Around The World Submerged
TRITON COMES HOME
This is a photograph of Triton standing up the Thames River in New London on 11 May 1960. We've been away from home for 84 days. It's raining. Everyone is tired. We just want to hug the wife and kids and go home. But since the Secretary of the Navy (SECNAV) is to present the ship with the Presidential Unit Citation, we can't go home. Ned Beach makes a perfect landing and we fall in at Quarters on deck. And we wait. We look at the wives and kids on the pier and they look at us. More time passes. Then Rear Admiral Daspit, ComSubLant, tells Ned it's OK for us to go on the pier. We hug the wife and kids. Then we find out what the problem is. The SECNAV motorcade from Naval Air Station Quonset has lost its way; even manages to elude the Connecticut State Police escort waiting at the Rhode Island border. Finally, SECNAV arrives. He makes a speech, presents Allen Steele with a medal, and gives us all a ribbon. Then the XO says, "Relieve Your Quarters" and we go home. We didn't know it then, but from that moment on, the crew of Triton - the crew that took a submarine around the world submerged - would never be together again.