“Okay people, tonight’s our first night sail.” The Briefing Officer, Sublieutenant Marsh, pointed behind himself at the diagram scrawled on the whiteboard. “We’re the inside ship in the nest, so we’ll be slipping last. Cowichan is outboard of us with Miramichi astern of her and Chignecto astern of us.” Marsh waited for the murmuring to settle. “Miramichi will slip and proceed to sea at 21:00. We will have to be ready to go by then, so have all your preparations made before that time.” He pointed at me “Ms Cooper, You’re going to have the job of keeping our fenders between us and Cowichan . The Captain doesn’t like having to repaint, so keep her from wrecking our paintwork.” The rest of the assignments for slipping were parcelled out and we dispersed to our tasks. Since the permanent crew of the sweepers was small, we students were routinely parcelled out to help with whatever tasks needed doing while getting underway and securing alongside.
Our minesweeper Squadron always secured alongside or at anchor in a four ship “nest”, two ships deep and two ships long. Each ship secured stern-to-stern with her division partner, and secured alongside to the other division. This facilitated visiting and overnight security, allowing one Duty Watch to oversee four vessels. Up to this point of our course, we had always secured at the end of the day’s sailing to rest and to allow we students the opportunity to prepare our chartwork for our next day’s assignments. Since this typically took several hours, we were denied the traditional sailor’s comforts while alongside. This was a powerful motivator to pass the course and get closer to the “real” fleet.
Tonight was going to be special. Our first time sailing at night. We’d of course been drilled on buoys, lights and markers so we knew what to look for, but still the reality of sailing a 46 metre long Sweeper that cannot make less than 9 knots, at night, through confined waters was going to be different from anything we’d done previously. Things look different at night. Distances are much more difficult to judge, and edges harder to define. This makes visual navigation far more of a challenge than it is in even in the worst visibility in the daytime. Add in vessels using running lights which makes it a challenge to judge how large (and therefore how far away) they are. Then add in the chance of running down a pleasure craft or fisherman running without lights to really fill the night with excitement. We viewed the upcoming trip with a mixture of anticipation and dread.
Sailing time approached and the nest of Sweepers became a hive of activity. Each ship’s crews closed up at their stations and engaged in a multitude of seemingly unrelated tasks, appearing at times to work at cross-purposes. Lines were loosened off, lines were tightned, people ran this way and that, fenders were placed between the ships then lifted up and taken elsewhere. That last became my downfall. Since I was tending the fenders between us and Cowichan , I was continually adjusting them as her position changed relative to ours.
Since the fenders play such a large part of this narrative, I have to pause a minute and describe them. I’m not speaking of those little inflated rubber things that David Hasslehoff keeps tucked into his armpit throughout Baywatch. Our fenders were FENDERS. The truly large industrial size. They were made of closed-cell polyurethane foam sheets rolled into a cylinder 1 ½ metres tall and ½ metre thick, all covered in a woven network of knotted thick yellow polypropelne rope. Each fender had a line several metres long attached to one end to allow for it to be dragged into place and tied to the railing to hang at the proper level on the ship’s side. This worked fine when the ships were solidly secured alongside but when there was any movement, each fender had to be tended and moved into place as needed to prevent damage. Quite often they had to be moved 2 minutes ago. Each fender weighed at least 20kg, which added to their unwieldliness. It was necessary to have such monstrous fenders due to a peculiarity of our ships’ design. Since they were originally designed to be used for minesweeping, they had very powerful engines for towing the miles of sweeping cables and paravanes that was state of the art for minesweeping in the 1950s. Since a paravane does not function at any speed less than 9 knots, the engines were geared to produce a 9 knot minimum powered speed. If we wished to travel at less than 9 knots, we would need to “pulse” the engines: ring on slow ahead or astern (9 knots) for a moment or two, then stop the screws before the ship could accelerate fully. Then pulse the screws again. And again. The engines provided their power to the shafts through pneumatic clutches. What amounted to giant rubber doughnuts would inflate to grip the shafts causing them to turn, then deflate when the shafts were ordered stopped. These clutches added their own dimension to slow-speed manoeuvering, given that they took about 5 seconds to fully inflate and firmly grip the shafts. Thus there was a built-in delay of 5 seconds between the time an engine order was passed to the time the ship began to respond. It took great care and anticipation to manoeuver a ship handicapped with such a system. With students driving, this often led to exciting times in close quarters.
