(Editor’s note: The Seafarers LOG reserves the right to edit letters for grammar as well as space provisions without changing the writer’s intent. The LOG welcomes letters from members, pensioners, their families and shipmates and will publish them on a timely basis.)
Retiree Looks for
Former Shipmates
I would like to hear from any mariners who made the final voyage on the S.S. Dannedaike, which took place October 14 to November 27, 1945.
I was an AB and got aboard the ship at Port Arthur, Texas. Signed nearby foreign articles and went to Aruba, where we loaded for Ecuador. This was two months after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. All the gun crews and guns were gone.
The ship had rivets — a real old ship, full of patches on deck where the decks had worn through. The old-timers on board cautioned me not to walk on the center of the deck plates; they might cave in. But that ship got through the war without being torpedoed.
After Ecuador, we had to clean all the tanks (gas-free) to go in the shipyard in Panama for repairs before we’d be permitted to traverse the canal. There were no operable winches or capstan aft of amidships. The capstan had to be recast, and parts of the aft well deck winch had to be refabricated. Some of the fore and aft stringers in the bottom of the cargo tanks were rusted through with visible holes in the top plates of the stiffeners.
We stayed in the shipyard a month for repairs, and then were sent to Los Piedros, Venezuela for her last and final load of cargo — destined for Fall River, then layup in the James River. You had to stow the anchor chain…. It wasn’t a self-storing chain, and the ship broke away from the dock four times before we finally discharged the cargo. All fore and aft manila lines had to be respliced four times. The discharge headers had to be repiped by sections to discharge cargo.
Marie Carl Durand
P.O. Box 39
Lydia, Louisiana 70569
Kind Words
For the LOG
I am a disabled union member. The Seafarers LOG is an excellent publication that helps me stay up-to-date on the new technology and the modernization of our ships. It also tells me who is doing what and sailing where.
Keep up the great work, and long live the SIU.
Larry D. Cole
Atmore, Ala.
We’re Shameless: More
Acclaim for the LOG
At my age of 76 years young, I really enjoy receiving my monthly Seafarers LOG. As I read it thoroughly, article by article, at times I laugh and sometimes a tear comes to my eyes, remembering what I went through as a young seaman….
History is sometimes very wonderful.
James T. Willis
Oakland, Calif.
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