U.S.S. Des Moines
CA-134
| THE SHIP lies at anchor in the harbor. Her colossal gray hull rises from the water into a staggered superstructural edifice resembling a series of ancient and ponderous monoliths. Her guns angled toward the sky, gleam in the sunlight. From her slim high stack streams a light film of smoke...She is long and sleek and built for fighting and the sea. She has fine proud lines enhanced by the wizard genius of radars, guns, fire control equipment. Her bridge with its slit of glass is like the visor of some medieval helmet. Apropo, for she is a warrior...Her crew scrambles about the deck preparing to get underway. With a rending grind and clank through the hawse pipes, fathoms of anchor chain are hauled to the windlass. Faces peer from the foc'sle to catch first glimpse of anchor tearing out of mud and silt and rising from the depths. The Bos’un raises his hand in signal more, salute than signal actually--and a shrilly certain trumpet blast dominates the scene, echoing out across harbor and hill... anchor is up ...anchor's away! The jack tumbles down to deck. The ensign plummets from its flagstaff and then is hoisted high to the leak where it unfurls smartly in stack gas and breeze, a vivid cloth of red and white and blue.... | Now the ship swings around with infinitely slow gracefulness while her turbines gather wind and fire and drive. Her screws turn, length and breath of ship feels their agitated pound. The ship seems to hesitate as if pondering some pre-ordained animal instinct which demands careful appraisal. And then she becomes truly underway, gaining speed and fierce momentum... A thin-plumed fanspray leaps from bow at water's edge. From either side of her stern a rivelet spreads into a wake, widening, bright with sunflecked white water. She releases a pitch and buck deep within her innards, for all her force of thunder will no longer be denied...Out of the confines of harbor and seaward, with her turbines delivering their giants' thrust into the hands of seastyled men who shape their destinies from wind and wave. Now her shuddering is eager vibration, a tempo seafarers know and love. She leaves the shoreline haughtily and passes with speed of dragons, pointing horizon ward... The sea is her habitat and purpose. This is why she was welded and fitted with men and machinery deep in her brooding, ironclad soul... And so, describing a great listing turn, the hiss of cleavage of water loud to the ear, she cuts her arc, creating that broad pavement which is wake. Showing her stern, one sees above that boiling churn and fume and spill of water, the brazen letters which form her christened title: DES MOINES |
This site is dedicated to the men who served on the Daisy Mae from February 1958 to 1961. What follows are pictures and text taken from the cruise book "Le Bateau" along with an article taken from the July 1959 Readers Digest about the Mother of the Sixth Fleet. The cruise book only covers the first 6 months the Daisy Mae was in the Med. in 1958 (the original length of the tour of duty)
