Reporting Aboard
A few days after Thanksgiving
in November 1962 Michelson was tied up starboard side to a pier at the
Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Northern Ireland. After a
long transatlantic flight in propeller airplanes via Gander,
Newfoundland and Glasgow, Scotland I arrived in the middle of the
night. An empty chair greeted me at the top of the gangway. Nobody
was in sight. Poking my head through the hatch, I found a few
of the merchant marine crew hanging out in the bosun's cabin. One of
them told me "just go down those stairs over there ... that's
where the Navy is". Thus began a most memorable two year
cruise on a survey ship.
