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Transcript for The Voyage of the Lee, segment 06 of 21
In command of the Lee is Captain Alan McClenaghan, a veteran of voyages like this. The young Captain, who regularly exercises by jogging around the cramped deck and who keeps a rubber duck close to the helm for good luck, has but one misgiving about this voyage, that his wife is expecting and that the time of arrival is expected while the vessel is far out to sea somewhere off the Hawaiian Islands.
Well, hopefully I'll be home if I can arrange to get off and fly down for it. It's touch and go right now. This will be the - of my - this'll be the fifth child. I've only been home for one other one. The rest of 'em I've always missed so it'll be something I'm going to try to do, but there's no guarantees. We have a very close-knit crew. We're all friends. This is the advantage of going to sea on small ships. My background has been basically large ships up to about six years ago, and I found that I really like the small, the smaller community that we have, basically first name basis. I'm not normally called Captain. It's always as my first name, Al or Alan.
Life onboard the ship also revolves around another veteran mariner, John Williams, in command of the Lee's galley. It is here and in the adjoining mess hall that those onboard gather to relax or discuss the day's events under the watchful eyes of the man for whom the ship is named, a U. S. naval Officer from an earlier century who pioneered in scientific endeavors.
I cook for a full year. I'll cook out and put out better than twelve hundred meals. I think I try a little harder than a lot of cooks that I've worked with. You run into a lot of cooks that don't give a damn, you know, about what they're putting out. I'm not only a cook. I get consulted about, you know, other things besides cooking, as what to do for seasickness and other things. The hub of the ship is usually the mess decks and galley, and the cook gets usually in all the rumors and what's going on aboard ship because that's where everything's happening, and I try to get involved in a lot of that.