Memoirs of Lloyd Moss: 1927
Now to get back to that early morning. We got under way as soon as we had sufficient steam up, went back to Bluefields in a hurry, took our landing force back aboard without even dropping the anchor, then went full speed to the Panama Canal. Here I discovered one of the fringe benefits of my new job. Since there were gyro repeater instruments in all the important navigational locations on the ship, I always found it necessary to be doing something to the unit that was located in the most interesting spot at the moment. So naturally I chose the glass-enclosed fire control station high above the pilot house. From there I could see everything going on in the Canal Zone for miles around. At Balboa supply station we took on a full stock of supplies including machine guns and two small cannon for the landing force. There was no time for liberty in the city this time and we were on our way across the blue Pacific headed for Honolulu in short order. One day during this run I was called down to the electrical officer's stateroom and given a short written test. Afterward he told me that I was now electricians mate 2nd class and I realized that I had another benefit from being a gyro compass man. The Marblehead steamed into the great naval base of Pearl Harbor on approximately February 17th. Then the tension sort of eased up and instead of racing on the China we began to hold battle maneuvers among the Islands and to have liberty in Honolulu and on Lahaina Island.
Naturally I found the islands fascinating and covered as much territory as possible by walking and riding the local busses everywhere. Telling about it would take a book in itself besides the comparison with today's Hawaii is too unbelievable according to what travelers since the war tell me. I did much of my exploring alone or with one other friend. It paid off unexpectedly one Sunday in Lahaina when I was invited to join a group hiring a car to make the circuit around the island. The crowd looked like they were after a wild ride over that extremely rough terrain and I knew the roads had no safety features so I declined and they got someone else to help pay the driver. Late that evening we got the news that the car had gone over a cliff and the ship raced back to Honolulu with one man in a coffin and the others so badly hurt that I never saw them again. I'm sure the memory of that Newport-Providence ride at the end of boot camp helped keep me from taking this trip. Lahaina raised cattle and once I saw a small inter-island steamer anchored a little way off the coral beach. Cattle were being driven into the surf and forced to swim to the side of the ship where a man lassoed their horns while standing on deck then a winch lifted them up like you pick up a rabbit by the ears and in no time they were landed kicking and bawling on deck. I saw a novel way of breaking in new land here.
Most of the area was steep mountain slopes rising up from flat coastal plains. These slopes were composed of extremely rough sharp pointed lava practically impossible to walk over but with rich volcanic soil scattered through it. The system was composed of two big steam tractors moving parallel and 200 yards apart up the slope. Each tractor had a cable winding drum on it and on the ground was a huge very heavy obsolete iron flywheel on its side and attached to cables on opposite sides. First one tractor would reel in its cable dragging the wheel across the field then both tractors would move a few feet and the other tractor would drag it back resulting in a breaking up and leveling of the lava. You could always see rain falling somewhere in between the high peaks of the mountains, and a system of catch basins and irrigation ditches was raised almost exclusively on the flat plains and many little narrow-guage railroads carried out cane stalks to local rolling mills. (See picture in my album). About the fifth of March the situation in China suddenly took a grave turn and the Marblehead was ordered to Shanghai at all possible speed. We began loading the ship full of all kinds of food and supplies plus live ammunition for the big guns, even extra torpedoes for the two triple torpedo mounts that the Marblehead had as regular armament on the after section of the main deck. We worked all day and most of the night then left Pearl Harbor about four A.M..