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- Story Listed as: True Life For Adults
- Theme: Action & Adventure
- Subject: Adventure
- Published: 02/07/2017
Bad Storm
Born 1954, M, from Cocoa Beach/FL, United StatesBAD STORM
BY GORDON ENGLAND
The sixty-foot wooden boat dropped fifteen feet straight down through the air, landing flat on its bottom! WHAM!! CRACK!! I waited for the hull to splinter apart and sink, killing all of the men in our family. Dad and I scrambled for life jackets. There was no lifeboat, not that we had a chance to launch one in fifteen-foot seas and load our eleven miserable crew members into it. Most of the men on the boat would have gladly welcomed death by drowning anyhow, rather than continue through seasickness on this fishing trip from hell. By some miracle, the boat did not break up. From a valley between towering waves, we watched another fifteen footer crash over us, rolling the boat ninety degrees onto its side. The boat magically popped back up and the captain kept going blindly through the storm. I prayed ‘Lord we are in your hands. Please get us back home'.
* * *
In April of 1964, Dad had me wound up for my first deep-sea fishing trip. He arranged for the men of our family to go on a party boat out of Freeport, Texas, to the snapper banks in the Gulf of Mexico. I was sleepless the week before the trip, imagining giant fish. I was not sure what a red snapper was, but I wanted one. By Friday after school I was raring to go.
The plan was to drive all night to Freeport on Friday, leave the dock at five o’clock Saturday morning, sail fifty miles out to the snapper banks, and spend the day loading up on big red snapper. At least that was the way Dad explained it to me, the only child on the trip.
Dad and I spent the week planning the trip and packing our gear into his station wagon. It was warm for April, but we still drove all over Dallas to find small long-underwear, a rain suit, and rubber boots for me. Being just ten years old, I didn’t understand why he was worried about my clothes. I would soon be glad he did. When Dad got off work Friday, we started our trek southward to the Gulf. We pulled into San Marcos four hours later to pick up Jack and Bud Weiser, Richard Altman, Steve Altman, and Ralph Shultz. We were true landlubbers, this being the first ocean trip for most us. The first order of business was to ice down several cases of beer in the backs of our cars.
The caravan continued an hour southward to San Antonio, where we picked up my grandfather, Adolph Scheh, and his friend Eberhard Weigand, the senior member of the crew at eighty-years old. We left San Antonio and weaved through south Texas on small, dark highways. Our convoy pulled into Freeport, two hours southwest of Houston, at three-thirty. We descended upon a fisherman’s café where we filled up on mountains of eggs and pancakes. You had to fish on a full stomach, right?
After breakfast, we made our way to the docks and boarded the party boat Deep Sea Rider. The interior cabin was lined with bunks and wooden seats along each wall. Above the bunks were primitive sliding glass windows. Under the cockpit was a head accessed by a ladder. At the stern was a large deck with ice chests for mountains of beer and fish. Two mates from the boat helped us load our gear. We were ready, but the Captain had not shown up yet. Not to worry, the guys were not about to let a late captain cut in on the fun. They launched a serious poker game and kept drinking beer.
Soon Captain Jim staggered down the pier and jumped on the boat. He stumbled into the cabin, fell flat on his face, and passed out cold in the middle of the aisle. Everybody roared with laughter and returned to the poker game. The mates threw Captain Jim onto a bunk, fired up the engines, and sailed out the harbor alongside her sister ship into the black Gulf. Exhausted from a long night, I crawled into a bunk and fell asleep dreaming of big fish.
In those days, there were no weather channels, radar for storm predictions, or satellite photographs. Fishermen were true sailors, navigating with just a radio, compass, and map. Our trip was supposed to be was an easy three-hour cruise to the snapper grounds; what we didn’t know that fateful day was that a fierce storm awaited us in the Gulf.
As the dawn turned grey an hour later, I awoke to four-foot waves throwing the boat around. The poker game and beer drinking was over and the guys were watching the seas with concern. Captain Jim awakened, staggered to his feet, and declared “Don’t worry none about these waves boys, Deep Sea Rider is a sturdy boat. We’re gonna clean up on snapper today!”
The response was timid from our novices who had not been at sea before.
The sun briefly peeked above the sea, revealing an endless sight of what to us were tall waves. The sky darkened again as huge raindrops spattered from rolling clouds. Winds turned hard and frigid as waves steepened from long rollers to short rockers. The guys laughed at Dad and me when we donned our warm, dry clothes and rubber boots, though I now saw Dad’s wisdom in bringing bad weather gear. Most of our buddies just wore T-shirts and looked enviously at us when cold rain started falling. Those with weak stomachs soon turned green and headed to their bunks.
