During all this time the fleet of yachts had gone clear of misfortune. In fog and mist and blackness they were banging up and down the rock-bound Breton coast amid ragged reefs and pinnacles, through crooked passages, and over German mine-fields. Offshore they dodged collisions by a hair or steered where the “Allo, Allo,” of the wireless submarine warnings indicated that the enemy was active. Good luck and good seamanship had saved them from disaster. It seemed as though these yachts bore charmed lives, but the pitcher can go too often to the well and the Alcedo was fated to be the victim. She had often cruised with the Corsair on escort duty, and between them there was bound to be a feeling of companionship. In port the officers and men had become acquainted, either visiting aboard or meeting ashore. And together they had stood by to aid the people of the Antilles and the Finland at the risk of destruction by torpedo attack.
CHIEF YEOMAN PAULSON
GUNNER’S MATE WILEY
The Alcedo left Quiberon Bay in the afternoon of November 4th with a convoy bound to the United States. In the middle of that same night, with murky weather, the yacht was fairly blown to pieces and twenty men were killed or drowned with no chance to try to save themselves. It was assumed by the survivors, and quite plausibly, that in the darkness the yacht might have been mistaken for one of the transports by the commander of the U-boat, who, if he knew his business, would have preferred to pot one of the big troop-ships rather than a small escort vessel.
Commander W. T. Conn, Jr., of the Alcedo, was carried down with his ship, but somehow came to the surface and fought his way clear of the suction and the fearful confusion of débris and agitated water. He described the disaster as almost instantaneous, a disintegration of the yacht whose frames, bulkheads, and plates must have been ripped apart from end to end as though they were so much cardboard.
While asleep in the emergency cabin immediately under the upper bridge [said he], I was awakened by a commotion and received a report from some man unknown, “A submarine, sir.” I jumped out of the bunk and went to the upper bridge where the officer of the deck, Lieutenant Drexel Paul, informed me that he had sounded general quarters at sighting a submarine on the surface about three hundred yards on the port bow, and that a torpedo had been fired. From the port wing of the bridge I was in time to see the white wake of the torpedo as it drove straight for the ship. Lieutenant Paul had put the rudder full right before I arrived, hoping to avoid the blow. The ship answered slowly to her helm, however, and before any other action could be taken I saw the torpedo strike the ship’s side just under the forward port chain plates.
I was thrown down and dazed, for a few seconds, by falling wreckage and torrents of water. On regaining my feet, I sounded the submarine alarm on the siren to call all hands if they had not heard the general alarm gong, and to direct the attention of the convoy and the other escorting vessels. I shouted to the forward gun crews to see if they were at their stations, but by this time the forecastle was awash. The foremast had fallen, carrying away the radio aerial. I passed the word to abandon ship.
I then left the bridge and went into the chart-house to obtain the ship’s position from the chart, but the lights had gone out and I was unable to see. Stepping out of the chart-house, I met the Navigator, Lieutenant Leonard, and asked him if he had been able to send a radio and he said, “No.” I then went with him to the main deck and told him to take charge of cutting away the forward dories and life-rafts.
At the starboard gangway I stumbled over a man lying face down. I rolled him over and spoke to him, but received no reply and was unable to make out who he was, as we were all in darkness. It is my opinion that he was already dead. Moving to the after end of the ship, I took station on a gun platform. The ship was filling rapidly and her bulwarks amidships were level with the water. I sung out to cut away the after dories and life-rafts and throw them in the water, and told the men near me to jump over the side.
Before I could follow them, however, the ship listed heavily to port, plunging down by the head and sinking. I was dragged down with her, but came up again and swam to a life-raft to which three men were clinging. We managed to lift ourselves upon it, and then, looking around, I observed Doyle, chief boatswain’s mate, and one other man in the whaleboat. We paddled over to them and crawled into the boat. It was half-filled with water and we started to bale and to rescue survivors from the wreckage. The whaleboat was quickly crowded to capacity and no more could be taken aboard. We then picked up two overturned dories which were nested together, separated and righted them only to find that their sterns had been smashed. Presently we discovered another nest of dories which were found to be seaworthy. We shifted some of the men into them from the whaleboat and proceeded to pick more men from the wreckage. During this time, cries of distress were heard from others adrift who had floated some distance away. Two of them were believed to be Ernest M. Harrison, mess attendant, and John Winne, seaman. We proceeded to where they were last seen, but could find no trace of them.
