A Strange Encounter At Sea: A True Life Tale
It was 3am and I was sick of looking at the ocean. More specifically, I was sick of being in the Navy. Two long years I'd been suffering, dealing with the politics and pretensions of life in deck division aboard a U.S. Naval ship. It hadn't been pleasant. Even this, mid-watch at aft look out, (one of the few places and times at sea on a ship you can get any peace and quiet) had become, almost, an anathema to me.
Darkness covered the water and it was a moonless sky, so all I could really see was the vague outlines of the stanchions in front of me that held up the roof of the lookout post. The aft-deck of the ship was shrouded in darkness and even the usually prominent white wake of the ship was absent, swallowed in the dark night of the Mediterranean Sea. At least it's warm, I remember thinking to myself.
It was then that I saw a speck of orange light, looking like a jewel shining through the darkness. It was my job to visually report any contacts I saw, to provide confirmation to the guys in radar that what they were seeing was true. Having done this for a couple years now, I recognized that the light was several miles away, likely close to the horizon line, had the horizon been visible. I radioed in the contact's bearing from the ship and continued to look for other contacts. Ship lights were what I was really looking for, since it was all that could be reliably seen at night. The strangeness began when Combat Information Center radioed me back.
“Aft-lookout, please report the bearing of that contact.”
Puzzled, I radioed back, “Bearing approximately one-six-zero, orange light on the horizon, appears to be getting brighter.” For the uninitiated, this refers to a 360 degree circle surrounding the ship, with 000 being directly in front of the ship and 180 being directly behind the ship. This meant that this contact was slightly off to the left and behind the ship. This was my first clue that something was off. Usually, at night, the only colors of light you saw were red, green and white; the colors of the port, starboard and mast running lights on a ship, respectively.
“Aft-lookout, be advised we show no radar contact in that vicinity.”
Now I was seriously puzzled. The light had been steadily getting brighter over the last few minutes, indicating that it was getting closer, if not headed directly for us. I depressed the button on my sound powered 'phones and said, “Starboard lookout, can you see this thing? It ought to be visible down your side.”
A few moments later came the reply, “Yeah, I can see it! Damn! What the hell is that thing?”
By this point, the scene on the aft-lookout station had changed dramatically. The light had at least tripled in size and it now illuminated the ocean around both it and the area between it and the ship. I could see the rolling waves in the ocean and the ship's wake now, turning darkest night into almost dusk, and I wondered for the first time what the hell was giving off this light. It certainly was no ordinary ship.
Nighttime, for a look-out, is usually pretty calm. Lots of lights on the horizon, lots of cigarette-boats that fly from one end of the horizon to the other, almost faster than you can report them. A lot of dark nights and trying not to fall asleep. Not, as was currently happening, having the Captain of the ship, the Executive Officer and the 1st Lieutenant all on my lookout post. They were standing as far from me as they could, not acknowledging me except to tell me to be quiet, and whispering to one another breathlessly. No, this was shaping up to be no ordinary mid-watch.
Typically, as I said before, you only see 3 colors of lights on the ocean at night. Whether you are a mile off the coast of Virginia or deep in the Arctic ocean, red, green and white are the colors of nautical running lights. Depending on the order they presented or their configuration, it could mean many different things. A single green light meant you were to stay the course, while two red lights, one on top of another, was an ancient, but still used, configuration to let other ships know that the ship in question was without a captain. Red over red, the Captain's dead, was the saying. Here we just had orange - bright, unmistakable orange - that, now, had turned the back end of a 600' long naval vessel into noon.
If it had been a ship, you would have been able to see it. Hell, by this point, you should have been able to distinguish many features about what was giving off the light. It had no physical dimension to it, no source that you could point to and say, “There it is. That's what's doing this.” When it was small, you could only see a point of light, like any other vessel on the water. As it grew brighter, it had seemed to grow closer. Looking back, this must have been an illusion, because there was no gradual illumination of the waters before it as it 'approached', such as a ship traveling across the water would create. Now, despite the light which had rendered sharp shadows on the deck of the ship before me, there was no corona, just an almighty bright glow, diffuse and undefinable. It seemed to hang there in the air, appearing larger than the ship I stood on, but with less substance than the blowing wind. It cast a sick glow on everything, and I was left with the impression that it was a ghost, an ephemeral thing, unnerving in it's presence and apt to disappear, like a dream upon waking.
Over the next 10 minutes or so, the light shrank, contracting in on itself until it appeared to be the speck in the distance I'd originally reported. As it dwindled, the officers that had come to witness it left, one by one. NO word of explanation, no thoughts on what it COULD have been. Just silence and a few looks that were inscrutable in the rapidly fading light. A few hours later, I could mercifully crawl into my rack, though sleep was long in coming. I asked myself, over and over, what it could have been, and was left with only questions as I fell into a fitful sleep.
The next morning, after I'd made myself presentable, I approached my section leader about the incident. I had no sooner got the words, “Last night, on watch...” out of my mouth before he took me aside and gave me a direct order to never speak of the incident again. As far as anyone on my ship was concerned, it never happened and I would be disciplined if I disobeyed. He walked away, leaving me speechless and (I must say) a little more than frustrated. God, I hated the Navy.
The following story is another true life tale.. I have often wondered about what it was I saw. I've called it a UFO for years without really believing it was a “Real UFO” but, as time goes on, I have to wonder, what did I see, all those years ago, on a warm Mediterranean night. Let me know what you think, even if it's just to call BS. Also, I've decided to tag all these autobiographical posts as #truelifetales so that they can be found easy