National Affairs: A Shape in the Dawn

Those aren't the contours of a Navy man, mused the water-taxi pilot suspiciously, regarding one of his fares by dawn's dim light. Nevertheless, he said nothing as his passengers debarked at Buoy 25 in San Diego Bay, where the crews of three destroyers were beginning to stir. But back on the beach he confided his suspicions to the shore patrol.

Soon the blinker lights were flashing, and the loudspeakers aboard ship had an electrifying announcement: "Now hear this. All hands muster at quarters. There's a woman aboard."

Four hundred sailors, each with an acceptable silhouette, assembled on deck while the officers poked into every recess of three destroyers (the U.S.S. Hollister, Isbell and Knox). In a steel locker near the after stack of the Hollister, an officer found the stowaway: blue-eyed, barefooted, 24-year-old Elizabeth D. Talk, rigged in pale blue pedal pushers and a well-filled blouse.

Hiccuping lightly, Betty was whisked off the Hollister, and the embarrassed Navy decided not to press an official inquiry into several unanswered questions, e.g., who helped smuggle Betty aboard, and how did she manage to slip past the quarterdeck watch? By week's end silence had settled over the incident, to which Betty herself, back at her favorite haunt, Kilroy's Club Alibi, was contributing nothing. "I was drunk," she said primly. "I don't wish to make no further statement."