Sea Year - 1968 - The Med Run

The Med

The day after disembarking from the Pioneer Contractor, Dick Gaston and I joined the Exford in Hoboken, NJ.  Dick and I were originally going to be assigned to the Expeditor, a sister-ship of the Exford, but we switched assignments with my former roommate, Bruno, since the Expeditor was scheduled to call at Trieste, Italy, where Bruno had relatives.

Sailing on the Exford was definitely a different experience from my previous three ships because she was so much older.  Built in 1946, the Exford was a 7 hatch C3-S-A3 class freighter owned by American Export Lines.  Even though small in size, the navigating bridge of the Exford was kept in tip top shape, being entirely clad in hard wood which was sanded and varnished every voyage.  The brass fittings were polished daily.

We had been aboard for one day when Martin Luther King was shot.  The longshoreman's union shut down for two days so I was able to go home again for a night.  After the laborers returned to work, we finished loading and sailed for Philadelphia.

Exford docked in Hoboken, NJ April 1968

We anchored in the Delaware River just off the Customs building.  At 0800, I reported to the coastwise Chief Mate, John Codispoti, a fellow Kings Pointer, and he told me to check the containers we had loaded in number 4 lower hold for damage.  The Exford, being an older vessel, was not fitted with steel hatch covers. She was fitted with rows of wooden hatch boards, the type that were commonly made into coffee tables in the 1970's.  Not all the hatch covers were in place so there was daylight filtering down into the cargo hold.  I went down through the ladder in the mast house.  As I descended lower and lower, it got darker.  When I started down into the lower hold, I stopped at the top of the ladder to let my eyes adjust to the darkness.  The Mate had said there were 2 layers of containers but I could make out only one layer.  I turned on my flashlight and saw that there were indeed 2 layers of containers, but the bottom layer was submerged under a thick layer of black liquid.  I scampered back up the ladder, found the Mate and told him there was 10 feet of molasses in the hold.  He thought I was nuts but came out and looked anyway.  He had the deck gang remove more of the hatch boards so he could see down into the hatch and was just as mystified as I was when he saw the liquid.  He called the captain, Giuseppe Ciaccio.  Captain Ciaccio was very short in stature and needed to stand on a crate in order to see over the coaming down into the hatch.  Without knowing what the liquid was, he gave the order to pump it over the side, something one could never do today.  We started pumping and the black, frothy liquid poured out of the overboard discharge line into the river.  It wasn't long before the Coast Guard showed up in a boat and asked what we were doing.  They made us stop pumping and came aboard to sample the liquid.  It was determined to be of vegetable nature and we were allowed to resume pumping.  The ship had loaded bags of powdered licorice forward across in the lower hold.  During the overnight voyage from New York to Philly, the engineers had transferred water from the forepeak tank to the afterpeak tank to adjust the trim of the ship.  Unfortunately, a valve in # 4 hold had been left open so they wound up pumping the water there.  The water had saturated and broken open the bags of licorice.  The mixture was as I had originally described it, like molasses.  When we got to the dock, the 2 layers of containers were hoisted out.  The contents in the bottom layer of containers were ruined.  The hold was a gooey mess.  The bottoms of lower holds were commonly fitted with "ceilings" which were wooden plank floor boards.  These boards were saturated with the black goo and had to be steam cleaned to get the mess out.  It took almost 2 days to get the hold clean enough for cargo again.  As a follow-up, several years later when I was sailing on my license, I spotted John Codispoti, the coastwise Chief Mate on the Exford, in Newark Airport.  As I walked over to say hello, he recognized me and said "well if it isn't old ten feet of molasses."

After the coastwise trip, the ship returned to Hoboken and several new officers joined - Chief Mate Emil Mincu, and 3rd Mates Nick Steinberg, and John Russell.  Emil Mincu was the oldest Chief Mate I had sailed with.  I believe he was in his 60's.  He always wore black pants and a button-down white dress shirt and had a knack for never getting dirty.  One day, he and I went up to #1 hatch and worked for several hours re-stowing loose boxes of cargo.  When we finished, I was filthy and he looked like he was dressed for dinner.

Exford - underway and rolling gently - April 1968

Unlike the other ships on which I had sailed, the cadets' quarters were not on the officer's deck.  On the Exford, our room was on the main deck.  We shared a common bathroom with the unlicensed crew.

Exford deck cargo

Much of our cargo was for the military. In addition to a NASA space capsule, we also loaded many crates of Budweiser beer. Of course the Hoboken longshoremen broke in to the beer immediately.  There was no stopping them. The Mate told us to go ahead and let them have one crate for themselves but to tell them not to break into other crates.  This practice seemed to work.  The longshoremen were happy and only one crate was pilfered.

Our first foreign port was the US Navy base at Rota, Spain.  It was located just to the northwest of Cadiz.  Our only trip ashore was to the town of Jerez de la Frontera which was world-renown for its sherry.  Of course we had to sample some.


Our next port was Naples, Italy with more military cargo.  Naples was a large, bustling city that did not really appeal to me, other than the fact that Mount Vesuvius was visible just to the east.  It wasn't the cleanest place either.  My only trip ashore was to the Navy PX.

Naples with Mount Vesuvius in the background

After Naples, we went to Catania, a city in eastern Sicily that sits below Mount Etna.  I enjoyed Catania.  I found it cleaner than Naples and the people were more friendly.