About this time, which was probably an hour after the ship sank, a German submarine approached the scene of the torpedoing and lay to near some of the dories and life-rafts. No effort was made to assist the men freezing in the water. Three Germans, presumably the officers, were visible upon the top of the conning tower as they stood and watched us. The U-boat remained on the surface about half an hour and then steered off and submerged. I then made a further search through the wreckage to be sure that none of my men were left in the water. At 4.30 in the morning we started away from the scene to attempt to make the nearest land.
The flare of Penmarch Light was visible and I headed for it, observing the star Polaris and reckoning the light to be about northeast. We rowed the boats all through the forenoon and sighted the Penmarch Lighthouse at 1.15 P.M. Keeping steadily at the oars, turn and turn about, we moved toward the coast until 5.15 in the afternoon when a French torpedo boat took us aboard. There were three officers and forty men of us, who were promptly carried into Brest, where I was informed that two other dories, containing three officers and twenty-five men, had landed at Penmarch Point. This was the first news that these had been saved, for they had not been seen by any of my party near the place of the disaster.
It was true of the Alcedo that in the moment of gravest crisis the cohesion and discipline of the Navy manifested itself. Orders were given and obeyed while the shattered yacht was dropping from under the feet of the young men and boys who had worn the uniform only a few months. It was a nightmare of an experience in which panic might have been expected, but officers and bluejackets were groping to find their stations or endeavoring to cut away boats so that others might be saved. Such behavior was fairly typical of the patrol fleet, although no other yacht was doomed to such a fate as this, but there was the stuff in the personnel to stand the test and the spirit of fidelity burned like a flame.
The yachts had been playing the game lone-handed, hoping to be reinforced by enough destroyers to move the American convoys which were subjected to long and costly delays in the French ports for lack of escort vessels to carry them out through the danger zone. The news that the United States proposed to build two hundred destroyers sounded prodigious, but it failed to fit the immediate occasion. To the Queenstown base were assigned the up-to-date oil-burning destroyers as fast as more of them could be diverted from home, and they were doing superb and indispensable service in cruising a thousand miles offshore to meet and escort the troop convoys in to France, but they could not tarry to take the ships out again nor to protect the slower supply convoys and undertake the other work of the Breton Patrol.
The French coast was compelled to do the best it could with the cards that were dealt. There was no such thing as discouragement in the Corsair or her sister ships, but the feeling grew that the job was vastly bigger than the resources. It was singularly cheering, therefore, when the flotilla of veteran coal-burning destroyers came storming in from the Azores, all stripped and taut and ready for business, looking for trouble and unhappy until they could find it. They became close kindred of the yachts, sharing the rough weather cruises with the convoys and, when in port, taking their doses of the dirty, back-breaking work of eternally shovelling coal in little baskets. And by the same token, their men wore the common mark of the trade, the shadows of grime beneath the eyes which soap and water could never entirely remove. Yachts and destroyers took orders from each other at sea and seldom disagreed. The authority depended upon which commander held the senior naval rank to qualify him to direct the movements of the patrol division.
Reid, Smith, Flusser, Lamson, and Preston, they were rated as no longer young and in size were lightly referred to as the “flivver” class when compared with the thousand-ton destroyers operating out of Queenstown, while bets were made that a winter in the Bay of Biscay would be too much for them. But they stood the gaff and sailed home again after the war, while the unterrified crews bragged of the merits of their sturdy boats and forgot all the hardships. Like the yachts they had a sprinkling of college rookies among the bluejackets, and of Reserve officers on the bridge, while the Regular Navy leavened the lump.
