Marine Pilots - Alaska Traveler - page 246

SWAPA pilot Captain Harry Scally takes the pilot boat out of Seward to board the in-
coming Maersk Defender by a fifteen-foot pilot ladder. A 315-foot cable layer, the Maersk
Defender is in Alaska this summer to lay fiberoptic cable around the Kenai Peninsula
from Seward down to Kodiak and up to Anchorage. She has twin screws, stern and bow
thrusters, and given her assigned task all the electronics in the world. Her bridge officers
dress in short-sleeved blue jumpsuits, and the bearded captain greets Scally with a hand-
shake and personally serves up soft drinks and coffee. Everyone wants to know how much
a fishing license costs and where to go fishing once they get one.
The ship is to dock at Seward's railroad cargo dock. From thirteen knots, in soft-voiced
commands that sound more like requests, Scally reduces speed to nine knots, then six,
then three. When the red buoy is on the bow, the captain requests the conn and the chief
mate goes to the controls at the aft bridge window, still under Scally's close supervision.
The ship pirouettes like it's on toe shoes. The chief mate takes the conn and guides the
ship in stern first, portside to the dock. When the ship's stern is even with the stern of the
Navy ship moored off the now starboard beam, the chief mate walks the ship in with bow
and stern thrusters.
Scally, a Scot who began his sea life in the British Merchant Marine, patrols the bridge
uttering a continuous and entirely unselfconscious “Guid, guid.”
The next morning Scally boards the USS Chafee , a 505-foot, three-year old US Navy
warship that looks like a Stealth bomber with a hull. Her home port is Pearl Harbor, which
may be why the bridge crew is bundled up to their ears in fleeces and float coats.
The undocking is complicated only by the number of trainees on every bridge postion,
about three each. The captain stands at Scally's elbow, the executive officer at the cap-
tain's. The Chafee 's lines are released and the ship parts easily from the dock and pro-
ceeds down Resurrection Bay.
The captain inquires when Scally will be leaving the ship. Scally is politely regretful
but firm. State law requires an Alaska marine pilot in command of any vessel over sixty-
five feet in length or three hundred gross tons entering or departing every port, and at Se-
ward that is Caine's Head. The captain is disappointed but accepting, and throttles back
the 100,000-horsepower destroyer to a slow crawl so it doesn't outpace the