COVER STORY : Sea Worthy : A Crew of Seasoned Sailors--Some in Their 70s-- Follow Their Dreams to France Aboard

If the Lane Victory sails out of Los Angeles Harbor as scheduled this week, bound for England and the Normandy coast of France, it won’t be the oldest large vessel ever to sail the high seas. But it certainly will have one of the oldest crews ever to go down to the sea in a ship.

The captain is 77; the chief mate is 76. The chief engineer is 72. Of course, most of the other crew members are much younger than that. Their average age is only 68.

Despite their age--or maybe because of it--the 53 Lane Victory crew members are determined to take their restored World War II cargo ship on the voyage to France for ceremonies marking the 50th anniversary of the D-day invasion of Normandy.

For most of them, it’s an 18,000-mile voyage back in time, back to the days when they were young sailors in the U.S. Merchant Marine, hauling cargo through dangerous waters to far-flung battle fronts around the globe in World War II.

For most of them, too, it will be the last great adventure of their long and often adventurous lives.

“Look at all these old boys,” Lane Victory Capt. Bill Tilghman, 77, a veteran of half a century at sea, said as he waved a weather-beaten hand at the congregation of gray-haired men--and a few women--who assembled on the ship last week for a pre-voyage crew meeting. “Every one of these old sailors is at the twilight of his life. How often do you get a chance to do something really exciting at the end of your life? Not too damn often. That’s why it’s worth fighting for to make this trip.”

And fight they did. They and other members of the U.S. Merchant Marine Veterans of World War II, a national organization with about 4,000 members, fought to get the old Lane Victory out of mothballs, and they fought to fix it up and turn it into a sea-going museum and memorial. Then they fought to collect the prodigious amounts of money, fuel and food they needed to make the Normandy voyage.

The Lane Victory and its crew--most of whom are from Southern California--plan to steam southeast to Panama, through the Panama Canal and then across the Caribbean, passing between Cuba and Haiti and into the Atlantic. Depending on how long it takes to get there, near Bermuda the Lane Victory may rendezvous with two other ships--the Maine, a training ship from a maritime academy in Maine, and the Jeremiah O’Brien, a World War II Liberty ship based in San Francisco that also is going to Normandy. (The O’Brien left San Francisco last week, but since its cruising speed is less than 10 knots, the faster Lane Victory could catch up.)

Alone or with the other ships, the Lane Victory will head east from Bermuda toward the coast of Africa, turning northward near the island of Madeira and sailing to Portsmouth, England, for a port visit before the Normandy ceremonies on June 6.

It’s a 9,000-mile voyage one way, and at a cruising speed of about 15 knots, it will take almost a month to get to Europe, and a month back, with some side trips in between. All told, the voyage is expected to last about four months.

The trip will be arduous; it won’t be like a cruise on the Princess Lines. There are no shuffleboard courts on deck, no health spa, no floor show at night. The crew cabins are at best Spartan. Like any other working ship’s crew, the Lane Victory crew members, all of them volunteers, will stand bridge, deck and engine-room watches 24 hours a day. If they want to get from one deck to another they’ll use ladders, not elevators.

And although the Lane Victory is equipped with modern navigational and radio gear and is taking the so-called “good weather” route across the Atlantic, any professional sailor can tell you that it’s a tough ocean. There’s always a chance the ship could hit rough seas. There will be a doctor on board, and all of the crew members had to get letters from their personal physicians saying they were able to make the trip.

Still, a pitching, yawing, rolling ship on the high seas, coupled with the inevitable problems of advancing years, could make the trip hazardous for some. At the pre-voyage crew meeting, Capt. Tilghman, a sometimes crusty old salt who lives in Fallbrook in San Diego County, didn’t downplay the actuarial problem.

“Now, considering our maturity,” the captain said, “there’s a good chance we might lose one or two of us before this thing is over. If somebody snaps the twig over there, he better decide right now if he wants us to ship him home or fill his pockets with scrap iron and dump him over the side.”

But none of the Lane Victory crew members seemed worried.

“I went around the world in a ship just like this one during the war,” said Ralph (Barney) Starr, 71, a Corona minerals prospector now serving as a galley “utility man” aboard the Lane Victory. “It won’t be any problem. Everybody’s looking forward to it.”

