Aboard the USS Turner Joy

Last weekend, while all of you were marinating in record triple-digit heat, I was relaxing on Puget Sound, enjoying temperatures in the mid-80s and mild breezes off the water.

The official purpose of my trip was to check on my father's boat, which is moored at the Port of Bremerton marina. In reality, that was just a free place to sleep while I got a quick big-city fix.

Besides a couple of ferry trips to Seattle, and way too much time and money spent at Starbucks, I took some time Saturday to tour a couple of Naval museums in Bremerton and learn a lot about the Puget Sound area's contribution to U.S. Naval history.

Those visits allowed me to provide the first installment of what we hope will be an occasional feature in The Times this summer. Since there are no high school sports to cover on these pages, we plan to share some of our summer adventures here, and hopefully inspire our readers to take road trips of your own outside the Touchet Valley, and maybe learn something while you're at it.

The first museum I visited in Bremerton was a ship. Here's its story:

In August 1964, the American destroyer USS Turner Joy was accompanying another destroyer, USS Maddox, on "watch dog" patrols in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of Viet Nam. When the Maddox reported sighting North Vietnamese torpedo boats, the two ships fired rockets, apparently sinking two of them.

Two days later, in very heavy seas, the Turner Joy's radar picked up what appeared to be more torpedo boats. Again the ships fired shells, while planes from the nearby aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga attacked from the air. Radar operators were never able to confirm for sure whether the ships had been under attack the second time. Some have claimed ever since that the radar readings were due to weather issues.

This conflict became known as the "Gulf of Tonkin Incident." As a direct result of this incident, despite the lack of clarity about what happened, the U.S. Congress passed the "Gulf of Tonkin Resolution," which served as the official start of the United States' war against North Vietnam.

The USS Turner Joy is now berthed at the Port of Bremerton, about 100 yards from my dad's boat. It's a museum, and while I've seen it there for years, I took the tour for the first time on Saturday. Before I get to that, a little more history:

The Turner Joy was built by the Puget Sound Bridge and Dredging Company in Seattle. It was launched in 1958 and was commissioned at the Naval Shipyard in Bremerton.

The ship is named after Adm. Charles Turner Joy, who was a Naval Captain and ship commander in the Pacific during World War II, and later became an Admiral and commander of the Pacific fleet during the Korean War in the early 1950s. He died in 1956.

His namesake ship made several tours to Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War years and for a few years after. It was retired from service in 1982.

In the early 1990s, the Turner Joy was refurbished by the Bremerton Historic Ships Association, and was opened to the public at the Bremerton Port in 1992.

For a $14 entry fee, I was able to roam almost the entire ship, including two decks below and two levels above. The tours are all self-guided, but there is copious signage describing what you see. I even climbed inside the gun turrets, two of which are trained on a condominium complex on the Bremerton waterfront.

The living and eating (and yes, bathroom) facilities are fascinating. With a crew of nearly 250 sailors and officers, privacy was clearly out of the question; unless maybe if you were working in the ship's bowels, with the engines and boiler.

The myriad controls on the ship are amazingly primitive by today's standards. Mechanical dials are everywhere, and the only electronics are old-fashioned sonar and radar.

When I was there, a large group was preparing for the wedding of a sailor, which was held that afternoon on the aft of the ship. Other visitors of all ages were touring the ship, including young ones who enjoyed climbing inside the gun turrets at least as much as I did.

Since the Gulf of Tonkin incident took place about two weeks before my ninth birthday, my ship tour (and the Googling I did along with it) brought back lots of memories of things I heard about as a child, but didn't really understand back then.

It also made me appreciate more than ever the commitment and bravery of the sailors and officers who served on this ship and others like it. The Turner Joy seems big when parked next to all those pleasure boats in the harbor, but to those on board at sea, it must have seemed tiny.