Ghosts at Sea

Sailors are notorious yarn-spinners, but every now and then some mariner will tell a tale about an improbable event or apparition that simply can’t be explained by logic or the laws of physics.

Some, like the sightings of mermaids, can generally be ascribed to the appearance of unfamiliar marine creatures like manatees or dugongs, combined with foggy weather and an abundance of rum.  Since the advent of radar and binoculars with better optics than the spyglasses of old (and maybe tighter restrictions on the issuance of grog), mermaid sightings have become rarer; the same goes for sea-serpents, which used to be seen with some regularity, even here in my home town of Gloucester, which boasted a sea-serpent in its harbor that dozens of people reported seeing in the summer of 1817 and occasionally thereafter.  But no physical evidence was ever found, and gradually Gloucester’s sea-serpent became the stuff of far-fetched legend.

Gloucester's Sea-Serpent

Other stories of unnatural sightings, however, are harder to debunk or satisfactorily explain. In his classic account Sailing Alone Around the World, the single-handed sailor Joshua Slocum wrote of how he lay in the cabin of his yawl Spray off the coast of Africa on his epic 1895-1898 voyage, too ill to leave his bunk after eating spoiled cheese and fruit, while a strange seaman, dressed in 15^th century garb, appeared on board, introduced himself as the pilot of Christopher Columbus’ ship Pinta, took over the helm and kept the vessel on course for the next 24 hours.

Maryland boat designer and builder Pete Culler wrote in his memoir Skiffs and Schooners of a night in 1945 when he was sailing with a friend off the New Jersey coast and saw, less than a mile off, a square-rigged brig, a vessel type not in general use since the 19^th century, sailing on a parallel course. Culler was aware of no such vessels still afloat, and spent some time examining her closely with a night-glass before turning to call down to his companion in the cabin below to come up and have a look. When he turned to look once more at the brig, it was nowhere to be seen.

But he saw it; Slocum saw his 400-year old shipmate, dozens of people in Gloucester saw a sea serpent.

And I saw something too.

In the fall of 1984, Joy and I joined a distant cousin of mine, her son, and his newly­wed wife for a passage from Boothbay Harbor, Maine to Bermuda aboard the son’s 40-foot flush-deck cutter. We set out on a brisk late-October morning. The vessel was fast and a comfortable sailer, and we made good time.

The second night out, we were well beyond the Great South Channel when I went on watch at 8:00 p.m. It was a clear, cold night, with no moon, but the stars were brilliant. I barely needed the compass, as I could navigate handily by taking dead aim at Orion, which rose before us each night. There was a fair breeze out of the north, and with a favorable current we were bowling along with the wind on the quarter at better than eight knots. I did have to tend the wheel, as the skipper had managed to drop the Autohelm self-steering control on the deck while he was attempting to show Joy how to adjust its compass; but the vessel was well balanced, and easy on the helmsman.

By 9:00 p.m. we had sailed through a busy fishing fleet and were alone on the North Atlantic. The rest of the crew had turned in, and I was enjoying the stars and the smooth rush of the hull through a gentle sea, the only variable being the occasional flash overhead as a tern or gull flew through the glow of the masthead running lights.

And then I became aware that I had company. I knew without a doubt that there was a man, unseen but unthreatening, just over my shoulder, astern of the vessel. I turned my head to look, but could see nothing. It was an oddly comforting feeling, but one I knew I’d experienced twice before—once when sailing with a friend from Chesapeake Bay to Nantucket around 1970, and again a few years later, 40 miles off the Jersey shore, when I helped a cousin sail his big Friendship sloop from the Virgin Islands to Martha’s Vineyard. Each time the sensation was the same. Someone was out there, not aboard a boat, not in the water either, but just a benign presence a few yards astern. It seemed so absurd that I was embarrassed to mention it when I turned over the watch at 10:00, and yet I couldn’t dismiss it as a hallucination. It was unmistakable, vivid, and real.

