Ship's Gunner

U.S. Navy Submarine Force, 19.5 years - highest enlisted rating Chief Torpedoman's Mate, now a Lieutenant serving in Guam as Assistant Weapons Officer in USS FRANK CABLE (AS-40). Prior to that (during my short-lived college career), 14 months in the USMCR, first as a Dragon anti-tank assaultman, and then cannoneer on a 105 MM howitzer crew. Respectfully, Chad Teasley Ship's Gunner

Anson was one of the best officers in the Royal Navy at the time. I think that the difficulties he encountered were much more of a testament to the incredible difficulty of accurate navigation during the mid-18th century than to any shortcomings on his part. That he was able to complete the circumnavigation at all was proof of his navigational skill. I believe my shipmate Coastie is correct...Navigating by dead reckoning for 58 days in bad weather, without any way to determine longitude, would be unbelievably difficult. It's amazing that he did as well as he did. Just further testimony of what a hard life those fellows led. Tough men, indeed. Respectfully, Chad Teasley Ship's Gunner

Shipmates, Thanks very much! Respectfuly, Chad Teasley Ship's Gunner

Shipmates, I desire to purchase a well-made Monmouth knit cap for my son's Christmas present. He wears approximately a modern size 7. (The lad is only 13, but is a veteran of over 5 years Civil War reenacting, most of that time "campaigner" style - i.e. wearing only hand-made uniforms and sleeping on the ground with one blanket. He and I are both transitioning from Civil War to 18th century naval living history, and he'd be thrilled with a Monmouth cap for Christmas.) The cap needs to be authentic, of course; hand-knitted from period-correct woolens. If able to assist, please reply here or e-mail me at polecatmess@aol.com . Thank you! Very Respectfully, Chad Teasley Ship's Gunner

Ahoy Shipmates, I recently received my 2006 Pirate calendar in the mail, with art-work by Don Maitz...It's awesome! Images of Blackbeard, Henry Morgan, Black Sam Bellamy's crew capturing the WYDAH, etc. Each month even has historically significant dates in pyrattical history. (For example, July 19 has the following entry: "1721- Black Bart's former quartermaster, Walter Kennedy, is hanged at Execution Dock in Wapping after being identified as a pirate by a former shipmate.") I heartily recommend it. If you'd like one, you can order it here: http://www.tide-mark.com/pirates.html Your Shipmate, Chad Teasley Ship's Gunner

Good Shipmates, Roger that...Copy all. I personally suspect that the Somali pirates are predatory thugs who would be violent criminals even if their socio-economic backgrounds were different, but that's just my opinion, and I've been wrong before.(I will point out that foks who would sieze a ship filled with humanitarian food shipments and then hold the crew hostage for three months seem to be more interested in gaining wealth and power than merely feeding their families.) In any case, re. the nature of the pirates involved in this situation, I suppose we'll just have to cheerfully agree to disagree concerning their likely motivations. Anyway, another fairly interesting article below, from CNN.com. Using non-lethal weapons is coming into vogue now-days...I wonder if the sonic device actually dissuaded the assailants to any degree. I kind of doubt it, but it's possible. Interesting also that Australia's Foreign Minister apparently believes the attackers may not have been pirates at all, but actually terrorists. Hmmm...I think that's kind of unlikely given the prevalence of piracy off Somalia's coast, but these guys were apparently shooting to kill, not just to frighten the vessel into giving up. (The story of the fellow with the RPG smiling as he fired it at the elderly gent on the weather decks is a bit chilling.) Anyway, a fascinating account. All the best. Respectfully, Chad Teasley Ship's Gunner Cruise ship 'used sonic weapon' Tuesday, November 8, 2005; Posted: 1:10 a.m. EST (06:10 GMT) MAHE, Seychelles (AP) -- The crew of a cruise ship attacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia used a sonic weapon to help ward off the attackers, the Miami-based Seabourn Cruise Line said Monday. The device blasts earsplitting noise in a directed beam. The Seabourn Spirit escaped Saturday's attack also by shifting to high speed and changing course, the cruise line said. The sonic device, known as a Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD, is a so-called "non-lethal weapon" developed for the military after the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen as a way to keep operators of small boats from approaching U.S. warships. Makers of the device compare its shrill tone to that of smoke detectors, only much louder. The pirates who attacked the Seabourn Spirit grinned as they aimed grenade-launchers and machine guns at the deck and staterooms, some passengers said Monday, recounting the ordeal after safely docking in this Indian Ocean archipelago. "I tell you, it was a very frightening experience," Charles Supple, of Fiddletown, California, said by phone. The retired physician and World War II veteran said he started to take a photograph of a pirate craft, and "the man with the bazooka aimed it right at me and I saw a big flash. "Needless to say, I dropped the camera and dived. The grenade struck two decks above and about four rooms further forward," he said. "I could tell the guy firing the bazooka was smiling." The Seabourn Spirit had been bound for Kenya when it was attacked by pirates armed with grenade launchers and machine guns on Saturday about 100 miles (160 km) off Somalia's lawless coast. The gunmen never got close enough to board the cruise ship, but one member of the 161-person crew was injured by shrapnel, according to Seabourn Cruise Line, which is a subsidiary of Carnival Corp. Relieved holiday-makers praised the ship's captain for foiling the attack, but some said they were lucky to escape with their lives. A woman survived an explosion in her stateroom simply because she was taking a bath at the time. Others flung themselves to the floor to avoid bullets that were zipping through the ship, Charles Forsdick, of Durban, South Africa, told Associated Press Television News. Bob Meagher of Sydney, Australia, said he climbed out of bed and went to the door of his cabin shortly before 6 a.m. after hearing a commotion outside. "I saw a white-hulled boat with men in it waving various things and shooting at the ship -- at that stage it appeared to be rifle fire," he told Australian radio. "My wife said, 'Look, they're loading a bazooka,' which we later discovered was called an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) launcher." "There was a flash of flame and then a huge boom -- a terrible boom sound," he said, adding the grenade hit about 10 feet from where they were. The liner had been at the end of a 16-day voyage from Alexandria, Egypt. Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Monday that the attackers might have been terrorists. Others said the attack bore the hallmarks of pirates who have become increasingly active off Somalia, which has no navy and has not had an effective central government since 1991.

