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Your memoir was so specific and had so many good details which is very important for research purposes, I was wondering, did you have records accessible to you that gave you the precise time and weather conditions and everything that you so vividly utilized or was that from recall?
I began, first of all, by excavating all the letters which, fortunately, my family had kept, so I had all of that. As I was going through those [Of course, with the self-imposed censorship you couldn't be specific. I'd make a reference to something and think, "Gee, what the dickens was that?" and so forth.] So, then I got in touch with Washington and I'd order up the log pages for those specific dates or whatever. This all came out of the smooth log, and the smooth log is one of those formalities, but, at any rate, you can get a lot of stuff out of it. This way I could be specific and then, of course, re-reading the logs brought back--keyed in--the memory of what happened. All the detail stuff is right out of the log pages.
Well, what I would like for us to do is to turn back prior to the World War II period. You started your memoir in 1943 by saying that you had been in Greenland for
Page 2thirteen months before you entered DE service. What I would like for us to start with is something of your background. From talking with you just now I see that all the way back as early as '35, you were doing a lot of sailing. If you could give us a little of your background, where you grew up, when you first got involved in sailing and then bring it up into World War II.]
I was born about 400 feet from here, because this was the family place here. They put it together back about 1909, bit by bit during the years after that. This was our summer place with the cottage on the shore. Then, in 1917, a classmate of my father's, Andover and Yale, designed this building which was our barn. We had horses here and it acted as a garage, and the second floor was the hayloft with two great big, heavy steel I-beams to support it. So, you could go anywhere upstairs with a pogo stick now and not do any harm. So anyhow, that's sort of where it all started.
Then I started out sailing at about the age of nine, or so. My first boat is the one up there to the left. A 14-foot sailing rowboat, she was. Ten in 1925, I believe, my father bought for my older brother a sloop, let's see, second item down over there. Her name was GOLLYWOG. My brother had her from 1925 on, and I used to sail in her until 1928. Then my father, again, had built this KETCH DOUBLOON, and I inherited GOLLYWOG. At the age of 15 a friend of mine and I just cruised all over Long Island Sound, and up to Newport, and out of Montauk, and all over the place. We were 15-year-old kids but we didn't get into any trouble at all. We certainly had some good sailing!The traffic on Long Island Sound back then was not quite what it would be today.
Quite a different proposition!
You said this was your summer home. Where was winter home?
We lived in my grandfather's house in New Haven which was on the corner of Hillhouse Avenue and Sachem Street. We sold it to the University in '33 and moved out in 1935. That was our winter home and then I went to school in New Haven. All of us then would move out here for the summer.
When my brother was in college, and got into graduate work in geology, why, then the KETCH was pretty much unemployed, so to speak. I took her over and we sold the little sloop. I took over DOUBLOON and in 1931 I took her for a cruise down to Maine and New Brunswick. In 1932 I went out from New York on a steamship--it was one of the Dollar Liners they alternated--one week they would have a ship around the world and then the next week it would be on the Orient run and back. I was on the Orient run.
At this time, you were in college?
Yes. That was the summer from college.
You were at Yale?
Yes. I was at Yale.
Then in 1933, the following year, I took the Ketch and, with some college classmates, sailed her from here, first of all, to Halifax. Then we cruised to Nova Scotia coast and then to Newfoundland. We had a problem with the rudder about halfway up the
west coast of Newfoundland that took some time to square away. Then we came back from there and went along the south coast to St. Pierre et Miquelon, the French islands there off of the south coast of Newfoundland, and then home. That made a pretty good cruise. I guess that I was 20. When I got home from that we laid her up.
That was when I went over to England and signed on the four-masted PARMA. Actually, I went to Sweden first because my family was over there. My father was engaged in straightening out the mess of the Krueger and Toll. Do you remember the "Swedish Match King" and all international intrigue that sort of grew around him and so forth. He, I think, committed suicide, and there was an awful lot to be cleaned out and my father was representing the Irving Trust Company of New York.
I went over and stayed with them for a week or so and then on over to London where I joined PARMA. I got back from the PARMA in the summer of '34. In 1935, I took the schooner VAGABOND in the race to Norway, after we had finished.Then we cruised down the coast to Oslo and laid her up there, then I went over to Lymington, in England, to join STORMY WEATHER, which is this boat here, which had won the race to Norway. I joined her in Lymington for the Fastnet Race in 1935 and then we sailed back across the ocean in her.
