‘Pipe Wrench’n, Snake Handl’n, Hydro Blast’n Turd Chasers’

Hull Technicians 'HTs'  or Turd Chasers as we so endearingly called them in my Navy days is not a term many civilians are familiar with…  but is what every 'swashbuckl’n  sea going sailor has come to know and love. For us 'surface' types it meant that sometime during our long trials at sea, we’d be in need of a pipe wrench’n... snake handl’n… or a good ol’ high pressure hydro blast’n… Turd Chaser!!!

Now I gotta tell ya, being a Turd Chaser ain’t the most glamorous job the Navy has to offer. And way back before I committed myself to the sin of Volunteering for Uncle Sam’s Canoe Club, I was offered the opportunity to be one of these fellas… but I gotta tell ya, when I heard the slanderous nickname of ‘Turd Chaser’ I knew exactly what I didn’t want to be!!!   

Being a Turd Chaser has got to be one of the dirtiest jobs on the ship… and when there was a clog in the sewage system… or ‘CHT’(Collecting, Holding, & Transfer)… who you gonna call???? The Turd Chasers!!!

Well on my first ship, ‘The Baglady,’ we had a couple a Turd Chasers that were typical of the breed… dirty ol’ armpit stink’n coveralls… built like King Kong… blood thinned with cheap whiskey… and the social graces of a foul mouthed whore in church!!!

There was a particular time we had a bit of a situation in the forward head (we only had two enlisted heads) as one of the urinals had gotten clogged… seems that between the officer cakes and the absorbent amount of calcium build up from salt water & whiskey piss… we had quite a conundrum on our hands.

 With piss water swash’n around to the tune of the ship toss’n & roll’n… the odor was becoming a bit overly ripe with a heavy ammonic scent that hung like a gaudamned curtain throughout the head and the cruise lounge…

It’s not as if these ol’ frigates didn’t have a unholy smell already brewing of diesel fuel… farts… dirty feet… lead based paint… never dull & Tabasco Sauce to make it sweet!!!!

As the two dirty shipmates stood and contemplated how the hell they were gonna clean this mess… one of em’ swabbed his finger down under the lip of the urinal and pulled out a big ol’ gob of calcified piss stained salt!!! The other fella smiles and says,

“ I’ll bet ya five bucks you won’t put that in your mouth and swallow it!”

Well, this story wouldn’t be worth tell’n if it wasn’t obvious what the son-of-a-bitch did!!!  And when he finished he told his shipmate he would’a done it for free just for the shock value…   

But hey, when you’ve spent as much time in this canoe club as I have then you tend to see things that should probably make your damn eyes bleed!!!

When I was on the Rainier we had a whole brand new ‘CHT’ system with huge tanks made to handle a large crew to hell and back… so we thought!!!

Now over the years in a normal peace time environment many a ship pulled into many a foreign port… and the questionable food that sailors put their mouths on (balut & monkey meat) and the local beer (San Miguel & Singha Gold) can put a hurt’n on your internal organs… namely the intestinal track!!! So I’ve seen the damage that can be done to render our shit chutes useless with mass cases of the shits combined with aggregate applications of government supplied sandpaper to wipe our asses!!!

But these CHT beasts were supposed to be up for the challenge!! Seems that now having women onboard ship presented a whole new problem… what the Turd Chaser referred to as mice or red trout!!! Apparently when it’s that time of the month and women have to use that feminine hygiene for that not so fresh feeling, some felt it was completely acceptable to flush them damn things down the shitter!!! 

Well there’s only so much those beastly gi-normous pipes and tanks could handle… So the Turd Chasers had to bring in the big guns!!! I’m talk’n about the hydro blast’n tools that could be used to perform a hysterectomy on the Statue of Liberty!!! 

But with so gaudamned many heads in different parts of the ship… sometimes it was real easy to miss a valve or two on a brand new commissioned hulk of steal that ain’t never been worked over yet…

So with most of the shitters forward of the ship secured… the Turd Chasers commenced a blowing away to try and unclog the mess!!  Unfortunately up in Ops berthing not all the valves were closed and one of the shitters literally blew apart... with shit water and fragments of porcelain splattered all over the gaudamned head… luckily no one was hurt but we had a whole damn shitter that had to be replaced and as they say… shit happens!!!

But over time I worked hard and played hard with the Turd Chasers… from port to port and sea to sea…  And as the faces change so does the technology that render us more useless in our daily lives as human beings… 

Years went by and I eventually made Chief… went to a new ship with a new CHT system called ‘VCHT’  I suppose the Good ol’ canoe club decided to trade in the old saltwater CHT commutaters for a more updated Vacuum version…

Gaudamn thing scared the hell outta me the first time I sat on one of them new fandangled shitters…  thought it was gonna suck me right in when it made that obnoxious sound of an elephants mating call as I flushed it down!!!   

I called the Turd Chasers to find what the hell was wrong with the damn shitter…

“Well that’s the way they’re suppose to sound Chief!”

I says,

“I got more time taken shits on these here shitters than you got in the Navy, so what the hell do you mean that’s the way they’re suppose to sound??”

Well, let’s just say I wasn’t about to be no gaudamned amateur McGuyver and try to figure it out myself… so from then on I just accepted it!!!

For there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years… the Turd Chasers were some of the hardest working handymen on the ship… working the darkest, dirtiest & smelliest jobs to keep that damn ship afloat… They worked the hardest, earned their pay twice over, and were damned underappreciated for it!!! 

So absent the inevitable ‘HT Punch’ and occasional floating turd down the passageway… This one’s for you ‘Turd Chaser’ and all the things you do!!!