“I suppose we’re trying to recapture our youth,” said Chief Mate Bill Skinner, 76, a World War II Merchant Marine veteran who lives in Lakewood. “But I don’t think we’re too old for this trip. Nobody’s pooping out. In fact, my blood pressure is down since I’ve been involved with this ship.”

Doubters may shake their heads and say it’ll be a miracle if the Lane Victory and its crew accomplish what they’ve set out to do. But as Joe Vernick, president of the national Merchant Marine veterans group, puts it, “This whole ship is a miracle.”

The Lane Victory’s story began in 1945 at the California Shipbuilding Corporation (CalShip) yard on Terminal Island. One of 531 Victory ships built during the war, the Lane Victory was designed as a seagoing workhorse, an unglamorous but tough vessel able to haul cargo and troops wherever they needed to go. The Lane Victory is 455 feet long, with a 62-foot beam and five cargo holds; powered by steam turbines, like other Victory ships it is larger and faster than the Liberty ships built earlier in the war.

Construction of the Lane Victory began on April 5, 1945; less than three months and about $3 million later, the completed ship was delivered to the American President Lines shipping company, which operated the ship for the War Shipping Administration. The Lane Victory, named after Lane College in Jackson, Tenn., which had been founded by a former slave who became an Episcopal minister and educator, became part of the U.S. Merchant Marine.

A little-known and little-publicized part of the war effort, the Merchant Marine was a government-contracted civilian organization that hauled about 85% of all war-related cargo, everything from tanks to ammunition to oil. Being in the Merchant Marine in World War II was dangerous work. Of the 225,000 who served, more than 6,000 died when their ships were hit by bombs or torpedoes, a battle death rate higher than any of the U.S. armed services except the U.S. Marines.

Most Merchant Marine ships were equipped with defensive deck- and anti-aircraft guns, manned by U.S. Navy “armed guards” assigned to the ship. In wartime, the Lane Victory carried a crew of about 55 Merchant Marine seamen, plus about 20 Navy men.

World War II ended during the Lane Victory’s first voyage carrying supplies to American troops in the Pacific. After the war, the ship was operated by American President Lines, carrying cargo around the world.

In 1948 the ship was mothballed, but was recalled to service in the Korean War.

The Lane Victory helped evacuate thousands of U.S. troops from the port of Hungnam while under Chinese and North Korean shelling and took them to relative safety farther south.

In 1953 the Lane Victory went back into mothballs, but in 1966 it was recalled yet again to haul war supplies to Vietnam. It was mothballed for the third time in 1973, after a total of 31 voyages. Assigned to the National Defense Reserve Fleet near San Francisco, it was one of many old ships kept on hand in case of another war.

Unlike many of the ships in the reserve fleet, however, the Lane Victory was kept in relatively good shape as a “show ship” for the fleet.

In 1988, Merchant Marine Veterans of World War II president Vernick and John O. Smith, vice president of the organization, persuaded Congress to give the group the ship for use as a maritime museum and memorial. In 1989 the Lane Victory was towed from San Francisco to the Port of Los Angeles--to the consternation of port authorities, who were reluctant to give the old ship valuable berthing space.

After considerable political maneuvering by the veterans, the Lane Victory was finally given temporary space at Berth 53 in San Pedro. Hundreds of Merchant Marine veterans and other volunteers spent hundreds of thousands of hours and almost $1 million fixing up the old ship. In 1991, the Lane Victory was named a National Historic Landmark. In addition to a museum commemorating the U.S. Merchant Marine, the ship, which is open to the public, also serves as headquarters for the Merchant Marine veterans group.

In 1992, after passing rigorous Coast Guard inspections, the Lane Victory went to sea again under its own power for the first time in almost two decades, taking about 700 passengers on a daylong cruise off Catalina Island. Since then it has made 10 such cruises.

Meanwhile, the Merchant Marine veterans started thinking about Normandy, where thousands of American veterans will convene on June 6 to commemorate the day in 1944 when American, British, Canadian and other Allied troops staged the largest amphibious landing in history. The Allied landing on the shores of occupied France, coupled with advances by forces of the then-Soviet Union on Germany’s eastern front, was the beginning of the end for Adolf Hitler and the Nazi German domination of Europe.

