Work Aboard the Ship

While in home port at the Yokosuka Naval Base it was a normal work week as usual with the weekends off unless you had duty. We were moored to the peer in the ship yard part of the base. When I first arrived on board the O’Brien, I was put to work chipping and grinding the old paint off all the equipment in the Auxiliary Engine Room #1, and then giving everything a fresh new coat of paint.

After familiarizing myself with the layout of the ship, I started my mess cranking duties because I was new and low in rank. I mostly worked in the scullery running the dragon; cleaning trays and dinnerware. It was hot as hell in there, the Sound and Security watch would come in and check the temperature every hour, and it was always over 100 degrees in the scullery from all the hot water and steam. I had a stereo playing while I worked though, blasting some “Rage Against the Machine” or “Bob Marley”; in protest against “The MAN”. In between meals I was assigned basic maintenance on valves and all the galley equipment.

While mess cranking in port; after dinner was all cleaned up we usually went out for a night of heavy drinking, we would sneak back into the galley at night and make ourselves some grilled cheese sandwiches. Out on the mess decks we could get some “Bug Juice” to drink, it was basically flavored sugar water that we also used for cleaning the brass fire nozzles and all the brass valves. The huge coffee pot was running all day and the thick black coffee would slowly ooze out the tap. We had a frozen yogurt machine that never worked, but I would sometimes mix the unfrozen vanilla yogurt with the coffee.

After I finished my first duty of mess cranking, which lasted a couple of months, I went back to the Auxiliary Department, a small group called “The A Gang”. We basically ran the ship from anchor windlass to aft steering. The equipment we were in charge of was all of the galley equipment from large cooking copper pots to the scullery dragon, and the food disposal machine. The vertical conveyor and plastic disposal machine. The laundry washers, dryers, and steam presses. We ran the large industrial refrigerators, industrial air conditioners, the chill water loop and the high pressure air compressors that produced 3000psi air each. Fire pumps and seawater service pumps. The EVAPs for making fresh water; we were in charge of scuttle butts, showers, sinks, hot water heaters and anything pertained to freshwater. I was one of the boat engineers for the RHIB and the Captains Gig. I was trained to be a diesel mechanic before I arrived on board, but the O’Brien ran on four huge gas turbine engines, so I basically became a maintenance man.

After a while I worked my way up to doing overhauls on the larger equipment. We worked close with the Electrician Mates and the Hull Technicians. If anything needed fixed we were the maintenance personnel that fixed anything and everything. Everyone in the engineering berthing was all a tight crew; we all hung out with each other out on liberty. If anyone pissed us off we would shut off the water to their berthing for “maintenance”, which included the officers cabins too.

As I moved up in rank, I began doing damage control maintenance on the firefighting and safety equipment in our spaces. Everything from maintaining; fire extinguishers, fire hoses and nozzles, emergency lighting, down to maintaining watertight hatches and scuttles in all of the spaces that belonged to the “A Gang”. By the time I was getting short term (counting down the days until I get out of the Navy) I was training for Work Center Supervisor because I knew almost everything about our equipment. I was in charge of scheduling maintenance and writing up work orders and ordering machine parts from a computer. I could sit at a desk under the air conditioner on the refer deck listening to music all day and sending out emails. Everyone came to me if something needed fixed, so I could write up a work order for them.

I had about 12 people who worked under me, they were very reliable. We all got along with each other, and I could count on them to get the work done in a timely manner. I would always tell them, “Out of sight is out of mind” as long as they didn’t spend all their time skating off out on the smoke deck or lounging around in the berthing; I didn’t care what they did with their day, as long as the work got done. I never overworked my crew though; I would evenly break up the work load fit to each other’s skills and help them work on their weaknesses. I stretch out the suggested man hours so there was plenty of time to work on a project or maintenance and still have enough break time.

If there was a big project that needed done I wasn’t afraid of getting dirty and helping them out with it. I would buy snacks and soda from the ship store for everyone, to boost morale. While in port Yokosuka if I had to give training after the morning muster, I would sometimes buy a box of Dunkin Donuts from the Navy Exchange for them. That also gave me an excuse to be late for the morning muster.

I took a lot of heat from the upper chain of command if anyone got in trouble though. I got along with my division Chief pretty well and he put me in his duty section because I was a hard worker and it made him feel at ease on his duty day. Our Auxiliary Officer was the only female onboard for a while until more girls started to show up on our ship, and after she left we got another female AUXO to take her place. Lieutenant Graham was a small petite redhead that had all the chefs and other officers chasing after here because she was smoking hot in uniform and even in civilian clothes. There was definitely some sexual tension between the two of us at work, since officers and enlisted personnel were not supposed to fraternize with each other, but there was always some heavy flirting going on.

I would give training on our equipment to anyone who wanted to get their ESWS - Enlisted Surface Warfare Specialist certification. You had to know about everything onboard the ship. Topsiders would come down below deck and would be completely clueless on how some of the machinery worked and us Snipes would have to go topside and learn all their equipment. I already had been in to all the restricted areas like Communications and Radar because we were in charge of their cooling systems. But I didn’t go for my ESWS because I was too busy with work and I didn’t feel like doing all the reading, studying and testing on my off time.

On such an old ship, there was always something that needed fixed, so the work was constant. For basic scheduled maintenance, we would have to secure the equipment by shutting it down. Then do a “tag out” procedure, filling out and getting red danger tags signed and approved by the Central Command Station watch, so they could document it in the Engineering Log. Then hang all the danger tags on all the valves and power, to make sure no one opened them accidently while we were working on it. When something major needed fixed on some of the larger equipment the whole “A Gang” would get involved and help out. As engineers, we were all known for working hard and playing hard.