Turbulent Seas My Life In The American Merchant Marine

Merriam Press Memoir Series. "Turbulent Seas" takes the reader back to the rousing American high sea memoirs that began 180 years ago with Richard Henry Dana's "Two Years Before the Mast." From the mid-1960s until his retirement, Merchant Marine Captain Lance Orton led an adventurous life on ships that crossed the globe's oceans and served ports in wartime Vietnam, India, the old Soviet Union, Alaska, and beyond. Co-authors Orton and Professor Barnett Singer tell of Captain Orton's career in an engaging narrative that, at times, could serve as a script for an action-�adventure movie. Readers will be entertained while learning fascinating details about a career in the U.S. Merchant Marine. This book will make an excellent gift to the family "history buff" and any of those who enjoy real-life adventures. -Michael Allen, Professor Emeritus, University of Washington, Tacoma. Co-author of the #1 Amazon.com and New York Times Bestseller, "A Patriot's History of the United States," 2014.

Merriam Press Personal Chronicle 1. Second Edition (May 2012). Lance Orton's career in the American Merchant Marine, during which he experienced an interesting, hectic, and often dangerous life on the high seas, and in a variety of ports from the mid-1960s through to the mid-1980s. What to him were fascinatingly difficult human challenges began with his cadet days and from his earliest times on the water, then continued during his first voyage as a third officer, and through his appointment as one of the youngest American captains of a very large vessel-in fact, the largest American ship ever built at that time (late 1970s), "The Golden Endeavor," then classed as a supertanker, but later downgraded to "Baby Super." Lance sailed with colorful, crazy, but sometimes gifted maritime personnel, and fought off a number of life-threatening situations, including pirate attacks, knife fights on board ship, attempted poisonings (of me), etc. I also sailed to Vietnam in the years when a merchant mariner literally took his life in his hands doing so. I had to deal with accidents and near explosions on ships, due to volatile hydrocarbons and other material we carried, but also to human error. In this book you get the inside story. You also get a close view of American organizations both blessed and plagued by a variety of personalities, and especially, by the growing disease of bureaucratization and political maneuvering. And you will encounter a sad, yet comical Soviet Union before Gorbachev, where the secret police, inequities, and paranoia were rife. This is one man's story that will compel the your attention. Contents: * My Baptism at Sea with Captain Crofton; * A Young Cadet's Progress and Revolt; * First Voyage to India; * Strafing in Vietnam and American Rage; * Enter the Divine Element; * Incompetence and Tragedy; * To Russia with Vodka; * Back to American Scalawags; * Returning as Captain Orton to KGB Land; * Ships' Revolvers and Revolts; * Final Diagnosis-Lunacy on Board Ship!

This book takes both a historical and personal views of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. The historical view is provided by Dr. Devine, Joel Liebesfeld, Todd Liebesfeld, Esq., and Prof. Schuber. The personal view is presented by Dr. Doherty who discusses the account of Robert J. Walsh, a U.S. Army 34th Infantry soldier telephone lineman, who was stationed near Nagasaki. Robert took approximately 275 pictures for his photo album with a simple Kodak camera. Many of the pictures are at ground zero and show the devastation of the atomic bomb as well as a marker for the epicenter. Robert was also electrocuted on high voltage wires and fell off a telephone pole to the ground. His back was broken in three places and he was put in a coma so that he would stay still and the back could be fused. While in a coma, Robert was lost in one of the nearby hospitals. His mother received a telegram that he was lost. His mother was completely beside herself and turned to Congressman Fred A. Hartley Jr. for help. Congressman Hartley launched an investigation and found Robert in a hospital in Japan. Robert was in a body cast for two years, part of it in a coma, but did not get a bed sore due to the results of a Japanese nurse named Snowball who invented a special medical instrument that she used with Robert. Robert was brought back home and brought back to Walter Reed Hospital where doctors used innovative techniques to help him heal and walk again. The book also ends with Robert as a senior citizen who lives a normal life leading a dance group at his retirement center.

In the dark days of World War II, merchant mariners made heroic contributions to the eventual Allied victory and suffered tremendous casualties in so doing. Among these were the engineers who toiled deep in the bowels of the ship and suffered appalling casualties. After the war, engineering personnel were unlikely to talk about their experiences, let alone write them down. These modest and self-effacing men were more comfortable in a world of turbines and pistons, so they seldom brought their stories forward. Liberty’s War sets out to explore the experiences of one such engineer, Herman Melton, from his time as a cadet at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy through his experiences at sea as a third assistant engineer. Melton’s story is representative of the thousands of Merchant Marine engineers who served on board Liberty ships during the war. Like many young Americans, he sought to do his part, and in 1942 he obtained an appointment to the newly created U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, New York. After graduating from the academy in 1944, he shipped out to the Pacific Theatre, surviving the sinking of his Liberty ship, the SS Antoine Saugrain, and its top-secret cargo.

This study provides a biography of Jose M. Lopez, who earned the US Congressional Medal of Honor during World War II. The author examines how he returned to segregation and discrimination in the United States and how court decisions, civil rights legislation, and veterans' organizations became part of the postwar US political agenda.

Looking back, author Bernhard J. Abrahamsson cannot say exactly why, at age fourteen, he chose a seafaring life. Perhaps, the choice was less the result of deliberate design and pursuit than of circumstances that led him in that direction. In The Beckoning Sea, Abrahamsson, a native of Sweden, shares the short stories and vignettes from a youth spent dreaming of seeing the world. This memoir narrates his experiences when he joined the Swedish Merchant Marine and sailed all over the world on Swedish and Israeli merchant ships through the 1950s. He passed the sea captain's exam in 1953 and was licensed as a captain in 1958, reaching the rank of commander in the Swedish Naval Reserve before becoming a US citizen. Funny and sad events mesh to form a picture of seafaring as it once was--of a lifestyle that no longer exists. The Beckoning Sea offers stories of friendship, loss and madness at sea, the forces of nature, and life in the rough ports of the Baltic coal trade immediately after World War II. A tale of a boy's journey to adulthood, The Beckoning Sea also contains a collection of memories and often comical stories from Abrahamsson's own second chapter--his life after leaving the sea and planting his feet on firm ground.