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At random: The USS SEAWOLF join the Electric Boat built USS NAUTILUS and SKATE in writing new chapters in the achievements of man when the nuclear powered submarine came to the surface at 11:45 a.m. on October 6, 1958 after being continuously submerged for 60 days.

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Ric

Posted 2009-08-26 2:11 PM (#30033)

Plankowner

Posts: 9165

Location: Upper lefthand corner of the map.

Subject: Poem

"There is a poetry in ships' names. It can still be heard in the quiet watches of the night..., when mist obscures the waterfront and foghorns call mournfully through the darkness. Out across the bay, blinking lights mark the channel down which Navy ships have sailed for a hundred years, and bells sound a knell for those that never came back. There is no quiet Arlington for ships; their bones rust in unknown lands beneath the sea. The names that entered history in minutes filled with fire and thunder are soon forgotten, except in long hours of the night when the bells call the roll of missing ships —Seawolf .
. . .

There are honored names, and the ships that wore them carried them well. Some were old and some were new, but sweat and skill and steel of Mare Island was a part of each of them to the end —Pickerel.
. . .

There are historic names, old in the naval list. Though the logs in the archives fade, their memories will live so long as the bells still toll —These are fighting names, and these were fighting ships —Wahoo, Swordfish, Tang, Trigger, Tullibee, Gudgeon, Pompano.
. . .

Such were the ships that Mare Island built, and such were the ships that made history."

Fletcher Pratt
http://pigboats.com/subs/tollbell.html

Bear

Posted 2009-08-26 7:41 PM (#30041 - in reply to #30033)

Great Sage of the Sea

Posts: 781

Location: Port Orchard WA

Subject: RE: Poem

since the Politicos will most likely never go back to naming boats after fish wouldn't be nice if each current boat was to adopt one of the older name boats names as well It could be the lost boat for the boats named after a state such as Escolar for USS Michigan or Grunion for USS Ohio or Trigger for USS Pennsylvania and so on for the state withou a current boat or a boat with a non state name the could pick up the missing names

Donald L. Johnson

Posted 2009-08-26 8:50 PM (#30044 - in reply to #30033)

Great Sage of the Sea

Posts: 602

Location: Visalia, Ca.

Subject: RE: Poem

Lovely words. Both power and music in them.

Is that, perchance, the same Fletcher Pratt who wrote science fiction and fantasy with L. Sprague DeCamp in the 40s and 50s?

I have at least one of their books on my shelf.

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