Part 23

The girls, not to put too fine a point to it, were getting fed up. Land fever was undermining their morale, but they nobly kept their feelings to themselves and it was not until long afterward, when I read their very outspoken journal entries, that I realized with what eagerness they were straining toward home and the reunion with family and friends. Barbara, on June 4:

The combination of sleepless nights (thanks to BUGS), becalmed days, and a diminishing larder makes it difficult to keep one’s spirits aloft. We are now out of potatoes and all other vegetables except one (1) onion. We have four cups of rice left (our usual allowance for a single meal being six!); and only enough tea for today’s tiffin; we are completely out of oleo and canned butter; ship’s biscuits (except for the emergency supply lashed in the life raft); and baking powder (I’ve been souring milk with vinegar and using baking soda for pancakes and dumplings, but now the flour is also gone and only the weevils are left). Eggs are down to three which, supplemented with (ugh) egg powder, will be sufficient for tomorrow’s scrambled breakfast.

We have one more “weekly sack” but it would go fast if we had only the canned goods it contains to fill us. The spaghetti is gone—and the last of the macaroni (without cheese) will be our supper tonight. Dehydrated soups, which usually eke out the canned variety, have also been finished, so lunches will begin to be a problem.

At any rate, we shan’t starve, for we have plenty of dried peas, beans and apricots; vacuum-packed cans of oatmeal; tins of pineapple juice; and lots of evaporated milk. A monotonous diet, but loaded with vitamins and calories. If only the wind would do us right, we could be there in two days!

However, the wind did not do us right, and on the morning of June 5 fog—a condition we had devoutly hoped to avoid—overtook us. As it gradually cleared, rain set in. We were now making three knots after sixty hours of mostly calms. For two days we had been unable to get a good position because of overcast and had to rely on dead reckoning.

During the night we passed many boats. The most baffling encounter is recorded as follows:

Small boat, dead ahead, showing green side-light, green masthead light, and all-around white light same level as side-light. As we approached, he turned off green light and headed directly for us. Could clearly hear engines. No running lights. He stopped several hundred yards away. We altered course and finally left him behind. Mysterious!

The next day we were again in fog, with cold rain and only a very light breeze. Our foghorn, hand operated, sounded small and insignificant, but we pressed a mournful wheeze from it every two minutes, in response to the hootings from ships around us, and hoped that the sound would carry. Eyes and ears have little relaxation in a fog. The known world contracts and all beyond the narrow range of vision becomes intangible and full of menace.

We had begun to feel that the small circle of visibility in which we moved was the only clearing in an otherwise opaque world, when suddenly a distant foghorn metamorphosed into a very large and close ship. It seemed to erupt full blown from the curtain of fog, complete with navigation lights, and passed us to port. Silent as a ghost ship it glided by and vanished gradually like the Cheshire cat, on the other side of our tiny circle, until only its stern remained, glowing more and more remotely. Yet, as the ship disappeared, the bellow of the foghorn doubled in volume, because its warning was now being carried to us from upwind, with far more urgency now that the danger was past.

We stood double watches, sounding our bellows continuously all night, but even when I was off duty I got precious little sleep.

In the morning we altered course to north-northwest, to pick up the Jersey coast, still operating by dead reckoning. We passed Scotland Light at 1000 and started the engine to go up the channel.

Just after noon we pulled up to the dock at the U.S. Quarantine Station at Staten Island, 19 days and 1,500 miles out of St. Thomas. I don’t know about the crew, but Barbara tells me she had a lump in her throat at the sight of the U.S. flag waving over the buildings—and I felt pretty lumpish myself.

14 EVERY KIND OF CRUISING: NEW YORK TO PANAMA, BY THE CORKSCREW ROUTE

“A man must stand up for what he believes.”

At Rosebank, the Quarantine Station for the Port of New York, we were given another example of the unreliability of hearsay predictions. In St. Thomas we had been warned that it would be foolish to enter at New York City, since it was not only dangerous for sailing craft (a point we were now willing to concede) but because the treatment given yachts was high-handed and arbitrary.

On the contrary, we were cleared in less than half an hour, and invited by the officials to move to a more secure spot inside the docks where we could relax for a day or two before going over to Manhattan. We were happy to accept, especially since it included showers and a chance to get in touch with family and friends by telephone.

In no time at all representatives of various “communications media” got wind of our arrival and began beating a path to the main hatch. Also, the families at the Quarantine Station, which is a surprisingly isolated community, were interested in the _Phoenix_, and most of them came on board to pay a visit, sign the guest book, and more often than not, leave a youngster or two behind to climb the masts or chin themselves on the ratlines.

