WE WERE MOORED at Solomon's Island midway through our nine day cruise with the Baltimore Yacht Club Fleet in 1956. It's located on the western shore of the Chesapeake, just across the river from the Naval Air Station at the mouth of the Patuxent River. We were supposed to cruise across the Bay and up the Choptank River to the Cambridge Yacht Club the next day. However, the Coast Guard advised us to stay put. Hurricane Betsy was passing offshore and they didn't want us going out onto the open waters until it was past.  

They called late that night to assure us we would be safe crossing the next day. Half way to Cambridge we received a panicked radio message from them asking where we were. The middle of the Bay we replied. Their advice, “Get the hell out of there. The hurricane has turned west and is headed right for you.”

We arrived at Cambridge well ahead of the hurricane, but the fleet captain was waiting for us on the dock when we moored. “The Buttercup is missing,” he informed us.

The Buttercup was a twenty-four foot Chris Craft Express Cruiser with a young couple and their infant daughter on board. Our Skipper, Emerson Patton, didn't hesitate. We headed out to backtrack along our route looking for them. A Coast Guard Cutter was dispatched from Cambridge to search along the course towards us.

We didn't worry. We were too young to have the good sense to worry. Fortunately, this was the type of weather that our forty-three foot Crash Boat had been designed for.

We found the Buttercup first, almost midway between Solomon's Island and Cambridge. A hose that carried cooling water from a fitting in the bottom to the engine had broken, and they didn't discover it until their batteries were covered and shorted out. They had no engine, radio, or pumps.

Our Skipper's first inclination was to transfer the family to our boat but the seas were already to rough to get them safely aboard. Two of the older Sea Scouts leaped aboard with hand pumps. They took over and made sure the seacock was closed to prevent the boat from shipping any more water, and then began pumping it out. We rigged a towline and began the long haul back to Cambridge.

The only danger was the prospect that we might foul our propellers on crab pots that were planted thick at the mouth of the Choptank River. Long lines ran from the pots on the bottom to cork floats bobbing on the surface. Each float had a color coded stick that identified the owner. I volunteered to crawl onto the bow and watch for them.

Fortunately, I was dressed in a bathing suit and the water was warm. The bow dug into each giant wave and swept over me in a giant sheet. As the bow rose on the other side, I had a dandy view like a preacher in his pulpit raised high above the water. I quickly pointed to every float I could see ahead of us and then took a giant gulp of air as the bow plunged into the next wave. It took us about an hour to clear the field of crab pots.

We arrived in Cambridge just as the eye of the hurricane passed overhead, and we were able to moor ourselves and the Buttercup without any trouble.

I remember later standing on the lawn in front of the yacht clubhouse. I was wearing a raincoat and spread my arms. I felt like a flying squirrel as the wind at the other side of the hurricane's eye filled the coat and held me up. I could not fall on my face no matter how far forward I leaned.

THE VAST MAJORITY of members at the Baltimore Yacht Club in the 1950s were oblivious to the presence of the Sea Scouts. They saw us but didn't pay that much attention. However, there was a significant minority whose sympathies lay with us and a small number who resented our intrusion among their select number. I'll save the later group for another time. 

Our friends probably would have supported us regardless of our contributions to the club. But it certainly never hurt that we were useful. We dressed up their ceremonies providing color guards and uniformed escorts for their daughters as they were paraded in competitions to select a Princess who would later vie for Queen of the Chesapeake, maybe even Miss Maryland. We did chores that their own sons wouldn't stoop to doing. We helped crew their yachts when they were short of friends. We ran the committee and safety boats for their regattas. Most importantly, we tagged along on their cruises and towed them to safety whenever they were in trouble.

Our best friends at the yacht club were Dr. Karl Ebling and his family. His yacht, the Emma S, was moored at the other end of the dock where the scout boats were moored. We occupied the least desirable slips close to shore and he would always stopped to say hello as he went to his mooring at the far end. One of us would jump to push his cart and help him unload it if he was transferring supplies or equipment from his car to the boat.

Dr. Ebling was a retired pediatrician with a sense of humor. Practical jokes were his forte. I could not mention him, even in passing, without sharing a few.

We ran out of food during the first summer cruise that I sailed on with the Sea Scouts. Our ship's cook had convinced himself that he could feed us for nine days for just five dollars each. Dr. Ebling stepped up and offered to feed us out of his own pocket after we ran out of provisions on the third day. For the remaining six, he and his wife fed us peanut butter sandwiches breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Surprisingly, it had no effect on me. I have never lost my love of peanut butter. Incidentally, I volunteered and was appointed ship's cook thereafter. But, that's another story.

