Mischief to Boost Morale: The Esther Williams Trophy, Crossing the Line, and Other Navy Traditions

Picture this: It’s a cool spring night in 1950, and you are a naval officer on the USS Orleck, a Gearing-class destroyer at port in Sasebo Harbor, Japan. The Korean War hasn’t broken out yet, and your ship and crew have not yet had to prove their mettle in a fight; however, tonight that might change. You and your fellow officers are in possession of something incredibly valuable that others will fight to take back. As intruders sneak aboard the ship, the alarm is sounded, and you and your fellow junior officers respond quickly, identifying the intruders and swiftly tossing them overboard.

World War II was over, and the Korean War had yet to begin, so who were these intruders on your ship and what were they after? As it turns out, they were your fellow American Sailors, attempting to steal a coveted, signed portrait of the beloved Hollywood starlet, Esther Williams. For decades, officers in the American, British, Australian, Canadian, and other Allied navies would fight over this portrait, known as the Esther Williams Trophy.

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Why fight over a photograph, you ask? Because it’s fun and because, at some point, it became tradition. The fight to possess the Esther Williams Trophy, by stealth or by force, is just one of many Navy traditions involving mischief, hijinks, and pranks that went on for decades because, despite technically being against the rules, they boosted morale, broke up the monotony at sea, and increased crew cohesion.

The Esther Williams Trophy: An Officers’ Game

Esther Williams was an American competitive swimmer and actress known for starring in “aqua-musicals” - early technicolor comedy-musicals that featured synchronized swimming. She was beautiful, talented, and a strong swimmer.

What more could a Sailor want? However, despite Williams being American, the story of the Esther Williams Trophy begins with an Australian Naval officer in the South Pacific.

Origins of the Trophy

The Esther Williams Trophy was a framed pin-up photograph of Esther Williams, with the inscription:

“To my own Georgie, with all my love and a passionate kiss, Esther.”

Lieutenant Lindsay ‘Georgie’ Brand was a young Australian Naval officer in 1943 when he brought the photograph aboard and hung it in his bunk. Sailors are known for their sea stories and tall tales, and Lt. Brand was no exception. By some accounts, he claimed to be Esther's fiancé to explain the signed photograph. In other versions of the story, he’d never even met Esther and it was a good friend who wrote the message.

At any rate, Lt. Brand was very protective over the portrait. As a prank, one of his fellow officers stole the photograph and took it to another ship. Naturally, Lt. Brand was furious and made several attempts to steal it back, starting a rivalry between the two ships that caught the attention of other Allied Sailors and grew into a massive, years-long series of war games between Allied wardrooms.

Rules of Engagement

The fight for the Esther Williams Trophy wasn’t a total free-for-all; there were strict rules of engagement to participate in the tradition.

First and foremost, the ship in possession of the Trophy could not hide it. It had to be openly displayed in the wardroom, and it could not be secured in any way. The ship was also required to fly a special Esther Pennant letting other ships know the Trophy was aboard.

Sailors looking to steal the Trophy were expected to remove it from the possessing ship’s wardroom either by brute force or by underhanded trickery. You may be wondering: how did the Trophy survive decades of brawls and duplicitous schemes?

As it turns out, there were actually two copies of the Esther Williams photo - the actual Trophy and a Fighting Copy. The Fighting Copy was displayed in a ship’s wardroom and served as the prize to be won. Once intruding Sailors successfully made it back to their own ship with the Fighting Copy, the Trophy and Esther Pennant had to be turned over within 24 hours.

Physical fights were encouraged, but use of actual weapons was prohibited. Using enlisted personnel in any way was also prohibited. This was an officer’s game.

The USS Orleck was the second U.S. ship to have possession of the Trophy, after three officers from the Orleck snuck aboard their sister ship, USS Floyd B. Parks, and stole it right from under the noses of the other destroyer’s officers. By some accounts, the officers aboard the USS Parks didn’t even notice the Trophy was gone until the next night at dinner.

The Tradition Ends, the Story Continues

Between 1943 and 1957, the Esther Williams Trophy changed hands at least 200 times. During that time, as the story goes, Esther Williams herself caught wind of the tradition and even encouraged it, often writing letters to the officers in possession of the Trophy at any given time.

In 1957, the Trophy was retired and given to the Royal Australian Navy Historical Repository at Spectre Island for safekeeping. In 1997, Australian officers once again stole the Trophy, reinstating the tradition. For a brief period in 2004, it was even returned to its original owner, Lt. Brand.

After Esther Williams passed on in June 2013, the Trophy was officially retired for good. It was returned to Spectre Island and displayed in the collection of the Royal Australian Naval Heritage Centre.

