By
Captain Leonard S. Hubbard*,
Commanding Officer, USC&GSS HYDROGRAPHER
The radio
news from Tampa
Announces fair and sunny weather,
Gentle breezes and passing showers.
But here
in the Gulf of Mexico
Our vessel is plodding its lonely way
In a frothy fluid of windy sea.
The wind,
it blows and blows,
The spray: hisses, hisses and hisses
And the sea: splashes, splashes and splashes.
The ship,
it rocks and rocks,
And she pounds, pounds and pounds,
As her engines throb, throb and throb.
On the
bridge, it’s deep sea charting,
Electronic fix and fathometer sounding,
“One to go.” – “Standbye.” – and
“Mark.”
Electronic
fix, electronic fix and electronic fix,
Hydrography, hydrography and hydrography,
Line and line after line and line.
Now when
does this ship end sounding?
The waters swish and whisper at her side,
“Hydrography, hydrography, more hydrography.”
In:
“The Buzzard”, June 22, 1954
The
lead-in to this poem as published in the June 22, 1954, “The
Buzzard” was:
“We
have just discovered that there is an “Edgar Allen Poe”
in Coastal Services Division. Captain Leonard S. Hubbard, skipper
of the Ship HYDROGRAPHER conducting EPI-controlled hydrography in
the Gulf of Mexico has given us some thoughts about the HYDROGRAPHER,
which he has classified as “primitive verse” in these
modern times. We think it is very apropos, and present it to you:”
This
short poem captures the essence of the rhythm and the unending nature
of the task of all hydrographers even in the present day, 50 years
after the writing of this poem.
