Shanghai

            

     Panama City, Florida was a tourist town and a fishing town and not much else in 1963  except for the big paper mill. Most of the men who had steady year round jobs worked  in the paper mill.

    As a teenager I hung around the fishing docks at Anderson's Marina to make some money deadheading on the  party boats, boats that took up to a hundred people  out deep sea fishing for red snapper. Those boats had regular  deckhands but if there were many people going out to fish the boats would take some of the wharf rats, that's  me and the other urchins that lurked around the marina, to help with the passengers and  we were allowed to fish. We could then sell or keep the fish we caught when we got back to the dock.

     There were commercial boats at the marina, too. They went out farther, sometimes to  Campeche down by Yucatan to catch tons of snapper and grouper and whatever else  had a market price. The tourist boats went out for half a day or a day, or for two days  with the more adventurous tourists. The commercial boats went out for a few days up to several weeks.

     So long as I was frequenting the waterfront I wanted to go out there, way out there. I suppose every boy on the coast dreams about going out on the ocean sometimes. I surely did. One of the party captains told me that the Peggy G needed some hands and was at the downtown marina. I went  to find it the next morning and there it was. It was a 76 foot old Mobile schooner that had its bowsprit removed and its topmasts out but the stubs were still there. They were "stubs" but they stood up forty feet from the deck. It was powered by a 671 diesel engine now, not enough to push that hull very fast through the water.

     I signed on and went below to see where my bunk would be. The Peggy G had a proper foc's'le with ten pipe frame bunks and a huge diesel cooking range.  Then I went back and collected clothes and gear for two weeks at sea. I had only a few dollars in my pocket so I couldn't buy the tackle I needed from the outfitter but the captain had a good supply which he would sell to the crew at exorbitant prices so I was okay.

     My ship was supposed to sail in two days but had not yet enough crew so I stowed my gear and the captain put me and three others who had signed on to work cleaning the deck and the rails. Captain Ralph said that we had almost enough crew now but the rest would only show up when it was time to leave the dock. I understood the reason. Those of us not yet experienced in such things that came aboard early got to clean up the boat.  At last we had ten men but Captain Ralph was still reluctant to sail because we did not have a cook. Cooks are very important on a fishing boat going out for more than a couple of days. Finally he told another young fellow and me, we being the two youngest crewmen and, at that point, the  ones who were both sober and unhung over, to take his truck and go up to the Bay Shore bar and bring back a man named Sam who was a well known (to everyone else) cook. I was unsure about going into a bar underage but Anchena,  my partner in the venture and a Muscogee  from Alabama, told me it was not a problem.

     We found Sam sitting at a table with several other waterfront types, all of whom were pretty drunk.  I asked Anchena,, "Well, do we just go over and invite him?" 

     Anchena  said ,"No. We gotta get him drunk so he pass out. Then we take him back to the boat."

     I looked at Sam sitting at that table. Sam was a big man. I weighed 125  pounds at the time. Anchena was muscular but probably only 170 pounds himself. Sam looked to be a lot more than 300 pounds and probably a few inches beyond six feet tall. "We gonna carry him outta here?"

     Anchena answered, "they'll help," nodding his head at some of the patrons at the bar.

     We pulled up chairs to the table when one of the men there left and Anchena started talking about big fish and bad boats with Sam and buying him more whiskey with money Captain Ralph had given him for the purpose. Presently  Sam's head sagged to the table. I prodded his shoulder and he didn't react. Anchena got up and went over and spoke to two men standing at the bar.

     The three came back and we four half carried half dragged Sam's deadweight bulk out to the truck. We got Sam positioned in the bed of the truck and hauled him back to the Peggy G. It took 6 men to get Sam below and stowed in a bunk. Then Willy, the first mate, tied him securely to the pipeframe leaving one arm free.

     Before dawn we cast off and moved around to the other side of the marina to take ice and bait and spent several hours blowing ice into the holds with a four inch hose while skipjack and minnows were brought on.  The ice blower made a tremendous wail blowing ice in and Sam slept  right through it. We finished loading the ice and bait and headed out the pass. When just out of sight of land Captain Ralph turned the Peggy G  east and angled out a bit farther. Then we dropped anchor. I asked Pappy why we were doing that. I thought we were going to Campeche. Pappy said we had to heave to until Sam got done with the DTs.  
     "He's dangerous when he start' seeing snakes".

      We had to be out of sight of land because if Sam got loose and came out on deck where he could see land he would step off the boat to go back to the Bay Shore Bar And we had to stay close until Sam was alert in case he died or something. When he got over the shakes and the snakes and realized he was at sea he would settle into being a cook and  a fisherman.

     I had heard of DTs- Delerium Tremens- but I had never seen it.  It comes over a serious drunk when he is cut off from his alcohol. I had heard about "seeing snakes" but just thought it was people being scornful or something.

     Sam woke up and started yelling. That man had a louder voice than I would have thought there was and he was in agony. And he "saw snakes" or rather felt them. Coming off the alcohol made him feel like ropy things were slithering all over his body and squeezing him so he feared he couldn't breathe and he screamed for someone to untie him so he could go home and get a drink.  I thought we should get him to a doctor but kept my mouth shut because the rest of the crew seemed to know what was happening and were not terribly concerned except to make jokes about snakes and bugs. Yeah, bugs, too.  But the bugs were real. I had already learned why I had heard Peggy G referred to as a roach boat.  There were lots of bugs and Sam's DTs magnified them  in his own perception.

     Sam wailed and demanded water if we wouldn't get him a proper drink. I started to go over to the water tap but Pappy said,"Don't give im no water. You'll drownd 'im."

     Sam broke one of the ropes that bound him and tried to lever himself out of the bunk with his now free leg. Then the experienced guys went into action and got the leg tied back to the bunk frame, sustaining some bruises and a bloody nose in the proceedings.

     The Peggy G stayed at anchor all day and all night. The next morning Sam was awake but didn't move much. Willy let him have some water. After an hour Sam, now untied, sat up and asked for food. Pappy had cooked eggs and pancakes and served him a pile of it. After eating some, Sam got off the bunk and went out on deck. He was a mess. He had fouled himself  and smelled like whiskey and rotten meat. He stripped down and drenched himself at length with the salt water hose. 

     Sam was a fine cook for a roach boat. A roach boat is a roach boat because the men who ship in her tended to be the less stable characters on the waterfront, mostly winos who would go fishing when their drinking money ran out and they couldn't get anyone to buy them a bottle or when they were hungry and the wine wouldn't calm their stomachs anymore. The captain of such a boat was usually sane and not a drunk but he had an old boat and drunks were easy to cheat when you came home and shared up. And drunks  didn't clean the boat very well on the trip back and would leave essence of fish in every corner, thus the roaches.

      I learned some things on that trip about DTs and about cooks. I heard a sailor say once that you should never ship with a skinny cook. Sam was surely not skinny and he cooked plain food from  the basics and we got as much as we wanted to eat. Sam said a hungry man doesn't catch as much fish. Sometimes he added fish when we brought up some non salable but very edible ones. Years later I learned first hand about shipping with a skinny cook 
but that's another story.