OT-Salvage of the SS Normandie

S.S. Normandie Whistle

A triple steam whistle from the S.S. Normandie was lodged at the Pratt Institute Power House for many years. It was under the care of the esteemed Conrad Milster.

Joe Michaels probably knows more of the story than I do.

John:

You are correct about the Normandie's whistle. It passed into Conrad Milster's hands and was blown at the New Years Eve whistle blows at Pratt. Sadly, Conrad Milster has been booted out of Pratt. Pratt administration pulled a low maneuver and "laterally moved" Conrad to a position, which, as he put it, was a "glorified janitor" at the same pay. With this move, he was forbidden to even enter the powerplant and a new chief engineer was assigned to it. Shortly after that, Conrad had to leave his row house on the Pratt campus. The word is that he is now living in Ossining, NY in an apartment. He chose Ossining as it was affordable and on Metro North commuter train lines. The Pratt powerplant was barricaded by contractors and no one knows what the fate of the contents of the plant will be.

Whether Conrad was able to remove any of his private collection- including the Normandie whistle- is unknown. Sad news for sure.

The actual story of the Normandie is one of those urban legends, but I will stand up and say it is true based on people I know. The gist of how the Normandie happened to catch fire was no accident. It was a deliberately started fire. It was not done as a formal act of sabotage, although the USA was already fighting in WWII.
There is a twist to why the Normandie caught fire. Here is the story, briefly:

A noted mobster named Charles "Lucky" Luciano had been sentenced to a term in NY State's prisons. Lucky was a slick operator and nothing like racketeering, murders, or similar crimes could be tied to him. He was convicted on a charge of "compulsory prostitution" as it was the only charge which could be made to stick. Lucky Luciano was convicted and sentenced just prior to WWII, and was shipped to NY State's furthest and coldest pen, up near the Canadian border. The prosecutor- an ambitious sort named Tom Dewey- thought he had put Luciano into the ice box and shut him down.

This arrangement was inconvenient and unacceptable to Luciano's business associates. They huddled and schemed and tried to figure a way to get Lucky sprung, or, at least get him moved to a joint closer to NY City and get him some liberal privileges including unlimited visiting by anyone and everyone. Dewey was not going to be moved by anything like the inconvenience of Lucky's business associates. As Lucky's associated schemed, they hatched a plan. The longshoremen's union was said to be "connected", and any business done in and around Fulton Fish Market was also handled through Lucky's business organization in one way or another. A spokesman for Lucky's business associates went to the US Naval Intelligence office in NYC and claimed there was "sabotage on the NYC waterfront" and that "fifth column axis agents" might be entering the Port of NY posing as crewmen on foreign vessels. The Naval Intelligence officer they spoke to pretty much laughed the ideas off and thanked them for their patriotic concerns, saying Naval Intelligence was perfectly in tune with doings on the NYC waterfront.

Another huddle by Lucky's associates occurred, and the idea was to give the Naval Intelligence Service a big chunk of sabotage to scare the pants off everyone. Hence, the Normandie caught fire and it was no accident.

Right after that, Lucky's associates had some very productive meetings with Naval Intelligence as well as with the NYS Attorney General and a few other wheels. Lucky got moved to a prison close to NYC, and was given nearly unlimited privileges. His pals shipped in great food from NYC's finest eateries, and his cell was luxuriously furnished. About all they could not do was get him an early release.

The side effect was a kind of "hands off" order went out regarding Lucky Luciano's associates and their various enterprises, since they were now contributing valuable intelligence and helping the war effort.

When WWII ended, Lucky Luciano was deported back to his native Sicily. Even his deportation was not a routine event. A Liberty ship called the "Laura Keene" was chartered for the occasion. Luciano went aboard, and the ship's food lockers were stocked with the finest from NYC restaurants and commissary supplies. Lucky's stateroom was stocked with some beautiful women to keep him company on the voyage. No reporters or anyone else could get on the pier when the "Laura Keene" sailed- the loyal longshoremen saw to that. As the Laura Keene headed out, a NYC fireboat came alongside. A ladder was lowered, and none other than the honorable mayor of NYC climbed aboard to say a goodbye to Lucky Luciano. He took the fireboat out to avoid any nosey reporters getting the wind of it.

