Is that what they told you when you came to?
February 1975, somewhere in the Indian Ocean, Latitude 0. The date is important since for almost a decade before that most US Navy ships had spent their sea duty time in the South China Sea, which despite the name, is entirely north of the Equator. As a result, out of over 5000 residents of the USS Enterprise at the time, fewer than 400 were Shellbacks.
The Senior Shellback was the First Lieutenant, the officer in charge of the ship's boatswain mates (decks, anchors, mooring lines, small boats) a 30-year man who had worked his way up from paint-chipper to a commission. His office was right outside the main entrance to our electronics shop. The Senior Polliwog was an AT1 on his final cruise before retirement who had spent his career mostly as an aircrewman on VP squadrons and requested a big ship for his last cruise and thus ended up in our shop. The loudest Polliwog was my buddy Tank (260-pound Italian from New York) who for a few days after the date of the Crossing was announced started every morning by shouting "Shellbacks Suck!" as he passed the First Lieutenant's office.
There wasn't enough time to give every Polliwog the full treatment, so I, like most, only had to crawl through a canvas tube filled with rotten garbage and fresh vomit and then jump into a tank of salt water -> Shellback! The old man was placed in a coffin-shaped box, a bucket of garbage dumped on him, the lid closed, and salt water from a fire hose sprayed on the outside. When they opened the lid, he was chewing on potato peels and asking for more, so they closed the lid and sprayed him down again.
Tank got the full treatment - spanked with lengths of fire hose, grease in his hair and ears, and kiss the baby's belly, in addition to the more common indignities.
On our way back to our berthing area to clean up, most of us just dropped our ruined clothes over the side.
