Authors: Bradley Peniston
Rinn started his own speechâ“Great things come from great traditions,” he saidâbut it had started to rain again, so he cut it short. He told
the former
Roberts
crew members in the audience, “You are our inspiration. You are our spirit.” And he asked his crew for three cheers “for those who have built our ship, and those who sailed before us.”
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FOR ALL ITS
Currier-and-Ives charm, the twelve-mile passage from the Long Reach to the Gulf of Maine was no sleigh ride. Here and there the channel narrowed until a sailor could toss a bolt onto either of the rocky banks. The Kennebec River wound past fields and forests, churches and clapboard farmhouses, menacing rocks and pebbled beaches. In winter the landscape was painted in fresh snow, and warships nosed gently between ice sheets that covered the river like a giant's flagstones. But the
Roberts
was making the journey in May, and spring was starting to color the riverbanks in shades of pale green.
The frigate passed beneath the granite walls of abandoned Fort Popham, picked its way past the bobbing buoys of lobster traps, and headed south to the open sea. In the coming year the crew would sail
Roberts
from the city of its birth, put into its home port, and head south to Cuba for a shakedown cruiseâthe first tough test of the young ship's capabilities and their own acumen. The ship would also earn their first decoration for operational valor.
Clear of the islands of Casco Bay, the bridge crew opened
Roberts
up and let it run. The frigate leaned like a young racehorse, the modern analogue of the square-rigged man-o'-war, a true and proper heir to the frigates of old. The bow sliced the water at twenty-five knots; the stern threw up a low, rumbling rooster tail. The ship was fast, no doubt about it. During a full-power run off Cuba later in the year,
Roberts
would set a
Perry
-class record by hitting thirty-one knots.
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Within hours of the ship's departure from Maine, the frigate entered rough water. The chiefs laughed at the young pups who turned green as the ship bulled its way through the swells. Still, most stayed gamely at their stations, gripping plastic bags, for adrenaline was flowing as well. “It's the first time you're working as a team together to get this huge ship where it's supposed to go,” said signalman Chuck Dumas.
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Paul Rinn took the opportunity to introduce some of his junior officers to the art of conning the ship, or “driving” it, as surface warfare officers were wont to say. Like most warships, a
Perry
frigate was guided by any
of several qualified crew members. The designated conning officer directed verbal orders to an enlisted helmsman, who steered the forty-one-hundred-ton warship with a three-inch replica of a sailing ship's wheel.
Like every class of watercraft on the sea, the
Perrys
had their quirks, many related to their single-screw, single-rudder design. For one thing, they turned a bit faster to port than to starboard. For another, their boxy silhouettes caught the wind evenly and would happily lie broadside to it, while most destroyer-type ships tended to swing away from the wind bow-first. And at very low speeds the stern tended to “walk” to starboard. This made it somewhat easier to moor portside to a pier, and somewhat more difficult to depart from such a mooring. In difficult situations, the conning officer had the option of lowering the auxiliary propulsion units, clamping the propeller shaft into motionlessness, and sidling up to the pier. A good frigate driver learned to use these quirks to his advantage.
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For all of this, driving a
Perry
was a dream compared to handling steam-powered ships.
Roberts
's twin gas turbines provided plenty of power on demand, and its variable-pitch propeller could all but make the ship dance. The seventeen-foot propeller had five blades mounted on individual spindles. As the helmsman took the ship up to fifteen knots, the computer-controlled blades swiveled to take bigger bites of the water. To go faster, the gas turbines sped up. For an emergency stop, the blades would reverse their angle, dragging the ship from flank speed to dead stop in two lengths of its hull. A frigate plowing backward at twelve knots could stop, reverse course, and hit its twenty-nine-knot flank speed within a hundred seconds.
Rinn, a fine shiphandler himself, loved teaching other people to drive. He had learned the craft from his skippers on
Sarsfield
and
Blakely.