Luciano went back to his native Sicily and lived out his days, dying of a massive heart attack at fairly ripe age- for someone in his line of work.

The Normandie did not fare so well. Having been removed to the drydock (which, in the youtube, seems to have been at the old Brooklyn Navy Yard), the Normandie lingered for awhile and was then declared a total loss. She went for scrap with no effort made to repair her.

What is quite a surprising thing is the amount of men and resources that were thrown at the Normandie salvage in the midst of WWII. Merritt, Chapman & Scott- the firm from which Captain Tooker came, and the firm which supplied the floating derrick barges and much else, was the world's biggest marine contractors for some years. By the 1960's, they were bankrupt and the name is nearly forgotten. The huge floating steam cranes "Century" and "Monarch" were Merritt, Chapman & Scott rigs. Int he old youtube, the amount of steam powered vessels and equipment is obvious. When the fire was being fought, NY Central Railroad tugs with "monitor nozzles" on top of their wheelhouses are seen playing water on the fires. These were the classic high stack steam tugs. Sadly, none of these survive.

Time marches on, and much of the story of the Normandie and the players in it and the underlying story as well, are nearly forgotten. I worked with the son of one of Lucky Luciano's business associates, and that fellow was well placed on the NYC waterfront. He had a major hand in arranging for the Normandie to catch fire. The son and his mother distanced themselves from the father, and the son grew up leading an honorable life. He served in the US Navy, was decorated for bravery, and came to work at the powerplant. I did not think anything about this fellow's last name. One day, I happened to ask about his family. He got a strange look, and said: "You are from Brooklyn, you've been around. You are the only one in this powerplant who'd know..." He then gave his father's handle or nickname. As soon as he did, I was taken aback and remarked as to where his father had stood with Lucky Luciano and his other associates, and said I was somewhat familiar with who his father had been. I never said another word about it, and neither did my buddy.

The story of the Normandy and how she caught fire is no urban legend or tale told across a bar after the alcohol has done its work. As I said, it was an act of sabotage, not intended as an act of sabotage against the US in time of war, but as a ruse to get Lucky Luciano sprung from prison.

The ss Normandie was proof to the Navy who was really in charge of the port of NY in the war years. The mob......The Navy worked with the mob for the rest of the war, no more fires, no strikes, or other mayhem as long as the right people were making some dough.

moonlight machine said:

The ss Normandie was proof to the Navy who was really in charge of the port of NY in the war years. The mob......The Navy worked with the mob for the rest of the war, no more fires, no strikes, or other mayhem as long as the right people were making some dough.

Click to expand...

I've been reading a book called "The box" all about the cargo container.

There is a very good chapter on the Longshore unions, and they were square in the sights
of Malcolm McLean.

The container was a radical change to the New York Docks, and the container
moved most of the traffic over to New jersey, and eliminated the rampant theft of
product.

Would be interesting to hear first hand accounts from the people here (Joe et all)
to see if the book was correct.

Doug:

You are correct in your statement about the move to the ocean freight containers. Prior to the use of ocean freight containers, ships carrying cargo were known as "break bulk carriers". These had cargo holds, and cargoes could take the form of crated goods, goods in paper cartons on pallets, or in sacks, bales, barrels, or on skids. Loading and unloading these cargoes fell to the longshoremen. In this same era, the break bulk type cargo ships docked along the North River (Hudson River) piers, some East River Piers, as well as the Brooklyn piers. It was common knowledge in that era, when I was a kid, that a lot of goods "fell out of the slings" and wound up being sold or given to people who either were related to longshoremen or through some intermediary parties. Around Christmas time, the pilferage was ramped up and included imported smoked hams, sewing machines, Italian leather coats, and anything else that might make a good Christmas gift. Whisky was shipped in cases, but some of this managed to make it off the piers as well. When someone suddenly had a new European made sewing machine or had a whole proscuitto (Italian hard smoked ham, usually sold by the quarter pound as it is quite pricey), if asked how they came by it, the answer might be something like: The guy down the street's brother-in-law works on the docks. Stuff falls out of the slings..."

