FOOTNOTES:
[2] Returned home on ship twenty-three months later.
[3] Destroyer Cummings.
CHAPTER III
AT SEA WITH THE BRETON PATROL
When the Corsair arrived on the French coast there was nothing to indicate the vast American organization, military and naval, which was soon to be created with a speed and efficiency almost magical. Supply bases, docks, fuel stations, railroads were, at the outset, such as France could provide from her own grave necessities. Marshal Joffre and Lord Balfour had convinced the Government at Washington that if the United States delayed to prepare, it might be too late. Troops were demanded, above all else. Man power was the vital thing. And so these early divisions were hurried overseas to Pershing with little more than the equipment on their backs.
The Navy was aware of its own share of the problem which was to extend its fighting front to the shores of France as well as to the Irish Sea. To protect the ocean traffic to and from the United States, small, swift ships were required by the dozens and scores, but they could not be built in a day, and, as a British admiral expressed it, “This rotten U-boat warfare had caught all the Allies with their socks down.” Of the naval escort with the First Expeditionary Force, the cruisers returned to the United States for further convoy duty and the destroyers went either with them or were ordered to join the flotilla at Queenstown. For a short time the Corsair and another large yacht, the Aphrodite, were left to comprise the American naval strength on the French coast. On June 30th, Commander Kittinger received the following instructions from Rear Admiral Gleaves:
When in all respects ready for sea, proceed with the vessel under your command to Brest, France, and report to the Senior French Naval Officer for duty. Exhibit these orders to the Senior United States Naval Officer in Brest. Upon the arrival of Captain W. B. Fletcher, U.S. Navy, report to him for duty.
The tenor of these orders indicated the wise and courteous policy which Vice-Admiral Henry B. Wilson was later to develop with brilliant success—that of coöperation with and deference to the French naval authorities instead of asserting the independence of command which, in fact, he exercised. At this time Captain Fletcher had been appointed to organize the American “Special Patrol Force,” and he was daily expected to arrive in the yacht Noma. The ancient port of Brest was selected as the chief naval base because the French had long used it for this purpose, maintaining dockyards, repair shops, and arsenals, and also because the largest transports afloat could be moored in its deep and spacious harbor. Saint-Nazaire and Bordeaux became the great entry ports for cargo steamers during the war, while into Brest the huge liners carried twenty thousand or forty thousand troops in a single convoy.
WINNING BOAT CREW IN FOURTH OF JULY RACE WITH APHRODITE
“THE BRIDGE GANG”
The Corsair steamed into Brest on July 2d in company with the Aphrodite and duly reported to Vice-Admiral Le Brise, of the French Navy. Two days later a fleet of other yachts arrived from home and were warmly welcomed, the Noma, Kanawha, Harvard, Christabel, Vidette, and Sultana. With this ambitious little navy it was possible to operate a patrol force which Captain Fletcher promptly proceeded to do, acting in concert with the French torpedo boats, armed trawlers, submarines, and aircraft.
The Corsair lay in port ten days to coal, paint ship, and otherwise prepare for the job of cruising in the Bay of Biscay. An unofficial log, as kept by one of the seamen, briefly notes:
July 2nd. Sailed for Brest from Saint-Nazaire at 4 A.M. Arrived at 3 P.M. and received four submarine warnings on the way. We thought we saw two periscopes, but they may have been buoys. We have added a French pilot to our crew. No shore liberty, as we are too tired. We hear we are to be over here a long time, with Brest as our base.
July 3rd. I spent the day painting the bridge. The ship looks fine. I am also standing a twelve-hour watch in order to give the other signal-men shore liberty. We caught a bunch of mackerel over the side to-day and will fry them. The Aphrodite has challenged us to row them a race to-morrow. A big French dirigible went out to sea to look for submarines.
July 4th. A national holiday, but not for us. We won the race from the Aphrodite. The Noma and the Kanawha arrived this morning. They fought a submarine, but no damage was done on either side. We expect to get under way any minute and will look for the U-boat that shot at the Noma. We had water sports in the afternoon and they were good fun.
July 5th. The Sultana arrived to-day. She picked up all the survivors of the S.S. Orleans which was torpedoed on the 3rd. Five of them were put aboard this ship and their description of the sinking was harrowing. Only two lifeboats got away. Four men were killed. The ship sank in ten minutes. According to the dope, the Corsair will sink in three minutes, if struck. Cheerful, what?
July 6th. This was my first liberty in Brest. It is a very old town high on the cliffs. We went through the Duke of Brittany’s old castle which dates back some fifteen hundred years and was once the homestead of Anne of Brittany. The dungeons were mighty interesting. They surely did treat ’em rough in those days. These rooms are more than two hundred feet down in the solid rock and have been dark for ages. I should call them unhealthy. The tortures they used to inflict on the prisoners were diabolical. And yet you’ll hear gobs growling about the Navy. All of which reminds me that life on shipboard has been running along without much change. Several Russian destroyers came into the harbor this afternoon.
July 7th. A lot more of the men got Paris liberty to-day. We had a bad little accident on board. The hook at the bow of the small motor sailer pulled out when the boat was suspended about forty feet above the water. It fell and three men working in it were spilled into the drink. Mr. Mason, assistant engineer, struck his back and head and was badly bruised.... 9th. I certainly will be glad when the other signal-men get back from Paris. These twelve-hour watches are wearing me out. There are two rumors—one that we are to go to sea again for three days, put in at Saint-Nazaire, out again three days, and then back. The other rumor is that we are going to England. I hope this is correct. This is the first time I have felt homesick, and for some reason to-night I do. I guess it is because poor old Art Coffey is to be shipped back to the States. His eye trouble can’t be treated over here. Nothing has happened aboard ship excepting that the commander told Art that the Corsair would not go back home for a long, long time, if he could help it. Golly, but I would like to go; not to stay, but just to get a glimpse of home and the folks.
July 13th. Spent the morning washing my white clothes. A new rumor! We are to leave here Saturday for five days, put into Queenstown for coal and then back to the States, spend a couple of weeks there and then convoy the National Guardsmen or more of the Regular Army back. I hope this is true. How I would like to see a real country again. France is beautiful, but dead. Brest is no livelier than Edgartown and there is only one Paris. Its name is New York. This was Friday, the 13th, so I was mighty careful to watch my step. To-morrow is the French Fourth of July and it is a big fête day. Wish I were going ashore to see the celebration. Met some Yale men off the Harvard and they are very nice chaps. I am improving on the blinker signals and feel encouraged. No more dope!
The Corsair sailed next day on her first patrol cruise, and the author of the foregoing observations affords us a glimpse of what the job seemed like while they were becoming hardened to it. He goes on to say:
July 15th. At sea. A cold, rough day. I feel a bit shaky and have a sore throat. Our work out here is answering S.O.S. calls, looking for submarines, and convoying merchant ships. We convoyed one Dane and two Britishers most of the day. One of the Limies had swapped shots with a sub.... No chance to take off my clothes or wash. Took a practice shot at a barrel and hit it at half a mile.... 17th. Ran over a submarine at 2.15 A.M. but could not get a shot at it. This trip has been awful weather most of the time, rain, mist, wind, and fog. Nothing is dry on the whole ship. Anybody that says life in the Navy is a cinch has never been in it. If this war lasts a year we shall all be changed men.
July 20th. Back at Brest. The Harvard came in with survivors of two torpedoed ships. One crew had been blown up twice within twenty-four hours. They had been picked up and then the rescuing ship was sunk. The submarine took the captain and the gunner along as prisoners.... 21st. At sea. This has been a very exciting day. We have seen three submarines. We fired at one periscope and either hit it or near it. When the splash cleared away the submarine had disappeared. We were at our battle stations almost all day. We passed a great deal of wreckage, some of it barrels of oil and gasoline. Also passed an upset lifeboat with two masts and a beautiful big life-raft. We always cruise around such objects before approaching them, as they may be submarine bait. I stood the midnight watch and sighted a light which we headed towards. It turned out to be a large American schooner, deserted and on fire. The masts were gone and it was a complete wreck. We met a British Naval Reserve ship bound to Africa, a funny-looking craft for ocean work, flat-bottomed with side wheels.
July 23rd. To-day we had lots of excitement. In my watch I discovered an object five miles off which looked exactly like a periscope. I sounded the alarm and we approached it very carefully. It turned out to be a large piece of wreckage with a ventilator on top. More empty lifeboats to-day, and no clew to tell where they came from. At night Captain Kittinger sighted a strange ship which he swore was a submarine. It proved to be a British destroyer and the joke was on the skipper.
July 26th. In port. To-day as per our weekly schedule we coaled ship with the usual results. Filth and coal dust everywhere. Instead of coaling I had to stand a twelve-hour signal watch. In sending a semaphore message to the Vidette I was nearly killed. A Spanish freighter was between the two ships and I had to climb into the rigging about fifty feet above the deck. As I could not hold on with either hand, only with my feet, it was ticklish work. I slipped and started to fall, but luckily caught hold of the rigging in time and saved myself. It was too close for comfort. A torpedo missed the Noma by ten feet. Wow!
