No Longer a Pollywog: The Journey of Crossing the Line

It's a centuries-old Navy tradition, those sailors who have crossed the Equator by sea are known as trusty Shellbacks, and those who have not are slimy Pollywogs. I, quite obviously, am a slimy Pollywog, having never been on sea duty in the US Navy. That all changed on July 11, 2021; this is my Shellback story.

On the evening of July 10, the entire ship began preparing for the Pollywogs Talent Show in the hangar bay. We were notified a few days prior that each department would be given 10 minutes to entertain the trusty Shellbacks. I was grouped with all the other Pollywogs from the medical and dental departments, and our skit was based on the Harlem Shake, a song that went viral in 2012, and if you aren't familiar with it click here. Our skit started off with providers checking on patients and then a medical emergency was called; a patient was brought in on a stretcher (I was one of the stretcher-bearers) and then I began looking in people's mouths, because why not, that's my job. After a few seconds, the Harlem Shake began and when the beat dropped, everyone got up and started dancing and acting crazy. The Shellbacks did not enjoy our skit and we were booed off the stage. I later found out that regardless of how good your skit actually was, you were going to be booed.

After the skit, we headed back upstairs to the medical triage area where the shellbacks in our department gave everyone their pollywog shirt they would be required to wear on Sunday. The requirements were that the shirt had to be white and had to have the word "WOG" written on it; my shirt was decorated and said "Floss Wog" on the front and "I FIX TEEFS" on the back. It even had a button where Shellbacks could press it and I had to do the floss dance for them. After receiving my shirt, I was told to hit my rack because it would be an early morning.

The following morning at 4:00, King Neptune, played by Commander Stahley (Chief Engineer), king of the Royal Court, came over the intercom and made notice of his arrival aboard LHA 6 and that all Pollywogs needed to be ready to clean off their slime. At 4:30, I reported to the medical triage area, where shellbacks were waiting for us for morning PT. After 30 minutes of PT and being sprayed with water from IV bags and syringes, we headed down to the mess deck for some breakfast. Everywhere we went around the ship, we were required to elephant walk as a group and sing songs; we mostly sang "Row, Row, Row Your Boat," "Spongebob Squarepants," and "The Alphabet Song." For those unsure of what elephant walking is, it's when you put one arm between your legs and the person behind you has to hold that hand.

For breakfast, we were served the traditional Wog breakfast: purple bacon, red oatmeal, green eggs, pink potatoes. At the end of the breakfast line, there were some trusty shellbacks seasoning our food with copious amounts of mayonnaise and salt; I can inform everyone that no one ate breakfast that morning. As I was in line to throw out my untouched breakfast, a trusty shellback dumped ice water down my coveralls. I guess he was just preparing me for how wet I was about to be in just a few hours.

After breakfast, we headed back up to the medical triage area, where we sang more songs, danced, completed more PT, got doused in saline and water, swabbed the deck with toothbrushes (thank goodness we have a bunch of those), and did just about anything our trusty Shellbacks asked of us. After about an hour of playing their sadistic games, we headed up to the flight deck (via elephant walk, of course), where we would be washed of our slime.

At the first station on the flight deck, we were required to sit in the push-up position, or high plank, and get hosed down with seawater. Once we had sufficiently tired out our arms, we got down on the deck and were required to blow the water out of the holes where the helicopters get chained down. It's quite difficult to blow water out of a hole when it's constantly being filled with more water.

Once done with that station, we headed over to the next station: pipe repair. There were four sets of broken pipes that required our attention, only we had a couple of wooden wedges and no hammer to fix it, so needless to say we were destined for failure. At the next station, we sat in a line, pretended to row while singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" and getting doused with more seawater. Once we had sufficiently rowed the boat, we then went to finally wash away our slime. There were three tubs set up with dyed green water, where we had to submerge ourselves and wash away our slimy scales.

Once we were "clean" we presented ourselves before the Royal Court and bowed before King Neptune. One of the members of the royal court, a chief petty officer aboard the America, was shirtless with whipped cream and a cherry in his belly button. A little bit of backstory: apparently pollywogs experienced some pretty serious hazing back in the early- to-mid 1900s because one of the old traditions is eating a cherry out of a chief's belly button. Thank goodness we didn't have to do that. The other members of the court were dressed as mermaids, Ursula from "The Little Mermaid" and other wonky costumes.

The officers in the group were asked to separate themselves for a special task; we were asked to go to the edge of the ship and call out to Flipper, for our trusty shellbacks misplaced him. We had to call for him using our best dolphin voices, and only when Flipper was finally found would we be allowed to present ourselves, once again, in front of the Royal Court. While we were out looking for Flipper, our enlisted Wog friends were inducted as Shellbacks. We bowed once more in front of King Neptune and were finally instructed to rise, but as newly inducted SHELLBACKS!

Once complete, I headed back to my stateroom, stripped out of my soaking wet clothes, took a shower, and slept from 8:30am until 3:00pm. That evening, as a celebration for all of the newly inducted Shellbacks, the ship held a Steel Beach Cookout in the Hangar Bay, where we were served hamburgers, hotdogs, chips, cookies, and sodas. It was a nice way to end a very thrilling day. It is a privilege to now be called a Trusty Shellback and receive my Order of the Shellbacks membership card.

Sending my love from somewhere south of the Equator,

-Bryan