Shipmates, Follow-up article, from USATODAY.COM. Interesting that the cruise ship was 100 miles out to sea. Pretty aggressive effort by the pirates. Respectfully, Chad Teasley Ship's Gunner Pirates may have also attacked U.N. ship NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The violent attack on a cruise liner off Somalia's coast shows pirates from the anarchic country on the Horn of Africa are becoming bolder and more ambitious in their efforts to hijack ships for ransom and loot, a maritime official warned Sunday. Judging by the location of Saturday's attack, the pirates were likely from the same group that hijacked a U.N.-chartered aid ship in June and held its crew and food cargo hostage for 100 days, said Andrew Mwangura, head of the Kenyan chapter of the Seafarers Assistance Program. That gang is one of three well-organized pirate groups on the 1,880-mile coast of Somalia, which has had no effective government since opposition leaders ousted a dictatorship in 1991 and then turned on each other, leaving the nation of 7 million a patchwork of warlord fiefdoms. Illustrating the chaos, attackers in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, threw grenades and exploded a land mine Sunday near a convoy carrying the prime minister of a transitional government that has been trying to exert control since late last year. The attack, which killed at least five bodyguards, was the second in six months involving explosions near Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi, whose internally divided government spends much of its time in Kenya. Even before the attack on the liner Seabourn Spirit, Gedi had urged neighboring countries to send warships to patrol Somalia's stretch of coast, which is Africa's longest and lies along key shipping lanes linking the Mediterranean with the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean. U.S. and NATO warships patrol the region to protect vessels in deeper waters farther out, but they are not permitted in Somali territorial waters. Despite those patrols, the heavily armed pirates approached the cruise ship about 100 miles at sea, underlining their increasing audacity. The International Maritime Bureau has for several months warned ships to stay at least 150 miles away from Somalia's coast, citing 25 pirate attacks in those waters since March 15 — compared with just two for all of 2004. Somali pirates are trained fighters with maritime knowledge, identifying targets by listening to the international radio channel used by ships at sea, Mwangura said. "Sometimes they trick the mariners by pretending that they have a problem and they should come to assist them — they send bogus distress signals," he said. "They are getting more powerful, more vicious and bolder day by day." Maritime officials worry that the pirates could one day open fire on a chemical tanker, causing damage that would likely disrupt shipping in the region, Mwangura said. A British maritime union on Sunday called for the world's nations to provide more protection for ships sailing by Somalia. Andrew Linnington of the National Union of Marine Aviation and Shipping Transport, which represents merchant navy officers, said the union would meet with ship owners this week to discuss the escalating piracy in that region. "It's got to the stage where it's anarchy on the sea waves and this latest incident shows it's time governments got their acts together," Linnington said in London. This summer, the Semlow was the first U.N.-chartered ship to be seized while on a humanitarian mission to Somalia and the 10 crewmembers were held for more than three months while the pirates tried to get the United Nations to pay ransom — which it refused to do. The hijackers agreed to let the ship go after it ran out of fuel amid negotiations by clan elders. The gunmen who shot at the Seabourn Spirit never got close enough to board the cruise ship, but one member of the 161-person crew was injured by shrapnel, according to the Miami-based Seabourn Cruise Line, a subsidiary of Carnival Corp. The liner escaped by shifting to high speed and changing course. Its passengers, mostly Americans with some Australians and Europeans, were gathered in a lounge for safety and none were injured, the company said. Mark Rogers, one of the passengers aboard the Seabourn Spirit, told AP Radio he was awakened Saturday by the sound of the bullets, then he said two rockets were launched at the boat. He described the experience as frightening, but said the crew responded very well. "It was absolutely amazing how little panic there was," he said The liner was bound for Mombasa, Kenya, at the end of a 16-day voyage from Alexandria, Egypt. It was expected to reach the Seychelles on Monday, then continue on its previous schedule to Singapore, company officials said. The 440-foot-long, 10,000-ton cruise ship, which is registered in the Bahamas, sustained minor damage, the cruise company said. The liner, which had its maiden voyage in 1989, can carry 208 guests.