But when I came on deck to relieve my cousin and stand watch again at 4:00 in the morning, I had to mention it to her. I felt ridiculous, and expected derisive laughter when I started to describe the experience. She said matter-of-factly, as though it was a perfectly normal event, that shortly after she had relieved Joy at 1:30 A.M. the man had climbed aboard up the swimming ladder (which in reality was totally inaccessible -- securely stowed away, folded up and lashed to the port lifelines), and had then gone forward to sit quietly on the deck throughout most of her watch before disappearing.

Neither of us discussed it further.

I don’t consider myself psychic, and am quite ready to scoff at other people’s stories of unexplained phenomena—on land. But maybe things are different at sea.

Why I Never Learned to Fly - Part II

In my previous post, I described my first flying lesson, an adventure that nearly turned to disaster as my nearly-blind-as-a-bat instructor lost his glasses and I suddenly had to bring the plane back to the ground. Undaunted, I accepted his invitation to go up again. I was 18, and was of course sure I was immortal. Here’s what happened next.

The next morning, Charlie told me that Lulu was repaired and ready to fly; did I still want to go for a flight? Of course, said I. So two days later I found myself following his smoke-belching Buick back to Compton and more adventures—this time less dramatic, I hoped.

Lulu was a war surplus Army Air Corps trainer, a Fairchild PT-26. Unlike the Ercoupe, she had conventional landing gear (two main wheels under the wings and a little tail wheel), and in place of the Ercoupe’s shiny aluminum skin, fabric stretched over plywood frames and aluminum tubing. Lulu was painted bright yellow. I liked her at once.

There were other differences between Lulu and the Ercoupe, reflecting the plane’s origin as a military trainer: pilot and passenger/trainee sat one in front of the other, in bucket seats. The dual controls were conventional: each seat had rudder pedals with toe brakes and a joystick between the knees to control ailerons and elevator. The canopy slid back and was not likely to jump its tracks. A six-cylinder engine (the Ercoupe had four) provided power.

Charlie did a quick walk-around inspection, and we climbed aboard, Charlie in the front cockpit, I in the rear. The wooden framework gave a friendly creak as I stepped on the wing. The airplane had a comfortable smell, like an old wooden boat.

A PT-26 (not Lulu),  in Canadian Air Force markings

“Let’s fly out to Catalina,” said Charlie. It sounded good to me. Santa Catalina Island was a short hop: about 35 miles from Compton and 25 miles off the coast. We could make it out there and back in less than an hour.

The takeoff was uneventful, and Charlie soon gestured over his shoulder for me to take the controls. Lulu seemed almost as easy to handle as the Ercoupe, though a lot of practice would be needed before I would be competent at coordinating rudder and stick. And the plane had many controls and instruments the Ercoupe lacked, but these were features I wouldn’t need to learn to use on this first lesson.

We climbed out over brown hills bristling with oil derricks, crossed the coastline just east of Long Beach, and started out over the Pacific, brilliant blue in the late afternoon light. Catalina was a tawny lump rising out of the sea ahead, San Clemente a low line on the horizon twenty miles farther out to sea. 

This was beautiful, I thought; why hadn’t I taken up flying before? Then the engine, which had been purring like a kitten, made a “Ptoo!” sound—like someone spitting out a watermelon seed. The purr changed to a hiccup. We began to lose altitude.

“Holy Mackerel!” said Charlie. “Must have blown a plug. Time to head back.” He sounded annoyed, and so quick with his diagnosis that I wondered if this had happened before.

The engine still chugged along, the propeller still spun, but we were no longer soaring in a graceful flying machine; we were strapped into a winged rock, being brought back to earth by gravity a lot faster than we would have liked (did I mention that we had no parachutes?).

It was ten miles back to the Compton airfield, and we were at about 2,500 feet altitude, but dropping fast. There were other small airstrips around, and plenty of flat open ground for an emergency landing, but Charlie seemed confident (from what I could make out from scrutinizing the back of his head) that we would make it back to our home field.

Once again, we were lucky that no other aircraft seemed to be in the vicinity. Skillfully, Charlie brought the plane around in a smooth glide, passed just over a tangle of power and telephone lines, and dropped the plane onto the runway in just the right position to allow us to coast to a stop in front of the hangar. 

