By KIRK MOORE
Gannett News Service
SANDY HOOK

The twin Johnson outboard motors look well-worn, but they' re running like clocks as Cmdr. Edward Galvacky heads his small boat toward hulking Navy ships at the Earle Naval Weapons Station pier.

At first glance it's hard to tell who Galvacky and his crew are. Clad in the standard green camouflage uniforms of the Army National Guard, they have life jackets like the Coast Guard's and tool around in an older boat that once belonged to the state police.

A closer look at the side of the hull reveals the words " NAVAL MILITIA." More than 100 years after Sandy Hook was on guard against a seaborne attack from Europe, New Jersey's volunteer small-boat sailors are back, helping to guard against an enemy that may come from any direction.

"We're running security patrols at the Salem nuclear power plants and at Earle, and at Lakehurst" Naval Air Engineering Station, said rear Adm. Timothy D. Beard III, commander of the Naval Militia. The militia is a little known, 200-strong National Guard force that was revived Sept. 12, 1999.

Almost two years to the day later, the World Trade Center attack propelled the Naval Militia to the front line in assisting with New York recovery efforts and mounting maritime security in New Jersey waters. The group's medical team was at ground zero 12 hours after the Sept. 11 strike on the World Trade Center, while its boats ferried military and FBI workers across the Hudson River, Beard said.

Naval personnel manned the operations center at Liberty State Park in Jersey City, and are still running the National Guard joint operations center at Fort Dix. About 85 percent of the force has been on duty since Sept. 11, Beard said.

With its eight boats, the force is also assisting the Coast Guard, which is stretched thin. Vice Adm. Thad Allen, the Atlantic coast commander of the Coast Guard, has said he welcomes all the state help he can get. Militia sailors are on standby at Coast Guard stations to help with search and rescue missions.

"We're what you would call a force multiplier. We can do jobs for everybody," said Capt. Jerry H. Rovner, who calls his boat crews a cost-effective solution for homeland defense. "We're like New Jersey's best-kept secret."

Much of the reason for that lies in the Naval Militia's talent pool, Beard said. It has what is typically found in a boat unit: Naval Reserve and Marine Corps members, weekend sailors and towboat captains, but also a virtual Swiss army knife of people with other skills.

Recruited mostly by word of mouth, there are law enforcement officers, doctors, lawyers, farmers, college professors and computer specialists.

"It's a very eclectic group, and that makes us very fluid. We can flow into any situation," said Lt. Harold Bobrow, who in civilian life is a Maplewood pharmacist and weekend resident of Long Branch.

Bobrow was among Naval Militia medical personnel who went to ground zero on the night of Sept. 11 with the state Disaster Medical Assistance Team. Bobrow recalls treating survivors and rescuers in those first chaotic days, and " seeing things that I'd rather not remember," hesaid.

Half a dozen chaplains from the militia help care for the spiritual and psychic well-being of recovery workers who toil at ground zero and at Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island where the trade center wreckage is being sorted.

Capt. Richard C. Joyce spent a career in the Navy submarine service and was executive officer of the base at San Diegobefore he retired to his hometown of Oceanport. With his sailboat tied up at a Highlands marina, Joyce had made Sandy Hook Bay and lower New York Harbor his home waters when he heard about the Naval Militia.

Now Joyce and the militia crews keep recreational boaters and fishermen clear of the Navy ammunition ships at Earle.

"Earle has always had their exclusion zone, but they never enforced it except when they were loading ammunition," Joyce said. The Navy asked for state help patrolling around the pier because the militia boats, 23 feet long with small cabins and heaters, can sustain their operations in the cold winter months, he said.

The militia is using Joyce's experience to acquire and equip its boats. Following a practice used with submarines, he standardized equipment on the boats, early 1980s aluminum models the force inherited from the state police. That way, Joyce said, parts and crews are interchangeable because everyone is trained to operate the same radios and navigation equipment.

Another project is a 46-foot former Coast Guard buoy tender, currently laid up at the former Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, Jones said. Militia officers want to convert it to a long-duration patrol boat, he said.

On the Earle patrols, the boats usually carry at least one Navy guard. This part of the new homeland defense mission requires the state sailors to be aware of federal law that restricts the use of military forces in police functions, but militia forces can always call on the state police and Coast Guard when they need law enforcement.

The Naval Militia name dates from 1894 when New Jersey's Legislature first organized a corps to patrol harbors and assist the Navy by providing reservists.

Some officers point out the group's historic roots go back to the Revolutionary War era in 1775, when New Jersey sailors cruised in armed sloops, on the lookout for British and loyalist ships.

Naval militia officers have given presentations at the Pentagon to top officers who want to know how the Naval Militia concept might help other National Guard and federal forces, Rovner said.

The old Naval Militia was absorbed into the Naval Reserve in 1963, a time when the Navy and Coast Guard were " growing and provided all the maritime security the state needed," Beard said.

In the 1990s, both services, especially the Coast Guard, shrank in numbers. Beard started recruiting members Sept. 12, 1999. On Sept. 15 they were in Bound Brook to deliver emergency assistance to flood victims of tropical storm Floyd.

That's how Galvacky wound up at the helm of this boat on Sandy Hook Bay. A Bound Brook resident, he read a story about the new Naval Militia and how Beard needed a place to keep its boats. So he became the militia's 13th member.

"I've been on 120 days since we started" after Sept. 11, Galvacky said. "It's great. ... I'm an environmental safety engineer, but that's been put on hold right now."

"I have some who haven't had a day off yet," Beard said. "It's tough, but these people are tough sailors."