Every time I visit the American Merchant Marine Museum at the United States Merchant Marine Academy, there’s always a little something that captures the imagination – it is like a huge curiosity cabinet. Since I have been looking a bit closer at the history of the Merchant Marine Combat Bar ribbon, seeing (and holding) a Tin Fish Club member card was particularly exciting. I know it is just a piece of cardboard with print on it, but that card represents perhaps one of the most terrifying days of the owner’s life up until that point. There’s something about the black humor – the creation of a club specifically to laugh at Death after having survived a torpedoing – that encapsulates the experience. And yet, having laughed at Death, the cadet-midshipmen went on to graduate and ship.
The card belonged to a fellow by the name of Oran F. Perks. Extant public records show his career as a licensed officer starting as a 3rd Assistant Engineer on the States Marine-operated ship SS Wolverine in June 1944 and ending as a 2nd Assistant Engineer aboard the Calmar Line ship SS Hagerstown Victory in October 1945. Taking into consideration the Tin Fish Club card’s issue date, it was barely three months before his first job as a Kings Point graduate when he experienced the cold reality of war at sea.. I found he supported a Maryland Maritime Museum and was a teacher, which probably means he left the maritime industry after the war and in retirement wanted to give something back. Many old seamen do this even after having been on the beach for decades – some out of an appreciation for their alma mater or for a place that captured their imaginations. He wasn’t a warrior, but his vocation expected him to be one – for just a moment. Thus, the war was only a brief chapter in his life. Along with the card was a note to the ex-museum director for him to return the card when he was done with it. That means it was something special, a touchstone, for the original owner. And now, it is in a box along with a club alumni pin to be re-discovered. I’m glad I had the privilege to see it.
On the same day, I held the Tin Fish Club card, I learned a mural of the SS America was leaving Academy’s dining hall – Delano Hall. It is a massive mural at 190″ high by 139 ½” wide; it is the focal point of the dining hall and has remained in place for generations of midshipmen. Once removed, it will reveal a cast stone plaque titled “The Last Full Measure.” The mural covered it for almost seventy-five years; and although the Academy wants the plaque to remain in place, the Administration is unsure of its condition given it has been buried for quite some time in an often humid dining hall. Archival photographs and an old issue of Polaris show the plaque featuring a shirtless cadet-midshipman behind a machine gun hovering over two columns of names. It was installed in October 1943 behind the head table in the center of Delano Hall in what was then called the Academy’s canteen; the intention of the plaque was to honor cadet-midshipmen who died over the course of the Second World War. Their names were periodically added as war reports filtered back to Kings Point.
With no end to the war in sight, but with the tide turning, the Academy’s Superintendent Captain Giles Stedman commissioned the painting of SS America mural in 1944 and had it promptly placed over the plaque in 1945. Captain Stedman, who arrived at Kings Point a month after the plaque’s installation, was concerned that students seeing the names of their friends and fellow classmates being constantly added to the list was not good for overall morale. For Captain Stedman, the painting was particularly touching as it shows the ship entering New York harbor on the morning of July 29, 1940 – just before she became the flagship for the United Lines’ fleet with Captain Stedman at the ship’s helm. Howard Barclay French, who painted mural, “wanted the viewer to enter the moment of the painting” and captured the regal approach of the ship dressed overall into the country’s busiest port, guided and not pushed by tugs. And like Captain Stedman, he knew the SS America quite well as he painted a mural on the ship in 1940; his attention to her detail was unparalleled (click image for the full photograph).
I agree with Giles Stedman – the plaque is too depressing. I think dwelling too much on the militaristic at a place like Kings Point misses the core mission of what it means to be both a merchant officer and naval officer. The Academy, in many respects, is already full of memorials to those cadet-midshipmen who have died in past conflicts – the chapel on grounds is dedicated to the 142 who perished in the Second World War with a grand honor roll atop a platform with the inscription “Tell America.” A plaque such as the “Last Full Measure” was a fine piece of propaganda for the war – it was meant to inure young men for certain death. The SS America mural is deeply symbolic of what it wished to achieve as well. The mural has the ship dressed as it was during the time of Neutrality; the underlying message of the mural is the United States wanted freedom of the seas and to trade in peace – per the Maritime Act of 1936, that is what the nation was investing in by having a place like Kings Point. If you sit and eat under that mural day in and day out, and having taken a history class on maritime history, the idea of freedom of the seas and the idea of neutrality sits with you in your subconscious. You put a bare-chested warrior in its place, well, you get an entirely different result. Today’s military’s place is to keep the peace – the last thing most career military officers want to be involved in is a shooting war.
Nevertheless, the work order for moving the mural stands in the public record:
The purpose for moving the mural is to reveal the relief sculpture and plaque to inspire the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA) midshipmen with the deeds of their forebears.
Apparently, the rendering of a ship in peacetime is not inspiring. The same ship served in the Second World War with great heroism as the USS Westpoint. She rescued two-thousand British refugees from Singapore before the fortress fell. The war was but a chapter of her career and one that did not define her worth. The same is true for an education at Kings Point – its motto is “In Peace and War.” Lest we forget, In Peace comes first.
I’m going to guess The Tin Fish Club would be divided on the subject of the mural or plaque. I am going to guess they would want the SS America.