Dr. Ebling could improvise a practical joke on the spur of the moment. During a visit to Chrisfield, Maryland, the entire yacht club fleet moored alongside a long dock used by local fishermen to offload their catch of the day into a warehouse nearby. Three of us had become trapped in the ship's dingy under the dock by other members of the crew wielding buckets of ice water. When we refused to come out, three of their number borrowed a dingy with a small outboard motor from one of the yacht club members and came after us. However, we had given them the slip and stationed ourselves on the dock and gave them a good dowsing of ice water when they appears. Half swamped and drenched, they rowed to the center of the harbor to escape us. One of them leaped overboard to swim back causing the dingy to swamp. 

Although filled with water, the airtanks fastened under the seats kept it afloat with two boys still sitting inside. Everyone was concerned that the outboard motor would not flood with sea water and began yelling instructions. One voice rose above the rest. It was Dr. Ebling instructing the boys to unclamp the motor and carry it over their heads to the dock. Everyone fell silent and looked at him. We all knew that the water was at least twenty feet deep. When we looked back towards the dingy, we saw one of the boys holding the motor over his head and about to step over the side.

We dove for the motor. It took us about a half hour to locate it in the murky waters, and another two hours to disassemble, clean, and reassemble it. Dr. Edling stood by all the while, sipping on a can of Eslinger's beer (he loved the trivia questions they printed on the cans) offering advice that everyone politely ignored.

On another trip to Cambridge, I contracted tonsillitis and Dr. Ebling sent me off to the pharmacy with a script. It was a mile and a half walk there. The pharmacist looked at me strangely when I presented the script to him. He handed it back saying, “I think someone is pulling your leg, son.”

The prescription instructed him to “dunk this reporbate's head in a jar of castor oil.” 

I read the replacement script carefully before making the trek back to the pharmacy.

I could continue but will permit myself just one more recollection. 

I was sitting at the clubhouse bar atop the terraces at Sue Island with Dr. Ebling one Saturday afternoon. We were eating crab cake sandwiches with chips. He had a beer and I had a Coke. When a new yacht club member joined us. The new member became curious about a large brandy snifter filled with currency in large denominations sitting on the back bar. It was placed there by one of the wives for a charity she was promoting. However, Dr. Ebling's explanation was something different.

“See that island out there,” he said pointing in the direction of Miller Island.

“Yeah,” the new member responded.

“It's a desolate place,” Dr. Ebling continued. “Just a sand spit barely above the high water mark and swamp.”

“So.”

“So,” Dr. Ebling explained, “anyone who can spend the night there wins all that money.”

The new member seemed interested. “What's the catch?” 

“Mosquitoes,” Dr. Ebling answered. 

“So what's the bet?”

“Just put a hundred in the snifter and spend the night there.”

“That's all there is to it?”

“Yep.”

I was familiar with the good doctor's impromptu jokes and knew enough to keep my attention on my sandwich if I wanted to see how it played out. The bartender was similarly inclined.

After mulling over Dr. Ebling's story, the new member seemed to suspect that something wasn't quite right. “It can't be that hard,” he muttered, almost to himself.

“Nope,” Dr. Ebling agreed.

“Why haven't you done it?”

“Too old,” Dr. Ebling replied softly, examining his sandwich as though one bite might be better than another. “Don't need the money.”

“All a fella needs is some repellant,” the new member speculated. “Maybe a mosquito net. They can't be that bad,” he added, “can they?”

Dr. Ebling shook his head. “They ran this same thing a few years back,” Dr. Ebling told him. “I'm surprised nobody remembers it.”

The new member perked up. “Somebody won it?”

“Yep,” Dr. Ebling replied without missing a beat.

“How'd he do it?”

“Well, the rules say you have to beach your boat on the island,” Dr. Ebling explained. “No problem there. The bottom is sand and the water's deep enough for a cruiser to nudge right up to it.”

The new member nodded his understanding.

The doctor looked around conspiratorially and leaned close to the new member. He looked around, too, and leaned towards the doctor.

“Then he hung a lantern on the stern. Drew all the mosquitoes to it while he slept peacefully on the bow,” Dr. Ebling concluded with a nod and turned back to his lunch.

The new member thanked him with a smile and left after giving the bartender five twenties to put into the snifter.

I hung around that evening after the other scouts went home. Dr. Ebling offered to drop me on his way so that I could stay for the show.

We watched the new member motor to the island that evening, and saw him beach his cruiser on the island.

“He's going to be stuck there in about an hour when the tide goes out,” I observed.

Dr. Ebling nodded and opened another Esslinger's. 

We saw the lantern burning brightly at his stern until the mosquitoes arrived. It then disappeared in a dark haze, and we went home.

The bartender told me the next weekend, that the man got his boat off the island at about two the next morning when the tide returned.

Dr. Ebling died when I was still a young adult leader of that Sea Scout Ship, while I was still in Law School. His funeral was well attended by friends and family as well as many Sea Scouts.

