This is one of my favorite sea stories. It is about an event I witnessed early in my Navy career, one that made clear to me the limits of authority. Tommy Lee Crabtree, the central figure in this story is as true to life as I can make him. However, I have changed our division officer’s name so as to spare him any embarrassment beyond that which he suffered at the time of the event. From time to time, I have told this story to illustrate the difficulties inherent in supervising knowledge workers – people who work with their heads instead of their hands. FORTUNE magazine once published a shorter version of this Sea Story in the form of a letter to the editor I wrote to Walter Kiechel, then an editor at FORTUNE.
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The year was 1957. The ship was the USS Gregory (DD-802), an old WW II Fletcher-class, 2100-ton destroyer. We were in Subic Bay in the Philippines, taking a break from our assignment of patrolling the Formosa Straits.
Tommy Lee Crabtree, a Gunner’s Mate second class (GM2), was working on Mount 53, one of the ship’s five, five-inch gun mounts, trying to repair an as yet unidentified malfunction. I was new on board and I was working on Tommy Lee, trying to persuade him to invite me to join the armory coffee mess. The armory coffee mess was, in my mind, the most prestigious coffee mess on board the Gregory and I badly wanted an invitation to join. The invitation had to come from Tommy Lee; he was the Gunner’s Mate in charge of the armory. Short-term, my hopes weren’t high but I was prepared to hang in there for the long haul.
Tommy Lee and I were taking a break, hunkered down on our haunches next to the gun mount, sipping coffee and chatting in a way calculated to help him take my measure, when we spotted our division officer approaching.
Our division officer was a Lieutenant Junior Grade (Ltjg) whose last name was Wilson. A bit of a martinet, he had been nicknamed “Whip,” an appellation borrowed from a star of western movies of the 1940s.
“What are you two doing?” he demanded.
“Drinkin’ coffee and shootin’ the breeze,” replied Tommy Lee.
“What are you doing here?” Whip asked of me.
As a Fire Control Technician (FT), my work required close coordination with the Gunners Mates so I had a convenient and true cover story. Standing up, I said, “I came down to find out when Tommy Lee thinks we’ll be able to include the gun mount in the daily workouts and if he thinks we’ll have to realign it with the rest of the gun battery.”
“Well,” demanded Mr. Wilson, turning to Tommy Lee who was still squatting, “when will it be fixed?”
“I dunno. I’m workin’ on it. Probably some time today.”
“That's not good enough! Get off your ass and get back to work! I want that gun mount back in working order A.S.A.P.!”
Tommy Lee looked up at Mr. Wilson, studying him much the way he might contemplate a cockroach he was thinking about crushing. Then, rising slowly to his feet, Tommy Lee grinned wickedly and asked, “Are you ordering me to fix this here gun mount, Mr. Wilson?”
“Yes, I am,” snapped Mr. Wilson.
Shifting his coffee cup to his left hand, Tommy Lee saluted smartly, and said, “Aye aye, sir. What would you like me to do first?”
The reactions played across Mr. Wilson's face like moving scenery: first puzzlement, then comprehension, followed in quick order by surprise, shock, humiliation and, finally, red-faced, apoplectic anger.
“Whip” Wilson had been heisted on his own authoritarian petard by a master of the game. Tommy Lee had done what all those who must submit to authority have been doing for thousands of years, he submitted. He went passive. He asked Mr. Wilson to tell him what to do and he would do it. The problem for Mr. Wilson was that he couldn’t issue the necessary orders. Tommy Lee knew that all along. “Whip” Wilson was just now finding that out.
Furious, Mr. Wilson glared at Tommy Lee, then turned and stomped off without a word.
Tommy Lee watched him go, then turned to me, doubtless feeling expansive as a result of besting Wilson, and said, “Nick, you can hang your cup in the mess when you're finished.”
Witness to Tommy Lee's triumph, the potential value of my testimony at future gatherings outside the armory had earned me the invitation I sought. I was in.
Epilogue
I learned recently that Tommy Lee passed away several years ago – in the Philippines, I am told. He will be missed but not, I suspect, by Ltjg “Whip” Wilson.
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