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Authors: Jimmy Carter
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giveaway prices. When we were alongside the dock, the captain let merchants display their wares on the deck.
The USS Pomfret in China in 1949, with merchants on deck.
I had very little money and bought just a few small souvenirs of ivory and jade, but some of the officers and men purchased expensive gifts to take home. We returned to Pearl Harbor after about two months of operation in the China seas.
This visit aroused my special interest in China and its history, and I was intrigued when, just a few months later, the Nationalists were forced to evacuate to Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China was formed on October 1, 1949—my twenty-fifth birthday. After that, I monitored quite closely the events in China and Taiwan.
A few months later, still in 1949, my submarine went into Mare Island, near San Francisco, for repairs, and I decided with some trepidation to visit Tom Gordy’s former wife, Dorothy. On a Friday afternoon we approached the address from one of her letters, and I left Rosalynn and Jack across the street, not knowing what the reception might be. I knocked on the door, told an older woman who I was, and she exploded into shouts, “Tom’s nephew is here!” It was Dorothy’s mother, Mrs. McDowell, and she embraced me as Dorothy and other family members crowded around. Rosalynn and Jack joined us, and we spent one of the most delightful uninterrupted celebrations I have ever known. A long table was filled with food, dozens of neighbors were invited in from time to time, and none of us went to bed that night. I remember vaguely that everyone was drinking boilermakers (shots of whiskey with beer), many of the men played guitars and sang while the rest of us danced, and we were regaled with descriptions of their experiences with Tom during earlier days. I told them that he was regaining his health, had been steadily promoted as he managed security at naval bases in Florida, had remarried, and owned a tavern in Lake Mary, Florida, which I had visited. We took brief naps the next day, and that night Dorothy and her husband accompanied us to the stage play A Streetcar Named Desire .
Tom retired from the navy as a commander and lived long enough to visit us in the governor’s mansion and to help with the early stages of my presidential campaign among his friends in Florida. He liked to remindme that he outranked me by several grades—but this was before I became commander in chief.
Before returning to Hawaii, our ship was assigned to operate in Puget Sound out of Seattle, and it was here that I found myself in danger again. We were tied up near the seaward end of Pier 61, and I was officer of the deck one night during a heavy fog. The lookout reported that a large ship was approaching quite close, and I went to the stern of the submarine and heard loud voices almost directly over my head. We could not see anything, and the people above me did not acknowledge my shouts as I attempted to let them know of our presence. I quickly realized that they were preparing to drop their huge anchor, believing they were in the middle of the channel. Finally, with the anchor visible just above my head and our ship, I heard the command “Prepare to let go the anchor!” Desperate, I strained my voice to the utmost and was relieved to hear, “Wait, I think there is someone down there.” I was blinded by a spotlight, and the large ship backed its engines. The crisis was over.
We operated with Canadian and British ships between the fresher water of Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, carefully adjusting the “trim” to accommodate our relatively lighter or heavier ship in water with changing salinity. This required experimenting until we achieved neutral buoyancy during our dives. When we concluded our operations in the area and were preparing to return to Hawaii, officers on the British destroyers invited us to join them for our last night in Victoria, British Columbia, and we went there from Seattle on the
The USS Pomfret in China in 1949, with merchants on deck.
I had very little money and bought just a few small souvenirs of ivory and jade, but some of the officers and men purchased expensive gifts to take home. We returned to Pearl Harbor after about two months of operation in the China seas.
This visit aroused my special interest in China and its history, and I was intrigued when, just a few months later, the Nationalists were forced to evacuate to Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China was formed on October 1, 1949—my twenty-fifth birthday. After that, I monitored quite closely the events in China and Taiwan.
A few months later, still in 1949, my submarine went into Mare Island, near San Francisco, for repairs, and I decided with some trepidation to visit Tom Gordy’s former wife, Dorothy. On a Friday afternoon we approached the address from one of her letters, and I left Rosalynn and Jack across the street, not knowing what the reception might be. I knocked on the door, told an older woman who I was, and she exploded into shouts, “Tom’s nephew is here!” It was Dorothy’s mother, Mrs. McDowell, and she embraced me as Dorothy and other family members crowded around. Rosalynn and Jack joined us, and we spent one of the most delightful uninterrupted celebrations I have ever known. A long table was filled with food, dozens of neighbors were invited in from time to time, and none of us went to bed that night. I remember vaguely that everyone was drinking boilermakers (shots of whiskey with beer), many of the men played guitars and sang while the rest of us danced, and we were regaled with descriptions of their experiences with Tom during earlier days. I told them that he was regaining his health, had been steadily promoted as he managed security at naval bases in Florida, had remarried, and owned a tavern in Lake Mary, Florida, which I had visited. We took brief naps the next day, and that night Dorothy and her husband accompanied us to the stage play A Streetcar Named Desire .
Tom retired from the navy as a commander and lived long enough to visit us in the governor’s mansion and to help with the early stages of my presidential campaign among his friends in Florida. He liked to remindme that he outranked me by several grades—but this was before I became commander in chief.
Before returning to Hawaii, our ship was assigned to operate in Puget Sound out of Seattle, and it was here that I found myself in danger again. We were tied up near the seaward end of Pier 61, and I was officer of the deck one night during a heavy fog. The lookout reported that a large ship was approaching quite close, and I went to the stern of the submarine and heard loud voices almost directly over my head. We could not see anything, and the people above me did not acknowledge my shouts as I attempted to let them know of our presence. I quickly realized that they were preparing to drop their huge anchor, believing they were in the middle of the channel. Finally, with the anchor visible just above my head and our ship, I heard the command “Prepare to let go the anchor!” Desperate, I strained my voice to the utmost and was relieved to hear, “Wait, I think there is someone down there.” I was blinded by a spotlight, and the large ship backed its engines. The crisis was over.
We operated with Canadian and British ships between the fresher water of Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, carefully adjusting the “trim” to accommodate our relatively lighter or heavier ship in water with changing salinity. This required experimenting until we achieved neutral buoyancy during our dives. When we concluded our operations in the area and were preparing to return to Hawaii, officers on the British destroyers invited us to join them for our last night in Victoria, British Columbia, and we went there from Seattle on the
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