Into the Domain of the Golden Dragon: The Meaning Behind a WWII Seafaring Certificate

To most people, it is simply a colorful old piece of paper. A golden dragon coils across the top. A mermaid reclines beneath it. An octopus, sea serpent and strange symbols decorate the bottom. The language is deliberately grandiose, announcing membership in the “Ancient and Sacred Order of the Golden Dragon.” It certainly does not look like an official military document, and that is because it wasn't. Yet to the serviceman whose name appears across it, this certificate marked something real. He had crossed one of the great invisible boundaries of the sailor's world, the 180th meridian, or International Date Line, and entered what generations of seafarers called the Domain of the Golden Dragon.

The certificate in the Ghosts of the Battlefield collection was issued to Richard C. Witzel, identified on the document as “Sea. 1c (R),” Seaman First Class, Reserve. The surviving form records his passage aboard a U.S. Army Transport and gives his latitude as approximately 11 degrees, 5 minutes when he crossed into the Golden Dragon's domain. The printed certificate itself carries a 1944 copyright, placing this particular design squarely within the World War II period. We do not yet know the name of Witzel's transport or exactly where his wartime journey was taking him. Those are pieces of his story we hope further research may eventually uncover. What we do know is what this strange certificate meant, and that story reaches far deeper into maritime tradition than its dragon and mermaid might suggest.

There is, of course, nothing physically waiting at the International Date Line. No buoy marks it, there is no gate to sail through, and no golden dragon sits on the horizon. The 180th meridian is simply an imaginary line used to help keep the world's calendars organized. Cross it in one direction and a day is added; cross it in the other and a day disappears. For generations of sailors, however, an invisible line on a chart was more than enough reason to invent a kingdom.

Crossing the 180th meridian entitled a sailor or serviceman to claim membership in the Domain of the Golden Dragon. The Naval History and Heritage Command recognizes the Golden Dragon as one of a large family of traditional, unofficial seagoing distinctions marking unusual places a sailor had traveled or things he had experienced. These were not military decorations. No admiral in Washington approved them, they did not appear beside the Bronze Star or Purple Heart in a service record, and there was no Navy-wide supply system sending Golden Dragon certificates to ships. Some were created in shipboard print shops, others were designed locally, and commercial companies also sold elaborate versions that could be filled out aboard ship.

Receiving one was therefore never automatic. Thousands upon thousands of American servicemen crossed the International Date Line during World War II without coming home with a Golden Dragon certificate. Whether a certificate was presented depended on the ship, command, available forms and traditions being observed aboard that particular voyage. Richard Witzel happened to make his crossing aboard a transport where someone considered the occasion worth recording, and he considered the resulting piece of paper worth keeping.

One detail on Witzel's certificate initially seems contradictory. His rank is Seaman First Class, yet the document records that he crossed aboard a U.S. Army Transport. During World War II, there was nothing particularly unusual about that. The Army operated an enormous maritime transportation system carrying men and matériel across the oceans, particularly into the vast Pacific theater, and those ships did not necessarily carry only soldiers. Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard personnel could travel aboard Army transports, just as men from different services often moved through the same wartime transportation network. The ship beneath someone's feet did not necessarily match the uniform he wore.

Nor did old seafaring traditions particularly care which branch had signed the travel orders. Once men were aboard ship and crossing oceans, they entered a culture far older than the administrative distinctions between Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard. The Golden Dragon was part of that culture, but it was only one of many imaginary kingdoms sailors created for themselves.

The most famous of those traditions is the Shellback. A sailor who had never crossed the Equator was traditionally known as a Pollywog. Upon crossing for the first time, he might undergo an elaborate shipboard initiation presided over by a mythical court headed by Neptunus Rex, King Neptune, after which he emerged as a Shellback, a member of the Ancient Order of the Deep. These ceremonies could involve costumes, mock trials, ridiculous charges and a great deal of shipboard theater. Historical versions could also become physically rough, something the modern Navy has moved away from, but the underlying idea remained the same: crossing an important geographic line became a rite of passage.

