So much of life depends on being in the right place at the right time—or in some cases not being there at the wrong time. Take Frank Shellenbarger, a retired merchant mariner. In 1952, he was living on the fifth floor of a walkup apartment building in Brooklyn; it was a convenient place for him and two other officers to live in between their seagoing jobs in commercial ships. One day, one of the three was carrying out the trash. He picked up a paper bag that contained 15 or 20 empty beer cans. The dregs of the beer had soaked the bottom of the bag, so the cans broke through. They went noisily tumbling down the stairwell and sent the roommates chasing after them. The cans raised such a clatter that curious heads popped out of doorways. One of those heads belonged to Mary Ivil, who at that point met her future husband, Frank Shellenbarger. Perhaps not the most romantic way to make a match, but it was certainly memorable, and the timing was great. They celebrated their 50th anniversary earlier this year.
Or take Shellenbarger’s experience in the Navy. He had joined in 1938 on a “kiddie cruise,” an enlistment that would expire when he turned 21. He shuttled from one ship to another and in the process encountered some remarkable differences in technology. After he completed boot camp at Newport, Rhode Island, he was assigned temporarily to the old sloop Constellation. Although there were no messing facilities on board, he and his temporary shipmates slept in berthing spaces that had first been inhabited some 80 years earlier.
In 1939, Shellenbarger wound up in an old four-stack destroyer he really liked, the USS Herbert (DD-160). But timing intervened. His skipper received an order directing that he transfer one seaman first class to the light cruiser Helena (CL-50). “Shelley,” as his shipmates called him, was the only seaman first on board, so he was picked. Shellenbarger related in his Naval Institute oral history that one of the real highlights of his naval service came when the Helena made her shakedown cruise to South America. He got a chance to go aboard the scuttled German cruiser Admiral Graf Spee in Uruguay to collect souvenirs.
Once his enlistment ended in 1941, he went to work for the Glenn Martin Company near Baltimore. Then came the attack on Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into World War II. Shelley sought to reenlist. The recruiter told him he could go to the Maritime Service officers’ training school in New London, Connecticut, and there earn an ensign’s commission in the Naval Reserve and prepare himself for a deck officer’s license in the merchant marine. He followed that well- timed advice and subsequently worked as an officer in merchant ships until the late 1970s.
The catalog of Shellenbarger’s experience in commercial ships spans the time from serving in Liberty ships during World War II, to serving as master of passenger-cargo ships that made around- the-world cruises, to being chief officer and acting master of the NS Savannah. The latter was an experiment in applying nuclear power to a civilian vessel. In late 1963, the ship was berthed in Texas, still going through teething problems a few years after she was completed. The ship was fitted to carry 60 passengers, so she needed deck officers with both passenger and dry cargo experience. The timing was right for Shelley, so he took the job, first as part of her crew and then as a shoreside superintendent for work on the nuclear-powered ship. He left that job in 1964 when offered his first opportunity to be the full-fledged master of his own ship. Over the years that followed he went hither and yon, including some 85 crossings of the North Atlantic and voyages to ports all over the globe. That way of life came to an end when his employer, Isbrandsten Lines, went out of business. Time was up on that career.
After that, Shellenbarger kept busy with a variety of pursuits, including testifying as an expert witness in numerous maritime legal cases. He also served from 1994 until early this year as president of the Marine Society of New York. His work for the society took him to New York City on 11 September 2001, and he was only a couple of blocks away when airliners crashed into the World Trade Center and unleashed madness in the vicinity. Shellenbarger and those with him feared that something dreadful was about to befall them. But it didn’t. He had narrowly avoided being in the wrong place at a bad time. Following his final retirement, he can enjoy the relaxation and satisfaction that come at the end of more than 60 years connected with the maritime world.