Our large boat was still handling the five-foot waves pretty well. Heavy rain seeped through the sliding glass windows, soaking the bunks. Though it was difficult to sleep, there was little else to do. By now, most men had dropped into the bunks like flies. Beer and eggs made a second appearance as guys staggered to the head in the bow or out to the stern to chum over the rail, but not good old Uncle Steve. He proclaimed, “I’ya sailed all over the Pacific in the navy during the big war and I never once got sick. I’m not startin’ now,” slamming down another beer while singing navy songs.
Two hours later Captain Jim announced we'd reached the snapper grounds. The seas were treacherous at ten feet high; about the scariest site most of us had ever seen. It was miserable, as cold and rain came down in heavy sheets. Nobody had any interest in fishing.
Captain Jim struggled with navigation because the compass rocked too much to take a reading. Most of the guys were in advanced stages of God-pleez-let-me-die seasickness. Jack and Ralph lay together in one bunk, sick as dogs. They could no longer stagger to the head. They just hung their heads over the side of the bunks and threw up in the aisles.
Jack begged the Captain, “Paleez turn around and take us back. I gots a hundred dollar bill says you can get us back to port.” When Ralph rolled over and spewed all over Jack, my young mind went into shock. I’d never seen people throw up on each other.
Captain Jim replied, “I’ll try to find calmer water where we can fish.”
I asked Dad, “When are we going back?” He grimly shook his head and held on to the railing while the boat tossed violently.
We had a problem in that Steve kept drinking beer, but the beer was back in the stern. There was no way he or anybody else could walk back there in ten feet seas to get more beer. A powwow was held among the adults.
Dad turned to me. “Gordon, it’s your job to retrieve beer for Steve. If he tries to go out back he’ll fall overboard.”
He tied a line around my waist and sent me after beer. We were too shocked to think about a life jacket for me. I crawled to the back of the boat on my hands and knees through the cold rain and wildly pitching floor, opened the cooler, pulled out a beer in each hand, and laid down on my back on the floor. Dad pulled the line and slid me back to the cabin. When I reached the cabin I staggered through the aisles sloshing with swill and proudly handed Steve his beer.
An hour later he bellowed, “More beer.” I looked at Dad. He nodded. I tied on the line and crawled out for more beer.
Around ten o’clock Jack pleaded, “Captain you gotta take us back.”
“We got a problem boys. I don’t know where we are or which way to go. We gotta ride out this storm.”
The waves had grown to twelve feet, bouncing the boat too violently to read the compass. We were out of radio range of anybody but our sister ship, who was also lost. Not that it really mattered. The only safe direction Captain Jim could steer was straight into the waves. Attempting any other course would have swamped us. All I saw through the windows was a wall of rain and mountainous waves previously inconceivable to me. The heavy rain was horizontal, pouring through the windows and doors, soaking everyone to the bone except Dad and me bundled up in cold weather gear.
Deep Sea Rider struggled up the front side of a wave, teetered to a stop at the crest, then barreled down the backside to the trough below, burying the bow into the water as the next wave crashed over the top of the boat. Captain Jim struggled with the wheel, straightened us out, and started up the next roller coaster wave. Again and again. Numb with exhaustion and fear I wondered if this boat ride would ever end. To keep from being thrown around the boat, I kept a death grip on the bunk poles until my hands cramped closed.
Noon came and went.
Now Jack was begging Captain Jim, “I’ll make it $300 to take us back now!”
“I would, but I don’t know where back is.”
The blinding rain, washing machine ocean, lightening flashes, and dark clouds continued endlessly. The waves were now fifteen feet high, roaring through at ten-second intervals to crash onto the top of the boat, over and over for hours. The sick guys in the bunks no longer lifted their heads over the edge of the bunks. They just lay in their bunks holding on for dear life. A good two to three inches of slop sloshed up and down the floor of the cabin.
Steve still drank beer, sending me out to the stern to fetch more. When he became hungry he ate sausage and sardines. At one point he fell off the bunk, dropped a sardine on the floor in the pink slop, picked it up, and ate it with a big grin. Dad and I had resisted sickness up to that point, but Steve’s show finally caused us to hang our heads over the bunk and chum.
With the boat being tossed around like a cork, Steve was constantly thrown from his seat, landing in the slush, crawling back up into his seat, and falling back down again screaming and laughing.
Later that afternoon Steve went to the wildly pitching head in the bow. After a while we noticed he had not come out, but we heard him yelling over the roar of the storm. When Dad opened the head door I wanted to laugh, but it hurt too much. Steve was being thrown all over the tiny room with his pants down around his ankles like handcuffs.