July 27th. Sailed this morning to meet and escort U.S. troop-ships. The Aphrodite is supposed to be with us, but she blew a boiler tube and has gone back. We had a pretty close shave this afternoon. Ran into a mine field, but zigzagged through it and, thank God, dodged them all. A mine would blow every one of us to kingdom come without a chance to get a boat over.... 29th. Left the transports we were convoying at Saint-Nazaire and then put out to patrol our regular area. Escorted several ships to-day, most of them British. One of the Limies was an awful bonehead and when we demanded to know his nationality he showed no colors. We hoisted our battle flag at the fore, but he came to and ran up his ensign just as we were about to throw a shot across his bow. We convoyed a big Cunarder, the Tuscania, carrying mail and supplies from America to Falmouth and dropped her at the end of our patrol area. Our Queenstown destroyers probably picked her up after we left her.... 31st. Early this morning a Greek steamer got mixed in her bearings and nearly ran into us. We had to stop and back at full speed. This is the roughest day I have ever seen on the ocean. The waves are half as high as the mast. We are shipping water almost constantly and it is dangerous to walk on deck.
August 2nd. Left Saint-Nazaire convoying the Bohemian. This is the largest cargo ship afloat, and it is quite a feather in our cap to be given the escort duty. The roughest sea yet and it is impossible to enter our compartment below. Almost everybody seasick. A big wave carried away our hatch ventilator and mess gear last night with a terrible crash. I was asleep, and when the noise came and the water poured down on us I thought we were sinking. I grabbed my life-preserver and started for my station, but got word that all was well, so went back to my bunk. It was soaked, with six inches of water on the deck under me, but I slept anyhow.
STARTING THE SWIMMING RACE FROM A MOORING BUOY
WATER SPORTS ON THE FOURTH OF JULY. THE RACE BETWEEN LIFE-RAFTS WITH COAL SHOVELS FOR PADDLES
August 15th. Convoying the Celtic. We had been at sea only two hours when the fo’castle began shipping water which lavishly deluged the “hell-hole” below, as usual. I slept in the motor sailer and got wet, as usual. It rained on me all night and all I had was one blanket. My clothes dried out in the wind.... Left the Celtic and started for Brest. Got an S.O.S. call and headed for it. Found three ships there, but no sign of a torpedoed vessel. I understand that she was not sunk, but got away under her own steam. I slept in a boat again. Couldn’t stand it below decks. Hear we coal to-morrow and put to sea again at night. Hope it’s a lie.
August 19th. Got liberty after coaling ship and went ashore. Was hungry, so bought quite a dinner—one omelette, two steaks, two orders of peas and potatoes, tomato salad, three plates of ice-cream, five small cakes, two peaches, coffee, and some champagne. Wasn’t at all hungry when I got through. The life begins to agree with me.
It may be noted that in these extracts from the day’s routine of several weeks of active duty, the Corsair was engaged in patrolling a certain definite area of ocean and in escorting single ships through her block, like a policeman on a beat, or in saving mariners and vessels in distress. Incidentally she endeavored to lift the scalp of Fritz whenever opportunity offered. These areas, as laid off on the chart in degrees of latitude and longitude, would measure perhaps sixty by one hundred miles. The same system was employed by the Queenstown destroyer flotilla during the early months of its service. Some protection was given shipping and the submarines were driven farther offshore, but as an offensive campaign the patrol system was a little better than nothing. Of the destroyer patrol, Admiral Sims had this to say:
The idea is sound enough if you can have destroyers enough. We figured that to make the patrol system work with complete success, we should have to have one destroyer for every square mile. The area of the destroyer patrol off Queenstown comprised about 25,000 square miles. In other words, the complete protection of the trans-Atlantic trade would have required about 25,000 destroyers.
The alternative and by far the more effective scheme was to group a number of merchant vessels or transports and send them out from port or take them in with a sufficient force of destroyers and yachts to screen the convoy from submarine attack. Valuable ships could not be allowed to run by themselves. This was the procedure worked out and generally adopted after the United States had come into the war, and it made possible the enormous task of placing two million men in France and feeding a large part of Europe besides.
When the Corsair was on the Breton patrol, in company with other American yachts, it was difficult to realize how few U-boats were actually cruising at one time and how great were the odds against finding one in a designated patrol area.
Now in this densely packed shipping area [declared Admiral Sims], extending, say, from the north of Ireland to Brest, there were seldom more than eight or ten submarines operating at any one time. The largest number I had record of was fifteen, but this was exceptional. The usual number was four, six, eight, or perhaps ten. We estimated that the convoys and troop-ships brought in reports of sighting about three hundred submarines for every submarine actually in the field. We also estimated that for every hundred submarines the Germans possessed, they could keep only ten or a dozen at work in the open sea. Could Germany have kept, let us say, fifty submarines constantly at work on the great shipping routes in the winter and spring of 1917, before we had learned how to handle the situation, nothing could have prevented her from winning the war. Instead of sinking 850,000 tons in a single month, she would have sunk 2,000,000 or 3,000,000 tons.
With such handicaps it was all the more creditable to the Corsair and her sister yachts that they were able to accomplish so much in the summer of 1917, before they were shifted to the troop and supply convoys. It was knight-errantry, in a way, this work of the Breton Patrol—rough-riders of the sea whose spirit was akin to that of the impetuous regiment which Theodore Roosevelt led at Santiago. The Breton pilots were eloquent in admiration, but shrugged their shoulders at the notion of weathering a Bay of Biscay winter in these yachts, so slender, so elegant, of such light construction, of a certainty built for pleasure and le sport!
The programme of patrol duty sent the larger yachts out two and two, each pair to be relieved after four days at sea. The Corsair and Aphrodite were coupled as cruising in adjoining areas, and when they returned to port the Noma and Kanawha went out to take the same stations. The smaller yachts of the “Suicide Fleet” were assigned areas nearer the Breton coast, where they guarded the shipping that flowed alongshore between the Channel and the ports of France and Spain. The Patrol Instructions included the following plan of operation:
When on an area patrol, vessels shall steer courses to cover the area but the method adopted must be irregular. Do not proceed with such regularity that the vessel’s position may be plotted.
When on a line patrol, vessels shall proceed along the line of patrol until reaching its extremity when a return over the same line will be made. The courses steered must be such that the advance of the vessel will be along the base course.
When on patrol, vessels shall speak all ships sighted. Obtain the following information:
(a) Name of vessel
(b) From where bound
(c) To where bound
(d) Character of cargo
(e) Nationality
(f) If defensively armed or not
(g) If escort is desired
If the vessel spoken is a valuable vessel, and is bound to a port on the west coast of France, below Latitude 48° 30′ North, she may be escorted. The fact that you have taken her under escort is to be sent to the Base by radio, in code, in following manner:
Example: “Baltic under escort, bound to——”
When acting as escorting vessel, keep on exposed bow of convoy and about 1200 yards ahead of her. Insist that all vessels zigzag day and night. Escorting vessels to break joints when courses are changed. Leave patrol and return to Base in time to arrive at or about scheduled time.
A WET DAY FOR THE DECK WATCH
FRENCH AND UNDERHILL ARE DOLLED UP FOR THE CAMERA
Calls for assistance from vessels will be answered and in case of disaster crews are to be rescued if possible. Report rescue of survivors by radio in order to receive instructions.
Ordinary cruising speed of the faster vessels should be at least twelve knots. Fires should be kept under all boilers. The slower vessels should maintain a speed of nine knots or over.
Ships returning from patrol will signal, using numerals, the amount of coal and water needed. Coaling may commence upon arrival in port or be done the day after arrival.
When it was desired to have the Corsair find and escort some particular ship or assemblage of them through part of the danger zone, such instructions as the following were sent to her commander:
United States Patrol Squadron, Flag Office
Brest, France, 27 July, 1917
Group Operation Order No. 2.
Force:—Group D.—Corsair, Aphrodite.
American convoy, speed 12 knots, escorted, should arrive Saint-Nazaire 27 July. Make preparations so that it can be piloted to destination without anchoring and without stopping at sea. Saint-Nazaire has been informed. Proceed in company as far as practicable, 28 July, to a position about 50 miles west of Belle Isle, relieving Kanawha and Noma.
Communicate with and join convoy. Radio FFK and FFL for IL (use AFR) the probable hour of the entrance into the Loire. Pilot the convoy as far as G’d Charpentier where river pilots will be ready. Unless otherwise ordered, steer to pass south of Belle Isle. The convoy must not stop at sea or anchor.
