Maybe this is stupid. If they come marching up those steps there, I’ll have no place to go. They’ll just throw me in the water and no one will ever know I’m gone.
It was one of the worst worries on a carrier—falling overboard. It was so easy. You could walk right off the ship in so many places if you weren’t careful. One stumble could send you sailing over the edge. Maybe you’d bounce off the structures jutting out from the ship and break your head wide open, or maybe you’d fall several stories straight to the water, which would feel like concrete from that height. If you survived, the ship would keep sailing, passing by before you even had a chance to yell. You would be just a tiny bobbing figure in the vast blackness of the sea. If no one saw you fall, the ship would be long gone before anybody realized you were missing. Even if they launched a rescue right away, your chances were not good. Many sailors have lost their lives falling off of aircraft carriers.
Man, I don’t want to go that way. I don’t want them to throw me over.
So Travers decided to move again. He made his way down several decks and found himself near the sick bay, which was filling up with injured sailors. He walked in and saw a corpsman there who seemed to have more patients than he could handle. Travers offered, “Hey, I’ll answer the phone for you,” even though the phone wasn’t ringing. It gave him an excuse to hang out in what he thought was a safe place.
CHRIS MASON, THE WHITE sailor from Alabama, was headed back to his berthing area after witnessing the wild scene in the aft mess deck. As far as he knew, that was the only disturbance on the ship. But as he got closer to his berthing area, he started noticing that hatches were closed, some locked from inside. Normally the hatches were left propped open so that sailors could come and go easily and to improve ventilation. Mason started wondering what was going on. When he reached his own berthing compartment, he found the hatch closed and the handrail down, the entry securely closed from the inside. The sight made his heart jump, as if he had been left behind in an emergency. But what the hell was going on?
Mason started pounding on the hatch.
“Hey, open up! It’s me, Mason! What the hell are y’all doing in there? Open this hatch!”
Soon the young man could hear the wheel spinning on the other side, then the hatch opened a few inches.
“Mason, is that you?” someone called.
“Yes! What the hell is going on?”
The door swung open wider and one of Mason’s friends yelled at him to get inside. Mason didn’t understand what was going on until he got inside and the hatch was secured tight again and he heard the men’s stories, how they had been jumped for no reason, how groups of black sailors were running through the ship and pulling whites out of their bunks. They had been holed up in their compartment for a couple hours, they told him. Now things were starting to make more sense, and Mason told them what he had seen in the mess deck.
Though the men were putting the pieces together, no one had anything close to the full story. Each sailor knew only what he had personally seen or experienced or what he was told by others.
JOHN CALLAHAN HAD NO idea that the Kitty Hawk was in the middle of a full-fledged riot. The mess cook who was seeking conscientious objector status, who had seen so many racially based fights in the mess deck that he worried there might be some sort of blow-up or an at- tempt to seize control of the ship, had just finished a shift and was taking a shower near his berthing compartment. Scrubbing off the grease and grime and food smells was always the best part of the day. Suddenly he heard the shower curtain being pushed aside and turned around. There stood three black sailors, men Callahan knew and considered friends. The look in their eyes told him everything.
Oh my god. It’s happening. It’s really happening.
Callahan was so vulnerable, standing there naked with the water splashing his back. He had nowhere to run and no way to defend himself. The men dragged him out of the shower and threw him on the floor, then kicked him as hard as they could, screaming obscenities, telling him he was going to die. They kicked him over and over with their work boots, several blows landing hard on his head. Each kick to the head clouded his mind further. He felt himself losing consciousness as he lay there in a fetal position, naked and bleeding, moaning with each blow.
Why … why are they doing this? I know these guys.
Eventually Callahan passed out. When he woke up, he had no idea how long he had been unconscious. The pain in his head, particularly one ear, was excruciating, and his face was swollen, lips bloodied, most of his body beaten. Callahan tried to stand but couldn’t. With his head throbbing and his whole body in agony, he managed to pull himself up on all fours and crawl out into the passageway outside the shower area. Seeing no one around, he crawled down the passageway, dazed. After what seemed miles but actually was only a few yards, Callahan realized he was in front of the brig. With muddied vision he could make out a Marine standing at his post. Callahan called out to him feebly, his voice encumbered by the blood in his mouth and his swollen, cut lips.
“Help me … I need help.”
The Marine stayed where he was and told Callahan to go to sick bay.
“Sorry, man, I can’t leave my post. I got orders to stay here.”
Callahan didn’t have the strength to argue. He continued his slow crawl down the passageway, not sure where he was or how to get to sick bay. He just crawled. Eventually he passed out again, lying in the passageway until someone found him. He woke up some time later in the sick bay.
TOM DYSART HAD BEEN standing watch alone on an electrical switchboard when the violence erupted on the Kitty Hawk. From his station, it was a straight shot down a passageway to the aft mess deck and then down to his berthing area, which was right below the mess deck. At the switchboard, Dysart couldn’t tell what was going on elsewhere in the ship. Like the rest of the Kitty Hawk sailors, he had heard little over the 1MC—no official announcements or instructions to the crew, just someone looking for the captain. Occasionally he heard what sounded like yelling and scuffling, things being tossed around, but he couldn’t leave his post to investigate. Then he got a phone call. It was a buddy calling him from another part of the ship.
