Reactor-Axe-Man
10-21-2009, 03:14 AM
Halloween draws near as I note the evenings actually becoming cool instead of merely 'not hot,' and the winter stars are beginning to make their rounds in the darkness. I say it's my only ghost story because it's the only one I can claim to have experienced first hand. I can't even say it's a ghost story for certain, just that's its damn peculiar, hard to easily explain away, and whose circumstances are consistent with past encounters.
Anyway, it's a sea story about a man named Joe.
Most sea stories usually begin with "no shit, there I was..." but this one will require a little backstory.
Joe was a Chief Petty Officer for A-Gang, the non-nuclear machinist mates on the submarine USS Kamehameha. From the lore passed on from crew to crew, Joe was doing a little 'midnight maintenance' on the ship's 4500 PSI high pressure air system in the early 1970s. This maintenance involved replacing the 'cartridge' on a high pressure air valve. The cartridge was basically a self-contained, easily replaceable module that was the internal mechanisms of the valve. Joe isolated the valve he needed to work on, but either the isolation didn't hold, allowing high pressure air to leak by, or else he forget to depressurize the section of piping holding the valve. To make a long story short, when Joe tried to remove the old cartridge, it blasted out of the valve body with 4500 PSI behind it, and right into his head. His death was said to have been instantaneous.
Fast forward to early spring 1993 about 1 AM. Kamehameha has returned to the place of her birth for conversion from an SSBN to a SEAL carrying SSN. I am the young and newly qualified Shutdown Roving Watch, standing the graveyard shift in the shipyard on a shutdown and still mostly inoperative boat. Every hour at the top of the hour, I am required to make a tour of the engineering section of the boat and write down various machinery parameters on a set of logs. The Engineering Duty Officer and the Ship's Duty Officer positions had been combined for that duty day, and he had made his midnight tour of the boat and retired to bed. The Engineering Duty Petty Officer was not due for his tour until 3 AM.
So... No shit, there I was, forward of the Reactor Compartment in the Auxiliary Machinery Room #1 (abbreviated hereafter as AMR1) for the beginning of my tour. AMR1 is divided into 3 levels but these are basically just deck plating with lots of gaps in between them. Upper level contained a deactivated 400 Hz motor-generator set and was generally considered to be E-Division (electricians) territory. AMR1 Middle and Lower Levels contained the various atmosphere control machinery, external hydraulics, the trim pump, R-12 plants, and, you guessed it, high pressure air systems including one of the air compressors. This is where Joe had met his end some 20 years earlier.
There was a curious ritual involving tools on the boat. A-Gang would steal Machinery-Division's tools (I was in M-Division). The Missile Techs would then steal the tools from A-Gang, and the Torpedomen would raid the MTs. Eventually the Torpedomen would have an embarrassment of riches and everyone would go forward to get their tools back. I spied the A-Gang toolbox in AMR1 Middle Level, aft, next to the O2 generators, with a mind towards speeding up the process of getting M-Div's tools back - but alas, the toolbox was locked with a padlock. Continuing on past the toolbox, I climb down a six foot ladder to AMR1 Lower Level to take four instrument readings on the Low Pressure Air Compressor. This takes at most sixty seconds to do. At most. I'm talking the whole evolution of climbing down, taking log readings, writing them down, and climbing back up. 60 seconds.
When I climbed back up the ladder, the toolbox was unlocked and open, and tools were scattered all over the deck. I was more than a little dumbfounded, since I had not heard a damn thing. I see the back of a man in khakis (the color of uniform officers and chief petty officers wear in port) as he proceeds forward through a regular door to the Missile Compartment. I call to him, not recognizing him, to ask about the tools he has (presumably) just strewn about a space I am responsible for. He does not reply, does not even look back as he goes out of sight forward into the Missile Compartment. I never see his face.