Our first act was to get in touch with Tim, who had come into New York to await our arrival and now lost no time in joining us. It was our first meeting with our older son since he had left us back in Japan in ’53, and naturally we had a great deal of catching up to do.

In spite of the bustle, the weekend at Rosebank was most pleasant. As the reports of our arrival began to appear, friends sought us out and telegrams and letters of congratulation poured in.

We had an overflow crowd as we set out on Monday for the momentous trip across the bay. It was a sparkling day and lower Manhattan was a spectacular sight, especially as seen from the deck of the _Phoenix_. We were under both power and sail, but the breeze was too light to do us much good and it took four hours to inch our way up the Hudson, against the outgoing tide, to the small-boat basin at West 79th Street. On the way we tried to stay on the fringe of the busy harbor traffic and did not forget to make our bow to the Statue of Liberty, as we passed her very close on the port hand.

At the commercial dock we settled down to ten days or so of combined business and pleasure in Manhattan. The dockage fee was higher than in any other port we had visited—5 cents a foot per day—but we had Riverside Park at our bow, a view of the Palisades across the river, and fast connections to midtown within a few minutes’ walk. There was no need to remind ourselves that a cheap hotel room would have cost even one of us several times what we were paying for all seven.

It was a hot and hectic time. Just a list of the things we did would be exhausting, but they included many of the rubbernecking activities that Barbara and I had experienced before, but which were new and exciting to Ted, Jessica, and the three M’s. In addition we had a good deal of business to attend to, including a series of conferences with Lurton Blassingame, our indefatigable agent, and a number of radio and TV interviews.

One of these—a half-hour interview-type program called “Night Beat” on which I was interviewed alone—was particularly interesting to me and, in retrospect, perhaps crucial, as it served to crystallize some hitherto rather amorphous thinking. I had no idea which of the many subjects we had discussed before going on the air would be emphasized, and was completely surprised when John Wingate, the interviewer, chose to ignore the yachting and travel aspect entirely and concentrated instead on my scientific work in Hiroshima and on the problem of radioactivity and our government’s foreign policy as a whole.

The program was well known for its controversial nature but Barbara, watching with friends, was as unprepared as I was for the series of very direct questions regarding my attitude toward nuclear testing and disarmament. She told me later that she actually had not the slightest idea what my answer would be when Mr. Wingate brought up the issue of the recently announced “clean bomb” and asked what I thought of it.

My first remark was almost instinctive. “A ‘clean bomb’ is like an antiseptic bullet. It kills you just as dead.” I went on to amplify my feelings, pointing out that even the “ideal” clean bomb described by Mr. Eisenhower, 96 per cent “clean,” would be twice as radioactive as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, from which victims were still dying of long-term effects of radioactivity.

Questions followed in quick succession. I didn’t resent the fact that they were “loaded,” since I had come on the program of my own free will and was intent only on answering as honestly and frankly as possible.

“Dr. Reynolds, would you unilaterally stop the testing of nuclear weapons?”

A host of thoughts crowded into my mind. To have given the audience a fair and comprehensible survey of the thinking and knowledge that determined my answer would have taken at least an hour. Anything less than that would have seemed equivocating. I simply answered, “Yes.”

The interviewer continued smoothly, “You realize, of course, that President Eisenhower has stated that people who express that point of view are giving aid and comfort to the enemy?”

This, of course, was the climax of the show, and the spot toward which the interviewer had been building. Strangely enough, to me it seemed an anticlimax. The President’s statements were his, my statements were mine. I answered briefly that a man must speak and act as _he_ believes and not tailor his thinking with no view but to oppose the enemy. The United States would be in a sorry state indeed if our only reason for saying “No” is because Russia has said “Yes.” This merely plays into the hands of an antagonist.

“A man must stand up for what he believes.” I finished, “even if this occasionally means agreeing with the enemy.”

Following the broadcast we were quite unprepared for the reactions it caused. Within the next few days I was (a) hailed as an individual of heroic courage, (b) regarded with suspicion as a fellow traveler or dupe of Communists, (c) chided for being so foolhardy as to “stick your neck out.” Frankly, I was amazed. I had been asked certain questions and I had answered them as honestly as possible. I didn’t think I knew all the answers but, on the other hand, neither did I consider myself completely uninformed, and in the area of radioactivity and human well-being I felt I could speak with some authority. I felt that I had the interests of my own country at heart as well as did most Americans, and better than some. Why all the fuss?