He was trapped in the hold, yelling and screaming, “Get me outta here.”
Why he did not break any bones was beyond me. The good lord really watched over him. Dad and the mate climbed down into the cramped head. At that moment the boat crashed into the bottom of another wave, tossing Dad and the mate on top of Steve. Screaming and yelling, they dragged Steve out of the head and threw him back in his seat.
He laughed then turned to me, “Gimme another beer, Gordon.”
I tied the rope on and crawled across the bucking deck again to retrieve beer while angry waves crashed over me. If not for the rope I would have been washed overboard to a dark horrible death. Dad pulled me back through the ten feet of eternity to the safety of the cabin. Too sick and scared to say a word, I staggered up the aisle and bounced off the bunks until I reached Steve. He laughed, took the beer, and popped the top.
Captain Jim was hopelessly lost in survival mode as he valiantly fought to keep control of the boat. Over and over we dropped off the fifteen-foot waves, crashing down into freezing water that deluged the boat. Each time I thought we were goners. Too scared and too sick to pray, I just held on to the bunk for what seemed like an eternity.
Most of the guys were passed out by now. They were soaked, frozen, blue, and did not move or respond to us. For all I knew they were dead. Each crash of the boat caused them to fly up from the bunk and smash into the ceiling while slosh from the aisles splashed over everyone.
Late in the afternoon the storm finally laid down, enabling Captain Jim to read the compass and take a heading back to port. The waves were still eight to ten feet high when night descended on us. Captain Jim couldn’t see the approaching waves in the dark, often hitting them at the wrong speed and angles, throwing us around like ping pong balls. The night was pitch black. The only thing I could see was the light of the dashboard. Every time we raced down the face of a wave I thought we were descending into the gaping mouth of hell.
We miraculously made our way back to port about eleven o’clock that night. While we had motored out to the snapper banks in three hours, it took fifteen tortuous hours to find our way back. By then Jack had come back to life and was only offering Captain Jim fifty dollars to get us back. And wouldn’t you know it, Steve was still drinking beer.
We were shell-shocked, drowned rats when we stepped onto the dock. To a man, we each had thought we were going down at any one of a dozen terrible times when waves crashed over the boat. Our sister ship had broken up during the storm and gone down with no survivors. The big sailor in the sky was watching over us for sure on that incredible day.
Bad Storm(Gordon England)
BAD STORM
BY GORDON ENGLAND
The sixty-foot wooden boat dropped fifteen feet straight down through the air, landing flat on its bottom! WHAM!! CRACK!! I waited for the hull to splinter apart and sink, killing all of the men in our family. Dad and I scrambled for life jackets. There was no lifeboat, not that we had a chance to launch one in fifteen-foot seas and load our eleven miserable crew members into it. Most of the men on the boat would have gladly welcomed death by drowning anyhow, rather than continue through seasickness on this fishing trip from hell. By some miracle, the boat did not break up. From a valley between towering waves, we watched another fifteen footer crash over us, rolling the boat ninety degrees onto its side. The boat magically popped back up and the captain kept going blindly through the storm. I prayed ‘Lord we are in your hands. Please get us back home'.
* * *
In April of 1964, Dad had me wound up for my first deep-sea fishing trip. He arranged for the men of our family to go on a party boat out of Freeport, Texas, to the snapper banks in the Gulf of Mexico. I was sleepless the week before the trip, imagining giant fish. I was not sure what a red snapper was, but I wanted one. By Friday after school I was raring to go.
The plan was to drive all night to Freeport on Friday, leave the dock at five o’clock Saturday morning, sail fifty miles out to the snapper banks, and spend the day loading up on big red snapper. At least that was the way Dad explained it to me, the only child on the trip.
Dad and I spent the week planning the trip and packing our gear into his station wagon. It was warm for April, but we still drove all over Dallas to find small long-underwear, a rain suit, and rubber boots for me. Being just ten years old, I didn’t understand why he was worried about my clothes. I would soon be glad he did. When Dad got off work Friday, we started our trek southward to the Gulf. We pulled into San Marcos four hours later to pick up Jack and Bud Weiser, Richard Altman, Steve Altman, and Ralph Shultz. We were true landlubbers, this being the first ocean trip for most us. The first order of business was to ice down several cases of beer in the backs of our cars.
The caravan continued an hour southward to San Antonio, where we picked up my grandfather, Adolph Scheh, and his friend Eberhard Weigand, the senior member of the crew at eighty-years old. We left San Antonio and weaved through south Texas on small, dark highways. Our convoy pulled into Freeport, two hours southwest of Houston, at three-thirty. We descended upon a fisherman’s café where we filled up on mountains of eggs and pancakes. You had to fish on a full stomach, right?