I do go forward to get an answer, but in the space of the twenty steps it takes for me to get to the door, he is gone. Vanished. There are only two ways he could have gone. One was 150 feet forward to the watertight door to the Ops compartment. The other was a ladder down to Missile Lower Level which is right on the other side of the door. The ladder to Missile Lower Level makes noise when you pull the safety chain off the ladder well to access it - there was no noise, and the chain was in place and was not moving the way it would if someone has just hooked it back into place. It is not possible for a man to work their way through the Missile Compartment and into Ops in the time it took me to get from the toolbox to the door. The MC was strewn with welding and lighting cables, tools, junk, and other detritus from the conversion, so running to escape me is unlikely. And why would a khaki run from a lowly blueshirt anyway?
No, he just vanished. Gone. No sound, no trace, no nothing. Only a big mess he left behind.
Puzzled but not yet coming to the conclusion that I may have just had a brush with the supernatural, I steal back M-Div tools from the mess, put the rest away, lock the toolbox, and continue my watch. The watch goes on without further event.
The next morning at duty section turnover, I relay my encounter of the early morning to the assemble off-going and on-coming duty sections. It is at this point that several of the crew relate the sad story of Chief Joe. One of the traditions of the boat was that you did not discuss Chief Joe with anyone new on board until they had experienced something unusual in AMR1. I had been on board for six months by that time, and this was the first I had ever heard of him.
Apparently Chief Joe continues to run his division and its spaces as if he were still alive. Given the sudden and unexpected end he had, it seems possible that he does not yet know he is dead. He is known to shift entire atmosphere control equipment line ups while the boat is at sea - instead of the AMR1 watch having the number one set of scrubbers and burners running, he will get up from his bench (within direct eyesight of the machinery) to find that the #2 set is running, with the #1 set in a normal and proper shutdown line up.
Anyway, even after four years on board I never ran into Chief Joe again, but he apparently made his presence known in various ways three or four more times during my tenure. I can't say for sure who it was that I saw that night. I also can't explain what I did see. The only guys in khaki who could have possibly have had a key to that toolbox were the Damage Control Assistant - the A-Gang division officer (and he did not have duty that day and so sure as hell wasn't going to be on the boat late at night on a weekend), and Master Chief Bowen, who was very short and an unmistakable character to say the least.
Kamehameha's been decommissioned for seven years now. It's probably been cut up for scrap. What does a ghost do when the ship he's haunted for 30 years is no more?
Anyway, it's a sea story about a man named Joe.
Most sea stories usually begin with "no shit, there I was..." but this one will require a little backstory.
Joe was a Chief Petty Officer for A-Gang, the non-nuclear machinist mates on the submarine USS Kamehameha. From the lore passed on from crew to crew, Joe was doing a little 'midnight maintenance' on the ship's 4500 PSI high pressure air system in the early 1970s. This maintenance involved replacing the 'cartridge' on a high pressure air valve. The cartridge was basically a self-contained, easily replaceable module that was the internal mechanisms of the valve. Joe isolated the valve he needed to work on, but either the isolation didn't hold, allowing high pressure air to leak by, or else he forget to depressurize the section of piping holding the valve. To make a long story short, when Joe tried to remove the old cartridge, it blasted out of the valve body with 4500 PSI behind it, and right into his head. His death was said to have been instantaneous.
Fast forward to early spring 1993 about 1 AM. Kamehameha has returned to the place of her birth for conversion from an SSBN to a SEAL carrying SSN. I am the young and newly qualified Shutdown Roving Watch, standing the graveyard shift in the shipyard on a shutdown and still mostly inoperative boat. Every hour at the top of the hour, I am required to make a tour of the engineering section of the boat and write down various machinery parameters on a set of logs. The Engineering Duty Officer and the Ship's Duty Officer positions had been combined for that duty day, and he had made his midnight tour of the boat and retired to bed. The Engineering Duty Petty Officer was not due for his tour until 3 AM.
So... No shit, there I was, forward of the Reactor Compartment in the Auxiliary Machinery Room #1 (abbreviated hereafter as AMR1) for the beginning of my tour. AMR1 is divided into 3 levels but these are basically just deck plating with lots of gaps in between them. Upper level contained a deactivated 400 Hz motor-generator set and was generally considered to be E-Division (electricians) territory. AMR1 Middle and Lower Levels contained the various atmosphere control machinery, external hydraulics, the trim pump, R-12 plants, and, you guessed it, high pressure air systems including one of the air compressors. This is where Joe had met his end some 20 years earlier.
