Glen (Pee wee) Rees sent these memories.

Didn't see many sea stories from our era 56-58. Do you remember the time we left Pearl harbor after our time there and they wanted us to sail to Melbourne Austrailia and take part in the filming of "On the Beach" with Gregory Peck. They wanted to use our boat.

Fortunately we had to overhaul an engine at sea and it delayed us in making their filming schedule so they used an Aussie boat.

Later on we found out that if were used in the film we would have been tied up at the oil docks in Melbourne instead of the pier downtown.

On our way we took time to go out on deck and celebrate

the crossing of the equator and change from a pollywog to a

shellback. I had to go through the ceremonies with some large boils on my butt and the back of my legs. I crawled through the fart sack filled with garbage saved for days. While crawling through my "shipmates" were swinging paddles and hard instrument, breaking open the boils. The only relief was to sit in the structure beneath the top deck and let the salt water burn the open boils on my butt.

While this process of initiation was going on we had this one baby faced seamen who was getting water by throwing a bucket attached to it over the side and bring up water to throw on people as they emerged from the fart sack covered with garbage.

Back to the kid with the bucket and rope, it seems that a low part of a swell pulled him overboard as he was trying to pull it up. He panicked and swam as fast as he could away from screws so he wouldn't be sucked in. The OD

immediately posted a shark watch since we were in waters

were we saw shark fins following us. By the time the boat was manuvered around to pick him up we almost lost sight of him bobbing up and down in the swells. We finally reached him and pulled him aboard.

After getting our engine back on line we sailed into Melbourne and had a great we of R and R which would not have happened we making the film. Do you remember the softball game with the Australian team? We thought we were pretty hot team with our new uniforms. Much to our surprise they beat us at our own game in the cricket stadium.

And finally when we were leaving "Crummy" fell in love with one of the locals and missed our departure for the U.S. I think he was reduced from a first class EM. to a second class EM.

I have more stories but I won't bore you the first time out.

Glenn Rees SS 56-58