The Later Years
Page 1
In 1979 my wife and I sold our home in Galveston and moved to Austin, Texas where my son and my youngest daughter were living. Before I left Galveston, I ran into Buddy Jordan one morning at a cafe and we ate breakfast together. Buddy stayed at seafaring and ended up Chief Engineer for Suderman and Young Towing Co. In 1983 we celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary in Austin with all our kids.
I guess the last shipmate that I have seen was Terry Garland. When Della and I celebrated 50 years of marriage in 1993 we re-exchanged our wedding vows at St.Catherine of Sienna Catholic Church and Terry drove to Austin to be my best man a second time. I know of many shipmates who have died over the years. I'm not sure how many of us are still living. I was one of the younger of the crews and since I am in my late seventies, I imagine most of the those that were a bit older than me are already gone and some I know of died young.
I don't care to travel much - just haven't had any interest to in many years, but I would have liked to have gotten back to England and Scotland. I would like to have visited some of the ports that I was in during the war. I really liked Great Britain and would have liked to have shown Della the places that I went to there.
When I got paid off the Charles Lanham in July of 1945 that was the last Liberty Ship that I would help crew. As it turned out though, that wasn't the last Liberty ship that I sailed on. In the summer of 1999 me and my wife flew to Baltimore, Maryland with my son and his wife and two of my grandchildren to take an all day cruise out into Chesapeake Bay on the SS John W. Brown, one of the two surviving Liberty Ships of the more than 2,700 that were built. The John Brown is a museum, but is still in working order and books cruises a few times a year. They tell me the other surviving Liberty ship is in San Francisco, California.
I enjoyed that day a lot. It brought back lots of memories. There were hundreds of Merchant Marine Veterans like myself and former Navy Armed Guards and their families on board. I got to show things to Della which I had often told her about years ago. It was her first time on a Liberty ship. I showed my family where I used to work, eat and sleep. Going down in the engine room was something - watching these old men my age fire and oil. I showed my grandchildren, David and Diana, where my battle station had been on one of the 20mm guns near the bridge. It was a hot day and the officers were steering from the monkey bridge. There are two wheels on a Liberty, the top most on the monkey or flying bridge is open to the elements and the other is enclosed below in the wheel house.
I heard the sound of the engine of a Liberty Ship again, a sound like no other ship's engines. The motor vessels I sailed on made a continuous loud racket, but the thump thump thump of that steam engine on a Liberty Ship is like the sound of a living thing. Its like a heart beat that you can feel through the deck plates all over the ship. I told my son that I didn't remember the engine room having been so hot. I couldn't take it down there for long, and I used to spend a whole watch down there and think nothing of it. Of course that was more that fifty four years before and I was only nineteen then. I expect that the voyage on the SS John W. Brown in July of 1999 will be my last voyage on a Liberty Ship.