Small nuggets of fact often are below mountains of folklore. Getting to the nugget is usually impossible. So it is with most sea stories. But this story is true. It was told to me by an admiral I knew back in my Navy days. My first father-in-law, the Cap’n, confirmed it.
Navigation and pilotage are difficult. The texts would have you believe that we have a science before us. In truth, they are arts. Like many art forms and crafts, bits of received knowledge point the way.
Most mariners can recite verbatim even the most obscure “Rules of the Road.” The Rules of the Road are a set of international rules and regulations for preventing collisions at sea and inland waterways. Beneath those codes are even older traditional sayings and acronyms used to remember basic things. Things like *BPOE—Black Port On Entry. In my day, BPOE meant that on entry into a harbor, you left the black can buoys to your port side while entering. The black cans marked the channel.
And that’s where the old sea story comes in. It seems there was an admiral of great repute and skill who every morning arose. He had his coffee, entered his day cabin, opened his safe, and read from a note. That accomplished, he proceeded with his day. None of his staff knew what was on the paper. After he died, they opened the safe and found this note: ” Port-Left, Starboard-Right.” None of the aids will do any good if you can’t tell Port from Starboard – left from right.
The admiral swore he had been among the crew opening the safe. The Cap’n claimed that it was he on board Liberty Ship Charles Owen who had opened the safe. Even though the ships were thousands of nautical miles apart in space and at least a decade separated in time, I believe the story.
If you spend enough time at sea or even sailing in coastal waters, you learn that human perceptions and memory are frail. That’s why we have all the rules, aids, and techniques, and still, things go wrong. Ask any sailor. Life on the water is dangerous.
- BPOE is now an obsolete term since they changed the color of the bouys.
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I’m with that highly reputed admiral. I’m challenged by right and left and writing numbers in order. When I took the sailing class in San Diego I was always going to wrong way. My teacher just got mad. That didn’t help. 🤣
He got mad because it happened to him too. He just couldn’t confront his own weakness.
There are no perfect sailors, only those who get out of bad situations and clam up about them!
Made me remember our boating class and my subsequent panic on our boat about everything. Not a sailor here. Oh well.
the secret of being a really salty sailor is not talking about those moments of utter panic…we just square away the cap, straighten the shoulders and try not to shake too much.