Nanorta Goes to Greece – Part II

Today’s post continues the trip of “Nanorta” from farm to Greece and the seagoing cowboys who delivered her, as told through diary accounts of Jim Long and photos from his father’s movie footage and slides taken on the trip.

Seagoing cowboys of the S. S. Villanova Victory, July 1946. L to R, Rev. George Kimsey, Richard Lambert, Darwin Overholt, Arthur Houk, Frank Melick (back), Rev. Wilmer H. Long (front), Jim Long, Harry Herbert.

Most of the Victory ships used by UNRRA carried around 800 animals, requiring 32 seagoing cowboys for their care. The Villanova Victory, however, was one of a few ships that carried livestock on the top deck only, requiring only 8 cowboys.

Rev. Long takes care of “Nanorta,” a heifer sent by his church.

On the two-week trip from Newport News, Virginia, to Kavalla, Greece, the 198 Heifer Project cattle on board kept the cowboys busy with the usual tasks: feeding and watering the animals, tending to newborn calves, and pulling up hay and grain when supplies on deck ran low. And with two ministers in the crew, the cowboys had Sunday morning church services.

Getting hay ready to pull up top on the S. S. Villanova Victory, July 1946.

After a week at sea, Jim noted in his diary, “A freak wave hit the port side, breaking loose the gang way. Deck crew retrieved it. Soon after that a boiler broke down and the ship proceeded at half speed.” Within 24 hours, the boiler was fixed. “Everything else normal,” Jim notes. “The routine is starting to get on my nerves.”

Things became more interesting the next day, however, with the sighting of land and passing the Rock of Gibralter on the way into the Mediterranean Sea. Passing Algiers the next evening, Jim writes, “It was very beautiful with lights stretching for several miles.” On reaching Greece, he notes, “We saw many islands and a beautiful sunset.” And fifteen days after departing Newport News, the destination about 250 miles north of Athens came into sight. The small city of Kavalla (Neapolis of the Bible), on the northern end of the Aegean Sea, stretched out in front of them with the ancient world awaiting their exploration.

Kavalla, Greece, August 6, 1946.

Among the many sights the cowboys took in were the ancient part of Kavalla, the ruins of Phillipi, St. Paul’s jail cell, and the river where St. Paul baptized Lydia.

St. Paul’s jail cell near Philippi, Greece.

The ruins at Philippi.

After ten days in Kavalla, the Villanova Victory made a six-day stop in Piraeus, the port for Athens, to unload the rest of her cargo. This afforded the cowboys the opportunity to tour the Acropolis in Athens and the old and new city of Corinth. “Ancient Corinth has the finest ruins I saw yet,” Jim notes.

Touring the Acropolis.

The trip home included the finding of seven stowaways while sailing through the Mediterranean and an argument with the captain once the ship reached the Atlantic about cleaning the stalls. “We lost,” says Jim. “So we cleaned them up all day.”

The trip also included a rare death at sea. The ship’s Purser died of a heart attack while alone in his cabin and was “put on ice” in the “fish box,” Jim says. After receiving instructions from the Purser’s elderly mother, Jim’s father Rev. Long and the other minister in the crew were told the Purser would be buried at sea and they were to conduct the service. “The Purser’s body was slid down a board and slipped into the sea,” Jim notes. “He was sewed into a canvas bag with two 5″ shell cases and 100 pounds of cement.” A sad, but memorable, event, to be sure.

With the Heifer Project animals being sent to quarantine in Greece before going to their new owners, Jim and his father were unable to go with Nanorta to her new home. But a year after the trip, they received their thanks in a letter from Nanorta’s new owner, a war widow whose husband, along with 300 more Greeks, was killed by the Bulgarians on September 29, 1941.

“I write to thank you and express the joy of all of us,” she said. “Nanorta gives about 10 quarts of milk a day.” The Norristown Times Herald carried the story along with a photo Widow Kallipoi Kl. Karyanni sent with the letter.

Norristow Times Herald, July 31, 1947.

A fitting end to Nanorta’s journey.

Nanorta Goes to Greece – Part I

Not many seagoing cowboys got to accompany their heifer from farm to recipient. The summer of 1946, Jim Long, just out of high school, did. His father, Rev. Wilmer Henry Long, pastor of Trinity Evangelical and Reformed Church in Norristown, Pennsylvania, hatched the idea of documenting the journey of one heifer. He named the heifer “Nanorta.” The children of Trinity and Ascension E&R churches sponsored Nanorta. Slides and still shots captured from Rev. Long’s 16 mm film and Jim’s diary tell the story.

The church school children purchased Nanorta for the Heifer Project from Silver Lake Farm, Center Square, Pennsylvania.

Nanorta stopped by Trinity Church Wednesday, July 10, 1946. for a visit with the children on her way to the Roger Roop Collection Farm in Union Bridge, Maryland, with other heifers and a bull from Silver Lake Farm.

Jim and his father lodged at the Brethren Service Center in New Windsor, Maryland, for the night, where Jim’s supper cost 40 cents.

While Nanorta rested at the Roop Farm the next day, Jim and his father took the train to Baltimore to get their seaman’s papers. “The process was easy,” notes Jim. The process for getting the livestock to the ship is quite another story.

Jim and his father arrived back in New Windsor in time for the loading of Nanorta and 197 additional animals into railroad cars on a sidetrack in Union Bridge.

Jim had a little trouble getting on the train. “Had to hop the train while it was moving,” he notes. “I used the wrong arm to swing on and fell off because of my back pack. But I got back on unhurt…. We made it to Baltimore at 8:30 PM after a very bumpy ride in the caboose.”

At 2:30 AM Friday, Nanorta’s train was shifted to the west side. “We slept in a vacant caboose,” Jim says. “We left Baltimore at 11 AM on the Baltimore and Ohio RR. We made Potomac Yard at 4 PM. We slept at the Bunkhouse from 10 PM. While in the Potomac Yard we watched RR cars being ‘humped’ – pushing cars up a hill and then letting them coast down the other side and being individually switched to the proper track to remake up the new trains for the continuing trip. This also required the use of automatic air compressor rail brakes to slow up the cars so the ‘hook up impact’ could be controlled and hopefully the goods inside the car not damaged.” Dinner at Potomac Yard cost $1.01.

Watering the heifers along the way. Wilmer Long photographer.

Saturday morning, “Left Potomac Yard at 3:20 AM on Chesapeake and Ohio RR and arrived in Richmond at 10:10 AM. We left Richmond yard at 12:30 PM on way to Newport News. At about 3:30 the train stopped along side Levinson’s stock yard to get the animals off the train in preparation for the trip to the ship.”

Jim and his father walked about one-and-a-half miles along 160 RR cars to the stockyards. “We saw cattle herded across the road and into the barn,” Jim notes. The first leg of Nanorta’s journey was over.

One of the Levinson brothers drove Jim and his father to Newport News where they checked into the Warwick Hotel at $2.75 per day. There they met up with two of Jim’s high school teachers who would accompany them on the trip. And there they stayed for the next week, waiting for their ship, the S. S. Villanova Victory, to come in, checking in frequently at the Brethren Service Committee’s seagoing cowboy office near the docks, and playing lots of pinnocle.

A week after arriving in Newport News, Jim, his father, his two teachers, and four additional cowboys finally boarded the Villanova Victory and got ready for their trip. Nanorta would be loaded with the other livestock the following day.

“The VV is a nice ship,” says Jim, “and our quarters were great, by ourselves at the back of the ship in one big bunkroom. The meals are good.”

Ready to sail!

[to be continued in the next post — in the meantime, Merry Christmas!]