COMSUBBBS
Posts: 2672
Location: New Jersey | Subject: A tradition
I don't know if any of you guys heard or know of this tradition. Supposedly on New Years Eve, the duty officer is to write a poem that commemorates the New Year. Personally I have never hear of this, but the poem below was published in a recent edition of Sirago's newsletter.
We are moored at Pier D, Philadelphia, “P” “A”
And it looks for the moment we’re here for a stay.
For the engines are dead and so are the pumps
(Takes a rag and a bucket to dry up the sumps)
Our torpedoes are gone and the tubes are mere pipes,
And the pump room’s the bane of the machinists and snipes.
We are blind as a bat with our periscopes gone,
There’s no deck nor a bridge, nor a circuit that’s on.
There’s nothing that works, not even a head,
And the ship is a monster that’s lifeless and dead.
We are told, though, in time we will have us a boat
That’s as deadly and nimble as the cobra and goat,
That will slide through the water with the ease of an eel
And avoid detection by all with a keel.
If she’s half what they claim when the building is through
She will keep the States safe in the years that ensue.
John Duff Jr. – 1 January 1949
|