RECOLLECTION

John V. Lindsay 1988

DECOMMISSIONING AND EPILOGUE

During my service in the Swanson I once made the flippant remark that “I’m the last man off this tub” and by golly I was, or close to it. I know that by the time I left, being a full Lieutenant. I was Executive Officer and may have even been the Captain. We were heading up the river in Charleston to be moth-balled. The main thing I remember was spending hours over my typewriter making an inventory of every piece of gunnery material on board, down to every .45 bullet. Everything had to be inventoried and listed. What happened to the lists, I’ll never know. They were turned over to the shore people and relevant parts of it stuffed aboard for some future person to find is case the ship was ever commissioned again. And the way I kept myself busy in Charleston when I was not aboard ship typing up inventories was by riding horseback with the Ravanel family whom I found in the yellow pages when I found out where I could find a ride. Fox-hunting at night was quite an experience with lots of stirrup cups en route.

As I write this in my office I’m looking at some of my proudest possessions; one is a photograph of the Swanson underway with Atlantic colors; the second is me in a gunnery control with Captain Robertson and Chief Boatswain’s Mate Miller alongside. The Captain is pointing to the emblazoned records of our guns.

The other item is the christening plaque of the USS Swanson, which was presented to me, much to my surprise, by the Chief of Naval Operations at a breakfast meeting in his office. I was in office then as Mayor of New York and could not understand why he was being so kind and I was being fed such a breakfast (prior to giving testimony in the U.S. Senate) until two Seamen walked in bearing our christening plaque with another plaque mounted underneath, made out to me. The only thing I could say to Admiral Moorer was “My God, you’re scrapped my ship!” Whereupon Admiral Moorer said, “We didn’t do a thing like that, did we?” End of conversation.