Cast of Characters – Robert Rentschler
Robert Rentschler was a young U.S. Navy Yeoman on starboard watch aboard U.S. Navy submarine Tench the morning of 8 June 1965. As he recalls the incident, “It was during the dawn watch, 0400 – 0800, when word came up to the bridge from the radar man, or the sonar man, about a possible contact just off the port bow.” Training his binoculars on the horizon, into the bright sunrise, he spotted a small mast on the horizon. Because their track would pass within their minimum operating distance zone, the captain was summoned. Commander Bacon ordered the Tench to change course and intercept the vessel.
As they approached, it became clear that the vessel was a “small rowboat with a mast, riding to a sea anchor”. No persons were visible aboard. They hailed the tiny craft with a megaphone, but got no response. The captain blew the boat’s air horn, a sustained 20-second blast of 3,000 pounds air pressure.
At that point, a man rushed out from the tiny cabin, no doubt greatly startled. The captain asked the man if he was in need of assistance, needed any food or water. The man said, “No, thank you”, he was fine. The occupants of both vessels simply stared at each other as the they slowly drifted apart, until they were outside of hailing range, and the Tench continued on her way.
The captain did not ask what the man was doing there, a couple hundred miles offshore. Robert Rentschler and his shipmates thought the man was crazy, but also thought it was wonderful that he was out there doing what he wanted to do, where he wanted to do it, as were they. “Like the Old Man and the Sea, that was just a rowboat and a couple of oars. It was the same thing.”
