MOLONEY's PHOTOGRAPHY OPPORTUNITIES          

From 1 Apr to 1 Oct 1979 I was Second Mate aboard USNS MISPILLION (T-AO 105).  She was a jumboized CIMARRON class oiler and was the second Pacific Fleet oiler transferred to MSC.  She wasn’t pretty.  Her lines were laid out with a yardstick; but she was utilitarian.  She could pump fuel fast and had a good, modern freight transfer rig.

When I got to her I had already served a short (4 month) second mate tour on an avgas tanker.  The MISPILLION was a big comfortable ship with 5 mates, three who stood watches and a cargo mate and chief mate.  As senior watch officer I would have the coveted 4-8 watch.  I was the ship’s navigator and my watch had sunrise and set and the star times.  It was a job I loved.  I enjoyed running the coasts and reveled in celestial navigation with my precision Plath Sextant.

From my days as a cadet I had studied how the other mates did their fixes.  I had the approved academy celestial formulas and had learned how to do sight reduction using trigonometry tables in Bowditch, the merchant marine navigation bible.  At the academy we had been introduced to sight reduction techniques using the slide rule.  The old guys on the ships we sailed during our “sea-year” thought that was heresy, but a few were actually leaping beyond that to the new fangled navigation calculators like the NC-7 that would let you do the number crunching without going to the navigation tables like HO 214.  There was even a new version the Tamaya NC-77 that had the Nautical Almanac tables built in all the way to the unbelievably distant year of 2000, that was available to the devoted navigator willing to part with $300 (when the yen was 360 to a dollar).

MISPILLION was homeported in the Far East and divided her time operating around Japan and the Philippines in support of the 7th Fleet.  I fell right into the groove.  The unrep ships were what I was looking for.  Fleet operations with the navy and merchant marine standards in ship operation and pay.  The MSC crew was heavy on retired USN people who appreciated the more laid back way the ships were run.  All the fun stuff the navy did with minimal busy work, and overtime pay on top of it.

Standing the 04-0800 watch was great.  It was the best watch so the senior unlicensed seamen took it.  I had two able seamen and an ordinary seaman.  The AB’s were good solid performers, the OS was sort of ‘luck of the draw’.  They rotated faster than the AB’s as good ones were promoted and non-performers relegated to less demanding watches.  In the early morning there was nobody moving around ship to bother us.  It was pure ship driving.  I got to make my preparations to shoot stars and observe sunrise to check the compasses.  The unlicensed alternated on the wheel, lookout, or roving patrol.  The OS would also swab out the bridge and chartroom.  About 0500, whoever was on roving patrol would rove back to the galley where the night cook/baker would be taking the day’s pastry out of the oven.  A hot bun and fresh cup of coffee were one of the perks of the watch.

On days where there were no unreps scheduled for dawn, the time just after sunrise was pure luxury.  The navigation fixes were done, we had our stock of fresh pastry and the rest of the ship was waking up for the day’s labors.  Life was good.

The other half of the day was the 16-2000 watch.  That had its own charms.  There had usually been unrep work of some sort during the day, if not, there was almost always something to add an hour or two of overtime like correcting charts or maintaining damage control gear.  Unlike the USN, if there wasn’t something to do, your time was yours and allowed for plenty of reading and writing letters.  Once back on watch at 1600, there was the routine navigation of the ship and preparation for dinner relief.  Depending on the ship, one of the off watch mates would relieve the 16-2000 mate for chow.  On the unrep ships the watch was usually relieved between 1645 and 1700.  The watch mate could go back aft and eat at 1700 before the rush of day workers filled the messes.  You could usually shovel down dinner and be back on watch in just over 20 minutes.  The relieving mate got an hour of overtime for that.  Pretty good deal.  After dinner it was time to prepare for sunset and evening stars.  In good weather conditions there was a chance to see the green flash at sunset.

The Green Flash is a phenomenon that can be experienced at sunset (or sunrise if you know exactly where and when to look).  You need a sharp horizon and a perfectly clear atmosphere.  As the sun sets the light passing through the atmosphere is refracted (like a prism).  The amount of bending is slightly different for each color of the spectrum.  Red is the first to set with blue/indigo/violet being last, but scattered and absorbed in the atmosphere.  This leaves green, and in the last second or so of the visibility of the tip of the sun it may appear to turn a bright emerald green.

I’ve known mariners who have sailed for decades and never seen it.  I knew about it and in the late summer in the western Pacific and South China Sea the weather conditions favored us.  We started seeing them regularly.  I clued my watch standers in and at sunset all four of us could be found on the bridge wing with binoculars or the flying bridge using the 20 power ‘big eyes’ to savor the moment.  The word spread around the ship and we wound up with visitors.  It was kind of funny having so many seasoned mariners coming up to watch something that is there all the time under the right circumstances.  If a cloud appeared at the last minute (a frequent occurrence), there would be disappointment, but it just made the next sunset that much more to look forward to.  We got to the point where we were green flash snobs.  “Oh, that was a good one; or, Eh, that was fair’.  In the best circumstances you could see the flash start at the edges and sweep into the middle as that last fraction of a second of sun disappeared.  At worst you got to see yet another spectacular sunset at sea.  They just don’t make bad ones!

I had bought a nice Minolta single lens reflex camera at the Navy Exchange and was taking lots of photos.  The camera was a lot smarter than I was and did lots of automatic adjustments for you.  I decided I would shoot a series of pictures to show the green flash.  I waited for a good sunset and took the photos.  I got a great sunset series but when the pictures came back from the printer, the flash just was not right.  I chalked it up to lack of experience and not manually adjusting the f-stop (which I don’t even remember how to do now).