USS Chincoteague, ‘Sailing Home’

Review by Bill Doughty––

They were dead in the water. Their seaplane-tender ship suffered major damage after a bomb with a delayed action fuse penetrated the super structure and deck. The bomb had detonated in the after engine room, killing Sailors there. Imperial Japanese bombers came back time after time. But “whistling death” Marine Corsairs came to the rescue, chasing the enemy away from the crippled AVP-24, saving the sailors and their ship. (Happy Birthday, United States Marine Corps!)

The harrowing tale is told in “USS Chincoteague: The Ship that Wouldn’t Sink” by Frank D. Murphy (Murphy Books, 1995).

Murphy wrote the short autobiography for his grandchildren, but it’s clear he also wrote it for his former shipmates and for his beloved ship.

Murphy in Boot Camp, 1942

Murphy grew up, one of eleven children –– in Sarles, North Dakota –– in another era: no indoor plumbing, shoeshines, fifty-cent haircuts, and hitchhiking. He traveled and worked as a teenager between North Dakota, Montana, and Washington State, wanting to escape an abusive father.

After attempting to enlist in the Marine Corps but being rejected due to a heart murmur, or “mummer” as he calls it, he joined the Navy and went to boot camp in 1942.

Murphy describes visiting Pearl Harbor aboard Chincoteague (AVP-24), crossing the Equator, and dropping Marines off at Espiritu before heading to the Santa Cruz Islands and Saboe Bay, Vanikoro Island. He and his shipmates arrived there the day before his 19th birthday.

For the young men who fought in the Pacific, like generations everywhere who go to war, the experience is tattooed on their souls.

Such was certainly the case for Frank Murphy.

“I can still remember those bombs coming out of these bomb bays. They looked like capsules when they first started out at about 30,000 feet. They got bigger and bigger as they got closer and closer. The screaming of those bombs scared me so bad that to this day I hate the sound of sirens and screaming fireworks.”

A squadron of PBYs prepare to take off from an island in the Pacific to attack Imperial Japan.

Murphy explains the important mission of a seaplane tender, to support PBY patrol bombers. The book opens with a moving description of how the “Chinc” rescued an airman from a Peleliu-based B-29 that had gone down in choppy shark-infested waters. A boatswain’s mate from Chincoteague dove into the sea and swam “with the speed of an Olympic swimmer” to rescue the exhausted airman.

The book, which I was lucky enough to find in a Salvation Army store, is signed by the author. Murphy dedicates his tribute to USS Chincoteague “to the 250 crewmen and officers of the USS Chincoteague and especially to those who lost their lives.” 

What Murphy’s thin book lacks in polish, it makes up with its first-person, eyewitness account and love for his shipmates and ship.

Chincoteague serves with USCG in 1964

Murphy includes a brief description of what happened to the Barnegat-class AVP-25 after the war, including stints in the U.S. Coast Guard, Vietnam (as RVNS Ly Thuong Kiet), and Philippines (where it was named BRP Andres Bonifacio). The ship was finally sold for scrap in 2003. Murphy died ten years later in early 2013, nearly ten years ago. His obituary reads, in part, “After six years in the Navy, Frank returned to North Dakota and worked for the Great Northern Railroad, later as a conductor for SP&S in Wishram, WA and the Burlington Northern Railroad in Vancouver, WA. He retired after 36 years. On Jan. 1, 1951, Frank met Carol Mortinson and they were happily married, for 61 years. They enjoyed traveling, especially to Hawaii.”

In “USS Chincoteague: The Ship that Wouldn’t Sink,” Murphy includes this poem written in 1942 by another Sailor who served in the war, Sherman Walgren, aboard USS Northhampton. Walgren’s verses must have made their rounds to other ships and WWII veterans, and Murphy undoubtedly identified with the sentiments in the poem.

'Sailing Home'

What is it the billowing waves impart,

and repeat and repeat with each dash

What is the pounding in my heart?

I'm sailing home, at last.

The salt spray stings on the naked cheek,

and the wind sings in the mast,

but it only sings because it knows,

I'm sailing home, at last.

Was it centuries since we sailed away

Out of the harbor there,

or was it only yesterday

I don't know, nor care.

For gone are the lonely nights and the days

mid tropical isles alone

and gone is the hunger countenanced there,

At last I'm sailing home.

And tho the sailor sails the seas

and in distant places roam

There is no "call" that's quite so sweet

as the call "I'm Sailing Home”

–– Sherman Walgren, May 1942, aboard USS Northampton

For a fuller description of the Chinc and its fate, I recommend the Last Stand Zombie Island website. Navy History and Heritage Command has great information, including a damage report of USS Chincoteague. And, of course, Wikipedia has a robust account of the ship’s history.