Quarterdeck 2.1
Tug Trials
Excerpt from an oral history of the Department of Oceanography by
Dr. Dale Leipper
One day we decided to take the ship
out in the Gulf for a run. Homer Hadley was captain. We had just gotten
to deep water when somebody yelled, "Man overboard!" It turned
out that the engineer had fallen overboard. Don Hood, Jerry Stein and I
threw a life ring to this fellow, who couldn't swim. Stein jumped in to
hold him away from the ship propeller as it went past; for this Jerry Stein
later received the Congressional Medal of Honor. The captain, when he heard
"man overboard," rang for the engineer to shut off the engine,
but it was the engineer who was overboard; so the captain had difficulty
stopping the ship, turning around and coming back to pick us up. That was
the only day we ever went to sea on the Albermarle. A sister ship
used by the oil companies was hit later by a wave in the Gulf of Mexico;
it turned over and sank in three minutes. So the two things; there was no
space - no way you could do research on that ship, and the other was it
wasn't an open water ship. That was the Albermarle story.
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Updated July 20, 1995