“We started talking about this trip about a year and a half ago,” said Vernick, 80, a North Hollywood resident. “We never had any doubt the ship could make the trip. This ship is in as good a shape as it was when it was built. The problem was raising the money.”

Taking a ship on an 18,000-mile, four-month voyage is an expensive proposition, especially when the ship burns a barrel of fuel--42 gallons--per mile. Going through the Panama Canal costs $16,000 each way for a ship the Lane Victory’s size; food for the crew costs about $100,000. All told, the group needed more than $1 million in fuel, equipment, supplies and cash to make the Normandy trip.

Shell, Arco, Exxon, Texaco and Mobil oil companies donated some fuel and cash, and the Stouffer company donated some frozen food. The Long Beach Naval Shipyard donated about 2,000 tons of concrete ballast needed to stabilize the ship. The Port of Los Angeles contributed $16,000 for Panama Canal transit fees. Members of the Merchant Marine Veterans of World War II and countless other individuals and smaller companies donated money and services.

But it wasn’t enough. As late as last week the Merchant Marine veterans weren’t sure if they’d be able to go. Then the Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation of Long Beach, a philanthropic organization founded by an important World War II munitions manufacturer, heard about the Lane Victory’s plight and stepped in with a $250,000 donation. That put the veterans over the top.

“It took some luck and some guts, and a little bluffing,” Smith, 83, of Seal Beach said of raising the money. “But we did it.”

Not everyone who has worked hard to make the Lane Victory ready could make the trip. There were more volunteers than there were spaces for them.

“The hard part is deciding who gets to go,” said Chief Engineer Peter Jacobelly, 72, a Harbor City resident who spent 46 years at sea as a merchant seaman before retiring 10 years ago. The ones chosen, he said, were “the guys who worked here longest and hardest.”

Some of the Merchant Marine veterans had health problems that kept them from going. Vernick, for example, who still suffers ill effects from the beriberi he developed while interned by the Japanese in the Philippines in World War II, plans to fly to England and rendezvous with the ship for the D-day ceremonies.

And not all the spouses of the old sailors are eager to see them go.

“My wife is mad as a cat,” says Capt. Tilghman, who retired as an oil tanker captain just two years ago. “But it’s always been like that. Every time I come home it’s a honeymoon, and every time I go back to sea it’s almost a divorce. But I wouldn’t miss this trip for anything.”

Some wives, on the other hand, won’t have to stand on the dock and wave goodby. Five women who put in many long hours helping fix up the Lane Victory are making the voyage.

“I’ve always bitched about the men having all the fun,” said Mary Stahl, 59, of San Pedro, whose husband, Ron Stahl, 67, participated in the D-day invasion as a young merchant seaman. “Now it’s my chance to have some too.”

“I want to experience what my husband did,” said Mary Anne Struyk, 68, from Downey, whose 71-year-old husband John, a former Merchant Marine sailor, also is making the voyage. “Besides, we worked our fannies off to get on this trip.”

Not everyone on the voyage is an old hand, either. The youngest member of the crew is Jim Watson, 32, a part-time hotel clerk from Redondo Beach. Although he never served in the Merchant Marine, he spent many hours helping to restore the Lane Victory, and subsequently got his seaman’s papers. He is assigned as a utility man in the galley.

“It’s an honor that they’re letting me go along,” Watson said. “And I think this is one of the best crews you could have. I mean, look at all the years of experience they have--and years, and years, and years. I really admire and respect these guys.”

So the men--and women--of the Lane Victory head to sea again, for what Vernick calls “their last hurrah.” In a pre-voyage interview, Tilghman probably summed up the feelings of most of the Lane Victory crew members when he quoted some lines from “The Ship That Never Sailed,” a poem he learned in high school.

“I’d rather feel the sting of strife, where storms are born and tempests roar/ Than settle down to an empty life, and rot in dry-dock on the shore.”

Lane Victory

Built: In 1945 at California Shipbuilding Corp. on Terminal Island.

Served: In World War II, Korean War and Vietnam War.

Type: General cargo.

Length: 455 feet.

Beam: 62 feet.

Power: Steam turbine.

Speed: 15 knots.

Crew: 55 to 60 sailors.

Home port: Berth 53 (temporary) San Pedro.