LETTERS Taking it for granted when I lived in NJ, I never realized the deep longing I have to be near New York Harbor and the Jersey shore again. I live in North Carolina now, at least 5 hours away from the ocean. Sea History is very important to me, if only to keep my nautical flame burning. I look forward to reading each issue. MANNY LEKKAS
Winston Salem, North Carolina
The Invasion of Maryland, 1943 As I was reading the last issue of Sea History (122, Spring 2008) and discovered that the NMHS annual meeting will be held at St. Michaels, MD, I decided to send along a little-known "vignette" of WWII regarding this little town on the Chesapeake as told to me by my brother and brother-in-law, who participated in the only invasion of Maryland during WWII. Both were Massachusetts Nautical School engineering cadets at the time. In March 1943, the whole of the Massachusetts Nautical School (predecessor of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy) was within the school ship Nantucket, docked in Boston. The cadets and crew needed sea time, but, with U-Boats patrolling off the coast, the officers decided they could not risk sending personnel or ships out into the Atlantic. They arranged to borrow a school ship (Keystone State, formerly USCGC Seneca) from the Pennsylvania Nautical School, which was in the Chesapeake Bay at the time. The Bay was big enough to sail around in without having to venture out into the dangerous waters outside. Having sent their officers and cadets to this borrowed ship, they then decided to conduct a commando-rype shore raid. Without notifying any local authorities, the cadets were dressed in black, given unloaded rifles, and divided into two groups-defenders and invaders. It was a serene, bright spring day in Maryland, but panic soon ensued as the groups came ashore and began crossing fields, etc., and the local people fled to their houses. Eventually, the sheriff and police got involved and the mission was promptly abandoned. My brother-inlaw had decided early on that this whole fiasco was stupid and had hitched a ride in someone's pick-up truck into town, where he found a local bar and planted himself there for awhile.
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After graduation, my brother, "Bud" Readdy, sailed on Liberry Ships, primarily the Ethan Allen and George Bancroft, reaching the post of acting chief engineer. Over the years, he worked in the maritime industry as a marine engineer and surveyor and also spent 17 years at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory (now Draper Laboratory). My brother-in-law, John Mullen, had to wait six months before he was old enough to be commissioned an ensign in the US Navy. He spent most of WWII with USS Wczyne (APA-54) throughout the Pacific and participated in some of the major invasions. He used the G. I. Bill to get an electrical engineering degree and worked for General Electric. MARJORIE
E. READDY SULLIVAN
Braintree, Massachusetts
''A Culture of Safety" Feedback Rigel Crockett's ''A Culture of Safery for Tall Ships" (Sea History 122) may be well intentioned but suffers severely from a regrettable lapse into unsupported innuendo. His basic point, that it is up to captains to foster safery consciousness in their crew and trainees, is unassailable. Furthermore, no one can view the two fatalities cited (one overboard from the barque Picton Castle, one fall from aloft onboard the schooner Alabama) as other than tragic and preventable. What I find grossly unfair is the unsupported statement, "I believe that [Captain Dan] Moreland felt his reputation would protect him if a serious accident befell his ship." This is not a fact, it is an unsupported opinion imputing a callous arrogance to Moreland. Nor does Crockett mention that Moreland was not onboard Picton Castle at the time of the loss, although Crockett does state that, when he served under Moreland, drills were regular and reckless stunts aloft were not allowed. Crockett goes on to cite how poorly Moreland fared in the CBC "Fifth Estate" production "Overboard." That highly biased film raised serious questions about vessel safery practices, then proceeded to answer them with innuendo and implied conclusions, much of it gathered from people whose qualifications went unquestioned. I have been shipmates with Dan Moreland in several vessels and consider him a highly capable mariner. Had he been in command at the time of the accident, I
think lifelines would have been rigged, and/ or crewmembers prohibited from venturing out on deck, and the loss avoided. I am not writing to give unqualified support to all practices onboard Picton Castle, a vessel I have never sailed in. Dan Moreland and I differ on many points in how we manage our vessels and crew, ask anyone who has sailed with both of us. I am writing in the hope of shifting the safery discussion away from innuendo about personaliry, and towards the complicated issue of safery judgments. With regards to safery aloft, as sad as each loss is, I submit the overall record is very good when exposure (number of participants times number of sorties aloft) versus accidents is considered. Some are the result of gear failures or slips between clip-in points, or errors in what to clip to. I am not advocating working aloft without a harness, just recognize that wearing one is no panacea. The great majoriry of vessels (including Niagara) require harnesses. There the consensus ends. Seat, chest, or full body harness all have pros and cons. Clip in only when in position to work, or constant tether? The latter sounds safer, until you have to get a lot of sail in and need a whole watch aloft promptly. Arguing over the best hardware is a distraction from the more important issue of under what circumstances are crew and trainees sent aloft. What level of training precedes unsupervised climbs? What protocol is in place for handling running rigging on deck while crew are aloft? There will be no one best answer because the rigs, conditions, and rypes of program vary so greatly. Safery on deck has even more variables. On small yachts, it obviously makes sense to be tethered to the vessel whenever at sea, while in large vessels with high bulwarks, harnesses and lifelines are only called for in seriously heavy weather. Onboard the smaller ships, such as Picton Castle, Niagara, Westward, and Corwith Cramer, lifelines and harnesses are not required on deck until the going gets rough. "How rough?" is the key question. Is the criterion wind strength of how many knots? Sea state of how many feet? Rolling through how many degrees? In my experience it has been left to the captain to judge when the time has come to rig for heavy weather. How many vessel operators have written policies and training
SEA HISTORY 123, SUMMER 2008