Now set the special sea and anchor detail

There was a loud-speaker on the ship. Somebody talked on it incessantly.
"Captain's on the bridge".
"Captain's off the bridge."
Time to get up.
Time to go to bed.
Time to be eight o'clock at night. (what the hell was that for?).

Somebody recorded the phases of my life with special scripted announcements of all the significant happenings of my days and nights at sea.

Each new act began the same way:

"Underway, shift colors".

"Sweepers, sweepers, man your brooms".

"Now set the special sea and anchor detail".

But long before that. Way into the night before. Into the early hours, before the weighing of that huge bunch of anchor, the crew came on.

I've been there. I've stood watch on the eve of the cruise. It's disgusting. And pretty funny most of the time.

When we put out to sea it was sometimes for a very long time. Sometimes we'd go for a few days and more often we'd go for a couple of weeks and some times we'd go for 6 or more months. A young man with ties to the shore can get a little melancholy as he drags his seabags up the gangway and into the vast imprisonment of the travelling jail town that we lived in out at sea.

One had a tendancy to get drunk.

And then he'd have a few more 'for the road' as it were.

It wasn't just one ship that would be heading away. When we'd go 'on a cruise' as they called it for the long ones into the Mediterranean we'd go with an entire task force. We'd rarely travel alone. Someone's gotta protect our carrier. So we'd go with a number of cruisers and destroyers and frigates and supply ships and probably some submarines too. A lot of sailors would have a reason to get drunk that night. The boardwalks at the beach, the bars, the trailer parks and cheap rental homes would all be sporting quite a party.
When other task forces put out to sea I noticed that the beach was a good place to be the following night. Some wives got lonely right away. And they were very ready to party.

Rules enforcement in the parking lot at the gangway were pretty loose on that night before we left. Drunken sailors would be arriving every few minutes. Sometimes some of our boys were carried up the steps. Sometimes they cried. Sometimes a spouse or very friendly girlfriend would help the men in blue act out a veritable porno-show right there on the gangway.

Kids would cry. Daddy don't go.

It was exciting. We were going away. Off to see the world.
It was sad. We were going away. Away from the world.

You had to get on board because one very high crime in the Navy is to miss the movement of your ship. The crime was called "missing movement". And I understand you went to jail for that.

Next day you woke up and you were out at sea.
They tied the planes down on the flight deck for the Atlantic crossing. Tied them with chains. It was pretty cool to go up on the flight deck and sit and see stars. More stars than anywhere else in the whole world. The stars were so everpresent, so overpowering, so heavily there that they actually felt like a weight fluffing over you. There were so many stars out at sea that it felt like a comforter you were looking up on. The universe seemed so real. The sunsets were so magnificent. The waves, the birds, the wind. So wonderful, I'll never do it again.