Of course I had NOTHING to do with this
That "bucket of prop wash" is famous here! I have also heard of freshmen sent to retrieve spark plugs for the diesels, ID-10T forms, fresh batteries for the sound powered phones and my favorite "go get the keys for the sea chest."
Some stories from the last cruise...
When one of the liscensed deck officers got annoyed by a deck cadet on watch, he sent the cadet to find some relative bearing grease. He went searching for it but couldnt find it so he went into the officers mess to ask the captain where he could find it. I guess everyone in the mess got a good laugh out of this.
On the engineer side...
My buddy was on watch preparing to switch over gens. We have three but only need to run two at a time. This was the first time he had switched gens so he was nervous about it. He hit the switch to parallel the gens, heard the turbo slowing down...then all the lights went out. Panic now spread through him and he expected the 1st engineer to be running and yelling at him any second. It turns out that the watch engineer had seen that my buddy was nervous and shut off the lights just as the gens were switching over. Not a nice prank to play when you have a limited number of underwear to change into...
Things you learn at a Maritime Academy...