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But Rinn learned something else from these men, who rarely took the helm when they could let junior officers do it: good captains are as much teachers as warfighters. “They gave you the football and let you play the game. And they said, âIf you made a mistake, you learn,'” Rinn said.
He adopted the practice as a tenet of leadership. “Your job as a CO was to fight the ship, no doubt about it,” he said. “But it was also to train your people. If you died in the first five minutes of the battle, they'd fight on without you. They'd just say, âOkay, he's gone, but we can do this.'”
One basic skill was the Anderson turn, a full-power circle used to rescue a sailor fallen overboard. To practice, someone would toss a buoy over the side, and the officer of the deck would practice zooming around in a turn that would bring the ship up behind the hapless sailor.
Rinn described the man-overboard lesson like this:
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I took everybody out into the bridge wing and said, “I don't know whether you've ever been trained on how to do a man-overboard drill, but I doubt it.
       Â
“Let me just tell you this: man-overboard drills are not a test of your manhood. It's not a test to see how fast you can drive the ship, and charge out there and run the guy over in the water. If you go too fast, you're going to scare him to death, or miss him.”
       Â
Recovering a man at sea or driving the ship is like hitting a guy throwing a curveball or fastball. I hate to use these analogies, but it really is. Always try to stand in the same place and use a physical marker somewhere on the bridge wing that doesn't move. That way, you have reference points. In baseball, when guys look at the pitcher on the mound, they size him up so that when his hand hits a certain point, he's flinging. That's how you hit a fastball. A curveball, same thing. You watch to see the environment.
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I took everybody out on the starboard bridge wing, and I said, “Okay, everybody close your eyes.”
The officers crowded onto the oblong open-air platform. Rinn pointed to the bobbing buoy and raised his voice to give the order to the enlisted helmsman in the pilothouse.
       Â
“Engines ahead flank, right full rudder.” I count to ninety seconds. And then I pointed and said, “Open your eyes and look out there. What do you see? It's the man in the water.”
       Â
So I did it about three times. Every time you hear “man overboard,” and you say, “Engines ahead flank, right or left full rudder,” you can be sure that in two minutes he will be there. Even if you can't see him, you can know that's where he is, okay?
       Â
Now that you know that, you have to bring the ship around to get in that position, so just trust that that's where he is. Now bring
him around to this cone over here at forty-five degrees. This is a highly maneuverable gas-turbine ship.
       Â
I said, “Whenever you drive the ship, you always stand here next to the pelorus [a navigation tool]. Always. Always, always.
       Â
“If you're not standing here, you're like a tennis player who gets out of position on the court. And if a guy hits a shot at his ankle, it doesn't matter how good he is, he can't return it. If you're out of position, you can't do the job.”
       Â
Good athletes always go to the place where they know they can execute the game. If you play badminton against an eighty-year-old man and he knows badminton, he runs you all over the court, and he kills you. And he hasn't moved. Why? Because he knows how to play the game. He knows the alleys.
       Â
“It's physics, man. So stand right here.”
       Â
And every time a guy didn't do it, I'd go out and give him hell, and say, “What the fuck are you doing? I told you where to stand. Stand there!”
       Â
Because they would immediately screw it up. They'd stand in the wrong place, and they'd get all botched up. And I'd say, “Why are you so thick? I told you, stand here.” And I'd ask, “What doesn't move here? The ocean moves, the sun moves, the water moves. The ship doesn't move. The ship's always going to be the same.
       Â
“If you're standing here, guess what is always going to be here? The corner of the bridge wing, this pelorus over here, these voice tubes down here, and you use them just like you use a sight on a gun.”
       Â
It's called seamanship. You teach them how to use their ship. As if it's part of your body.
       Â
I eventually got them all indoctrinated on how to do it. And to a man, they could all get a man to the side of the ship in under three minutes. And they could teach anybody else to do it. I'd bring the enlisted men up there and teach them to do it.