IT DIDN'T TAKE LONG before all the boys in the detention facility wanted to be part of the Sea Scout program that I was offering them. Not that the program was all that spectacular, but it offered them a relief from the routine and regimentation of incarceration. We went to Dana Point all day every Saturday to play with boats. Even the classes on Wednesday evenings got them out of the barracks to do something different. And, the classes I taught were nothing like the regular schoolwork that they sat through every weekday. I hid lessons in science, math, and history deep inside practical courses of piloting, seamanship, and navigation. 

It didn't take long for me to see that these hardened criminals were still boys at heart. No, I'm not some bleeding heart liberal. Indeed, I ran into a contradiction early on when I referred to them as criminals while they were being taught that they were “boys who had made mistakes.” Sorry, I retorted, “Did you commit a crime and were convicted of it?” “Yes.” “Then you are a criminal.”

Of course, their records would be expunged and they would lose the label as being criminals until the next time. Unfortunately, for most of them, there would be a next time and they would move on to another facility where they would serve more time. After that, their records would not be expunged and the label would stick for life. However, in the time I met them, there was a chance, just a chance.

Like every other boy I ever met, they tested limits. They tried to see what they could get away with. They looked for “buttons to push.” Fortunately, I had some experience commanding boys, and I had cop eyes. I was used to saying things once and having people obey. That experience served me well.

I never yelled at them. Just about every week that I visited the detention facility, I would find a new Deputy Probation Officer in training. It was easy to tell which ones would make it and which would not. Yelling was a dead giveaway. You say something once and take action if someone doesn't listen. The boys were smart. They got the message pretty quickly.

I learned very quickly to keep an eye on the clever ones. There's a big difference between “smart” and “clever.” All career criminals are clever. The smart ones quit.

The clever ones were guileless. They didn't even realize when they were doing something wrong. I remember one evening when the Officer on duty sent two of the boys to retrieve the supplies I kept at the facility in a storage cabinet. They soon returned without them, and one of the boys asked for the keys. He said the cabinet was locked. The Officer merely looked at him, and the kid's buddy laughed. “He isn't going to give you the keys.” “Why?” “We're criminals!”

Times being what they are, my willingness to work with the boys raised some suspicions. I was frequently asked by the boys, “How much are you being paid to do this?” “Nothing.” That raised some eyebrows among them and it took a while to earn their trust. No, I wasn't a pedophile. Hell, one of them probably would have slit my throat had I tried anything.

The most important thing they taught me was the duty of a parent. Remember when your mother used to ask, “What would you do if your friends [jump off a cliff/stick their fingers in an electrical socket/eat rat poison]? Whatever? What would you do?” Honestly? You would have done it, too. That's what kids do. Every one of the boys at that detention facility was a member of a gang. They were caught doing exactly the same thing all of their peers were doing. The remarkable thing about them is that they were caught.

Remember this, if you are a parent of a preteen or a teenager: You most important job is to be aware of your child's friends. Whatever they're doing, your child's doing. It's that simple. 

Occasionally, I would meet a parent. These boys rarely had two or more than one who had the interest to visit them. Once in a great a parent would tell me that they had moved while their son was incarcerated. Their son had a chance. The others, the ones who returned to the same homes in the same neighborhoods were condemned. The gang was waiting for them. So I labored hoping against all hope that at least one would survive.

I HAD BEEN working with the Sea Scouts that I recruited from the juvenile detention facility for about three years when I had the bright idea to enter them in a competition. Sea Scouts, mostly from the West Coast competed twice each year. Some traveled from Canada and Mexico, and there was even one that occasionally showed up from England. They met at Coast Guard Island in San Francisco Bay for the Ancient Mariners Regatta each Memorial Day weekend, and at the U.S. Marine Corps Base at Camp Pendleton each Thanksgiving Day weekend for Rendezvous. Another Sea Scout Ship at Dana Point was preparing for the Ancient Mariners Regatta and my boys were practicing along side them when the idea occurred to me. 

I turned to the Deputy Probation Officer standing next to me and suggested it. He surprised me by saying that he too had been thinking of it.

He told me about a field trip the boys had taken to tour a warship at Long Beach. One of the members of our Sea Scouts had been with them and began showing off what he had learned. Finally, while on the ship's bridge, the boy heard the ship's clock ring two bells. The boy turned to another and explained, "That's thirteen hundred hours, it's the Afternoon Watch." The ship's captain overheard him and was amazed. It was just one example of the knowledge he had demonstrated all day. 

Both Sea Scout competitions involved two days of grueling tests of individual skills in piloting, seamanship, and small boat handling as well as teamwork. Most of the ships competing at these events were comprised of groups of teenagers who had various levels of experience between one and four years. We knew that if we entered a team, we would not have any experienced members to carry them through the events.

Generally, the boys were assigned to the facility where I volunteered for the final six months of their terms of incarceration. The best we could hope for was to assemble and train a team in that six months only. Even then, some might get early releases and we would end up with team members with only a couple of months to train. Oh, and let me point out that I only had a few hours to work with the boys each week.

