Schumacher also appreciated his new commander’s directness and informal submariner’s ways. If the captain had a question about radio communications, he went straight to the radio operator for an answer, bypassing—and sometimes angering—the man’s immediate supervisor, usually a senior petty officer. Although he was a demon about enforcing spit-and-polish rules while his ship was in port, the skipper didn’t much care what his men wore at sea. Bucher himself was a bit of a slob, showing up for work in shabby khakis and a tatty straw hat, or for lunch in the wardroom in a T-shirt and flip-flops.
Like many men who’d served beneath the waves, Bucher enjoyed being a little different. One manifestation of that trait was his adoption of a theme song for the Pueblo: “The Lonely Bull,” by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. The melancholy, Spanish-accented tune blared from the ship’s loudspeakers whenever it entered or left port, much to the amusement of onlookers. Many Navy ships had their own insignias and letterhead, but not their own song. The captain, however, considered “The Lonely Bull” a morale booster; it gave his men something special to take pride in. He also felt the song’s title reflected the Pueblo’s unique charter as a solitary sentinel on the immense gray wilderness of the sea.
His casual clothes and eccentric flourishes aside, Bucher was a demanding leader. He set high standards and vocally enforced them. To Schumacher, he seemed to possess an amazingly detailed knowledge of his vessel’s mechanical innards. He didn’t view the Pueblo as just another career stepping-stone, as some officers might, but rather as a serious assignment to be executed well for its own sake.
Despite his devotion to running a tight ship, the captain had no problem with his men cutting loose now and then. Indeed, Bucher, himself a former enlisted man and connoisseur of good times, often led the pack. When he, Lacy, and Harris hit the beach for drinks after work, Schumacher could barely keep up.
At an officers’ club or civilian bar, the gregarious captain was marvelous company, singing and telling jokes and attracting knots of revelers, male and female alike. “You’d get a couple of nice-looking babes walk into the place, and inside of three minutes he’d have ’em smoking and joking and laughing,” Schumacher recalled in an interview 35 years later. “He’d start telling his corny jokes; he was really something.”
Bucher particularly enjoyed the companionship of Lacy, who of all his officers most closely matched him in age and Navy tenure.
Schumacher was drinking with Bucher at the starchy Admiral Kidd Club in San Diego one day when the captain issued a typically unorthodox summons for Lacy to join them. Bucher lunged onto the terrace and, with no warning to the high-ranking brass tippling around him, unleashed an ear-piercing, double-fingered whistle in the direction of the Pueblo, tied up nearby. When he had the attention of the ship’s watch, he began rapidly flapping and windmilling his arms, as if he were trying to take off and fly. Other officers stared at him, transfixed. Bucher was signaling in semaphore for Lacy to come ashore. The chief engineer showed up a few minutes later.
Reserved and self-assured, Lacy had enlisted out of high school and spent so much time amid pounding pistons and screeching drive shafts that he was partially deaf. He’d served on a variety of ships, including Navy icebreakers, and had seen action in the Korean War. With his chiseled face, brush-cut dark hair, and dignified bearing, he was often mistaken for a captain himself. Though he was a tough disciplinarian, his fairness earned him the respect of the men under him in the engine room.
Bucher bonded further with the engineering officer when they conspired to steal a large painting of a nude woman that adorned the submarine officers’ club in San Diego.
The generously endowed beauty, enticingly supine, hung behind the bar at the Ballast Tank, a small, lively hangout that rang with the shouts and good-natured taunts of many of Bucher’s old sub mates. One slow night, Bucher, Lacy, and Harris played pool at the club as they waited for the right moment. When the bartender went to collect empty glasses in the next room, Bucher followed and delayed him with small talk. As Lacy distracted other customers, Harris vaulted the bar, grabbed the nude, and scampered out a side door. He deposited the booty in his car trunk and sauntered back into the club as if nothing had happened. The bartender somehow failed to notice the glaringly empty spot above a row of bottles, and the grinning thieves slipped away undetected.
Bucher displayed the prize in the Pueblo’s wardroom and encouraged everyone from officers to mess cooks to come in and savor it. The Ballast Tank, meanwhile, buzzed with theories about the identities of the malefactors who’d lifted the beloved nude; sitting at the bar again, Bucher gleefully speculated about various suspects. When he learned that Navy criminal investigators were on the case, the painting discreetly reappeared in the submariners’ haunt.
The Great Naked Art Heist endeared the captain to many in his crew. But after witnessing his reaction when the shore patrol arrested three of his men, some sailors were ready to run him for Congress.
The three, all young communication technicians, had seen a movie in downtown San Diego and were looking for a bar to knock back a few beers in before calling it a night. A shore patrol truck pulled up and a policeman accused them of being drunk. Despite their denials, they were hauled to the SP station and booked for violating a Navy rule against wearing “inappropriate clothing” off duty—specifically, jeans and sport shirts.
Late that night, the trio returned to the Pueblo. Their sleeping captain was roused and informed of his men’s misfortune. Bucher thought back to his enlisted days, when overly aggressive cops had often ruined a good night out. Furious, he gathered up the three CTs along with Ensign Harris and drove to the police station.
The duty officer, a lieutenant junior grade, was clearly displeased at being confronted by an angry superior in the middle of the night. When he pulled out a thick manual and quoted the regulation under which the sailors had been picked up, Bucher began loudly chewing him out. The captain noted that the regulation also prohibited wearing Bermuda shorts in public places. Yet he’d seen high-ranking officers in such attire at the post exchange; why weren’t admirals getting busted along with swabbies? Bucher demanded that the lieutenant get his boss on the phone.
The hapless SP man eyed Bucher as if he were from another planet. “It’s zero two ten, sir,” he said, using the military time for 2:10 a.m. “The district shore patrol commander is at home, asleep.”
“I know what goddamn time it is, mister!” Bucher exploded. “I took the trouble to leave my ship in the middle of the night and come down here to deal with the harassment of my crew. So get your CO on the line right now!”
The outranked lieutenant had no choice but to call. When the drowsy police commander answered, Bucher snatched the phone and gave him a tart summary of the evening’s events. The SP chief replied that he resented being awakened at such a grim hour over a “trifling” matter; Bucher barked that the unjustified detention of his men was a serious issue to him and hung up.
Still fuming, the captain later banged out a letter of complaint to the admiral in charge of the Eleventh Naval District, which encompassed the San Diego base. Almost immediately, he was ordered to report to the admiral’s chief of staff.
The staff chief, a grizzled senior captain, told Bucher he’d been put on report after the outraged SP commander raised a ruckus. Bucher emphatically restated his belief that his men had been hassled for no good reason. “If they’d gotten drunk and broken up some joint, I’d personally bust them,” he said. “But for wearing Levi’s and loud shirts?”