FOREWORD
The following foreword has been provided by the recently summoned USS Triton
(SSRN-586) who, in 1960 as part of Operation Sandblast, circumnavigated the entire Earth submerged in 61 days, retracing the route of the original Magellan Expedition that Juan Sebastian Elcano and the remaining crew of the Victoria eventually completed.
I have the distinction of being the only non-Soviet nuclear submarine with two reactors, designed to provide me with a grand total of 34,000 horsepower, though that could have been pushed to 45,000 and, speculated by my first commanding officer, even to 60,000, though that is not related.
When I was first commissioned, what would eventually be Operation: SANDBLAST would be borne from two colliding events: My captain Edward L. Beach, wishing to make something special of me due to my 'uniqueness', and the upcoming May 1960 Four Powers Paris Summit, in which President Dwight D. Eisenhower was to meet with the Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, and thus necessitated some example of American ingenuity and scientific advancement to present to the Premier to further boost American prestige on the global stage, though certainly, the latter had a more driving force behind it.
With that in mind, the Navy began top-secret planning for SANDBLAST, the first completely submerged circumnavigation of the globe by a submarine, theoretically only possible by one nuclear powered. The Navy, in need of a nuclear submarine, meet me, in preparation for a shakedown cruise. They presented it to Captain Edwards within a week, who accepted it immediately. Within 3, we were stocking provisions. Within another week, we were off, down the South American coast.
What no one tells you about sailing without a fleet, though it should be fairly obvious, is that it's quite lonely. You are out there, in the open expanse of the wide, blue ocean, for weeks, months at a time, slowly traversing your way to your destination still thousands of miles beyond your grasp, with nothing but your crew, your job, and any odds and ends you bring along to accompany you.
As a ship spirit, being unable to interact with any of your crew doubles that feeling. Being wholly submerged, and thus finding it difficult to connect to radio to contact any other ship spirits, though I doubt I'd have been allowed to hail them if I could. As time passed by, the initial excitement of my mission and the prospect of being on the cusp of revolutionary proceedings gave way to weariness in the job, monotony in daily proceedings, and everything else in between.
Around the time that we began transiting the Drake Passage, after forgetting my bag of marbles at New London, playing Solitaire 11 times (of which I had a win rate of 0% that I later learned was a result of me missing the 6 of Clubs), making 5 passes around to let my crew all take a peek at Cape Horn, and listening to all of my favorite music on record enough times that I got sick of them, I finally took the advice of my mentor,
USS Nautilus (SSN-571), and opened up a package of bound paper inscribed with English characters that in such a way resembled words, arranged in such a way to portray a story to the reader.
In other words, I read a book.
To my half-sisters and friends that knew me during my shakedown phase, this may turn out to be a shock, as I had vehemently opposed the objects when I was first constructed, claiming that they were 'a bore' and 'old' in comparison to the greatness of radio shows and board games. As my half-sister Darter would say, that was 'fucking revolutionary'.
Yes, I thought books were boring and old. A ship girl can have a chunni phase. Just ask Nukeprise (
CVN-65).
Regardless, when my mentor learned about my solo operation, she provided me with a stack of books 'for your perusement' while I was out at sea. Like any good child that got a present that they did not want, I said thank you with the best fake smile I could muster, left quickly, and promptly stowed it away in my hold, planning to never touch them again.
But, also like any good child, there comes a time when you are bored out of your mind, having exhausted all other options for entertainment, with no friends to tide you over and decide to at least see what's the point of the gift you were given. The next thing you know, it's been an hour and a half and you still can't get the ball on a string onto the peg. I hated that damn Kendama toy.
Back to the point at hand, around the time that we exited the Passage, I had finally decided to open Nautilus's gift to me, rationalizing that I might get some interest out of reading a story about a boy who found a treasure map and then fought against pirates on an island in order to secure the lost treasure of their former captain.
In hindsight, Robert Louis Stevenson is a master at writing, and I was suddenly opened up to a whole new world of amusement, entertainment, and joy. No longer was I bound to the mortal confines of my steel tube. Now, I could escape to the mines of Moria and the grandness of Rivendell, enjoy a spot of tea with Mr. Paddington in the aforementioned station and rush headlong into a German ship like the calvery knights of old with
Ulysses.
As I, and you will soon, find out, Victoria did not have any of that.
It was the 20th of March, while my crew was setting up a luau in celebration of passing by Pearl Harbor, that I had seen Frodo finally toss the One Ring into Mount Doom, and believed that I had finished all of my books. I was quite disappointed to reach that achievement, only to look to my bookbag and find that, in fact, I had one more book that Nautilus gave me that I had not reviewed yet. Unlike the other ones, this one was leather-bound, with no title, and its pages were yellowed with time. There was no printing in it, and everything was written by hand, though it was difficult to understand the writing, as the ink was fading.
However, I did understand one thing. The inside of the front cover had one sentence written on it.
Property of Nao Victoria. 1519.
And suddenly, I realized what it was, what I held in my hands. It was the logbook of
Nao Victoria, one of the five ships of the original Magellan's Expedition whose route I had been tracing, and the only one of the five to complete the voyage. Either Nautilus had slipped it in thinking it would be some sort of irony to have it while on my mission, or it had suddenly appeared in my hold for unknown reasons. Supposing that it was serendipity, I began to delve into my 'predecessors' writings, hoping to see what her thoughts were during her time around the globe. True to form, it did log the daily locations of Victoria and her fleet mates, but it also doubled as Victoria's personal diary, serving to memorialize her thoughts and observations across her nearly three-year journey.
She was wildly inconsistent. Sometimes, she would intensely document events day by day, hour by hour, going into as much detail as she believed was necessary. Sometimes, her entry consisted of a singular sentence or phrase. Often, she would become sidetracked from her 'official' mission by the actions of her fellow shipgirls, who serve to also prove that the discontent and occasional infighting that plagues the rumor mills of modern ship girls have tradition behind them.
In there, we see the divide between Victoria and I, between the days of past and present. While I had my board games, deck of cards, and swaths of fictional literature to tide me over in my two-month journey, Victoria had no more than a handful of dice, her diary, and her fellow ship girls to break her three-year monotony. What could be considered poor weather for drills for my fellow surface ships, would pose a real and immediate threat to Victoria and her wooden-hulled, sail-powered contemporaries. What modern ships consider to be inconveniences were true dangers or perils that Victoria and her compatriots would consider to be a top priority to rectify, lest failing in their mission altogether.
In the end, Victoria's diary serves as an excellent account of the Magellan Expedition, rivaling that of Antonio Pigafetta's narrative. Her diary is a testament to the shipgirls of the Age of Sail, a time when the world was so much wider than we know it now. On the border of making history, she enamors us with her descriptions and provides a window into what life was like as a ship of sail in such a period, when the act of sailing was more than just the prerequisite to be called a ship, and when morals conflict with trust and with integrity.
- Triton
