Andrew Jorgensen sailed to Cuba as a captain’s mess boy on a ship carrying cars and as a United States Navy yeoman during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
His story:
- Andrew Jorgensen
the shipping business in New York Harbor, so he put me on a ship to work. The ship sailed out of Brooklyn, New York and went to Baltimore. There we loaded cars on the ship, and took them to Havana, Cuba. We would drop the cars off at Havana, pick up sugar and bring it back to Baltimore. Every time we dropped the cars off, we would sail down the coast to a little town. We anchored and sugar would be brought out on barges. It would take a couple of days for the cargo to be loaded. (This was before containerized cargo.) The bags of sugar were lifted off the barges and put into the hold. In port, during loading and unloading I would get some time off. The first drink I ever had was when I was in Cuba. I was drinking Bacardi Rum made in Cuba. It used to be a Cuban rum. After blockaded the Bay of Pigs, Bacardi Rum came from Puerto Rico. I was 15 or 16 years old and I was drinking rum and Coke.
The ship had a crew of maybe 10 people. I didn’t even have to serve the rest of the crew, I just took care of the captain. I made sure he had his meals and a clean cabin. It was a good job. When you’re that young you’ve got muscles, you’ve got ambition and nothing seems to bother you. It was summer time out of high school.
Naval blockade
I volunteered for the Navy right out of high school. I had plenty of seaman’s experience since I worked on the Norwegian freighter. I served on the destroyer USS Mills. The ship was assigned to watch the Russian ships coming in and out of Havana Harbor because Kennedy put a naval blockade around Cuba. While on the bridge, I saw the Havana Hilton sign on top of the hotel being taken down. As I’m watching, and I said [to a nearby shipmate], “I was in that hotel and now they’re taking it (the sign) down. I can’t believe they’re taking it down.” I can’t believe I was there two or three years ago. That was a gay old time down in Havana. There was a very party atmosphere there. They changed the name to Havana Libra.
Aboard the Mills
While we were patrolling outside of Havana harbor, small cargo ships would go in and out of the harbor and they would have submarines hidden underneath them. The submarines were moving along under these Russian trawlers. We identified a Russian trawler as having a submarine underneath it and we were instructed to follow. After following for two weeks, we went out to the Azores and finally lost contact. The trawler was there, but the sub, we lost somewhere along the line. We told the trawler we were going to board. I was never so scared in my life. We got the word from command to tell them we were going to board. Communications were going back and forth. The captain is saying, “if they don’t agree to us boarding would you like us to throw one over the bow?” A shot fired over the bow is a movement of aggression. So I am listening to the captain and he is saying, “this is peacetime.” We did not fire on or board the trawler. Command told us to forget it and return to Cuba. The Russians were trying to sneak missiles into Cuba because they were only 90 miles away from Key West. That was the whole basis of us watching those ships over there, coming and going.
USS Mills mothballed
I finished my time in the U.S. Navy. Eight years after I left the navy I was working on tugboats in New York Harbor. The Hudson River used to have a mothball fleet (Navy ships in long term storage). There were hundreds of ships mothballed in the Hudson River, just south of the Bear Mountain Bridge. So here I am, going up the Hudson River on a tugboat one day and there is my ship, the USS Mills.
