We felt a gentle nudge shiver through Saipan's hull as the brightly colored harbor tugs with their grumbling diesels churned out the salt water froth and urged our 40,000 ton warship closer to its awaiting berth in Marseilles, France. The shrill of the Boatswain's pipe echoed through the ship's passages and conversation ceased in anticipation of the announcement "Moored, shift colors!" At once, fulfillment of Naval tradition and a signal for all line handlers to take up slack and double up on all mooring lines. Signalmen hurried up ladders to the O8 level to retrieve the United States Ensign from its customary station aloft the after mast and carry it, in respectful formation, to the flag staff specially rigged on the fantail. Engineers repeated their age-old struggle with hot, tired machinery securing the two three-story tall boilers. In the Chief Petty Officer's Mess, the USS Saipan Insulator Hunting Team made ready their gear for yet another foray into exciting, unfamiliar territory. Unfamiliar and old.

Not old like most Americans think of old, but ancient, thousands of years old. So old that the word 'antiques' doesn't even exist in some European languages. Their word antiquities refers to relics fabricated by artisans who flourished in Mediterranean society thousands of years ago. Greek Sailors from Phocea, one such civilization in Asia-Minor, first established the sea port of Massalia near the river Rhone. That picturesque commercial cross-roads that we call Marseilles today is at least 2600 years old. In comparison, the relative age of harnessed electricity and communication equipment seems insignificant, like yesterday. So, with that thought, my shipmates and I set about the 'simple' task of finding yesterday's insulators in metropolitan Marseilles.

During the first two bright Mediterranean summer days of liberty, Mike Warner and I stomped and tromped around in the industrial area just outside one of the many shipyard gates pulling date nails and finding some old glass bottles from around the turn of the century. In the course of our search we realized that you had to look carefully at every nook and cranny because the old, paint splattered insulators seemed to hide In the woodwork. 

While we searched the eaves around a few dockside warehouses and strained to catch a glimpse of glass peeking through the gloomy soot stained shadows underneath an old railroad bridge, I reflected back on a past visit where I had seen a red-amber CD 559.2 half-buried In gleaming white Italian stucco high on the side of an old hotel in Genova, and an ice-green T-bar peeking out from below a 16th century French balcony overlooking a lush private garden in Toulon. I'd often wondered how easily I might have obtained those choice pieces had I been able to speak the language....

When Mike spotted the first rack of gingerbread men under the bridge he let out a holler that jerked me out of my reverie, and I ran through the tunnels murky shadows to see what all his excitement was about. Just inside the far end of tile railroad bridge there were two big green unembossed gingerbread men resting on a loosely hanging rack mount just ten feet up on tile rock wall. It looked as though our reconnaissance was going to be an eventful one.

Mike Warner and two gingerbread boys!

Since we had planned our outing as a reconnaissance, we had neither the tools nor the clothing to support a recovery operation, but we located many desirable insulators including one light purple jewel in the immediate area that afternoon. Even though all of the insulators that we saw were no longer in service, they were still mounted on their iron racks and brackets, they mocked us as we trudged past them on our way back to the ship where we would consider our day's experience and formulate a plan to recover them.

As we approached the control point just outside the dock area, we came to a huge marine engine machine shop with three sets of four CD 640 gingerbread boys mounted securely to vertical galvanized steel posts along its roof edge. Since the insulators were not in service, Mike and I decided that it wouldn't hurt to ask for permission to climb and recover a set of the little green jewels. We walked into the busy shop where we saw pistons the size of small trash cans and fuel injector nozzles you could spray marbles through. Almost immediately we were met by the shop foreman, a wiry old mechanic clad in oil streaked coveralls who wore an expression of tired amusement. After exchanging what little French greetings Mike and I were capable of, we began to explain our request to the foreman. The man spoke just enough English to understand our request after we walked him outside and pointed out our objective. 

With his permission and a nice big pipe wrench that he said would make the job easier and faster, we hustled outside to a corner where I boosted Mike up and he began loosening bolts. Mike had the whole rack down and was back on the ground in sixteen seconds! We walked back to the door where we found our benefactor waiting, thanked him profusely, and returned his well worn but highly effective pipe wrench. With gingerbread boys in hand, we headed once again for the dockyard gate and beyond toward 'home'.

Once onboard, we headed straight to the Chief Petty Officer's quarters where we carefully washed each of the four green ISOREX gingerbread boys hoping that the cleaning would not reveal any hidden damage. That is when I noticed that there was a difference in their embossing. While one insulator bore the well known 'ISOREX' lettering, all the others sported a weird half-backward embossing that read 'XEROSI' where the 'E' was embossed backward but the 'R' and 'S' were not, which made the embossing impossible to read properly even with a mirror. The letter sizes varied a bit and the 'I' was slightly out of alignment.

As soon as I saw the embossing variation I figured that there was no listing for it in Marilyn Albers' book, GIFONA, and I knew that we had an interesting find; so I headed straight for the computer to email Marilyn and get the definitive word. Sure enough, her email reply confirmed what I suspected, we had an unreported embossing variation for the CD 640 ISO REX gingerbread boy. What an exciting way to end a great day of insulator hunting!

Light purple CD 545

Over the next couple of days the Saipan Insulator Hunting Team recovered nine more out-of-service insulators around the industrial area of Marseilles. Almost every one was in great condition and each came attached to its iron bracket. In all, we recovered two CD 642 gingerbread men, six CD 640 gingerbread boys and one light purple CD 545. A pretty good showing for three day's hunting. By that time though, I was already looking forward to our next Insulator hunt in and around Rota, Spain.