Old Salts Coming Back to Help Move Cargo to Gulf : Merchant marine: Many return from years of retirement. In all, thousands are called back to sea duty.

Dressed in clothing more appropriate for the Sunbelt than the numbing chill of this busy North Sea port, 75-year-old Guy Lipane tugs on the front of his thin blue sweater.

“I live in Florida,” he says with a New York accent. “This is the warmest thing I’ve got.”

Until a few weeks ago, the white-haired Lipane was a Ft. Lauderdale retiree. Today, he is chief engineer of the Cape Farewell, a mammoth cargo ship, sleek and gray, anchored here to pick up missiles, rockets, bombs, trucks and tanks for delivery to coalition troops in the Persian Gulf.

Plucked from 10 years of retirement and dropped into these incongruous surroundings, Lipane is one of thousands of American merchant seamen--and former merchant seamen--who have been called into service to keep the allied forces supplied.

They travel unarmed into the most dangerous waters in the world, usually carrying enough explosives to blow a fair-sized city to smithereens. Floating mines, Exocet missiles and chemical warfare attacks are their nemeses. As they enter the Gulf, the seamen hold tight to their gas masks and lower the lifeboats in preparation for abandoning ship. Many sleep on deck, where it’s safer.

With the overwhelming majority of American military supplies being sent to the Gulf by sea--it takes 180 jumbo C-5 cargo planes to carry the load of one ship--the merchant mariners have been playing a crucial, though little-noticed, role in the war.

Before Iraq invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, there were far more sailors than jobs in American merchant shipping. But almost overnight, the equation was reversed. Once the decision was made to send in U.S. troops, the Military Sealift Command (MSC)--the branch of the U.S. Navy responsible for procuring ships to transport supplies to American forces--scrambled into action. Since August, the MSC has arranged nearly 400 shipments, carrying a total of 5 billion pounds of dry cargo and 8.6 billion pounds of fuel.

“The market was so tight for shipping jobs prior to this,” says the Cape Farewell’s captain, David T. Downs, a Navy SEAL commando for eight years before joining the merchant marine. “Now, they won’t let you go. There’s no relief and no vacation until further notice.”

His ship, which normally carries a crew of 26, has vacancies for several key posts, including third mate and first assistant engineer. “All the ships are sailing short,” he says.

Some sailors have ducked Gulf duty by claiming illness, a feint that allows them to escape their work contracts without being penalized. “There’s a fairly large turnover,” admits Capt. Barry Annala, who commands another cargo ship, the Advantage, which is being loaded with cluster bombs as he speaks.

But countering the Gulf dropouts are sailors who have purposely signed up for war-zone missions. All have their own reasons for going, but some combination of patriotism and pay bonuses usually tops the list.

Bonuses are collected by both the “civilian mariner” sailors, who work directly for the government, and by seamen who work under contract to private shipowners. The special wartime compensation includes $130 a month for work on a Gulf-bound supply ship, a 10% bonus for carrying ammunition and double pay for time spent in the most dangerous parts of the Gulf.

On the Cape Farewell, even the lowly “ABS”--able-bodied seamen--are earning $4,800 a month. Capt. Downs expects to clear nearly $150,000 this year.

Bremerhaven and neighboring Nordenham, just across the Weser River, are the primary ports for transferring arms and equipment from U.S. bases in Germany to the Gulf.

While Bremerhaven is accustomed to loading equipment and “rolling stock”--tanks, trucks and other military vehicles--it is from Nordenham where the munitions are shipped. Unlike most of the world’s ports, Nordenham places no limits on the amount of explosives allowed inside the port at one time.

“We’ve done what would be a year’s worth of work in a three-month period,” says U.S. Army Col. Thomas C. Mills, commander of the Military Traffic Management Command (MTMC) in Bremerhaven, which oversees the cargo handling.

Since November, 60 ships have been loaded with cargo, including everything from helicopters and howitzers to portable bridges to more than 20,000 wheeled and tracked vehicles.

Currently, 20 U.S. and 79 foreign vessels are under contract to the Navy for the undertaking. Though the government has been criticized for paying too much for some of the charters, MSC officials in Washington said they have no figures available on the total cost of transporting equipment to the Gulf.

Besides chartering private ships, the MSC has also activated its own ships, including the Ready Reserve Force, a ragtag fleet consisting primarily of aging vessels that are no longer commercially viable. A number of seamen, such as Lipane, had to be pulled out of retirement to run them.

“I was sitting at home when I got a call that they needed me,” says Lipane, who worked on military supply ships during World War II,

He is one of a dwindling number of sailors who holds a license that qualifies him as a chief engineer for the outdated system that powers the Cape Farewell. The ship, taken out of mothballs in Mobile, Ala., had already made two ammunition and tank runs to the Gulf when Lipane was asked to meet it in Dammam, Saudi Arabia. A seat on a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight had been reserved for him.

Without giving it much thought, Lipane packed his sweater and left, reaching the Cape Farewell on Jan. 8. The ship left port after three days, clearing the Strait of Hormuz on the southeast end of the Persian Gulf on Jan. 14--just before the fighting erupted.

