Marvin Creamer, a Mariner Who Sailed Like the Ancients, Dies at 104
“No GPS for him, not even a sextant; the sun and the stars did nicely. He was the first recorded person to sail round the world without navigational instruments.”[1]
Long before I went down to the sea to take my chances on ships, I had memorized this verse written long ago by Samuel Taylor Coleridge:[2]
‘God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends, that plague thee thus!—
Why look’st thou so?’—With my cross-bow
I shot the albatross.

I don’t know why I have remembered it all of these years, but it wound up meaning something once I first beheld the vast, watery desert of the ocean blue. First, you don’t go to sea, especially on a small boat lightly – it is a deadly place for the unwary and unprepared – just watch any episode of Gilligan’s Island. Odds are not in your favor even if you survive a shipwreck, and you probably aren’t going to be shipwrecked with Ginger or MaryAnne. And oh by the way, shooting an albatross is extreme bad luck. Liking pissing to windward, don’t do that shit, either. And make sure you keep a weather eye out for sea bats – even more deadly than the COVID-19 carrying variety to the unwary…

Okay, I digress. I also have a circumnavigation under my belt, performed aboard the USS CARL VINSON during most of 1983, and it was great. But not in the same league of a feat as that performed by Marvin Creamer on a small boat in 1982-1984, without instruments. Hell, I’ve been offshore several times on long-distance sailboat races over the past 20 years and I would never, ever dream of going out there now without my trusty GPS, an HF radio, SATCOMM, and EPIRB. The last race I was on we even had the internet via satellite as well as AIS. Nothing as ballsy as what Marvin and his crew did – I was on a 100,000T nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, after all, but it was still a challenge back then. We had no GPS, just LORAN and Transit SATNAV; we did sun shots at noon every day, and star sights at night during bridge watches. We were underway for nine months, to include two 70+ day stints on Gonzo Station and made a dozen port calls on five continents. I was single, a LTJG and in my early 20s. it was a heady, almost hypnotic adventure back in that golden haze of time but sadly, it is not like that today.

Interestingly enough, we were pretty close to Marvin and his crew during their transit from Cape St. May to Cape Town, South Africa. I remember reading the night orders and NOTAMs that we had to review and initial before every watch. For a period of time after clearing Ascension Island and before we rounded the Cape of Good Hope, we were instructed to be on the lookout for a small sailboat that might or might not be in our area; to determine and report his location if sighted or contacted, and render assistance if needed. It seemed a little weird to me, since I was more concerned about dodging fast merchant ships in the shipping lanes off Africa with sometimes 60kts of relative motion closure in the pitch dark off the Skeleton Coast – so fuck a small sailboat. But now, looking back, it was Marvin we had been alerted to look out for, so he had the US Navy in the South Atlantic as sort of lifeguards while we were in the area. But I was not the first in my family to make a circumnavigation, just the latest.

USS SHANGRI-LA (CVA/S-38) – Still One of the Best Carrier Names, ever

My uncle Guy was a WWII Pacific Combat Vet, flying SBDs, and later a Sky Raider pilot in the 1950s, flying out of NAS Quonset Point along with my bud B’wana Jim’s and Vic’s fathers. His squadron was assigned to the air group on the USS SHANGRI-LA. Over the course of a two-year tour, the Tokyo Express (as she was known) completed a circumnavigation of the planet during various deployments to Westpac, the South Pacific, and the South Atlantic while transferring from San Diego to Mayport. He told me they made about 15 port calls all told, to include several exotic places in South America that Navy ships never went to before, and probably won’t ever again. This conversation occurred before I had graduated high school, and I was already hooked but didn’t really know it at the time. It only took me five years of college to figure it out. Join the Navy and see the world (which is mostly covered by water, by the way). Given the choice, I was glad to do it on a carrier, not a small sailboat as did Marvin Creamer. What he did was true guts ball stuff, and likely a feat that will never be replicated except maybe by some weirdo Euro-weenie guy like Dieter from the SNL sketch “Sprockets” wearing skin-tight black pajamas lying semi-prone on an interviewer’s couch while trying to prove some obscure point or position on the green ecology, global warming, and the threat that human existence poses to the planet – whatever that might be.

Dieter and the Gang – And now we dance…

So, like many things these days it won’t be the same as what I and my uncle experienced, now going on what way too many years ago, but the chance for a circumnavigation is still a brass ring worth grabbing. If you get the opportunity, go! and take that ride; life is short, your career is even shorter, and no one will ever pay you to do it again. Marvin Creamer took that risk, albeit under more extreme circumstances, and now has bragging rights for the ages.

I remain your faithful servant.

Copyright 2020 Pont Loma
www.vicsocotra.com

[1] Source NYT, online edition 17 August 2020.
[2] From the “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”