Our father has been to 55 countries; partly due to his time in the Merchant Marines and partly due to being an American Airlines employee. Recently, I recorded a list of the countries he’s been to but I never knew specific details about his job duties until I interviewed him. Wisdom and resilience are two nouns that come to mind when people think of him. He is known for his proverbs and inspirational quotes and he defines swagger and humor.
After I started travel writing, I gained a new appreciation and fascination for my father’s experience with the Merchant Marines. As his child, I like to refer to his travel experience as my “wanderlust DNA.” I interviewed my father over a few occasions about his reason for joining the Merchant Marines when he was a teenager in Greece.
He explained that he was nineteen years old and it was a good opportunity to help support his family back home in Greece when his father died at ___ years old. Being the oldest son in a family of five children, it was naturally his duty to support them.
Upon finding out about the job in the newspaper at the village square, he learned that he needed a Seaman’s Passport or “Seaman’s papers”. The advertisement was looking for people to work on ships in the Navy. He took the job and became an employee on the Hephaestus ship. He remembered that ship had 200-300 employees which serviced other ships; working on the motors, pumps, pipes. etc. Dad spent three years doing the service tasks and picking up old WWII airplanes that had sunk in the ocean.
The routes they took in the Merchant Marines are staggering, fascinating and overwhelming at the same time. The Hephaestus ship departed from Piraeus to go to Alexandria, Egypt and then onto France because they were on a French ship. His assistant electrician duties on the ship Meditteranea is where he learned the skills on the job. On one ship, they went to Istanbul, Israel, Lebanon, Turkey and Tunisia. Another time, they took an airplane from Athens to Cairo and Suez, Egypt and from there took a ship to England, transporting the oil. Then they sailed onto Venezuela and Argentina and back and forth to Venezuela before going onto San Francisco.
He is on the far right of this picture.
Dad was on the Meditteranae for six months and then went to Egypt by airplane. He worked for three years for the Royal Navy before this. After San Francisco, Curacao, New York and back and forth there, they went to Aruba, Cartagena, Columbia and loaded up to go to England. Back and forth and then, onto Morocco spending a few days there and going on to Jamaica and Baton Rouge. “Back and forth again” he mused, wistfully.
He recalled something that happened that was very significant in his journeys. On a ship going to Jamaica, there was seaweed that made a big clump that floated close to the ship. If the ship got too close to the seaweed clump, the pump sucked it in and stopped up the pipes. If the latter happened, they would have no electricity and be in emergency mode. They couldn’t start the engines with no electricity. Everyone was desperate and confused. Dad got a brainstorm idea that if he unclogged the weeds from one pipe, then, the water would go the other direction where the pipe was clean. “It could’ve flooded the ship”, he bravely and quietly stated to me, recalling this vivid memory with obvious trepidation and possibly even some trauma.
When Dad cleaned that area of the ship, it was 140 degrees in the engine room and he was down there all by himself. He started that generator back up which fired the boilers and started the pump from the bottom of the ship, pushing the water out. The lights and fan came on and the ship cooled down and started running again. When he looked up, everyone came down to the boiler room cheering for him! The cook, the captain, the whole crew was surprised to find him there. They thanked him and the cook brought him a case of sodas as a gift. They started the engines and went to Jamaica. The experience was a controversial situation. If he failed, he might have flooded the ship. Yet, it was a successful outcome and one that clearly defined his naval experience.
Dad was twenty three years old at the time which baffles me when I think of what modern day twenty three year old face as challenges compared to this. According to Dad, he was supposed to receive a medal by the company who owned the ship….a badge of honor for saving the ship. The whole crew almost lost the ship and allegedly, they were all responsible. He never received the medal because he didn’t stay with the Merchant Marines. More ordeals were ahead on the sea…
As if this wasn’t enough of an adventurous and intense story, I also learned of more adventures in his Merchant Marines journey. In 1957, in New Orleans, two ships collided at midnight when he was on duty. Everyone was alert. Dad remembered many bats gathering all over the ship. They stayed two days until better weather came. This collision was covered in the newspaper article that saved all these decades and shared with me.
“November 30, 1957, the SS Ellin and SS Claiborne collided….The Coast Guard said Friday it will investigate a ship collision on the Mississippi River and dense fog about 11:55 PM Thursday 13 miles downstream from New Orleans…No injuries were reported but both cargo vessels had deep gashes in their bows…Neither ship took on water as the damage was above the waterline….Involved were the one-year-old SS Ellin 16,000 ton freighter of Liberian registry and the Waterman 15 ship corporation SS Laybourne AC 2cargo ship…The Ellin, according to Captain Michael Worden present at the Texas Marine transport company Inc. agents Alan was anchored in the thick fog…The Claiborne ran into Ellin’s bow….”
He explained the mechanics of what happens when they hit rough seas or hurricanes, too. “When a propeller came up, they had to slow down the engine. When the ship went down, they closed the steam…when it went up, they opened the steam. This went on for four hours. If you miscalculate, the engine goes too fast.”
I asked him if he ever regretted being in the Merchant Marines and his response was
“No. I was lucky I never got seasick. Many guys vomited. A couple of times, we had the icon of St. Nicholas for hope to save us.”
