One of the worst ever jobs I had while in the Navy was a job I was assigned to when I first was promoted out of the enlisted ranks to Warrant Officer. Usually Warrant Officer is a sweet position in the Navy. You’re neither fish nor fowl, as the saying goes. No longer an enlisted person and not yet accepted fully as an officer. The first two years as a Warrant Officer are a temporary condition where if you mess up it’s back to the enlisted ranks with you. After the two years are complete and you’ve kept your nose clean the Navy dubs thee a Commissioned Warrant Officer. Then you are “a made officer”. You’re ‘in’. I kept my nose relatively clean. I was assigned to Charleston Naval Shipyard in South Carolina.
During those two years in the shipyard I enjoyed many interactions and I witnessed human behaviors that no other place could afford. A shipyard is a virtual city. It’s a factory of many items. More precise, its a city of factories. A shipyard can make nearly anything. Here I will try to list the items a shipyard is skilled at and from that one can imagine the natural progression to other more complex objects that can be manufactured. The shipyard has skilled people who can; drive boats, weld, cut metal, form sheet metal, lift large and heavy objects, machine metal, forge and cast metals, non-destructively test metals, form pipes, braze piping, grind piping and metal, reshape metal objects, bend piping, make piping systems, fill and test piping systems, make foundations for engines and motors and generator in ships, make ships, design ship, design living spaces in ships, make anything that goes into a ship, procure and install electrical and elecronic equipment, test all the equipments, stitch and sew fabrics, make curtains, covers, install fomica, cut and shape wood, build furniture, build staging around ships to keep the workers safe, paint and coat protections on metals, wood, and fabrics, give first aid to workers who are injured, teach workers about safety measures, maintain safety and health records for workers. All the skills listed require buildings and shops that are made by the shipyard, cleaned and maintained, watched and protected from criminal activity. There are cranes, dry docks, train systems for moving large items across the shipyard. There are gangs of people who clean up industrial waste constantly. There are nuclear testing people, doctors, nurses, technicians, mechanics, apprentices, schools and class rooms. The list goes on.
My job was to know all of the capabilities of each shop and skill in the shipyard. I needed to know the responsibilities of all these trades so I could supervise the overall task of performing work lists for each ship that entered the shipyard for maintenance/repair. I did this for two years. Many times I was on the waterfront from 7 A.M. to 11 P.M. It was a demanding job. When the Production Officer asked me what I had learned during my exit interview I told him that I had learned to lie, cheat, and steal. He was nonplussed. Apparently he never was a Warrant Officer for two years. I will probably be able to write many stories about shipyard workers for a long, long time. In so many ways it was the worst job ever for me and in many ways I can not think of a better job to learn so much in a compressed time.
Of course this whole piece came about because I was thinking about shipfitters I’d seen in shipyards. A shipfitter can weld, grind, fit, shape, assemble metal parts in the ship building industry. Here is Wikipedia’s definition of a shipfitter:
“Shipfitters fabricate, assemble and erect all structural parts of a ship, coordinate all fixed tank work performed on submarines and ships, and coordinate all sonar dome work. Shipfitters also use heavy machinery, such as plate planners, shears, punches, drill presses, bending rolls, bending slabs, plate bevelers, saws, presses up to 750 tons, angle rolls (vertical and horizontal), dogs and wedges. Shipfitters are responsible for hydro and air testing of tanks and compartments, as well as perform grinding, drilling and fit-up operations on submarines and surface crafts.”
Shipfitters are highly skilled and I admire them for the courage they display in the places they are required to work while assembling the parts of plating that comprised the hulls of ships.
I have a memory of watching shipfitters talking over a project. This is a characteristic of most shipfitters I’ve ever met. While they talk the shipfitter needs to have a pencil or a piece of chalk in their hand to roughly illustrate what they mean. Often I’ve done the same thing. The shipfitter is usually sketching a situation on top of a railing or on the side of a structure with some form of marker. Most often it’s on top of a bollard somewhere along a pier or dock where the graphics get laid down. Shipfitters carry a piece of chalk in their pocket. It is used on the job to layout shapes and dimensions for cutting or fabricating metal. It never fails though that when a shipfitter begins to discuss a project out comes the chalk. It’s just part of the communication style.
G. M. Goodwin
27 March 2018
Playing Fair and Being Kind 