Catania with Mount Etna in the background

Corinth Canal

After Catania, we headed for Piraeus, Greece. On the way, we passed through the narrow Corinth Canal.  Piraeus is the port of Athens.  It was a great port.  Train transportation into Athens was convenient.  Dick and I headed for the Acropolis.  There were vendor stands set up in the parking lot there.  Dick wanted to buy a scimitar-shaped letter opener but didn't have the right change and asked to borrow some.  A word of explanation here, because cadets travel to so many different countries, it's easy to get drachmas, lira and pesos mixed up.  For this reason, we used the term "gazoony" for the local currency of whatever country we were in at the time.  So Dick asks me "How many gazoonies you got?"  The vendor spoke broken English and asked what a gazoony was.  We must have spent five minutes trying to explain to him what it meant.  He was thoroughly confused.  At the end, he said "My son is being tutored in English by a man from North Carolina.  If I ask him what is a gazoony, will he know?"  This just cracked us up.  The poor guy obsessed over our use of slang.  We left him literally scratching his head.

The Parthenon 1968

 

The Parthenon was incredible.  In those days one could walk all around and through the temple.  I don't think you can now.  The other good thing about Piraeus was that you didn't have to walk far from the ship to get a beer.  John Bull's was just down the waterfront.

Temple of Hephaestus from the Acropolis 1968

 After Piraeus, we headed for Salonica, Greece.  While Salonica was Greece's second largest city, it paled in comparison to Athens.  Our stay there was not without incident.  There was a freighter anchored near the docks manned by only three people, the Captain, his wife and the Chief Engineer.  The rest of the crew had deserted due to non-payment of wages.  The port authorities demanded the ship be moved to the dock so the three on board tried to do it by themselves.  They didn't do too badly until they got too close to us and nicked our stern.  We wound up with only a small dent and some bent handrails but I'm sure other vessel's owners' problems rose exponentially.  My other memory of Salonica was the unfortunate resemblance of a local barmaid to Ethel Kennedy.  I don't think she got many tips.

Turkish Martyrs' Memorial - 1915 Battle of Gallipoli - Canakkale 

Izmit from the sea

From Salonica, we headed for Turkey.  Passing through the Dardanalles, a narrow strait that joins the Aegean Sea with the Sea of Marmara, was interesting due to its history during World War I.  Our first port in Turkey was Izmit, a small town with friendly people located East of Istanbul.  I was sorry to hear that Izmit had significant earthquake damage in 1999.

Castle on the Bosporus

After Izmit, we docked North of Istanbul on the East side of the Bosporus Strait, near the border with Russia.  We spent two days there discharging liquid latex that was carried in one of the ship's deep tanks.  We were able to take a launch across the Bosporus to the more populated side where we had dinner at an outdoor cafe.  The most memorable part of this was the cab ride back to the launch.  Gasoline was expensive there and cab drivers used any method possible to improve mileage.  Our driver would turn off the car and coast downhill whenever possible.  Coasting downhill at night with no lights on the back roads of Turkey was not an adventure I had signed up for.  But we made it.

The Golden Horn - Istanbul

Galata Bridge - Istanbul

We shifted down the Bosporus and docked in Istanbul within walking distance of the Galata Bridge and the Golden Horn.  Water porters lined the bridge as did fishermen. We passed several large castles during the short trip down the Bosphorus to the city.

Turkish Water Porters

Grand Bazaar

We were docked in the city for only one day.  Other than the Grand Bazaar, I did not get to visit the main tourist attractions.  The Grand Bazaar was something else, a huge maze of stores unlike anything I had ever seen.  One could easily get lost inside.  I bought several puzzle rings and needed directions to put them together.  When I gave one to my brother Rob that summer, he figured it out in 5 minutes.

Tripoli Waterfront

Our next port was Tripoli, Libya.  We had a lot of cargo destined for Wheelus Air Force Base nearby.  Even in 1968 Libya was not a safe country.  There was a strong military presence which caused me not to venture too far from the ship.  The hot souvenir items of the time were sheepskin rugs. 

Libyan Desert Patrol

Downtown Tripoli

Beach at La Goulette

Upon leaving Tripoli, we headed for La Goulette, the port of Tunis.  The dock was within walking distance to a beach.  I think Dick and I started a new beach sport - soda can target practice.  We would toss an empty soda can into the sea and throw rocks at it to try and make it submerge quicker.  We drew quite a crowd of local kids and they soon joined in the fun.

From the port, one had to take the train into Tunis proper.  Tunis was quite a nice city.  The spoken language in Tunis was French which I had luckily studied for three years in high school.  I was able to get by fairly well.  One could definitely see the French influence in Tunis, especially with the wide main boulevard.  The best shopping spot was the casbah where I bought a very comfortable pair of camel hair slippers and a fez hat, which I still have.

Tunis - Habib Bourguiba Boulevard

La Goulette was a short train ride from Carthage and Dick and I had panned to go there on the way back from the city but we missed the last train of the day and unfortunately never made it to the ruins.

Sagrada Familia

Our last port in the Med was Barcelona, Spain. The stay in Barcelona was bittersweet; it was an interesting city but it was also the last foreign port of my sea year.  Barcelona seemed very cosmopolitan in that I heard many languages spoken.  The Sagrada Familia, which looked like a very confused church, was the only attraction I had time to visit.

On the way back to the States, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, becoming the second public figure to be killed during my time on the Exford.

The Exford was scrapped in 1976.