I remember once at some gathering at a friend of the family's home, this line of conversation came up. I was a very literal kid of maybe 6 or so, and knew how loads were slung to be picked by cranes (having been on jobsites with my father). The answer about something falling out of a sling seemed fishy to me. I opened my mouth and asked: "Why wasn't the load rigged right ?". Mom kicked me under the table, and I asked her why she was kicking me. I then asked: "If the stuff fell out of the sling coming off the ship, why didn't it fall into the water or get smashed to bits landing on the pier ?" At this point, Mom was looking daggers at me and dragged me out of the room to tell me to shut up and not say another word, she'd explain later. On the drive home, my father said the NY Waterfront was "a very rough place where they do things differently and people can get into trouble really easily..."

As the story goes, in the 1950's or perhaps the early 1960's, the handwriting was on the wall for how ocean freight would be loaded and moved. When I was alittle guy, my parents would sometimes drive north on the old West Side Highway. This was an elevated roadway which paralleled the North River waterfront. Along the piers was a veritable world atlas of names of countries, and exotic sounding shipping lines such as "Congo Line", "Boma Line", and further upriver in the 40's and 50's were the piers where the big "name" liners docked. Riding along the West Side Highway, I'd occasionally see cargoes being handled in the nets, or as crated goods being picked off barges or lighters (self propelled barges with stiff leg derricks for handling cargoes). The Brooklyn piers handled the German shipping traffic (Lloyd and Hamburg-American), Istbrandsen/American Export Lines, Moore-McCormack Lines, Gran Columbia Lines, and plenty more. Those are the shipping lines which come to mind at this point. The Brooklyn piers were always interesting as you'd see trucks in the forms of cabs and chassis being loaded aboard ships for export, heavy equipment, and plenty of large crates. You'd also see the traditional net cargo slings and skidded loads being hoisted on or off of the ships.

Back in those days, in the 1950's-early 1960's, the Port of New York was a really busy place and a lot of cargo moved through it. The names of the ships and the ports or registry (if visible depending on how a ship was docked) all used to seem so exotic to me, and made what we studied in social studies as well as the old roll-down maps in our classrooms, come alive. I'd see the roll down maps of the world in my classrooms and see the dotted lines crossing the oceans of the world, giving the shipping routes and mileages and think of the ships tied up at the Brooklyn piers. As a kid, I entertained notions of becoming a merchant marine engineer and seeing something of the world in that way. Seeing the ships at the Brooklyn piers without knowing the real story of what went on aboard the ships as well as on the piers was back when I was an innocent kid and not wise to too much. That soon changed as I got into my adolescent years and got a grasp on the real world.

In that same era, ccean freight containers were on the horizon. At that same time, the North River piers were in sorry shape. The agency within NYC government which had responsibility for the piers had a decision to make. As it were, the North River Piers were seeing less of the kind of traffic they had handled. A lot of traffic on the North River piers was from railroad car floats, which brought freight cars into Manhattan. A number of these cars contained livestock to be slaughtered in the meat packing plants on the West Side of Manhattan. This traffic was all but gone with the move to frozen carcasses moved by reefer trucks. The move to jet aircraft had pretty well killed the passenger liners docking there as well. All that was left was some break bulk cargo shipping. This is when the NYC agency had to make a decision: build new piers for break-bulk ships, or build piers with cranes and facilities for handling containers. The NYC government agency opted for piers to handle break bulk ships. In a very short time, these piers were totally un-used. Across the harbor in Newark and Elizabeth, New Jersey, the new piers and with special cranes and land facilities for handling thousands of containers were built. All the cargo traffic in the Port of NY went to the New Jersey side of the port. Belatedly, a few Brooklyn piers were rebuilt to handle containers, but nothing like what was developed in Elizabeth and Newark.

