THE PRESIDENCY: No. I Pollywog

As the U.S.S. Missouri steamed northward through blue, tropical seas, Harry Truman relaxed. Every day he was up early, tramping the decks for an early morning constitutional. He prowled and poked around the “Mighty Mo’s” intricate innards, inspected the enlisted men’s mess, chatted with sailors.

Afternoons he napped, or did some light reading. Evenings were quietly convivial. Once he went down to the ship’s barbershop, patiently waited his turn for a trim.

After the exhausting festivities in Rio, he and his family welcomed the rest. Mrs. Truman spent most of her time in their comfortable quarters in the admiral’s island. Daughter Margaret, in white halter and skirt, sunned herself on the surrender deck (while sailors peered from behind gun mounts) and got in an occasional game of deck tennis.

Vile Landlubber. But around the presidential party, the ship hummed with excitement. Everybody got ready for the traditional ceremony of “crossing the line,” a rite in which oldtimers take savage pleasure in initiating “pollywogs” (sailors who have not crossed the equator before) into King Neptune’s “Royal Order of Shellbacks.” The 350 shellbacks aboard busied themselves fashioning clubs out of canvas stuffed with rags, constructing a throne for Neptune, a ducking pool and other devices of torment for his victims.

It was the kind of jape that Harry Truman thoroughly enjoys and he joined in with zest. Pollywog Truman cheerfully donned a baker’s cap, saw to it that others in his entourage conformed to the prescribed pollywog costume of trousers, loud shirts and ties worn backward.* Margaret wore a shoe-length slicker and sou’wester, which made her look like a Morton Salt boy. She was told to mount watch for Davy Jones, who traditionally appears the day before crossing.

At sundown, Davy Jones boarded the ship through a hawse pipe. Grinning, Harry Truman found himself indicted as “a vile landlubber and a pollywog . . . .in that, knowing full well that there are no party politics in this absolute monarchy, you are guilty of practicing the same, this crime being further aggravated by your being a Democrat.”

Gauntlets and Grease. Next day, before breakfast coffee had well settled in pollywog bellies, a full-whiskered Neptunus Rex arrived on the fantail. He was attended by Davy Jones and Queen Amphitrite (a tough, blond Marine sergeant wearing enormous falsies and rope-yarn hair). As No. 1 Pollywog, Truman was first—but was let off easy. He was merely ordered to give his autograph to each member of Neptune’s court, and to furnish his staff with Corona cigars forever. Margaret was directed to lead a group in Anchors Aweigh, which she did falteringly and off key.

But the other dignitaries did not fare so well. Big, jovial John Steelman, the President’s special assistant, had unsuspectingly come dressed in white shirt and pants. As Truman chuckled gleefully, Steelman was laid out on the tin “operating table,” prodded with an electrically charged knife, and given a gargle of quinine and lemon extract from a huge hypodermic syringe. Then he was plastered with paint, run through a gauntlet of shellbacks wielding stuffed canvas paddles, up steps with electrically charged handrails. After another gargle, he was pushed into a tilting chair and dumped backward into the ducking pool, where seven blackened sailors ducked him vigorously. Then he was shoved down a greased slide, belabored through another gauntlet, and pronounced a shellback.

Brig. Gen. Wallace Graham, the President’s physician, was next, followed by others on the Presidential staff. The initiations, getting rougher all the time, continued for four hours. When they were over, 16 men and officers required medical attention.

*The saltiest sailor aboard, Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, chose this moment to admit that he had never been properly initiated. He confessed that in 1898, when he first crossed the line as a midshipman on the U.S.S. Oregon, he had bought off the shellbacks with a keg of beer — a custom then permitted on naval vessels.