We knew that we would never get permission to transport the boys on an overnight trip to San Francisco, so we planned to attend Rendezvous at Long Beach where we could transport them back to the barracks each night following the day's competition.

Besides teaching them the skills that they would need, I had to come up with uniforms for them. Inasmuch as we had no budget, I had to solicit donations. Fortunately, I was able to purchase second hand uniforms at the Navy Thrift shop, but had to order shoes, socks, ties, and hats as well as all regulation insignia new. A local dry cleaner volunteered to sew on the insignia and press and clean the uniforms for free.

The Deputy Probation Officer was a retired U.S. Marine Sergeant. He taught the boys how to march and spit shine their shoes. They surprised me at one of our Wednesday night classroom sessions, bringing their shoes to show off their handiwork. They were as good as any I had ever seen.

Despite the fact that the boys had very poor study skills, they applied themselves to learning a daunting array of academic knowledge: the 32 points of the compass, the 32 points of relative bearings, first aid, navigation, signaling, and more. They learned knots and marlinspike seamanship. Then they practiced the team events: rope climbing, boatswain’s chair lifts, rowing, swimming (many had never learned how). The most difficult event, the one that few ships could master, even with many years of training and practice, was scuttlebutt; assembling a tripod from three twelve foot spars, erecting it over a barrel filled to the brim with water, and raising the barrel with a rope and tackle, then lowering and disassembling the rig in an extremely short period of time - all without spilling a drop!

Keep in mind that these kids were all members of gangs, often rival gangs. Many probation staffers predicted that they could never cooperate in a team event.

I won't keep you wondering. They performed well. They not only won an overall award, they placed third in the scuttlebutt competition.

They made me proud. The Deputy Probation Officer I worked with was beaming with pride when they accepted their award and returned to display it at the facility. I was also proud of the other Sea Scouts at the competition who took our boys to heart. They were genuinely distressed that our boys couldn't remain in the evening for the dance and celebrations. They cheered for our boys, especially at the scuttlebutt finals.

Overall, we entered a team from the juvenile detention facility three years, with three different crews, and they won awards each time. Skippers of other ships approached me with wonder in their voices to congratulate them. One admitted that he had brought teams to competitions eight years before they ever won anything.

I will be forever proud of their performance. I only regret that a physical disability forced me to retire and there was no one to keep the program going.

NOTE: Inasmuch as regulations preclude me from sharing any photographs of the boys, the pictures accompanying this article are of other Sea Scouts demonstrating the competition events. 

BOY SCOUTS LEARNED a little about a lot of different things. Sea Scouts learned a lot about piloting, seamanship, and small boat handling. As a result, they were valued over the years when they grew up and joined seafaring organizations such as the Navy, the Coast Guard, and the Merchant Marine. Most were appointed leaders as soon as they arrived at boot camp. 

I wish I could have used this history to show the boys who I recruited from Juvenile Detention that the skills I was teaching them could offer an escape from the gang life in which they were trapped. Unfortunately, as the years passed, Sea Scouting lost its cache with the naval services.

From its inception in 1912 until the end of World War II, Sea Scouts who joined the Navy, Coast Guard, or Merchant Marine and made a career of it, rose through the ranks. Many earned high honors and some even became admirals. Thus, when I was a Sea Scout in the 1950s we never wanted for support. If we needed a vessel, one could always be found lying around some Navy yard unused and signed over to us. If we needed help servicing the engines, a Navy chief would show up. Inasmuch as most of our equipment predated World War II, the type of engines that many of the older engineers had cut their teeth on as new recruits, it was like a bit of nostalgia for them to come and help us, and we learned a lot working with them.

All of our boats had 24 volt electrical systems, each carrying four heavy duty six volt batteries connected in serial. Every year, a Navy supply truck would arrive at our skipper's home to pick up the old batteries and provide us with newly re-cored ones.

When we acquired the Crash Boat, it was driven by twin Hercules V8 gas engines. These were not like the V8s in automobiles. They were much larger and could drive all 17 tons of that boat at high speed. We loved the speed but flinched when we saw the gas bill. Each engine drank about eight gallons of gas per hour.

Our skipper called the Navy for a solution and a tractor dragging a flat bed trailer soon arrived with eight brand new, supercharged Hercules six cylinder diesels with transmissions attached. The Navy had acquired them to test a new clutch system that didn't meet their specifications. They were good enough for us though and we inherited them. 

The Navy truck driver was happy to drive to a warehouse owned by one of the Scout's fathers to drop off six of them, and take the remaining two to a marina. The next week, a team of Navy engineers showed up to help us rig out the Hudson Invaders and install the diesels. Though not as powerful or fast thereafter, we found that we could afford the diesel fuel.

