Tender Duty

About the Book

USS Daniels, a crowded destroyer tender is anchored in New Guinea when the main characters, Ensigns Renton and York, report for duty. Captain Ball, was a submarine officer. The executive officer, Commander Riley, was recalled for his second war. Lieutenant Commander Cass, the remarkably able Repair Officer, supervises artisans working three shifts every day -- assisted by civilian technicians -- repairing destroyers and other vessels.

Chief Quartermaster Thornhill, an Asiatic Fleet "retread", often spins lusty stories of the Asiatic Fleet and tells of a storm in 1933 when USS Rampo measured and reported a wave 112 feet high.

Liberty is rare. Morale is low. The captain delays the nightly movies while entertaining a nurse. Junior officers search for a still. Mail is censored. Christmas mail is torpedoed. Ensign York finds a floating body. New Year's Eve is observed by shooting at unidentified planes and wounding the gunnery officer; a destroyer drops an enemy plane.

Daniels convoys Army ships to the Philippines where Captain Ball and Chief Steward Tomales go ashore. The crew's anticipated liberty is denied. Chief Tomales tells of his families suffering under Japanese occupation. Daniels rescues downed fliers while sheparding a convoy to Subic Bay where damaged ships await repair. Supervised recreation parties are allowed on a deserted island. For a few hours Ens. Renton is the happy owner of a monkey.

Aboard a PT Boat, Ensigns York and Renton dart among 80 torpedoed Japanese ships and roam recently liberated Manila. A Japanese vessel, disguised as a hospital ship, but filled with able troops is brought into port, and the ensigns go board. The assistant gunnery officer plays cowboy with his .45.

An all-girl orchestra entertains Daniels and her nest of destroyers. Commander Riley orders Ensign York to escort the ladies and chaplain ashore and "shoot the chaplain if he starts any funny business."

About the Author

Neil G. Carey was born in Vermontville, Michigan in 1922, was raised in small towns and on a farm, and graduated from high school in 1939. Joining the US Navy in 1940, he was assigned to USS Colorado and promoted to turret captain first class in 1942. In 1943 Carey was ordered to ordnance school in Washington, D.C., then selected to be a gunnery instructor. In mid 1944 he was appointed ensign and returned to the Southwest Pacific. In 1940 Carey met Betty Lowman, dugout canoeist, journalist, and lecturer, after she was shipwrecked in the Atlantic. They married in 1941.

Between wars Carey served on an attack cargo ship, a gasoline tanker, and attended the University of California at Berkeley. During the Korean War he served on an attack aircraft carrier and as gunnery officer of a destroyer and was awarded a personal combat medal. He resigned from the Navy at the end of the Korean War, and retired with the rank of lieutenant commander.

In 1954, with Betty and their young sons, the family spent three months circumnavigating Vancouver Island, B.C. in a Grand Banks dory. During four months the following year they continued searching for a Pacific coast homesite by exploring the Inside Passage and circumnavigating British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands.

Carey has worked as a stone mason, attended Brooks Institute of Photography, and was a supervisor in the motion picture laboratory of the Pacific Missile Range, Point Mugu, CA until 1965 when he and Betty moved to the Queen Charlotte Islands. There, in a remote lagoon, they built a cabin overlooking the North Pacific and cruised year around, photographing and beachcombing. They were the subject of a few TV documentaries. Carey has written many articles and two books, A Guide to the Queen Charlotte Islands and Puffin Cove about their life in the islands. He edited the books No Bended Knee, the Battle for Guadalcanal (the Memoir of General M. B. Twinning, USMC, [Ret]); Fighting the Bolsheviks (the Russian War Memoir of Private First Class Donald E. Carey, US Army, 1918-1919), and Bijaboji, Betty Lowman (Carey's) two month vacation in 1937, rowing her dugout canoe from Anacortes, Washington to Ketchikan, Alaska.

During Carey's years in the Charlottes, he has worked with scientists, TV crews, loggers, contractors, commercial and sports fishermen, tourists, and explored the Charlottes by land, sea, and air.