Back in the 90s sometime the subject of rumor control was being discussed by a couple of us in tha parking lot before crew change.
Alvin, John and I were talking about it. John and I were old salts. Alvin was sort of a newbie. John and I decided to show Alvin how well it worked. We made up a rumor and decided to spread it to see how fast it made the rounds.
The rumor was a corker. 'All barges are going to be issued sextants and navigation tools and all tankermen are being sent to the six week celestial navigation course at Piney Point.'
The alleged reason was so anchored barge crews could check and see if their anchor was dragging.
Never mind the fact that celestial navigation isn't all that accurate. Few tankerman know anything about it.
The three of us set our watches as this was pre-cell phone. Most of us didn't have one then because they were terribly expensive. Tugs and barges did have fixed cell phones installed.
They were supposedly for official use only but like a lot of things that got stretched.
John, headed to New York Harbor, would start the rumor at exactly 1300. Alvin and I would log the time it got to us via the jungle telegraph. John would log when it got back to him which would cover his ass because he could now honestly say he had heard the rumor from someone else. There really was no way the office could trace it back to anyone.
At 1304 the barge cell phone rang and sure enough, the rumor was in full swing. By about 1308 people started calling their port captains asking "What's this $hit I heard about having to go to school at Piney Point for six weeks?"
By 1309 people had started calling their reliefs and passing the word. There were people at home that were living in places like Idaho.
About the only one of us that didn't get the word was Jimmy Beardsley because he was incommunicado because he had taken his family to see the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone or some damned thing and was out in space somewhere.
A couple of days later the tugs all got faxes denying everything which was really too late because the rumor died about as fast as it started. When the office denied it early on Rumor Control spread the denial almost instantly.
The next time I ran into Alvin he told me he was astonished. I told him to keep everything under his hat because if the office ever got wind of who started this there would be hell to pay. I didn't have to tell him twice.
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