“Tom, you’re at the switchboard now?” His buddy sounded excited about something, maybe scared.
“Yes, of course I am. You just called me here.”
“Stay where you are, man! Just close the hatch and don’t let anybody in!”
“What the hell are you talking about? What’s going on?”
“They’re beating people up, just grabbing guys and beating the heck out of ’em.”
“Who is? Who’s beating people up?”
“A bunch of black guys. They’re crazy. It’s real bad, man. Just don’t let anybody in!”
Dysart assured his buddy that he would be safe, then hung up and closed and locked the hatch to his work area. He didn’t know what was going on, but from the fear in his friend’s voice, he didn’t want it to come in there with him. He stayed at his post, doing his job and wondering what the hell was going on out there. Not knowing was terrible; Dysart’s mind raced. Was this really a riot onboard? Were black sailors trying to take over the ship? Sitting there by himself, and knowing how bad race relations had been up to this point, it wasn’t hard to imagine the worst. After a while, when it was about time for his shift to end, Dysart heard someone pounding on the hatch. The sound made him jump and he feared they had finally come for him. But then he heard a familiar voice calling out for him to open the hatch, that it was okay.
Dysart opened the door and saw a friendly face, a black sailor from his division who just happened to be the biggest, burliest guy on the ship. He knew the man fairly well because they worked together, but they weren’t close buddies.
“C’mon, man, I’ll take you back to our compartment.”
Dysart just looked at him for a moment and then he realized what the other man was offering: an escort through the dangerous areas. The two headed down the passageway. The
other guy didn’t say much and Dysart didn’t feel comfortable asking him what was going on, so he just followed his bodyguard. As they got closer to the mess deck, they started encountering more black sailors, and Dysart could hear men screaming and throwing things. Several of the black sailors screamed obscenities at Dysart as soon as they saw him; some made a move to grab him. Dysart’s bodyguard told them to get away, shoving aside those who didn’t listen the first time. Dysart kept moving, shocked by the scene and immensely grateful for his escort. It didn’t take much imagination to see what would have happened if he had walked out of his work area and headed to his berth on his own.
When they got through the mess deck and down to Dysart’s compartment, the black sailor turned and walked off before Dysart had a chance to thank him. Dysart holed up in his berthing area with other men from his division, all of them sharing stories about what they had seen, how narrowly they had escaped being beaten, or how they hadn’t been as lucky as Dysart.
White sailors weren’t the only ones being assaulted on the Kitty Hawk. Seaman William E. Boone, a young black sailor who had been aboard since August 3, was still serving out his stint as a mess cook. On the evening of October 12, he was in a berthing compartment where he bunked with other mess cooks, four whites and one other black. They were watching television when a black sailor suddenly came running to the compartment and yelled for everyone to get out. “There’s going to be trouble!” he shouted, before rushing away. The men didn’t react right away and were still trying to figure out what the man was talking about when a gang of seven black sailors barged in, yelling at the two blacks to join them. Boone and the other man stood up reluctantly; evidently the crowd thought they were acting too slowly, so the intruders grabbed them and shoved them into the hallway. Then the mob pulled two white men off the couch and started punching them in the face. Boone just stood there in the hallway, trying to figure out what was going on and what to do. When he saw the black sailors move farther into the compartment and pull white sailors out of their bunks and beat them, Boone ran to the nearest phone and called for help from the master-at-arms. When help arrived and the black sailors scattered, Boone went to the master-at-arms office to make a statement about what he had seen. That’s when he realized something was seriously wrong on the Kitty Hawk. The office was calling in every master-at-arms possible, on and off duty, to respond to fight calls. There were only a few dozen masters-at-arms available, and they couldn’t offer much resistance to a violent mob. Unlike the well-trained and armed Marines, the masters-at-arms were only regular sailors assigned to security guard duty. They were unarmed and usually spent their time breaking up scuffles and writing out citations.
After staying there for a while, Boone returned to his compartment and found that another white friend had been beaten, attacked while he was in the shower. The man didn’t have many obvious injuries, but he was shaken up, nearly in tears from shock and fear.
“They kept hitting me in the chest,” the man said quietly. “They said I wouldn’t bleed that way and then I couldn’t pin anything on them.”
Boone could see the man was in pain, and they didn’t know if any of the assailants were still around, so he decided to help his friend go to the nearby master-at-arms office to seek refuge and report the assault. As they were climbing a ladder to the next deck up, the white sailor going first, a crowd of about twenty-five black men saw him and attacked with some sort of club. The man managed to scramble up the ladder and get away, but the mob pulled Boone down and started beating him. With two men holding Boone’s arms out, he was unable to ward off the men punching his face and gut.
