Excerpt
Fifth from the Bottom
I am sure my disdainful contemporaries and disapproving instructors believed I would
become a thoroughly disreputable upperclassman were I somehow to escape expulsion
during my plebe year. Most of the time, my behavior only confirmed their low regard
for me. For a moment, though, I came close to confounding their expectations. That
moment began when I boarded the USS Hunt to begin my first-class cruise to Rio de
Janeiro in June of 1957.
The Hunt was an old destroyer. It had seen better days. It seemed to me a barely
floating rust bucket that should have been scrapped years before, unfit even for
mothballing. But I was ignorant, a sailor's son though I was, and I overlooked the
old ship's grace and sea-worthiness. I assumed the Hunt was suitable only for the
mean task of giving lowly midshipmen a rustic experience of life at sea. I was wrong.
We lived in cramped quarters in the aft of the ship. We kept the hatch open to cool
our quarters with the breeze blowing off the Chesapeake Bay. Once the Hunt left the
bay and entered the Atlantic, the seas grew heavier and seawater washed in through
the hatch. We lived in the pooled water for several days. The rough seas sent a good
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