Moving the Midway

Out on a small man made peninsula in the bay, we stood wrapped against the early morning chill. Across the bay we could see the orange and yellow tugs ready the USS Midway for her move to her final home. The crowds were small but excited. Several of us had binos and could share the details we could see with everyone.

“One of the bow lines is gone,” said one man loudly.

“An anchor is still down,” said another, and yes, there was a chain from the bow into the water.

One tug came our way, put down a gangway to pick up someone at the old Navy pier, and quickly moved back to the other side of the bay. For the first time I was able to read the name on one of the tugs: C TRACTOR 7 it said. A small Coast Guard cutter slowly cruised in and out. Our eyes were drawn quickly back across the bay.

As she drew closer, we could see the hundreds that lined her flight deck for the final cruise. We could begin to see a clear difference between her original 1945 plates and those added later when they modernized her.

“Had you been on her?” I asked a man standing next to me.

“Yes, but I was an engineer with the company that built her airplanes not crew,” he replied.

“How did she handle?”

“Her hull was low, and she plowed right into the waves. A wet ship,” he said with waving hand motion. “Water isn’t good for airplanes. And she listed to port. Those are some of the reasons they withdrew her from Japan and eventually mothballed her.”

She grew closer. As they began turning her in the middle of the bay, the clicks of shutters sounded almost like applause. Then, as they began sliding her into her final birth, the crowds flowed back off the island and toward her pier their cameras clicking. We crowded on the pier to take shots of her as she grew closer, to photograph the line handlers, aging volunteers all, and to answer the radio on G’s hip.

“Where are you,” said G’s boss.

“We are right off the bow. Where are you?”

“I’m on the front bridge,” he replied. We smiled. Retired Navy commanders have their uses. We faded away to buy one baseball hat in support of the Midway this marvelous new historical addition to our city’s skyline.

And perhaps I always post pictures of us in my journal so later I will say, yes, see, we were really there as they moved the Midway, and we were really there aboard the Queen Mary that day. And we were, but the Midway now lists to starboard.