“Sorry about that,” said Charlie. He unfastened and removed the inspection panel that covered the starboard side of the engine. Sure enough, where there should have been six spark plugs in a row there were only five, and a black hole in place of one of them, dripping oil.

“Guess she won’t fly on five cylinders,” I said.

“Nope,” said Charlie. “And sometimes she won’t fly on six either.”

This last remark was not comforting. But Charlie seemed so confident  (and his handling of the plane in its distress had certainly seemed skillful) that I felt reassured. If there was a problem, surely Charlie could deal with it.  Why, it was almost as though this little adventure was part of the expected everyday business of flying!

Ten days later, Charlie announced that Lulu had been repaired and was ready to fly once more. He was thinking of taking her up to the desert near Barstow, about 100 miles away. Would I like to come along? Of course I would.

Did I ask myself why no one else from the shop seemed interested in flying with him?  Or how he’d lived that long with his seeming ability to get into trouble? He was like Joe Btfsplk, the Li’l Abner character who traveled around with a cloud over his head, inviting doom. Or maybe more like the Roadrunner, who always seemed to escape disaster at the last minute. Somehow, I managed to excuse the two near-disasters I’d just experienced with him. Besides, I must have persuaded myself that the close calls we’d had were just part of the ordinary flying experience.

It did seem prudent to leave my family unaware of what I’d been up to. Best not to cause them needless worry, after all.

The following Saturday, our day off, we found ourselves flying cross-country, out over the San Gabriel Mountains and into the high desert country beyond. It was another spectacular day: we flew over and among small puffy clouds most of the way, looking down on brown desert punctuated by green where fields and orchards were irrigated by waters brought hundreds of miles from the north by aqueduct. To the left, stretching northward as far as the eye could see, stood the snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada. Off to the south we could dimly make out the Salton Sea.

We landed at Barstow at about noon and stopped in the airport office to check in and pick up a sandwich. The airport manager said in passing, “Watch out for tumbleweeds,” but it was a still, windless day, and very pleasant sitting on a bench outside the hangar to eat our lunch, admiring the scenery and the collection of planes parked in the area. Charlie pointed out one that belonged to a friend of his.

“Ground-looped that one once,” he said. Not knowing what a ground-loop was, I assumed it was some kind of clever flying stunt. When I learned what it was later (it’s an uncontrolled horizontal spinning of the aircraft on the runway, just after landing. Often one wing tip will touch the ground, leading to much damage, possibly even flipping the plane upside down) it was hard to believe either he or the plane had come through unscathed. Or whether he was telling the truth.

Lunch over, we climbed back aboard Lulu. Charlie had me sit in the front seat this time, and said it was time to practice take-offs and landings.

With little coaching, I got Lulu to the end of the runway successfully, and started my takeoff roll.

As we gathered speed down the runway, out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of something moving towards the runway from the right. It wasn’t until we were just airborne, abreast of the control tower, that I realized we were about to run head-on into a swirling dust devil, or miniature tornado. Suddenly we were in the middle of it. The plane, totally out of control, spun around 180º, rose another five feet or so, and slammed down hard on the runway, facing the way we had come, its forward motion stopped cold. Both tires blew out simultaneously. Charlie killed the engine and we scrambled out of the cockpit to assess the damage.

“Holy mackerel,” said Charlie. “Whaddaya know?”

I knew. Without a word I walked the hundred yards to the airport office, went to the counter and asked when the next bus was leaving for Los Angeles. 

Why I Never Learned to Fly - Part I

In the summer of 1951, I was 17, about to enter my sophomore year at the University of California at Los Angeles. I had a summer job in a machine shop that manufactured engine parts for the F-86 jet fighters that were being built by North American Aviation for use in the Korean War. I was a stock boy, wheeling raw materials and unfinished parts around the shop from one step in the manufacturing process to the next. Every day, heavy sheets, rods, castings or billets of steel or aluminum would be delivered from mills and foundries in the area. I would transport this raw stock on a forklift truck from the loading dock to the stock room, then trundle it on a flat cart from stock room to turret lathe, drill press, stamping machine or whatever other machinery might be involved in making each engine part.