The Corsair’s log-book and the official War Diary, which was sent as a record to the Navy Department, are so laconic and technical that one might conclude the Breton Patrol to be lacking in all adventure. They serve to check up the yarns spun by the crew, however, and have the merit of accuracy. Omitting the daily entries of courses, position, and speed which could interest nobody, the commander’s record of the first cruise out of Brest reads like this:
July 14, 1917. Under way from Brest for patrol area. Spoke to British steamer Ardandeary bound for Falmouth with general cargo.
15th. Speed 14 knots to investigate intercepted S.O.S. Spoke to British steamer Itola for Falmouth with general cargo. Spoke to Danish steamer Alf from Montreal for Havre, course east, speed 9 knots, with general cargo. She was not zigzagging and was making a great deal of smoke.
16th. Exchanged recognition signals with three French destroyers, escorting cargo ships. Intercepted S.O.S. from British steamer Devon City, light, for Newport News. She had sighted a periscope and fired five rounds at same and it disappeared. Fired one shot from No. 2 gun at a floating barrel, making a hit, distance about 400 yards. Arrived south limit of patrol area. Changed course to west, parting company with steamer Devon City.
17th. Headed for steamer on horizon. Spoke to British steamer Medford for Plymouth with cargo of mineral phosphate. Changed course to escort Medford. Held target practice on floating wreckage. Changed course to east, speed 12 knots, making best of way to Brest.
18th. Moored at Base.
19th. Coaling ship.
20th. Cleaning ship and preparing for cruise.
Two more cruises were made in the month of July, but they furnished no thrilling episodes beyond the discovery of the burning American schooner Augustus Weld which, no doubt, had been shelled by a U-boat. What had become of her crew was left to conjecture. This noble four-master was one of many Yankee sailing vessels which dared the war zone, tempted by the chance of fabulous profits, until the War Risk Board refused to grant them insurance. The easiest marks in the world for submarines, they loafed along in infested waters, at the whim of the fickle winds, or drifted becalmed with towering canvas that was visible for many miles. Some of them were sailed by sun-dried skippers from Maine and Cape Cod who vowed they “would take her to hell and repeat if the bonus was big enough.” The episode of the blazing, derelict schooner profoundly impressed the crew of the Corsair. It was their first glimpse of the heartless havoc of the U-boat.
They were learning that the service in the war zone was not all adventure and exhilaration, but, for the most part, monotonous toil and discomfort, just as the soldier in the trenches had found it out for himself. To be wet and cold and slung about in a rolling ship, to return to port and shovel coal until almost ready to go to sea again—this was to be their lot month after month. The danger of it was always present, but they soon became cheerfully indifferent. It went without saying that at the explosion of a torpedo the yacht would fly apart like a box of matches, but these young men snored soundly in their uneasy bunks until the cruel boatswain’s mate bade them “show a leg” or “rise and shine.”
With the elasticity of the American spirit they adjusted themselves to this new manner of life and to the ways of the Navy. Their language suffered an extraordinary sea change. They talked the lingo of the bluejacket, which is not so much slang as a strong and racy sort of expression. The officers were called “bolo-men” because they adorned themselves with swords on official occasions. One spoke of the ship’s cooks as “food destroyers,” or “belly robbers,” which was sometimes unjust. To pipe down for mess, or the call to meals, was shortened to “chow down,” and the meal pennant was the “bean rag.” “A hash mark” had nothing to do with food, but was the service stripe on a sailor’s sleeve.
THE BURNING AMERICAN SCHOONER AUGUSTUS WELD
FROM THE CORSAIR’S MAIN-TOP THE CONVOY STEAMS OUT
A “canary” was a man who slept in a hammock instead of a bunk, and when he got up in the morning he “hit the deck.” The Corsair never departed from port, but always “shoved off,” and when her crew was granted liberty they “hit the beach.” Instead of putting on clean clothes they “broke them out.” This phrase was used in so many ways that a boyish seaman whose best girl had discarded him for a doughboy was heard to confide that he “had broke out a pippin of a new one.”
The period of enlistment was a “hitch” or a “cruise.” The depth charges were seldom called such, but figured as “mines,” “ash cans,” or “battle-bricks,” and the deck upon which they were carried was always “topside.” Almost any foreigner was a “Spic,” barring the Briton who was always a “Limey.” The yeomen, gunner’s mates, and quartermasters of the Corsair were “politicians,” which slurred their habits of industry. “Four bells” meant to move rapidly, and the weary sailor did not fall asleep, but “calked off.” At the mess table it might divert a landsman to see the catsup bottle pass in reply to a request for the “red lead,” or to hear, “Put a fair wind behind the lighthouse” when the salt cellar was desired.
During these early months of foreign service, both the morals and the morale of a ship’s company were bound to be tested. Jack ashore was traditionally presumed to take the town apart to see what made it tick. But this was a different navy, just as the American Army was to set new standards of behavior and self-respect. Among the crew of the Corsair were all sorts and conditions of youth released from the restraints of home ties and subjected to all the demoralizing influences which must ever go hand-in-hand with war. It was a saying among troops freshly landed, when they were inclined to run riot, that France had gone to their heads, and there was something in the excuse.
It was most noteworthy that the conduct of the sailors of the American naval forces was everywhere commendable, whether ashore in Brittany, or at Queenstown, or with the Grand Fleet at Edinburgh. They were, in a sense, on honor to acquit themselves as became the flag and the uniform, and in character, intelligence, and upbringing a large percentage of them represented the best blood of the United States. This was true of the Corsair and also typical of the other ships manned by the Naval Reserve Force on the coast of France.
Shore liberty at Brest was diverting as a respite from the crowded ship and its routine, but the novelty was soon dispelled. It was picturesque and colorful to ramble in the Rue de Siam where the soldiers and sailors of many races jostled each other, but until the Y.M.C.A. established its social centre in the port there was not much else to do than eat and loaf and drink white wine and red. Of the three days in port, coaling ship consumed so much time and energy that leisure hours ashore were brief. There was no coaling machinery at this important French naval base, and the American yachts had the back-breaking job of filling baskets from barges alongside and heaving the fuel aboard to be stowed in the bunkers. The grimy slaves of the shovel envied the Queenstown destroyers when these smart, immaculate craft tarried to fill their fuel tanks with oil by inserting a hose in the deck and then fled back to their own base.
Among the songs inspired by the day’s work it is no wonder that the fo’castle or the “black gang” quartets should have led the close harmony in such stentorian plaints as the following:
C-O-R-S-A-I-R,
Spells the old Corsair.
At home she used to be hard to coal,
And always made us swear;
But since we crossed the ocean
We have coaled at Saint-Nazaire!!
Wow!
C-O-R-S-A-I-R,
Spells the old Corsair.
COAL ON THE CORSAIR
(Tune of “Cheer for Old Amherst”)
Coal on the Corsair
Fill every bin,
We work like hell, boys,
Till it’s all in.
Boom, boom, boom!
We’ll never rest, boys,
When we’re in Brest, boys,
Corsair will coal to-day!
There were temptations enough, Heaven knows, to live recklessly when the liberty boats hit the beach, but the Corsair’s record was excellent and her officers were proud of it. During July and August of 1917, when the crew was new to the game and the tendency to run wild was perhaps strongest, almost all the offenses for which the commander held mast and which were passed upon by deck court-martials comprised overstaying liberty by a narrow margin of minutes and other small infractions of the strict disciplinary code of the Navy. And it should be mentioned that the enlisted force was permitted to be ashore no later than nine-thirty o’clock in the evening. During the whole sojourn of the Corsair in foreign waters, not a member of her company was punished by a general court-martial. By way of indicating how naval justice was dispensed, the entries in the log will be found to read like this:
| 20 minutes overtime from liberty. | Lose pay amounting to $5.00 |
| 35 ” ” ” ” | ” ” ” ” ” |
| 47 ” ” ” ” | ” ” ” ” ” |
| Smoking below decks. | ” ” ” ” ” |
| Disorderly and creating a disturbance after pipe down. | ” ” ” ” ” |
| Insubordination and insolence to a warrant officer. | Warned. |
| Not keeping an efficient lookout. | ” |
| Not making up bunk. | ” |
| Not relieving watch on time. | Excused. |
“COAL ON THE CORSAIR, FILL EVERY BIN.”
“WE WORK LIKE HELL, BOYS, TILL IT’S ALL IN.”
As was bound to happen, an occasional “drunk and disorderly” was included in these lists, but there were many kinds of men aboard and such entries were amazingly infrequent when one considers the circumstances. And the exiles of the Corsair learned that there was possibly as much truth as poetry in the jingle which ran through the ships of the Breton Patrol: “The Guy that Rates the Croix de Guerre”:
’Tis not the man who, single-handed,
Kills ten or fifteen raging Huns,
’Tis not the man who safely landed
A bomb on Wilhelm’s long-range guns;
’Tis not the darling Red Cross sister
Who nursed the wounds in No Man’s Land,
’Tis not the ingenious mister
Who makes the lion lick his hand.
