Viewing page 3 of 28

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

3

and trouble.  I could not have gotten a finer man to skipper this outfit had I had anything to do with it in the first place--a classmate of Callaghan's and Foster's.  A nice group of officers, mostly younger men.  And is the [[underline]]Mallard[[/underline]] crowded?  Ralph H. Ernest, who is to do some land surveying, is my roommate in the pilot house, where we sleep on cots which we fold up during the day.  Our clothes are draped over the speaking tubes and instruments.  We each have two shallow cupboard shelves and a wooden box for our surplus gear.  Wish I had had time to bring along the usual collecting outfit I carry.  I could have done some nice collecting.  We are a submarine salvage craft (a converted mine sweeper) and we have no end of hoists, diving equipment, and cable with which I might have dredged.  There are two captains aboard, Capt. (Freddy) Laing, who went to the Acad. with Brady's (snake boy of Wash. and Museum now in New York) brother; Laing is Captain of [[underline]]Mallard[[/underline]], Pickens is Capt. of whole expedition, which includes six subs.  One of the officers has a citation for helping with the Squalus rescue.  I hope to get a full list of names soon.  Eats are good (and a reasonable mess share).

^[[Apr. 3/'41]]  Had our Neptune party today 1-3p.m. for about 39 men, a very lively, well dressed party.  Davy Jones had an admiral's coat made of a blue shirt cut to swallowtail behind and an edging of yellow tape clipped on to shirt and collar edges with paper clips!  A very effective get-up, all were barefoot.  You should have seen the royal dentist's drill--several lengths of broomsticks or mop handles fastened together with screw-eyes so that the [[strikethrough]]righ[[/strikethrough]] rig had sort of universal joint connections; had a string to counter weight so attached that when he wasn't using it, it would life up out of the way.  Under a cloth [[strikethrough]]opp[[/strikethrough]] at the end opposite the business end he had an electric drill concealed which he turned on when he started to shove the other end around in the victim's mouth.  The whirring noise it made gave a realistic sound to the rig

Transcription Notes:
For "the Squalus rescue" see http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/the-great-rescue-squalus-2/. The "Neptune party" is a Navy initiation for a person's first crossing of the equator; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line-crossing_ceremony.