Sailing to Oblivium: August 25,

Bosun's Mates in the U. S. Navy share a sentiment with our brothers and sisters in the U.S. Marines. There are no “ex’s” only “formers.” So, when, even years after our active service, one of us is hurt (even a non-Bosun’s Mate), we all bleed. When something is wrong, we want it righted.

Something is wrong now, seemingly at the highest levels. Our collective rigging is fouled. Our national anchor is dragging. Our shipmates are dying as a result of collisions at sea that would have been unthinkable in the past.

I don’t know why. It has been so long since I served, that I can’t imagine what modern duty at sea is like. I only know what it was like in my day.

After returning from land-based duties overseas, I spent the final two years of my enlistment aboard the USS Hunley out of Charleston, South Carolina. We spent a lot of time moored and servicing the submarine fleet. But, like any Navy warship, we went to sea when the time came.

There is a difference between being berthed, and being at sea. The Navy would communicate that difference quite clearly by the command, when the last mooring line was cast off, to “Hoist the Battle Flag.” At that moment, the flag was moved from astern to the mainmast. Everything changed. We rigged for war. Even though we might be moored five miles up the Cooper River, as we were, the ship was ready to go “in harm’s way.” Lookouts were posted fore and aft, port and starboard, and places in between.

If the Navy took those precautions while being led by tugboats down a river within our own country, one can only imagine how tightly we made things shipshape when we reached international waters.

Something is wrong. Our military people sign a contract with the 99.5 percent of Americans—the ones who do not serve—that they, the few, including sailors, will go into life-threatening situations to protect the many. It is their job. But no less a person than Carl von Clausewitz, in his classic work On War, cautions leaders to avoid what he called unnecessary “friction,” or avoidable acts that impede the mission in war. In short, war is a messy, complex business, so don’t knowingly make it more so by inserting such friction.

I’ve read where American warships such as the USS John S. McCain are designed to be difficult to detect at night. Let’s file that tactic in the same drawer with "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it."

Something is wrong when our brothers and sisters are dying without being fired upon in battle. As for my own experience, I didn’t have to go to sea, or stand watch aboard ship. I coxswained our Admiral’s “Barge” and could stayed ashore with it and watched the Hunley led down river. But if the “old man” was away somewhere, I volunteered to sail and stand my watch with the other sailors.

We learned, in the Navy, to identify the direction in which a distant vessel was steaming by the visual appearance of their “running lights,” i.e. white lights fore and aft, red to port, and green to starboard. If numerous vessels were near, it could be confusing, But one thing was abundantly clear: if you saw a symmetrical combination bearing toward your post, displaying a white light amidships, a green light to your starboard, and a red light to your port, it was “gunnel awash,” (or “holy shit’ in landlubber’s terms).

Something is wrong. Shipmates from the USS Fitzgerald and the USS John S. McCain are dead or missing from disasters only a few days apart and in the same waters. The latter, by the way, is named after Senator John McCain’s father, a crusty old admiral who once attacked an entire Japanese battle fleet with an undersized carrier force and was present when the armistice ending the war in Japan was signed aboard the USS Missouri. His memory deserves our respect, as his son’s service does not deserve our disrespect.

Our lost sailors themselves deserve better treatment, said treatment to include recognition of their sacrifice, not tweets but real recognition.

Something is wrong, terribly wrong. America is dragging her anchor and we need to trim our sails. Maybe better still, we could, as progressive Americans, borrow the United States Naval command that still rings in the ears of those who have served our country with only a thin sheet of steel (or wood) between them and eternity:         

“Sweepers, sweepers, man your brooms. Give the ship a clean sweep down both fore and aft.”

Sounds like a good tactical plan to me.

Anchors aweigh, old girl.