On June 22, after checking the tide tables carefully, we rounded the foot of Manhattan and started up the East River, with the tide in our favor. The trip was quiet and uneventful. In the late afternoon we dropped anchor off the west end of City Island, outside a small cluster of boats. Curious yachtsmen soon boarded us, and after dinner we spent a fine evening ashore as guests of the Stuyvesant Yacht Club, off whose pier we had chanced to drop our hook.

The next morning we had a good day’s run among the Sunday sailors on Long Island Sound. In the afternoon we were met by Barbara’s cousin, Dave Dorn, and his family, in their cruiser _Grand Slam_, and with a convoy of boating friends were escorted to an anchorage off the Sprite Island Yacht Club near Norwalk.

There we were introduced to the sociable custom of “rafting.” With the _Phoenix_ in the middle and our anchor responsible for the entire flotilla, we found six launches tied alongside, to port and starboard. Hampers of food were unpacked, and ice and drinks materialized, and people began to drift back and forth from one boat to another. Without more ado we found ourselves in the center of as cheering a welcome party as I have ever experienced.

After several days here we moved to a small shipyard in Rowayton, up the Five Mile River, where it had been arranged that the boat would spend the summer.

Here Ted left us temporarily to join Minnetta in Madison and enter summer school at the University of Wisconsin, where he was accepted, in spite of his unorthodox schooling, on the basis of entrance exams. Tim, too, checked out in early July to enlist in the army, while Jessica and Barbara made a semipermanent home ashore at the invitation of the Dorns. The rest of us embarked on an extensive haul-out, including the installation of a new engine, courtesy of Universal Motors, who had offered to replace our doughty kerosene-burning model with a gasoline engine of the same type, even-steven. (Why they should want an old, slightly beat-up engine which had been over 35,000 miles and across three oceans is anybody’s—or maybe only an adman’s—guess.)

Using Rowayton as a base, we worked out a schedule which would permit us to do the necessary boat work and still visit friends and relatives in the Middle West. We planned to take Nick, Mickey, and Moto with us, so they could see as much as possible of the United States. To do this, I bought a very secondhand station wagon. But when we were ready to leave for Wisconsin, we learned that Mickey and Moto had decided to remain. Only Nick elected to go with us. To me it was another indication of the chasm that was widening between the men, but we said nothing and set off with Barbara, Jessica, Nick, and myself.

Back in Connecticut after this pleasant break (the longest time I had been away from the boat since the launching), we found a number of problems awaiting us. First, I had a bill from the shipyard for $914.92, a figure which will remain engraved in my memory. I was aghast, for I knew that the dockage had been without charge, the materials at a discount, and we had done most of our own work. “Labor,” however, was still the chief item on the bill, and I was forcefully reminded of an incident I had witnessed earlier that illustrated most vividly how labor costs can mount. While installing the shaft, one of the workmen happened to touch a spot of wet green paint on the engine. He stopped work immediately, with a curse.

“That does it!” he exclaimed enigmatically, eying the green spot with disgust. Throwing down his tools, he left the boat.

Half an hour later I went from the boat into the shed and saw him still sitting there, idly rubbing his fingers with a rag, while smoking a cigarette. I said nothing, but later, while checking over the bill, I figured that that little spot of paint had cost me about $4—the cost of the time needed for the workman to recover his mental composure and restore his fingers to their former pristine condition.

Under the circumstances, I was particularly interested in an article I read about that time, by a yacht owner who had kept a record of the work done on his boat over a period of thirty years. He pointed out that, labor costs aside, _the time taken to do the same job_ had more than doubled, and as I thought of the pouting workman, lounging in the shop and contemplating a green smear on his finger, I could understand why.

Another problem was slower to become apparent, but no less real, and couldn’t be solved by paying a bill. During our absence, Mickey and Moto had become friendly with a very fine family in Rowayton, who on our return immediately extended their hospitality to us all. It was the first time in our travels that we had spent so long a time in one place and achieved such an easy intimacy with any one group, and perhaps we should have been prepared for the tragicomic consequences.

Mickey and Moto, quite unfamiliar with the camaraderie of American girls, became enamored of the daughter of the family. Jealous of each other, they promptly joined ranks against Ted on his return to the boat, while he, completely unaware of the situation, began to compete for the attentions of the young lady.

Not until the day before we sailed from Rowayton did we realize that we had been sitting on a powder keg. Ted came home from a sail with the girl, to be greeted with a torrent of loud and tearful abuse from our usually quiet Moto, who had obviously been drinking. The unleashing of this apparently long-buried hatred and resentment was an unnerving experience, since we had come to like and respect Moto very much. His very real torment was obvious, and although at this time we did not fully realize the cause, it was impossible to write it off as the empty rantings of one in his cups.

