This is some more 107 South Broadway:
I got up into the first year high school, and by that time Mamma was a substitute teacher, and I was the only one up to that point that didn’t have her as substitute teacher, in one of the classes. But, I finally got one; I got her in study hall. And, of course, I had to behave myself, being called down once or twice by the other teachers to say, “what would say if you cut up like that in your mother’s class.” Well, I had no answer to that.
But, uh, the freshman year there wasn’t much going on. I wasn’t too big to go out for any high school sports or anything like that. But, at the end of my freshman year I took an examination for entrance into the New York State Nautical School, which was on the ship, the Newport. And they were supposed to call us to duty in May sometime, and, of course, I didn’t go back to school, then knowing when I was going to get out of there. But, they evidentially found out that it’d be better to wait until the school year was over. So, it wasn’t until June that we got a call to come. Well, it’s like everything else, you get into a new school you need a uniforms, you needed clothing, and there was no money involved in the thing, but you sort of had to make your own. And you were allowed only 50 dollars, is what you were allowed. And we immediately got on board, and the ship pulled out into Long Island Sound and up into Gardener’s Bay, which was near the end of it for the sort of shakedown. Well, Newport had had her boilers condemned for being unsafe, and they were only allowed to generate 50 pounds of steam. Well, that was enough to run the generators. So, we continued on that, and then onto the cruise. And the cruise that year was to take us to Grave’s End Bay. But, in the meantime we had small boat drills on Gardener’s Bay there, and I didn’t have enough sense to keep covered, and I got a terrific sunburn. And the sunburn was such that I had to sleep on mess bench, which was narrow enough between the shoulders. I had to do that because of the fact that the burn was so bad that it was like sheets of skin coming off. Really a bad burn. But anyway we got hardened to that and most of the skin came off on the way. We had split the crew, the cadets, the deckhands and also the engineers. The deck didn’t interest me, so much as the engineers did. Because we had a triple expansion engine there as an auxiliary, but not being able to generate enough steam to run it. We made the cruise on the sail.
Now, the Newport was a barkintine (sp. 214) rig, which was a square rigger and mammoth, foremost, I mean, and a fore and aft and a main and a mizzen. We did alright. We had a skipper, who was very good sailor. We had a boatzan, who was very good at handling all sails and so forth. Well, of course we had to learn all the gear and the post and where they were and the bland pins had to sort of a number on them. There was no number, but you had to learn where that pin went, where the hallus (222), where the out-hauls, clue lines went, and all that business. And they really drilled -- tried to get you to learn that fast because they were going to sail then. Well, after, must have been a week, two weeks, I think it was, we pulled into Grave’s End Bay, which was sort of a protocol to London. And we got a chance to go a shore there. And one of the things on the way (laughs), which I think I must have started it myself, I got the barber to cut my hair all off. It was some crazy thing. When some of the other guys saw that, they got it done. Well, the skipper didn’t like that at all because he thought it be sort of a signal of a combat ship or a ship that had a bunch of renegades on board. But it wasn’t that, it was just the fact that he didn’t like that, and I don’t blame him now, of course. It was a crazy thing to do.
But anyway, we go into Grave’s End Bay; they split they ship’s personnel into two different groups. Because they had to have a group on for emergencies in case something happened, in case something came up like either a fire or a wind store or some such thing where we needed a crew to handle it, the operations. So that happened, and we what we saw was typical English port, so to speak (246). And we didn’t see too much. Although we did get a good idea of what it was like there. So, we left there and went across the Bay of Biscay. Went down through the Channel and back down through the coast of Africa to the Bay of Biscay. That was the most treacherous runs that we had, cause the wind was blowing stiff all time and the waves were pretty high. We all got a little touch of motion sickness, so to speak (laughs). And we got across it to a point, to a port they call Pelos, Spain. Pelos is a port that Columbus set sail from many years before on his discovery of the new world, so to speak. And there is sort of a spire or a monument there. But nothing much else, however, some of the guys went a shore – we all went a shore a little ways – but, didn’t go too far. But some of the fellas found a gin mill, and they got a little too much of it. So that was nothing as far as we were concerned; it didn’t bother us any. So from there we went on down around the coast to the Canary Islands. And Canary Islands was the Tenor Reef (273). And there we took on water and we took on coal because she was a coal fired, hand fired, boilers, they had two boilers in it, and we took on a little supplies as well. And from there they decided the routine would be down across the southern route towards South America. The southern route took us through the Doldrums (281), and boy we were in the doldrums there for a while. And instead of the log line going stern, she went athorpchips, indicated no travel at all, no headway. Well, we were in there a couple of weeks, and finally we got to a point where there was a little headway and that brought us around to Bermuda. Well we stopped in Bermuda then; we didn’t do too much because there wasn’t… I don’t really recall exactly why we stopped there; we stopped anyway. Then we went up the coast. We got a good breeze up the coast until we came into port into New York.
