Bacalao Characters
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Lieutenant Lawrence Miller: A member of Bacalao's commissioning crew, Miller is initially assigned as electrical officer. He joins the boat when she is only a pile of curved steel plates at the Electric Boat yard in Groton, and goes with her to Honolulu, where he becomes a witness to the Pearl Harbor attack. Rising through the shipboard hierarchy to become executive officer under her third captain, Miller then departs to take over as commanding officer of S-56. That assignment completed, he again returns to Bacalao in 1944 as her captain.
Lieutenant Commander James "Andy" Morley: An instructor at the Submarine School at the Submarine Base, New London, Morley finds himself assigned to the partially-completed Bacalao when her original captain is killed in an automobile crash. A second generation submariner and the son of a World War I Medal of Honor winner, Morley is a consumate seaman and highly skilled in the methods of operation that had been predicted to be most effective should a war break out.
Lieutenant Commander Frederick Ames: Bacalao's Executive Officer and Morley's former Naval Academy roommate, Ames is also a replacement, the original XO having been injured too badly to immediately return to active duty in the same accident that killed his commanding officer. An extremely aggressive officer, Ames becomes Bacalao's second captain.
Third Officer Sarah King: This red-headed WRANS officer first meets Miller, quite by accident, in a restaurant in Fremantle. The relationship develops quickly, as often happens in wartime. By the time Miller completes his duty in S-56, Sarah has been assigned to the staff at the Australian Consulate in San Francisco, so when Bacalao is sent to Hunter's Point for overhaul the stage is set for the pair to take their relationship to the next stage.
Electrician's Mate First Class Kenneth Ohara: The only member of Bacalao's enlisted crew with a college degree (in Spanish Literature), Ohara is a fourth-generation Japanese American, a condition that causes more than a little trouble once the war begins. Described as sounding "more like Rhett Butler than Mr. Moto," Ohara is from Atlanta, and completely ignorant of Japanese language and culture, though he did once get into a fight with a British petty officer who made the mistake of calling him a "Yank." Winning a Distinguishe Service Medal during Bacalao's first action, Ohara is afraid of only one thing—his mother, who has her own ideas about his future.
Chief Motor Machinist's Mate Albert Gordon: Bacalao's COB (Chief of the Boat, the senior enlisted man aboard) is an old-time, no-nonsense sailor with an encyclopedic knowledge of submarines. In any submarine the COB is usually the main contact between the crew and the officers.
U.S.S. Bacalao: One of the first Gato class fleet submarines, Bacalao is 312' long, armed with ten 21" torpedo tubes and a 3"/50 deck gun. She can make 21 knots on the surface, and a maximum of about 9 knots submerged. Gato class submarines were rated to dive to 300 feet, and started the war with an average crew of about 60 officers and men. The crew would grow to around 80 as the war progressed, and more equipment was added. Following the Navy "tradition" of mispronouncing foreign names establish with Gato (pronounced Gate-oh), Bacalao is usually called "Back-uh-lay-oh" by her crew, and much to the annoyance of the Spanish-speaking Ohara.
Original content © 2001, 2004, J.T. McDaniel. All rights reserved.
