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Updated: May 20, 2025
Steve Dempsey was a conspicuously ingenious chief machinist's mate one of the most ingenious in the Naval Aviation Forces, Foreign Service, and he was ingenious not only with his hands, but with his tongue. That is why I cannot guarantee the veracity of what follows; I can but guarantee that he guaranteed it.
Not long ago a mother, a black mother, who lived in one of our Northern States, had heard it whispered around in her community for years that the Negro was lazy, shiftless, and would not work. So, when her only boy grew to sufficient size, at considerable expense and great self-sacrifice, she had her boy thoroughly taught the machinist's trade. A job was secured in a neighbouring shop.
So I light my pipe on the platform deck and go below. Great Jehosh! The first thing I run on to is a couple of torpedoes, about a mile long and two hundred yards thick, loaded up with gun-cotton or pistol-satin enough to blow the ocean up into the sky. And I haven't had my smoke yet!" "That's all right," called Hal, quietly, as the machinist's somewhat shaking voice died out.
But let a machinist's mate tell you in his own way of the night he was standing a fire-room watch this with all due respect to the chart-house bulkhead, the trolley line, the buckling decks, and the radio operator who was confined this night he was on watch in the fire-room. Was it rough? He thought so.
There had been a good deal of joking, both Spanish and English, among the passengers; I had found particularly cheering the richness of a certain machinist's trousers of bright golden corduroy; but as the shades of night began to embrown the scene our spirits fell; and at the cry of a lonesome bird, far off where the sunset had been, they followed the sun in its sudden drop.
In many cases the ramifications of the petty graft were exasperatingly intricate. For example: one Thomas Gryson, who was on the pay-rolls as a machinist's helper in the repair shops, demanded free transportation across the State for eight members of his "family." Questioned closely, he admitted that the "family" was his only by a figure of speech; that the relationship was entirely political.
The War of 1812 having given a sudden start to manufactures in this country, he went to work in a cotton factory for a while, where, for the first time in his life, he saw complicated machinery. Like a true Yankee as he was, he was strongly attracted by it, and proposed to learn the machinist's trade.
I had made the acquaintance and friendship of three old women in Bethnal Green who lived together, and collaborated in their work. They made trousers for export trade; one machined, one finished, and one pressed, brave old women all! They all worked in the machinist's room, for this saved gas and coal, and prevented loss of time. At night they separated, each going to her own room.
Williamson, having been left to sleep there alone through the night, had secured the entrance to the conning tower. A few sound thumps on the deck, however, roused that machinist, who, donning slippers and trousers, quickly ran up the spiral stairway, admitting them. "I'm mighty thankful to see you back, Captain," was the machinist's greeting.
Indeed, one of the foremost efficiency engineers in the country to-day began as an apprentice in a foundry, while another, fully as well known in efficiency work, began life in the United States navy as a machinist's mate. Automobile engineers, whose names, many of them, are household words, in particular have gone big in the profession and from very obscure beginnings.
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