Of course, with the move to ocean freight containers, the next step up in theft was to divert whole containers. Instead of longshoremen making off with some of a load, the whole load would be diverted and stolen. I remember working on a nuclear powerplant job (Millstone Unit II) in Connecticut in 1973-75 for Bechtel. That jobsite was wide open with all sorts of rackets and shady dealings going on. You could play the numbers, play the horses, get into sports betting (no legal off track betting or legal numbers lotteries existed then). If you wanted something, you put the word out and someone might just get the word it was available at a very attractive price. I remember one guy, around this time of year, was walking around wearing an Irish Fisherman's Sweater. He was taking orders as a "shipment had come in". Italian leather coats and shoes, handbags, Solingen carving sets, and all sorts of handy gift items seemed to be available on the jobsite for very low prices. You knew if you were going to buy any of it, you were buying stolen goods, and you also knew never to ask where or how it came to pass that those goods were for sale for so low a price.

Getting back to the Brooklyn waterfront: A millwright I worked with in 1981-83 told me that in the 1950's, he had been working on a job in a NY Department of Sanitation garbage incineration plant on Hamilton Avenue. This is right on the Brooklyn Waterfront. One morning, when he arrived to go to work, he saw a crowd of longshoremen outside the nearby entrance to a pier. This was normal for shapeups when ships would need to be loaded or unloaded. As the millwright told it, he sensed there was something wrong, and sensed some real trouble was going to bust loose. He decided to stay in his car and wait a bit rather than pass through the crowd of longshoremen. As he waited, he said a scene that will stay with him for the rest of his days occurred. He said a "gloved hand holding a baling hook" seemed to loom large over the crowd, and plunged downward. Just that quick, the crowd melted away, as if they flowed down the storm drains. The only one left was a man bleeding out on the sidewalk with the baling hook in his chest. The millwright knew if he was seen and thought to have seen anything, he'd likely be the next casualty. He said he got on the floor of his car and stayed there until after the cops and meat wagon were gone from the scene. He said he never heard a word about the murder, not that he'd be crazy enough to ask about it.

My father was a construction inspector for the NYC Department of Buildings, and got around Brooklyn pretty well. Dad was extremely street wise, having grown up in a rough neighborhood and been around all sorts of people. Dad always told me how there were entirely different rules on the waterfront, and things had a way of happening. I remember Dad telling me of how a barge mounted crane suddenly sank over a weekend, telling me that the contractor with the crane apparently did not "play ball" with the boys who ran things on the waterfront. One time, Dad came home with a longshoreman's baling hook. It hangs in my shop to this day. It is a good deal bigger than a hay hook, and forged of good steel.Dad claimed it came off the piers along Hamilton Avenue.

I think with bar coding, computers, and ocean freight containers, the amount of theft is greatly diminished when the overall numbers are considered. However, if a container is diverted and the contents stolen, it is a single haul bigger than anything the longshoremen in the break-bulk days could have pulled off. At the same time, the gross tonnage of the ships carrying cargoes has also risen almost exponentially. Where a break-bulk ship might be 300 or 400 feet long and hold perhaps 15,000 tons of cargo, the new container ships are at least twice as long, many times the gross tonnage, and hold well over 1000 containers. One container diverted and stolen seems like a lot when considered by itself, but as a percentage against the total cargo, becomes fairly small. With todays sophisticated hackers, a container with valuable contents can be spotted, and arrangements made to divert it once it is loaded onto a semi trailer and moved out of the port. It is a whole different world. Longshoremen still work on the docks and run the container handling cranes and other machinery and "work cargo", but nowhere near the numbers they once did. I think theft of cargoes in ocean freight containers had moved from the longshoremen to other people altogether. It's a combination of cybercrime and sending a tractor driven by someone who is part of the theft rather than something like an overt hijacking of a rig. Today's thefts of ocean freight are the kinds of crime which is "seamless" and not readily apparent like a hijacking a rig or seeing some guy walking off the pier with his coat bulging in weird ways and looking 9 months pregnant.

Doug / Joe -

To add just a bit to Joe's great description.

I was never around the waterfront or docks until in grad school. Wrote what amounted to my thesis on the container operation in Portsmouth, VA. This was in 71-72. In the Hampton Roads area Newport News was the dominate waterfront, all break bulk. When in the 60s there was a need for the first container handling facility Newport News acted much as NYC and figured it would never amount to much. So between the state of VA and the city of Portsmouth a container handling facility was built. As container handling took off - and the importation of Japanese cars on ROROs (roll on roll off ships)picked up Portsmouth grew like crazy, adding on to the port facility. Newport News docks at that point were death taking life savers. As Joe said, totally changing how cargo was handled.

