Wartime saga recalls life aboard destroyer

200,000 MILES ABOARD THE DESTROYER COTTON by C. Snelling Robinson, Kent State University Press, 328 pages, hardcover, $35.

When he set out from Penobscot Bay 57 years ago, C. Snelling Robinson had no idea that as a 20-year-old junior officer aboard the destroyer Cotton he would participate in five of the major Pacific campaigns of World War II.

In this book, Snell Robinson carries us through the commissioning of the Fletcher-class destroyer through Pacific battles to service as part of the Occupation Force in Tokyo Bay three years later.

How did he manage to recount the details of this three-year service at sea? Besides his own recollections and 55 letters he had written his parents, he reviewed the deck logs and the war diaries of the ship. The deck logs contain a summary of each watch of each day and many of them were entries he made as junior officer of the watch, then as officer of the deck, and finally as navigator. Robinson obtained photocopies of these from Nov. 1, 1943, to Aug. 31, 1945.

The next step was to obtain microfilm copies of the war diaries of the commanders of his squadron – Destroyer Squadron 50 – from Jan. 1, 1944, through Dec. 6, 1945, and these provided an overview of each wartime action as well as a perspective for the sea battles.

The result is an absorbing narrative that carries us from the vessel’s first outing – “Shakedown Cruise” – from Brooklyn, N.Y., through joining the Pacific Fleet and its participation in the amphibious assaults at Tarawa, Saipan and Iwo Jima, and massive fleet engagements in the Philippine Sea and Leyte Gulf.

Part of the shakedown cruise included live shore bombardment gunnery exercises for the 5-inch main battery conducted against targets on Seal Island, one of the outermost islands of Penobscot Bay in Maine.

Though stationed in Maine for about three weeks at that time, Robinson said it was all business and he didn’t have an opportunity to visit friends or family. Robinson was born in Carroll Plantation on the border of Penobscot and Washington counties and lived there until his family moved out of state when he was 4 or 5. He summered at his grandparents’ cottage on the bay side of Northport every year while growing up and visited Maine regularly until about three years ago when he sold the cottage he had inherited. His brother Ralph Lindsey Flanders Robinson, who founded the Robinson Ballet in Bangor, still lives in Northport.

Now 78, the author lives in Asheville, N.C.

Robinson’s book also includes low-key descriptions of the ship’s participation in support of the Gilbert and Marshall Islands actions.

What distinguishes these descriptions is the view from the small ship – small when compared to the battleships and carriers which were the main combatants in the Pacific island-hopping strategy. Histories and many memoirs recount these battles with great and absorbing detail as seen from the deck of the battleships or carriers. This narrative puts in context the support role of these 376-foot-long destroyers, which were built to provide screens and protection for the fast carrier task groups in the Pacific.

Robinson describes attacks by Japanese kamikaze planes, night raids by bombers, midget subs, submarine contacts, airplane rescues and the difficulties of firing at fast-moving targets. He also describes many of the routine actions aboard ship in an engrossing way and he is equally adept at picturing for readers the conditions the ship sailed under:

“At 30 knots a destroyer becomes a different entity from a vessel passing through the water at its design hull speed or less. Hull speed for the Cotton was about twenty-two knots. At thirty knots, the ship would try to ride over its

bow wave; the bow rose several feet, and the stern dug deep in the water. To a person standing near the stern at this speed, the surface of the ocean would be higher than eye level. In addition to the unusual fore-and-aft attitude, the ship would acquire a rigidity with respect to its rolling movement. … What motion remained would be pitch, the rise and fall of the bow … making it necessary to hold on tightly to avoid being tossed about like a rubber ball.”

The author describes gunnery action and the intricacies of fire support for amphibious landings and provides some insights, from a distance, on the thinking of fleet commanders. There is a frank story about a pharmacist’s mate with a penchant for his fellow crewmen and how he was shipped off for a general court-martial – all without mentioning the word, “homosexual.”

Perhaps his most vivid narrative is “The Great Pacific Typhoon” in December 1944. Robinson takes us through it, almost moment by moment.

“The Cotten’s worst moments came when seas caught up from behind, lifting the stern seventy feet higher than the bow and giving the impression that we were headed right for the ocean’s floor.”

In concluding the memoir, Robinson notes that “nothing could possibly ever diminish the monumental grandeur that had been the hallmark of the drive across the Central Pacific.”

The book includes appendices giving the specifications of the vessel, a list of awards, notes concerning the maps included, and a glossary.