BUCKING INTO THE WINTER SEAS
SHE TAKES ’EM ABOARD GREEN
When the November winds began to show their temper, blowing strong from the west and north, the Corsair had a foretaste of what the winter service would be like. There happened to be no one aboard who took the trouble to set down on paper, in diaries or letters home, just what the life was in the crowded compartments below decks when the ship was bucking and rolling five hundred miles offshore and the combers toppled green over the bows. In the Reid destroyer, however, was a young lawyer from Wisconsin, Timothy Brown, who was not only a very able seaman, but also something of an artist with a pen, and he managed to convey very adequately what all these young mariners put up with in order to make the seas safe for democracy. Almost word for word, he might have been writing of the Corsair:
A wave suddenly lifted us and I went down on my right hip, sustaining severe contusions and abrasions, not to mention a general shaking up. Our chief pharmacist’s mate rushed up with a tourniquet, iodiform gauze, and sticking plaster and asked me what I needed worst. Thanking him, I made my way below and moored to a stanchion for chow. I call attention to the stanchions because our tureens, containing food and silverware, were hitched to them while the rest of the food was in aluminum platters which the mess cooks surrounded as best they could with their feet and knees. Occasionally a platter would get away from our inexperienced mess cook of the Reserve Force and he would dive across the compartment to nab it, only to lose other dishes which he was safeguarding. The hungry sailors would assemble the chow again, whereupon each man would help himself and eat under whatever endurable circumstances he could find.
Gentle reader, imagine yourself perched upon a camp-stool with your face to port and your back to starboard, at the seamen’s dining-table, trying to steer a bowl of soup safely into your face. The ship rolls forty-five degrees and your stool and soup bowl begin to slide at the same time. You hold the edge of the table with your left hand, clamp your spoon down hard into the bottom of the bowl to secure it, then cautiously push yourself to your feet, for the stool threatens to carry you across the compartment in a jiffy. The angle of the bowl now being constant with the relation it bears to the table, the angle described by the ship’s lurch spills half your soup. You quickly release your grip on the table edge and take the soup in both hands to steady it. This leaves the soup suspended perfectly between zenith and nadir, fixed in its relation to the bowl, if you don’t weaken. Your spoon and slice of bread have been sliding all over the table, kept from hitting the wet deck only by a wooden flange. Before you can plan a campaign to absorb the soup, your feet begin to slip and ere you can blink an eye you have slid four yards across to the starboard mess table, your feet tangled with a stool, and you bump into a shipmate who turns loose his own soup so that it fits perfectly down the back of your neck.
The other day a tureen of canned salmon skidded off a near-by locker and landed under the starboard table. The mess cook plunged after it, but missed it by a hair. The tureen bounded into the lap of our Irish oiler, who shouted gleefully, as he clutched it with both hands, “I’ve got the bloody thing.” I was reminded of a fat football player receiving the ball on the kick-off in his centre of gravity and not knowing what to do with it. The ship’s swing back upset our hero and the salmon slipped away from him, landing on the locker of a gunner’s mate and spoiling a brand-new suit of liberty blues.
I had the misfortune, at this sad moment, to let a ration of stew get away from me to the deck. There was no use in staying below to hear the mess cook rave, so I seized a cold potato between my teeth and followed it madly all the way to the chart-house where I feasted in peace. I was thankful to be alive, thankful that I had a slippery deck to skate on, a speaking-tube to cling to, and an oilskin coat which fitted so snugly about my neck that not more than a quart of briny water seeped into it every time our good ship did a courtesy to the waves. Only a third arm could have made me happier. Every sailor needs one in his business.
The deck continued to be a sort of good-natured joggling board which playfully teased you, smashed you, and tried to exterminate you. In another hour I had contracted decorations on my knees that stuck out like hens’ eggs, slivers of skin had been peeled off my shins, and pains of various kinds convinced me that, although my heart, lungs, and diaphragm were still working, they had shifted from their accustomed places. I had grown so feeble from underfeeding and excitement that you could have knocked me flat with a dried herring. It would have been an advantage to go below and try to sleep, but the ship was as unsteady down there and the stifling air was not tempting.
When it was time to go below, a sudden encounter with a wave sent me to my hands and knees. Bethlehem steel is hard, so I crawled the distance to the ladder and fell to the quarter-deck, then fell down the other ladder to the head of my bunk. Only one light was burning and it was all wrapped up in black cotton socks so the submarines couldn’t see us. I groped my way into the bunk and removed my shoes, this being an old custom with sailors, to rest the feet. Then I stretched out and was ready for a few hours of slumber. However, the waves continued to pound us and made the night hideous. The machinery creaked and groaned and a leaky steam-pipe kept whistling like a peanut roaster. To stay in my bunk it was necessary to run my arms beneath an elastic strap that goes over the middle of the mattress and under the metal frame.