One story I remember the being told about the difference that made - I asked what the stainless steel 20 foot tank was (a half container - tank inside a tube frame). Scotch whiskey. Story was that he could tell in the old days if any liquor was coming off a break bulk ship - longshoremen would show at the work up with each having a metal pail or two. 100% probability that the last skid of booze would be 'accidentally dropped' short of it's place in the warehouse. Out come the buckets and cloth to strain any broken glass. If any bottles survived I guess those were distributed by 'seniority'. Stainless steel tanks solved that particular method of redistribution.

I never got all the first hand observation that Joe did but the stories sure ring true from what I have heard.

Dale

Joe & Duck,
Thank you both for the extensive writings.

The book spelled it out just as you both have written.

As the author is an economist, the facts backed up
with figures really brings home the points made.

He writes, that the first ship (a converted war surplus oil tanker) The "ideal-x"
With cobbled up on board cranes (no dock cranes to unload 20 ton
containers) he had an unheard of cycle time, of 7 minutes
per container.
This drove the price (in 1956) of loading from $5.83 a ton (loose cargo) to $.158 (fifteen point 8 cents) per ton.

BTW the book told that Malcolm Mclean's first
customers were Scottish distilleries.

As he placed 2 large (IIRC 1000 gallons each)
stainless tanks inside a container, it eliminated the
extensive theft problem. (just as you have described)
They quickly saw the advantages of the container,
they were quick to adopt to it.

At the risk of opening a political discussion & getting this thread locked, I will relate a story of my late cousin, George. George has been dead a good 25 years and had lived into his 80's. George was kind of a black sheep on my mother's side of the family, having married into the fold. George had done a few things in his life, amongst which were boxing in the featherweight class (common amongst boys born or poor immigrant parents in that era), and he eventually wound up in the Boilermakers union. During WWII, George had been a hull and superstructure welder at Federal Shipbuilding in Kearny, NJ. After WWII, George continued working as a boilermaker. George had a brother who was a captain in a NYC police motorcycle precinct. Therein begins the tale. Prior to the British granting Israel its independence, it was obvious there was going to be a hell of a war when that event did happen. At the same time, there was a strict embargo against the sales and shipment of any arms or war materiel to Palestine (as it was then called). In the USA, various underground groups were set up to funnel all sorts of things to Palestine and get past the embargo. Used machine tools, construction equipment, and other industrial equipment was shipped legally- often with arms making machinery in pieces put inside of housings, pressure vessels (which were then welded back together, often by ASME qualified welders, so the appearance was not suspect) and anywhere else it could be secreted. The more obvious thing was to collect small arms and get them into Palestine for use by the Israelis in what was to become their "war of independence". With an embargo in place, this had to be done by clandestine activity, or not-so-clandestine activity as the case often was.

The NYC police department had plenty of police officers right up the line who were supportive of Israel. Guns confiscated by police officers from various hoodlums, unless wanted specifically as evidence, were supposed to have been disposed of. This was to have consisted of putting the guns into 55 gallon drums, filling the drums with concrete, and dumping them off a workboat into the East River.

What actually happened was the NYPD property offices were selecting usable guns and sending them for "disposal" to various machine shops and automotive shops around the NY area. My cousin's brother- the police captain was quite active in this part of it. The guns arrived at an automotive rebuilder's machine shop and were stripped, checked, cleaned and test fired (into a railroad cut below street level) right in Brooklyn. If the guns were found in good condition and in a usable caliber, they were preserved with cosmoline, tagged with make/model/caliber, and loaded into wood packing crates.

This is where my cousin George came into the picture. George arranged to be one of the boilermaker/welders called to weld cleats to the decks of ships carrying deck cargoes from the Brooklyn docks.

