Former Navy man and retired IBMer Ken Sayers sits in the Ridgefield study where he wrote ‘Uncommon Warriors,’ a book telling the stories of unusual Navy ships. Atop the desk is a photo of the destroyer he served on in the 1960s.
Are ships people? Damn close, to hear old Navy guys.
Ships have names. They’re christened. They have skeletons. Accomplishments, accidents, problems. Personalities? Ask the old Navy guys.
Ships are a life-long passion for Ken Sayers. The 40-year Ridgefielder and ex-Navy man writes of ships and their stories in his book: Uncommon Warriors, 200 Years of the Most Unusual American Naval Vessels.
The ships he writes of aren’t the Navy’s stars or newsmakers — though some were, back in their day. They’re forgotten ships, odd-balls and old-timers, converts from one purpose to another, captured warriors that switched allegiances, spies in disguise.
“When I was in the Navy I was serving on an old DE, an old destroyer escort, and they didn’t have spare parts,” Mr. Sayers said. “…So we were allowed to go on these decommissioned ships and take what we wanted.
“I went one of those missions and walked around in one of these old destroyers. I was amazed to see what was still on board. There were still charts. I remember paperwork as if they’d left last week…
“There’s a story here,” he thought. “This ship did things in its prior life. And now here she sits, like a derelict.”
Mr. Sayers’ book tells some of those stories. It’s dedicated: “To Gunner’s Mate Third Class William Verey Sayers and all who served in the Navy’s ‘uncommon warriors’ ” That mate’s his father.
“He was a gunner’s mate in the pre-World War II Navy,” Mr. Sayers said.
“He imparted to me the love the Navy.”
The gunner’s mate’s son became a naval officer, serving on that old destroyer and then in Washington on the staff of an assistant secretary of defense for public affairs.
“He was so proud of me in my naval career,” Mr. Sayers said.
Uncommon Warriors follows ships from the date and shipyard their keel was laid down to eventual end.
“I wanted to know what happened to them subsequent to the naval service,” he said.
“Many went into the mothball fleet and sat there for years and were eventually scrapped. Others were returned to their civilian owners, or just sold, recycled back to commercial work.”
After World War II there were “five or six huge collections of Navy ships” around the U.S. When Mr. Sayers and his wife, Rose, traveled they visited some of them.
“Like a floating museum, ships built before World War II, rusting in the sun,” he said.
His book on “the Navy’s little-known family of miscellaneous auxiliary and support vessels” opens with a kind of song of praise:
“They came from all walks of nautical life — civilian, government, military, and naval. From the private sector came trawlers, tankers, and transports, as well as motor yachts, schooners, colliers, steamers, Liberty and Victory ships, barges, ketches, passenger liners, motorboats, sealing vessels, racing yachts, yawls, fishing vessels…
“From the Navy itself came a venerable frigate, a sloop of war, battleships, protected cruisers, colliers, gunboats, cargo ships, minesweepers, destroyers, seaplane tenders, oilers, net layers, surveying ships, repair ships, submarine tenders …LSTs, LSMs and LSMRs, small coastal transports, lighters, aviation supply ships, destroyers escorts, distilling ships, self-propelled barracks ships, oceanographic research ships, floating dry docks, gate craft, barges and even tugboats.”
The book has directory listings for 400 auxiliary and support vessels, and histories — colorful biographical-type sketches — of 45 ships.
“My favorite is the Sea Cloud,” he said.
Built as a sailing yacht — a four-masted bark — in Germany in 1931, it was later used by Joseph Davies, ambassador to the Soviet Union and later Belgium, for “entertaining foreign dignitaries.”
In World War II masts were removed, guns added, and it served as a Coast Guard “weather observation vessel.”
In 1943 Lt. Commander Carlton Skinner proposed an experiment: “…minority sailors would no longer be restricted to duties as messmen and stewards but would instead be trained to perform in any of the usual shipboard assignments,” Mr. Sayers wrote.
“Captain Skinner later reported there had been no racial problems on the ship and that ‘the officers and crew, mixed, Negro and white, performed ably and bravely.’ ”
The experiment “helped pave the way for full racial integration of the armed forced in 1948,” Mr. Sayers wrote.
Restored as a sailing vessel, the ship was bought “by Generalissimo Rafael Trujillo, the strongman of the Dominican Republic” as “his presidential yacht in the late 1950s.” German businessmen rebuilt the ship in the 1970s, and it still works “as a luxury charter yacht.”
The Sea Cloud, Mr. Sayers said, “managed to play a role —albeit a minor one —in the allied victory over Germany. But in retrospect, her most significant contribution to America was in successfully demonstrating, under her progressive wartime captain, the Naval effectiveness and human potential of a fully racially integrated warship — something taken for granted today but virtually unknown in World War II.”
He tells the stories of Cold War spy ships, converted freighters that feigned commercial trade, all the while listening in on radio communication of the coasts of Africa, Cuba, Korea, Vietnam.
“They looked like merchant ships,” Mr. Sayers said.
“…I think everybody knew what they were doing: gathering electronic intelligence, reading the other guy’s mail.”
The book includes the USS Constitution, “Old Ironsides,” a three-masted frigate launched in 1797, a War of 1812 veteran, and the world’s oldest commissioned warship.
“It’s a revered relic,” Mr. Sayers said. “They have a regular Navy crew on it. Once a year they take it out into the harbor, and turn it around, so that it will weather evenly.”
Mr. Sayers grew up in Queens, and joined the Navy Reserve in 1962. He got commissioned in 1965 and served on a destroyer based in San Francisco. “Rose and I loved it there. You couldn’t buy the view that we had… From our house we would see northern San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz.”
Then he went to Washington to work in public relations at the Department of Defense.
In the private sector, he spent 30 years with IBM.
“Had great time there, too,” he said.
Retired, he wrote the book.
“I had a lot of fun doing it. It was a love affair,” he said. “This subject just intrigued me for about 30-40 years.”
“They’ve been selling, but I can’t say at a very brisk rate,” he said. “…It’s gotten very good reviews but it’s such a niche book, appealing to nuts like me.”