By Todd DePastino
Japanese glass net floats
Before he died in 2013, WWII veteran Jack Purcell attended VBC events and shared his remarkable story of serving as a Navy officer in the invasion of Okinawa.
Before Pearl Harbor, Jack was already well known as leader of what would become the Jack Purcell Orchestra, which would play big band gigs all over the country postwar.
When Jack joined the service, he thought he’d hit the jackpot. The Navy assigned him exactly where he was meant to be: playing first trombone for the Navy band in Washington, DC.
Why the Navy suddenly and inexplicably changed his orders to operational sea duty in the Pacific, he’ll never know.
Before shipping out for combat duty, Jack was assigned to one of the most famous yachts in history, the Zaca.
The 118′ Zaca had been built in 1929 especially for railroad magnate Templeton Crocker, who sailed it around the South Pacific during the 1930s. After Pearl Harbor, the Navy requisitioned it, painted it gray, fitted it with machine guns, and used it as a radio ship off the coast of San Francisco to track Japanese ship movements.
One day, while serving as Officer of the Deck on sea patrol, Jack spotted a large green ball bobbing in the rough surf. He turned to the helmsman.
“Head for that ball and pick it up with the net!” he ordered.
Sailors had enjoyed catching these exquisite glass balls for sport. They were net floats used by Japanese fishermen in the Pacific, even off the coast of San Francisco.
Zaca (IX-73) at anchor in San Francisco Bay of Naval Station Treasure Island, circa 1943 (NARA)
These hand-blown glass balls sometimes escaped the nets and floated out to sea until sharp-eyed sailors spotted them.
Jack couldn’t explain why they were so prized. “They were rare,” he said. “You didn’t see many of them. But the rule was, the first man to spot it got it.”
The helmsman of the Zaca took a pass at the green ball and missed.
Jack ordered him to turn around and try again.
“Turning around a 118′ schooner isn’t easy,” he said. “It took a quarter mile or so to circle around.”
The helmsman tried again, but the waters were choppy. He missed again.
“If you miss a third time, I’m jumping in to get it myself!” warned Jack.
Sure enough, the helmsman missed and, true to his word, Jack stripped down and jumped. He battled the waves for a hundred yards to get to the floating prize. As he was doing so, his Commanding Officer came topside and peered out into the ocean.
“Sailor,” the skipper demanded, “who is that man out there swimming?”
“That’s the Officer of the Deck, sir,” the sailor responded.
Needless to say, when Jack wrestled the ball out of the water and over the gunwales and presented himself dripping but triumphant, the Zaca‘s captain wasn’t happy.
“Now, let me asked you,” Jack said to our group, “was that brave or stupid?”
Most of us agreed it was stupid.
“Just to prove that I really did it, I present to you the green float!”
Out of a large shopping bag emerged a gorgeous green glass ball, which Jack held in triumph over his head. He had just run across it in his attic the other day. He didn’t know he still owned it, and the sight of it brought back the memory.
What happened to the Zaca? After the war, the actor Errol Flynn bought it and sailed it around the world before his death in 1959. It then languished, stripped of everything valuable, in a French harbor.
Sounds of wild cocktail parties emanated from it at night, leading Anglican and Catholic priests to conduct an exorcism in 1979. Some years ago, a yacht enthusiast bought it, restored it to its former glory, and it now sails once again in the Mediterranean.
For more on Japanese net floats: http://japanese-glass-Yoats.blogspot.com/
