This happened on the USS Mobile in 1977.
During one thirty day cruise to Alaska, we had a full complement of Marines on board. It's kind of a pain when they're aboard. Marines had little to do at sea except stand in line for chow and clogging up the heads. I got along fine with them most of the time and enjoyed giving them tours of the ship, if they were interested. Occasionally we’d come up against a real knothead and we’d have to set them straight. After all, while we’re onboard and steaming, we have home court advantage. This episode was more like a training evolution.
With the Engineering berthing area smelling like a ripe football locker room, and the mess decks crowded with an overabundance of movie goers. HT2 "Snake" Snedeker and myself decided to kick back in the carpenter shop with a cup of fresh coffee and some tunes. We were doing a little work on a flag box project for an upcoming retirement. We hadn't gotten much accomplished when FN Ronnie Blankenship barged in on us. During his Sound/Security watch, Blankenship ran into a bit of trouble with an American Samoan Marine sentry. The deranged Marine wouldn't allow Blankenship into the cargo hold to make his soundings.
"Can you guys help me out?" asks our faithful Fireman.
Well, we reached the aft cargo bay in record time and way down deep, on the seventh deck, was the offending grunt. Just like Blankenship said, the stupid jarhead kept waving his fixed bayonet Poodle shooter at us! He would not allow us entry into the cargo hold.
Snake and I conferred with each other and came up with a plan. I told Ronnie to go chase up the duty electrician, whilst Snake and I dropped and dogged the hatch leading down into the Marine's cargo hold.
Ronnie returned with IC3 Stanley Powell, now the stage was nearly set.
I opened the scuttle and Snake called down to the grunt asking him if he had changed his mind, but he wasn't being cooperative. Snake told the grunt he'd better know how to swim.... Boom! Down went the scuttle. Snake and I boogied back up to the main deck.
Next, Stanley Powell, killed all the lights and electricity to the cargo hold. We had Blankenship notify DC central and main control to ignore the loss of firemain pressure 'cuz we were flushing and testing fire plugs back aft in the ship.
Powell and Blankenship came back down to the cargo hatch/scuttle. In order to maintain water-tight integrity, the boys kept our little Marine buddy company by sitting on the hand wheel of the scuttle.
LKA’s had some handy features. Port and starboard of the four cargo hatches on the main deck are sets of large hand wheels. From here one can remotely operate the de-watering eductors located in each of the four corners in each cargo hold. It's really a beautiful system and hard to appreciate unless you witness its operation first hand like our Marine sentry was going to shortly.
In theory, If we were to maintain 150 p.s.i. on the firemain, we could de-water each flooded cargo hold at 4,000 gallons per minute! That's a lot of salty water, but we're not really dewatering, we're just testing fire plugs, remember? If this cargo space were full of water, you would feel a lot of heavy rumbling, and it would be relatively quiet. But when the water level drops below the level of the eductor intakes, each eductor intake sounded like a cross between a bathtub drain and Niagara Falls... maybe louder! Everything shook like a dog poopin’ razor blades. Snake and I could feel the rumble we'd created, seven decks below.
The bat cave darkness of the cargo hold also added a spooky element to the scenario. As soon as we got all four eductors running hard, we reversed our steps and secured the impromptu dewatering exercise. The noise and vibration was bound to draw attention. It took us all of 15 minutes to turn the thing on and off. Then back down to deck 6 #3 cargo hold we went.
Depending upon your viewpoint(above or below the hatch); this training exercise took no longer than 15-20 minutes to complete, or as in the case of one overly gung-ho American Samoan Marine, it was an eternity to endure.
After securing the eductors, each of us squids grabbed up a dogging wrench and prepared to debrief our studious sentry. Blankenship and Powell said the Marine had been pounding pretty hard on the other side of the hatch, and they were having a heck of a time holding the handwheel shut. No sooner had we loosened the dogging bolts, the grunt flung open the heavy hatch, bounding up the ladders two steps at a time.
When everything was secured and the lights and juice turned back on, we all went our separate ways. FN Blankenship returned to his sounding-security
watch . Later on he came back to the carpenter shop and showed us a nice big piece of the Marine’s bayonet he’d found at the bottom of the ladder. It was soon turned into a souvenir key fob.
