Shore Patrol

  In the Army there is a specialty called Military Police. The MPs are highly trained and they function like the police in any big city. They have their own vehicles with flashing lights and sirens, and all kinds of tactical gear. On the other hand, the Navy has the Shore Patrol. The Shore Patrol is the opposite of the Military Police; the SPs are not highly trained, they don’t have special gear (only an arm band saying “SP” and perhaps a big flashlight and a set of handcuffs), and they are ordinary sailors who get picked to stand Shore Patrol duty once in a blue moon. 

   When a Navy ship makes a port visit for a few days in a port that doesn’t have a permanent Navy presence, one of the middle-ranked officers on the ship is designated as the Shore Patrol Officer. He in turn chooses a few petty officers to be the Shore Patrol. If the officer has good sense he chooses petty officers who are experienced and who at least look intimidating, and if possible he chooses sailors who have been to this port before. The obvious benefit is that the SPs remember which bars and brothels are the ones they hung out in as the places where fights were most likely to break out. The main function of the Shore Patrol is to keep their shipmates out of trouble, and to hustle them back to the ship if they are drunk and/or looking for trouble. If a drunken sailor doesn’t get picked up by the SPs he may be arrested by the local cops, and that is a world of trouble for everyone.

   When there is one ship in port, the Shore Patrol situation is simple. But sometimes there may be two or three ships in one small port. In this case the senior officer automatically takes charge. The standard term is Senior Officer Present Afloat (SOPA) and it is his job to get a few officers and petty officers from each of the ships, and form the (amalgamated) Shore Patrol. 

 In my entire career just by chance (maybe luck) I recall being a Shore Patrol Officer only 3 or 4 times. One of those times was memorable and worth a story, and the other times were uneventful. Naval officers are never to lay a hand on a sailor, except in the most dire circumstances. So, a Shore Patrol Officer would never “arrest” a sailor; one or more of the petty officers would hold a berserk sailor and get him handcuffed. I never had to get physical with a troublesome sailor, and by the time we got him back to the ship he was usually contrite. 

   I remember two cases which had sad outcomes. I was not on Shore Patrol at those times, but I remember them clearly. In one case the Shore Patrol took a young sailor back to the ship. He was drunk and passed out, so the well-meaning Shore Patrol carried him to his bunk and left him there. He did not wake up. We did not have a doctor on board but our hospital corpsman reported that he had asphyxiated by choking on his own vomit. On another ship there was a similar situation where a young marine was brought back to his ship passed out, and he also was carried to his bunk. There was a medical officer on board who should have been called, but no one called him. The marine died of an overdose of some drug. There was an immediate reaction throughout the fleet and it was forbidden to carry an unconscious sailor to his bunk unless he had been examined by a medical officer or corpsman.

   In about 1969 I was on the destroyer USS ROGERS (DD876) when we made a port visit of 3 or 4 days to Beppu, Japan. Beppu is a resort town in the south of Japan; there are no places to tie ships to docks, so we anchored out in the bay. Along with another destroyer and an aircraft carrier anchored in the bay there were at least 3000 sailors, and probably 2000 or so ashore at any time. SOPA was the carrier captain and I was one of several Shore Patrol Officers. My job was to station myself and 2 petty officers at a small dock where the boats from the carrier and the 2 destroyers shuttled sailors back and forth to their ships. It was about a half hour each way to and from the ships, so our job was to keep order on the dock. When the sailors came ashore from their ship they didn’t hang around but headed for the nearest bar. However the sailors hanging around the dock waiting to get back to their ship were unpredictable so we had to keep an eye on them. By about midnight the crowd was getting small and things were getting boring - which suited me fine. And about then a middle-aged Japanese couple walked to the dock and asked me if they could go out to the carrier. They spoke a little English and I spoke less Japanese, but we were able to converse a little. I told them that it was not possible, but they were politely insistent. Fortunately one of the petty officers with me was from the carrier, so I had him speak to the couple. His Japanese was pretty good so he found out what their problem was. The carrier had been in port at Yokosuka a week ago, and there had been a visiting day on the ship. A large number of Japanese civilians had been given tours of the ship, until all civilians were told it was time to debark. The couple’s daughter had been separated from them, and they have not seen her since. Obviously this was serious. This was long before cell phones, so our communication with the carrier consisted of a walky-talky which was not very reliable. But we contacted the officer of the deck on the carrier and explained the problem. It turned out that the “daughter” was more likely their “employee”. The “daughter” had talked a sailor into getting her set up in an unused compartment where she had run a business (evidently the world’s oldest business) and had taken in a very large amount of money in about three days. At some point her business was disrupted and she was now in custody and is to be turned over to the Japanese authorities when the carrier got back to Yokosuka. I never found out about the money; I’m pretty sure none of the sailors got their money back.