Tipton’s Navy : Good Samaritans’ Fleet Carries a Cargo of Caring to the World’s Needy Children

Tipton’s Navy, unsteady as she goes, navigating more by faith than seamanship, has docked here to add to its small yet precious first cargo of food, clothing and medical supplies for children in the Fourth World.

In keeping with the bodacious, audacious, who-said-it-can’t-be-done doings of the venture, the MV (motor vessel) Gratitude is skippered by Fritz de Quilettes, a Dutch electrician who hasn’t been to sea for almost 30 years.

Undergraduate Cabin Boy

The second mate is Mark Higman, a sous chef fresh from a tour with the Salvation Army in Sacramento. Tending the spiritual needs of the ship’s mighty diesels is the Rev. Jamie Saunders, missionary and ordained minister. His 12-month-old son, Regan, is undergraduate cabin boy. And the ship’s cat gets seasick.

“They may not have the right tickets (maritime licenses) or experience but they’ve got the right attitude . . . they’re willing to try and willing to do and that’s how you get things done,” grinned Don Tipton, proud admiral of the effort. He’s another retread. Tipton once owned the Park West Polo and Hunt Club in Beverly Hills and assorted equestrian facilities.

Outrageous Idea

Two years ago, Tipton grew irritated with Southern California’s monied, power-breakfast scene. Doing something beyond self seemed much more compelling. So Tipton decided to do something about world hunger . . . with the outrageous idea of using prayer to find free ships he could man with unpaid crews and fill with donated groceries to be delivered gratis to hungry chunks of Africa, Asia and Pacific Islands.

And now he’s doing it . . . although, agrees Tipton, 42, soft of heart but built like a capstan, there surely is a whole lot of “McHale’s Navy” about Tipton’s Navy.

“But look at how far we’ve come in just two years and one month when we had $38 in our bank account. We have three ships free and clear and 50 crew members . . . a 13,000-square-foot warehouse and seven offices with telephones and Telex in Redondo Beach . . . trucks and 33 acres at Petaluma where we intend to open a missionary training school . . . and we have never asked anyone for money.”

Nor were the land and facilities and the ships purchased by rich patrons or through fat foundations.

They were freebies engineered and wheedled by Tipton from individuals willing to trust the strength of his beliefs and handshake.

He has been given--in order of appearance in the life of his Park West Children’s Fund--buckshee titles to about $1.3 million worth of shipping: Spirit, a 4,000-ton, ex-Navy supply ship; Gratitude, a converted, 180-foot tuna seiner; and Reverence, a 150-foot riverboat veteran of brown Sacramento waters, plus her 200-foot barge.

No matter the repair, renovation or modification to any of the ships, from rebuilding engines, through drydocking or tug transfers, to painting and overhauling of electronics and hydraulics, all services and parts and labor have been donated.

The first segment of Tipton’s vision--the feeding and clothing of hungry youngsters with medical treatments and missionary resupply--cast off in August when Gratitude sailed from Seattle and began filling her holds with relief supplies. At San Francisco. At Sacramento. At Long Beach and now San Diego.

A Hand-to-Mouth Voyage

Granted, the voyage south has been hand-to-mouth, port-to-port, a coastal hopscotch in search of donated fuel and waived pilot fees, until Gratitude arrived at Pier B here. With her fuel tanks near empty.

Yet her holds are rich, with canned salmon, with used clothing, with powdered baby formula and hospital beds and bicycles and wheelchairs and Mylanta and an orange Volkswagen van.

Another 22 tons of aid will be loaded in San Diego.

Then Gratitude and her 14 crew members (13 if Ricky, the green-whiskered cat, decides to jump ship as he did in Seattle) will sail to serve the Marshall Islands, the Carolines, Ralik, Truk and the Philippines.

And after those two years and one month, Tipton’s charity is fully afloat and steaming in the right direction and still has just about $38 in its checking account.

“But to some of those who look at me, I don’t measure up,” Tipton said. True. Here’s an evangelist in baggy Levi’s who doesn’t own a Rolex. He’s married to Sondra whose chief beauty aid is a comb. “Others expect me to be a saint, a walking Moses, a special gift from God.

“I’m just a common Joe . . . someone who believes what it says in the Bible that a righteous man’s prayers availeth much. You know, at this very moment, there are 1,000 people on their knees praying for medicine to keep a child alive, or for a blanket to keep an old lady warm . . . and there are men and women in Africa and India, in the villages and jungles and on hilltops, who are ministering to these people, feeding them, educating them, healing them.

Prayers Prevail

“I’m simply trying to get stuff to these missionaries, to prove that the prayers of righteous men are prevailing.”

Five years ago, Tipton wasn’t all that righteous. Nor was he praying.

