USS MULLINNIX DD-944
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Rota, Spain 1961
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Excerpt from "The Last Gun Ship - History of USS Mullinnix DD-944"
A Historical Novel By Frank A. Wood
Naval Station Rota, also known as NAVSTA Rota, is a Spanish naval base commanded by a Spanish Rear Admiral and fully funded by the United States of America. Located in Rota in the Province of Cadiz, near the town of El Puerto de Santa María, NAVSTA Rota is the largest American military community in Spain.
NAVSTA Rota has been in use since 1953 when Spanish dictator Francisco Franco strengthened relations with the United States in order to improve local economies. The installation covers more than 6,000 acres on the northern shore of Cadiz, an area recognized for its strategic, maritime importance over the centuries.
The spectacle of bullfighting has existed in one form or another since ancient days. A contest of some sort is depicted in a wall painting unearthed at Knossos in Crete, dating from about 2000 BC. It shows male and female acrobats confronting a bull, grabbing its horns as it charges and vaulting over its back.
Bullfights were popular spectacles in ancient Rome but it was in the Iberian Peninsula that these contests were fully developed. The Moors from North Africa who overran Andalusia in AD 711 changed bullfighting significantly from the brutish, formless spectacle practiced by the conquered Visigoths to a ritualistic occasion observed in connection with feast days on which the conquering Moors, mounted on highly trained horses, confronted and killed the bulls.
As bullfighting developed the men on foot, who by their cape work aided the horsemen in positioning the bulls, began to draw more attention from the crowd and the modern corrida began to take form. Today the bullfight is much the same as it has been since about 1726, when Francisco Romero of Ronda, Spain, introduced the estoque (the sword) and the muleta (the small, more easily wielded worsted cape used in the last part of the fight).
Six bulls, to be killed by three matadors, are usually required for one afternoon’s corrida and each encounter lasts about 15 minutes. The three matadors, each followed by their assistants, the banderilleros and the picadors, march into the ring to the accompaniment of traditional paso doble ("march rhythm") music. The matadors are the stars of the show. They wear a distinctive costume consisting of a silk jacket heavily embroidered in gold, skintight trousers, and a montera (a bicorne hat).
When a bull first comes into the arena out of the bull pen gate, the matador greets it with a series of maneuvers, or passes, with a large cape. The amount of applause the matador receives is based on his proximity to the horns of the bull, his tranquility in the face of danger and his grace in swinging the cape in front of an infuriated animal weighing more than 1,000 lbs. The bull instinctively goes for the cloth because it is a large, moving target, not because of its color; bulls are color-blind and charge just as readily at the inside of the cape, which is yellow.
The second part of the corrida consists of the work of the picadors, bearing lances and mounted on horses. The picadors wear flat-brimmed, beige felt hats called castoreños, silver-embroidered jackets, chamois trousers and steel leg armor. After three lancings or less, depending on the judgment of the president of the corrida for that day, a trumpet blows, and the banderilleros, working on foot, advance to place their banderillas (brightly adorned, barbed sticks) in the bull's shoulders in order to lower its head for the eventual kill.
After the placing of the banderillas, a trumpet sounds signaling the last phase of the fight. Although the bull has been weakened and slowed it has also become warier during the course of the fight sensing that behind the cape is its true enemy; most gorings occur at this time. The serge cloth of the muleta is draped over the estoque, and the matador begins what is called the faena, the last act of the bullfight. As with every maneuver in the ring, the emphasis is on the ability to increase but control the personal danger, maintaining the balance between suicide and mere survival. In other words, the real contest is not between the matador and an animal; it is the matador’s internal struggle.
The basic muleta passes are the trincherazo, generally done with one knee on the ground and at the beginning of the faena; the pase de la firma, simply moving the cloth in front of the bull's nose while the fighter remains motionless; the manoletina, a pass invented by the great Spanish matador Manolete, where the muleta is held behind the body; and the natural, a pass in which danger to the matador is increased by taking the sword out of the muleta, thereby reducing the target size and tempting the bull to charge at the larger object—the bullfighter.
After several minutes spent in making these passes, wherein the matador tries to stimulate the excitement of the crowd by working closer and closer to the horns, the fighter takes the sword and lines up the bull for the kill. The blade must go between the shoulder blades; because the space between them is very small, it is imperative that the front feet of the bull be together as the matador hurtles over the horns. The kill, properly done by aiming straight over the bull's horns and plunging the sword between its withers into the aorta region, requires discipline, training, and raw courage; for this reason, it is known as the "moment of truth".
Ernest Hemingway saw his first bullfight in Pamplona in 1923. It became one of the reigning passions of his life. Hemingway last visited Spain in 1959 to cover a series of one-on-one contests between two leading matadors. Life magazine had commissioned a 10,000-word piece. Hemingway turned in 10,000 words, later published as the 1985 epic "The Dangerous Summer." After Hemingway's death in 1961, two tickets to the upcoming Pamplona bullfights were discovered in his desk drawer.
To be continued...
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