After breakfast, we made our way to the docks and boarded the party boat Deep Sea Rider. The interior cabin was lined with bunks and wooden seats along each wall. Above the bunks were primitive sliding glass windows. Under the cockpit was a head accessed by a ladder. At the stern was a large deck with ice chests for mountains of beer and fish. Two mates from the boat helped us load our gear. We were ready, but the Captain had not shown up yet. Not to worry, the guys were not about to let a late captain cut in on the fun. They launched a serious poker game and kept drinking beer.
Soon Captain Jim staggered down the pier and jumped on the boat. He stumbled into the cabin, fell flat on his face, and passed out cold in the middle of the aisle. Everybody roared with laughter and returned to the poker game. The mates threw Captain Jim onto a bunk, fired up the engines, and sailed out the harbor alongside her sister ship into the black Gulf. Exhausted from a long night, I crawled into a bunk and fell asleep dreaming of big fish.
In those days, there were no weather channels, radar for storm predictions, or satellite photographs. Fishermen were true sailors, navigating with just a radio, compass, and map. Our trip was supposed to be was an easy three-hour cruise to the snapper grounds; what we didn’t know that fateful day was that a fierce storm awaited us in the Gulf.
As the dawn turned grey an hour later, I awoke to four-foot waves throwing the boat around. The poker game and beer drinking was over and the guys were watching the seas with concern. Captain Jim awakened, staggered to his feet, and declared “Don’t worry none about these waves boys, Deep Sea Rider is a sturdy boat. We’re gonna clean up on snapper today!”
The response was timid from our novices who had not been at sea before.
The sun briefly peeked above the sea, revealing an endless sight of what to us were tall waves. The sky darkened again as huge raindrops spattered from rolling clouds. Winds turned hard and frigid as waves steepened from long rollers to short rockers. The guys laughed at Dad and me when we donned our warm, dry clothes and rubber boots, though I now saw Dad’s wisdom in bringing bad weather gear. Most of our buddies just wore T-shirts and looked enviously at us when cold rain started falling. Those with weak stomachs soon turned green and headed to their bunks.
Our large boat was still handling the five-foot waves pretty well. Heavy rain seeped through the sliding glass windows, soaking the bunks. Though it was difficult to sleep, there was little else to do. By now, most men had dropped into the bunks like flies. Beer and eggs made a second appearance as guys staggered to the head in the bow or out to the stern to chum over the rail, but not good old Uncle Steve. He proclaimed, “I’ya sailed all over the Pacific in the navy during the big war and I never once got sick. I’m not startin’ now,” slamming down another beer while singing navy songs.
Two hours later Captain Jim announced we'd reached the snapper grounds. The seas were treacherous at ten feet high; about the scariest site most of us had ever seen. It was miserable, as cold and rain came down in heavy sheets. Nobody had any interest in fishing.
Captain Jim struggled with navigation because the compass rocked too much to take a reading. Most of the guys were in advanced stages of God-pleez-let-me-die seasickness. Jack and Ralph lay together in one bunk, sick as dogs. They could no longer stagger to the head. They just hung their heads over the side of the bunks and threw up in the aisles.
Jack begged the Captain, “Paleez turn around and take us back. I gots a hundred dollar bill says you can get us back to port.” When Ralph rolled over and spewed all over Jack, my young mind went into shock. I’d never seen people throw up on each other.
Captain Jim replied, “I’ll try to find calmer water where we can fish.”
I asked Dad, “When are we going back?” He grimly shook his head and held on to the railing while the boat tossed violently.
We had a problem in that Steve kept drinking beer, but the beer was back in the stern. There was no way he or anybody else could walk back there in ten feet seas to get more beer. A powwow was held among the adults.
Dad turned to me. “Gordon, it’s your job to retrieve beer for Steve. If he tries to go out back he’ll fall overboard.”
He tied a line around my waist and sent me after beer. We were too shocked to think about a life jacket for me. I crawled to the back of the boat on my hands and knees through the cold rain and wildly pitching floor, opened the cooler, pulled out a beer in each hand, and laid down on my back on the floor. Dad pulled the line and slid me back to the cabin. When I reached the cabin I staggered through the aisles sloshing with swill and proudly handed Steve his beer.
An hour later he bellowed, “More beer.” I looked at Dad. He nodded. I tied on the line and crawled out for more beer.
Around ten o’clock Jack pleaded, “Captain you gotta take us back.”
