My Crime Fiction: 'Site One: The Joker'

The short story below originally appeared in American Crime Magazine.

Site One: The Joker

By Paul Davis

As I write this in my comfortable book-lined basement office, I’m sitting at my desk in front of my computer and enjoying a good cup of coffee and a fine cigar. 

I’ve never smoked cigarettes, as I was an amateur boxer in my youth, and we were told that smoking cigarettes would rob us of our valuable second wind. (Although some professional boxers have been known to smoke crack). 

But I’ve enjoyed cigars for many years, going back to my early 20s. 

I recall how I often enjoyed smoking a cigar out on the deck of the USS Saugus (YTB-780) back in 1975 when I was a young sailor. The Saugus, a 100-foot-long Navy harbor tugboat, was assigned to the U.S. Navy’s "Site One" nuclear submarine base at Holy Loch, Scotland. 

Having previously served on the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk during the Vietnam War, I had to adjust from serving on one of the world’s largest warships to one of the Navy's smallest boats. 

Although I was not thrilled with Scotland’s awful winter weather, especially when the tugboat was ordered out into the Irish Sea to rendezvous with submarines and we encountered 50-foot waves and Gale Force 10 winds, I generally liked serving on a small boat with a small crew with no officers. 

And the people of Scotland were friendly and kind to me and the many other American sailors who were stationed there during the Cold War.

I spent time in Dunoon, which was the town nearest to the base, and I had a flat in Glasgow. I also visited Edinburgh quite often, ventured north to visit Inverness and Loch Ness, and I visited a good number of other Scottish cities, towns and offshore islands during my time there. I also visited London.

The Scottish winters are cold and rainy, but Scotland is quite beautiful in the summer. As a student of history, and being Scot Welsh on my father's side, I enjoyed visiting the many historical sites in Scotland. I also enjoyed visiting the Scottish pubs.

I traveled all over Scotland, the United Kingdom and Europe during those two years on the tugboat. 

During the Cold War the U.S. Navy base at Holy Loch was the headquarters of Submarine Squadron 14 (COMSUBRON 14). The base, called "Site One," consisted of the USS Canopus, a 644-foot-long ship called a submarine tender, a floating dry dock that could accommodate submarines, and a large barge with a super crane. All were anchored in the middle of the loch.

Submarines ventured to Site One from the sea before and after their patrols and tied up to the anchored submarine tender. The submarines received supplies, maintenance and repairs at the floating Navy base.

The base also had several small boats that tied up to the barge. Two of the boats were 100-foot harbor tugboats, which were the workhorses of the bustling floating naval base. 

The USS Saugus and the USS Natick (YTB 760) towed ships, barges, submarines and other craft in, out and around the site, as well as put out fires and broke up oil slicks.

The tugboats were often sent to sea to rendezvous with submarines for medivacs, classified missions and transfers of the COMSUBRON 14 Commodore and his staff. The tugboats also went to sea to perform in exercises with the submerged submarines and then retrieved the torpedoes used in the exercises from the sea.

Working on the tugboat was hard, physical and dangerous, but we were proud of our service. Working with the rugged and independent crew on the tugboat felt like I was serving in McHale's Navy, one of my favorite TV shows from my youth. 

I worked on deck, stood helm watches while at sea, stood security watches in port, and during my second year onboard I was the boat's supply petty officer.     

Stationed on the USS Natick, the other assigned tugboat to Holy Loch, was a big and burly West Virginia hillbilly named Joe Marks. He was quite a character, an irrepressible joker, and we enjoyed cutting each other up. It became something of a rivalry. He took my sarcastic asides in good humor, and he sometimes gave as good as he got.

In summer, Marks liked to go around the boats shirtless and shoeless. I called him Li'l Abner after the barefoot hillbilly in Al Capp's cartoons.

