There are dozens of serious tropical storms in the Pacific every year. Only the worst are designated as typhoons and given names, Assigning names is a relatively new thing, dating from //
In 1963 the Valley Forge was in port in Subic Bat in the Philippines. The typhoon was being tracked well to the north and east. It would have to swing south, across the island of Luzon, in order to reach us. That was not a high probability track. Also, when going over land typhoon usually lose a lot of strentgh, Despite this, it was deemed prudent to move the ship from alongside a pier and to anchor in the middle of the bay. Not only would we have a better chance of avoiding being blown ashore (very low probabilty risk) but we would avoid being bashed againt the pier side repeatedly. That might cause some damage.
The ship anchored off Grande Island where the bottom was shown as muddy on the chart. Because of the storm we set an enhanced watch to keep track of the position of the ship. In th event of problems we could get underway quickly. A pair of boilers were kept on line and ready to use if needed. In CIC we set a modified anchor watch and checked radar ranges every few minutes to ensure that the ship was inside her anchorage position, I was assigned the midnight to 4 AM watch, so I went to bed early.
“Fire!, Fire!, Electrical Fire on the mast!” The announcement came over the internal loudspeakers. “Away the damage control team.”
It was about 11PM. I expected the ship to go to full battle stations. I quickly got dressed and sat on my bunk to wait. Nothing happened. After a few minutes the telephone rang. It was the CIC watch officer, We were to double the watch team in CIC so I, as the oncoming watch officer, needed to report to CIC immediately. When I arrived I got a short, but worrisome, briefing.
All power to the mast had been secured (shut off) because of the fire. All our radar antennas were there, so we now had no usable radar. The last radar fix taken just before the fire was reported showed we were at the edge of the anchorage safety circle, That was a circle centered on the point where the anchor had been let go and with a radius equal to the amount of anchor chain that had been released before setting brakes of the anchor winch. There was no visual confirmation because the bridge watch could not see any land navigational points. In fact, they could not even see the bow of the ship which was about 400 feet away. The anchor watch on the forecastle reported there was strain on the anchor chain, but no vibrations to indicate that the anchor had broken free, The only working instrument we had was the anemometer. It was not located on the mast but rather just above the bridge. In the absence of any other date we sat and watched the anemometer. The needle was vibrating rapidly. Gusts were reaching speeds of around 90 miles per hour. Then, suddenly, the needle stopped trembling. It slowly, but steadily, dropped to zero. What had happened? Had the cable from the anemometer broken?
No, everything was fine. The eye of the storm was just passing over us. Visibility improved and the bridge team took a quick round of navigational bearings. The visual fix showed we were just outside the safety circle. The officer of the deck ordered the engines to go ahead, slowly, to ease the strain on the anchor chain. We had apparently dragged the anchor through the mud for about 50 yards. The repair team found one of the cables on the mast had parted. It was the source of the sparks that caused the fire alarm.
The rest of the typhoon closed in again and we braced for another trip through the back of the storm. It wasn’t as frightening as the first half. Soon, all that was left of this typhoon was just a bunch of memories. But they would be helpfu the next time I went through a typhoon.
Wetherhorn 