We took off the next day, September 7, with a rather subdued and introspective crew. During the next several weeks, only gradually did we fit the story together. Just how involved the various men of our crew had been we will never know, but there is no doubt that bits and pieces of a number of hearts had been left behind in Rowayton. How deeply embedded were the suspicions and bitterness only slowly came to light in experiences such as the following:

Weeks later, in the course of a violent outburst, Mickey accused me of “spying on him.” It took considerable patience and much probing to get at the origin of his belief, but eventually it was traced back to Rowayton and an incident that had occurred during our stay.

One evening, arriving late, and looking for Barbara and our hostess, I had wandered into the small sitting room reserved for television. All was darkened except for the TV screen, and I had asked, referring to the program, “What’s going on?”

Someone had answered and, not being attracted by the program, I had gone on to another part of the house. Now, weeks later, it developed that Mickey and the young lady in question had been watching TV together, and Mickey had interpreted my commonplace remark as suspicion of his actions and a desire to spy on him.

In any event, our trip up Long Island Sound, around Montauk Point, down to the entrance of the Delaware, and on through the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal into Chesapeake Bay was not noted for its jollity. Nick was moody and Ted and Mickey unusually withdrawn, but Moto was particularly pathetic. In complete contrast to his former cheerful, wryly humorous self, he sat for hours in the bow, staring moodily at the water, or wove rope into intricate designs with all the withdrawal symptoms of a paranoid. We felt that he had lost so much face by his outburst that he did not know how to get back to our former friendly relations, and we did everything we could to assure him that we wanted to let bygones be bygones. What we did not realize, yet, was that his spirit was completely broken.

This trip was an introduction to a different type of cruising, where we used the engine much of the time and measured our progress not by noon shots but by markers as frequent as street signs in a city. By night we anchored: at Reedy Point, Delaware; Sassafras River, Maryland; and finally, in Whitehall Creek, near Annapolis, where we lay just off the back yard of Bob and Billy Phelps, guiding lights of the American Yachtsmen’s Association. If anything was calculated to repair shattered morale and raise the drooping spirits of our crew, the two weeks we spent with the Phelpses was it. Their instantaneous, homely welcome, the freedom of their pleasant home, the effervescence of their two lively dogs, and the easy exchange of yachting reminiscences were all fine medicine.

During this period we made one more inland trip, to our old haunts at Yellow Springs, Ohio. Once again we had intended to take the entire group, but once again, at the last moment, plans were changed. Mickey decided he would rather go to “see friend,” who lived near Schenectady or Syracuse, or, at any rate, “somewhere in state New York.” And Nick, at the last minute, announced that he would remain on board to “write letters.” It seemed unlikely that he had enough letters to last a week, but we accepted his decision.

Our return to Yellow Springs, although hectic and far too brief, was a highlight of our stay in the States. We could recognize now how unique was the community spirit we had taken for granted during our eight years at Fels Institute and on the Antioch campus. When a public meeting was organized to welcome us “home” and permit us to meet old friends, as well as give a talk about our travels, we were very much moved.

Jessica and Joan had renewed their former friendship so completely that nothing short of a major operation could successfully separate them, so we postponed that problem by packing Joan into the station wagon with us and taking her back for a short trip on the _Phoenix_ and a week of sightseeing in and around Washington.

At Annapolis we took on fuel and supplies and I gave a slide talk to the members of the Yacht Club. It was an enjoyable stay except for one fierce day with torrential rain, and wind speeds up to 80 mph, which shattered a large window on the club veranda. At the height of the storm, poor Joan and Jessica finally had to part, and the weather provided a dramatically satisfactory background as we put Joan on the bus for Ohio, as per arrangement with her folks.

On October 9 we left Annapolis, sailing down Chesapeake Bay. It was a quiet and pleasant interlude, during which we made four stops—at Oxford, where we picked up our new genoa jib, and at Solomon’s Island, Indian Creek and Horseshoe Shoals. At Hampton, Virginia, we stopped for a slightly longer stay. Here we discovered old friends—Hugh Gloster and his family, of Hampton Institute. Hugh had been in Hiroshima as a Fulbright fellow at the university during our stay.

Also, I’m sorry to say that once again we found ourselves in an area of segregation. When we visited the local Marine Museum, I was deeply ashamed to see the look on my men’s faces when they saw “White” and “Colored” on the rest-room doors, here in my own country.