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Rinn could use shiphandling lessons to teach other ideas as well. One day, the captain walked into the wardroom around lunchtime.
       Â
I said, “Remember what I told you: that a man-overboard drill isn't a test of your manhood. You remember that? Well, I'm a pretty straight guy. You can believe what I say, right?”
       Â
And they all said, “Oh yes, sir.”
       Â
I said, “Well, I lied. Today, it's a test of your manhood.”
       Â
And they all went, “What?”
       Â
There was a lesson. I always believed that lessons are a very good way of teaching people how to do things right. Just like officers are your men's best protection, and your men's best friend, the CO sometimes can be the biggest prick in the world, and he's doing it for a reason, and they don't have to know it. And you're not there to explain it to them. You're not trying to win a popularity contest.
       Â
The reason I did this was that the combat systems officer, a guy by the name of Glenn Palmer, was kind of different by the wardroom's standards. But Glenn was a good guy. I liked him a lot. He worked incredibly hard, and I trusted him.
       Â
I said, “Today, we are going to have a competition.”
       Â
And there was a prize. I said, “Whoever wins this, I'm going to take out to dinner in the most expensive restaurant in Newport, you and your wife, or you and your girlfriend.”
       Â
So everybody says, all right. So we go up on the bridge, and everybody's making a good run of it. Racing around. About fourteen people. I got up there and it was really super. I had a stopwatch. It was the way you want your wardroom to be. These guys were great. They were all aggressive.
       Â
The first five or six guys are all at two minutes, fifty-six seconds; two minutes, thirty-six seconds. It's great. They're all hauling around, driving the ship at thirty-one knots. The ship's heeling over, and I'm loving it. I'm thinking this is what being a cruiser-destroyer guy is all about. I'm telling them stories about black smoke and white water.
       Â
Palmer steps up. He's like the sixth or seventh guy and he says, “Man overboard, starboard side. Engines ahead flank. Engines stop. Engines back full.”
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He stopped the ship on a dimeâgas turbine shipâand backs up: one minute and ten seconds. Glenn's going to win.
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And everyone's pissed off: “You cheated.” Some of the remarks to Palmer were in jest. But a lot of them weren't.
       Â
And I thought, “We're all a team here, and these guys talk about Glenn being a nerd. Well, that means we're not a team. We're a bunch of bullies, and we like to pick on a guy in our wardroom.”
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Glenn used to drive me nuts, because he was a little different. But that didn't mean he wasn't a good officer. And he worked his ass off. That's the one thing I was so impressed with the guy. He just really worked hard. He did his job very, very well.
       Â
So we get down to the wardroom, and I told Glenn I'd take him out to dinner. So Glenn left the wardroom, and I told everyone else to stick around.
       Â
I said, “I do have a comment for you guys. You know, this was a lot of fun, wasn't it?”
       Â
They said, “Yes, Palmer won. He cheated.”
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I said, “He didn't cheat; he was better than you. Smarter than you. You're pissed off because the geek beat you, aren't you?”
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And everyone looked at me, and I said, “Yes, that's right: the geek. That's what you guys call him. That sucks. Because you know what? What's worse than anything is, the geek kicked your ass, didn't he?
       Â
“So let me teach a lesson about combat. My friends, you may think that guy out there doesn't look like an all-American. You may think he doesn't look like much of anything. He'll kick your ass and kill you, okay?
       Â
“Learn this lesson today. You went up against a guy who out-thought you and smoked your asses. And you call him a nameâpretty badâand he blew you away. So my question to you is, âWhat day are we going to meet somebody on the high seas that you don't think much of, and he blows us away?' So don't ever forget the lesson you learned today, and don't ever call him a geek again.”
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Total silence. I got up and said, “I hope you enjoyed your lunch. See you later.” And you could have heard a pin drop.
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It was a very good lesson, and they viewed Glenn Palmer very differently after that day.
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