The shop was in Vernon, then a semi-rural suburb of Los Angeles (and now just another neighborhood in the sprawling city). I commuted the twenty miles from my home near Santa Monica in a 1937 Chevrolet.

The job had variety: sometimes I would deliver parts or paperwork to another North American subcontractor, using the company’s three-wheeled motorcycle. Sometimes I would be assigned to sweep the floor or get coffee. For the most part it was an interesting job for a teenager—at least for the eight weeks or so that I was there.

It was a small operation, with perhaps a dozen metalworking machines and a small administrative staff. Periodically, inspectors from the parent company or the government would come through, measuring, testing, and examining every component as it passed through the manufacturing process. Any flawed parts (and there were few; the machine operators were all experienced men and women) were tossed in a reject bin, to be melted down and reprocessed later.

As the summer passed, I began to see how the machines worked, and to understand the manufacturing process, from blueprints to finished parts. The machine operators tolerated my curiosity, letting me look over their shoulders and ask questions as they worked.

One machinist, a lanky man in his 30s named Charlie, had a photo of a yellow low-winged airplane taped to the top of his turret lathe. I asked him about it one day, and he said, “That’s Lulu. Want to come up with me in her?”

Oh boy, did I! What teenage boy wouldn’t? Furthermore, he soon offered to teach me to fly. That Charlie had just obtained his own pilot’s license (and couldn’t possibly be a rated flight instructor) didn’t bother me a bit. And the fact that he wore impressively thick eyeglasses and admitted he was blind as a bat without them didn’t faze me either.

Charlie and I were both on the 8-to-4 daytime shift, and the airstrip in nearby Compton where he kept his plane was only a short drive from the plant, so we would be able to get in several hours of daylight flying after work. We planned to have the first lesson the next day.

When I got to work the following morning Charlie looked glum.

“Can’t take Lulu up today,” he said. “I had a little engine trouble last night and the mechanic is working her over. But I have a friend who’ll let me use his Ercoupe.” 

It made no difference to me what airplane we would be in. I was going to start learning to fly, and that was what mattered. We punched out at 4:00 p.m., and were soon on the road to Compton. I followed along behind his ancient Buick, distinctive for its peeling paint and the blue smoke belching from its tailpipe. Over the noise of my Chevy’s engine I could hear its distinctive clatter: a piston rod was clamoring to break through its cylinder wall; a new muffler was badly needed. Somehow Charlie’s casual approach to car maintenance didn’t square with the tidy way he kept his tools at the shop or the meticulous care he gave to the work he performed; I hoped it didn’t carry over to airplanes.

We arrived at the airstrip in fifteen minutes. The Ercoupe, a shiny little silver bird, stood parked in front of the main hangar.

It was the kind of aircraft people had in mind when they visualized a post-World War II America with a plane in every back yard. In the 1950s you could buy one, brand new, for $3,995. It had very simple controls, only the bare essentials for instruments, and it was nearly impossible to stall it or to lose control in a spin. The plane was supposed to be so easy to fly that almost anyone could handle it.

It was a trim-looking craft, all shiny metal, weighing barely 1,000 pounds. It had a tricycle landing gear (two wheels under the wings and a third, steerable wheel under the nose)—unusual for a small plane in those days. It carried only two people, seated side-by side in a cockpit over the wing. There was a large curving windshield in front, a raised section behind with two smaller windows in it, and on each side a clear curved Plexiglas panel that slid down into a slot in the side of the fuselage. The cockpit could be closed in by sliding the panels, which rode in tracks, up to the top of the opening. For takeoffs and landings they were always kept in the lowered position, in case pilot or passenger had to get out in a hurry. On nice days you could keep them open, like a convertible.

An Ercoupe in flight, with the canopy side panels open

There was a radio, but small plane operations in those days seldom involved its use; many of the little airstrips, even within the Los Angeles city limits, had no radio-operated control tower. Pilots were expected to keep their eyes open and stay out of each other’s way.

