From Fort Trumbull to the Seven Seas: the Travels of John Herman Comisak
One of the more than 15,000 merchant mariners trained at Fort Trumbull was John Herman Comisak, a midwesterner who decided to serve his country by joining the war effort after he had been exempted from the draft. His wife, Marylee, joined the Women's Army Corps (WAC) in 1943, and John was admitted to the Maritime Officers Training School in July, 1944, soon after the D-Day Landings in Normandy.
Like most of his classmates, John already had maritime experience, in his case as a machinist on Federal Barge Line's Mississippi River towboats, starting in 1933, and later for other companies.
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Editor's Note - October 2023
This chapter is drawn from a collection of John Herman Comisak's papers and memorabilia presented to the McGuire Library in 2023 by his daughter, Johanna Rhodes, of Paducah, Kentucky. The papers provide a glimpse of the career of a Fort Trumbull graduate, adding a personal dimension to the Library's holdings about the school.
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John's class at graduation, November, 1944.
Students were trained either as Deck or Engine officers. The former were in charge of navigation and cargo management, while the latter were responsible for a ship's propulsion and all electrical and mechanical systems. Given John's work experience, he was enrolled in the Engine program.
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The Seaman Passport was a precious document and no officer or seaman could ever be without it. John's shows evidence that it got very wet at some point. His application for the Passport is also shown.
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A prized item is John's Seamen's Handbook for Shore Leave, a compact book of practical information for mariners when they found themselves in an overseas port. Most of it consists of an alphabetical list of all the seaports of the world, from Aalborg, Denmark, to Zungouldak, Turkey, giving names of hotels, hospitals, doctors, dentists, banks, laundries, amusements and points of interest for each. Helpful foreign language phrases are given along with advice on staying out of trouble!
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Below: More significantly, the Handbook also contains notes about John's seventeen voyages. Inside the cover and on both sides of the flyleaf he recorded the ship names and voyage dates, from December 11, 1944, to December 8, 1950, five years after the end of World War II. He also jotted down arrival and departure dates for the 25 ports visited.
For the ships he notes whether they were powered by a reciprocating steam engine or a geared turbine, two very different power plants which engineers were called upon to operate. Finally, he notes if a vessel is a Liberty or Victory ship, or one of the C-class of American freighters requisitioned from shipping lines by the War Shipping Administration.
John's first foreign voyage was aboard the S.S. Edward L. Grant, a Liberty ship operated by the American-West African Line, which sailed from Baltimore to the Black Sea in November, 1945, calling at Odessa, U.S.S.R. (now Odesa, Ukraine), and ports in Bulgaria, Turkey and Romania.
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Below: Seven Images from the Comisak Collection
1. A month after leaving Baltimore the officers and crew were treated to an elaborate dinner on Christmas Day.
2. More than two thousand Liberty ships were built during WW II. Only two remain afloat, so John's lubrication manual is now a rare item.
3. John's pay for the four-month trip on the Grant, much of it overtime, was $1237.64 after taxes.
4. At the end of each voyage, merchant mariners received a discharge certificate from the Coast Guard.
5. To pursue his photography hobby, John set up a darkroom in his cabin, most likely during the full year he spent aboard the S.S. Green Valley (June 1949 to June 1950) sailing to Europe, the Mediterranean (twice), through the Panama Canal to Korea and the U.S. West Coast.
6. S.S. Green Valley, possibly taken by John. Date and location unknown.
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Foreign ports called at by John Comisak's ships, as recorded in his Seamen's Handbook for Shore Leave:
Bremen, Germany
Brindisi, Italy
Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka)
Cristobal, Canal Zone
Dakar, Senegal
Dunkerque, France
Genoa, Italy
Gibraltar, U.K.
Istanbul, Turkey
Kobe, Japan
Las Palmas, Canary Islands
Le Havre, France
Madras, India
Manila, Philippines
Monrovia, Liberia
Odessa, USSR (now Odesa, Ukraine)
Piraeus (Athens), Greece
Port Said, Egypt (Suez Canal)
Rangoon, Burma (now Myanmar)
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Southampton, England
Talcahuano, Chile
Tampico, Mexico
Tocapilla, Chile
Trieste, Italy
Valparaiso, Chile
Venice, Italy
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Unnamed ports in:
Bulgaria
Colombia
Ecuador
Peru
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U.S. Ports:
Albany, NY
Galveston, TX
Long Beach, CA
Oakland, CA
New Orleans, LA
New York, NY
Philadelphia, PA
Portland, OR
Seattle, WA
Stockton, CA
Wilmington, DE
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John must have found life in the Maritime Service quite satisfying, staying with it more than four years after the end of World War II. The time came to leave, however, and he and Marylee resumed married life in New Orleans (with a family photography business on the side), then moved a few times until John took a machinist job with Union Carbide in Paducah, Kentucky, where he stayed until he retired in 1973. Later in life he took up the photography hobby he had enjoyed aboard ship years before.
John Comisak passed away in 1983 and is buried in Paducah alongside Marylee. Their service to the nation is commemorated by a Women's Army Corps marker on her side of the common gravestone, a Merchant Marine marker on his.
In 2015 the John H. Comisak Photography Studio at the Paducah School of Art and Design was named in his memory.
In Memoriam
John Herman Comisak, 1908 - 1983