We must admit that all these guys are there.
But take the guy that crosses over
And lives in Brest a year,
The one who to a wife or lover
Returns with conscience clean and clear,
Who daily walks through Rue Guyot,
Gives icy stares to girlies wild,
And when approached, says, “Little Willie
Is mother’s darling angel child.”
Now he’s the Guy that rates the Croix de Guerre!
CHAPTER IV
TRAGEDIES AND RESCUES
During the first three months of war duty, June, July, and August, the Corsair steamed 11,738 miles, which was the greatest distance logged by any of the yachts during the same period. There was little time or opportunity for the grooming and tinkering which a pleasure craft is presumed to receive. Blow high, blow low, she went to sea at the appointed hour and the fires were never dead under the boilers. In her forward deck-house was a couplet, carved on a panel of wood, which she was living up to in full measure:
“North, East, South and West,
The Corsair sails and knows no rest.”
The first cruise of August took the yacht to Saint-Nazaire, on the 4th, in company with the Aphrodite, Kanawha, and Noma, to escort a group of empty transports to sea. This was safely accomplished, and the Corsair returned to Brest where the Celtic was waiting to be guarded through the danger zone. For lack of destroyers it was the business of the yachts to take the big ships out after they had discharged their troops or supplies. Having parted company with the Celtic at Fourteen West and wished her good luck, the Corsair hastened back for coal and further orders, which were to cruise in the regular patrol area. The American steamer Carolyn was expected, inbound and running alone, and the Corsair searched a waste of waters until the magic of the radio found the unseen ship and whispered to her this comforting message:
I am thirty miles west of you. Pass north of Belle Isle and I will intercept you at daylight, in time to escort you into Quiberon Bay.
The skipper of the Carolyn had become a trifle confused in his bearings and was glad to be led to a safe anchorage where he could join a coastwise convoy for Bordeaux and so reach his destination.
To the Corsair then fell the experience of protecting a cargo steamer whose speed was so slow that she crept through the dangerous stretch of sea like a rheumatic snail and was a tempting target for any prowling submarine. It was all in the day’s work, although a bit trying to the nerves, and Commander Kittinger’s report indicates the nature of the task:
The Corsair was assigned to escort duty with the American steamer Manto bound from Saint-Nazaire, France, to America. A conference was held with the captain of the Manto at Saint-Nazaire on the evening of August 22nd, the day before sailing. The Manto is a small, low-powered steamer under charter by the Navy Department. The captain stated that he could make between eight and nine knots in favorable weather, but with a head sea and a stiff breeze he could not make more than six knots.
At 10.12 A.M., August 22nd, the Manto was ready and got under way with Corsair escorting. The route was laid through Chenal du Nord and into Quiberon Bay at Croisic. During this time the Manto was able to make about six knots on the course, not zigzagging in these waters. After entering Quiberon Bay she was able to make eight knots. The wind continued in force from the west and at 3.55 P.M. the convoy and escort anchored at Quiberon Peninsula to await more favorable weather.
The wind continued in force and direction during the night, but to avoid further delay a start was made at 5.23 A.M., August 24th. After clearing Teignouse Passage, took up Base Course 275°. Convoy was unable to make more than five knots good into the rough head sea and strong breeze from west. Escort steamed at ten knots and zigzagged at 45° and 60° on each side of Base Course in order to keep position. This continued throughout the morning and at noon Penmarch Point was still in sight.
During the afternoon the force of the wind diminished and the convoy made better headway. By noon, August 24th, the wind became a light breeze and the convoy was making about eight knots good on the Base Course. After noon the barometer fell decidedly, decreasing a half inch in eight hours, and with it the wind increased to a strong breeze with an overcast sky and driving rain squalls which reduced the visibility to practically nil. The convoy dropped back to about five knots.
A FRENCH FISHING SMACK WHICH DARED THE RUTHLESS WARFARE
THE S.S. MANTO, WHICH SPED THROUGH THE WAR ZONE AT FIVE KNOTS
Up to the time of darkness the convoy and escort were making so little progress that a hostile submarine would have been able to manœuvre and attain any position desired for attack. After darkness the lack of visibility was the best protection that could be had. I believe that the best scheme for getting a low speed vessel of the Manto type through the danger zone from Saint-Nazaire would be to have her proceed from thence to the Brest rendezvous with the convoy using the protected inshore waters. After arrival at Brest she should await favorable weather so that she could be escorted through the danger zone at her best speed.
By way of variety, the Corsair was next ordered to the English Channel to pick out the American supply ship Erny from a convoy escorted by H.M.S. Devonshire and carry her into Saint-Nazaire. This was the first taste of the Channel Patrol, of cruising in those black and crowded waters where the numerous routes of traffic crossed and converged, and ships ran blind with no lights showing, and the risk of collision was much greater than the chance of submarine attack. The yachts regularly assigned to this coastwise escort duty saw more of it than the Corsair, but she learned to know the meaning of that lusty chantey of the war zone, “On the Channel Run”:
“If promotion means nothing to you,
And comfort you can forswear,
And you’re willing to be forgotten,
And to work every day in the year;
If you’re fond of taking your chances,
And the praises of Admirals you shun,
Pick an eight-knot tramp of the N.R.F.
Carrying coal on the Channel Run.
“The job is a stranger to honors,
It’s also a stranger to shame.
There’s naught to win and your life to lose
’Midst its dirt, its dangers, its damns;
But once you have laughed its laughter,
And the cynic has captured your soul,
You can smile at the rest as you do your best
To approach an illusive goal.
“My lad, there is nothing to it,
There’s nothing,—and yet,— and yet,
It is something to strive for nothing;
That is something—don’t you forget.
So if you are in for the game of it,
And you’ve got sufficient nerve,
Pick an eight-knot tramp on the Channel Run,
Of the U.S.N. Reserve.”
The Corsair laid a course for the secret meeting-place where she hoped to make contact with the convoy and picked up the Lizard Light, cruising in rough water for a day and a night until the flotilla of merchant ships was sighted, when she signalled the Erny to follow and so returned to France. This errand brought the month of August to a close. It would have seemed incredible to the crew, before they sailed from home, that they could spend a summer in the war zone and steam more than eleven thousand miles without seeing a submarine or enjoying the excitement of a torpedo attack. They had passed large quantities of floating wreckage, tragic evidence that the enemy was active, and the S.O.S. calls of frightened ships had often come to the radio-room, but this was all. One inference was that the yachts had been of real service and that the U-boats were learning to be wary of them and their rapid-fire batteries.
The autumn was to be much more eventful. On September 5th the Corsair stood out from Brest to look for an American supply convoy which included the valuable steamers Edward Luckenbach, Dakotan, Montanan, and El Occidente. While steering for the latitude and longitude named in the confidential orders, a small boat under oars and sail was descried from the bridge. A few minutes later a second boat was sighted, and the Corsair bore down to save the castaways who were frantically appealing for help. They were in two dories, eleven men in all, who were hauled aboard and made comfortable by the crew of the yacht. They were from the French fishing vessel Sadi Carnot which had been shelled by a submarine while homeward bound from the Grand Banks to Saint-Malo with a cargo of salted cod.
Impassioned, with many gestures, these weather-beaten Breton sailors cursed the Germans who had placed bombs under the hatches of their beloved bark. The Corsair’s men listened eagerly while they cheered their weary guests with sandwiches and coffee. Presently a hail from the bridge announced that another boat was adrift to the westward, and the mariners of the Sadi Carnot yelled vociferous joy. Five more comrades of theirs were deftly picked up, leaving three boats still unaccounted for, and the Corsair searched for them in vain.
Another boat was discovered a little later, it is true, but the men in it made no sign—four of them, all corpses which washed about in the water under the thwarts or were grotesquely doubled up like bundles of old clothes. They were English seamen and the boat bore the name of the British steamer Malda. As one of the Corsair’s signal-men wrote in his diary; “It was a ghastly sight. The French fishermen we have on board were almost starved and frozen. They could not have lived more than another day or so. Imagine their feelings when they saw the Malda’s boat with the dead men and knew that this would soon have been their own fate.”
It was later reported in Brest that another ship had picked up the Malda’s boat in passing and had discovered that the bodies of the English sailors were riddled with bullets from a machine gun, presumably after they had abandoned their steamer.
The Corsair kept on her way and had no trouble in finding her convoy of four vessels with which she started for Saint-Nazaire at thirteen knots. Off Belle Isle, the Montanan developed a fit of hysterics and opened fire on an imaginary flock of submarines which turned out to be blackfish in a sportive mood. The other merchant steamers promptly joined in the bombardment and banged away for all they were worth, at the same time stampeding most zealously. They scattered over the sea like hunted ducks and the indignant Corsair endeavored to recall and soothe them.
