Life in the Yards

(Inspired by the fire aboard the USS Bonhomme Richard)

I've been through one major overhaul, a few SRAs (Shipyard Repair Availabilities) and numerous shorter maintenance periods, which were called "Tender Availabilities", even if there was no destroyer tender involved.

The most challenging is a major overhaul. The ship is in drydock, so in the summer, it is hotter than a baked motherfucker in the ship and, in the winter, it is colder than a carport outside of an igloo. The shipyard workers have little to no respect for the ship. Trash and debris accumulate everywhere if the ship's force isn't driven to be diligent. That's a tall order, as it's hard to motivate the sailors to keep cleaning up other people's shit. Usually the motivation has to devolve into unrelenting harshness, which means that's a job for the XO.

When there is welding or cutting going on, there have to be fire watches, which is usually a task for the ship's crew. The sailor so detailed gets to stand around with a fire extinguisher and watch the yardbird work. If the work is being done to a bulkhead, deck or overhead, then there has to be a fire watch on the other side. If the work is at a corner, then there can be more than one space on the "other side" of the work and all of them have to have a fire watch.

This is in addition to any repair or maintenance work that the repair plan assigned to the ship's force to do. If money is tight, a lot of that work is assigned to ship's force. While this is going on, a lot of the crew may be away, attending training classes (individually or in teams) or sucked away on temporary duty to another ship. There's not much in the way of fun, there's no time at sea, no port visits, just day-to-day life in a dirty industrial environment.

Add to that the security issue: The yardbirds steal anything that is not locked up or welded down. A sailor who leaves his tools at his or her workside to go to the head or catch a smoke will often come back to find all of the tools, if not the entire tool box, has been stolen. The sailors can start treating the yard workers like a pack of unarrested criminals, which also does a number of morale.

One day in the yards, I was the Command Duty Officer. I was making my rounds and opened a door to step out onto the weatherdeck on the 01 level. It was full dark, the lighting wasn't great, and I almost tripped over some piping that some fucking sandcrab left lying on the deck. If I had tripped, it would have thrown me up against the lifelines, which were of a temporary nature, and would probably have resulted in my fall to the bottom of the dry dock, which would have been at least a sixty-foot drop onto the steel floor of the dock. In other words, it would have been fatal.

I was enraged. I threw the piping over the side and down into the drydock. Then I went around the weatherdecks and threw every other obstruction that was not properly marked or guarded (that I could lift) into the drydock.

The next morning, I told the XO what I had done. He wasn't amused, but he got the idea that I didn't much care. The yardbirds were not at all happy and complained to their bosses, who complained to the CO. The CO promised an investigation, which of course, went nowhere.