In this position I remained doggedly silent until midnight when our watch was called again. I was so sleepy that I remembered little of what happened during the next four hours, except that at the end of it I noticed a radio man swinging around a smokestack in an effort to snag our flying wireless apparatus and put it to rights again. After two or three hours more of misery in the bunk, breakfast time came, with beans and loaf bread on the menu, and I felt sure that I would be lucky if I could stomach a single bean. Beans didn’t look a bit good to me, yet I was forced to eat something or I couldn’t stand another watch.
At the table we did not waste much time on etiquette. To wash your face for breakfast during a gale was considered a decided economic disutility, and we didn’t care what place we occupied just so we got a mouthful of grub. But one thing was always insisted on, and that was for a man to remove his headgear at meals. It didn’t make any difference whether a fellow had any pants on or not, but he must not presume to wear a white hat or a watch-cap. All hands would howl him out of the compartment.
The foregoing fragment of a deep-sea idyll is included in a war story of the Reid destroyer as deftly compiled by George M. Beatty, Jr., one of that dashing crew, and published with the title, “Seventy Thousand Miles on a Submarine Destroyer.” This young man was heartless enough to print in the volume a ballad of his own devising which had such things as these to say of the author of this chronicle of the Corsair:
Soon after the flotilla of coal-burners came to Brest, the whole scheme of American naval operations in France took on a new aspect with the arrival of Rear-Admiral Henry B. Wilson. He was the man to perceive the vital need of expansion and to create the organization so urgently required. Outspoken yet tactful, with the hearty affability of a sailor and the energy of a captain of industry, Admiral Wilson proceeded to build upon the surmise that the war might last three years and demand an American army of four million men. The pulse of the service quickened and the response was loyal and instant.
It was not long before the executive offices of the Admiral and his staff, in a tall building of Brest, resembled the headquarters of a busy firm in Wall Street. It was the centre of a network of communication by wire and radio with the entire shore-line of France, from Dunkirk to the edge of Spain, and with the Allied naval chiefs of Paris, London, and Washington.
The Corsair received her orders and did as she was told, but guiding her movements was the complex and far-flung activity of the secret intelligences which revealed only the deductions and the results. The Admiral’s changing charts were dotted with tiny flags and lines of red ink which recorded, hour by hour, the track of every German submarine that stole seaward from Zeebrugge, and the plodding courses of every Allied convoy that steered in hopes of a safe haven. The decoding room unravelled the messages that whispered by day and night from a hundred sources, or caught and read the German ciphers that were sent to the U-boat skippers far out at sea.
Bit by bit was put together an organization of equipment and personnel which extended from Brest to a dozen other bases and separate patrol divisions, each with its own subordinate commander. Gradually it came to embrace such a list of departments and responsibilities as these:
| Coastal convoy escorts | Yard Boatswain’s Office |
| Harbor tug fleet | Radio repair shop |
| Naval Port Officer | Naval magazine |
| Marine Superintendent | Naval hospitals |
| Supply office | Shore patrol |
| Repair shops | Docks |
| Repair ship | Canteens |
| Barracks | Oiling stations |
| Personnel | Coastal stations |
| Pay Office | Coaling stations |
| Public Works. | |
THE SHIP’S COOKS AND THE WARDROOM STEWARD
THE NOBLE JOB OF PEELING “SPUDS”
All this was not set in motion in a week or a month. Admiral Wilson had to build almost from the foundation. The French organization was depleted and worn. Vice-Admiral Moreau and Rear-Admiral Grout achieved everything in their power to assist the American undertaking, with men, ships, and material, but it was unfair to expect too much of them. When the Queenstown destroyers came into Brest and the officers found time to go ashore, you might have heard them boast, in the most gentlemanly terms, of the splendid efficiency of their own base and the extraordinary ability of Admiral Sir Lewis Bayly, who directed their operations. At this, an officer from the Corsair was likely to fling back that the Queenstown outfit ought to get on, with the vast resources of the British Admiralty at its disposal and a base that had nothing much more than a fleet of destroyers on its mind. The whole French coast was cluttered up with transports and cargo boats, from Brest to Bordeaux, and it was some job to keep them moving, not to mention chasing Fritz. And as for Admiral Sir Lewis Bayly, K.C.B., he was said to be a fine old bird, but he wasn’t the only two-fisted, “iron-bellied” admiral in the war zone, and the doctrine of the Breton Patrol was “Wilson, that’s all.” In such manner was voiced the spirit of friendly rivalry between the Navy men of Brest and Queenstown and it was the kind of loyalty which you might expect.
