photo provided

Saturday, April 3, 2010, at 0720 hours the local weather was clear and mild with a slight southwest breeze stirring an imperceptible ripple on the Cooper River. The tide was 20 minutes off dead low and a lone observer stood at the Patriot's Point Marina observing a curious sight. An M.S.C. Rapid-On / Rapid-Off (RO / RO) ship, the Westward Venture, silently slipped up river at 1 to 2 knots, however; she appeared to be dead in the water. She hardly created a wake.

The 33-year-old ship, rusted hull, bare deck, and gaping cargo ports made for an eerie sight in the dawn's early glow. It was as if she wanted to slip in unannounced and unnoticed, for it was obvious that the Westward Venture has seen better days. One wondered if the mothball fleet off Pascagoula might have been her destination and that someone steered her into our harbor by mistake. Yet the deliberate hard rudder positioned her to take the Ravenel Bridge. More hard left rudder pointed the ghost ship around Drum Island and up the Cooper River. Could she be heading to dry dock here for refitting?

Not many readers will readily recall that two years ago this month the Westward Venture made international headlines when she fired on Iranian high-speed patrol boats in the Persian Gulf. The incident put the U.S. Mediterranean Naval Fleet on alert, and news analysts pondered Iran's escalation of the ongoing hostilities with the West.

The only knowledgeable witness of the Westward Venture's unheralded entrance was the lone observer staring through his binoculars at the marina on that Holy Saturday day of Easter Week.

The skeleton crew manning the Westward Venture arrived a few years too late to see the sister bridge to the Commodore Barry Bridge that spans the Delaware River at Chester, Pennsylvania, the home port of this vessel. The Commodore Barry cable suspension bridge is an identical, but newer, structure to the old Grace Bridge that once linked Charleston to Mount Pleasant.

Sun Shipyard and Drydock of Chester, Pennsylvania, was the contractor for the 700-foot vessel that was delivered to T.O.T.E. (Toten Ocean Trailer Express, Inc.) Shipping Company of Anchorage, Alaska, exactly 33 years ago this month. Sun Shipping and Drydock built two of these seagoing, heavy-duty workhorses for T.O.T.E. to haul oil-drilling rigs to Prudhoe, Cascade, and Schrader Bluff on the North Slope. In the 1970s Alaskans had hopes of opening the great wildlife refuge for oil exploration and drilling.

Of course Sun Shipyard made big money on the contract, and since the yard is a part of the Sun Oil Company (Sunoco) empire begun by John Howard Pew and Joseph N. Pew over 100 years ago, much of this profit went into the nationally-famous John Howard Pew Charitable Trust -- the one that practically bankrolls National Public Radio.

This iron hull cargo carrier could have spent her entire life in the great waters of the northern Pacific had not the events of September 11, 2001, changed the course of history. Few outside the military will ever know the enormity of the logistical effort that became known as Gulf Wars I and II. The massive amount of material moved across the sea dwarfs anything associated with the Normandy invasion. Three-hundred-thousand cubic feet of cargo was sent over to support just the 1st Infantry Division.

The United States government pressed merchant ships into the Naval Sealift Command for the emergency. Even some commercial airliners hauled men and material for Uncle Sam.

On April 20, 2008, 50 miles off of Iran's coastline in the international waters of the Persian Gulf, when Iranian Fast-Attack Patrol Boats, similar to American World War II P-T Boats, swarmed and made a dash at speeds exceeding fifty knots toward what appeared to them to be an unarmed American merchant ship. However, the Iranians got the surprise of their lives from this innocent looking commercial hull.

Unbeknown to the Iranian Navy, an elite team of U.S. Naval personnel unmasked batteries of twin 50 caliber machine guns while other sailors fired M-16s from the cargo hatches. The fusillade of machine-gun fire temporarily stunned the Iranian commander and he signaled a hasty retreat. An hour later every cable news network in the world was trumpeting the story and speculating on this escalating of tension by Iran.

The text of the Fox News Report of Friday, April 28, 2008, states, "A Navy security team of 12, armed with M-16 rifles and .50-caliber machine guns, was onboard the Westward Venture at the time the warning shots were fired."

"The incident, which lasted for about 15 minutes, began when the Westward Venture attempted to make bridge-to-bridge contact to warn the fast boats that they were too close."

"The Military Sealift Command vessel then blew its whistle and fired flares before finally firing warning shots with the machine guns and M-16s when the boats came within 100 yards of the cargo ship (Fox News)."

Claiming responsibility for the feigned attack was the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. At the Pentagon and State Department our top-level analysts were trying to verify just who the Revolutionary Guard answered to Khamnei, or whether they were hotheads stirring things up on their own. The heroes of the moment were those gun-toting sailors who had a field day not unlike the hey day of John Paul Jones 200 years ago.

Iranians are highly advanced in every facet of warfare, and they possess a credible intelligence gathering branch. It's a safe bet that someone in Teheran was aware that the Westward Venture was hauling military rolling stock to a staging area in Kuwait.

This unlovely ocean wheelbarrow plowed ruts in the ocean between Atlantic logistical bases and Kuwait, and the Iranian speedboat threat is similar to the old German U-Boat menace of World War II. In fact, United States Naval vessels do accompany merchant ships ferrying sensitive cargo in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea.

Just two-weeks prior to the Westward Venture incident an American flag ship, the Global Patriot, a break-bulk carrier, defended itself in the Suez from a similar hostile attack from radical Egyptians. Our armed sailors killed an Egyptian and wounded two others on March 24, 2008, in an incident that temporarily sent oil prices higher on the international markets.

So, what is Westward Venture doing hanging out in our serene harbor? No one seems to be forthcoming with clear information at this point, but one thing was certain on Saturday -- the ship is in desperate need of an overhaul, and there's a top-notch facility up the Cooper.

Remember, Charleston is not only a city of history; it's a city hot-wired to current affairs.

(Dr. Thomas B. Horton is a history teacher at Porter-Gaud School. He lives in the Old Village of Mount Pleasant. Visit his Web site at www.historyslostmoments.com).