THE SUN HAD ALREADY RISEN over the Island of Manhattan, illuminating the day’s supply of air pollution, when the battleship Alabama came lumbering in from the Atlantic toward New York Bay.
Outside the control room, the helmsman was trying to explain something to the Officer of the Watch.
“I think there’s something wrong with him, sir.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, before he chased me out, sir, he was humming all the time.”
“Humming?”
“Yes sir.”
“What is wrong with humming if the admiral wants to hum?”
“Oh?”
“I don’t know how to say this, sir.”
“Well, just say it, man.”
“The admiral was… well, sir, he was playing with himself.”
“What?”
“Playing with himself, sir. You know what I mean.”
“You’d better go below, sailor, and check into sick bay,” the first officer said. As the sailor walked slowly away, the first officer scratched his head.
Admiral James Benton Crust had indeed been playing with himself. But he had stopped now. He had decided he would rather hum. So he hummed. Sometimes, for a change of pace, he whistled…
And every so often, just so those lazy fakers who didn’t really belong in this man’s navy wouldn’t forget, he called down to the engine room for “More Power. Full Speed Ahead.” Which was odd, since the ship had been at full power since leaving the Chesapeake Bay.
Admiral Crust looked around the room, humming, soaking up the feel and tradition of its highly polished wood. The Navy could be a life for a man, if the man were big enough for the Navy. Admiral Crust—master seaman, master diplomat, master lover—was big enough for anything.
Onward, he steamed. To his left, he saw the Kill Van Kull and beyond that, the smoky air hovering over Bayonne’s oil refineries. To his right was Brooklyn.
Up ahead loomed Manhattan. The Battery. Its beautiful skyline, beautiful not because of its beauty but because of its magnitude. And up ahead, slightly port of the ship, Liberty Island. The Statue of Liberty held her torch high in the air, her copper plates greened with corrosion, her smile benign, as she looked down upon her nation. Behind her back lurked Jersey City, doing all those things that the Statue of Liberty was better off not knowing about.
Admiral Crust picked up the horn again. “More power,” he shouted. “You bilge rats produce some power. This is the Navy, man, not an excursion boat. More power.”
Down below, in the bowels of the ship, the technicians, who monitored the power plants of a ship of the modern Navy, looked at each other in confusion. “He must think we still have people down here shoveling coal,” one said. “Wonder where we are?”
“I don’t know,” a lieutenant senior grade answered. “But at this speed, we’re going to get wherever we’re going in a pretty big damn hurry.”
Alone in the control room, Admiral James Benton Crust slowly turned the wheel to the left. Gradually, the big ship began to come about toward the port side, veering left, pulling out of its own channel and crossing over the southbound channel. He straightened the wheel. The ship was now on course.
Admiral Crust continued to hum as his big ship steamed ahead toward Liberty Island. The feeling of movement in the sheltered bay was so slight it seemed as if the Statue of Liberty itself were floating on top of the water, racing forward towards his ship.
The thousands of yards separating them quickly turned into hundreds of yards. Crust kept humming. Now he began to jump up and down on the floor of the control room, slapping his hands against his thighs.
“More power,” he screamed into the horn. The ship was racing now. The sailboat Lie-By capsized in its trail. Two city councilmen out for a ride in a canoe were overturned. An excursion boat headed for the Statute of Liberty saw the battleship Alabama bearing down on it. Wisely, the skipper goosed his boat and narrowly got out of the path of the great warship, although two passengers fell overboard in the rocking turbulence that followed the Alabama through the water. Overhead, Navy planes that had monitored the cruise of the Alabama ever since it had taken off without orders, and all through the night as it refused to respond to radio messages, excitedly relayed reports to a nearby Naval air station.
Two hundred yards now and closing fast. Then the heavy battleship crossed out of the continually-dredged deepwater channels and its prow began to bite into the mud at the bottom of the bay. But its force and impetus kept it moving forward and the motors continued to scream. Now mud was enveloping the propellers and the ship was no longer cruising, it was sliding, still at full speed, but then it began to slow down as its sharp-edged prow bit more deeply into the mud, but it kept coming and then it crashed into a stone pier, shearing it off from the body of the island like a pat of butter sliced off a warm quarter-pound stick. The ship buckled up against the compacted garbage base of the island—bit its way in, ten, fifteen, then twenty feet, and then stopped, the motors still roaring through the mud, but without effect now.
The ship quivered and pitched over lightly on its side, a sputtering, frustrated behemoth implanted in an island. On the island, park personnel ran about wildly in confusion and shock.
Admiral James Benton Crust left the control room on the dead run, heading for the engine room, far below in the hull of the ship. Seamen were running around in panic, ignoring him.
Some had already jumped overboard onto the island, even though the ship was in no danger of sinking. The whoops of boat sirens could be heard in the air as pleasure boats, then tugs and other commercial vessels in the area began to ply toward the scene to offer help.
Admiral Crust raced through the now tilted corridors, oblivious to the excitement, humming to himself, occasionally waving at seamen he recognized.
He entered the engine room.
“All right. All hands, abandon ship.”
Seamen began to scurry toward the door.
“You will leave in an orderly manner,” the admiral ordered angrily. They slowed their run down to a trot.
The lieutenant senior grade in charge of the engine room saluted: “Admiral, sir. Can I be of assistance?”
“Yes, get out of here.”
“Aye aye, sir. And the admiral?”
Crust was even now shoving the lieutenant through the bulkhead door. “The admiral is going to show you jugheads of the Modern Navy how a real seaman dies with his ship.”
He locked the bulkhead door, spinning the wheel lock, until it was secure. Then, humming to himself, he began to open the sea valves.
Oily black muddy water began to pour into the engine room. Clouds of oily putrid steam arose as the water engulfed the huge diesel motors and they sputtered and stopped. Admiral Crust giggled.
“Give me sail, every time, lads, give me sail. Yo, ho, ho, and a bottle of rum.”
The young lieutenant pounded on the bulkhead door.
“Admiral, let me in.”
Inside, James Benton Crust shouted: “I know what I’m doing. It’s the Navy way.”
The lieutenant kept pounding for several more minutes. But then there was no one left to hear.
Admiral James Benton Crust, Annapolis ’42, was face up, against the metal ceiling of the engine room compartment, the water pressure mashing his face against the steel ceiling plates.
The last thing he did in this world was hum.