John B. Marek is a writer, farmer, outdoorsman and recovering economic developer. You can find his books at johnbmarek.com.
I was reading a book on the front porch of my parents’ house late in the summer of 1985 when my mother poked her head out the door and announced, “The FBI is here for you.”
She said it with a sly smirk that implied she always knew it would come to this. I did a quick mental inventory and couldn’t come up with any federal offenses I’d committed in the previous few days, so it was with more curiosity than concern that I greeted the agent at our back door. He identified himself, showed me his badge, noted helpfully that I wasn’t in any trouble and asked if I would be willing to answer a few questions about my friend, Carl.
Carl, he went on to explain, had applied for a job at the Pentagon that required a high-security clearance and he had listed me as a personal reference. The agent went through a list of fairly typical questions regarding Carl’s character (fine), alcohol (not excessive) and drug (no) use. Then he asked the question that almost sunk (pun intended) the whole deal. “Has Carl ever been involved in purchasing or distributing illegal weapons?”
I chuckled.
The agent looked at me seriously and said, “I know it seems like a dumb question, but the position Carl has applied for involves classified weapons systems, so I really need an answer.”
“Well, other than that one time with the French missile, nothing comes to mind.” Of course, I didn’t actually say that, but I certainly thought it.
•••
On April 2, 1982, the military junta that ran Argentina attacked the small British garrison in the Falkland Islands, 300 miles off the Argentine coast. Although the islands were sparsely
populated and of little economic importance, they held strategic value and were subject to territorial disputes for centuries. The United Kingdom claimed them but the Argentine government, incorrectly it would turn out, believed that the UK had neither the resources nor the desire to fight for a bunch of meaningless rocks 8,000 miles from the homeland.
While the UK of the early ’80s was not the naval power it was before WWII, it still had significant military capabilities. It assembled an impressive maritime force and sailed for the remote archipelago.
The British forces quickly overwhelmed the Argentinians, sinking their largest warship, the General Belgrano, within the first few days of the conflict and downing almost the entire Argentine Air Force in two weeks. But the Argentinians did score one major win, the sinking of the British destroyer HMS Sheffield. The Sheffield was sunk with a French-made anti-ship missile called an Exocet, which was launched from a fighter jet.
The sinking was noteworthy because it exposed the danger that relatively inexpensive – each Exocet cost around $200,000 – missiles posed to large, multimillion dollar warships.
The Falklands war was set against the backdrop of the last few weeks of my sophomore year at Ohio University, and by the time I returned home to Port Clinton for summer break, the conflict was resolved and the world had moved on to the next “newsworthy” crisis. Well, most of the world.
My buddy Carl, a political science major, was fascinated by the geopolitics of the war and was prone to launch into analyses of its impact on the British Empire, the delicate balance of South American dictatorships and the re-election chances of then-President Reagan.
That same summer, a historical preservation society from the nearby town of Sandusky bought the barely floating remains of an old steamship called the G.A. Boeckling and had it towed across four Great Lakes to their downtown waterfront. From 1909 to 1951, the Boeckling had served as a ferry connecting Sandusky to the resort town of Cedar Point, some 10 miles across Sandusky Bay. With the construction of the Cedar Point Causeway in 1950, however, the need for ferry service was essentially eliminated and the ship was sold and sailed to Sturgeon Bay, Wisc., where it served as a floating machine shop and warehouse.
The historical society, which called itself “Save the Boeckling,” wanted to restore the old ferry to its original glory and turn it into a floating museum. To achieve this, they set out to raise $250,000.
For reasons I cannot begin to fathom, Carl took offense to the idea of the group soliciting money for this purpose and floated his counter-scheme; we would found an organization called “Sink the Boeckling” with a goal of raising $200,000 to purchase an Exocet missile for that purpose. It was the sort of absurdist line of thought he was famous for, but it was also a touch too over the top. So far as I know, he only ever shared this idea with me and maybe select members of his family who I am sure convinced him that even joking about such a thing would be malicious and tasteless. The whole bit of silliness was dropped almost as quickly as it was conceived, which turned out to be a VERY good thing because in 1989, while at anchor in Toledo awaiting its $250,000 restoration, the G.A. Boeckling mysteriously burned to the waterline and sunk.
My alibi is watertight. As for Carl and those classified weapons he had access to … just a coincidence, I’m sure.