“We could see what they were shooting at,” noted a quartermaster on the yacht, “but believed it to be the splash of a big fish. However, they were thoroughly convinced that Fritz was out to pull some of his morning hate stuff. The ships of the convoy were so excited that they shot all over the ocean. One of their shells missed us by a hundred yards or so and we got sore. I sent them a signal, ‘Cease firing at once and come within hail.’ They paid no attention, but we rounded up the bunch and escorted them safely into port and then beat it out to sea again.... We passed close to a submarine last night, but could not find him. We got the smell of his Diesel engines and I guess he was charging his batteries and ducked under when he heard us.”
The emotions of this startled convoy were not easily calmed, for the commander of the Corsair records, an hour after the alarm, “Proceeding again in close formation. The Edward Luckenbach fired one shot at a flock of gulls on the water.” Concerning the general bombardment he officially observes:
The Montanan opened fire at a disturbance made by a large fish, abeam and to port, distance about one mile. The fish was clearly seen and observed from this ship when it jumped from the water twice and then swam away near the surface. A few minutes later a school of porpoises appeared and all the transports opened fire. The firing was widely dispersed and apparently not aimed at any visible object. The shells from the Montanan landed abreast of the Corsair. None of them burst. The Oise, a French vessel of the escort, attempted to investigate the splash made by the fish but had to draw away when fire was opened at the porpoises.
These false alarms happened often, and during her next tour at sea the Corsair sounded the call to battle stations on two different occasions, reported as follows:
(1) Sighted an object which was believed to be a submarine about four miles ahead. Two submarine warnings were received, one before and one after sighting object. Upon arriving at point where object had been sighted, no evidence could be detected of the presence of a submarine.
(2) Sighted object on starboard beam, distance 3000 yards, which appeared to be a periscope. Informed convoy and headed for object. No. 1 gun crew opened fire when object became visible in gun-sight telescopes, followed by fire from convoy. When we approached close to object it proved to be a black spar, riding about vertical, six feet out of water. The heavy swell running caused the spar to disappear at intervals, which gave it the semblance of a submarine operating.
A GROUP OF CHIEF PETTY OFFICERS
A LIBERTY PARTY AT BREST
Until the merchant convoys became more accustomed to the routine of their hazardous employment, they were a source of almost continual anxiety to the yachts and other naval craft escorting them, and the work was more harassing than may appear on the surface. As a sample one may select from the Corsair’s daily experiences such an incident as the following, under date of September 5th:
Signalled French gunboat Oise to take position on port bow of leading transport. Corsair took position on starboard bow. The El Occidente was rapidly gaining position. Proceeded about five miles and El Occidente turned out of formation and slowed down. I then ordered Montanan to reduce speed until convoy had caught up and then proceeded with the Corsair to El Occidente. Found out that this steamer had sighted the ship’s boat of the S.S. Malda with four dead men in it and had stopped to investigate. I ordered her to rejoin immediately and cause no further delay, and also to stop using her signal searchlight as evening twilight had come on. On rejoining, found that the transports had gotten in line abreast and were all communicating with each other by signal searchlights. By this time it was growing dark and it became necessary to order them by radio to cease signalling with lights. They paid no attention to signals to form column and continued the formation of line abreast covering about four miles front. About 9 P.M. the moon rose so that all ships were visible. Went close to each and ordered them to form column. By 10 P.M. succeeded in getting them in column formation.
The Corsair’s crew had been hoping to visit England and the opportunity came, but not precisely as they might have wished it. The yacht was ordered to proceed to Devonport on September 13th to load a cargo of depth charges for the other naval vessels on the French coast. It was something like asking a man to make a railway journey from New York to Boston with a stick of dynamite in every pocket of his clothes. With luck it might be done, but he would feel painfully eager to avoid any more bumping or jostling than could be helped. And as has been said, the Channel was an extraordinarily crowded and darkened thoroughfare. This was getting on with the war, however, and the unterrified Corsair duly anchored in Plymouth Harbor. Instructed by Admiralty officers, she shifted to moorings at a jetty of the British naval docks where a lighter came alongside, and the Corsair bluejackets, with gingerly care, hoisted in almost a hundred “ash cans.” This quick-tempered merchandise included such items as these:
34 Depth Charges, Type D.
34 Depth Charges, Type G.
14 Boxes Gun Cotton, Dry.
68 Boxes First Fittings.
Of this trip to England, one of the petty officers wrote in his little notebook:
Caught my first glimpse of John Bull’s country early this morning when we arrived at Plymouth, a very beautiful spot. A British army camp is on the hill and we are soon to have a base here. It sounds good to hear the English language again. Rated liberty and had a splendid time. I guess we will make some knots on our way back to Brest, as we have enough TNT on board to blow up the whole fleet. If a submarine hits us this time—good-night! I hope the luck of the Navy will take care of the old ship this cruise.
September 15th. Got back to Brest at 11 A.M. Our radio picked up two German submarines near us which were talking with Zeebrugge. They were probably looking for us and our cargo of mines, but we gave them the slip. When we hauled out of Plymouth the British jackies on their warships gave us cheer after cheer—yells of “Hello, Hello, Yanks,” “Hurrah for the Corsair,” and “Three cheers for Uncle Sam.” They handed us more cheers when we sailed and we gave them as good as they sent. Plenty of excitement last night. I noticed a rowboat with two men in it hovering around the ship. I hailed them, but got no answer. They left, but the same boat approached the gangway an hour later. I threatened to shoot them and they turned around and vamoosed. I can’t imagine who or what they were, but it was peculiar that they should pick this night to hang about, when we had all those mines aboard.
September 16th. I had a long talk with a couple of British sailors off the Goshawk. One of them had been in the Jutland battle. He tells me the Germans have invented an artificial fog to hide behind, something like our smoke screen, but better. The English are experimenting with it. They got the fog all right, but it nearly asphyxiated every man in the ship.... I don’t know what has happened to all our officers. They are so blamed disagreeable that there is no pleasing them. They canned Copeland off the bridge and put me back on signal watches. I wanted to know why I had been rated a quartermaster. They said it was so I could draw the extra pay. I darn near threw it in their faces. If I can’t hold the job I don’t want the rate.
The Corsair was again assigned to the convoys and the same chronicler has this to say of the remaining days of September:
21st. Saw a very wonderful sight. Two submarines were reported off Belle Isle, so we had an extra escort of four seaplanes, four little fighting aeroplanes, one seventy-five-foot chaser, and a big French dirigible. They went out to help us carry some empties beyond the war zone, the same ships we had taken in, Montanan, Dakotan, Luckenbach, and El Occidente. The air craft flew over us fifty miles offshore. The dirigible made the signal, “Submarine below” but he was so far off that he had submerged when we got there. Another dirigible came out from Brest and looked us over, but soon went back. This evening we passed the body of a dead sailor, but did not pick it up; also an empty dory. Aphrodite and Alcedo are with us.
The American Army had begun to move overseas in a swelling tide of khaki and the transports came faster and faster. No sooner had the Corsair seen the last of one group than another was waiting. On September 28th she left port to seek contact with the store-ships City of Atlanta, Willehad, Artemus, and Florence Luckenbach, and a British destroyer which was the senior vessel of the escort. Having found them, the subsequent proceedings were such as sprinkled gray hairs on the heads of the commander and the officers of the Corsair. The War Diary records it in this summary fashion:
September 29th. Noma signalled by blinker tube that City of Atlanta, the last ship of the convoy, was having engine trouble and could not keep position. Signalled to Noma to stand by her. Noma and City of Atlanta dropped astern and disappeared in the darkness.
THE GUNNER’S MATES AND THE LONG ROW OF DEPTH CHARGES READY TO PLOP OVER THE STERN
ANOTHER VIEW OF THE MINE TRACK, SHOWING THE Y GUN OR DOUBLE MORTAR
3.32 A.M. Received radio from Alcedo, “I have been rammed by convoy. Stand by.” Headed back to look for Alcedo and found the Willehad out of position and making the best of her way to rejoin. Communicated with the Willehad by megaphone and was informed that she had fouled the Alcedo but that the yacht had rejoined and was in position with the escort. During this détour, received from the Noma, “I am proceeding with the City of Atlanta.” At this time a large convoy was observed standing to the northward and cutting off the Noma and City of Atlanta from our convoy.
6.15 A.M. Received from Noma, “Lost City of Atlanta about 4.30 A.M. in passing through large convoy. Is she with you?” The Noma was instructed to search for the missing ship and escort her in.
8.44 A.M. Noma reported that she had found the City of Atlanta and was proceeding to Teignouse Channel.
So much for the routine of faithful endeavor, continual danger, and incessant vigilance! The month of October was very different. It was memorable in the Corsair’s calendar because she fought a submarine, rescued many survivors of abandoned ships, and saw two fine transports torpedoed, the Antilles and the Finland, with heavy loss of life. There was no more grumbling at the uneventful drudgery of war. The crowded activity began on the second day of October when this radio message was caught and decoded:
To all Allied men-of-war,—from Land’s End:
Picked up five men of French fishing vessel sunk by submarine.