This required George to tow a Lincoln gas driven welder with a cutting outfit and plenty of hose and lead onto the piers. He had a pass to get into the secured areas, past customs. George had a special car for those jobs. It was a prewar sedan or touring car. He had put a truck transmission into it, a heavier rear end, a Lincoln engine, and had blocked the rear axle solid to the frame rails. He also had removed all but a crude seat for himself to sit on when driving and gutted the interior. Curtains were drawn over the side windows. When George got a call to weld cleats on a ship bound for a Mediterranean port such as Naples or Trieste, he knew he had to bring his car to the automotive machine shop. There, the car was crammed full with crates of guns. The blocking between the rear axle and frame rails kept the car from squatting down and giving away the fact it was grossly overloaded with an illegal load.

George then hitched up the Lincoln welder and drove to the docks, showing his pass and being waved through. Once on the dock, he'd park near the ship he was to work upon. He would string his welding lead and cutting outfit hose up to the deck of the ship, set the heat on his welder and take his shield and tools and go up the ladder to the deck. He'd set to work, burning off old cleats, welding new pad-eyes or steel chocks, and keeping real busy. He had been told to leave the keys in his car and not to look towards the dock, stick to his work.

He'd finish his job, roll up his leads and hoses, and get back to his car. It was hitched to the welder, but the inside of the car was emptied of the crates.
The story George told me was that the longshoremen were quite sympathetic to the founding of the State of Israel, and were doing what they could to help that cause.

The crates of guns were placed aboard cargo ships bound for Mediterranean ports. The Longshoremen got those crates aboard and got them bunked aboard the ships. What deals and greasing of ship's officers went on can only be imagined. Probably more stuff "slipped out of the slings" and was used for that purpose. George never looked nor asked, all he knew was the longshoremen were handling things.

I had wondered what became of the crates. In 1981, on a job, we had a boilermaker foreman who was a Yugoslavian immigrant. We called him "Tabernacle" because he had made a tabernacle out of brass and copper for his church. I never learned his right name. Tabernacle found out I was Jewish, and pulled me aside and told me the next chapter in the cousin George's gun running. Tabernacle had been a chief engineer in the Yugoslav merchant marine. He said he was sailing on some tramp steamer (which he described as a floating slag heap overdue for heading to the breakers) that was heading to Haifa, a port city in what became Israel. As Tabernacle was walking on the waterfront in some Mediterranean port that tramp was tied up in, in 1947 or 48 a man approached him and spoke to him in bad Spanish. Tabernacle could speak Italian as well as Slavic, and from the Italian he could get the gist of what this fellow was trying to tell him in Spanish. It turned out the fellow was part of the underground arms running network, and needed to get the crates of guns from the USA aboard Tabernacle's ship, since it was sailing to Haifa. The payoff was in good quality men's suits and American cigarettes. More goods that "fell out of the slings" on the Mediterranean docks. Tabernacle said this fellow had lined up the longshoremen in that port, taken care of customs officers and anyone else who might otherwise get in the way, and all that was needed was a ship and some of the crew to make sure the crates got aboard and safely stashed. Tabernacle said he handled a few such cargoes after that. He made sure the skipper and mates were taken care of with some of the stuff that "fell out of the slings" and the crates made it to Haifa.

Tabernacle's part of the tale shows that the waterfronts of the world, the crews of some of the bottom-of-the-barrel tramp steamers, and the longshoremen of the world in those days were all pretty much cut from the same cloth.

In response to this sentence in Joe's Post #6:

" the new container ships are at least twice as long, many times the gross tonnage, and hold well over 1000 containers. "

Yes, indeed! The capacity of a container ship is measured in how many "Twenty Equivalent Units" she can carry. A plain 20-foot container is the basic unit, equal to one TEU. Obviously, a 40-foot container is 2 TEU's, etc.

Look up the ship "MOL Triumph" - It can carry literally TWENTY THOUSAND TEU's !
MOL Triumph - Wikipedia

Note that since she will always have a mix of 20- 40- and 45-ft containers, she will never actually have 20,000 boxes aboard, but certainly 10,000 is a believable round figure to for the following discussion.

When one of these ships arrives, ground transportation must be provided for all these containers. Taking the 10,000 example, say half are going by truck and half are going by rail.

That's 5,000 truck cabs that have to show up at the terminal. Some will bring their own chassis, others will just hook up to a chassis which already has the container loaded upon it. For efficiency's sake, the truckers have to show up on a schedule as the containers are unloaded.