1936 is where the Navy comes in because I had been in Naval ROTC at Yale. In order to do the Norway race, I had deferred the cruise required for Naval ROTC. Before getting my commission, I had to put in the cruise time, and I did that first thing in '36.That's how come we didn't get over to Norway until July. Then like I mentioned, we picked up VAGABOND, the schooner. We sailed her home by Copenhagen and through the Kiel Canal, over to Cuxhaven, then outside to Terschelling and then to Zuider Zee, which was then a navigable body of water. Down to Amsterdam through the canals and out at Middleburg and Flushing, then out into the North Sea and into the English Channel. We almost lost her off of Start Point, because we got hit by a squall which laid her over on her beam ends. She had an offset companionway for you to go down below. Fortunately, we were hit on the starboard tack so that the companionway was up instead of down. She went right over on her side.
It did not take on enough water?
That's right. We just had one port hole that was open. One of the boys who was down below was able to get that battened down. Then we got her back up on her feet. But if it had been the other way around...
It was kind of testy there?
We went into Portland and Brixham and then Plymouth. We fitted out in Plymouth for the rest of the long trip. So then from there we went down to Lisbon and then from Lisbon to Madeira and from Madeira to Tenerife. We climbed the peak at Tenerife, which is a lot of fun. They call it Teide; it's about 13,000 feet. It was a lot of fun. Good exercise.
Then from there we went over to Port Etienne in French Mauritania and from Port Etienne down to Dakar in Senegal. From Dakar we went down to Bathurst inn Gambia and
then we took her 100 miles up the Gambia River which was a lot of fun. We borrowed rifles from some people we had gotten to know in Bathurst so we could go bush-pig hunting upriver and so forth, and that was a lot of fun.
Then from there we sailed across to Trinidad and then from Trinidad we sailed on up, hitting almost all the islands up through the West Indies. Of course, in those days there were no yachts, it was just natural native situations. I guess there were one or two yachts down in Port of Spain, but we didn't see another yacht until we got up to St. Kitts. Then just one yacht and that was that.
We took in all these islands, then sailed on to St. Thomas and then from St. Thomas we went on over to San Juan. That was where I left. We had Christmas there, then I left shortly after that, and the rest of the boys took her from San Juan directly over to Miami.Well, that got us into '37. Fortunately, the outfit that I went to work with was rather broadminded in allowing me time off. Then in '37, that was when we did the Fastnet Race, Dick Reynolds, me, Lizzy Mack, and all. We came back by steamer that time on the QUEEN MARY.
That was another story. When we were finishing the Fastnet Race, it had been very foggy with very light winds and so forth from the Lizard into about 40 miles from Plymouth. As we came up toward the breakwater, we could see the English boat call the Teaffe outside the breakwater. We were trying to nurse the boat in, in very little wind and just doing what we could to keep her moving. We speculated and we thought, "Gosh, she'drounded the Lizard three hours ahead of us, 40 miles back." We figured that she had probably finished. She's just out here to watch the other boats come in. Dick Reynolds in his characteristic big way said, "Well, if she hasn't finished, I'm going to buy each one of you a case of champagne!" So, we laughed it off, you know. As it turned out, she had not finished! We beat her across the line. Of course, we forgot all about the case of champagne. We raced down the French coast and across the Channel and then down to La Baule and the Bay of Biscay side.
Dick went back on the QUEEN MARY a trip or so ahead of the rest of us. When we stepped aboard the QUEEN MARY looking like a bunch of pirates, I guess, why right away the smoking-room steward was waiting at the gangway and he looked at us and he said, "Mr. Reynolds' friends?"
"Yep." So, he said, "I have something for you." He marched us up to the smoking room and gave us each an envelope with a hundred dollars in it! Of course, a hundred dollars in 1937 was a hell of a lot of money! We decided Dick's purpose in this was to give us a hell of a good trip back. And we had it! We had a lovely time.1938 was when BLITZEN was new, and we raced her to Bermuda. Then 1939 came along and we then took her in the Honolulu race, and she was shipped out to San Francisco and Dick had all of us flown out.
By that time the situation in Europe was such that you couldn't race to Europe
anymore, could you?
No. That's right. Well, that worked out for 1939. I had been out of college long enough that I had not kept up with my requirements for my Navy commission, I took four weeks of cruising in four-stack destroyers, on the USS THATCHER. She was one of the ones who was turned over to the British right after the second cruise, in the Land-Lease business. The Bermuda race was in '40, but I went on active duty in April of '41.
Were they calling up Reserve officers at that point or did you volunteer?
Oh, I volunteered. I figured that it was coming along, so let's get on with it, so I volunteered in April of '41. I was assigned as executive officer of a YP--YP62. She was in a Consolidated Shipyard in the Bronx in New York. That lasted until June. It was just a couple of months. I never really had much to do with her.
