My path through the Navy was not smooth. One month, I was a road bum, a Pius Itinerant, and about six weeks later, I was hoisting a seabag and heading to the Caribbean. What’s not to like about a Caribbean cruise in February? Well, let’s see…the mid watch ( 12 AM to 4 AM) anchor watches, do nothing watches standing around, and stubbing your feet over unseen objects on the hangar deck of an ancient World War II era aircraft carrier. I don’t think I was in the minority in wishing I was in a better place.
So, it was with some trepidation that I viewed yet another, I thought, dumb assignment. I was dumped into a work detail with the infamous Bosun John O’Toole ( known as the Tool to his closer associates). Working with O’Toole and his team was a constant cycle of routine tasks, inspections, and reports. But we did very little work, drank a lot of coffee, played cards a lot, and spent endless hours telling, sometimes instructional, stories. How did we submit so many reports and finish so many inspections, and still have time for stories, games, and coffee? It’s simple, we “gun decked” all but the most critical.
What is Gun Decking? It’s nothing less than the ancient and less-than-honorable way to prepare reports that look authentic but are rigged. It dates to the days of sailing ships, and “Young Gentleman Midshipmen who were supposed to be learning to navigate. After taking their noon sights of the sun, they retired below to the gundeck to ‘work their sights’ and determine the ship’s position at sea. There on the gundeck, miraculous things occurred that frequently resulted in wildly inaccurate sights becoming correct.
Over the generations, the Navy gradually became a place where many reports on much equipment needed to be filed. Sometimes, “those in positions of authority” deemed they should be done daily, weekly, quarterly, semi-annually, and so forth. In truth, some tasks that had to be done daily were ridiculous and only really needed to be done monthly. And so Gun Decking, and to Gun Deck, became part of the Naval life.
Reports came in many forms and degrees of intricacy. The easiest to GunDeck were simply items to be checked off. But there were more complex ones with multiple choice, and other items requiring creativity. To leave time for cards, dice, coffee, and sea stories, bosuns needed to become creative. Devices were employed to determine the results that needed to be input into forms. In my day, they were game spinners, dice, and decks of cards. These days, I imagine the crafty ones use downloaded apps from the internet. Technology does move on.
O’Toole’s favorite item for the more complex work was the Magic Eight Ball. Combined with carefully crafted questions, it offered subtle guidance in making reports. O’Toole offered all of us advice to live by: “You need to know the pattern of failure in the equipment. Not all the reports are make-work, so you need to know what really needs careful work and what is just fluff to keep some idiot lieutenant junior grade running.”
These words were familiar. They were almost verbatim what my father, a Merchant Marine Engineer, had told me growing up and helping him in the boiler room. I told this to O’Toole, he smiled and mentioned that my dad was a smart man.
Who was this paragon of naval wisdom? Well, he ran the most successful bootlegging operation on board, only catering to selected officers, bribed masters at arms, and some careful friends. The ship had undergone so many renovations since it was built towards the end of the war that plans were incomplete and inaccurate. It was legend on board that O’Toole had three barrels hidden in which he crafted his own bourbon, brandy, and scotch. In fact, there were no barrels, just good smuggling operations that brought the goods on board before each cruise.
On learning that I was a folksinger, he added a guitar to the smuggling operation. My singing and playing were added to the cards, dice, coffee, and sea stories.
O’Toole’s advice is that: “You need to know the pattern of failure in the equipment. Not all the reports are make-work, so you need to know what really needs careful work and what is just fluff to keep some idiot lieutenant junior grade running.” It was especially applicable during my years working for various governmental services that were amazingly like the Navy in many ways.
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