Ah, I feel something lurching toward us, and I do not mean the stupid election, or the stupid Tea Party or the resurgent strain of Marxism that is raising its hoary and discredited head across the pond. I have to click fast to stay ahead of the political ads that intrusively appear as side-bars to my email accounts. It is cloying. Sickening, almost.

It was a relief when I got a request from a pal of a pal for some information about an inspirational story that involved one of my ships. I wasn’t there, mind you. I arrived on the Good Ship Midway three years after the event, and the ship’s company and associated Air Wing had largely turned over, and only a few were present to remember the astonishing event.

Since the Good Ship still exists as a memorial in the lovely waters of San Diego Harbor, that was the precise reason the dialogue began about how we worked and what equipment we had at the time to accomplish our part in the intricate ballet of hurling jets off one end, and bringing them back on the blunt end.

The compartments are still there, silent, dogged and padlocked and off limits to tourists. They may get around to restoring them, some day, but the non-public areas are much vaster than those open to prying eyes and there are ghosts in the voids.

We will talk about them when we get to it.

The Midway Docents, mostly retired Navy men who like to tell sea stories about the bold old flat-top, are always interested in new tales about the half century that CV-41, Midway Maru, sailed the world ocean and proudly flew America’s flag.

I was trying to figure out how to do it. The jargon of Navy-speak is almost impenetrable unless you have been in the tribe, and there is no good path between just spewing it out, or slowing down long enough so that it is comprehensible to the layperson. Then it rings inauthentic, like the sailors remembered to USE FULL TITLE at first incident of acronym for clarity.

In reality, it was much more like: “Hey. Aft CIWS is AFU! Whiskey Tango Foxtrot! How are we supposed to run the fucking profile on the Event Two Launch?”

Explanation is for writing, not hearing, and the acronyms linked by assorted obscenities that makes the dialogue a rich, acrid, and obsolete dialect.

So, walking the fine line is going to take some time, and I am dubious about my chances of success. I was moving some facts around to make it a real Sea Story- the sailor’s version of the Fairy Tale (not that there is anything wrong with it) and got sidetracked with another ship and another astonishing story.

But that is the way of this stuff, one thing leading to another, and so off we go.

This other story I will impose on you has lyrics and lore, and I came around to it with a recollection from a shipmate with a fondness for the romance of the sea, and the inevitability of history. My pal started off with the words to an old song from the 16th century, and how he came to it:

Gentlemen it is me duty
To inform you of one beauty
Though I’d ask of you a favour
Not to seek her for a while.
Though I own she is a creature
Of character and feature
No words can paint the picture
Of the Queen of all Argyll.

Turned out that the song, which he linked to the woman who would become is bride, had first appeared to him in the friendly islands of Hawaii where we served together for the first time. The tune popped up on a port visit to West Australia on what he described as the “stained and strife-weary” USS Constellation (CV-64).

It resonated this morning. I never cruised in Connie, but I did ride her a few times, and she was one of my favorite ships. But the trains of The Queen of All Argyll brought something back to me vividly, particularly as I was thinking about Ma Midway.

Our visit to Perth was in 1979, the first I a long while. There was a little rag-tag group of Enterprise sailors waiting at Fleet Landing to turn themselves in to Navy justice, refugees of the last major warship visit to the West Australian port.

Which leads directly to the first American visit to Perth on Regatta Day.

No, it was not a Navy visit, but there is a great story about it in one of the best liberty ports in the universe. There were friendly ladies and stand-up cobbers and fabulous music. I had a cassette as well, long gone now, that had some fine lyrics and seemed appropriate to write back to my pal.

I envy the union he has enjoyed with his Queen of Argyll. My path has been a bit more circuitous, and at the end of all things I imagine I will have to go it alone- or at least with some of the best friends a man could have in this world.

(Six bold Fenians.)

But the music of West Australia- now that was a moment at the show worth remembering. One song on that tape struck me, the story of the 1876 rescue of six Irish convicts from the Crown’s screw-warders. It goes to a melody that is a variant of the old Irish air “Rosen Up the Bow.”  I still sing snatches of it to this day:

A noble whale ship and commander
Called the Catalpa, they say
Came out to Western Australia
And took six poor Fenians away

Chorus:
So come all you screw warders and jailers
Remember Perth regatta day
Take care of the rest of your Fenians
Or the Yankees will steal them away

Seven long years had they served here
And seven long more had to stay
For defending their country Old Ireland
For that they were banished away

You kept them in Western Australia
Till their hair began to turn grey
When a Yank from the States of America
Came out here and stole them away

Now all the Perth boats were a-racing
And making short tacks for the spot
But the Yankee she tacked into Fremantle
And took the best prize of the lot

The Georgette armed with bold warriors
Went out the poor Yanks to arrest
But she hoisted her star-spangled banner
Saying you’ll not board me I guess

So remember those six Fenians colonial
And sing o’er these few verses with skill
And remember the Yankee that stole them
And the home that they left on the hill

Now they’ve landed safe in America
And there will be able to cry
Hoist up the green flag and shamrock
Hurrah for old Ireland we’ll die!

Hurrah, too, for love, and for history, and a lives lived with thunder and passion. More on another of those tales, on what was our ship, tomorrow.

(Cell block at the Freemantle Gaol. I bought the tape not far from the imposing gate.)

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

(A concise account of the rescue can be found here).