We were running light barge down the Hudson once when some jerk in a sailboat decided at the lastminute to make a tack across our bow. We were running hooked up, meaning all ahead full.
It was the mate's watch and he was actually a very competent mate although a bit too serious minded for my taste but that was OK. Competence first.
Anyway, he backed down hard and for no apparent reason a face wire parted. (Later determined to be a manufacturing flaw). When the first wire parted all the energy transferred to the other wire which let go. A nanosecond later there were two pistol shots as the poly Dacron safety wires parted.
We were adrift at about 10 knots!
I was on deck in a flash, stark raving naked and soaking wet as I had been in the shower and heard the first face wire part.
I saw the sailboat going down our port side inches away from us so I knew there was no injury or casualty. Thank God.
Instead I saw a panic stricken idiot babbling about how sailboats have the right of way and I shot back "Read the Rules of the Road, asshole! They don't in a narrow channel!"
Anyway, the mate was pretty cool about it as he hooked back up and started to swing past out starboard side. At this time my mate jumped on deck and was actually clothed carrying a jacket which he donned.
"Grab his lines and let me get dressed," I said to him and headed for the house. I had a pair of coveralls and topsiders on in a heartbeat and returned while running and putting on a jacket. It was pretty cold at the time.
By this time the port side was aground and we hauled the tug's lines on deck and made them fast, dropping the eye over a deck cleat.
The mate skillfully pulled us off the beach and we continued heading at a slow bell downriver. By this time the captain was in the wheelhouse observing everything.
My mate and I made a check in the voids and tanks for damage, None noted. I went below and instantly logged the incident. There was a good reason I logged it without checking with the skipper. I knew how the game was played.
A few minutes later the skipper came aboard and asked, "Do you see any reason why this has to be reported?" I told him that while I had already logged it, that nobody had bothered looking in my log for years and the likelihood of anyone looking in the log were slim to none.
"Eee-yeah...I suppose we can let this one slide," he said.
When he left my mate was in a dither about not reporting it and I flat out told him that he was not responsible for anything. I had logged it, and reporting it to the office was entirely the skipper's responsibility. There was no way he would be responsible for anything. He stood there and brooded.
The mate and I returned to the galley and maybe twenty minutes later the radio went off and it was a quick statement from the tug skipper asking me to meet him on deck. I said "Wilco" and came out alongside the tug. The skipper had the wheelhouse window open.
"I thought about it," he said, "And figured I'd better report it to the office. I said no damage."
"That's what I logged," I said. "I found no damage whatsoever."
"Good."
I went back to the house and ate lunch and the mate went out on deck to check things. About eight or ten minutes my phone rang. It was my port captain wanting to know what happened.
"Got a call from the mate, huh? After the skipper called you?"
"Yeah," he replied automatically and then wished he hadn't given me that answer. "What's that all about?"
"Ever see that cartoon about 6 guys in a rubber raft with about 3 feet of tugboat mast above the surface as the tug is headed toward Davy Jones' Locker? Remember the caption? "Do we have to report this?"
"Yeah," he chuckled.
"Then you know how the game is played. You've probably played it yourself. First you have to get your story straight and think a few minutes. Then you realize you may get away with it for a while but eventually someone will say something and it gets back to the office. Reality sets in and you make the phone call. Whole process generally takes 30 minutes to about an hour or so. You know the drill. I just waited it out because if I called there would be permanent bad blood between the tug and barge forever. If push came to shove I'd probably make the call to cover myself though. That's a given."
While I was talking with my port captain it occurred to me that my mate knew his ass had been covered and that all he was trying to do was rack up brownie points at someone else's expense...including mine. I knew that if he could get a fifty cent a week raise by selling me into slavery in Egypt I'd be speaking Arabic. The bastard wanted my captaincy and didn't care how he got it.
Of course if he did get a captaincy he'd become a tyrant and not be able to keep a crew.
I told the tug skipper that he was lucky he called when he did and spilled the beans. The skipper and the entire crew wanted to pound the hell out of him but I headed them off and promised to take care of it. I knew that evaluations were due the next week and I had already started my mate's.
I headed back and filled his out and was 100% honest about it. I said he was skillful, attentive, willing to work and all the usual crap except for trustworthiness which I gave him a zero. Under comments I wrote "This man lacks integrity. He is a troublemaker and a sneak. I want him off here."
When I asked him to sign it he refused so I wrote refused in the signature box. After that I made a copy. I put the copy in the barge's outgoing mail box and the original in the tug's outgoing mail after I had written 'original' in the corner.
A couple of days before crew change someone from the office dropped my while we were loading and he took the mail from both of us.
When crew change came around I grabbed the newly generated mail and went into the office to turn it in. My port captain spotted me and called me over. He handed me the evaluation I had written up and asked me why I thought the man was a snake. I pointed to the corner that I had written 'original' on and aske him if he had gotten the one that was a copy. He hadn't.
"That's because he filched it out of our mailbox and made it go away," I said. "I rest my case."
"I'll get him out of there," he replied.
When I returned to duty three weeks later he was gone. While his replacement wasn't quite as talented, he was pretty good and knew how the game was played. At least I could trust him.
The old mate was reassigned and wound up working for a couple more tours. Word was out on him and he wasn't trusted by most people. A couple of months later he went to work somewhere else, supposedly for more money. Later I found out that the company he worked for paid a little less but paid travel expenses so I figured he probably was about fifty bucks a tour ahead. Big deal.
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