French opinion of the work of the American naval forces found expression in the newspapers. Admiral Wilson was held in the highest regard, personally and officially, and L’Illustration said of him:
The indomitable will of our Allies is represented by Admiral Wilson. He has a physiognomy which you never forget. His quick manner of shaking your hand while looking you squarely in the face, the smile which, I dare say, follows up the orders he gives, his brief and concise speech, denote a great firmness of character. He knows what he is here for and what to do, and as he wishes to carry on a big task properly he frees himself completely of details,—on his desk are no papers, no books, no litter of documents. He is precisely aware of what he wishes to be done, and when he has spoken his serenity shows that not for a second does he doubt that he will be obeyed.
La Dépêche, one of the journals of Brest, manifested the cordial feeling of the city in stating:
Admiral Wilson is now a well-known figure among us. He takes part in our daily life, shares in all our sorrows as well as in our hopes. Later, without doubt, the title of “Citizen of Brest” will be conferred upon him. It is a pleasure to converse, if only by means of an interpreter, with this fine mind which has a natural tendency to action. He makes his resolutions without embarrassing himself with paper work or useless formalities.
In the first week of November, the Corsair was sent to England with a group of American ships which were to join an outward-bound convoy assembling at Mount’s Bay, Penzance. Quartermaster Carroll Bayne mentioned this trip in his diary, as follows:
November 5th. Penzance is very interesting. All sorts of seaplanes, etc., flying about. I did not rate liberty, but most of the men did and went ashore for a few hours. I amused myself by holding a long conversation with a naval quartermaster on a British yacht, the Venetia, anchored near us. He was a good chap and a typical “Limey,” with his “carry on” and “awfully.” ... 6th. Left Penzance. Night very dark. We have in the convoy, besides the four destroyers, the steamers Houston, Evangeline, Montanan, and two others. The Clan Cummings was to have come with us, but joined the British convoy which left half an hour ahead of us. She was torpedoed at 8 P.M. She was the biggest ship in the whole flock and was right in the middle of sixty-five other vessels. How the Germans do it, I can’t see. We had a scare this morning when the Evangeline hit something, either a mine or a wreck, or a submarine, or a torpedo. We dashed around and stirred things up, but there was no explosion or disturbance in the water. We proceeded to Saint-Nazaire and anchored safely.... Had a great fight on board. The “Spic” cook got into an argument with one of the firemen and it was some set to. The cook drew a knife which Dave Tibbott snatched away from him. The skipper took a hand and he surely had a full head of steam.
Another trip out with empty transports and then the Corsair was assigned to the escort of two of the huge ships which were unlucky enough to be torpedoed several months later, the President Lincoln and the Covington. This time they passed safely through hostile waters, and with them were the Pennsylvania, Nansemonde, and Neches. When these towering troop-ships began crowding into Brest, including those which had been German liners, it was significant of the fact that the American Army was really moving into France. Instead of battalions or regiments, the convoys were thenceforth to disembark whole divisions, and Brest was to see from fifteen thousand to forty thousand stalwart American soldiers pour out of one group of ships after another. The responsibility of the escort vessels was heavily increased, and officers and men thanked God when one of these tremendous argosies had been moored outside the breakwater without hindrance or mishap.
It was while waiting for this convoy, just mentioned, to be ready for sea, on November 16th, that the Corsair became considerably agitated for fear that Commander Kittinger had been lost or mislaid. Quartermaster Bayne reflected the general state of mind when he noted:
Still in Quiberon Bay, waiting for the captain. Everybody is getting worried as to what has happened to him and the Smith. The scuttle-butt is full of rumors.... Tibbott, Houtz, Evans, Barry, and others are to be sent home to get commissions, but not a chance for me. The only thing, I guess, that our captain would recommend me for is a firing squad.
