RobertJ.
Member
When Navy guys are swapping sea stories, there's one trump card that when played, usually wins, (not always, but a lot) especially if you're swapping these stories with guys who didn't spend a lot of time on the ocean. This is regardless of rate or pay grade. And that's, "Yeah, but are you a shellback, or a wog?" (short for pollywog)
A friend of mine who was already a shellback took these photos of me. He took an entire roll of film, these just show the equator crossing initiation the best. We were in the Indian Ocean, part of the carrier Constellation's battle group.
They got us out on the deck at 0600, and hosed us all down with ocean water. Then they made us do various things, like pretend we were rowing a boat, while singing "Row, row, row your boat" loudly. They also slapped us all with lengths of fire hose, aka the sheleighly. In the group shot of us on the deck, I'm just to the right of center. After an hour or so of this, we had to crawl from the bow to the fantail, where we went through the worst of it. In one shot, I'm "Kissing the Royal Baby". Al Cantu was the royal baby, and he had crisco smeared all over his belly, and a cherry stuck in his belly button. We had to eat the cherry. I spit the first one out, so I had to eat two. When you went to eat it, he'd grab your head and smear it all over his belly. (Yeah, yeah, save your jokes!) Then we had to lay in "the coffin" where they poured garbage on us that they'd been saving for a week. Then they fed us breakfast. It wasn't as nasty as it looked, it was scrambled eggs and pasta with green food color.
I survived, and it was worth it. This, along with actually getting to "pull the trigger" on a 5"/54 was one of the high points of my active duty.
My thanks to Master Chief for inspiring me to dig these photos out!
A friend of mine who was already a shellback took these photos of me. He took an entire roll of film, these just show the equator crossing initiation the best. We were in the Indian Ocean, part of the carrier Constellation's battle group.
They got us out on the deck at 0600, and hosed us all down with ocean water. Then they made us do various things, like pretend we were rowing a boat, while singing "Row, row, row your boat" loudly. They also slapped us all with lengths of fire hose, aka the sheleighly. In the group shot of us on the deck, I'm just to the right of center. After an hour or so of this, we had to crawl from the bow to the fantail, where we went through the worst of it. In one shot, I'm "Kissing the Royal Baby". Al Cantu was the royal baby, and he had crisco smeared all over his belly, and a cherry stuck in his belly button. We had to eat the cherry. I spit the first one out, so I had to eat two. When you went to eat it, he'd grab your head and smear it all over his belly. (Yeah, yeah, save your jokes!) Then we had to lay in "the coffin" where they poured garbage on us that they'd been saving for a week. Then they fed us breakfast. It wasn't as nasty as it looked, it was scrambled eggs and pasta with green food color.
I survived, and it was worth it. This, along with actually getting to "pull the trigger" on a 5"/54 was one of the high points of my active duty.
My thanks to Master Chief for inspiring me to dig these photos out!