“We got a problem boys. I don’t know where we are or which way to go. We gotta ride out this storm.”
The waves had grown to twelve feet, bouncing the boat too violently to read the compass. We were out of radio range of anybody but our sister ship, who was also lost. Not that it really mattered. The only safe direction Captain Jim could steer was straight into the waves. Attempting any other course would have swamped us. All I saw through the windows was a wall of rain and mountainous waves previously inconceivable to me. The heavy rain was horizontal, pouring through the windows and doors, soaking everyone to the bone except Dad and me bundled up in cold weather gear.
Deep Sea Rider struggled up the front side of a wave, teetered to a stop at the crest, then barreled down the backside to the trough below, burying the bow into the water as the next wave crashed over the top of the boat. Captain Jim struggled with the wheel, straightened us out, and started up the next roller coaster wave. Again and again. Numb with exhaustion and fear I wondered if this boat ride would ever end. To keep from being thrown around the boat, I kept a death grip on the bunk poles until my hands cramped closed.
Noon came and went.
Now Jack was begging Captain Jim, “I’ll make it $300 to take us back now!”
“I would, but I don’t know where back is.”
The blinding rain, washing machine ocean, lightening flashes, and dark clouds continued endlessly. The waves were now fifteen feet high, roaring through at ten-second intervals to crash onto the top of the boat, over and over for hours. The sick guys in the bunks no longer lifted their heads over the edge of the bunks. They just lay in their bunks holding on for dear life. A good two to three inches of slop sloshed up and down the floor of the cabin.
Steve still drank beer, sending me out to the stern to fetch more. When he became hungry he ate sausage and sardines. At one point he fell off the bunk, dropped a sardine on the floor in the pink slop, picked it up, and ate it with a big grin. Dad and I had resisted sickness up to that point, but Steve’s show finally caused us to hang our heads over the bunk and chum.
With the boat being tossed around like a cork, Steve was constantly thrown from his seat, landing in the slush, crawling back up into his seat, and falling back down again screaming and laughing.
Later that afternoon Steve went to the wildly pitching head in the bow. After a while we noticed he had not come out, but we heard him yelling over the roar of the storm. When Dad opened the head door I wanted to laugh, but it hurt too much. Steve was being thrown all over the tiny room with his pants down around his ankles like handcuffs.
He was trapped in the hold, yelling and screaming, “Get me outta here.”
Why he did not break any bones was beyond me. The good lord really watched over him. Dad and the mate climbed down into the cramped head. At that moment the boat crashed into the bottom of another wave, tossing Dad and the mate on top of Steve. Screaming and yelling, they dragged Steve out of the head and threw him back in his seat.
He laughed then turned to me, “Gimme another beer, Gordon.”
I tied the rope on and crawled across the bucking deck again to retrieve beer while angry waves crashed over me. If not for the rope I would have been washed overboard to a dark horrible death. Dad pulled me back through the ten feet of eternity to the safety of the cabin. Too sick and scared to say a word, I staggered up the aisle and bounced off the bunks until I reached Steve. He laughed, took the beer, and popped the top.
Captain Jim was hopelessly lost in survival mode as he valiantly fought to keep control of the boat. Over and over we dropped off the fifteen-foot waves, crashing down into freezing water that deluged the boat. Each time I thought we were goners. Too scared and too sick to pray, I just held on to the bunk for what seemed like an eternity.
Most of the guys were passed out by now. They were soaked, frozen, blue, and did not move or respond to us. For all I knew they were dead. Each crash of the boat caused them to fly up from the bunk and smash into the ceiling while slosh from the aisles splashed over everyone.
Late in the afternoon the storm finally laid down, enabling Captain Jim to read the compass and take a heading back to port. The waves were still eight to ten feet high when night descended on us. Captain Jim couldn’t see the approaching waves in the dark, often hitting them at the wrong speed and angles, throwing us around like ping pong balls. The night was pitch black. The only thing I could see was the light of the dashboard. Every time we raced down the face of a wave I thought we were descending into the gaping mouth of hell.
We miraculously made our way back to port about eleven o’clock that night. While we had motored out to the snapper banks in three hours, it took fifteen tortuous hours to find our way back. By then Jack had come back to life and was only offering Captain Jim fifty dollars to get us back. And wouldn’t you know it, Steve was still drinking beer.
We were shell-shocked, drowned rats when we stepped onto the dock. To a man, we each had thought we were going down at any one of a dozen terrible times when waves crashed over the boat. Our sister ship had broken up during the storm and gone down with no survivors. The big sailor in the sky was watching over us for sure on that incredible day.
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