Other dangers and disasters he encountered kept me on the edge of my seat. He went on to tell me about the time when the captain had his family posing for a picture and a wave came up and picked up the three year old boy. Tragically, the boy fell in the ocean. They stopped the ship, turned around in big panic and confusion and found him ….but he was dead. This was on a trip from Iran to London.
Another time, the assistant cook went to dump trash and he fell in, too. “The ship never stopped that time…nothing…all they could say was “goodbye.” The waves can be so bad and you have to hit the waves a certain way. You can’t always turn back.”
On another ship, (going from San Francisco to Curacao) their propeller hit a whale and damaged the propeller. It took two months to sail because the propeller was going so slow. Because you can’t change ships in the middle of the ocean, from San Francisco to Curacao, they had to go to Norfolk for repairs. That is where they saw the whale with blood all over it.
I asked him what the ports were like, especially after sailing for so long. He explained how they found places to eat good food or buy things. In his opinion, the islands and the ports in the Caribbean were the best—Curacao, Colombia, Venezuela…The worst port in his recollection was England because there was no sunshine or good food, in his opinion.
In the middle of such an intense conversation, one question/answer was the comic relief in this entire topic. I asked him which country had the best looking women. He answered, “When you’re on a boat for a month and come out, every woman looks good. (chuckling). Brazil, I guess.”
After the ship collision, my father jumped ship in Baton Rouge and took a Greyhound Bus to Tulsa to visit relatives. While visiting his relatives in Tulsa, they attended church together and a striking lady filing into the choir caught his eye. He asked his aunt about this beautiful woman. Later, they met at a church community event. After some flirting, my mother dismissed my father so that she could to go to the airport to pick up her future cousin-in-law from a flight. Her cousin- in- law was coming from Greece to marry Mom’s cousin. Mom introduced the cousin to my father and they quickly became friends. Her cousin brought a bottle of wine to Mom as a gift from a suitor back in Greece who intended to marry Mom. The suitor was an eligible doctor and Mom’s parents were hopeful about this possible match.
As mischief would have it, my father drank the doctor suitor’s bottle of wine with my mom’s cousin in law! (He was chuckling when he relayed this story to me). In hearing my father tell this humorous story about my mother’s doctor suitor back in Greece, I asked him, “you drank his wine and you took his girl?” “Yes! he answered, proudly and with no regret.
My dad mused on about how my mom’s cousin in law told her that my dad was the “better deal” and that she’d be better off with him. The doctor suitor back in Greece wanted a dowry anyway. He explained that my grandfather was confused about all this. He wanted the other man to marry my mother. The rest was history. He describes this time as, “I woke up and found himself with a baby… and then two babies.” A four month whirlwind romance and engagement resulted in a wedding, new job, and family. Instead of continuing on with the Merchant Marines, his life took on a whole new kind of journey.
After a short courtship, my parents married. Mom arranged for dad to get a lawyer so that they could handle the situation of him jumping ship. They went to the police station and the lawyer told them that dad was confused and was supposed to go to New York but ended up in Tulsa. They fingerprinted him and told him that he had twenty days to leave the U.S. My father explained that his father-in- law (my grandfather) was exhausted from worry about all this. Dad stayed in the United States but they even considered going to Mexico if needed. Dad was working at the Tulsa Hotel overseeing the boilers. Around that time, immigration officers came to my parents’ house to deport dad. My mom told them dad was working at the Tulsa Hotel. She called our priest (who was Dad’s uncle) and said, “Kosta’s in trouble.” The priest came to his work to intervene. The immigration officers told him to go to the immigration office in Dallas. Dad went to Dallas and then went on to Toronto to fix his papers and entered the states legally through the Detroit office.
He worked for several places and then eventually for St. Francis Hospital and American Airlines after that. In between those years, in 1968, they welcomed a third child (me).
one of the first employees of St. Francis Hospital
I was very curious about what he would’ve done if they deported my father. He answered me that he would’ve gone back to Greece. But by leaving Greece in the first place to join the Merchant Marines to help support his mother, sisters and younger brother back home, he wasn’t drafted. In Greece, everyone has to go to the army at twenty years old. I asked, “Why is it called “Merchant Marines” ? He explained that they transported merchandise. (the merchant part). A “marina” is another word for a “port” (the marines part). A better term for it is “merchant mariners.” Dad said, “The Merchant Marines was very educational. On some legs of the voyages, we traveled to seven countries or so. In later years, fewer people signed up for it because they didn’t want to do that type of work. But, it was a good opportunity and a very good financial opportunity for helping support my family back in Greece.”
We circled back to the Merchant Marines job history and I asked him if he encountered any other dangers on his voyages. That’s when he told me about the hurricanes and icebergs they encountered. They never knew they were coming because there was no communication. …only the wind. There were icebergs in the North Atlantic but they never saw them in the nighttime. They just watched the temperature of the water and if it dropped fast, they stopped because it meant the iceberg was coming. They’d turn and go the other way. Dad’s ships were caught in many hurricanes. They went against the waves of the ship, otherwise the ship would tilt.
My father’s next quote came naturally and wistfully when he told me with a that look in his periwinkle blue eyes, “If you manage to face the waves, you have a good chance to survive.”