We were always welcome at Naval facilities. We often took our vessels to the Naval Academy where they were lifted out of the water and cradled in dry dock so we could clean and paint their bottoms. We also took advantage of numerous trips on Navy ships. On one occasion, we were at sea on a diesel submarine when the call came that one of our adult leaders was needed back in Baltimore. His wife was having a baby before expected. The Navy sent a helicopter from Norfolk to pick him up and then flew him to Baltimore on a Navy transport.

You are right to wonder how I ended up in the Army. I was not an ordinary Sea Scout. I also had my Coast Guard license as an operator of commercial vessels. I was a college and a law school graduate. I applied for Officer Candidate School in the Navy and seemed a shoo in. However, the North Vietnamese didn't have much of a naval force and the U.S. Navy was slow to find a slot for me. I waited until the last hour before my draft notice required me to report and swore in at 5 p.m. Four hours later, the Naval Recruiter called to tell me that they had an opening but it was too late.

Unfortunately, things changed during the 1960s. The Boy Scouts of America distanced themselves from the uniformed services to avoid the public's disapproval over the war in Vietnam. By the end of the war, Sea Scouts were no longer enjoying their special relationship with the Naval Services.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Sea Scouts dropped the Navy uniform and adopted more casual wear. Their program de-emphasized naval tradition. The Navy responded by establishing their own program to attract teenagers who wanted to prepare for a career in the naval services.

During this same time, there was a major shift in world economies. Americans discovered that their dollars could buy more goods and services in foreign lands. The Merchant Marine service began to shrink as ship owners re-registered their vessels under foreign flags and hired foreign nationals to man them. Thus, I could offer my Sea Scouts little promise of a naval career to inspire them to learn the skills that I was able to teach them. 

Ultimately, I think that America has suffered for their shortsightedness. Ships, no longer held to the higher standards of U.S. Registry, are more likely to be involved in accidents. Crews are more likely to abandon their passengers. Goods sold here are shipped in foreign bottoms and, in the event of crisis, we are dependent on the whim of other nations to transport men and material to trouble spots around the world.

Meanwhile, young men and women seeking good paying jobs won't find them at American ports. Certainly, there are some few openings to maintain and operate yard boats, service barges, and tugs, but nothing like the rich opportunities that used to exist.

So, I taught my boys the skills and hoped that they would serve them in other careers that hopefully saved them from a life of crime.  

THE BOYS WHO I recruited into the Sea Scouts from the Juvenile Detention Facility at Joplin, California, never ceased to amaze me. One of the more interesting traits that I found in them was their fascination for riddles, brain teasers as some refer to them. I dusted off my copy of the companion book to the 1979 PBS production, The Search for Solutions, and taught them to look for patterns, chance, and feedback, and to model problems as a method of solving them. 

Apparently these boys, neglected by the American education system, had not yet had their native curiosity driven out of them. They still exhibited, in the words of that PBS show, a rage to know and I was determined to feed it.

If you are fortunate enough to get your hands on a copy of The Search for Solutions (no, you can't have mine – it's one of the few hardcover books that I have retained), you will find an interesting story of a young girl, aged eight, who, like my boys, was as yet unspoiled by an educational system that force feeds children with information and demands that they regurgitate it without thought. She “...had just stumbled onto the fact that some numbers are prime... She called them 'unfair numbers...' because there's no way to share them out evenly.” My boys, too, understood well the concept of unfairness.

Almost every class began with a demand that I give them a riddle to solve. They rarely had anything to do with piloting, seamanship, or small boat handling. For example, I once challenged them to figure out how many handshakes it would take for each of them to shake hands with every other boy in the room. They huddled up and decided to model the problem. They formed a line against one wall. The first boy shook hands with each of the others and wrote the total on the board. The next did the same, omitting the boy who had already gone ahead. When the last one had no one left to shake hands with, he added the numbers written down by the others. It was a fair and correct solution for a group who had never studied algebra and could not craft a formula to solve the problem.

What you probably are missing at this point is the fact that had the Deputy Probation Officer in the room and I smiling. Many of these boys were rival gang members and it was miraculous to see them shaking hands with each other. Ordinarily, they would be fighting tooth and nail, often with knives and firearms.

In time, I was able to use their fascination with riddles to teach them some simple algebra to solve problems as well as simple navigation equations to calculate Time, Distance, and Speed.  

Now, some of you may wonder why I never became a real classroom teacher. The simple truth is that most teachers I have known have told me that the establishment would have destroyed me. I tend to agree with them.

2012 IS THE CENTENNIAL of Sea Scouting in America. Inasmuch as it was a significant part of my early life during which I not only honed my love of history and was exposed to a great storyteller who influenced my style, but also learned skills that prepared me to be a soldier and an officer, I am writing a series of postings on Sea Scouting to contribute to the celebration. 

My last hurrah to Sea Scouting came as the skipper of a crew of young men who were incarcerated in the Orange County Juvenile Detention Center at Joplin, California. The Boy Scouts of America weren't especially pleased with me for registering juvenile delinquents into their august body – Boy Scouts are good boys. Too bad. I figured these boys needed a little positive role modeling more than good boys.

