My next assignment was as Captain on the Mississippi, relieving my good friend JPK in Wilmintgon, NC.  The Misssissippi, originally a T-2 named South Mountain, was built in 1944, renamed Mississippi in 1950 and Texaco Mississippi in 1959.  She was jumboized in 1964 in Newport News and later renamed Star Mississippi in 1990.  She was the last remaining Texaco T-2 and was sold and scrapped in 1992.  She was primarily a lube oil ship and was of riveted construction.  Because of her lube oil cargo history, her steel hull remained in excellent condition but unfortunately some of her rivets had begun to weep and, riveting being a lost art, there was no effective way to remedy this problem.  Her time was soon to be up.  As happenstance would have it, many of the officers onboard had recently attended the same Quality training course in Portland, ME as I had, which made for good communications and a very smooth running operation.  Ports called at during that work cycle included Port Arthur, Port Neches, Baytown, Texas City, Houston, New York and San Juan.

San Juan was always an interesting port to enter.  With all due respect to the harbor pilots there, it had been my experience that some of the pilots had become spoiled by working ships that repeatedly called there.  The pilot boarding station there is supposed to be one mile offshore but pilots would often wait and board while the ship was entering the harbor.  I had once witnessed a pilot when first boarding having to shout "hard left, half ahead" from the main deck to the bridge in order to keep the ship from running aground.  I wasn't about to let that happen to me as Master so I had a minor stand-off with our pilot when we first arrived.  He wouldn't come out to the pilot station and I wouldn't come in closer to shore.  We compromised and I picked him up a half mile out and all went well.
 
On one of the trips we got orders to load in Houston at the Lyondell berth.  I had never been to that terminal and it started out as a contentious stay.  After docking, the ship was so positioned that we could not use the long ship's gangway.  We carried a shorter gangway just for instances like this and we rigged the short gangway on the foredeck.  The terminal representative refused to come up the gangway saying it was a barge gangway, not a ship's gangway, which was of course absurd.  Even after showing him the gangway specs sheet and approval document, he wouldn't come aboard.  There was a shore gangway laying on the dock so I asked if we could use it instead.  He then told me we'd have to rent it from him for $200.  So this whole gangway charade was a scam to get us to pay him to use the shore gangway.  This probably worked on foreign flagged ships and I didn't expect it to work with American ships but when I called the office to report the incident, surprisingly they told me to go ahead and pay the guy which I did.

One northbound voyage was eventful.  My standard routine after dinner was to hang out in my cabin for a bit while a few of the Mates went up to the bridge for coffee.  I liked them to have time for themselves without me hanging around.  Anyway, my phone rang and I expected it to be the Mate on watch letting me know there was fresh coffee made.  Much to my surprise, he asked me if I wanted to do a rescue at sea.  He was fairly nonchalant so I really thought this was just an invite for coffee.   When I got to the bridge, he pointed over the side and lo and behold we were passing a guy floating in a large life ring.  At the time we were approximately 20 miles northeast of Miami.  I immediately put the engines on stand by, phoned the engine room to have them ready to maneuver, and called the USCG for their assistance.  We proceeded to make a Williamson Turn, required in man overboard situations, and maneuvered close by the man the life ring.  I had the deck crew put a pilot ladder over the side and shouted through a bullhorn to get him to paddle or swim over to the ladder so he could climb aboard.  He kept shouting "tiburon" which meant "shark" in Spanish and was scared to swim to the ship.  He stayed in the life ring until the Coast Guard arrived in a boat some 45 minutes later.  They took him aboard their cutter.  They reported to me that the man was a Cuban refugee and had been in the life ring for 4 days.  I'm convinced that had not our Second Mate (Rick C) stood such a diligent watch and with night time fast approaching, this man would have drifted out of the shipping lanes and never been rescued.

 August 1992 Rescue of Cuban Refugee

During this same northbound voyage, my father-in-law passed away.  The family wanted his ashes spread at sea.  That voyage we called at New York, first anchoring in the harbor off Staten Island while we waited for a berth in Perth Amboy.  I wanted my wife to come aboard at the anchorage so she could make the four hour shift to the dock, as she had never made a trip on board before.  She didn't want to risk climbing the pilot ladder especially with her father's ashes and so she waited to come aboard until we docked.  I spread my father-in-law's ashes at sea two days later on the southbound voyage.

Also on the southbound ship we received word that the ship had been sold.  We knew this was coming but still it was very disheartening to hear.  There would be one more voyage and then the ship would sail for Alang, India to be scrapped.  As a tribute to some of our previously scrapped ships, and to lighten the mood onboard, I allowed the crew to stencil an irreverent call sign graveyard on the bridge wing.

I was due for paid leave and my good friend Capt Bruce Calhoun relieved me in Port Neches, TX.  I was told he also rescued a Cuban refugee during the following voyage.  One rescue is a very rare occurrence.  Two rescues on consecutive voyages is unheard of.  The Mississippi definitely went out in a blaze of glory.