Boat Picture

This is one of my favorite pictures and arguably the finest picture that I myself have ever taken. I used one of those Kodak a disposable camera that when you get it developed you get your pictures and the camera itself is thrown away. The picture is of the USS West Virginia during a port visit to Souda Bay, Crete in the Mediterranean Sea in late May of '96. That was an interesting cruise because of the difficulty of navigating the Med while submerged and dragging a floating antennae behind you and very few of the crew had been in the area before. I've never really talked about my experiences while in the Navy other than passing on sea stories that I had heard to the amusement of my friends. It really wasn't all that eventful mostly due to the fact that the boat I was on had only one job really, wander the ocean and not get found. That was it really, being a submarine and the naturally secretive attitude of the submarine community within the US Navy we only got two separate port calls while I was aboard; Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico and Souda Bay, Crete. Don't get me wrong those places were amazing, driving around the island of Puerto Rico going from the base up to San Juan for the night then walking around and looking at the sights was just like home in Miami and not just because of the familiarity of the language spoken but the horrible crazy driving on the roads. Crete was my favorite though simply because it was the farthest away from home I have ever been, and the general friendliness of everyone there.

Anyways back to the picture, we had pulled in and tied up the day before and luckily my section pulled the first day of duty in port. After all lines were across and we were securely tied up and shore connections made for fresh water and sanitary lines hooked up the off-duty sections quickly changed and abandoned us to our lonely lot at the pier farthest from anything else in the bay. Our boat was tied up far away from everything and everyone else and accessible by only a single horribly maintained road that ran along the edge of the bay on the side of a mountain, mostly because the boat has a nuclear reactor that could power the entire island and yet if something went wrong could also wipe out the entire island so it was safer to keep everyone away and safe (not that us crazy bubbleheads couldn't run and maintain a reactor because we could and we did a damn fine job thank you). Down the road from us at another pier was a Kriegsmarine minesweeper (I can't remember the name even though I have it on some of the things we traded) and some of their crew came down to visit and gawk at our big metal tube o'death and being nosy kid sailors like the rest of us we all proceeded to trade stuff with boat emblems with each other. Almost everything changed sides from lighters to hats to shirts, I myself made off with two epaulets, a ship patch, and one of those fabric strips that are tied around the white hats of many European naval personnel all in exchange for a gold t-shirt with blue qualification emblem and the words "USS West Virginia - Food Service" printed on the left side. Yep, all for a shirt that I wore while washing dishes.

Again back to the picture dang it. After an uneventful night of watch standing under a beautiful sky my duty section came topside after the next section took over and gathered for the bus ride into town on the other side of the island. Of course the bus was late so I decided to walk a bit down the road to get a view of the boat from another angle, I honestly don't know how the light turned out that way in the picture but it just came out to look awesome. Souda Bay is an amazing looking port, it is like most islands an extinct underwater volcano that grew until it broke the surface and the island itself is actually the upper rim of the volcano. This means an extremely deep water port and quite safe anchorage during a storm. The water is amazingly clear and is evident although you cannot see the bottom even while tied up at the pier; the port is so deep that I don't think we ever found the bottom while using the fathometer (device that finds the bottom so the boat won't run aground).

While in port we were treated to sights of A-7 Corsair II's of the Greek Air Force flying overhead while landing at the nearby airbase, after a few double takes we saw an outbound submarine of unknown nationality since it wasn't flying an ensign (flag), and while on our bus trips, which became known in my head as Souvlaki's Wild Rides, we realized just how serious Greece was in their disputes with Turkey when we saw caves dug into the side of the mountains with artillery and anti-aircraft guns on rails to be slid back in and hidden or kept safe in the event of an attack. One sonarman, who shall remain nameless, in a drunken trip almost closed the deal on a trade for an American flag in return for a 155mm howitzer but the deal fell through when he was reminded that we had no transportation to get it down to the boat. We had already figured out a way to mount the gun in such a manner as to be retractable within one of the missile tubes and be a surprise to any vessel that came too close.

I was not this sonarman because I was a quartermaster, and contrary to all you that think a quartermaster is a supply depot type of person WRONG that's only for the land locked services. A quartermaster is someone who deals with the charts and courses and safely navigates the ship wherever she goes. That means I knew where we were going and where we were all the time which was good for me because I'm a naturally nosy person. It also meant that I didn't have to deal with all the mechanical workings and such on a regular basis, yes I still knew how the systems worked and how to operate most of them like any qualified fish wearer does but I have never been very mechanically astute so it was safer for all that I didn't work with the diesel engines or lining up valves to pump something from point A to point B since it probably would have ended up at Point W. Oh well that's enough for one day, time to go walk the "turd machine" again.