If the destination can accommodate double-stack trains, which not all the world's rail lines can, the other 5,000 containers are going to need 25 100-car double stack trains carrying 200 containers each.

All this ground transportation, the trains and the truck cabs, obviously has to be arranged in advance. The only way to do this is on this scale is with Electronic Document Interchange (EDI)

EDI makes it possible for ocean shipping companies to offer literally door-to-door container services if that is what the shipper wants.

The engineering and information technology acumen needed to make all this possible is staggering!

Here is the story, briefly:

Click to expand...

But it is pretty interesting stuff I'd never heard before. Thanks!

I saw a documentary on the story Of "Lucky" Luciano and the goings on with the prosecution and the
how the government intervened to get the mobs help .

Just as Joe so eloquently described, It may have been a discovery channel. I dont remember but It was well worth watching.

Thanks for the detailed writings Joe.... Great stuff

Piggybacking a rumor that I heard (and believe well-placed) in the late 1960s on Joe M's Scotch-whisky story:

First the background . . . in the closing days of San Francisco break-bulk longshoring, any case of merchandise that was damaged in loading or unloading was "sold to the insurance company". The insurance company then passed the damaged cases along to freight-salvage concerns that sorted out the unrecoverable items before selling the undamaged and slightly-damaged contents of the cases to others.

The freight-salvage operators paid some portion of their salvage-sales income to the insurance companies, and kept some portion to cover their expenses and profits.

So . . . my source told me that insurance company records showed that only one or two bottles in a damaged case of liquor survived the drop, while more than half of the bottles in damaged cases of other liquids survived.

Apparently booze bottles are more fragile than detergent bottles.

Doug -

Have to admit you got my interest up - I'll have to find a copy of that book.

Dale

duckfarmer27 said:

Doug -

Have to admit you got my interest up - I'll have to find a copy of that book.

Dale

Click to expand...

Indeed... but the book I really want is the one Joe Michaels needs to write.

Thanks Joe and all for the thread

Joe Michaels said:

At the risk of opening a political discussion & getting this thread locked, I will relate a story of my late cousin, George. ...... There, the car was crammed full with crates of guns. The blocking between the rear axle and frame rails kept the car from squatting down and giving away the fact it was grossly overloaded with an illegal load.

George then hitched up the Lincoln welder and drove to the docks, showing his pass and being waved through. ...... He had been told to leave the keys in his car and not to look towards the dock, stick to his work.

<....>

I had wondered what became of the crates. In 1981, on a job, we had a boilermaker foreman who was a Yugoslavian immigrant. We called him "Tabernacle" because he had made a tabernacle out of brass and copper for his church. I never learned his right name. Tabernacle found out I was Jewish, and pulled me aside and told me the next chapter in the cousin George's gun running. Tabernacle had been a chief engineer in the Yugoslav merchant marine. He said he was sailing on some tramp steamer (which he described as a floating slag heap overdue for heading to the breakers) that was heading to Haifa, a port city in what became Israel. As Tabernacle was walking on the waterfront in some Mediterranean port that tramp was tied up in, in 1947 or 48 a man approached him and spoke to him in bad Spanish. Tabernacle could speak Italian as well as Slavic, and from the Italian he could get the gist of what this fellow was trying to tell him in Spanish. It turned out the fellow was part of the underground arms running network, and needed to get the crates of guns from the USA aboard Tabernacle's ship, since it was sailing to Haifa. .

Click to expand...

Joe, that story hit me really hard. In 1979 in Houston, I was invited to a very dear friends home. He grew up in Brooklyn.

He told me that he was a participant in organizing those shipments. While he was a Rabbinical student in Jerusalem.

Knowing him well, I knew that statement was a big understatement.

Confirmation came when later - he showed me his collection of pictures of him and his frequent visits to Joe Kennedy's home. There he was, hob knobbing with the Kennedys including JFK's Presidential Cabinet members.