Ma'am, I think you're absolutely right about the cruise line being nuts for scheduling the vessel's transit through an area known for high pirate activity. I don't think, though, that the Skipper is necessarily culpable in that decision. He probably should have thrown the flag and protested being assigned that transit route. As the Captain, he is ultimately responsible for his vessel's choice of passage..But then again, those folks at company hq are the ones writing his paycheck. As to whether he will get sued, I believe it's very possible. It's the ship's owners, though, who will have to pay the damages. I don't believe the Captain was a hero...That word is much over-used now-days, IMHO, and he really was just doing his job. However, I believe he must have done it pretty well, if the news reports of the situation are accurate. Speaking as someone who regularly conns a similarly large, and rather slow-maneuvering, vessel, I'd hate to be in a situation of having to fend off a bunch of well-armed dudes in high-speed small craft without any armament myself. His shiphandling must have been pretty darned good...And, professionally speaking, I admire that.(Fortunately, my ship has a substantial battery of 25 millimeter and 50 caliber machine guns, as well as 40 millimeter grenade launchers, so I really have no such worries my own self ) I must respectfully disagree with your characterization of the Somalian pirates as starving and persecuted. There are multitudes of unfortunate people in that wretched country that are indeed in just such a condition, but I don't believe these pirates are among them. From every report I have read (and that's more than a handful), the Somali piracy problem is caused by many of the same warlords who have oppressed that country since the early '90s. I don't know for absolute certain, but I figure that the goons in those speedboats are pretty well fed. In other words, the folks who attacked that cruise ship are almost certainly VICTIMIZERS, not VICTIMS. Please understand that there is no disrespect at all intended in any opinions I've expressed, and I certainly respect and appreciate your point of view. Very Respectfully Yours, Chad Teasley Ship's Gunner

Shipmates, I'm currently re-reading N.A.M. Rodger's superb THE WOODEN WORLD, AN ANATOMY OF THE GEORGIAN NAVY, and was impressed by the following passage. I thought you might enjoy it, so am passing it on. Although Rodger's book deals specifically with the Royal Navy during the Seven Years War, the perils described would be common to any Sailor during the 18th century. Of course, those of a pyratical bent had the additional (and substantial) concern of being captured and hanged ... "Fire was an acute danger in wooden ships filled with highly combustible stores. Rear-Admiral Boderick's flagship the Prince George was burnt at sea on passage to Gibraltar in 1758. The admiral himself was an hour in the water, and only 256 were saved out of 721 on board, in spite of the efforts of other ships in company. Losses like this were inevitable when few sailors could swim, and the modern swimming stokes were undeveloped. If ships drove ahore, it was common for no one aboard to be able to swim through the surf with a line-or, as in one case, no one but the pig. When the Lichfield was wrecked, sixty out of a ship's company of about 350 could swim, and this seems to have been about the highest proportion that could be hoped for. Those who survived shipwreck might find themselves, like the Lichfield's company, among hostile natives. Survivors, if any, of ships lost at sea were in a worse position. When the slaver Luxborough Galley was burnt on passage home from the West Indies 23 men took to the boat, without food or water. Seven survived to be picked up by a Newfoundland fisherman, having lived off the dead bodies of their shipmates. The future Commodore Boys was one of them, a lucky man in a profession in which perhaps one in two died unnaturally. His brother officer Captain Stancombe supported a request for sick leave in 1761with an account of how he had narrowly escaped when his ship was burnt under him, broken his skull in a fall, and frostbitten his ears conning his ship among icebergs. Men were drowned falling overboard or capsizing in boats, they were killed falling from aloft, struck by lightning on deck, or suffocated in the noxious vapors of the hold. Of those who went down to the sea in ships, very many never returned." (pages 54-55) What a way to make a living, eh? Respectfully Your Shipmate, Chad Teasley Ship's Gunner

