Speaking of Ed Meier reminds me when Captain Pearce (stoned to the gills and mad because someone did not honor his request for beer for the crew) decided to demonstrate to everyone in the MEK (Mers-el-Kebir, Algeria) basin how a true Ship of the Line could get underway with a flourish. In the after engine room, I was on pump watch, Renslow had the top watch, Tony Colpo was on the throttles and some newcomer fireman second was the unfortunate victim of an indoctrination experience as messenger of the watch that he would never forget. In fact, I don't think he was able to even recover his voice and composure for a week.

We had been idling at the pier, singled up (the lines had been reduced from double to single) and spinning engines awaiting Hap's return from wherever captains disappeared to when ashore. The Edison was a picture of total serenity when someone yelled down the hatch, "Here comes the skipper and he's mad as hell?"

Simultaneously with "Cast off" we got our first bell and engine order for one Third Ahead Port and immediately the stern of the ship left the pier. All of us in the engineers were so familiar with Hap's docking bells that once we received that first bell everything else fell into place automatically. None of us, however, had the vaguest notion of what was to happen when we floated away from the dock some 200 feet. The next bell was Flank Ahead Starboard and Full Astern Port and all hell broke loose. It is to be remembered in naval engineering this procedure is for extreme emergency, not routine getting underway. The Edison reared up on her fan tail, burner "batters' in the fire rooms became hysterical, safety valves chattered against their restraints, throttle men did a valiant though losing effort to keep from hurling boiler water directly into the turbines and it was surprising the main blowers didn't hurl unburned fuel through the stacks. What a mess?

Within what seemed to be moments, though it had to be longer than that, we were headed for the sub nets (drawn across all harbor entrances) at flank speed. Two sub net tender crewmen dove over the side in a fruitless effort to get away from a destroyer run amok. Meier said he was nearly petrified as the ship headed out and appeared to be heading directly toward the shoals that lay at the foot of the well remembered cliff off to the starboard. Nobody questions the captain's orders, of course, so Ed said he surreptitiously managed to get the helmsman to gradually ease the ship a bit to port. The Edison's wake nearly swamped the net tender. Meanwhile back in the after engine room, we were trying to restore order which involved sliding the upended floor plates back into their regular position, checking for exploded gauges and retrieving the Joe pot, which had upended and rolled nearly to the bilges.