Less than three weeks later, Lipane arrived in Bremerhaven, anxious to buy a warm hat and coat. Although he was to leave again for the Gulf in a few days, catching a cold seemed, for the time being, his biggest fear.

“This is nothing,” he says, scoffing at the potential dangers of the voyage. “In terms of shipping, Korea was nothing, Vietnam was nothing, and this is nothing. Now World War II, that was something. You had the Wolf Packs”--Nazi submarines--”to worry about then.”

Rick DeMont, chief officer on the Cape Farewell, also expresses little concern about the risks.

“I was in the Marine Corps in Vietnam in a reconnaissance unit,” he said. “I know what a war zone is. In my mind, this is as detached as you could be and still be part of it. My fear threshold has been stretched to the maximum already. It takes more than this.

“If I was a Marine in an amphibious landing force waiting to hit Kuwait. . . .” He pauses, as if envisioning the scene. “That’s the real thing.”

As chief officer, however, DeMont must make sure all on board feel confident about their safety--including his wife Ruti, a cabin steward unaccustomed to working in a combat zone.

Before hiring on the Cape Farewell, the couple worked together on the Constitution, a luxury liner that cruises the Hawaiian islands. They loved the tropical climate and the chance to putter across paradise.

But the opportunity to become second in command on the Cape Farewell was a powerful lure for DeMont. So the couple cut an employment deal that ensured they could work together, just as they have for the last six years.

Ruti DeMont, from Western Samoa, is still worried about traversing the Gulf, but is calmer now than she was on her first trip last fall.

“I was thinking about the dangers all the time,” she says. “I had a million questions. I drove Rick nuts. I drove everybody nuts.”

Vessels from countries around the world have been hired to pick up Gulf-bound cargo in Bremerhaven. Even ships from Yugoslavia and Romania, one American sailor notes in near-disbelief, have hauled U.S. military cargo.

And while the top officers of foreign ships usually need security clearances for U.S. military work, that requirement is being waived for most Gulf shipping, says Downs. (A Navy spokesman said that numerous regulations, including clearances, can be suspended during wartime but that security checks are still made when deemed necessary.)

Not far from the Cape Farewell is an Iraqi Line ship that broke down just before the Kuwait invasion. The ship, a mid-sized cargo hauler called the Al Zahraa, had to have its engine removed for repairs. But when the United Nations imposed an embargo on trade with Iraq, German port officials refused to let the crew have its engine back.

The Iraqis offered to sell the ship to Jordan and re-flag it as a way to beat the embargo, but that scheme proved unsuccessful. The crew was given subsistence money from the German welfare system until most of its members were sent home. Two were left behind to guard the ship.

Further up the road, along the harbor, is a Gulf-bound fleet of military vehicles donated by Germany.

The equipment--trucks for hauling tanks and mobile showers--came from the disbanded East German army. No one could figure out how the vehicles worked, so former East German soldiers were brought in as instructors. The trucks now wait on the dock to be loaded onto the Cape Farewell.

Across the river in Nordenham, the crew of the Advantage was anxious to get into town and spend money. Bremerhaven is the first decent port they’ve seen in months, they say. Their ship was prepositioned before the war--”pre-po” in naval-speak--meaning it was crammed with military equipment and floating, more or less aimlessly, around the Mediterranean awaiting orders.

When the Gulf crisis erupted, the Advantage rushed to Saudi Arabia to drop off its cargo of arms, food and airstrip-building equipment. The crew was required to spend considerable time anchored in Saudi waters, where their mail was censored and the seamen were allowed to travel no more than 50 yards up the dock from the ship.

“Not my favorite place in the world,” says Annala, the captain. Above his desk is a bumper sticker: “I (love) Saudi Arabia.”

Like their fellow seamen on the Cape Farewell, the crew of the Advantage is mindful of the dangers ahead, but confident they’ll pull through.

“It’s a little tense,” says chief engineer James Fernandez. “We’re carrying some things that pack a wallop.” But he adds, with more than a hint of superstition, “this is a good-luck ship. I’m not worried.”

“The way I see it,” says Annala, “the guys over there need these supplies desperately. These are our friends and neighbors.”

Adds Walter Wheeler, the 76-year-old radio man: “It doesn’t bother me at all. You only die once.”

Boatswain Henry DeArmond--straight out of central casting in long beard, cap and coveralls--has been working to keep the right attitude.

“I don’t have any doubts that we’re going to make it there and back,” says the deck crew’s chief officer. “I think of things that can happen. And I think of things we can do to prevent things from happening.”

Although he’s a bit concerned about hitting a mine with so much ammunition in the cargo holds, he loves the job and couldn’t imagine doing anything else. “It’s the biggest sense of freedom you can find, I believe,” he says. “It’s not like the rat race, running back and forth, commuting.”

Nonetheless, he’d just as soon have the war end. “Maybe then,” he says, “we’ll go back to seeing interesting places.”