Five boats still adrift—twenty-one men. Position 39-JSD.
The Corsair was in company with the yachts Wakiva and Alcedo, and promptly signalled them to disregard her movements as she was going in search of survivors. Shortly after noon, the wreck of a schooner was sighted, the hull awash, and many barrels of oil floating near it. The Corsair’s gunners fired seven shots into the derelict, but were unable to sink it and the yacht hastened on her errand of mercy, guided by the squared areas of the secret chart to which the radio message had referred. Three hours later the first boat was found, a dory four men from the French fishing bark, Saint Pierre, which had been set on fire by a boarding party from a U-boat one hundred and eighty miles off Ushant.
The mate, who was one of those rescued, swore that after the crew of the Saint Pierre had scrambled into the boats two more large submarines appeared, and that all three of these infernal sea monsters had made a circuit of the hapless bark before destroying her. It was also his belief that each submarine was very formidable, at least a hundred metres in length and mounting two large cannon.
The crew of the Corsair cheered at the tidings while they sympathized with the forlorn fishermen. “The U-boats were coming in bunches,” joyously reflected the deck force, and the “black gang” slung the coal with an earnest determination to give her twenty knots or blow the boilers out of her. The ship raced to scan the sea for the other boats of the Saint Pierre and at 4.35 P.M. heard firing in the direction of a tall barkentine whose sails gleamed seven miles to the northward. Here was a second fisherman in trouble and a U-boat actually shelling her within sight of the U.S.S. Corsair! Ten minutes more, with speed worked up to eighteen knots, and the submarine could be clearly recognized through the binoculars aimed from bridge and crow’s-nest.
Etched very small against the horizon was the deck, like a fine, black line, and the conning tower as a tiny hump in the middle, while a gun winked as a red spark, and the water splashed high near the target of a sailing vessel and was visible as so many white specks resembling dabs of cotton. The Corsair was then four miles distant, too far to use her own guns effectively. The submarine delayed five minutes longer, rolling on the surface and using her battery in order to sink the fisherman without wasting a precious torpedo on a victim so unimportant. Then the cruel U-boat filled her ballast tanks and submerged as a whale sounds when alarmed. Sighs from the Corsair’s decks were mingled with the deep and hearty curses of the saltwater vocabulary. The commander expurgated his report when it came to writing it, and this was his unadorned narrative:
Shortly after this, six dories were observed pulling away from the vessel. At 5.08 we came up and found her to be the French barkentine, Eugene Louise, from the Grand Banks to Saint-Malo. Searched for whereabouts of the enemy. A long wake was observed. Ran the ship into this wake and at 5.16, at the place where it disappeared, let go an English depth charge, 120 pounds TNT. Circled around and passed close to survivors’ boats and asked them the location of the enemy. They were so badly demoralized that they could give no intelligible replies and pointed generally to the westward. Search was continued and at 5.34 returned and picked up the survivors, the entire crew of the Eugene Louise.
At 5.45 we started ahead at eighteen knots. The first estimate made of the damage to the Eugene Louise was that her bob-stays had been carried away and that her topmasts and topgallant-masts would probably come down. At this time she was hove to with all square sails aback. The fore-staysails and jib halliards having been let go, the sails were halfway down the stays. Approaching closer to make a careful inspection, we found that what appeared to be the bob-stays were a couple of rope-ends hanging from the dolphin striker to the water.
Attempts were made to persuade the crew to return to the Eugene Louise and bring her in. The captain consented on condition that the Corsair should escort him. He was assured that the Corsair would stand by. After conferring with his crew he asked that one of the ship’s officers would confirm this assurance in person. The Gunnery Officer, Ensign Schanze, gave this assurance to the crew in their own language. A long talk ensued among the Frenchmen of the Eugene Louise. The indications were that they had no intention of boarding their ship again.
FRENCH FISHERMEN WHO WERE SET ADRIFT
THE CASTAWAYS FIND A HEARTY WELCOME ON THE CORSAIR
At 6.19 P.M. proceeded S. 17° East, speed fourteen knots, and continued search for survivors of the Saint Pierre. Opened communication with some British destroyers and informed them of the condition and position of the Eugene Louise. At 9.08 P.M. the destroyers radioed that they had the Eugene Louise in tow and were proceeding to the Scillys. Heard two German submarines communicating with each other by radio. Five minutes later heard two more enemy submarines in radio communication. The signals were coming in very strongly which indicated their close proximity. Under these circumstances it was considered unwise to take the Eugene Louise in tow without the presence of escorting vessels.
It was an animated scene aboard the Corsair when the thirty-one men and officers of the Eugene Louise were disputing whether or not they should go back to their ship and sail her into port. There were also two dogs, one of them shaggy and black, who barked in energetic approval of remaining on the Corsair. Their Breton shipmates appeared to share this opinion. Panic had gripped most of them. They were literally frightened out of their wits. Red kerchiefs knotted about their heads, gold rings twinkling in their ears, they looked like shipwrecked buccaneers, but their spirit was quite otherwise.
The captain of the Eugene Louise was a man of stout heart and, besides, he owned a share of the barkentine. He raced between bridge and deck, conferring, imploring, expostulating, but his fishermen refused to follow him. They were fed up with submarine warfare and, in their opinion, once was enough. The next U-boat would undoubtedly cut their throats and it was a long road to Saint-Malo. Their refusal brought genuine grief to the navigating officer of the Corsair. Nothing would have pleased Lieutenant Robert E. Tod more than to sail the barkentine Eugene Louise into the nearest French port, and he had already volunteered for the job.
He was a faithful and zealous officer of the Corsair, but, after all, she was a steam kettle and his heart went out to the spars and stays and canvas of a sailing vessel and the winds that served to steer her by. Such had been his own training as a yachtsman, and he knew he could shove this French square-rigger along for all she was worth, with thirty nimble Breton sailors to swarm aloft. Alas, Captain Pierre Catharine, of the Eugene Louise, could not argue his frightened crew into accepting this sporting proposition. It was left for the industrious British destroyers to take her to safety at the end of a tow-line. The news was gratifying, when received later, that the barkentine with her cargo of fish, so welcome to the Breton villages, had been rescued from the brutal destruction of the enemy. One of the Corsair’s deck force sadly noted in his journal:
I also volunteered to go with Commodore Tod as quartermaster for signals, but our skipper decided to leave her derelict. It was a great disappointment. Mr. Tod thanked me for offering to take a chance on the barkentine, which I appreciated.
During the night of this same day the Corsair was zigzagging toward Brest at twelve knots when she encountered one of the submarines which had been running amuck among the fishing vessels. The weather was hazy and obscured and an occasional rain squall drove across the ship. The bridge and deck watches were peering into the gloom which lifted between the squalls to let a watery moon gleam through. Lieutenant Tod was officer of the watch and Quartermaster Augustus C. Smith, Jr., stood at the wheel. At 11.25 P.M. one of the whistling flurries of rain and wind had passed and the sea was visible in the illumination of the misty moonlight.
No more than five hundred yards away the outline of a large submarine was clearly discernible as it rested at leisure upon the surface of the water, having emerged, no doubt, to open hatches and give the crew a breathing spell. This was a sight which the crew of the Corsair had dreamed of. It was too good to be true. Quartermaster Augustus Smith, a bland, unruffled young man in all circumstances, had an uncommonly keen pair of eyes and he did not have to be informed that yonder was the enemy. He spun the wheel at the order. Lieutenant Tod threw the handle of the engine-room indicator to emergency speed, and the Corsair swung to rush straight at the U-boat, hoping to ram.
Commander Kittinger and his executive, Lieutenant Commander Porter, instantaneously appeared upon the bridge, while Ensign Gray dashed for the chart-house deck to make certain that the forward gun crew had sighted the submarine for themselves. There was excitement, but no confusion. Long training and disciplined habit had prepared them all for such an episode as this, like sprinters set and ready on the mark. No time was lost in wondering what ought to be done. Those who hunted Fritz had to be quickwitted or else he would scupper them.
The submarine, caught napping, went ahead on its oil engines, moving slowly on the surface and almost in the same direction as the plunging Corsair whose forward battery endeavored to bear on the mark, which was difficult for lack of a bow-chaser. Number Two gun barked once and the shell kicked up foam astern of the U-boat which was submerging in the very devil of a hurry, as one may imagine. Before the Corsair could fire again, the conning tower had vanished and the gray shape of the slinking submarine was slanting downward in a “crash dive.”
The yacht had three hundred yards to go before she passed over the spot. Her keel failed to strike and rip through the thin plates of the German craft which was, perhaps, thirty feet beneath the sea, but a bubbling wake was visible and into it the depth charges began to drop from the stern of the Corsair. The gunner’s mates played no favorites, but let go an English “ash can” with 120 pounds of TNT, then two French “Grenades Giraud,” and finally an American Sperry bomb.
