Sea stories p2

Do you remember the Steward Hermasura?
I think that's how you spell his name.) Anyway, Hermon (that was his Boat Name) was a young Filipino and very gullible, like most of us had been at one time or another. He would occasionally come back to the engine rooms to shoot the shit. Especially when we were on long submerged operations. I was in charge of the fwd. engine room and He,He Evans was in charge of the after engine room. He He had an Oilier named Jerry. (can't remember his last name) Jerry was one kind of a practical Joker. Do you remember the Alligator that was in a fenced in pin, in front of one of the Bars in Subic? Anyway we had just left Subic for a weeks operation. We got on station and made our Dive.
During this dive Jerry devised the following Joke on Herman. He convinced Hermon that we stole the Alligator and that it was in the after engine room bilges. Jerry rigged up an air hose and put it underwater in the bilge.
Naturally Hermon didn't believe us and wanted to see it and came to the engine room several hours after the dive. Jerry opened the hatch to the lower engine room area and pretended to look around. He told Hermon that the alligator wasn't up on the deck plates and he would have to climb down and look into the bilges. Hermon said ok and followed Jerry down. Just as one of Herman's feet hit the deck plates, I turned on the air. Herman shot up the ladder like a Polaris Missile and ran to the forward battery. It took us a couple of days to calm him down. We didn't tell him that it was all a joke. He would still take a trip back to the engine room but wouldn't look down the hatch. Ten days latter we went into port in Yokosuka. A couple of days after being in port, Jerry was down in the bilges cleaning, and taking down his Alligator air hose rig. It was then he discovered some large chunks of meat. Herman had thrown food in the bilges to feed the gator. It was then we told him that it was all a joke.