of reassurance, wherein two of us supported him so he could rest, we advised Louie that we were all good swimmers, and we would help him get back to the ship.
As we mentioned the home base, we turned to see the direction in which we had to swim. We all simultaneously realized we were a lot farther than we had been when we started out. The ship appeared to be the size of a 3” toy, about ¾ of a-mile away…perhaps farther. We had been swimming with the current.
The ship was anchored. It wasn’t going anywhere.
I could barely see any movement on board. Without my glasses, I was still able to see well enough to know which direction we needed to go.
We reassured Louie, as we reassured ourselves, this wasn’t as far as it looked. We were all good swimmers who would take turns towing Louie back.
As we began the first leg of our trip Louie grabbed at me in a panic, fastening onto my swimsuit pulling it down near my knees. I immediately pushed Louie off and reassured him again that this should be an easy swim, but he needed to trust us and not cling to either us or our clothes. I pulled my suit back up.
We eventually convinced Louie to hang on with a light touch and we would all arrive safely. After all, we would need to be able to swim ourselves if we were to make the time we needed, to overcome the current. This time we were swimming against the strong swells.
We soon fell into a rhythm that enabled us to make slow progress toward the ship.
After a lengthy and challenging but steady swim we were within hearing of the crew. They were cheering us on with full voices and a level of excitement that made it impossible to pick out individual words or phrases. We had been gone for the better part of an hour at this point and were all anxious to get back to the security of a firm rolling deck.
Talking among ourselves we noticed the gunners-mates were no longer spread out around the ship but were in the middle of the crowd with everyone else cheering and shouting encouragement. Someone asked, “Aren’t they supposed to be watching for sharks?”
We all agreed that they were becoming a bit casual as we still had people in the water, but we chalked it up to typical crowd interest. We simply hoped they wouldn’t be needed. The gunner’s mate with us said, “We’re just a few minutes away. We’re close enough we will get to the ship before anything could possibly happen.”
As we got closer, we could more clearly hear the shouts and encouragement of my shipmates. “Come on!” “Faster!” “Hurry up!” Was the general gist of the shouts. This was disturbing as we had been swimming for so long and were worn and pretty much played out. Were they really that anxious to get underway?
As we voiced our dissatisfaction among ourselves, we began to catch other words. “Shark!” and “Hammerheads!” managed to get our attention just as we reached the side of the boat and the cargo nets at which we paused to get our breath. A relief to not be using our legs and arms to fight the current we hung loose, barely hanging on.
That was about when all those words became so much clearer: “You are surrounded by hammerhead sharks! Get the hell out of the water!”
The next line in this legendary tale, as I overheard later that day, was, “They came out of the water like they had a rocket up their ass.” I do know we all reached the deck at the same time with our wet feet slapping the deck almost in unison.
Spinning around I looked over the side of the ship. There, between two and ten feet underneath the surface, were what appeared to be dozens of small hammerheads. I was told when they were first spotted, we were still quite a distance from the ship, and they were circling together in a formation that was about twenty-five feet across.
By the time we reached the ship this circle had shrunk to around fifteen feet across with the small knot of swimmers in the center of a circle that put all of us around five feet or closer to the wall of fish. They were closer to me than I am tall. We had no idea as our little knot of young men and its circle of clear water inside deep hammerhead walls, moved through the mass of strange fish that mysteriously moved out of the way, clearing our path home.
Squinting into the Sun, I looked out over the water and saw sharks in every direction. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of hammerheads as far as I could see. Sharks swimming casually through the water and a distant thrashing on the surface that quickly disappeared as fast as it had appeared.
Jimmy related that every so often a shark would break out of the hammerhead wall and cruise underneath the swimmers. At times this lone shark would make a quick break toward the group of sailors. It would break-off the run just before reaching a person and dive under our tangle of legs.
After changing clothes, I went back out to the helicopter-deck overlooking the fantail. As I looked overboard toward, I still saw hundreds of hammerheads still in the area.
The deck was going through a salt-water-wash-down after sweeping the ceremonial leftovers overboard and they were happily feeding on anything that hit the water. They were no longer circling, and they were no longer confining themselves to depth. Instead, a hammerhead occasionally broke the surface before rejoining the teaming, frothing school of weird-looking fish.
As we got underway about 45 minutes later, I donned the sound-powered telephone to ask the Aft-Look-Out on the condition of the sharks. It seems they were still hanging around looking for a handout… or a foot out… or an elbow out. They, evidently, were still looking forward to, and contemplating, an exotic meal.
Me?
I’m still looking forward to another bath-water swim on the equator on another perfect day… someday.