USS Sablefish, Buzzards Bay

Click photo for larger image in new window. Image from submarine photo index web site.

Came across your web site while following Rita today! I still have vivid memories of my encounter with Carol 51 years ago. I was a Quartermaster aboard the Submarine Sablefish on our way back from Trinity Bay, Newfoundland and that morning we went through the Cape Cod Ship Canal and ran into the full brunt of the storm in Buzzards Bay.

Waves were monsters with the wind coming from a southerly direction. Visibility was nonexistent with the heavy rain. Radar picked up a major stationary "target" right in the center of the Ship channel, as if a ship had anchored there! We stayed to the right but had to come close and the lookouts spotted it and it turned out to be a large black and white fairway buoy with a radar reflector that gave the large look to the radar image.

This didn't show on any of our charts and as I was the QM in charge of updating the charts the Navigator was furious with me and sent me up the periscope shears to clean the periscope lens 30 feet above the water. I used two safety harnesses and I don't remember being frightened, but I do remember the awesome sight of a very confused sea with huge waves that at times I was looking up at.

It turned out that the buoy had just been placed there for the first time the day before, so I had had no notice of it in "Notice to Mariners" and wasn't at fault.

We had been operating with the Sub Tender Gillmore and they had gone around Cape Cod that morning and were hit off Long Island as a Lee Shore. Captain Dave McClintock was the CO and he is from my home town of Marquette Michigan. He told me in about 1970 that he was more frightened during that storm than he had been during the many depth charge attacks during WWII. The Gillmore had very high freeboard and it had to be kept going into the wind or else be capsized, or with better luck blown aground on Long Island.

Enjoyed your Web site,
Don Elzinga