November 2000 || Volume 01, Issue 04

Of M-16s and Macs...

One of the great things about life is that you get to meet so many interesting people. I've recently had the great fortune to stumble across Mr. Steven L. Waterman. This gentleman has recently authored Just a Sailor on "a PPC 7600 that has been souped up with a G-3 board." I caught Waterman as his book was getting ready to ship and he was kind enough to take a few minutes out of his hectic schedule to share some of his thoughts about his new book and Macs.

Currently, Waterman makes his living from writing, lobstering, and working as a Macintosh computer consultant -- fairly mundane work I'm sure you'll agree. But the younger Waterman was pretty much a fire-eating daredevil. Bored with his teenage life in Maine, he sought adventure in the Navy, with his eye on a career as an underwater photographer - an ultra elite group of folks that I didn't even realize existed.

Just a Sailor chronicles his extraordinary 12 year career as one of a group of only 15 highly specialized sailors.

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels.

In the process of pursuing this unique livelihood, Waterman went through numerous physically and mentally exacting Navy diving schools on top of various challenging photography schools. (His underwater shots have appeared in several magazines.) He's made over 200 parachute jumps. He's made numerous deep dives to recover, or search for riches on, sunken vessels. He's been locked in and out of submarines resting on the sea bottom. On more than one occasion he's been placed in decompression chambers with the bends.

Most impressive to me is Waterman's service with the Navy's elite Underwater Demolition Team (UDT)-13, which, coincidentally, doesn't limit itself to undersea mayhem. When I asked what he was doing with these bad boys, Waterman told me:

"My main job was intelligence photography, but packed an M-16 and a couple of grenades sometimes. When we did search and destroy operations, I carried a haversack of capped in C-4. We blew up bunkers and stuff with that. On the search and destroy ops, the photos were just for the record, and not intelligence."

So Why Macs?

A guy like this is serious about the tools he chooses. I asked him about his use of Macs on somewhat less intense missions.

"I started out with a Mac SE 030, then a Performa, (the current 7600), and next, money allowing, I will have a G-4 cube with lotsa memory."

What software did you use to write Just a Sailor?

"Mac Write Pro to start out with and finally AppleWorks 5.0. For purposes of mailing it off, I saved it to Microsoft WORD 5.1 and emailed it to them after I had sent hard copy."

Well, Steve, why are you so set on the Mac?

"I am a computer user, not computer geek. I like the simplicity of the Mac and feel that of those who were starting out from scratch exposed to ONLY the Mac operating system vs the PC, hardly anybody would buy a PC. The Mac is the most under promoted piece of gear that has ever been put on the planet. The big sell for PCs is price and the number of stupid games that are available for it."

So, to what use do you put your Mac when you're not writing great books?

"I do a lot of photography work and have started selling prints of some of the stuff I've shot over the years. I don't have ANY crashes on Photoshop 5.5 and am printing on an EPSON 2000P, which I just took delivery on a week ago."

Raving about the Epson printer, Waterman says it

"...is off the scale great. The prints are good for 200 years if you use the archival matte paper. Otherwise you can probably get 60 out of them. I'll fade before they do, for sure."

It's that sort of dry humor that helped earn the rave reviews Just a Sailor is raking in.

The Experts are Saying...

W.E.B. Griffin, best-selling author of The BROTHERHOOD OF WAR and THE CORPS series, says:

Written with humor, a wealth of detail, and some gripping combat scenes, Steven L. Waterman's memoir of his unique experience as a navy diver is a vivid, true picture of life in the Vietnam era military."

Robert Gormly, former Commanding Officer of the astonishing Navy SEAL Team 6 and author of Combat Swimmer, offers:

Steve Waterman was anything but JUST A SAILOR. He weaves a no-holds-barred story of his unique navy career with humor and an easygoing style. A great read.

Whether you're taking difficult photos under the sea, fighting off the bad guys, or hunting sunken treasure in precariously perched submerged wrecks, professionals understand well that you select only those tools which work and dispense with those which do not. Those are lessons that Waterman learned under intense pressures that the vast majority of us will never comprehend. That's why he uses a Mac -- it just works.

Steve Waterman's written an excellent book about people of conscience in difficult situations. Most Mac users can relate to that. I enjoyed the book immensely and I suspect you will too. You can order your copy here. As an added benefit, the money you spend on Steve's book means he's got more money to spend on Apple stuff.

Writers and Macs. They seem to me inexorably intertwined. Sort of like bread and butter, burgers and fries, or rum and coke.

When I mentioned that maybe this column would sell a few books for him, Waterman said "Don't worry about that. Let's sell some more Macs." That type of idealism is refreshing. So is Just a Sailor. I heartily recommend it.

Craig Cox - craig@macosjournal.com
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