SCHOOLS FOR SAILORS

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXX, Issue 13670, 18 June 1942, Page 3

SCHOOLS FOR SAILORS

MERCHANT SEAMEN Big American Undertaking Problem Of Manning New Freighters Right now it seems appropriate to say a word about our merchant seamen. You know, the fellows who man the freighters that are bridging submarine-infested seas with supplies for democracy’s embattled outposts. A great deal is said about the ships first and last but not so much about the men. In a way, this is not suiprising. Garbed in their inconspicuous cloth caps, and dungarees faded from scrubbing in sea water and strong soap, our merchant mariners are an unassuming lot. About the only time a landsman ever thinks of them is when a handful comes ashore from a torpedoed ship and they line up on the pier and smile when the photographer says smile, and stick up so many gnarled fingers to show how many times they have had a ship sunk from under them, or hold their fingers aloft in a V. After that, they traipse off to the sailors’ home to wait for another ship. Nowadays they don’t have long to wait, writes Harlan Trott in the “Christian Science Monitor.” With close to 1,5 00 ships slated for launching before the end of next year, the U.S. Maritime Commission

has been working out a programme for training men to take the ships to sea as fast as the builders can bring them back from their sea trials. This means that before the end of 1943 we must train some 60,000 seamen in all ratings—deck, engine room, and galley—and 15.000 officers to serve the new ships. It means multiplying our merchant marine personnel one and a half times in the next two years. Can it be done? It is being done. When the order came from the White House recently to turn the training service over to the Coast Guard and let them carry on from there, the Commission had in operation shore training stations for apprentice seamen at Hoffmans Island and Swinburne Island, New St. Peters-

burg, Fla., and Port Hueneme, Calif,

Special schools for radio operators, cooks and stewards are running at Callups Island in Boston, and schools for prospective officers at Fort Trumbull in New London, Conn., and Government Island, Alameda, Calif. The Commission’s officer training system operates cadet schools in New York. New Orleans, and San Francisco. The Commission has assembled an imposing training fleet. There are 18 ships altogether, the auxiliary schooner Verna, formerly a millionaire’s three-masted plaything; the full-rigged Joseph Conrad, a tiny jewel of a ship that once circumnavigated the globe; the square-rig-ged Tusitala, a romantic sort of old-time deep-water sail trader which bears the name admiring South Sea Islanders bestowed on Robert Louis Stevenson —Tusitala —Teller of Sea Tales. The Government took two old Shipping Board freighters and remodelled them from keel to truck. The American seamen and the American Sailor are the two best training ships afloat. One of the emergency type 10,000-ton Libeity freighters is being redesigned and taken over as a schoolship and christened American Mariner. One day a while back Mrs Jessie Ball du Point told the Maritime Commission, “Here, you can have my Nenemosha if she’s any use to you.’’ And no strings attached. The Commission was glad to get Mrs du Pout’s speedy, 115-foot, Diesel-driven dream.

Not long afterward, former Ambassador Joseph E. Davies threw in his yacht for the good of the cause. This made quite a splash, as Mr Davies’ yacht is the biggest squarerigged ship that ever weighed anchor merely for the pursuit of pleasuie. A four-masted barque, the Sea Cloud generates terrific sail drive afloat. Auxiliary motors add to her handiness. And the scope and comfort of her commodious cabin arrangements make her a natural sail trainer. But pity the poor young Coast Guard skipper who occupies the cabin abdicated by the one-time breakfast food magnate! The blue and purple ships of '"Tarshish pale beside the Babylonian grandeur in which the captain of this new school is condemned to live.

The long arm of the Government has reached out to stop those salty

overnight runs between Boston and New York by taking the Eastern Steamship Line’s elegant sponsonsided sisters Boston and New York for the training fleet. The Alleghany and Berkshire of the Merchants and Miners Boston-Norfolk line and the Savannah Line steamer City of Chattanooga are also listed as trainers for the duration. The sea schooling programme has been going with forced draft under all boilers since the President’s message calling for a 50 per cent, shipbuilding expansion. At New London, buildings were started to double Fort Trumbull’s seaman-offi-cer training capacity within 90 days. The Pacific coast officer school has just requisitioned the Delta Queen, a new station ship, to boost the school’s capacity from 200 to 400. Hoffmans Island is erecting barracks to increase accommodations for apprentice seamen to 1.300.

Down east, as Castine. the Maine Maritime Academy has started training junior sea officers. The Commission has promised to lend them a training ship in time for the Academy’s first summer practice cruise. This enterprise adds to the output of officers being trained in state nautical schools in Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Cali-

fornia. Pools for seamen ciualified by the Government training schools and ready to board ships are maintained at the Seamen's Church Institute in South Street, New York, and in New Orleans and San Francisco. No competitive examinations are necessary for admission to Government sea training schools. In spite of everything our enemies are doing to sink American ships, Coast Guard headquarters are being flooded with applications for enrolment. Such red-blooded zeal bespeaks the determination of seaminded young Americans to man the new ships, even at the risk of getting their feet wet.