Damato (DDE 871) - Naval Cruise Book

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THE CAPTAIN ... WILLIAM WINFIELD MEADORS, Commander, United States Navy Born March 21, 1920, the son of the late Mr. Irby Meadors and Mrs. Meadors of 522 2nd Avenue, Albany, Georgia, Commander Meadors was educated in the Public Schools of Albany. A graduate of North Georgia College in Dahlanega, Georgia, in 1940, he entered the Navy as an Ensign. He has served in the Gunnery Department of the U.S.S. Anderson (DD 411), as Gunnery Officer of the U.S.S. Heermann (DD 532), as Executive Officer of the U.S.S. Claxton (572), as Commanding Officer of the U.S.S. Foss (EDE 57) and as Operations Officer and Navigator of the U.S.S. Fargo (CL 106). He reported aboard the Damato as Commanding Officer in January 1951 to be vi ith us for almost two years and was relieved by Commander Victor F. Wadsworth as our Skipper on 20 December, 1952. Commander Meadors is now serving in the Planning Department of the Commander-in-Chief, United States Atlantic Fleet, Norfolk, Virginia.

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For THIS is a BOOK of SAILORS . . . The faces and the places on these pages are all projected against a background of the sea, and as you look, and read, you must hear its sounds: the sluicing of the sea at the ships bow, its rumbling at the fantail, and the passage of wind in the rigging. [For this is a book of sailors.) There is Collins, red face gleaming with spray, urging his deck apes to get the slack out of that line; and Ward, swaying through a passageway, a bag of change for the Coke machine in one hand, and in the other a list of electronic spares; and Litten squinting down a 40mm barrel; and Gjerding, his blue shirt soaked with sweat generated in the moist and humid for- ward engine room, taking a breath of air in the midships passage; and the Del Signers, in the steaming galley; and Captain Meadors peering upwind as he conns the ship along- side a wallowing carrier; and Wright, squat- ting happily in the Torpedo Shack with his fifth cup of coffee; and Spitz ram-rodding the mess deck, — and three hundred others you came to know during your cruise on the DAMATO. A year, ten years from now, see- ing these faces again, you will remember a familiar tone of voice, smell the acrid stack gasses clouding the bridge in a following wind, feel once more the biting chill of an early winter hour at the C. E. Piers. You will see the grey combers of a North Atlantic gale rearing mountain-like against the ship ' s side, or recall the green shadowed eminence of Gibraltar against Mediterranean stars. Men travel in trains, in planes, in cars, but it is only in a ship that men travel — and live, and who can tell the landsman how it is to live with men in a ship at sea? Do they know why it is that in weeks and months at sea the everlasting immensity of the ocean around one, and the heavens overhead makes man seem small, and each man more than life-size? Think, yourself, how well you remember your shipmates. Does the landsman know what the wind can do, out there beyond the horizon? No picture can show him those endless watches, those hours, days and weeks of a howling gale, with the ship lunging heavily into the sea and the bow exploding in a fan of spray which the wind ships aft in smoking stream- ers which lash the pilot house windows and drive the lookouts to cover. Below decks, in passageways and engineering spaces, men stagger and cling, riding the ship, fighting the sea with their muscles and their minds, while the loose gear crashes for days and nights and the funnels are crusted with salt and the rust begins. And how would you paint for him the gentle quiet of a spring night, at anchor in Lynnhaven roads, the whisper of the tide along the side, and the soft light of a full moon over the Virginia shore, and the promise of port the next morn- ing? Or the lilac Mediterranean lake at dawn, as the ship stands in to anchor at a Riviera port? Will you, in time to come, tell from some rolling rocking chair on a tree shaded porch, of Lamy ' s singing at the Gibraltar smoker, of the time you almost fell overboard from the liberty launch in Tangier, of the night-time search for the crew of a plane which crashed in the Straits of Sicily, of standing rigidly at mast in the chart house, of spinning shut the throttle when the starboard engine lost lube oil pressure during a full power run, of having the Commander in Chief of the Canadian Navy tell you that this was the cleanest ship he ' d ever seen, of crouching tensely in Mount One the first time you ' d ever helped fire a five-inch gun, of watching the orange tracers stream out from your 20mm to the target, of standing stiffly at quarters for inspection while the Captain ' s eyes swept down the blue ranks of your division? What other mem- ories will you have of this watery, wind- swept, regimented but wonderful life at sea on a United States man-of-war? You can say to yourself, in time to come, that this cruise was more than a voyaging and more than a mere traveling. It was for its time, a way of life. And remembering this seafaring, you can say to yourself more: that in this time and in this ship you stood to your station and were, or still are, a sailor in the world ' s best Navy.