Photo of LTJG Fowler from the commissioning pamphlet

A BREMERTON shipmate recommended I write a sea story about my experience on board. As a caution, never ask a Sailor to tell a Sea Story unless you have a lot of time and some adult beverages. But here we go . . . Background: I reported aboard my first submarine BREMERTON at the end of 1979 in Groton, CT, in Electric Boat shipyard as a LTjg. My detailer told me we were headed to my dream homeport of Pearl Harbor “shortly”, and we were scheduled to go to sea for the first time the next week. Due to some quality assurance issues on non-critical welds, however, the boat had to disassemble much of the forward compartment to investigate and repair where necessary. We went to sea eleven months later. Although this beginning of my submarine career was disappointing, my three-year tour on BREMERTON was amazing professionally and personally. Professionally: Shipyard life is tough, especially when you are going backwards taking apart what was ready to go. But as a “non-qual” Junior Officer, there was a huge benefit of tracing systems and visually seeing where all of the hull penetrations were located by walking the drydock basin. I was able to experience many “once in a boat’s life” testing events, including initial sea trials and all of the boat’s certifications. Fast Attack tough: Life on an SSN is unpredictable, to say the least. We were going to work our way through our initial certifications in the Atlantic, then change homeport to Pearl via the Panama Canal with a fun port stop at our namesake Bremerton. We were commissioned in late March 1981 to execute this plan. Then we had an unscheduled underway visit by COMSUBLANT who wanted to tell us in person that we were going to deploy to the Indian Ocean due to the Iranian Hostage crisis and shift homeports following the deployment going “that way”. We were at sea a lot cramming in weapons, systems, and nuclear certifications so we could deploy early July 1981. I was promoted to LT and earned my dolphins just as we deployed. What a deployment it was! We had not been to sea for any lengthy time yet in the history of the boat, but we took off for the Indian Ocean around Africa because we didn’t use the Suez Canal back then. Nearly the entire crew became Shellbacks for the first time crossing the equator. We kept getting extended until finally we stopped in Diego Garcia for 42 hours after being submerged for 77 days consecutively. Two funny things I remember the effect of the long underway. First, since we had no fresh salads as soon as we got underway, we started with the three-bean salad, which then became the two-bean salad, and finally one-bean salad. I pretty much had my lifetime dose of bean salad on that cruise😊 . Second, we stored some food staples back aft, including in a mezzanine above the shaft, where we had a few cases of peanut butter. When we finally broke out that peanut butter, each jar consisted of half a jar of peanut oil on top of peanut cement—it had been shaking for two months and separated out. I think we were able to resurrect it back into peanut butter by stabbing it with a knife and finally trying to mix it up. Following the short stop in Diego Garcia, we headed to our first (and only) liberty port in Perth, Western Australia. I had the great privilege of being the Officer of the Deck for BREMERTON’s first foreign port visit. We made it to our new homeport of Pearl Harbor 111 days after leaving Groton, becoming Golden Dragons (International Dateline crossing). In my last year on board BREMERTON (1982) I fleeted up to become the Weapons Officer, something we did back then before all Weapons Officers went through Department Head school. Personally: The unfortunate shipyard extension and a few divine interventions directly allowed me to meet my soulmate to whom I have been married almost 44 years now. Since we were in the shipyard as “non-quals”, the XO sent us out to sea from time to time on another boat to get our quals done. I was sent to Norfolk, VA to ride the CINCINNATI to work on my Diving Officer and EOOW quals for five weeks. We were scheduled to be at sea for most of the time, but they had a material issue during the first week, so we came into port for the weekend. I went to the beach. I met a cute girl. I liked her a lot. I spent the next afternoon into the evening with her then went back to sea and down to AUTEC in the Bahamas. Upon our return to Norfolk a month later, I used a pay phone to call the number she left me. No answer. I didn’t think she would give me a bogus number, so I took my dime and used the next phone booth. She answered and picked me up. We enjoyed one evening at her parents’ house before she headed back to college in Virginia and I flew back to Groton. This started a long-distance romance that nearly didn’t make it after the four-month deployment ending up with me in Hawaii and she in Virginia. When I arrived in Diego Garcia, I had 26 letters from her numbered so I could read them in order. I guess she liked me too. I had a plan to call her from Perth—12-hour time zone difference. The cost back then was $7/minute at the phone booth, so I got about $50 Australian in dollar coins and called her. One problem—it took me a minute to get the 7 coins to register. My only choice was to call her “collect” and have her Dad accept the charges. It was probably $20/minute which is something like $100/minute now. I did get to hear her voice. After I got to Pearl, we had an argument about our future . . . which ended up in me proposing to her in November 1981. We were married in April 1982. I saw her five days in the nine months before we got married. I brought her to Pearl for the last several months of my tour on BREMERTON. I didn’t want to get married on sea duty because I wanted to spend more time with my new wife once I did get married. But the sea duty experience was critical in allowing us to decide to continue with this career path during later tours. One typical example occurred soon after our honeymoon. We were getting underway on a Monday and coming back home on Friday . . . I didn’t show up, nothing heard from us, and I called her six weeks later from Seattle. Welcome to the fast attack world, honey. Bottom Line: I couldn’t have asked for more out of my first submarine tour on BREMERTON. From shipyard to front line deployment, from North and South Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, Indian Ocean and North and South Pacific Ocean operations–ending up in beautiful Pearl Harbor. Jobs of Chemistry and Radiological Controls Officer, Reactor Control Assistant, Sonar Officer, and Weapons Officer. Plankowner, Shellback, Golden Dragon. And most important, my first group of true shipmates who remain friends to this day. And from a personal standpoint, I unexpectedly met and married my wife Katie of 44 years due to the unlikely travels caused by BREMERTON.