Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club Patch

Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club was the Seventh Fleet's own tongue-in-cheek name for itself during the Vietnam War, in use from 1961 until the fleet left Vietnamese waters in 1975. There were no yachts and no club dues. Membership went to anyone assigned to the fleet: destroyermen on the gun line, flight deck crews, aircrews flying sorties north, riverine sailors and the Marines ashore. The name even turns up in a declassified 1966 command history of USS Enterprise (CVN-65), about as close to on the record as a sea joke ever gets. Say those four words to a Vietnam-era sailor and he knows exactly where you mean.

Seventh Fleet ships first came off Vietnam in March 1950 on show-the-flag tours. In May 1964 three carrier task groups took position at Yankee Station in the Gulf of Tonkin and flew reconnaissance before any strikes had begun. That August the destroyer USS Maddox (DD-731), out on a DeSoto patrol, was at the center of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. Through the war that followed, Task Force 77 carriers struck targets in North Vietnam and supported troops in the South, while cruisers and destroyers worked the gun line and USS Enterprise and her escort USS Bainbridge became among the first nuclear-powered ships to see combat. After the 1973 cease-fire the fleet swept mines from North Vietnam's coastal waters, and in 1975 it carried Americans and refugees out of South Vietnam and Cambodia.

The patch is a 4 inch circle with a navy blue merrowed border around a bright yellow field. Three red stripes run across the field side to side, the colors of the Republic of Vietnam's flag, so the whole background says South Vietnam at a glance. Over the stripes sails a black junk with white battens across its sail, the working boat of those waters and the only kind of yacht anybody saw out there. TONKIN GULF arches across the top in black block letters, and YACHT CLUB curves along the bottom. It is a plain design, and that is why it still reads from across the room at a reunion.

The joke worked because everybody in on it knew what the Gulf asked of them. Flight deck crews worked launch and recovery cycles at Yankee Station, gun line destroyers answered calls for fire, and Marines and riverine sailors carried the same membership without ever seeing a carrier. Calling the whole thing a yacht club was a sailor's way of saying all of that without having to say any of it. The name outlived the war and still turns up on reunion vests and cruise book pages wherever Vietnam-era Navy men get together. Being a member just means you were there.

Put it in a shadow box with your ship's patch and your Vietnam Service ribbon, or on the vest you wear to the ship's reunion. It also makes a fitting gift for a son or grandson who grew up on the Yankee Station stories and wants something to hang next to them. It has iron-on backing and can also be sewn on if you want it to stay put for good. Welcome back to the club.