Michael Hillman
(5/17/2005) In the climatic ending of the movie The Perfect Storm, a fishing boat is show struggling in vain to climb the face of an enormous wave. As the picture on the TV flashed between shots of the crew struggling to keep their boat upright, and the wave cresting over them, long dormant memories from my childhood came back to life.
Like many navy brats, my childhood memories are filled more by images of my mother, then by my father, Lt. Commander Bernard Hillman, who always seemed to be at sea. The cold war was at its peak and duty always seemed to call. While we missed him while he was gone, we always looked forward to his return, not so much for the gifts he might bring, but for the movies we knew he would have taken.
Movie night was one night we never argued about getting into our pajamas. As my mother popped popcorn, my father fussed over the move projector, which always seemed to want to argue about something. After jostling each other for prime viewing position in front of the screen, we settled in to discover the world. Through my father’s moves, distant nations like Vietnam and Japan come to life.
While many of his movies have long since faded from my memory, one of a North Atlantic storm is still very vivid. I remember my sisters and I leaning forward as the bow of his ship plunged headlong down into what seemed a bottomless trough, then leaning backwards as the ships bow pointed to the open sky. As the ship crested the wave and began its next plunge downwards, all the screen showed was a horizon of walls of white water.
I remember my father saying was they were caught completely off guard. Unlike the move characters however, he survived the perfect storm.
The events leading up to this fateful day all began with COMOPDEVFOR Operations Order 15-59, dated March 29, 1959. The order directed my father’s ship, the submarine rescue vessel USS Petrel, ASR-14, to proceed from its homeport, Key West, to Norfolk Va., were they were to rendezvoused with the USS Nautilus (SSN-571). The pair was then to proceed to operations area located 43 N, 40 W (southeast of Newfoundland) were they were to conduct test designed to calibrate wave measuring equipment.
The morning of the 14h dawned bright and sunny, but cold. With the change of watch, the ship resumed crisscrossing the ops area. The 25 mph winds that had buffeted the ship since it had arrived continued unabated, generating waves that made the technicians ecstatic with the quantity and quality of data that was being collected. If the weather keep up, they would have all their information they need in another day, and the Petrel and her crew could return to their sunny homeport.
Throughout the exercise, the bridge of the Petrel was alive with the constant chatter of communications between the Nautilus, maneuvering, and the wave measuring technicians. Everyone focus was on completing the mission. Too focused …
... Unnoticed in all the hustle and bustle was the failure of the ship to receive the regular next day’s weather bulletin. A bulletin, warning of a major convergence of north Atlantic storms in the very area the Petrel was operating in. A convergence one weather forecaster predicted that would produce the storm of the century.
The crew of the Petrel continued with their assignments unaware of the gathering of storms around them. If anything, the early hours of the 15th gave the crew hope that the relentless winds might finally be settling. By daybreak, the winds had dropped to a mild 7 knots, the temperature had risen to a balmy 40, and the sea was almost a mirror. Never was the notion its "its always quietest before the storm’ so true.
As the technicians reviewed their data and planned what the last few runs, my father, the ship’s navigator, joined the crew as they gathered on deck to enjoy the unusual calm, to take in the beauty of the open ocean. Its moments like this that men, like my father, with seawater in their veins, live for.
Having grown up on the piers of Cape May, New Jersey, and cut his teeth on the decks of old fishing boats, he knew the ways of the sea. Before he could tie his shoes, he could tie a half-hitch and 20 other knots whose names are as foreign to me as the Greek language. My father understood the sea. He understood it’s power. He didn’t fear it, he respect it.
His seamanship abilities were recognized and admired by his subordinates, peers, and superiors, and he rose quickly through the ranks, from a Bosenmate to a mustang officer in less then 12 years. The Petrel was his first assignment were he ate in the wardroom, not the galley. Respect equally by the crew who recognized him as one of their own, and the command staff for his ability to put the ship where it need to be, when it need to be there. He was the captain’s number one choice to be at the Conn in tough situations.
By noon, the convergence of the storms began to manifest themselves. The wind began to pick up, and with it, wave heights. By two, the wind was howling through the Petrel’s forecastle. The gentle swells of the morning had been replaced by 18-foot waves.
