Crossing the Line

Last week, we crossed over the equator, which means three things. Number one, we’re heading back north to home. Number two, the warm weather is back. But finally, it means that we all had to become shellbacks. What is a shellback? Read on… I’ll explain.
The tradition of “crossing the line” goes back so far that nobody really knows where or when it began. In the old days, it was a test for sailors to determine if new shipmates were fit for duty. They’d be put through a serious of rigorous “tests” where they were beat and bloodied, and if they passed, they were fair shipmates. As time progressed, it became more elaborate and more dangerous. In the last 20 years or so, the danger has dropped off significantly due to the Navy’s strict safety/anti-hazing stances, but we still do it in some form or another.
The way the legend goes is this: King Neptune, ruler of the deep, comes on our ship to find that there are slimy Polywogs (those who have not crossed the line) onboard. King Neptune declares that this is unacceptable and that they all must be converted into trusty Shellbacks. He calls on his Shellback disciples onboard to carry out the initiation. The Polywogs are charged with various crimes and subpeoned before King Neptune’s court (with Davy Jones as his right hand man) and asked to plead guilty to the crimes to purge themselves of their sins.
The day before this initiation, it’s tradition for the Polywogs to revolt. We did so in grand fashion, but paid the price the next day. The night before, each division of Polywogs was to prepare a talent show for the Shellbacks. Stupidly, they all gathered in one spot, leaving the rest of the ship open to looting and pillaging. Myself and the rest of the junior officers broke into the Captain’s stateroom and stole his door. Later on in the evening, we stole the ship’s bell, which is instrumental in everyday use both for practical purposes (ringing bells every half hour for the time) and tradition. They found the door that night, but didn’t find the bell until the next day when I told them where it was. For the ceremony, I was the first one through the ceremony and in the last group to finish.
The next morning, we were woken up at 5 a.m. and made to crawl around before being taken to breakfast, where they basically threw gross food at you, covered you in syrup and raw eggs, and then sprayed you with a fire hose. We were forced to work out, climb through buckets of “slime” water (that was colored green) and given hair styles from the “royal barber” who put mayonnaise, coffee grinds, and hot sauce in our hair. All the while, we were being sprayed with fire hoses on a consistent basis. It lasted until about 11 a.m.
All in all, it was a miserable experience that my body is still recovering from, but I am no longer a slimy wog… Next time, I will be the one spraying people with hoses and cracking eggs on their heads. We’ll be steaming around off the coast of Ecuador for the next week or so before getting some gas and heading up to Panama for the start of our last multi-national exercise of the deployment. But more on that later…