~ 720th Military Police Battalion Reunion Association Vietnam History Project ~
The Patrick, The Joseph, and The Michael, Tug Boat MPs
Vung Tau Sub~Port, August 1966
   The "Patrick", the "Joseph" and the "Michael" were ocean going tugs operated by Alaska Barge and Transport (AB& T), a civilian company contracting with the Army to move cargo around the rivers of Viet Nam. The crews were civilian and numbered about five per tug; Captain, engineer, cook and two deckhands. The “Michael” was a steel hulled tug, the “Patrick” and the “Joseph” were wooden hulled twins.
   We learned that the reason for our sudden new assignment was that a ship, the Baton Rouge Victory, a WWII Victory class freighter, had been sunk in the river somewhere between Vung Tau and Saigon. A mine had blown a 12’ by 45’ hole in the side and the engine room crew of seven men had been killed. The river was not deep enough to completely submerge the ship, but she was resting in the mud and was blocking the river. The large tugs were to be used to push the ship out of the way and to keep the shipping channel open; an armed MP escort was required on board the tugs.

   When we arrived at the scene, about 22 miles down river from Saigon, the other two AB&T tugs were already nosed up against the side of the freighter. The ship was then pushed out of the channel to the side of the river.

   The ship was held in place by the three tugs until two large floating derricks were brought in; cables were passed beneath the hull and the ship was lifted out of the mud. It was later towed to a safer location away from the shipping channel by the "Patrick" assisted by Army tugs.

   One night I was asleep in my berth when I was awakened by a crash and was nearly thrown from my bunk. It turned out that while the "Joseph" and the "Michael" were changingpositions alongside the Baton Rouge Victory, they collided and the "Joseph" was damaged.

   The "Joseph" received enough damage that it had to return to Saigon for repairs. One of my partners and I transferred to the "Patrick" which had been hurried to the scene without an armed guard on board.

   On the "Patrick" we spent the next month and a half hauling barges up and down the Long Tao River between Vung Tau and Saigon or around the Port of Saigon. When going up or down river the tug generally had two barges in tow and one tied on each side of the boat. And unlike other river traffic, which did not operate at night, we ran the river at all hours. The tug used Radar to navigate in the dark.
   Our usual cargo of ammunition, bombs and fuel made the night trips that much more exciting. This was most true when we took barge loads of bombs to the airfield at Can Tho. This trip required the tug to go down the river from Nha Be and into the South China Sea at Vung Tau.

   We went south along the coast and entered a branch of the Mekong River.The tug then traveled upstream for several miles and then anchored in the center of the river overnight.

   Jungle was all around and you could not see beyond the shoreline. The next day we continued upstream to a canal that connected two branches of the Mekong, passed through the canal and then went downstream to Can Tho. There the bombs were loaded onto trucks for transport to the air field.

   As MPs our duties on tugboats were the same as on larger ships, namely watching for floating debris to which mines could be attached, keeping other boat traffic away, and providing outboard security while at anchor or tied to a dock. Because of the low freeboard, especially around the rear of the tugs, outboard security was much harder and a higher level of vigilance to prevent unauthorized boarding was needed than on a ship that had sides 30 or 40 feet high. We slept on the upper deck of the "Patrick" on folding cots under a large canvas awning that covered the whole deck. While under way we both kept watch and took turns, four hours on- four off, when tied up in port or at anchor. We handled security 24 hours a day, 7 days a week while we were on the boat.
SP/4 Lawrence D. Brown, 188th & 560th MP Company, 92nd MP Battalion, January 1966 to June 1967.
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