Thus I found myself clutching a huge heavy fender on the starboard side of our forecastle keeping it perfectly lined up between us and Cowichan’s forecastle, moving briskly aft as she pulled away from her position alongside. At the break in the forecastle, I hauled the fender inboard (Cowichan having moved safely clear) and headed down the ladder to the main deck just in case she were blown back into us. As I reached the deck, SLt Marsh, doing his real job of Deck Officer, yelled up from the quarterdeck “COOPER, GET THAT FENDER BACK HERE YESTERDAY!” Obviously Chignecto was having trouble getting away from our stern. I started running full tilt aft through the darkness towards the quarterdeck. I had taken no more than two steps when my toe caught on a fender that had been carelessly thrown crosswise on the deck after it had been hauled inboard instead of being properly stowed parallel to the rail. I was airborn for what seemed like several seconds before my left knee led my impact into the deck. Murphy’s law being what it is, I picked the only scotchman plate on that part ship to land on. My full weight, plus the weight of the fender I’d been carrying over my shoulder landed squarely on my kneecap. I won’t say I saw stars, but I did see a spectacular flash of light behind my eyelids while my kneecap did its best to imitate an overloaded circuit breaker. Keenly aware of the urgency of the DeckO’s order, I picked myself up and hobbled aft as quickly as I could. Even so I arrived too late, to Decks’ extreme displeasure. Once I explained I’d fallen he pinged on me for not looking where I was going, and then turned on the hapless sailor who’d left the fender in my way and gave hm a royal chewing out.
Once we were safely clear of the jetty, we secured from our stations, cleaned up (I personally put the offending fender away) and cleared away to our normal steaming watches. Since all students were expected to be present on the Bridge, I hobbled forward and up the ladders to await my turn at the con.
Bay class Mineswepers have an open bridge, the design of which hasn’t changed since before World War II. There is a gyro-compass repeater in the centre, a chair for the Captain, a chart table to one side and a microphone to relay conning orders to the wheelhouse on the deck below. What it lacks is space for a dozen Naval Cadets and their instructors to gather in anything resembling comfort. Being among the taller students, I habitually stood near the back of the gaggle to allow my shipmates a good view that didn’t include my shoulders. We indulged in a little shuffling and pushing, sometimes stumbling against each other as the ship rolled. Normally we paid little attention to this fact of Naval life but tonight was a different story. My knee was hurting like fire and I was having to hang on to the binnacle housing the backup magnetic compass to keep from collapsing. Suddenly the student in front of me lurched backwards into my kneecap. I saw flashes once again and sagged down clutching spasmodically to the binnacle. This drew the attention of Lt Taft, our Course Training Officer. He looked over and asked me what the hell I thought I was doing. I couldn’t answer right away, instead giving him my best imitation of a gaffed fish; goggling eyes and gulping mouth. Decks mentioned that I’d fallen while we were getting underway and could be hurt. Lt Taft picked up his flashlight and directed it at me. When he got to my knee he stopped and swore as only a sailor can. My knee had swollen since the injury and it now looked as though I was trying to smuggle a grapefruit in my pantleg. It was swolen so badly that the fabric was straining at the seams. I looked down at it and immediately felt worse; I felt a wave of nausea sweep down from the top of my head and nearly collapsed once again. Lt Taft grabbed two of my classmates and had them half-carry me down the bridge ladder and back aft to my bunk. I was unceremoniously bundled into my rack and ordered to not move a muscle until we got alongside the next morning, when I’d be taken to the Base Hospital. Shortly after everyone had bustled back up to the Bridge, Leading Seaman Morely (the ship’s First Aid attendant and resident Comedian) came by with a bag of frozen peas to help take the swelling down, and make me taste better in case they had to make soup out of me, so he said.
What does a young officer faced with being confined to her bed all night do? Right. I fell asleep shortly afterward and slept blissfully right through the night while my colleagues toiled and sweated through their first night’s sailing. I knew that I'd have to make up the time lost, but I couldn't bring myself to care about it right then. I slept until we came alongside in Esquimalt the next morning. I was helped out on deck and into the waiting ambulance for a trip to hospital. After I endured some exquisitely painful poking and prodding and an X-ray on the coldest X-ray table in NATO, I was pronounced as being the proud possessor of a deeply bruised and almost (but not quite) crushed kneecap and given 5 days off to recover.
20 years later, my left kneecap still twinges occasionally.
Chaleur at sea during happier times
Mirimachi, Thunder and Fundy nested 3 abreast after paying off, August 2008
