FIX BAYONETS!

The Sea Services have a wide variety of customs and traditions that have come down to us over the years. Many of them seem to have an air of the ridiculous, viewed in the light of our modern world. Most of them still have the power to create camaraderie, often because of their ridiculous nature rather than in spite of it.

‘Crossing the line’ is one of those traditions. It is celebrated in very similar form whether the line being crossed is the Equator, the Arctic or Antarctic circles, or the International Date Line. The ceremonies are similar for each line but of course, each line has details that separate its ceremony from the rest.

In general, when a ship crosses one of these lines, King Neptune comes aboard, with his royal court, to admit those who have not previously crossed the line into the fraternity of those who have. The initiation can be pretty rambunctious and the preparations sometimes even more so.

Onboard the CGC Staten Island, crossing the Arctic Circle in the summer of 1973, the preparations greatly outweighed the actual celebration.

The number of ‘blue noses’ (non initiates) happened to greatly outnumber the ‘Polar Bears’ (initiates) on this trip, and included the XO. The ‘Polar Bears’ failed to take this into account, secure in the knowledge of their inherent superiority.

Having held a number of meetings to plan the festivities, the ‘Polar Bears’ went unquestioningly when another meeting was announced, to take place on the forward recreation deck. Once they had all arrived, but before they figured out that they had been set up, the hatches were dogged and they were prisoners of the ‘blue noses’. Pounding on the hatches returned only laughter. Threats returned nothing at all.

The routine of the ship continued while the ‘blue noses’ destroyed all the materials that had been gathered for the actual ceremony. The ‘Polar Bears’ remained confined long enough for the destruction, plus a few hours, just for ensuring that the maximum psychological benefit to the prisoners. When they were released, they were not happy, but didn’t have the tools to really make up for their embarrassment. Crossing the line was somewhat toned down for that crew.

On CGC Southwind, preparations also didn’t follow the established plan. The Aviation detachment, spoilsports that we were, really didn’t want to participate. We started off the day with our clothes switched around, everything inside out, underwear on the outside as did the rest of the newcomers. In order to avoid the actual initiation, we were willing to do almost anything.

The JP5 pump room had a leak; (just a small one) to the extent that the room was awash in about six inches of jet fuel. Cleaning that room up with mops and buckets was preferable to going through the initiation, so that’s what most of us did for the next six hours. A couple however, chose to do otherwise.

ASM 3 Missing Link and HM 3 Doc decided to interfere with the preparations for the ceremony. They put on their wetsuits under their uniforms and went up onto the flight deck, where they broke out a fire hose and lowered one of the flight deck safety net/rails. Sitting in the net gave them a commanding view of the fantail, underneath the flight deck,  where the Chiefs and First Class Petty Officers were making their preparations. A 2 ½ inch fire hose makes a wonderful statement, especially when the water that’s being used is drawn directly out of the icy North Atlantic and sprayed on people whose defenses are nothing more than a little cotton uniform cloth. Missing Link and Doc weren’t the only aggressors. A few members of the ship’s crew also arrived on the scene and joined the fray.

The Chiefs and Petty Officers 1st Class were not at all amused. Though freezing, they fought back, initially with hoses of their own, (which drove back the crewman but had little effect on the airedales) and then with a frontal assault that overwhelmed the miscreants and carried the day. Fire hoses are much more effective against wetsuits if they can be shoved down the front of them before being turned on; and were very effective in this case, being a punishment that fit the crime. The non wet suited crew ran away, but were rapidly gathered up and all of the assailants were then allowed to go through the initiation as originally scheduled.

The Royal party was piped aboard with all due honor and given an audience hall on the mess deck. After proper speeches of welcome, King Neptune demanded that the ‘foreigners’ entering the Kingdom of the North be presented to him, so that he could individually judge their fitness to enter.

Each applicant, alas, had some shortcoming that could only be rectified with the proper royal punishment. Failure to recognize the seriousness of the occasion or to be properly respectful of the royal personages resulted in being required to kiss the royal Baby’s belly as a sign of respect. (The Baby, of course, like all babies, only wanted to play. That bucket of grease was so handy, and the people giving obeisance were RIGHT THERE and their hair was ……. full of grease.)

No one was able to satisfy the Baby, so they were blindfolded and sent on their way. The next station involved them being branded as the property of King Neptune. With the appropriate verbal suggestion, ice applied to the backside feels hot instead of cold.. A little ice cube elicited shrieks of anguish.  Once through with the branding, they went through a hazing line where the Polar Bears swatted them with newspapers to keep them moving along, right out a hatch toward the stern where a slop chute waited.

The slop chute was a canvas trough filled with all the garbage from the past couple of weeks and liberally mixed with salt water. The candidates were required to fully immerse themselves from one end to the other or they had to go back and do it again. Crawling through rotting hot dogs and cauliflower tended to focus one’s mind, if only on how to get out of the current plight. But relief was near because the next, and last, station was a fire hose to wash off the worst of the mess. One of those same fire hoses used in the earlier battles with the same icy water and effect.

The initiation ended. It wasn’t all over, though. It was hard enough to wash the garbage off with the limitations on fresh water we had; the grease in the hair really didn’t want to come out for the next few days. And, as newly initiated Polar Bears, we all now had the privilege of initiating the next crew of blue noses on some other trip.