Ships of Mercy

42 Ships of Mercy
row. Their crops had been destroyed one year by the government’s troops
and the next year by the insurgent troops. We decided to help.
In the port of Los Angeles, thousands of visitors, including the
media, toured the Mercy Ship. We announced our relief effort plans, and
soon the donations poured in. That first cargo consisted of twenty tons
of cornmeal, one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of seeds for crops,
twenty-three thousand new shirts, enough steel roofing for 750 homes,
hand tools and farm equipment, generators, a portable sawmill, medical
supplies, and a mobile dental facility. Local longshoremen donated their
services, volunteering to load cargo for two solid days, free of all charges.
With the total value of seeds and high-quality gifts-in-kind, the value of
our cargo for our first official relief voyage was equivalent to a million
dollars—the exact purchase amount of the ship itself.
As soon as we were loaded, we headed for the Guatemalan port of
Champerico. Because the ship was too big for the dock, we anchored
offshore and were carried ashore literally like big, breathing bunches of
bananas. The sea village was an old banana loading port. In fact, the crane
used to haul us to the dock was actually steam-driven.
The banana barges were brought out to the ship and tied alongside.
Our crew had to ease into a cargo net “sling” with thick plywood in the
bottom and stand squashed together, while a crane lowered this netted
cargo of humans over the side of the ship and into the barge, where everyone
wiggled out of the net to be motored ashore. Then everyone had to
step back into the nets to be lifted up to the pier by the steam-engine
crane. Adding into the equation the rolling four-foot swells, we knew we
were in for an adventure before we even set foot on land. As you might
imagine, it took us quite a while to unload.
After our experience in Guatemala, we responded to calls for help
in the South Pacific, where deadly cyclones that made worldwide news
had almost decimated Fiji and Tonga. We planned to sail to New Zealand
to pick up a load of donated supplies waiting for us, with hopes that our
presence could help generate more.
We didn’t have to wait long. Shortly after arriving in New Zealand,
I received a call from the country’s governor general, Sir David Beatty:
“New Zealand would like to respond to this devastation in Fiji and Tonga;
I would like to use my office to start Operation Good Samaritan. We will
fill up your ship with building lumber from our mills and with corrugated