Sailors did not stop with the Equator. Cross the Arctic Circle, and you could become a Blue Nose, entering the Northern Domain of the Polar Bear. Cross the Antarctic Circle, and you could become a Red Nose, sometimes also called a Frozen Stiff, entering the Royal Domain of the Emperor Penguin. Cross the International Date Line and the Golden Dragon claimed you. Cross the Equator at the International Date Line and you became a Golden Shellback. Cross the Equator at the Prime Meridian and you could become an Emerald Shellback. Round Cape Horn and you might claim the title Mossback. Sail completely around the world and another certificate could welcome you into the Order of Magellan.

Taken individually, some of these traditions can look wonderfully ridiculous. Taken together, however, they form a sailor's map of the world. It was not a map defined by countries and political borders, but by where you had actually been. A Blue Nose had gone north. A Shellback had crossed the Equator. A Golden Dragon had crossed the Date Line. A Mossback had rounded Cape Horn. These were bragging rights, memories and proof that someone had traveled farther from home than most people of his generation ever would.

During World War II, crossing the International Date Line carried another layer of meaning for Americans heading west. A serviceman crossing that line in peacetime might have been bound for a foreign station, a cruise or some distant port. During the Pacific War, the destination could be very different. Beyond that line lay places whose names were becoming painfully familiar to Americans: Guadalcanal, New Guinea, the Philippines, Guam, Saipan, Tinian, Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

We cannot yet say where Richard Witzel was headed when he received this certificate, and we should not invent that history for him. But surviving wartime unit histories show how closely the Golden Dragon tradition became entwined with movement across the Pacific. Troops crossing the Date Line sometimes received Golden Dragon certificates or membership cards as part of the voyage. The ceremony itself might be playful, but the reason those men were traveling was not. A troopship voyage could mean crowded compartments, seasickness, endless waiting and the knowledge that every mile carried a man farther from home and closer to a war.

The old maritime rituals inserted a little humor into that journey. For one day, the International Date Line was not merely another coordinate on the route toward combat. It was the border of a mythical kingdom. There was a dragon waiting, and apparently he had paperwork.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Witzel's certificate is precisely what it was not. It was not a medal. It did not mean he had performed an act of heroism. It did not increase his rank, change his pay or qualify him for anything. Officially, it meant almost nothing.

Yet Richard Witzel kept it.

That distinction matters when we try to understand personal artifacts from military service. Museums naturally preserve the objects associated with the largest events: weapons, uniforms, flags, vehicles and medals. They are essential pieces of the story, but those were not always the things veterans themselves chose to keep in a drawer for fifty years. Sometimes they saved a menu from Christmas dinner aboard ship, a liberty card, a photograph of friends whose full names have since been forgotten, a train ticket, a handwritten note, a patch or a strange colorful certificate proclaiming that a mermaid and mythical dragon had welcomed them into an imaginary kingdom somewhere in the middle of the Pacific.

Those objects tell us something the official history cannot. They tell us what a person remembered.

We still have questions about Richard C. Witzel. We would like to identify his branch conclusively, determine the name of the U.S. Army Transport he was aboard, establish the precise date of his crossing and discover where that ship was taking him. Perhaps someday we will. Until then, the certificate itself tells us something important.

At some point during the World War II era, Richard Witzel traveled far enough across the Pacific to cross the 180th meridian. Someone aboard his transport marked the occasion according to an old seafaring tradition and presented him with a certificate declaring that he had been accepted into the Ancient and Sacred Order of the Golden Dragon. Among the millions of men being moved around the globe during the largest war in history, it was a tiny moment, but it was his moment.

That is why an artifact like this belongs in the Ghosts of the Battlefield collection. To the average person, it may still look like nothing more than an odd old piece of paper decorated with a dragon and a mermaid. To someone who understood the traditions of the sea, it said something very different.

I crossed the line. I was there. I went that far.

More than eighty years later, Richard Witzel's Golden Dragon certificate still proves it.