He was, in fact, Windbrook Farms, a hunter-jumper horse ranch in Malibu, Brentwood Farms, an equestrian facility in West Los Angeles, and the Park West Polo and Hunt Club, sponsors of East-West Polo Challenges at Will Rogers State Park. He also was Gucci blazers, $100 lunches and first name friendships with Sylvester Stallone, Sally Struthers and Neil Sedaka.

Then, the dissatisfaction.

With self: “I looked at 40 years of my life spent chasing things I felt important, the cars, the houses, the titles that denote respect . . . and I found a void.”

With important friends: “Money and position really hadn’t given them much . . . they were afraid to turn loose because that might mean going back the other way, to when they didn’t have money.”

Even his small but successful Park West Children’s Fund aiding ill and abused children wasn’t working as broadly as it might: “For every dollar earned by our events we were spending 80 cents to entice them (donors) to come to give the other 20 cents to benefit the children and that’s wrong.”

Tipton divorced. His two sons and a daughter were grown. Suddenly he was alone, restless, closing on middle-age. But there was Sondra George, a polo friend also signaling her exit from the fast lane. They met God, decided a commitment and Park West Children’s Fund ran away to sea.

To relieve world famine was their easy, topical cause.

There’s a Trick to It

The trick, Tipton said, would be to do it cheaper than Live Aid or Band Aid or Bruce Springsteen: “World Vision (in 1985) shipped 100,000 pounds of medicine, tents and food to Ethiopia for $240,000. That’s $2.40 a pound and the crew fee alone was $8,000 a day.”

What if, Tipton asked, there could be volunteer crews aboard a donated cargo ship sailing on free fuel? And what if its cargoes were obtained by tapping “spoilage and corporate waste . . . samples, bad orders that weren’t picked up, overruns.

“If you ask them (corporations) they’ll tell you it’s very valuable. But if you ask ‘em properly and they realize what you’re doing and recognize the tax value of a donation . . . well, they’ll deshelf it to make room for other things and give it to you.”

Coast Engine & Equipment Corp. of Tacoma were quick to prove Tipton’s point. They had a rusty elephant, an ex-Navy freighter reluctantly inherited years earlier in lieu of payment for marine work performed.

Tipton pitched. Coast Engine conceded. When the deeding was done, Coast Engine was out from beneath a $2,500-a-month mooring and maintenance expense, the firm had made a handsome charitable donation for tax purposes--and Tipton’s cause was richer by one $700,000 vessel quickly rechristened Spirit. The ship and its home port of Seattle became Park West’s new headquarters

Reverence and her barge were next--as a San Francisco harbor pilot, Don Hughes, preferred Tipton over his own fading plans to restore the vessel. Said Tipton: “I just told him that the Lord had need of his tugboat and Don said: ‘Brother, it’s yours. I wouldn’t be caught dead with something the Lord needed.’ ”

Gratitude I was obtained and quickly traded and eventually became Gratitude II after a convoluted, bizarre piece of ship trading with a group that rarely loses any confrontation--the Redondo Beach-based Sea Shepherd Conservation Society guided by eco-guerrilla Paul Watson.

Crews drawn from volunteers willing to work for bed, shipboard and satisfaction, have come from Christian movements nationwide. In its first 18 months, Park West, doing fleet business as Spirit Mercy Ships, received in-kind contributions worth more than $4 million.

A Typical Cargo

Manual hospital beds outmoded by electrical versions. An X-ray machine with a 10-second developing cycle made obsolete by one with only a two-second delay. Incubators from Ballard Community Hospital and five tons of canned salmon from Peter Pan Seafoods. Sweaters and shirts from J. C. Penney. Linens from the Mayflower Hotel, Seattle. Pasta and peroxide, radar and rice steamers, a pickup truck and 100 pairs of jeans. All courtesy of human concern--with enough perishables left over to be redirected to Seattle charities.

When Spirit Mercy Ships became a truly deficit operation, Tipton and Sondra and crew washed cars and painted ships. And, eventually, Tipton sold all his horse interests.

“Three vessels and their crews,” Tipton reported in a recent newsletter, “have functioned for a year on (cash donations of) about the price of one well-equipped new Cadillac.”

In between time, Tipton married Sondra.

Their honeymoon was watching the good ship Gratitude leave Seattle on her collection voyage south.

“I just burst into tears,” Tipton said. “All the work, all the doubts and disappointments, all the false starts and those people who told us it couldn’t be done . . . when Gratitude spun around and pointed her bow out to sea, Sondra and I put our arms around each other and just sobbed.”

Tipton is no Bible thumper, ordained minister, converter or preacher.

“I’d rather do it than talk about it,” he explained. “I just want to be a fine human being laying down the guidelines God asks us to follow. On Judgment Day, I want Him to look at me and say: ‘Well done.’ ”

To some, the extraordinary generosities shown Tipton may be attributed to his undeniably good cause, plus America’s traditional support of daring dreamers.

Miracle of the Holy Scrounge

To Tipton, every gift and development and achievement may be seen as part of the Miracle of the Holy Scrounge.