The Naval Heritage Center closed in 2021; however, the story of the Esther Williams Trophy lives on, in particular on the USS Orleck, which was converted into a museum ship docked in Jacksonville, FL. The Trophy and its time on the Orleck are a key piece of the story the museum tells about life aboard the ship and her time in service.

Pranks Amongst Enlisted Sailors

Many of the staff and volunteers working aboard the USS Orleck now spent all or part of their careers serving in the U.S. Navy, like Docent Coordinator Joe Gaughan, who served from 1976-1996, retiring as a Chief Petty Officer. The museum’s gift shop manager, Pat Stroud, is a retired Master Chief who served from 1964-1993.

Neither had heard of the Esther Williams Trophy during their time in service. This is likely because the tradition was paused during their years on ship and because they were enlisted Sailors. However, both Veterans had plenty of stories to share about other pranks, rowdy traditions, and general shenanigans that new Sailors were often subjected to during their early days at sea.

Wild Goose Chases

Imagine you’re a fresh-eyed Sailor and everything is new to you; maybe you’d never even seen the ocean or been on a ship before you started training to be in the Navy. You’re probably a little stressed settling in and trying to dutifully follow every order you’re given so you don’t end up on your petty officer’s bad side.

On one of your first days out at sea, he tells you that you need to find a squeegee sharpener and to go ask for one in engineering. You get to engineering, and they say, “Sorry, we just gave our last squeegee sharpener to the guys in Supply; you’ll have to ask them.”

You think you hear some laughter as you walk away, but don’t think much of it because you’re too focused on your current mission. Somehow, Supply doesn’t have the squeegee sharpener either, but they send you on to another part of the ship where they’re sure you’ll find one. This pattern continues until you’ve gone all over the ship and turned back up to your Petty Officer empty-handed, only to realize you’ve been duped. There’s no such thing as a squeegee sharpener!

Sending new Sailors on wild goose chases like this was a common prank, according to Gaughan and Stroud. The object you needed to find always sounded like something real: a squeegee sharpener, relative bearing grease, 10 feet of water line or 6 feet of chow line. In reality, these were all clever wordplays on common naval terminology meant to trick unsuspecting Sailors.

While playing a prank like this on one of the new guys was undoubtedly entertaining for more experienced Sailors who were in on the joke, Gaughan suggested that this common prank had a secondary benefit. It exposed new Sailors to parts of the ship and members of the crew that they might not otherwise see as they spent their days focused on their own specific duties aboard the ship.

Sea Bats and Mail Buoy Watches

Much like squeegee sharpeners or relative bearing grease, other traditional pranks relied on a new Sailor’s naivete about life at sea to pull a fast one on him.

For example, at some point during his first week at sea, the new Sailor might be minding his own business when he hears someone mention that one of the other guys caught a sea bat. Curious, the Sailor would head out to the deck, where he’d find a group of more experienced Sailors standing over an upturned cardboard box.

Curious about this creature he’s never heard of before, the Sailor would be drawn in by the group’s invitation to come closer and see a sea bat for himself, warning him to bend low and lift the box slowly so the creature couldn’t fly away.

Of course, at the moment he bent over to look, the group would commence whacking him with brooms or whatever else they had available, and he’d realize there’d been no sea bat in the first place.

You may be thinking that all of these examples are obvious gags, but how about this: you’re out to sea for the first time waiting on a letter from your sweetheart back home, when your petty officer tells you it's your turn to stand mail buoy watch.

He tells you that the way that the mail gets delivered while you’re out at sea is by mail buoy. A passing ship or plane drops a huge sack of mail at a designated mail buoy for the ship to retrieve during its transit. Everyone on board will be mad if the ship misses the buoy and they don’t get their letter from home.

If you don’t think about it too hard, the explanation actually seems somewhat plausible. It was believable enough to convince Gaughan, who dutifully stood watch with a pair of binoculars searching the horizon for a buoy that would never appear, while the more experienced sailors laughed at the inside joke they’d played on him.

According to Stroud and Gaughan, these pranks played on new Sailors were long-standing traditions that broke up the monotony during long cruises. While they may not be fun for the new guy, they were certainly entertaining and morale-boosting for everyone else who was in on the gag.

Crossing the Line

Perhaps one of the most infamous naval traditions is the Line-Crossing Ceremony, performed whenever a Sailor crossed the equator for the first time in his naval career.

Exact details of the ceremony varied from ship to ship, but there were some common elements that both Gaughan and Stroud remembered from their own Line-Crossing Ceremonies.

