I suppose a word of introduction is in order.  It took a while, but I eventually caught on to the idea of a weblog.  It is an appealing exercise in willful narcissism, but I found “blog” offputting for reasons I could not explain to myself for a while.  I came to see that the problem was the “b”…

If one is going to engage in this practice, why start with a “b?”  I managed to manipulate my way through graduate school in the humanities without missing an “a”, so I see no reason not to call this an A Plus Log, or APLOG for short, as it were.

Former Naval Persons (as Sir Winston Churchill liked to refer to himself) will recognize “Steaming as before” as the standard beginning to the deck log kept by Officers of the Deck relieving from another officer for a standard watch period and having nothing of substance changed from the prior watch, at least at first.  Thus, some prior OD would have recorded the course, speed, ships in company, boilers on the line, any unusual sea conditions or weather problems, major equipment outages, upcoming exercises or major events to be expected, and the like.

A couple of years ago, I retrieved copies of the logs from U.S.S. Basilone, DDE 824, the experimental ASW destroyer I served aboard for several years in the mid-fifties, for the month of January 1956. I will describe the catastrophic events of the first week of that month later, but for now simply want to record my shock at seeing the “anchored as before” legend continue to appear from watch to watch, with very little mention of the extraordinary trauma unfolding for ship and crew during one of the most treacherous gales, a northeaster, recorded in Norfolk, Virginia weather archives.  It was indeed a “perfect storm” as the eponymous Sebastian Junger book title has it, and the grounding of Basilone during it, the lives lost, equipment destroyed and command structure assembled to salvage the foundering ship, are glossed as if nothing more routine that a man overboard drill had been conducted.

Perhaps the records have been scrubbed, but I don’t think so, especially since my own logs appear recognizably in this chain of banality, and they speak in the same subdued tone.  Thus, the title of my electronic log is intended to convey the idea that as we steam right along through the sometimes heavy weather of life, there may be more to be found than meets the eye, belying the apparent quotidian calm.

Come along with me as you choose.  You can always tell me to keep my peace, or say your piece at stil9285@charter.net.