Moving through the ship on a different route, Townsend also found pockets of black sailors roaming the ship, some armed and some just pounding on hatches, ripping gear off the walls and jumping on any white sailors they encountered. He went to the sick bay to check on trouble there and used his authority to quell another assault on medics and patients. The medical staff and injured men there were somewhat reassured by the captain’s presence, but they also wondered why he was there instead of on the bridge, running the ship. Seeing the captain personally intervening to stop the violence only made them wonder more about exactly what was going on. Mutiny?
Townsend also encountered more black sailors running around screaming “They are killing our brothers!” Some were hysterical, and some were clearly just trying to stir up more resistance. As he had done earlier, Townsend demanded, “Show me!” and no one could. Townsend broke up any fights he ran into, demanding that the sailors stand down and hand over their weapons, which they always did. He could see, however, that often the men picked up other weapons as soon as he stepped away. Townsend never encountered a single crew member who refused to hand over a weapon when ordered and, unlike Cloud, he was never personally assaulted, despite spending much of the evening in the midst of the riot. (The iron stancheon thrown his way earlier in the hangar bay didn’t count, Townsend felt. Some of the others who were there would disagree.) Due to the lack of direct, one-on-one defiance to him, Townsend concluded that, despite everything he had seen among the crew and his own XO’s questionable actions, this was no mutiny. The situation wasn’t good, but the Kitty Hawk crew could not be in mutiny if the captain was able to wade right into the middle of rioting sailors and not be taken down.
Cloud feared that Townsend might be pushing his luck. Earlier reports of the captain being injured or killed had sounded entirely plausible, and he was not sure that the violence was on the wane.
Many of the sailors who were aware of the violence and the extent of the danger, particularly the department heads and mid-level officers, waited for orders on how to respond, but those orders never came. In the end, many of the white sailors who were terrorized that night felt they were let down by the way the Kitty Hawk leaders did not immediately and decisively end the riot.
WHILE CLOUD WAS FOCUSED on the men of the Kitty Hawk, trying to understand what was going on with the different factions and how to best handle the fighting, Townsend’s attention was drawn more to the ship’s operations and in this respect, the captain and the XO were carrying out their duties just as would be expected in the Navy: The XO was trying to keep his finger on the pulse of the disturbance and understand its complexities, and the captain was trying to make sure the Kitty Hawk remained operational. Townsend feared sabotage more than rebellion, and for good reason. The armed services, and the Navy in particular, had seen plenty of sabotage in recent months, and the Navy command had specifically warned Townsend to be on the alert. And some saboteurs might not mind if their interference took Navy lives. Townsend didn’t know that, in fact, Chris Mason, the white sailor from Alabama, had heard rumors that black sailors were talking about trying to sabotage bombs on board to create a massive blaze like those that crippled the carriers Forrestal and Oriskany in recent years. Hundreds of men died on those ships when accidental fires set off bombs, some as large as 1,000 pounds.
The bombs and planes were vulnerable to saboteurs. Many crew members knew just what safety devices on the bombs to circumvent to make them dangerous while still on the Kitty Hawk, and everyone knew that it didn’t take much to disable the planes, whose jet engines could be destroyed by something as small as a loose screw sucked into the spinning blades. Townsend wasn’t the only officer on board who realized the danger of sabotage. Others were taking measures to ward off any destructive acts.
A petty officer ordered Marvin Davidson, a young bomb assemblyman from South Bend, Washington, to move his squadron’s bombs from the hangar deck back to the bomb magazine—a locked storage facility—for added safety. Davidson, a white man, had not been attacked but had heard reports of fighting, like many sailors on the Kitty Hawk. The petty officer explained that there were fears of sabotage and that it was up to the squadron to make sure no one messed with their bombs, so the sailor scrambled up seven ladders from his berthing area to the hangar deck. He was opening the final hatch to the hangar deck when several hands snatched him up and dragged him through the opening. It happened so quickly that at first Davidson couldn’t see who was grabbing him, and he could hardly make out anything the men were shouting at him. All he heard was lots of cursing, then he felt blows commence as soon as he was thrown down on the deck. The black sailors beat and kicked him for what seemed a long time, then suddenly someone pushed his way into the scrum and started tearing the assailants away, yelling at them to knock it off and get away. The black sailors fell back and the rescuer picked Davidson up off the deck.
The young sailor tried to focus and see who had just saved his bacon. Wait a minute, is that . . .is that the captain? Davidson was still a little dazed from the beating, still confused about what was going on. Yeah, that’s the captain. Townsend was still standing there looking at him as the men who assaulted him ran off.
“Are you okay, sailor?” the captain asked.
“Yeah,” Davidson said, wiping the blood from his face and trying to recover his senses.
“Are you sure?” Townsend asked. “Would you like to go to sick bay?”
“No,” Davidson said. “I’ve got bombs to move.”
Davidson wiped more of the blood from his face and limped off to secure his bombs. Townsend was reassured to see that young men still protected the Kitty Hawk.