“The day we were due to leave Seattle, we didn’t have enough fuel to make it to San Francisco,” he said. “A lot of equipment on board Gratitude wasn’t working.

“Then a tugboat, the Seaway skippered by John Hauff, took fuel, about 4,000 gallons, out of its own tanks so we could get to San Francisco. Once we were at sea, the sonar started working, then the gyro compass, then the radar. We just didn’t know what was happening.”

When Gratitude arrived in San Francisco there was $200 in the kitty, the ship was empty of fuel, there were pilot, mooring and longshoreman fees to pay--yet the vessel was shunted to an obscure dock away from public view, visits and possible donations.

Then, without warning, port officials asked Gratitude to move. Pier 32 was needed for other traffic. Gratitude would be moved to Pier 45--right off Fisherman’s Wharf, right behind the popular display of a World War II submarine, right where tourist monies would flutter into Gratitude’s donation drum.

The pilots donated their services. So did longshoremen. The port waived mooring fees. “Do you know why we were moved from Pier 32?” asked Tipton. “It was needed to park vehicles. For the Pope’s visit.”

Gratitude’s arrival and stay in Long Beach was a disaster. Although the news media have promised coverage, no reporters showed up for the Oct. 1 docking. They were too busy covering the Los Angeles earthquake.

“We were out of fuel and out of food for the crew,” Tipton remembered. “We were $6,500 in debt and only had about $1,500 coming in. Then Tom Miller of Covina, a friend from my horse days, walked up on the dock and without being asked just wrote out a check for $5,000.”

Tipton spoke to Christian fellowships in Palos Verdes and Westminster--and more than $11,000 was donated to the voyage.

Queen’s Wharf sport fishing boats gave what they could--as much as 900 pounds of fresh fish per day.

Then the cornucopia overflowed. With a donation of 2,800 pounds of sliced ham. Then a half ton of ice cream. With a contract from a produce company to donate, on a regular basis, up to 50 tons of food per week.

‘No Warehouse, No Staff’

“But we had no place to keep it, no warehouse, no staff,” Tipton said. “Our office was our Jeep parked next to a pay phone at Berth 54. Sondra would sit in the Jeep surrounded by papers and using the phone. Then it would rain.”

It didn’t last. Of course not. Over lunch, an auto parts dealer moving to a new warehouse offered to donate his Redondo Beach facility to Tipton for the remainder of the lease. Six months. Rent free.

“It’s the Taj Mahal of warehouses,” Tipton enthused. “Loading docks, parking lot, wrought iron gates and those little trees with balls on top, just like a doctor’s office building.

“Everything in one shot, in one week. We prayed on Wednesday. We had the warehouse on Friday.”

Yet even that deal pales alongside the two-ship shuffle that brought Tipton the MV Gratitude.

Gratitude I was a slick, fast Seattle tuna boat called the Skipjack. Tipton went for it with an offer anyone could have refused.

“I offered them $100,000 for the boat,” he said. “But in installments of $10,000 a year. With no interest and the first payment to be made at the end of a year. I told them I would not insure the boat and I wanted the title right away.

“I never thought they’d go for it. But they jumped on it. I just don’t know why. But they did.”

Enter Paul Watson. He wanted to buy the Skipjack, now Gratitude I, to oppose Russian whalers in the Bering Strait. Tipton said he wasn’t in the business of selling boats. Just trading.

Exit Watson. To reenter as owner of a tuna seiner he had purchased for $100,000 and would be willing to trade for the Skipjack.

Tipton decided to push his luck. He said he would trade boats--plus $20,000 cash. Watson went away and came back with a counteroffer. He said he would trade boats--and pick up the $100,000 Tipton owed on the Skipjack.

“So I got Gratitude II, not a cigarette butt against it, free and clear, for nothing,” Tipton said. “I don’t know why. I just got out of there before Watson changed his mind.”

Watson is out of the country and unavailable for comment.

But Scott Trimmingham of Redondo Beach, president of the Sea Shepherd group, confirmed the amounts and outcome of the deal.

Yet despite the blessings, despite the running miracles, the Tiptons and Gratitude and crew are in San Diego again with empty fuel tanks (to fill ‘er up is a large matter of 14,000 gallons) and emptying pockets.

Optimistic Outlook

Tipton, however, is optimistic that fuel tanks and coffers will be replenished and that Gratitude will be leaving in 10 days for Honolulu and the South Pacific. Next year, Spirit will sail for Africa. With the riverboat Reverence bringing supplies from Sacramento River communities.

He refuses to accept that it can’t be done.

Just as he denies those who doubt the worth of his admittedly small labor against a world filled with sickness and famine.

“Some people have said to me: ‘What difference does it make to save 10 people where there are 10,000 people dying?’ ” he said. “I say: ‘It makes a lot of difference to those 10 people.’ ”

Yet, he concedes, it may take one almighty miracle to cure a seasick cat.