Getting Sea Sick
By: Allen E. Walker

I was one of the lucky few who never got sea sick, but both the Craftmaster, a Chief Boatswain's Mate, with 22 years in, and one of our young Seamen always got deathly ill. Anyway we had to tow a YD from Subic down to Mariveles with YTB 775, the and once we got out past Grande Island and were running down along the Bataan coast we got into some pretty heavy ground swells. They were running between 6 and 12 foot and that little tug was bobbing around like a cork.

I went up to the pilothouse because I knew the Chief would be sick and found him hanging out of the wheelhouse door puking on the deck. The seaman, had the helm watch and was just as sick as the Chief. As soon as the Chief saw me he wiped his mouth off and cried. "God damn it, take the watch. I've got to go below!" Then as he got to the ladder, going down below, he uttered some kind of profanity about Snips who weren't smart enough to get properly sea sick at sea.

Well anyway I managed to keep us on our Track Line while the seaman relieved the Chief at the wheelhouse door puking at the same place on the deck. Then a few minutes later the Chief came back up with a three pound coffee can in which he had punched two holes and had tied a short piece of line through them. He walked over to the seaman, hung the can around his neck, stood him back in front of the wheel and said, "There, ya little sonofabitch, don't leave the wheel again!"