There were good men on this ship, black and white, and Townsend knew it. Maybe if he could get some of them involved, they could influence the hotheads. With that thought in mind, Townsend went searching for men he could trust.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“HE IS A BROTHER!”
Shortly after midnight, Robert Keel and his buddies were hunkered down in their berthing compartment and prepared for the next fight. The hatch was sealed tightly, but they could hear men running past on the other side, and the announcements on the 1MC by the XO and the captain had only left them more worried than ever. Keel and his buddies didn’t know exactly what was wrong on the Kitty Hawk or how bad it was, but the young men’s minds raced with fear and anticipation. With little real knowledge, almost no hard information other than what they were told by those who had witnessed some of the violence themselves, the sailors filled the void with worries about what was going on out there, on the other side of that sealed hatch. Would the rioters come for them and manage to break in? Were they taking over the ship? Did they try to take the captain? Were they doing the right thing by just sitting there, or should they go out and fight?
The captain’s message had not reassured them much and the men agreed that it was time to arm themselves. They weren’t going to just sit there and wait for something to happen. They had to be ready when trouble came, and they might have to go out there and help regain control of the Kitty Hawk.
“They caught us by surprise, but come morning, we’re taking this ship back,” one sailor said. “We’re not going to let them take this ship and do this to us.”
The rest of the sailors agreed, and the men set about finding or making weapons. It was a relief to have something to do instead of just worrying. Keel looked around and, because their berthing compartment was in the ship’s forward IC area with its abundance of electrical supplies, he quickly found a length of multiconductor armored cable, about an inch and three-quarters thick, solid and heavy but with a good flex. He took a two-and-a-half-foot length of the cable and used electrical tape to attach a large steel nut to the end of it, creating a flexible cudgel that he could use to clear a path in front of him. His buddies came up with a similar array of cables, wrenches, chains, and tools they could use to defend their space and mount a counterattack.
Armed but stil
l hobbled by their lack of information, the men didn’t know when to make their move. Waiting till morning seemed like a good idea, but no one slept. They sat and worried more, talked some, tried to distract each other with mindless talk.
They were all startled by a rap on the hatch, which caused them to look at it and then each other. The pounded was repeated. One man stood up and went to the hatch, hesitating before doing anything. A voice on other side called “Open up! It’s the captain!”
Someone nodded to the man standing at the hatch, agreeing that he should open it. The sailor slowly opened the hatch and, sure enough, there was the captain.
Keel had the same thought that was going through most of their minds:
The captain? What the fuck is the captain doing here? This can’t be good.
At least they knew the captain was still okay. Townsend was calm and asked to speak with one of the sailors in the compartment, a black man he knew was popular and influential among the other black sailors. Townsend had found him by asking around until sailors pointed him to the right berthing area. The black sailor was clutching a wrench, just as scared as the rest of men in the compartment. The man stepped forward to talk to Townsend.
“Will you come talk to these men and try to stop this?” the captain asked.
Like Keel, the black sailor had already seen the rioters in action, and he didn’t want any part of it.
“No sir, Captain,” he said, his tone respectful but firm. “You made this mess. You fix it.”
PERRY PETTUS HAD MADE his way back to his berthing compartment after witnessing the assault on the white sailor. He didn’t want any part of that kind of viciousness, but he still held on to the anger and resentment from his earlier mistreatment. He sat and stewed about it, hearing the sounds of fights and disturbances nearby, until one group of black sailors came rushing by his compartment just after midnight and he decided to tag along. They were on the hunt again, snatching white sailors out of their bunks, tearing through their belongings, generally creating a mess. Pettus hung in the back of the crowd, not wanting to be part of the violence, but he roamed the ship again and, like many other black sailors, ended up on the forecastle, where the captain had said he would meet with anyone, not just black sailors, who had a grievance. The captain wasn’t there yet, and fortunately the Marines had followed the captain’s orders to disregard the XO’s earlier instruction for them to head to the forecastle. So black sailors milled about on their own, waiting for someone to hear their complaints. The crowd was a mix of the most determined agitators like Avinger and the less extreme sailors like Pettus. Some of the men were trying to whip up the crowd, yelling for them to get ready for a fight. Black power salutes were made in unison as the group seized control of the forward deck.
After failing to convince the black sailor in Keel’s group to help negotiate with the rioters, Townsend made his way back to the sick bay to check on the situation there. Cloud, meanwhile, was making his way to the forecastle to meet with the black rebels. With the ship in turmoil, scores of men injured, and the possibility of worse violence looming, the XO was desperate to end the crisis. With every passing minute, he felt a growing need to act, to do something to stop this insurrection.
When Cloud reached the forecastle about 12:15 A.M. on October 13, about 150 black sailors were gathered there, mostly young sailors but a few petty officers too. They were crowded into an enclosed area at the very front of the ship that held machinery for raising and lowering the carrier’s huge anchor chains. Cloud was discouraged to see that senior petty officers were involved. Many of the men were bare-chested in the overheated space. The crowd was raucous and being pumped up more by the ringleaders. Nearly all of them were armed. As they saw the executive officer walk up, the crowd turned on him, screaming “Kill, kill! Kill the motherfucker! Let’s tear this ship apart!” There was a traitor in their midst.