All four of the Allied gifts for Fritz functioned with terrific effect. The Corsair, charging ahead at full speed to avoid being hoisted herself, was shaken as though she had hit a reef. The sea was violently agitated in a foaming upheaval. The men asleep below decks came spilling up through the hatches, convinced that the ship had been blown up. One of the French fishermen vowed that he had a glimpse of the shadowy shape of the submarine as it passed directly under the Corsair. It seemed reasonable to assume that the four depth charges had been placed where they would do the most good. Nothing could survive the destructive effect of the solid wall of water impelled by these explosions. And the submarine had been near enough, in all probability, to receive the force of these rending shocks.
The Corsair moved ahead for five minutes, along the track which the U-boat had taken when it submerged. There was the hope that it might rise to the surface disabled, but the moonlit surface of the sea was unbroken. The mist had cleared and the sky was bright. Swinging about, the Corsair retraced her path on the chance of finding some sign or token of a shattered U-boat. Soon she ran through a spreading oil slick, a patch of greasy calm amid the glinting waves, and the smell of mineral oil was strong. They sniffed it greedily aboard the Corsair and the French fishermen forgot to mourn the Eugene Louise. It was their belief that the glorious American Navy had evened the score with the Boche. The bluejackets were of the same opinion and felt confident that the Corsair would be awarded a star to display on her funnel, the Croix de Guerre of the sea, to show that she had bagged her submarine.
The officers were not quite so cock-sure. Daylight might have disclosed some bits of débris, enough wreckage to substantiate the claim beyond a shadow of doubt, but the mere presence of floating oil was no longer admitted as final proof either by the American Navy Department or the British Admiralty. Submarines were apt to leak a certain amount of fuel oil, or to blow it through the exhaust when running on the surface, and it was suspected that Fritz had learned the trick of opening a valve in order to delude the pursuers into the belief that they had crippled or smashed him.
In this instance, however, the circumstantial evidence was very strongly in favor of the Corsair, even though officials ashore might decline to give her documentary credit. The submarine had been unusually close aboard, almost under the ship, when four depth charges were let go and all exploded perfectly. Commander Kittinger was so reluctant to claim too much that he presented no more than the terse facts and let the matter rest with that. Earlier in the war, destroyers had been granted the star on a funnel for evidence no more conclusive than this—depth charges dropped within a fatal radius and the presence of abundant fuel oil as the aftermath.
GUNNER’S MATES BARKO AND MOORE, AND A DEPTH CHARGE
WATCHING THE APHRODITE GO OUT ON PATROL “HOPE SHE GETS A SUB”
It is highly probable that the Corsair wiped one U-boat from the active list on this moonlit night in the Bay of Biscay and her crew had the right to feel pride in the exploit. That careful, well-poised petty officer, Quartermaster Augustus Smith, who saw the whole show from his station at the wheel, took pains to write down his own observations which confirmed, in every respect, the conclusions of Commander Kittinger and his officers:
On the night of October 2, 1917, at 11.25 P.M., a dark object was sighted by the officer of the deck, bearing about three points on the port bow. The officer of the deck, after looking at the object with the night glasses, called out that it was a submarine. The order was given for full left rudder and to steady on the submarine which was then plainly visible in the moonlight. At the same time emergency speed was rung up and before we had swung to the new course we were fast gaining speed. The captain almost immediately came on the bridge and ordered that a shot be taken at the submarine which was about three hundred yards away and moving slowly on the surface in the general direction we were steering. We swung a little to starboard and one shot was fired which cleared the periscope and showed the submarine distinctly for a second.
From the way the Corsair answered the rudder we were making fine speed. The submarine completely disappeared when we were just a little way off. As we crossed her apparent course we began dropping depth charges, four in all. As we passed over her position we went full right rudder, dropping two of the cans as we swung. We then steadied on North 74° East, the original course, and ran it about five minutes. We then slowed to thirteen knots and went full right rudder, and steadied on South 80° West. Returning over the spot where the charges had exploded, we ran into a great slick of oil that seemed to spread out for several hundred yards. A strong odor of oil could be smelled, even on the bridge.
CHAPTER V
WHEN THE ANTILLES WENT DOWN
For more than three months the Corsair had been escorting transports and supply steamers to and fro, in an area of ocean where the hostile submarines cruised incessantly. Not a ship in all these unwieldy convoys had been torpedoed, and the few hard-driven yachts could feel, without boasting, that they were doing their bit to keep the road open to France. It was unreasonable to expect, however, that the record could be kept wholly clear of disaster. The fortune of war was not as kind as this.
The unhappy event occurred without warning on October 17th when the transport Antilles, a fine, seven-thousand-ton steamer of the Southern Pacific Company, was sent to the bottom with many of her people. It was no fault of the escort, for there was never a sight of a periscope nor any other indication that a submarine was near. The Corsair did what she could and did it well, saving survivors from the sea with the readiness and courage that might have been expected.
The convoy had sailed from Saint-Nazaire two days earlier, waiting at Quiberon for one of the ships to join. With the Antilles were the Henderson and the Willehad. The escort comprised the Corsair, phrodite, and the Kanawha, which replaced the Wakiva after this smaller yacht had returned to port because of leaky rivets in the main boiler. With the circumstances as they were, no better protection could have been given this small convoy of three transports. The Queenstown destroyers were employed in guarding the laden ships inward bound, meeting them far offshore, but the American Patrol Force in France had to take them to sea again as best it could, with the yachts and whatever aid the French Navy was able to offer.
The small flotilla of coal-burning destroyers which was sent to base on Brest had not yet arrived and was en route from the Azores. Captain W. B. Fletcher, who commanded the Patrol Force at this time, and who was superseded by Admiral Wilson a little later, received a certain amount of adverse criticism because of the loss of the Antilles, but the fact is evident that he had taken all the precautions within his power to send this convoy safely through the danger zone.
ENGINEERING FORCE OF THE CORSAIR
LIEUTENANT J. J. PATTERSON, ENGINEER OFFICER, AND HIS HUSKY “BLACK GANG”
The three transports and the three large yachts proceeded without incident until the morning of the second day at sea, when a freshening wind kicked up a boisterous sea and the Kanawha found herself in trouble. She was taking the water green over her bows and the decks were flooded. To avoid being seriously battered, she was compelled to reduce speed, and, to make matters worse, the weather was growing rougher and a gale threatened. Unable to maintain the standard speed of the convoy, which slowed down, for a little while, to nine knots in order to let the Kanawha attempt to regain position, her captain signalled for permission to part company and return to port. This was granted, as the heavy weather had made her of no service to the convoy. Thereafter the formation was maintained in this wise:
| Corsair O | O Alcedo | ||
| O Henderson | |||
| Antilles | O | ||
| O Willehad |
| W | ||
| | | ||
| S | —— | N |
| | | ||
| E |
The third day out, October 17th, dawned clear with a moderate wind from the southwest and a disturbed sea covered with whitecaps. The ships were zigzagging, with all lookouts properly kept and gunners at their stations. The Antilles had her own battery which was manned by a detachment of the Naval Armed Guard. Early in the morning, at 6.45, she was steaming directly astern of the Corsair during one of the frequent changes of course. The light was still poor, and it was this hour, before the sunrise had brightened the sea, which the submarines had found most favorable for attack.
The Antilles was seen to sheer out to starboard and the Henderson hoisted a signal which could not be read from the bridge of the Corsair, but the yacht swung about on the instant and sounded the call to general quarters. There was no other indication that the Antilles had been hit and mortally wounded. Presently she was settling by the stern. Then the bow rose in air, towered there, and the ship plunged to the bottom five minutes after a torpedo had ripped open her engine-room. Smoke and dust and dirty whirlpools marked the spot where she had been, and the sea was littered with boats and bits of wreckage and struggling men. On board the Corsair was Commander F. N. Freeman, as commander of the patrol division to which the Corsair and Alcedo were attached, and his report contained the following description of the disaster:
No explosion was heard on the Corsair, nothing was seen of it, nor was a submarine sighted. The Henderson immediately turned to starboard and made a smoke screen, the Willehad turned to port and from knowledge now at hand apparently passed very nearly over the submarine that fired the torpedo. The Alcedo turned back to the spot where the Antilles sank. The Corsair steamed at nineteen knots directly astern of the Henderson and to the northeast, followed by the Alcedo. These two escorting vessels continued in the vicinity of the wreckage until 8.30 A.M. No sign of the submarine was seen.
During all this time the Alcedo was picking up survivors while the Corsair continued circling around the boats and wreckage. The Corsair assisted in picking up the survivors in outlying boats and patrolling the vicinity until 10.30 A.M. All survivors having been rescued, and it being impossible to overhaul either the Henderson or the Willehad before nightfall, we set course for Brest.