One evening while I had the watch on the Saugus and Marks had the watch on the Natick, Marks came out on deck as I did for "Evening Colors," the tradition of lowering the Flag on ships. Moored to the large floating barge, we looked up as a team appeared on the tender's fantail to lower the ship's flag, as we were to follow suit. 

Marks, that crazy fool, was shirtless and barefoot as he lowered the flag on the Natick. I laughed and then I called up to the team on the tender told them to look at the sailor as he lowered the flag. 

The team looked down and could not believe that the tugboat sailor was half naked. 

"Fuck you, Davis," Marks said. "I'll get you for this."    

The senior petty officer on the tender reported the incident to the Natick chief, and the chief chewed out Marks when he first came aboard in the morning. 

Later that morning Marks tried to rile the Saugus' chief and get back at me.

Most of the crew were afraid of Joseph Coolidge, the Saugus’ chief petty officer, an odd, humorless man who rarely spoke, much like another Coolidge, the 30th president known as “Silent Cal.” 

As the story goes, President Coolidge was once confronted by someone who told him that he bet a friend that he could get the quiet chief executive to say three words.

"You lose," President Coolidge reportedly replied.

Although Chief Coolidge said little, when angered the tugboat chief would bark orders with a powerful voice that made most errant sailors shake. 

Chief Coolidge had a stone, deadpan face, and he reminded me of the silent film comic Buster Keaton. I called him “Chief Cool,” based on his name and his aloof and taciturn manner, and the nickname caught on with the rest of the tugboat sailors. 

Marks saw the chief sitting with us and drinking coffee in the galley that morning. 

“Morning, Chief Cool. How are ya?” 

The guys in the galley were shocked that Marks would address the feared chief as “Chief Cool.” 

The chief ignored him. 

“Did you know that Davis here started everyone calling you Chief Cool?" 

There was dead silence in the galley. Then, quite unexpectedly, the chief looked at me and smiled. 

I don't think anyone had ever seen him smile before. He got up and left the galley without saying a word. 

Everyone laughed. Apparently, the chief thought the nickname was complimentary. 

Marks was taken aback, but he still tried to get the better of me. 

The weather that day was nice for a change as the Saugus and Natick were moored to the floating barge, and I took a break from my supply petty officer duties and stepped out on the deck and lit a cigar. 

Some of the crew were on the Saugus' fantail smoking cigarettes. Marks came out and saw me with my cigar and he laughed and pointed at me. 

“Don’t you feel old smoking that ci-gar?” 

“No,” I replied. “I feel...prosperous.” 

This got a laugh from a couple of guys, and as Marks probably didn’t know what prosperous meant, he had to come back with a good zinger. 

“It looks like you’re smoking a big ole dick,” he said with a laugh. 

I took a long draw on the cigar and replied, “I would prefer to think of it as a woman’s elongated nipple.” 

I got the bigger laugh.

 

Although Marks was a happy-go-lucky guy, and he got along well with his deck supervisor, he turned downright mean and nasty when it came to Billy Joe Johnson.

Johnson, a short and stocky man in his late 30’s from Georgia, was a First-Class Engineman and Marks’ section leader. Like the USS Saugus, the Natick had three sections. Every third day Johnson’s section stayed aboard the tugboat overnight and the section’s crew members held security watches throughout the night and were assigned to cleaning the tug's various spaces. Johnson’s section and the other two sections rotated staying aboard the tugboat every third weekend.

Marks, the joker, resented taking orders from Johnson, a serious and humorless career sailor, and Marks often clashed with him. On one weekend midnight watch, Johnson woke up and berated Marks’ poor performance and ordered him to clean the galley again. 

Marks called Johnson a “fuckin’ lifer,” and the two argued over the cleanliness of the galley’s tile deck. Johnson told Marks to swab the deck again or he would put him on report. 

Marks responded by threatening Johnson. He told the senior enginemen that he would “whoop his country ass if he ever saw him on the beach.” 

Johnson walked away from the gallery and returned to his rack. Marks grumbled, took a mop and swabbed the deck again. 