There was a curious ritual involving tools on the boat. A-Gang would steal Machinery-Division's tools (I was in M-Division). The Missile Techs would then steal the tools from A-Gang, and the Torpedomen would raid the MTs. Eventually the Torpedomen would have an embarrassment of riches and everyone would go forward to get their tools back. I spied the A-Gang toolbox in AMR1 Middle Level, aft, next to the O2 generators, with a mind towards speeding up the process of getting M-Div's tools back - but alas, the toolbox was locked with a padlock. Continuing on past the toolbox, I climb down a six foot ladder to AMR1 Lower Level to take four instrument readings on the Low Pressure Air Compressor. This takes at most sixty seconds to do. At most. I'm talking the whole evolution of climbing down, taking log readings, writing them down, and climbing back up. 60 seconds.
When I climbed back up the ladder, the toolbox was unlocked and open, and tools were scattered all over the deck. I was more than a little dumbfounded, since I had not heard a damn thing. I see the back of a man in khakis (the color of uniform officers and chief petty officers wear in port) as he proceeds forward through a regular door to the Missile Compartment. I call to him, not recognizing him, to ask about the tools he has (presumably) just strewn about a space I am responsible for. He does not reply, does not even look back as he goes out of sight forward into the Missile Compartment. I never see his face.
I do go forward to get an answer, but in the space of the twenty steps it takes for me to get to the door, he is gone. Vanished. There are only two ways he could have gone. One was 150 feet forward to the watertight door to the Ops compartment. The other was a ladder down to Missile Lower Level which is right on the other side of the door. The ladder to Missile Lower Level makes noise when you pull the safety chain off the ladder well to access it - there was no noise, and the chain was in place and was not moving the way it would if someone has just hooked it back into place. It is not possible for a man to work their way through the Missile Compartment and into Ops in the time it took me to get from the toolbox to the door. The MC was strewn with welding and lighting cables, tools, junk, and other detritus from the conversion, so running to escape me is unlikely. And why would a khaki run from a lowly blueshirt anyway?
No, he just vanished. Gone. No sound, no trace, no nothing. Only a big mess he left behind.
Puzzled but not yet coming to the conclusion that I may have just had a brush with the supernatural, I steal back M-Div tools from the mess, put the rest away, lock the toolbox, and continue my watch. The watch goes on without further event.
The next morning at duty section turnover, I relay my encounter of the early morning to the assemble off-going and on-coming duty sections. It is at this point that several of the crew relate the sad story of Chief Joe. One of the traditions of the boat was that you did not discuss Chief Joe with anyone new on board until they had experienced something unusual in AMR1. I had been on board for six months by that time, and this was the first I had ever heard of him.
Apparently Chief Joe continues to run his division and its spaces as if he were still alive. Given the sudden and unexpected end he had, it seems possible that he does not yet know he is dead. He is known to shift entire atmosphere control equipment line ups while the boat is at sea - instead of the AMR1 watch having the number one set of scrubbers and burners running, he will get up from his bench (within direct eyesight of the machinery) to find that the #2 set is running, with the #1 set in a normal and proper shutdown line up.
Anyway, even after four years on board I never ran into Chief Joe again, but he apparently made his presence known in various ways three or four more times during my tenure. I can't say for sure who it was that I saw that night. I also can't explain what I did see. The only guys in khaki who could have possibly have had a key to that toolbox were the Damage Control Assistant - the A-Gang division officer (and he did not have duty that day and so sure as hell wasn't going to be on the boat late at night on a weekend), and Master Chief Bowen, who was very short and an unmistakable character to say the least.
Kamehameha's been decommissioned for seven years now. It's probably been cut up for scrap. What does a ghost do when the ship he's haunted for 30 years is no more?