As the winds and waves continued to grow, the exercise was put on hold and the crew ordered to make the ship ready for heavy weather. Bad as it was, life did continue on board the ship. The galley served dinner, thought keeping one’s plate in front of you took diligent effort. For 11 hours, the wind held constant at 35 mph, as did the waves at 21 feet. Nothing the able boded crew couldn’t handle. And had it not been for the rolling of the ship, many would have ventured on deck to enjoy the 60-degree temperatures the storm had brought with it.
Midnight brought not only a new day, a new watch, but the more powerful punch of the storm. Throughout the long dark morning hours, the winds increased in speed, and the waves grew in height. The light of Daybreak brought no relief to the weary crew, only an horizon of sold white water. At 0800, the captain directed my father to assume the Conn. Soon after, all hell broke lose.
As my father recounted the events that followed, a shimmer came to his eyes, and a smile to his face. He must have loved it! "Of course what your were supposed to do in situations like this was to keep the ship pointed into the directions the waves where coming from … but there was no direction. They where coming at us at every angle. You no sooner got over one wave then you had to steer the ship in another direction. Fortunately, the Petrel had some might powerful engines – it was after all noting more then a tug boat – so I could gun them to make her turn faster … even so, we didn’t always make it in time."
By 1600, waves had reached 48 feet in height, dwarfing the 28-foot Petrel. "The coon was only 16 feet above the waterline, so you can imagine what a 50 feet wave looked like … it was wall of solid water coming at you. From inside, you couldn’t see the top of the wave, all you could hope for was their was a top somewhere!"
"The Capitan," My father recounted with a chuckle, "strapped himself into his seat and chewed on the stub of his cigar. I can still see him now chewing away. He had never been through anything like this before and he was clearly worried, and his cigar was taking the brunt of that worry."
"We bob, rocked and rolled so bad you couldn’t do anything. You couldn’t eat, you couldn’t sleep, all you could do was hanging on to something and pray nothing hit you. A few guys did try to sleep by wedging themselves in between equipment, but I don’t think they really got any sleep, everyone was pretty worried."
It wasn’t only the crew of the Petrel that was worried, but the crew of the Nautilus 250 below who themselves were taking 30 rolls. As its captain would later tell the Petrel: "We expected to surface after the storm and find you guys gone [sunk]"
For 9 hours the storm battered the Petrel at peek ferocity, and for nine non-stop hours my father battled wits with the storm, keeping the ship point in the direction of the next oncoming wave.
In reviewing the ships logs for this story, I asked my father about his entries related to the visibility. According to the logs the visibility had dropped to 1/8 mile. He laughed. "Well you have to understand, when you were on top of a big wave, you could see for miles, but when you were on top of a smaller wave, all you could see was the bigger waves, the furthers of which might be 1/8 of mile, then again, when you were in a trough, all you could see was the next wave a 100 feet or less away … frankly I was more worried about what I could see in front of me then how far I could see!"
As he reviewed his entries 44 years later, recollections of the day’s events came back. "Look here he said," pointing to his entry under miles steamed. "We only steamed 30 miles that day." Point to another day’s log, "on a normal day, we would have steamed 236 miles. The difference was the energy the waves took out of us. It was like waking in a windstorm. You had to push the ship against the sea just to stand still, making headway was out of the question."
"It was around 2200 that the storm began to break. It was subtle at first, but I could feel it. The waves weren’t coming as fast, nor where they as high. You still couldn’t do anything, but at least we new the worst was behind us.
At midnight, assured the storm was decreasing in intensely, the Capitan allowed my father to be relieved, 12 hours after taking the Conn.
"I think I went below for a few minutes to hit the head and grab a cup of coffee, but the ship was still rolling too much to lay down, so I came back to the bridge."
By 0700 the waves had decreased to 30 feet, still large, but not large enough to prevent a dad from step outside the protected confines of the ships bridge and recording what remained of the storm for children, still slumbering safely in their beds, 2000 miles away.
Throughout the day, the storm continued to abate. By sunset, the winds had decreased to 28 mph, and the waves to 4 placid 4 feet. Surprisingly, the Petrel suffered little damage.
In May 1959, NAUTILUS entered Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Kittery, Maine for her first complete overhaul--the first of any nuclear powered ship--and the replacement of her second fuel core. Upon completion of her overhaul in August 1960, NAUTILUS departed for a period of refresher training, then deployed to the Mediterranean Sea to become the first nuclear powered submarine assigned to the U.S. Sixth Fleet.
The Petrel would late go on to fame as the ship that recovered a nuclear bomb that was lost by a B-52 over the Mediterranean.
Read
other articles by Michael Hillman