We stayed on Bedlows Island. That was the place, instead of staying in a regular birth somewhere, they shuddered us over to Bedlows Island. Well, you know, the Statue of Liberty is on Bedlows, and there wasn’t much else over there. Except, there was sort of an army detachment there and there. And there was nothing to do on the island except climb up into the Statue’s head and look and see what you could find. Well, that sore of acted as exercise as well for us guys. We also had some classes there, and the classes were not very much except for the fundamentals of engineering: the pumps, and engines and the boilers – the boiler stuff was mostly safety. And, later on I took, I went to school for that, again. I went to McCounties Institute. But, after I got off in October, the second cruise – I went on two cruises in that. The second one, they had replaced the faulty plates on the boilers, which they moved the boilers out into the navy yard – we were stationed in the navy yare for awhile while they were fixing the boilers up. While we were in the navy yard, we were builded on the Pueblo, which was the navy receiving ship there. And I was playing the bugle at the time so I shared the buglers job – buglers calls riverlay (323) and taps and whatever else was necessary – with a another fella as long as we stayed there. Well, we were a work crew, we got the boiler’s in boiler shop; we did the chipping and scrapping of the boiler plates to put them in shape to where they were good enough to back in the ship and build the steam up to 125 pounds. That’s when they put the engine – the triple expansion engine – in service as an auxiliary, and that gave us guys, who was in the black gang, a chance to run and also a chance to feed the boilers.
And there was several things you have to be careful of in regards to lubricating that engine. It had what they called Steverson Link Motion (339). That particular type of link motion, you had to feel the pillow box and the cranks as she turned and feed it by hand. Well, I caught my finger – I still have that in there – I caught me finger in one of the shins which was not trimmed correctly and ripped a big piece out of it. Fortunately, the doctor on board stuck it back on (laughs). It healed up alright; there wasn’t any problem there.
Another incident on the second cruise, we took a fellow by the name of Bridgeman, who was the publisher of Brooklyn Daily Eagle, on. And also the skipper had his wife and three children on. So, they had passengers ride on that. But, in the meantime, poor old fella, Bridgeman, died. And the doctor had to, you know, take care of the body and we put him in the freezer there for awhile until we could get to Bermuda. And, when we got to Bermuda they had him embalmed, and they put him on – and we had to stand to watch on the gun deck, cause they put the coffin on the gun deck, and they had the guard all the way up the coast until we got into New York again. And they removed the body for proper burial.
And the kids of course. He had two sons – Resinberg, the skipper –had two sons and a daughter. And the three kids were, they weren’t allowed to mingle too much, but they were having a lot of fun. They were pretty well supervised there. Resinberg was quite a skipper (384). Not only was he a skipper, but he was also, he was a civil engineer. After that trip we found out that he supervised, or was a resident engineer on a project when they built Columbian Presbyterian Medical Center, in the heights there.
There are a couple of items that I left out, that I guess, in the previous.
In August 1922, uh, I went to the CMTC, which was the Coast Artillery Core of the Army, to Fort Hancock as a reserved reader. And, there were three courses: the red, white and blue course. Of course the first year I took the red course. And that lasted for a month, in August 1922. And we came back from August, and went to the high school. And there was a point there in the high school that there was no -- as I mentioned -- there was no organized athletics, but there was a football team. And which I went out for football in the fall, and I went out for basketball, and also baseball in the spring, and also got a bid to belong to Phi Lambda fraternity in high school. In that time fraternities were legal, and they were like a club so to speak. And they got as many people as they could as far as athletes concerned to join up, which included, of course, initiations and stuff of that nature. That’s before I went on the Newport in ’23.
That Newport cruise – two cruises there were – and, as I mentioned part of it before, there was a bunch of cadets, and also a professional crew to operate the ship; the cadets didn’t know enough about it.
Also, I might mention in high school, the organization in high school, they had a field that was away from the school. And we used to walk; we very seldom had transportation except for walking to the Burke Foundation, where we did practice on their field there. And that, also, the equipment wasn’t so good. And a lot of times we’d went and practice and scrimmage and which the football team they didn’t have enough helmets to go around. They did have enough pads, padding and so forth (laughs). When we used to go in the game we used to swap the helmets. The fellow that came out used to give the fellow that came in – the substitute – his helmet. So, there’d be some protection there anyway. And that went on all season. We used to walk from the high school, where we’d change clothes, and went up to the Burke Relief Foundation to do the practice thing and so forth, and then back. Day after day. And we had some games, and, of course, we’d follow a team, a high school team that was unbeaten – 11 or 12, or maybe there was 16 men. Both ways. And they were unbeaten that year. And, of course, the fellows graduated, and the coach left. And (laughs) we were left as a bunch of kids that they took (laughs) their revenge on something. They beat us every single game that year. But, that didn’t make much difference.
The basketball team was the same. We didn’t have too many good basketball players there. But they did have, more or less of a iffy schedule, which went on alright.
Then baseball started, of course, in the spring, and that was the year that I was going to go on the Newport, which was the New York State Nautical School at that time. And right now it is known as the New York State Maritime College, and it’s a four-year course. When we took it was only two years. But, we finished the two years in a little less time on account of a reorganization taking place at that time. But, today that school is a four year course in engineering, and also deck management and all the marine side of the whole business. And, it’s quite a school now; it’s a college, really, recognized by the New York State curriculum, so forth.