“What’s wrong? Are you chicken to fight us?” one man yelled as he punched and kicked at Boone.
The young mess cook took ten or fifteen blows to the face, leaving his nose broken and gushing blood. Finally the men released him, and he moved toward the ladder to try to find help. Before he could get up the ladder, one of his assailants grabbed his arm and delivered a parting shot.
“Don’t you tell nobody it was brothers that did this to you,” he said. “You tell anybody it was us and we’ll kill you. We’ll find you and kill you.”
GARLAND YOUNG AND THE other men in his berthing compartment had slept through the early hours of the violence, unaware that anything was wrong. Things changed at 2 A.M., when about forty black sailors burst in and started pulling men out of their bunks and beating them. Young recognized one of them as a man who had been in his division earlier but was transferred because he was considered a troublemaker. Like everyone else in his division, Young couldn’t get along with the sailor no matter how hard he tried. The sailor claimed to be a Black Panther and was always talking about black pride. Young concluded that the guy had a chip on his shoulder and was trying to prove how black he was. He also was known for keeping an afro comb with the handle sharpened like a knife. Before Young could think of a way to defend himself, he was pulled out of his rack and thrown to the floor. Young scrambled to get away from the kicks and stomps of the rioters. He managed to get out of the compartment and, with a couple of his buddies, ran up one deck to a quiet area. There they stood in their skivvies, panting from the run, hearts racing, trying to figure out what the hell was going on and what they should do. After a few minutes they decided they had to go back. They didn’t know where else to go, and once they could catch their breath, they decided they weren’t going to let a bunch of thugs run them out of their own berthing area. They grabbed any weapons they could find before heading down. Young picked up a large breaker bar, essentially a ratchet with an extra-long handle to provide more leverage, and the group made their way back to the compartment, determined but anxious too. When they got to the hatch, they could see that the black sailors were still there, grouped on the far side across from the hatch where Young and his buddies stood. Also in the compartment were several whites who had been beaten and were now trying to stay down and avoid another attack. Young locked eyes with the Black Panther for a moment and then looked at the other man’s hands. He was holding a straight razor.
“Come on, Young. I’m gonna cut some off of you,” he snarled.
Young raised the breaker bar over his head and hurled it the other man. It missed, but that set off both groups, and they rushed to close the distance. As they were punching and kicking each other, one of the black sailors suddenly started yelling for his buddies to get out. They must have thought trouble was coming, because they rushed out, leaving Young and his friends alone. Then the white sailors quickly sealed the hatch, and Young started surveying the damage. The mob had opened the sailors’ lockers, thrown all their belongings out, probably stolen some stuff, ransacked everything. But then Young noticed something curious. Two sailors were still asleep in their bunks. The mob hadn’t attacked them, and they had slept through the whole thing.
STILL SHAKEN AND CONCERNED by the calls for the missing captain he had relayed in damage control, Keel wasn’t sure what he would find when his shift ended at 11 P.M. and he left the relatively secure damage control area. As he made his way back to his berthing area, it didn’t take him long to run into trouble. He saw roving gangs of black sailors, usually just a handful at a time, running through the ship, sometimes with weapons. They were causing a ruckus, but at first he managed to evade them by just stepping aside. Then he started seeing larger, angrier groups of men on the prowl, and he looked for a place to hide. He reached the first-class mess and found that a number of the white crew had holed up in there, so he joined them to wait out the trouble. The others in the compartment wanted to barricade the door, which opened inward and couldn’t be sealed from the inside. At one point, a large, heavily muscled crewman from Guam walked by the room and laughed at how the white sailors were all huddled inside, discussing how to seal the door. The Guamanian sailor thought it was funny that they were so scared, when he could walk the passageways unopposed because, first, he wasn’t white, and second, he was about 300 pounds of mostly muscle.
Fina
lly Keel and the other white sailors closed the door and barricaded it, but it wasn’t long before a crowd of black sailors rushed down the hall and tried to get in. The crowd was screaming and banging on the door, the many black hands on one side trying to push it open as just as many white hands on the other side tried to keep it closed. Keel grabbed a Purple-K fire extinguisher from the wall and stood one row back from the door. He pulled the pin and pointed the nozzle toward the widening crack in the door, ready to blast someone with the caustic powder. As the door opened wider, Keel made eye contact with one of the black sailors on the other side and shoved the Purple-K nozzle right toward his face. Seeing what he was about to get, the black sailor’s eyes grew big and he fell back, allowing the men on Keel’s side to push the door closed again.
The pounding and pushing continued for a few minutes, then the rioters gave up and moved on. Keel and the other men were charged with adrenaline now, fearful of another assault and not certain they could keep the door closed the next time. Soon they scattered out and took off on their own. Keel headed to his berthing area, leaving the fire extinguisher behind. He made it in without any more encounters with the rioters, but he told the men there what had happened to him, and he was wary, watching out for the next attack. When he heard the sound of trouble coming down the passageway toward their berthing area, Keel suggested they seal their hatch and wait out whatever was happening.
Troubled Water Page 16