Charlie conducted a perfunctory walk around the aircraft, pulled out the wheel chocks, then climbed into the pilot seat on the left side and told me to get aboard. I stepped onto the wing, climbed over the lip of the cockpit window, and settled into the right-hand seat. It was a tight fit but comfortable, particularly with no rudder pedals on the floor. But it didn’t seem much larger than the little planes in an amusement park ride. I fastened my seat belt.

Charlie primed the engine and turned the ignition key to the start position. The propeller turned slowly around; the engine coughed, belched out a few puffs of exhaust, caught in earnest and began to purr reassuringly. The propeller became a whirling disk. Charlie revved the engine, checked the fuel level, oil pressure and engine temperature gauges, then throttled back to idle while he checked the flight controls. He checked the windsock on the tower, taxied to the downwind end of the runway, spun the plane around, checked the operation of the elevator, rudder, and ailerons once more, then let off the brake and slowly pushed the throttle forward.

The plane started down the runway, gathering speed rapidly. All at once we were airborne, climbing eastward into a clear blue sky. (Remember, this was Los Angeles in the early 1950s. You could see for miles in those days).

Charlie saw my beaming face, grinned back and said, “You take it while I close my side of the canopy. Keep her going just as she is.”

I gripped my wheel and felt the thrill of flying for the first time. The slightest twitch to one side or the other would turn and bank the plane; pushing the wheel in or out, even a fraction of an inch, would send the nose up or down. I kept us climbing, straight as an arrow, at a steady rate. I didn’t dare touch the throttle.

Then Charlie turned to his left, grasped the handle in the middle of the Plexiglas slide, and began to pull it up, over his head.

There was a loud CRACK, followed by the sound of many hard objects crashing into the rear window.

“Holy Mackerel!” said Charlie.

Still gripping the wheel, I glanced in his direction, and saw that the Plexiglas panel had jumped out of the front track. The wind whizzing by at close to 80 miles an hour had snatched it out of Charlie’s hand, shattering it as it bent away in the rush of air. Pieces of Plexiglas littered the shelf behind Charlie’s seat. A lot of it had flown past the tail, fortunately none of it hitting the control surfaces, which might well have been damaged or even torn off.

But not just the canopy slide had gone. So had Charlie’s glasses. He couldn’t see a thing.

We both kept our cool.

“What do I do now?” I gasped.

“Just keep flying the way you’re going, and keep your eyes out for other traffic,” he said. The way we were going seemed like straight up.

I looked around. Still no other planes in sight.

“How high are we?” asked Charlie.

I glanced at the altimeter. We were at about 500 feet.

“OK, start to level off.”

I pushed the wheel forward, too far; we began to nose over. I pulled back, experimented, got the plane more or less level.

We didn’t have to discuss what lay ahead. I had to get the plane back down on the ground, and Charlie was going to have to tell me how.

And so he did. I would tell him the airspeed and general flight attitude of the plane, he would tell me what to do with the throttle, how to circle the field to start the approach, how steeply to approach the runway, when to level off, and finally how to handle the plane on the ground once it had (thankfully) touched down. There was no crosswind, and no other traffic to worry about. I was lucky.

Once we were on the ground, I taxied the plane back to the hangar (the control wheels steered the nose wheel as well as controlling the ailerons and rudder), using the throttle alone to control our speed, since I had no brake pedal on my side. When we were within about 25 yards of the hangar, and more or less near our original parking place, Charlie brought us to a halt using the brake pedal. He cut off the engine, and we both sighed with relief.

I unbuckled my seat belt, put one hand on the edge of the cockpit and the other on the shelf behind Charlie’s head to hoist myself out of my seat. My left hand closed around the unmistakable shape of his eyeglasses.

NEXT: More of the same, only different…

The Real Scandal of American Politics

Every now and then my email inbox – and probably yours -- disgorges a new version of a chain letter proposing a “28^th Amendment” to the Constitution that would impose term limits on Members of Congress and eliminate alleged special privileges they supposedly enjoy.
           Most of the email’s alleged special Congressional privileges never existed or were eliminated long ago, and the presumption that a massive email campaign will bring about change is naïve. Term limits would force out competent and effective members along with the less deserving. A better mechanism to limit terms is the ballot box.

