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PICS FROM THE PAST

April 2007

The photos below were sent to the Seafarers LOG by Leon Jekot of Jefferson City, Tenn. The one directly below was taken in 1969 when he was the bosun’s mate aboard the Long Lines on a cable-laying operation. “When the cable we carried and laid ran out,” Jekot wrote in a note accompanying the photos, “it was buoyed off, to be picked up later when we had more cable.” Someone had to be lowered over the side onto the buoy to retrieve it. “No one spoke up. It looked like fun...so I said I’d go. What made it interesting was the fact that when the ship pulled away and left me on that buoy, it brought home the reality of being alone, really alone, on that object in the middle of the ocean, not to mention the enormous size of the fish underneath it. I couldn’t believe I did it. Everything turned out all right and we finished the lay, but it was an experience I won’t forget.” The other photo was taken in 1965 aboard the SS Suzanne, a C2 freighter carrying a load of flour to Syria. Jekot was an AB on that vessel. “It’s a type of ship one doesn’t see or work aboard anymore,” he stated. “With all the rigging, I thought it would be interesting to have some of the sailors of today see what we had to work with back then. Things that sailors don’t do much of anymore, like rigging and splicing the lines and wires for the gear, and what I was doing that day in port: cleaning the chain locker. It turned out to be a real nasty mess after we left. The flour got wet, and it took up to a week to clean it off the ship. It was everywhere.”