Generally, these boys were not successful scholars. Indeed, their teachers at the detention center seemed to have little hope of doing anything more than warehousing them during their periods of incarceration. I offered to help explaining that I could tailor lessons in piloting, seamanship, and small boat handling to complement whatever they were teaching in math, science, and history. All they had to do was send me their lesson plans and I would make adjustments in my program of instruction. They never took me up on the offer.

One day, the principal of their school complained to the facility director that I was setting the boys up for failure - modern American education is all about building self-esteem regardless of any lack of accomplishment. She had gotten her hands on a test I had given them in the rudiments of navigation. One question in particular irked her: If it is solar noon where you are and 1:00 pm in Los Angeles, where are you? She wasn't happy when I explained that all but one of the boys had answered correctly even though I had not previously given them the answer – I had taught them the skill they needed to answer the question. I believe that the boys rose to my expectations of them and fell to hers. Unfortunately, her expectations were parallel to the ones that society had for these boys.

This and other experiences with the boys led to an interesting conversation that we had one day when I asked them, “What is a teacher?” They danced around the subject for several minutes until I gave them another question to steer their thinking: “What was the first thing you ever learned?” 

"No one can "get" an education, for of necessity education is a continuing process." – Louis L'Amour

After some deliberation, they agreed that walking was the first thing they learned. Good start. Who taught them? Their family. How did they teach them? This took a lot more deliberation.

I helped them imagine themselves lying on the floor, raising their heads to look around, and seeing feet and the lower parts of legs passing by. It was amazing how seriously they took to the exercise until they came up with an answer to my question: Imitation. Their families demonstrated the skill and they imitated it.

“Did they master it right away?” No, using their experience with their younger siblings for a guide, they visualized their first unsteady steps. They visualized themselves hanging on to furniture or holding someone's hand to steady themselves.

The last part of the exercise was the “Ah ha!” moment. Beaming with pride, the boys declared that a teacher is someone who exposes you to a challenge and then holds your hand until you master it. The corollary is simply that no one can teach you anything; you have to learn it. Personally, I have never heard it stated better.

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“I quit school in the 10th grade because it was getting in the way of my education.” – Louis L'Amour, The Education of a Wandering Man

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This incident frequently comes to mind, especially when I read an article such as the one that appeared in the Los Angeles times on Sunday, August 21st, Chocolate Milk? Not in schools, reporting the debate at the Santa Monica/Malibu School Board to ban flavored milk in schools. Interestingly, the preponderance of comments in the discussion thread following this article berated the school board for focusing on this issue when the problem they purport to be addressing, obesity, is rooted elsewhere and that there are far more important issues, such as poor academic performance, that they should focus on. I say “interestingly,” because discussion threads attached to news on the Internet are not known for common sense or rational speech.

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"What is education but a conditioning of the mind to a society and a way of life." – Louis L'Amour, The Californios

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I met one of the boys, a man now with a wife and daughter, working in a store that my wife and I patronize. We had a pleasant chat and always pause to say hello whenever we've gone back there. He is the only one I met or heard of since retiring from Sea Scouting. I hope there are more. Somehow, even one is enough to provide a lasting sense of pride and accomplishment. Too bad too many real teachers fail to realize that teaching someone to think for themselves is its own reward. 

[Note: If it is solar noon (the time when the sun is highest above the horizon) where you are and 1:00 pm in Los Angeles, you are approximately 15º west of Los Angeles. The earth rotates 360º every 24 hours or 15º every hour. You would need more information to determine latitude and thereby fix your position at the intersection of latitude and longitude.] 

I WAS REPEATEDLY stunned during the eight years that I skippered a Sea Scout Ship for youth at risk – children incarcerated for crimes – to learn that most lived within a mile or two of the Pacific Ocean and never even seen it. Then again, I wonder how much of the Chesapeake Bay I might not have seen but for Sea Scouting, even though I lived within a few miles of its shores. 

Before I continue my story of Sea Scouting, I must pause to introduce you to the Chesapeake Bay inasmuch as it was the venue of the stories that I will share. It is the largest estuary – a body of water fed by rivers and opening to the sea – in the Continental United States. It was formed over many millennia as rivers draining from the Piedmont Plateau deposited silt to form the Eastern Shore which encompasses parts of Maryland and Virginia and almost the entire state of Delaware.

The Chesapeake is undoubtedly the most frightening body of water that I ever sailed. I didn't understand this at first. I grew up there as a sailor and was accustomed to it. However, the bluewater sailors who I met during those years were universally cowed by it. I failed to understand their fear until I too sailed the blue waters of open oceans.

Still waters are of little concern to anyone, regardless of where they occur. As hard as it may be for a landlubber to imagine, I have encountered them everywhere, even on the broad oceans of the Atlantic and the Pacific, and the Chesapeake Bay as well. The difference between these oceans and the Bay lies in the aspect of their waves.