Furthermore, if voters want to unleash their frustration about congressional abuses, their principal target should be the very real threat to democracy embodied in the increasing costs of political campaigns, and the disproportionate influence of large donors on the process of government, not the presence of perceived special privileges.

In all its guises (sometimes it claims Tea Party authorship, sometimes it appears to originate from the progressive camp), the email campaign against perceived Congressional abuses is a fantasy concocted by authors who don't understand the mechanism for amending the Constitution and the hornet's nest that would be opened up if anyone actually tried to implement this idea.

But readers are asked to send the message on to twenty others, promising that in three days’ time everyone will have seen it. At least that part of the message seems to be working.

Multibillionaire Warren Buffett is quoted in most versions of the email, telling a television interviewer that "I could end the deficit in 5 minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election."  Why lawmakers would ever pass such a law is not explained.

In another version of the email, Buffett himself leads the charge. The email  states, implausibly, that “Warren Buffet is asking each addressee to forward this email to a minimum of twenty people on their address list; in turn ask each of those to do likewise. In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one idea that really should be passed around.”

“Buffett” didn’t explain why anyone in Congress would want to vote for such an amendment -- and that’s what’s absurd about this and similar proposals to amend the Constitution.

Unhappily for the email’s hopeful author(s), even if members of Congress implausibly ever wanted to vote to reduce their own powers, the Founding Fathers made it very difficult for something like this to come about. 

The Constitution provides (Article V) for amendment through a purposely difficult process: any proposed amendment must be approved first by the Congress (2/3 of each house) and then by 3/4 of the state legislatures. This amendment would never pass stage one. Would 290 Representatives and 67 Senators willingly vote to eliminate their own jobs or Congressional perks?

Article V prescribes a second way to amend the Constitution, which has never been tried: two thirds of the state legislatures may request that Congress call for a constitutional convention, which then can propose amendments which must still be approved by three fourths of the states. 
           And of course, once such a convention is assembled, every hot button issue could be on the table for possible inclusion: religion; abortion rights; gun control; gay marriage; immigration; voting rights; social security; Medicare; "Obamacare" -- somewhere there'd be a zealous clique ready to push forward its idea of "reform."  Some people might welcome this, but I suspect it would be a nightmare.

Just maybe the Founders were smart to make it hard to change the system. "Be careful what you wish for" may have been one of their watchwords as they cobbled together their (and our) Constitution.

The Founders did not anticipate the instant mobilization of sizable segments of the population through email, of course, but far more significantly, they anticipated neither the emergence of political parties (they called them “factions”), of lengthy election campaigns, or of the vast sums of money needed by politicians to influence voters.

The disproportionate influence of money in politics is the real scandal voters should be addressing, not some fancied and outdated lists of abuses of privilege. As the cost of campaigns – particularly the multimillion dollar cost of television time -- continues to increase, and campaigning politicians are forced by necessity to turn to large donors to meet those costs, the likelihood that legislators will be called upon to vote for measures to advance those donors’ interests, even when they run counter to those of the majority of their constituents, is bound to grow as well.

I was a legislative assistant to a United States Senator in the 1970s, and well remember how one big donor after another would buttonhole me to tell me how my boss should vote. They weren’t asking me; they were telling me. And they were used to having their way. After all, they had paid for it.

Forty years later it’s much worse. On one critical domestic issue after another, be it the defense budget, environmental regulation, abortion rights, gun control, drug policy or immigration reform, and on international affairs from opposition to arms control treaties to support for overseas wars to adherence to the International Criminal Court to resolution of the Arab/Israeli conflict, the positions taken by too many legislators reflect the views of big donors, not those of their constituents. But money talks, all too effectively. 

All this was true even before the outrageous 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United decision which declared a corporation to be a citizen and its political contributions to be free speech, protected by the first Amendment to the Constitution.

And that’s the real scandal of American politics today.

-- # --