November | 2023 | M.C. Tuggle, Writer

One of the more colorful naval traditions Americans inherited from Mother England is the initiation of sailors and passengers the first time they cross the equator. Think of it as a baptism at sea.

My father, Clayton Tuggle, served on the USS Birmingham in World War II. Seriously battered and burned in the Battle of Okinawa, the Birmingham limped to Guam and later to Honolulu for extensive repairs. The sailors enjoyed their shore leave, but knew the ship was being prepared for the final invasion of Japan. However, Japan’s surrender on August 15 changed everything. The Birmingham’s new mission was to sail to Brisbane to serve as the flagship for the Commander of U. S. Naval Forces in Australia.

On September 15, 1945, as the Birmingham steamed toward Leyte Gulf, Captain R. H. Cruzen received an urgent request from King Neptune, the monarch of the sea. Neptune was greatly troubled that the ship was infested with Polywogs who had never before crossed the equator. Captain Cruzen graciously accepted the King and his consort, Salacia, the lovely goddess of the sea (in photo above).

The Polywogs were so numerous and so green that King Neptune summoned the Devil to oversee the purification process. The Devil enthusiastically administered the proper cure to the Polywogs, including immersion in seawater, crawling through kitchen refuse, and wearing women’s clothes.

Officers were not spared. Above, a recent Midshipman School graduate (90-day wonder) marches cheerfully to his doom. Sailors who had previously been initiated – Shellbacks – look on approvingly.

Not even the pilot of the Birmingham’s single seaplane was spared from the Devil’s not-so-tender mercies.

With their sins forgiven, their greenness thoroughly washed away, and their worthiness proven, the Polywogs graduated to the rank of experienced Shellbacks and were inducted into the Solemn Mysteries of the Ancient Order of the Deep. Sailors got to let off steam, and King Neptune acquired hundreds of loyal subjects.

I was intrigued by this observation from author Walter Stephens:

Writing evolved to perform tasks that were difficult or impossible to accomplish without it; at some level, it is now essential for anything that human societies do, except in certain increasingly threatened cultures of hunter-gatherers. Without writing, modern civilization has amnesia; complex tasks need stable, reliable, long-term memory.

Think about the octopus. It’s a remarkably intelligent creature, but its short life span precludes it from creating an enduring civilization. Imagine a human child that had to discover for itself how to make fire, the wheel, or language. As Stephens puts it, “Writing enabled memory to outlast the human voice and transcend the individual person.” Tradition, our inheritance from countless forbears, is the infrastructure that makes us fully human. Without it, we’d be in the same boat as the octopus. Except we wouldn’t have boats.

As Stephens reminds us in his thought-provoking article, the written word is the most powerful tool — or weapon — we have yet created. No wonder we view language as a “wondrous, mystic art.”

Wondrous indeed. And surely an art. Early on, I was fascinated by stories, and still love reading and writing. Words enable us to connect with the past, the present, and the future, and allow the individual to pass on the things that enchant and delight us. I love describing the joys and terrors of life, from the roar of a storm on Onslow Bay, the smell of a wood campfire at a mountain camp, or the taste of a steamed oyster. And while passing our thoughts and feelings to others is an essential life skill, the art of writing is a life-long pursuit. As Hemingway once put it, “We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”

It’s a journey that will never end.