Then I was made prospective commanding officer of the minesweeper that was building up in Ipswich, Mass. We didn't commission her until the 29th of September. The exec., a fellow named MacGruger Dent, who is still a good friend of mine, he and I sort of spent the summer going to mine school and that kind of stuff. I was living at the Eastern Yacht Club in Marblehead which is convenient. It was a pretty easy-going summer, actually, because the people at the yard didn't want the Navy people hanging around. We did do what we had to do and that was about it.
She was commissioned in September and then we took her down to Yorktown to the naval mine warfare establishment there for shakedown. Then from there we went for abrief availability to the Norfolk Navy Yard, and then on up here. We got up here in the later part of November. We based in New London, which was very convenient as far as I was concerned. It was just thirty-five miles away from home.
We operated out of there. We'd start out from New London and go out through the race. We'd stream our sweep gear, then we'd steam on out past Montauk and go about twenty miles beyond Montauk. Then we come back into Block Island Sound, and we'd patrol Block Island Sound for that night. When daylight came, we would join up with another sweeper. We would then sweep from Block Island Sound out again, twenty miles off of Montauk and then back in New London and then we would lay over for a day. It was quite a nice setup.
That lasted until February. At that time, I was given command of the schooner BOWDOIN. She was an Arctic exploration vessel; I don't know whether you've ever heard of her or not.I've heard the name, but I don't recall what context it was in.
Well, she had been owned by Donald B. MacMillan, the Arctic explorer. She had been built in 1919. I guess he wintered up in Northern Greenland, and so forth, for five different winters. She'd been an Arctic exploration vessel.
I was given command of her. She was at that time lying up in Boston, at Lawley's yard there in at Neponset. We fitted out. They had various things there that they wanted to do, install a heating plant, for example, because we were going to be in Greenland over the
winter. She also required some other things. Amazingly enough she had no independent generating system. All of the electricity was generated by the main engine and held in a whole bank of storage batteries. This was not a satisfactory situation. Also, it was the main engine that ran the compressor to give compressed air for starting the main engine. So, if you ran out of air, you were in trouble.
Or if your main engine went down and those batteries depleted, you were in trouble too!
That's true. Absolutely incredible setup. Anyhow I got right on to that and installed a seven and a half W generator and we also installed air compressors so that we were independent of that. Actually, at one time in the previous summer, Captain Mack had had her in Greenland and they had run out of air! It was incredible.
Another ship would have to come in to assist you.
Yes. That was it.
What was your mission in Greenland?
We took her up there under sail, which was a lot of fun. Our mission was to do hydrographic surveys of some of the fjords on the west coast. First of all, we went into fjords of southern Greenland to Tunulliarfik Fjord Bluie West One, which was the biggest of the Greenland bases and was serving as sort of ferry stop. They would stop in at Base One and fuel and whatever and then they'd go on from there over to England.
So, there was a military purpose to the surveying as well as a scientific purpose.
Definitely. This was really basically a military purpose. We had two survey officers on board to begin with. Then we had a bunch of aerial photographs that had been taken with a 60 percent overlap so that we had to triangulate the fjords.
From Tunulliarfik we sailed north to S�ndre Str�mfjord. This was the first one that we were to survey. One reason for that was a ship had run aground in December just prior to our arrival. They were anxious to get the whole fjord surveyed. That was about 85 miles and took us from about the twentieth of June until we finished that job in early September. This means building signals, primary signals, which would be occupied by theodolite, then secondary signals to key in various points, promontories, and one thing or another. Those could be used in controlling the tracings from the photographs and suchlike.
Was this being done entirely by military personnel, or did you have hydrographic civilians on board?
No, this was all Navy, as far as we were concerned. I had nine enlisted men and two survey officers and an executive officer. Of course, when we were up there, it was a lot of hard work. Dory work. Ferrying in and out of the shore to build the signals and then to come back and occupy them. After the boat sheets had been made up with all the shore points plotted in, signals and that, then we ran lines of bearing with just visual soundings, fathometer-type instruments. We kept checking out position with horizontal sextant angles to keep exact tabs of our line of soundings. So, it was a pretty effective process. The only trouble with it was that it was not like a wire drag survey, where you had a couple of survey
vessels and a wire drag and if it happens to be a pinnacle or anything like that you find it; whereas, with our type of survey, if that happens to be a pinnacle, it may show just this one quick blip, which could be a fish or darn near anything. We did apparently miss one pinnacle down in the entrance of S�ndre Str�mfjord Fishmaster's Harbour, and some vessel did foul up on that, but other than that, everything worked out fine.
In September, then, we moved south to Tunulliarfik Fjord and we did surveys in Tunulliarfik, Skovfjord and the entrance to Bredefjord and that whole area. We worked over the winter which again was pretty tough work particularly for the survey officer because they were shuttling back and forth in the dories building signals, and then having to occupy them wearing thick gloves and all.
The weather there in the winter is something to behold, is it not?
[End of Interview]