I have experienced ocean waves that were many times larger than those on the Chesapeake, but none as steep as those on that Bay. Ocean waves grow in interval as they grow in size. That is, the space between them becomes longer and the slope up one side and down the other remains generally uniform. However, waves in the Chesapeake tend to maintain the same interval regardless of their height. Thus, they become steeper as they grow in size.

Riding on steeper waves is not only uncomfortable, it is more dangerous. Vessels pitch – tipping fore and aft – and yaw – rolling side to side – more violently on steeper waves. Local boat builders on the Chesapeake compensate by building boats of a uniform length – about 32 to 37 feet. Such a vessel generally sits comfortably on at least two waves under most conditions, thus reducing the violence of the pitching. They build hard chined boats – boats with flat bottoms – to reduce the yaw. Most blue water sailors visit the bay in longer, round bottomed vessels that do not fare as well in the local conditions. These are better suited to the open waters of an ocean.

Flat bottomed boats with center boards - projections from the bottom of the boat to prevent leeway or side slipping - are better adapted to shallow waters than the vessels that bluewater sailors rode. Thus, they feared navigating shallow waters of the Chesapeake where depths rarely exceeding a few fathoms. Indeed, there are many places on the Bay that can be negotiated only at high tide. Running aground is rarely a concern in the open ocean unless you approach too close to the shore. Sailing from any point on the West Coast of the United States, you have a thousand feet of water under your keel after progressing little more than a mile from harbor. You may well bump into the shore line in many places on Catalina Island without ever running aground! There is no Continental Shelf off the West Coast as there is on the East Coast. 

“Baltimore lay very near the great protein factory of the Chesapeake Bay, and out of the Bay it ate divinely.” – H. L. Mencken

Although pollution has greatly diminished its production of seafood in recent years, it was still teeming with life when I sailed there as a Sea Scout. We could stop almost anywhere in the Bay, tie one end of our lines to the gunwale of the boat and toss the other ends over the side with crude weights and scrap meat, and soon harvest a bushel of hard shelled crabs. Wading in the shallows with nothing but a rake, we could harvest a bushel of soft shelled crabs in minutes.

The most exciting fishing I ever experienced was in taking stripped bass – we knew them as “Rock” – from the Bay. Good eats, too! Most fished with stout rods and strong lines. I preferred ultralight spinning tackle and 6 pound test line. We trolled for Rock. The faster the boat pulled your lure through the water, the larger the fish you caught. Rock struck the lure like a marlin and “ran” with it like a demon. A three pounder on my rig sometimes required ten or fifteen minutes to “boat.” I never hooked one over seven pounds, but saw many larger ones, up to twenty-five pounds.

A local brewery released tagged Rock every year, and cash prizes were given to anyone who caught them. A ten thousand dollar prize in those days was a fortune and thousands would be fishing nearby the day that the tagged fish were released.

Although just a little more than two hundred miles in length and averaging just a few miles in width, the Bay has more than three thousand miles of shoreline when the beaches of its tributaries are measured. Thus, a sailor can spend the better part of a lifetime exploring them all. I believe that I sailed on every major river that fed the Bay. James and Elizabeth were named to honor monarchs of the colonial age. Middle and Back bespoke of location. Choptank, Rappahonock, Susquehanna, Patauxent, and Potomac harkened back to the native tribes that once populated the region. Sailing on the Bay was like leafing through the pages of a living book of history.

There you have it. My Bay. I left it at age twenty-three and still pine for it these forty-six years later. 

SEA SCOUTING  in the 1950s was hard work. Seriously, hard work. I didn't get to “ride” on a boat until I had invested at least three months scraping, sanding, caulking, and painting the hulls of four boats – a combined one hundred and twenty-eight feet of hulls from keel to gunwales (where the deck meets the side). Then we had to clean and paint the cabins, and sand and varnish the brightwork (handrails and other natural wood trim). There were brass to polish and engines to service, sails to sew and bilges to clean. As I said, seriously hard work.

There were fewer and ten of us who met regularly each Saturday to work on the boats. I suppose it was my willingness to show up and put in the effort that quickly won me a place in their ranks. For my part, I was thrilled to find people, the skipper and the senior boys, who had the patience to teach me the skills that I needed and frequently complimented my work. That was a unique experience for me.

The Skipper inspected our work product, but the older boys taught me the skills and corrected my mistakes. Thus, I learned to “pass it on” was a key element of Sea Scouting. Almost every skill I learned, I learned from my peers. In turn, I taught those who followed me as I gained experience. It was a lesson that has served me well all my life. How much better would the world be if everyone shared that philosophy.