2nd part :

In the winter of early 1980, I was enroute to Haifa from Deft Holland to the Athen's port, in my wife's Citroen 2CV4. At Trieste Italy, I got lost and couldn't find my way up the mountains to the Italian exit to Yugoslavia. Little did I know that at the time, it was the spy capital of the world. At midnight, at the bottom of the geological hole that is Trieste, at the main train station, I ran into an American who was working as a Detective for the Trieste police dept.

He most kindly offered to get me on our way. Our car was loaded heavily, and I told him I didn't think the Citroen's 600cc motor-cycle engine would make it up the steep mountain grade out of Trieste. He put the family into his personal car to lighten the load, led me out, then; called for a special motorcycle escort to lead me to the Yugoslav border crossing.

The border crossing Yugoslav guard post was about 300 yards inside Yugoslav territory, and someone not supposed to be there in that country, and got caught, and then tried to run for it back to Italy - had an excellent chance of getting shot.

I wasn't supposed to be there.

Two Russian agents were "monitoring" the crossing, and when they found out I was an American, tried to pick a fight to start an incident. It was a ridicule of Jimmy Carter. My response was - "yeah.. but the Americans really admire Tito". At the time, he was the only independent communist leader.. But it drew a big laugh from the Yugoslav border guards, and they flagged me through quickly, before the Russians could respond further.

Still makes me shudder a little..

Thanks all for the thread, George Eller

Interesting. Went that route in about 1966. No problems , just delays getting through. Must have taken a hour and a half, and there were only 3 cars waiting.

When we were down near (as I recall) Split in Jugoslavia, we wanted to take a picture of the harbor. One guy ran up and told us in bad english to stop, "no picture". We did stop. Then another slightly more respectable looking guy came along right after him and said "Last year, no, this year yes", so we took our pictures.

At least one of them featured the huge Red Star tractor factory (at least I was told it was a tractor factory). Maybe that was part of the first guy's issue.

BTW, I understand Tito was originally some form of metalworker, possibly locksmith..

JST said:

Interesting. Went that route in about 1966. No problems , just delays getting through. Must have taken a hour and a half, and there were only 3 cars waiting.

When we were down near (as I recall) Split in Jugoslavia, we wanted to take a picture of the harbor. One guy ran up and told us in bad english to stop, "no picture". We did stop. Then another slightly more respectable looking guy came along right after him and said "Last year, no, this year yes", so we took our pictures.

At least one of them featured the huge Red Star tractor factory (at least I was told it was a tractor factory). Maybe that was part of the first guy's issue.

BTW, I understand Tito was originally some form of metalworker, possibly locksmith..

Click to expand...

In 1980, Americans were not given visas to Yugoslavia. I was traveling on an international driver license. Plus, my wife's legitimate visa from Holland. That - stipulated that I had some kind of ambiguous 7 day emergency visa to get through the country..

At Banya Luka, the car engine threw a spark-plug on the mountain outside the city. Two Russians spotted me, and towed us down the mountain at high speed with their fiat. I won't forget that ride...

Then.. My excellent Yugoslav map kept winding me up at a farmer's barnyard. After 3 tries, I stopped at a farm for directions. By now, about midnight. A lady who was alone answered the door and invited me in. We conversed in "kinder Deutch" which worked well there. How many other places would show that kind of hospitality ? Very few.. It turned out that the official map was a ruse. Tito was hiding his main military motor pool on the actual route that I needed.

I could put out a lot of stories about that place.. most of them scary..

It is good to converse with someone who has been there also.

It used to be then.. that human life had little value there..

And yes, I heard similar stories about Tito's background in machining.

I saw a lot​ of people get tears in their eyes when his name was mentioned. A HUGE amount of lives were expended under his leadership.

Best wishes, George

nearly everyone was nice as pie there, Reason was we were not Germans. Germans flooded Italy and Jugoslavia when the 6 week vacation came around, and nobody liked any part of them but their wallets. It was not long enough since the war. Now it probably is. There was still a lot of concrete on some of the coast in Italy especially. One campground had a huge concrete bunker/tower a few hundred yards North of it.

Zadar, Split, and Dubrovnik were nice then. Don't know how they are now, Dubrovnik at least, was shelled, but has been rebuilt. We walked the walls around it, and the fishermen were mending nets out on the waterfront near the aquarium. .