Camp Kiowa was the Boy Scout camp, part of the Ten Mile River
Reservation in the Catskills. I went there first on July 26, 1956. The morning
we went to the ferry on Staten Island and
waited on the street across from the ferry for the buses which would take us.
I had never been on a bus of this type, only New York City buses.
The morning was a very foggy July morning and the harbor was
covered in fog and it was warm and very humid. It was July in New York. The bus was to pick us up at 6:30
AM and take us to the camp. My grandfather drove me to the bus stop. My father
was working.
As we waited, men ran across from the ferry and the Coast Guard
station up to my grandfather. He had just retired as Harbor Master in New York. They were
shouting that the Andrea Doria had just been hit and was sinking. This was my
first memory of a tragedy. The men all surrounded my grandfather as they
discussed the chances and how best to handle the recovery. He had done many of
these recoveries in the War after from the attacks by German subs on our ships. He
spoke to them coolly and discussed the options. His ship, the Vigilant, was on
the way out to help the rescues process. We all sat quiet as we heard that hundreds
of people were dying the in calm ocean, connected directly to the waters the
flowed in front of us. The sea was a powerfully ally and also a deadly enemy, in
certain times.
Then history of that day says:
“On the tenth floor of 80 Lafayette Street (my grandfathers
headquarters), Lieutenant (senior grade) Harold W. Parker, Jr., swung into
swift routine action. On a large chart of the coastal waters, Lieutenant Parker
spotted in an instant the location and availability of all Coast Guard vessels
in the Third Coast Guard District extending from Rhode
Island to Delaware.
The district maintained three ships on rescue duty, alternating weekly in three
conditions of readiness. In Status-A a ship has its full crew aboard, motors
warmed, and is ready to put to sea on notice. Status-B was standby duty,
followed by a number to indicate the hours it would take the crew to return to
the ship and be under way. Status-C was off duty and not available. A
telephone call to the Sandy Hook Lifeboat Station in New York Harbor and a
relay by voice radio put the 205-foot Coast Guard cutter Tamaroa, which
was on Status-A, under way three minutes after the collision message reached
Lieutenant Parker. The Owasco, on B-6 status in New
London, Connecticut, was alerted
via the East Moriches radio station.
Lieutenant Parker next dispatched the cutters Yakutat and Campbell
of the Coast Guard Cadet (training) squadron, anchored in Cape Cod Bay.”[1]
We could see the Coast Guard cutters assembling and going
out to the Andrea Doria. We never saw their return.
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