Life on Mobile was good again.
dz
During one thirty day cruise to Alaska, we had a full complement of Marines on board. It's kind of a pain when they're aboard. Marines had little to do at sea except stand in line for chow and clogging up the heads. I got along fine with them most of the time and enjoyed giving them tours of the ship, if they were interested. Occasionally we’d come up against a real knothead and we’d have to set them straight. After all, while we’re onboard and steaming, we have home court advantage. This episode was more like a training evolution.
With the Engineering berthing area smelling like a ripe football locker room, and the mess decks crowded with an overabundance of movie goers. HT2 "Snake" Snedeker and myself decided to kick back in the carpenter shop with a cup of fresh coffee and some tunes. We were doing a little work on a flag box project for an upcoming retirement. We hadn't gotten much accomplished when FN Ronnie Blankenship barged in on us. During his Sound/Security watch, Blankenship ran into a bit of trouble with an American Samoan Marine sentry. The deranged Marine wouldn't allow Blankenship into the cargo hold to make his soundings.
"Can you guys help me out?" asks our faithful Fireman.
Well, we reached the aft cargo bay in record time and way down deep, on the seventh deck, was the offending grunt. Just like Blankenship said, the stupid jarhead kept waving his fixed bayonet Poodle shooter at us! He would not allow us entry into the cargo hold.
Snake and I conferred with each other and came up with a plan. I told Ronnie to go chase up the duty electrician, whilst Snake and I dropped and dogged the hatch leading down into the Marine's cargo hold.
Ronnie returned with IC3 Stanley Powell, now the stage was nearly set.
I opened the scuttle and Snake called down to the grunt asking him if he had changed his mind, but he wasn't being cooperative. Snake told the grunt he'd better know how to swim.... Boom! Down went the scuttle. Snake and I boogied back up to the main deck.
Next, Stanley Powell, killed all the lights and electricity to the cargo hold. We had Blankenship notify DC central and main control to ignore the loss of firemain pressure 'cuz we were flushing and testing fire plugs back aft in the ship.
Powell and Blankenship came back down to the cargo hatch/scuttle. In order to maintain water-tight integrity, the boys kept our little Marine buddy company by sitting on the hand wheel of the scuttle.
LKA’s had some handy features. Port and starboard of the four cargo hatches on the main deck are sets of large hand wheels. From here one can remotely operate the de-watering eductors located in each of the four corners in each cargo hold. It's really a beautiful system and hard to appreciate unless you witness its operation first hand like our Marine sentry was going to shortly.
In theory, If we were to maintain 150 p.s.i. on the firemain, we could de-water each flooded cargo hold at 4,000 gallons per minute! That's a lot of salty water, but we're not really dewatering, we're just testing fire plugs, remember? If this cargo space were full of water, you would feel a lot of heavy rumbling, and it would be relatively quiet. But when the water level drops below the level of the eductor intakes, each eductor intake sounded like a cross between a bathtub drain and Niagara Falls... maybe louder! Everything shook like a dog poopin’ razor blades. Snake and I could feel the rumble we'd created, seven decks below.
The bat cave darkness of the cargo hold also added a spooky element to the scenario. As soon as we got all four eductors running hard, we reversed our steps and secured the impromptu dewatering exercise. The noise and vibration was bound to draw attention. It took us all of 15 minutes to turn the thing on and off. Then back down to deck 6 #3 cargo hold we went.
Depending upon your viewpoint(above or below the hatch); this training exercise took no longer than 15-20 minutes to complete, or as in the case of one overly gung-ho American Samoan Marine, it was an eternity to endure.
After securing the eductors, each of us squids grabbed up a dogging wrench and prepared to debrief our studious sentry. Blankenship and Powell said the Marine had been pounding pretty hard on the other side of the hatch, and they were having a heck of a time holding the handwheel shut. No sooner had we loosened the dogging bolts, the grunt flung open the heavy hatch, bounding up the ladders two steps at a time.
When everything was secured and the lights and juice turned back on, we all went our separate ways. FN Blankenship returned to his sounding-security
Life on Mobile was good again.
dz
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