On July 11, 1942, the USS� North Carolina� steamed into
Pearl Harbor. She was a magnificent ship—the first in a new class
of battleships, simultaneously monstrous and fast. She was
two-and-a-half-football-fields long and so wide she could barely
pass through the Panama Canal on her journey to Hawaii. At any
given time, 2,339 sailors manned the ship—a total of more than
7,000 during the six years she served. As she glided into the
ravaged harbor, past the wreckage of sunken American ships, the
morale of the men in the surviving Pacific fleet soared. A little
over two years earlier, more than 57,000 people had gathered in the
Brooklyn Navy Yard on the day she was launched. As she went through
her “shakedown” period, she returned repeatedly to that same
naval yard for adjustments and modifications. Many New Yorkers,
including radio commentator Walter Winchell, often witnessed the
ship entering and departing New York Harbor and began calling her
the “Showboat.” Although she was an impressive structure, she
was more than just a showboat. After coming to Pearl Harbor, she
saw action in some 50 battles in almost every campaign in the
Pacific from Guadalcanal to Tokyo Bay. In 1960, when the navy
announced its intention to scrap the ship, North Carolina citizens,
including countless schoolchildren, raised over $330,000 to bring
the ship to Wilmington, North Carolina, and preserve her as a state
war memorial. In this book, Ramsey tells the story of the
battleship through the eyes of the men who served her. After doing
research about the ship at the National Archives in 2000, Ramsey
spent six days helping the staff of the memorial compile a
living-history archive of personal interviews conducted with the
surviving crewmembers when they attended the ship's annual reunion.
She became fascinated with the stories these men told. For the next
few years, she continued talking to the men to flesh out their
stories. The result is this narrative about one of the most
decorated American battleships in World War II, as seen through the
eyes of the young sailors who matured into men while manning this
floating fortress. As Ramsey says in her introduction, “Sailors
know the difference between a fairy tale and a sea story. A fairy
tale begins, ‘Once upon a time.’ A sea story starts simply,
‘Now, this is no bullshit.’ This book is a sea story.” In the
early 1960s, Cindy Ramsey was one of thousands of children who
raised money to save the battleship North Carolina and bring it to
Wilmington, North Carolina. Though her family was poor, her father
made sure she and her siblings had money to take to school to help
save the ship from becoming scrap. Ramsey grew up in Pender County,
north of where the battleship now rests. She graduated with a B.A.
in English in 1999 and an M.F.A. in creative writing in 2006, both
from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Ramsey began
writing and editing the Pender Post in February 2002, then
purchased the newspaper that fall. She sold the newspaper and moved
to Columbus, North Carolina, in 2006. She is now retired from the
state community college system.
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