Voyage Eight
Charles H. Lanham - Page 1
After I was discharged I had to wire Della to send me some money for the train ticket home, but on the way down on the train I won several hundred dollars in poker games. I gave her most of the money when I got home. She says that she doesn't remember. She only remembers when she had to send me money and never remembers when I wired her money. But I did send her several hundred dollars.
When I left on my next voyage on (March 17, 1945) my wife was pregnant with our first child. The baby was due at the end of May and I didn't know if I would be back before it was born. I went to Houston and boarded the last Liberty Ship that I would sail on during the war. She was the SS Charles H. Lanham and like all my other Liberties, brand new off the ways at Todd, Houston. I had signed on as a wiper in the engine room. The ship left Houston on the 29th and made its way down the ship channel into Galveston Bay and docked at Baytown, Texas. It was loaded with grain. The next day it sailed independently for Norfolk, Virginia, where it docked on 6 April, 1945. The Lanham went across from Virginia.
Ray Sweeney was deck engineer on the Lanham. He was from Galveston and he wanted to be the union business agent there. There was dissatisfaction with "One-eyed" Wallace who was an old drunk. While we were in port several of us went to the union office and swore out affidavits that Wallace wasn't doing a good job. When we got back Wallace was replaced and Sweeney did serve as business agent for a while. He eventually went back to sea and died there. I remember, because his wife and son we were friends of ours for some years after the war. His son and mine played together as kids. I never thought it was right that Mary Sweeney had Ray buried at sea. I think that she should have brought his body back to Galveston and given him a proper burial.
We were taking on supplies and getting ready to leave for overseas when I had a spell right on deck. I got dizzy and passed out. They called an ambulance and rushed me to a hospital emergency room. After I came to, I was in bed and a doctor came in to see me. He said my blood pressure was very high. He told me I needed to loose some weight and start taking care of myself or I would have a stroke or heart attack. I had gotten up over 180 lbs., the heaviest that I ever weighed. The doctor wanted to keep me in the hospital for a few days for rest and observation. Hell, we were leaving in a day or so. I checked out the next morning against his orders and rejoined the ship.
I did start watching what I ate and before the voyage was over, I lost 15 lbs. By the end of my next voyage I was almost back to my regular weight of 120 lbs. I never had a weight problem for the rest of my life. If I gained several pounds, I could just quit eating so much and my weight would go right down.
I was wiping in the engine room with this fireman/water tender who was a young kid right out of the Maritime Service school. He didn't know what to do - one of these thirty day wonders who only knew what to do from reading it out of a book. The Chief Engineer finally had enough and asked us if anybody could fire. I told him that I could. Budy Jordan had taught me how and I often had stood his watches so he could go ashore during previous trips. So I became a fireman. I fired the rest of the voyage and I got two Coast Guard discharges from that voyage, one to a certain date as wiper and the other until the end of the voyage as fireman. The Chief really liked me. At the end of the cruise he wrote me a long letter about my skills and how I had effectively acted as fireman. He told me to take it up to the Maritime Commission and get my Fireman/Water Tenders lic. I did and I got my papers when we got back to New York.