"We Were All Young Then"
To the South Pacific in a Steam Schooner by Shannon Wall
In Sea History 38 we published Ed Zelinsky's account of sailing with war supplies in the steam schooner Esther Johnson to Australia and New Guinea. Here, Shannon Wall presents his own memories of a similar assignment. While Mr. Zelinsky went on to become a paint baron in San Francisco and, more recently, to lead an effort to bring the Gold Rush ship Vicar of Bray back to that city, Shannon Wall remained in the maritime industry and now serves the National Maritime Union ofAmerica (the NMU) as its president. In April of 1943 , a number of us who had just been paid off the Army Transport Troopship, Frederick Funston , were staying at the old Drake Wilshire Hotel on Stockton Street , just up from Union Square in San Francisco. A couple of young shipmates from the Frederick Funston-I guess we were all young then-came into our room laughing and carrying on. They had just shipped aboard an "old pirate ship , " which , we soon learned , happened to be the lumber schooner, the
Esther Johnson . They left to pursue their fantasies about wooden pirate ships never to be heard of or seen by us again. Covering our usual nightly haunts such as the Cirque Room at the Fairmont Hotel or the Top of the Mark, Carl Anderson, Murray Runstad and I put all this talk of pirate ships down to youthful imagination. They were I remember all of two or three years younger than us. A day or two later, funds running low , we went back to Fort Mason for subsistence and travel money due us and for another ship. Yes , the dispatcher said , he had one ship in port that had room for three ABs. Well by that afternoon we had our own pirate ship--the steam schooner Barbara C. She didn't look romantic to the three of us " old hands" as we stood looking at her with our seabags over our shoulders. She was old; she was dirty; she had been squatting on the mud flats of Alameda for years. But , we decided , she could still do the job that was required of her and that was to get lumber and piling to the war in the South Pacific. Besides , we suspected that she might not be worth torpedoing. So we signed on . Much of our itinerary paralleled that recounted by Ed Zelinsky in the Esther Johnson : San Francisco , Hawaii , Pago Pago, Australia and New Guinea. However, our shipboard experiences were quite dissimilar. We too had a street-car trolley type of lever that activated the steering engine. If my memory serves, it was the Chief Engineer who complained of the constant clanging , rattle and thumps of the steering chains as they passed through his cabin. Our Skipper's cabin was aft of the wheel house and his door faced aft, where he sat most of the time dreaming of another life . Coupled with the Chief Engineer's complaints was our own dissatisfaction with the lever steering arrangement. Because of the inertia of the magnetic compass , there was a pronounced delay in answering the helm. This-along with the steam engine ' s delay to the lever' s request, and the slack in the chain leading aft to the steering quadrant-prompted us to request the Captain to let us use the ship's wheel which was connected directly to the rudder. Permission granted , the Chief Engineer slept better and the Barbara C ceased her involuntary zigzag course across the Pacific Ocean. But all was not sweetness and light on the wheel watch . As the wheel was attached directly to the rudder , any wave action was transmitted directly to the helmsman. We rigged a stopper line from the deck which could be attached to a spoke of the wheel to take the shock of severe wave action . Still , I recall being driven to my knees every once in a while by rogue waves hitting the rudder. There were other times when two helmsmen SEA HISTORY , AUTUMN 1986
were needed to manhandle the wheel: the ki ng spoke was five feet off the deck. On the other hand , on most wheel watches a moderately competent wheelsman could handily balance the rudder with course to be steered and not have to touch the wheel for minutes at a time. I recall a dark , ca lm night with Murray Runstad at the wheel as we were heading for New Guinea inside the Great Barrier Reef for perhaps the third or fourth time . The Third Mate came in from the starboard wing to the chart room. Murray was out on the port wing. As the Third Mate returned to the wheel house he realized no one was at the wheel! Dashing into the wheelhouse grabbing for the wheel the mate collided with Murray and almost knocked him down. Sputtering " but , but , but ," the poor Third Mate finally got out, " But there was no one at the wheel." "I have been at this wheel all watch , mate ," Murray stated flatly. To this day the Third Mate probably still has some doubt as to his sanity that quiet night aboard the Barbara C . Our ship never sai led in convoy, but one experience between Hawaii and Pago Pago made me wish we had company. Plowing ever southward about two days out of Pago Pago the Chief Engineer gave orders to switch to the stern fresh water tanks. The engineers acco rdi ng ly shut down the forward tanks and opened the valves to the after tanks. Nothing happened. There was a whoosh of air and nothing else. Hurriedly they sounded the stern tanks only to get a dull thump at the bottom of the empty tanks . There we were over 400 nautical miles from Pago Pago , our nearest and only port for thousands of miles and NO WATER . Fresh water was never a problem in the Northwest lumber trade , so evaporators were not something lumber schooner crews worried about. We limped along barely making steerage way for a day or so. Then the evaporator gave up the ghost , never to be revived. Although under strict orders to maintain radio si lence the Old Man had to break them when the evaporators gave out. Thirty-nine lives , including the Army gu n crew , were at stake. But in spiie of breaking radio silence we drifted and wallowed for almost two days with no help or relief in sight . l don ' t know whose prayers were answered , but on the third day we ran into a tropical rainstorm. Luckily most of the crew had been sleeping on deck under tarpaulins stretched over the cargo booms forward. Water began cascading off the tarps and down the scuppers. In short order garbage cans , oil drums , galley pots and pans-everything we could get our hands onwas brought out to catch the rain. Bucket brigades fill ed the life boats and the engine room ga ng manned pumps from the life boats to the fresh water tanks. It was a wild scene as everyone, captain to ordinary seaman, chief engineer to wiper, chief steward to messman, sergeant to buck private , pranced naked on deck soaping, shampooing and washing while collecting every possible drop of water. Four days later we limped into Pago Pago. They had not yet sent anyone out for us: so much for our value to the war effort. Nevertheless for the crew of the Barbara C there never was a tropical island as beautiful as Tutuila in American Samoa 19