 

The Natick, like the Saugus, had two small cabins, one on the starboard side and the other on the port side. The starboard cabin was occupied by the tug’s chief, and the port cabin was occupied by the next senior petty officer, Enginemen First-Class Bobby Joe Johnson.

Other than the times the tug went overnight on a mission, the cabins were used as offices, as the chief and Johnson were married and had homes in the Navy Housing area.  

Marks was not the only sailor aboard the Natick that hated the petty officer. Fireman Mark Towers, a young, skinny sailor with a thin dark mustache from Norfolk, also hated Johnson. Johnson was his supervisor, and Johnson rode the lazy and larcenous fireman hard.

Towers, a petty thief, lingered aboard the Natick after the crew left the boat for the evening, leaving only the duty section aboard. Johnson left the tugboat and boarded the boat that left the base and cruised across the loch to the Scottish pier. He headed towards the EM (Enlisted Men’s) Club with the Natick’s Second-Class Electrician, where the two sailors had hamburgers and cold American beer.

The duty section’s sailors were eating dinner in the galley, so Towers snuck down the passageway to Johnson’s cabin. He broke the lock on the cabin door and stepped into the cabin. Johnson, a pipe smoker, had a dozen pipes hung on a rack on his small desk. Towers placed the rack and pipes into a sack. He searched the cabin and found a watch and $125 dollars in cash, which he placed in the sack with the pipes. He placed the sack over his back like a crooked Santa Claus and left the tugboat.

Once on the “beach,” as the sailors called the Scottish shore, Towers took a taxi to a Dunoon pub where he sold the pipes to a local thief that he often did business with.

The following day at muster Johnson reported the theft to the Natick’s chief and he pointed a finger, figuratively and literally, at Marks. Marks was insulted and infuriated, and he denied stealing from Johnson.  The chief separated the two and said he would look into the theft.     

Two nights later, Marks stood in the parking lot of the EM (Enlisted Men’s) Club and waited for Johnson to come out of the club. When Johnson came out and walked toward his car, Marks came out of the shadows and confronted Johnson, his right hand raised with a thick, six-inch branch that he had found under a tree. 

“Let’s get it on, you lifer son of a bitch,” Marks said.

Johnson stood his ground silently and pulled his work knife from his pocket. Marks saw the knife, and in a panic, he dropped the branch, turned and ran. 

 

Marks told me the story the following day. He said that he saw Johnson earlier at morning muster and the enginemen said nothing about the incident and Johnson apparently did not put Marks on report.     

“You’re lucky he didn’t,” I said. “You could have could have been charged with threating a petty officer with a deadly weapon. You could have been put in the brig or even prison. Maybe you should cut Johnson a little slack.”    

“Yeah, I guess the lifer ain’t all bad,” Marks said with a laugh. 

Some months later Towers was caught red-handed rifling through a shipmate’s locker, having cut off the combination’s lock with the tugboat’s bolt cutter.

The owner of the locker, a tough deck hand named Al Mason, discovered Towers pocketing some of his money in front of the locker.

Mason punched Towers in the back of his head and Towers’ forehead hit the ledge of the locker’s top shelf and he collapsed to the deck.

The chief heard the noise below in the crew’s quarters and he and Johnson ran down the steps and saw Mason kicking Towers as he cowered on the deck. The chief and Johnson pulled Mason away and Towers was able to get to his feet.

The chief and Johnson marched Towers up to the tender’s brig where he confessed freely to stealing various valuables from the crew, including Johnson’s pipes and cash.

With Towers placed under arrest and placed in the ship’s brig, the chief and Johnson returned to the Natick. Johnson was pleased to see Marks at the galley’s table. He told Marks that he was sorry that he accused him of stealing his valuables.

“Sure,” Marks the joker replied with a laugh. “Does this mean y’all get off my case?”

“No,” Johnson said.       

© 2025 Paul Davis 

Note: You can read my other crime fiction stories via the link below:

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction Stories