Commander Kittinger was having troubles of his own which may serve to convey an idea of the little trials and tribulations which were apt to beset the course of events in French seaports. In language admirably restrained, considering the provocation, he reported to Admiral Wilson:
The escort commander left the Corsair and embarked in U.S.S. Smith to make passage to Saint-Nazaire for conference with the Naval Port Officer. Shortly after passing du Four Light, the Smith was lost in the fog and anchored about 9.30 A.M. A boat was lowered and by noon the ship was located as between Grand Charpentier and Le Pierre Perce. At this time a strong ebb tide was running which made navigation by dead reckoning doubtful. The Smith also had on board the French military pilot. Another attempt was made to reach the mouth of the Loire, but the soundings indicated shoal water and the ship was again anchored. Finally, at 10.30 P.M., the fog lightened sufficiently so that the principal navigation lights were visible and the ship got under way and anchored at Saint-Nazaire at 11.30 P.M. The fog again set in and continued through the night.
At 6 A.M., November 17th, I left the Smith to go ashore to confer with the Naval Port Officer. At this time the tide was running about five knots ebb and the fog was so thick that objects could not be distinguished for more than a hundred yards distant. The boat missed the landing and fetched up on the beach at Le Petit Taraict. I walked ashore and reported to the Naval Port Officer about 9.30 A.M. He informed me that he had no news, and calls were made at the Army Base and upon the Commandant Marine. No information of importance was obtained at the latter place. Afterwards a call was made at the Bureau de Renseignements which was found closed. An appointment was made for me to get the latest news at this office at 1.00 P.M.
Upon my return at that time the office was still closed. About 2 P.M. the fog lifted and I returned to the Smith in the captain of the port’s launch. On going aboard I found that urgent engine repairs were being made which would delay the ship for two hours or more. As it was impossible to get to Quiberon and hold conference in time to move the convoy that night, I decided to delay sailing until the following morning. An appointment was made for a visit at the Bureau de Renseignements at 7 A.M. on the 18th, by the Naval Port Officer. I reported at that time and found the office was closed. I communicated by telephone with the office of the Commandant Marine and received no further news. Returned to Smith and got under way for Quiberon.
Six months of service in the Corsair had hammered most of the greenhorns into rough-and-ready sailor-men who had come to know the ways of a ship and the feel of the sea. A few still suffered and were pallid about the gills when the waves rolled high, but it was everlastingly to the credit of these unfortunates that they made no effort to be shifted to shore duty and were resolved to stick it out to the bitter end. The war bred many kinds of heroes and among them is to be rated the sailor who continued to be seasick. One youth in the Corsair confessed that he could never sleep below, but in all weather, month after month, he curled up on deck, in a boat, or wedged himself in odd corners, wet or shivering, nor had he any other intention than to stay with the ship until she flew her homeward-bound pennant.
BOATSWAIN’S MATE HOUTZ IN THE NAVY’S STORM CLOTHES
SWOLLEN SEA, FROM THE FORWARD CROW’S-NEST
The enlisted personnel, in respect of intelligence, ambition, and education, excelled the average of the Regular Navy. This was bound to be true of a Reserve Force recruited as this was. Many of them were anxious to win promotion and to attain commissioned rank. It was realized that the swift expansion of the Navy, with a strength of fifteen hundred ships and four hundred thousand men already in sight, had made the shortage of officers acute. There was no prejudice against the Naval Reserve, and from its ranks were chosen most of the ensigns and lieutenants for the new fleets of destroyers and submarine chasers, for the transports and the armed guard of the merchant marine.
The word had passed through the Corsair that examinations could be held and commissions granted on board ship or at the base, and also that applicants whose records merited it might be chosen by the commander to go to Annapolis for the three months’ intensive course which would turn them out as temporary ensigns in the Regular Navy. Some of the aspirants preferred to study while in the ship and try to pass the tests, a little afraid that if detached for Annapolis they might not be sent back to the war zone.
