This was the first ship that I was assigned to when I hired on with Military Sealift Command-Pacific back in August of 1979. I was a green horn to say the least. It is said that there is the wrong way then the Navy way. Well, that cliché is kind of back wards when working in the reality of merchant marine standards. The fact was that I had to unlearn the regular Navy way of doing things as an electrician. The thing of it was that I had just left active duty just one year before and all of that structure and regimentation was still engrained in my brain. Sure I was probably smart enough to pass the electricians exam for my endorsement, which did get me hired as an electrician. As for practical matters I sincerely did not know what in the world I was doing.
You see in the Regular Navy what an electrician works on is determined by rate and rank. This is not so in the real world of the merchant navy. When I served on the Kilauea I trained to operate and watch the Main and Emergency switchboards. At sea when I was not a compartment PO I stood 4 hours on and 8 off manning the main switch board. In the real world no body stands a watch on the switch board and the electrician has nothing to do with the process except for hooking up shore power when and if the ship goes cold iron in port. It is the engineer on watch, a licensed officer that has the duty of operating the main switchboard unless he so directs the Chief Electrician. What in the world is a four hour watch? In the real world a watch standers duty is eight hours. The regular navy operates the four hour system, or six if you are a scope dope because it carries its reinforcements on board the ship in event of war time casualties.
We had well over 20 electricians in three divisions that performed electrical maintenance functions aboard the Kilauea when the Navy manned it. Aboard the Navasota we only had three electricians for the entire ship. We had a Chief Electrician and two second electricians and we maintained it all. We took care of the interior communications system, (Navy has the IC men for that.) elevators, gyros, galley equipment, stream gear, you name it. If it had a light bulb, a motor or a circuit breaker, we took care of it. The compliment of three electricians is standard manning for a ship manned by Military Sealift Command Civil Mariners, or CIVMARS as is the common classification. MSC mans all of it ships according to Coast Guard certification and licensing requirements.
I have to admit that I was not very well in tune with that first job. Some of us have to take a longer time maturing. Understand that when I hired on with Military Sealift I had never seen so much money in my entire life. I was a pompous conceited fool that thought of himself as a big shot. I even bought a suit and upgraded to business class to join the ship in the Philippines. I was really stupid back then, as soon as I arrived in the Philippines I sought out that last girl that I met in Subic before I got out of the navy which did nothing but create misery in the long run. I had such a hard time aboard the Navasota because of my lack of experience that I had consistent conflicts with the other 2nd electrician Barney Hui Hui. Barney became the temporary Chief Electrician when Frank got sick after the port of call in Mombasa Kenya. Barney literally drove me nuts and it was not long before I was begging to transfer to another ship to get away from him. The ships Master Lee Roy Gil who was the exemplified and one of a few of Master Mariners who also happened to descend from African slaves and he insisted that I wanted to resign. When we returned to Subic after our part in the hostage crisis I was given a plane ticket back to the states.
Yes I was part of some little known history aboard the Navasota which also figured into the biography of Christopher Cross of Sailing fame. We had already been part of carrier group enroute to the Persian Gulf. We call it the Arabian Gulf today since we are not friendly with Iran. Bear in mind that I take this from memory. To my knowledge no one else has written on this subject or there would have been a book about it. It was about 1630 hours just a few minutes before chow. We had just secured sea detail after departing Diego Garcia on that fateful November 17th, 1979. The Chief Mate stuck his head in the day room or crews lounge which ever you prefer and said to the effect; "Mombasa is out boys, the embassy in Tehran has been over run and hostages have been taken". We did not have a port of call again for well over two months. We did not even go into port for fuel it was brought out to us by a spot tanker not designed for underway replenishment. It took us well over 24 hours a shot to take on fuel from one of those ships. We eventually did get to see Mombasa but I would not really call it a fantastic liberty port. While we were attached to the carrier battle group which I believe to have been the Midway the Seventh Fleet Band's Orient Express group was visiting the different ships. Christopher Cross was a musician with the band back then and he was the primary vocalist in the group. Orient Express was far better than the raunchy USO sponsored band that came out during Christmas week.