Line-Crossing Ceremonies Then

First, the terminology. Sailors who’d already crossed the line were called Shellbacks, and the new, uninitiated Sailors were called Pollywogs. To complete the ceremony, the Pollywogs had to strip down to their skivvies and crawl through the garbage chute. On the other side of the trash chute, Shellbacks waited with Shillelaghs 1- to 2-foot lengths of fire hose or other material that they used to smack the Pollywogs on the bottom as they crawled past.

But the new guys didn't always go down without a fight.

“In our day, the night before you cross the Equator, the Pollywogs had their revolt,” Joe Gaughan recalled. “They would pull pranks on the Shellbacks, or they’d try to destroy the materials that were prepared for the next day.”

Amongst the Shellbacks, a Royal Court was designated, though the exact roles sometimes changed. Both men remembered the Royal Baby, usually the Shellback with the roundest belly. Pollywogs would have to kiss the Royal Baby’s stomach which was covered with grease, hot sauce, and other gross substances. Stroud also recalled a Royal Doctor, who had an oil can full of vinegar or hot sauce that was sprayed into each Pollywog’s mouth.

Each man also recalled some variation of the Pollywogs being dunked in water as a part of the ceremony. Gaughan’s Line-Crossing Ceremony began before the trash chute, with each initiate having their head dunked into the bowl of a toilet that had been brought up to the deck and filled with salt water and other dubious liquids.

In Stroud’s case, Pollywogs were repeatedly dunked in a pool of saltwater at the end of their trial, until they realized their initiation was complete and answered “Shellback” instead of “Pollywog.”

Unlike the other traditions, ranks and experience didn’t play as much of a factor. Both men recalled that they even witnessed Commanding Officers who’d never crossed the line participating in ceremonies, though how much of the experience they were subjected to depended on the individual.

Gaughan remembers seeing his CO go through the full experience and even submit to a few Shillelagh whacks from lower-ranked Shellbacks. However, Stroud’s CO only wore his uniform backward for the day when he first crossed the line.

As they recounted these somewhat gruesome stories, Gaughan and Stroud didn’t seem to resent the experience. In fact, they laughed and cracked jokes as they recalled most of it. Was it fun to be a pollywog? Of course not.

Gaughan even joked, “I still have bruises on my ass from that.”

But it was tradition, a rite of passage, even. And on the other side of it, you were a Shellback, and you got to be in on the tradition when the next round of Pollywogs came aboard.

According to Gaughan, the other benefit of enduring the whole ordeal was that they fed you well and, if you were lucky,

“After one of those is the only time you got a Hollywood shower that lasted more than five minutes.”

Line-Crossing Ceremonies Now

Compared to the other pranks described above, the Line-Crossing Ceremony in Gaughan and Stroud’s day was a much more elaborate and raucous tradition that arguably crossed the line (pun intended) to what we’d now consider hazing.

According to Stroud, just how rowdy these ceremonies got and how much you could bend the rules depended on who your commanding officers were. If your captain was trying to make admiral, he might crack down a bit on some of the shenanigans, but others were more lenient and willing to look the other way for a bit of fun.

Over the years, the ceremonies were toned down. By the time retired Master Chief Jimmy Halleran crossed the line in 2004, the ceremony was “Disney-like” in comparison to the earlier horror stories. He did still have to crawl across the deck, but recalls the trash chute being toned down quite a bit. It was mostly food scraps, and the trash certainly hadn’t been left outside to bake in the sun. He did also have to kiss the Royal Baby, but there were no Shillelaghs involved and no Royal Doctor.

Halleran suggested that one explanation for his more mild experience is that he was on an aircraft carrier with an admiral aboard and a dedicated PR team, which stopped things from being too over the top. But according to Gaughan and Stroud, the ceremonies had been changing as early as the mid-90s.

Gaughan argued that two of the biggest factors were the introduction of women to naval ships and the introduction of new leadership programs for senior enlisted personnel, making them responsible for the younger Sailors whenever things went too far. Combined with a general crackdown on hazing throughout the U.S. military, Line-Crossing Ceremonies began to look very different.

Today, Line-Crossing Ceremonies are still common aboard U.S. Navy ships, but they're much more heavily managed from the top down and are treated as entertaining team-building opportunities that boost morale amongst the crew. Whether this change is for the best depends on who you ask, but at least the tradition lives on.

Mischief Might Just Be What You Need

The Esther Williams Trophy, mail buoy pranks, and Shillelaghs may be things of the past, but Sailors are still finding plenty of ways to have fun and break up the monotony on long cruises, with everything from beard-growing contests to rib boat races, according to Joe Gaughan.

While many of the traditional naval antics and pranks have come and gone or changed over time, the core principle remains: sometimes a bit of unofficially sanctioned mischief is just what you need to boost morale and bond as a crew.