It was inspiring to find the ship’s officers anxious to assist these ambitions. The Corsair became more or less of a nautical school. Earnest young men were to be found frowning over problems and text-books instead of playing cards at the mess tables or reading old magazines. Those who had been in college had a certain advantage in that they had been compelled to make some sort of an acquaintance with mathematics and were presumed to have acquired the habit of study. It was the popular thing to be a grind. Lieutenant McGuire and Chief Quartermaster Shelton Fair showed keen interest in teaching navigation and were very helpful to the pupils who wrestled with the knotty points of the subject.
The novelty wore off, of course, and the laggards fell by the wayside, for the requirements were stiff, and dogged persistence and many a headache were required to master the technique of the naval ensign’s job. The reward was waiting, however, for those who deserved it, and there was no taint of caste or favoritism. The service was essentially democratic, barring only the differences in station which discipline demanded. Through the autumn and winter, the Corsair was schooling a fine group of ensigns for duty in other ships.
It may be of interest to explain what this course included, as defined by the Bureau of Navigation in a formidable document “Relative to Examinations of Enlisted Men of Regular Navy for Appointment as Ensigns for Temporary Service, also of Certain Reservists and National Naval Volunteers to Ensigns, Naval Reserve Force.”
In a general way the would-be ensign of the line was expected to pass examinations, written and oral, in such departments of knowledge as these:
General Instructions
Acquaintance with Navy Regulations and Naval Instructions and General Orders of the Navy Department.
Care of enlisted men’s clothing, bedding, and equipment and marking same.
Emergency drills,—such as fire, collision, abandon ship, etc.
Navigation (except Nautical Astronomy)
Rules for preventing collisions, international and inland.
System of buoyage in the United States.
Use of charts.
Describe a magnetic compass.
Describe how to lay a course.
What is variation and deviation?
Use of a pelorus.
Ability to take bearings and determine position by same.
Use of hand lead and precautions to be taken in obtaining soundings with hand lead.
Use of soundings in fixing positions.
Ability to read mercurial barometer.
Ability to navigate by dead reckoning.
Use of Chip log.
Use of patent log.
Adjustments of a sextant.
Use of an azimuth circle.
Use of Sir William Thompson’s sounding machine.
How to obtain chronometer rate by tick at noon.
Navigation (Nautical Astronomy, Sights, etc.)
Ability to take and work out the following sights of the sun:
Meridian altitude, time sight for longitude, obtain error of compass.
Seamanship
Types of boats used in the Navy and their equipment.
Handling of boats under oars and sail.
Boat salutes.
Hoisting boats.
Man overboard—lowering and handling of lifeboats.
Ground tackle and how to care for. Marking chain.
Duties of officer of the deck.
Ship’s log, what is put in, etc.
Etiquette of the side.
Routine ceremonies, such as colors, etc.
Orders to steersman, right rudder, etc.
Ordnance and Gunnery
School of the squad and company in infantry.
School of the section and battery in artillery.
Precautions to be taken in handling small arms and their ammunition.
Describe any Navy gun with which you are familiar.
Describe the projectile, fuses, and primers for any Navy gun with which you are familiar.
Brief description of the care and preservation of the battery.
While this mental fodder was in process of digestion, you might, perhaps, have overheard such abstruse and breezy dialogue as this, aboard the Corsair:
“Good-morning, old top. When may the officer of the deck decline to relieve the deck?”
“I pass. When shall the sides be piped, and what are the limitations placed on sending official signals?”
“You can search me. But I’ll bet you don’t know how to swing ship for reciprocal bearings.”
A LETTER FROM HOME. COALING SHIP MUST WAIT
CARROLL BAYNE GETS HIS ENSIGN’S COMMISSION
“A cinch, my boy. Right off the bat, now, what is the correct dope on a Traverse Table and how do you use it?”
“You make me smile. Upon getting under way what special entry must be made in the ship’s log? Likewise and also, what is a Polyconic Projection? Snap it out, now!”
“You poor simp! I’m the man that invented that gadget. On the level, there’s only one question on the whole list that you are sure of.”
“What is it? I’ll bite.”
“When and where is the meal pennant flown?”