Few of today's Sea Scouts have wooden boats. Most are plastic and they have been deprived of that experience. Indeed, as an adult Sea Scout – I skippered ships for my children and their friends as well as youth-at-risk (gang kids serving time in juvenile detention facilities) I have often wondered how many would hang around if they had to work like we did back then. Unfortunately, they are growing up in a world of entitlements and guarantees. What will happen when society can no longer afford them?

Do I sound old and crotchety? Speak up! I can't hear you... 

TURNING THIRTEEN WAS a momentous time of my life. It gave me a new source of freedom from my father's abuse when shortly after that celebration, a school chum, Lindsey Fisher, invited me to join the Sea Scouts. I had been a Cub Scout and a Boy Scout, and only recently joined the Explorer Post when the invitation came. Although I had worn my brand new Explorer uniform but once, I was ready to hang it up for Sea Scouting as soon as I learned that it would take me on adventures almost every week, far from home.

I had never heard of the Sea Scouts and quickly learned that almost no one else had ever heard of them either. It was created when the first Boy Scouts outgrew the organization and wanted to continue with the organization. It so happened that one of the adult sponsors of the Boy Scouts in America had a sailing yacht and took these boys for a ride that has continued to this day, one hundred years later.

I rode my bike to Lindsey's home. He lived in a community named Stoneleigh, near the elementary school we had attended. From there we rode to the Skipper's house. Adult leaders of Sea Scout Ships are known by that familiar title. There, we squeezed into the Skipper's 1949 DeSoto with another boy of our age, Jim Urch. The older members of the crew – Terry Feelemyer, John White, Bob Cook, and Barry Monaco – piled into Barry's Jeep Wagoneer, and we traveled a confusing maze of highways and byways to Ethel's Boatyard. I couldn't see much hunkered down in the backseat of the DeSoto and felt very overwhelmed.

I suppose you may think that I am reading these names from a roster or looking at a picture of them. I'm not. That day and those boys are seared into my memory. Yes, it was that significant an event in my life those fifty-four years ago. 

Ethel's was located on Frog Mortar Creek, a muddy tributary of Middle River near Essex, Maryland, near to the Martin Aircraft Plant. In case you missed it, the Martin's plant was an important contributor to America's war effort during WWII. It was so important that they camouflaged it covering the entire facility, including the massive parking lots with camouflage nets. Unfortunately, Middle River and the main line tracks of the Pennsylvania Railroad formed an arrowhead pointing directly to the plant's location and those landmarks couldn't be camouflaged. Even more unfortunately, the camouflage netting collapsed under the weight of snow during its first winter, and workers weren't able to remove their cars until the spring thaw. But, I digress...

Ethel was dredging the channel when we arrived. I didn't know her when I first spotted her struggling armpit-deep in the water, probably up to her hips in silt, dragging a large metal bucket with two three-foot long wooden handles out into the creek at the end of her railway boat ramp. When she was satisfied with its position, she waved to the operator on her antique Caterpillar tractor, and he began to drag Ethel and her dredge back to shore with a steel cable that joined them. Keep in mind that this was sometime in April and the water was just thawing from the winter freeze, and Ethel was wearing only coveralls, no footwear and no shirt. Imagine the sight it made for an unworldly fourteen year old boy from the suburbs of Baltimore.

“Our” boats, as I came to know them, included a 35' Captain's Gig, a 24' Seaplane Tender, and a 27' sloop, all wooden, all Navy Surplus. The Captain's Gig would be familiar to anyone who has ever looked at photos taken at Pearl Harbor just after the Japanese attack on December 7th. Boats like it can be seen hovering near the sunken and burning ships, their crews fishing injured sailors from the oil slick waters. The Seaplane Tender was an open personnel carrier with a bench seat along either side to carry passengers to and from float planes. The sloop was previously used at the United States Naval Academy to train midshipmen in the art of sailing. All were on loan to us from the Navy. They liked us in those days. Not so much after the Vietnam War. (I'll talk more of that in later postings.)  

Later in the day, after doing a little scrapping and painting, we took a ride to the Baltimore Yacht Club on Sue Creek, at the confluence of Middle River and the Chesapeake Bay, where our boats would join the rest of our “fleet.” Here I was introduced to our flagship, a 42' Crash Boat, used to retrieve downed fliers from the English Channel during WWII. Interestingly, while researching and writing Rebels on the Mountain, I learned that Fidel Castro had attempted to purchase a crash boat just like ours to transport his men from Mexico to Cuba. Unfortunately for him, he had to settle for the Granma, a vastly inferior, though slightly larger cabin cruiser.   

I will never forget that day and those people until my dying breath. It was the beginning of an adventure that taught me that I wasn't the lazy misanthrope and coward that my father claimed as my lot in life. It introduced me to men who became my surrogate fathers, who prized my efforts and accomplishments. It made me a member of a crew that included older boys who became my friends, upperclassmen who elevated my lowly status a peg above the other high school freshmen. It taught me skills that served me well all my life. Why else do you think I am writing this?