The Passaic Affair

Washington, D.C. (Global Press)—Testimony concluded today in the United States Navy's court of inquiry into the loss of the U. S. S. Passaic off Montauk Point last January.

The court's findings, as announced by Vice-Admiral Rodney H. Limpert, are that the Passaic's commander, Lieutenant Commander Harold T. Short, evidenced "culpable neglect of his functions," and all indications are that Short will face a court-martial.

In his summation for the defense, Short's civilian counsel, Arno Fedders, took nearly an hour to recount the unfortunate details of the incident that resulted in the Passaic's capture by Giovanni Spoleti, a Toms River, New Jersey, junk dealer, now in the Federal penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

The Passaic was the self-propelled barge pressed into service from the reserve fleet to assist in the disposal of garbage gathered in the wake of last winter's strike by New York sanitation workers.

Fedders pointed out that the barge's "self-propulsion" was provided by a pair of outboard motors affixed to the stern, giving it a top speed of .04 knots in calm seas, thus making evasive action well-nigh impossible in any kind of weather.

Earlier testimony had established that the Passaic, her capacious holds fully loaded with refuse, was making for a dumping area roughly 12 miles off Montauk Point when she was intercepted by a Chris-Craft motor cruiser chartered by Spoleti, who was aboard at the time.

"I thought the guy was some kind of a nut," Lieutenant Commander Short told the court of inquiry yesterday. "I told him to talk to the Bureau of Ships or somebody if he wanted to buy my barge, but he wouldn't pay any attention; just kept yelling that it was the biggest floating junk heap he'd ever seen and he'd pay top prices."

It was just after this exchange, Short declared, that a powerful oceangoing tug appeared on his port quarter; and within minutes, he continued, his starboard outboard motor failed, cutting his top speed to .02 knots.

Short's counsel called the court's attention to the fact that the Passaic had been originally designed to be filled with concrete and sunk as part of the "Mulberry" artificial harbor on the coast of Normandy during World War Two, but was never put to use.

It was also developed that Short, as the vessel's commanding officer, was not permitted into the garbage holds, since he did not hold a sanitary-disposal clearance, as required by the U. S. Public Health Service. These areas of the barge were under the direction of Lieutenant (j. g.) Emerson Furlong, a 1966 Naval Academy graduate.

When it became evident that Spoleti intended to board his barge, by force, if necessary, Lieutenant Commander Short said his first thought was for the safety of his crew and cargo. Scuttling the barge was impossible, since all the plugs that required opening were rusted fast, as well as being under several hundred tons of garbage. Earlier, when the Passaic was undergoing a refit for sanitary-disposal duty, he had requested that the plugs be freed, but the commander of the Fifth Naval District, Rear Admiral Hugo Schmidt, had declined the request on grounds of economy. A further consideration, Lieutenant Commander Short told the court, was the danger of water pollution.

"If I had scuttled," he declared, "I would have sent hundreds of tons of garbage floating toward the beaches of Long Island. But I couldn't even scuttle."

Why, the court then asked, did he not radio for assistance?

This query brought out the fact that the only radio equipment aboard the Passaic was an eight-transistor radio belonging to Seaman Second Class Udell Smith, capable of receiving but unable to transmit signals. For normal signaling purposes, the Passaic carried a heliograph mounted abaft the deckhouse; and since the day of the incident under investigation had been foggy, the heliograph had been inoperable.

It was at this point in the proceedings that the court's law officer reminded Lieutenant Commander Short that he might be in violation of naval regulations and that his testimony might be used in the event of a court-martial. Lieutenant Commander Short then indicated his willingness to continue his testimony.

"The motor cruiser carrying Spoleti, as well as the tug, was very close aboard, and Spoleti was offering bribes to my crew if they'd jump overboard. A ship's captain is the father of his crew, and I couldn't go on permitting my men's morals to be corrupted. It was at this point that I decided to surrender."

With the surrender, Spoleti took possession of the Passaic, setting Short, Lieutenant Furlong and Seaman Second Class Smith (the barge's entire complement) adrift in a life raft. Through his lawyers, Spoleti told the court that he had intended to tow the Passaic back to Toms River and break it up but that halfway to its destination it sprang a leak and sank. The Navy conceded that it had discovered the Passaic's loss only when Seaman Second Class Smith failed to turn up to receive his pay check.

"That Commander Short and his crew were adrift for 130 days without food or water does not relieve the commanding officer of his responsibility to report the loss of his ship immediately to the chief of operations," Vice-Admiral Limpert declared at this juncture. "A note in a bottle would have sufficed in the circumstances." Advised that there was no bottle aboard the life raft, Vice-Admiral Limpert said that this gave strong indication of a lack of proper inspection and general carelessness of procedure. He also noted that despite the inclemency of the weather, Navy emergency rules require that an effort should have been made to transmit a distress signal by means of the heliograph or, failing that, semaphore flags.

To this, Lieutenant Commander Short replied that the Passaic's semaphore flags had been eaten by moths while the barge had been moth-balled, and that a request for replacement had been denied "on the grounds that the efficiency of the semaphore system had been downgraded by obsolescence and minimal short-range visibility."

Testifying under oath, Giovanni Spoleti told the five admirals composing the court that he had been the victim of "intolerable provocation."

"How long," he asked, "can a professional scrap dealer like myself put up with the sight of all that valuable junk doing nothing but haul garbage? I was doing the Navy a favor, just taking that floating wreck off their hands."

The question was then asked: Did Lieutenant Commander Short offer any armed resistance when Spoleti and his party began the boarding operation?

"They was throwing rotten tomatoes right up until the end, also grapefruit rinds and banana peels," Spoleti replied.

This exchange brought out the fact that the Passaic's sole armament was a BB gun belonging to Seaman Second Class Smith, who was in the habit of amusing himself by attempting to control the rat population in the bilge. Further questioning established that at the time of the incident under investigation, Smith had run out of pellets and his BB gun was, in consequence, functionally useless.

Throughout the proceedings, Lieutenant Commander Short's wife, Anne, sat dry-eyed, betraying her emotions only by an occasional gasp as the details of her husband's 130-day ordeal aboard the life raft—caught in a flat calm just three miles off Asbury Park, New Jersey—were described. Even when the court's findings were announced—findings that will probably mean the end of his naval career—Short retained his imperturbable calm. A "mustang," in naval parlance, Short won his commission from the ranks.

In view of his relative inexperience, Vice-Admiral Limpert said, Naval Academy graduate Furlong was fully cleared of any accusations of dereliction of duty.

The court concluded with a recommendation that Seaman Second Class Smith be given a dishonorable discharge for his failure to provide an adequate supply of BB pellets for his gun.