Pettus, on the periphery of the crowd, joined in the shouting but was growing more uncomfortable by the minute. The men seemed to be whipping themselves up for something explosive. Realizing he might not be hard core enough for this crowd, Pettus was beginning to fear for his own safety. There was a lot of jostling and pushing.
Cloud did his best to make himself heard over the crowd, imploring them to calm down and listen to him, but the men grew ever more menacing. As Cloud tried to make his way forward to where the ringleaders were whipping up the mob, he knew exactly how defenseless he was. His black skin was the only thing saving his life at that moment. If a white man had walked into that crowd, if the captain had walked in, this crowd would have thrown him overboard.
“There’s the fucking traitor! There’s the Uncle Tom!” men screamed in Cloud’s face. “He’s no better than the rest! We ought to kill him! We ought to throw him over the side.”
Cloud continued pushing his way through the crowd. No one threw a punch at the XO, but he was pushed around and there were repeated calls for violence.
“Kill him! Beat him up!” men kept shouting, but those closest to Cloud seemed reluctant to throw the first punch at the senior officer.
Cloud finally reached the front of the room where the group’s leaders were. He tried to call for the men’s attention, but they were in no mood to hear from the XO again, not after what happened last time. Cloud kept trying to shout for them to listen, to just give him a minute, but he had to endure more jeering and threats. The vitriol was unlike anything he had seen so far. These men were on the precipice of doing something truly terrible. Cloud knew he had to do something drastic to get the men’s attention.
Surrounded by the raging mob, convinced that he had lost all credibility with them and might die at any moment, the XO raised his fist high in a black power salute. He hoped the gesture would show the black sailors that he was on their side, that he was there to help.
Cloud stood there with his clenched fist held high, waiting for a reaction, but nothing changed. They weren’t buying it this time. The men continued screaming for him to be killed, calling him names, pushing him around.
Finally, seeing Cloud’s raised fist, one of the ringleaders decided to give him another chance. The man stood high on the ship’s anchor chain, raised his hand, and called for quiet.
“Listen to him! Listen to what the man has to say! The least you can do is listen to what he has to say!” he shouted.
Eventually the crowd began to quiet down. They begrudgingly gave Cloud the floor, and he knew this was his last shot. He had to reestablish his credibility, at least the small amount he had had before the men felt betrayed by the confrontation with the Marines on the hangar deck.
“My black brothers …” he began. The crowd muttered its disapproval, and several men shouted that he wasn’t black at all. A couple of the ringleaders shouted for them to be quiet and let him speak.
“We have to find a better way to solve our problems,” he continued. The crowd was letting him talk, but Cloud knew their patience wouldn’t last long. “You’ve got to stop this violence. Now, I know you admire both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. They both died for their causes, but the methods of the two men greatly contrasted with one another, didn’t they? Now in the final analysis, even though both men met death by violent means, I think the black community in America today can say that Martin Luther King, Jr., was certainly the most effective of the two. He was more successful because he followed the peaceful lead of Gandhi.”
The crowd was still restless, but they were listening.
“Those are the men who are the backbone of the black movement and the black principles in the United States today,” Cloud said, the emotion unmistakable in his voice. “Look at the tactics of Gandhi in India. If you follow the practices of Gandhi, and of Martin Luther King, Jr., you can live today and tomorrow and the next day in pride and respect. But if you continue to use the tactics that you are using here tonight, the only thing you can guarantee is your death and the further worsening of the situation that you are trying to correct.”
Cloud looked over the men. He could see that he was getting through to some of them. But others still resisted, shouting “Don’t believe him! He’s just like whitey!” There were plenty in the crowd who were bigger fans of Malcolm X than King, Cloud knew, and he wasn’t giving up on them.
“I hear you, brothers! But don’t doubt my sincerity as a black man sympathetic to your problems. Yes, I’m a Navy officer and I want to see this situation rectified within the legal framework of our society. I’m your XO, but underneath this uniform I am a black man just like you.”
He was winning some of the men over, but others were trying to pull them back, yelling that Cloud was just lying to them, that he was an Uncle Tom, he couldn’t be trusted. Cloud knew this was a pivotal point. What am I going to do? How can I convince them? After a long pause, he addressed the crowd again.
“If you doubt for one moment that I understand your problems, if you doubt for one moment that I am a sincere black man …” His voice trailed off. He looked over the crowd, making eye contact with several men. He could see the contempt in their eyes, the way they looked at him with disgust and skepticism.
With a sudden burst of resolve, Cloud reached down to a man standing in front of him and took his weapon, a heavy piece of steel about two feet long. With the weapon in hand, Cloud tore off his uniform shirt and tossed it away. He stood bare-chested before the crowd and thumped his chest hard with a fist as he looked at the other men fiercely. Fury and determination in his voice, he raised the weapon high and shouted.
“The first man in this crowd that for one moment does not believe my sincerity, I hold this weapon and I bare my back for you to take this weapon and beat me into submission right here!”
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