Ahoy Shipmates, "If my memory serves me, John Paul Jones was a privateer himself when he took the Bonhomme Richard to Brittan. If I am mistaken, please make it known to me...." Actually, Jones was a commissioned officer in the Continental Navy when he commanded Bonhomme Richard, and his crew was mostly regularly enlisted into the Navy. The exceptions were 137 French Marines, and possibly 36 French landsmen who had shipped aboard in Brittany. He did have a couple of French privateers in his squadron when he set to sea, but they soon disappeared, leaving him in company with a 32 gun frigate, the Alliance, commanded by the erratic (actually, probably insane) Pierre Landais. Landais and Alliance proved to be more of an impediment than an assistance to Jones, actually unleashing two broadsides into Bonhomme Richard during the epic battle against HMS Serapis off Flamborough Head, on September 23, 1789. (Jones preferred charges against Landais, and he was eventually dismissed from the Continental Navy.) The incident in which Jones' men took silver was on his previous voyage, in command of Ranger. On the evening April 22, 1778, Jones led two boatloads of volunteers from Ranger into the port of Whitehaven, and set fire to several ships there, but the local inhabitants were able to extinguish the blazes before any real damage was done. (They were aided by a heavy rainstorm, which also served to assist Jones and his men in making their getaway.)The next day Ranger crossed Solway Firth to St. Mary's Isle, home of the Earl of Selkirk. Jones planned to capture Selkirk, and then offer him to the British in exchange for American seamen being held prisoner. Unfortunately for Jones, the Earl was not at home, and he wanted to abandon the expedition. His men, however, wanted SOMETHING to show for all their trouble, and insisted on making off with Selkirk's substantial store of silver. (Evidently, although the crew of Ranger was enlisted into the Continental Navy, and Jones was by most accounts a firm disciplinarian, there was a bit of the unruly privateer spirit among them.) Jones allowed his men to take the silver, but then purchased it from them and later returned it to Selkirk's family. Source: The U.S. Navy, An Illustrated History, by Nathan Miller, Naval Institute Press, 1977 Respectfully Your Shipmate, Chad Teasley Ship's Gunner

Shipmates, Evidently a solid response by the cruise ship's Captain and crew. The articles I've read only mention aggressive ship-driving as the actions they took...I wonder if they employed any fire-arms. I tend to think not; I doubt that a luxury cruise liner carries small arms. Any Shipmates out there happen to know for sure? In any case, considering that the pirates were firing light weapons and an RPG, the crew of the cruise ship seems to have conducted itself quite admirably to have escaped with only one minor injury. I believe you're absolutely correct, though, that the vessel shouldn't have been there in the first place. I suspect the ship's owners may be facing a few law-suits from their passengers. With the increasingly severe piracy problem off Somalia interfering with UN humanitarian food shipments, I wouldn't be surprised if the USN gets tasked with maintaining a piracy patrol off the Somalian coast. In fact, I've been wondering for some time now why it hasn't already happened. I suspect that the Bush Administration may be a bit hesitant to get much involved with Somalia. It turned out rather badly for President Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton... Your Shipmate, Chad Teasley Ship's Gunner

Shipmate, May your Buddy make it home safe and sound soon. Here's to him and all his brave Comrades on the tip of freedom's spear. Respectfully, Chad Teasley Ship's Gunner

Shipmates, I'm also interested in the purchase of a hanger/cutlass, but desire it to be sharp. (I'm fortunate in that my children are now old enough that I can trust them to leave my play-things alone ) I need a highly authentic blade...Have checked out Old Dominion Forge, and am quite impressed with their website http://www.olddominionforge.com/swords.html , but am curious as to whether there are any other smiths out there producing swords of comparable quality and authenticity. Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Thank you! Shipmates, No sooner had i posted the above than I discovered the very answers I was looking for in a previous thread entitled "Cutlasses". Thanks! Your Obedient Servant, Chad Teasley Ship's Gunner