The total number of persons on board the Antilles was 237. The number rescued by the Corsair was 50, by the Alcedo 117—total rescued, 167.
It is believed that every man on the Antilles who got into the water alive with life-belt on was rescued. Attention is invited to the excellent work of the Alcedo and Corsair in picking up survivors who were in the boats, on wreckage and life-rafts, floating over an area of several square miles. The Corsair picked up fifty persons from outlying wreckage and lifeboats without lowering a boat. The sea at this time was getting rough.
Officers from the Antilles have informed me that there was a fire on board the ship during the early morning, just before dawn, and that nearly all hands had turned out. This may account for the comparatively small loss of life, as the Antilles sank in seven minutes or less. It is not known whether the lights which had been turned on at the time of the fire were visible from outboard, and whether this has anything to do with the submarine attack. The Corsair reported no lights on the Antilles. The statements of the survivors are that several of them had seen the torpedo just before it struck the ship. It is worthy of mention that the conduct and bearing of the Armed Guard were a credit to the service.
No visual signals of any kind were made by the Corsair or Alcedo after nightfall at any time, and only one PDL flash-light signal was noted in the convoy. Only one radio signal was made and that at low power to the Henderson in thick weather, at night. Commanding officers were all thoroughly indoctrinated before getting under way in regard to the course, zigzagging, etc., and the escort vessels were unusually alert and attentive.
The senior naval officer on board the Antilles was Commander Daniel T. Ghent whose report to the Navy Department contained many incidents of interest in the story of the Corsair. Of the sixty-seven men who perished with the ship, he stated that forty-five of them belonged to the merchant crew, four were members of the armed guard, sixteen were soldiers who had been sent home, one was an ambulance driver, and one a colored stevedore. It was strange that the detonation of the torpedo was unheard by the escort vessels and that there was no visible disturbance, for on board the Antilles, according to Commander Ghent, the explosion was terrific. The ship shivered from stern to stem, listing immediately to port. One of the lookouts in the maintop, although protected by a canvas screen about five feet high, was hurled clear of this screen and killed when he struck the hatch below.
A BOAT-LOAD OF SURVIVORS FROM THE ANTILLES COMING ALONGSIDE
NAVAL OFFICERS RESCUED FROM THE ANTILLES, WITH GENERAL McNAIR, U.S.A., IN THE CENTRE
The explosion wrecked everything in the engine-room, including the ice machine and dynamo, and almost instantly flooded the compartment. The engine-room was filled with ammonia fumes and with the high-pressure gasses from the torpedo, and it is believed that every one on duty there was either instantly killed or disabled, excepting one oiler. This man happened to be on the upper gratings at the time. He tried to escape through the engine-room door but found it jammed and the knob blown off. Unable to force the door and finding that he was being overcome by the gases and ammonia fumes, he managed to escape through the engine-room skylight just as the ship was going under. Within a few seconds after the explosion, the water was over the crossheads of the main engines which were still turning over slowly. Of the twenty-one men on duty in the engine and fire rooms, only three escaped. Besides the oiler, two firemen crawled up through a ventilator. The fact that the engines could not be stopped and the headway checked, added to the difficulty of abandoning ship.
That only four boats out of ten succeeded in getting clear was due to this and several other causes,—the short time the ship stayed afloat, which was four and a half minutes by my watch, the rough sea, the heavy list, and the destruction of boats by the explosion. When there was no one left in sight on the decks, I went aft on the saloon deck where several men were struggling in the water near No. 5 boat and making no attempt to swim away from the side of the ship. I thought that they might be induced to get clear before the suction carried them down. By this time, however, the ship which was listed over at an angle of forty-five degrees, started to upend and go down. This motion threw me across the deck where I was washed overboard.
The behavior of the naval personnel was equal to the best traditions of the service. The two forward gun’s crews, in command of Lieutenant Tisdale, remained at their gun stations while the ship went down and made no effort to leave their stations until ordered to save themselves. Radio Electrician Ausburne went down with the ship while at his station in the radio-room. When the ship was struck, Ausburne and McMahon were asleep in adjacent bunks opposite the radio-room. Ausburne, realizing the seriousness of the situation, told McMahon to get his life-preserver on, saying, as he left to take his station at the radio key, “Good-bye, Mac.” McMahon, later finding the radio-room locked and seeing the ship was sinking, tried to get Ausburne out, but failed.
The Corsair and Alcedo returned to the scene of the accident and circled about for two hours when the Alcedo began the rescue of the survivors, the Corsair continuing to look for the submarine. Too much credit cannot be given to the officers and men of the Corsair and Alcedo for their rescue work and for their whole-heartedness and generosity in succoring the needs of the survivors. The work of the medical officers attached to these yachts was worthy of highest praise.
It is one of the many black marks against the sinister record of the German submarine campaign that the naval vessels with a convoy in such a catastrophe as this were compelled to delay the rescue of the survivors—dazed, wounded, helpless men in the last struggle for life.
It was possible that the submarine might come up to gloat over the murder it had wrought, or attempt to take prisoners, or even to ram the lifeboats or turn a machine gun on the struggling wretches, as had happened more than once. Therefore, in this instance the Corsair and Alcedo steamed at full speed, dropping depth charges and manœuvring to avoid torpedo attack while they scouted to drive away or destroy the ambushed U-boat.
As soon as it seemed advisable, they closed in and undertook the work of saving life, the Corsair still circling the outer edge of the area because of her superior speed. One of her crew described the scene in this manner:
It should be noted that although the Corsair spent most of her time looking for the submarine, she picked up a large number of survivors and without putting over a boat. One of these rescues was that of a lad who was riding upon an ammunition box. When the Corsair was brought alongside him, he began to semaphore us to keep off, and then he shouted to steer clear and go easy because he had a cargo of shells and didn’t want to blow up our ship. When we hoisted him aboard, he begged us to fetch his salvaged ammunition along, as he didn’t think it ought to be wasted. I doubt if he had many shells in the box, but he surely did show the right spirit, and the men agreed that he was “one game little guy.”
Shortly before we picked up this fine young bantam, we took aboard a loaded life-raft, under our starboard side. It was a delicate piece of seamanship, with a troublesome sea running, and the commander let our executive, Captain Porter, show what he could do with the yacht. The men of the Antilles owed a lot to the skill with which the Corsair was handled that morning.
One of the merchant crew of the Antilles had climbed upon the upturned bow of a broken boat and was seated astride the stern. Every wave was breaking over his head and he clung to his precarious perch with his arms and legs, like a jockey wrapped around the neck of a runaway horse. How he managed to stick there was a puzzle. He had drifted several hundred yards clear of the rest of the wreckage but our executive had an eye on him. “Skipper, I think we had better circle around again,” said Captain Kittinger. The “skipper” (Porter) replied that he would like to “go get that fellow first,” pointing to the man on the piece of boat. “Go ahead, skipper,” was the answer, and before the yacht swung off to fetch another circle we steered close to this lonely castaway and tossed him the bight of a heaving-line. He grabbed it with a death grip and we hauled him over the rail, but he was almost unconscious from cold and exhaustion and we had to pry his fingers open to make him let go the line. The doctor scored an “assist” on this rescue.
These unfortunates had been flung into the sea in a moment, some of them scrambling half-dressed from their bunks. They became chilled to the bone, half-strangled in the breaking waves, worn out with trying to cling to overturned boats, submerged live-rafts, doors and hatches and benches, the flotsam spewed up by the stricken ship as she dived under. Some of them swam from overloaded rafts to find help elsewhere, or floundered without life-belts until gallant comrades lent them a hand. It was a dreadful business, new to the Corsair and Alcedo; but all too familiar to the maritime annals of the war.
THE ANTILLES CROWDED WITH TROOPS ON HER LAST VOYAGE TO FRANCE
THE ALCEDO PICKS UP THE ANTILLES SURVIVORS
It is not easy to quench a sailor’s sense of humor even in the presence of death and disaster, and Ensign Schanze wrote, in a letter to his mother:
The commander of a supply ship bound to New York promised me that he would look Dad up if he could possibly do so, and tell you how I was getting on. His ship was in our party on the morning the Antilles was torpedoed, and maybe he got sore at us for letting a submarine scare the wits out of him. Our yacht had to stop and fish a lot of very wet citizens out of the ocean, and the last view I had of his ship was in a great cloud of smoke, and he was crowding on full speed to make his get-away. He was going like a scared rabbit. He never even waved good-bye.
Another gentleman who promised to call on Dad was a naval officer in charge of the gun crew of the Antilles. I yanked him out of the ocean and helped make him at home on the Corsair during the time between the sinking of the ship and the return to our base.
The fifty survivors saved by the Corsair found a warm-hearted welcome. Nothing was too good for them. They were promptly thawed out in the cabins and engine-room and tucked into bunks, while the crew, as a committee of the whole, ransacked their bags and boxes for spare clothing. They were ready and eager to give the shirts off their backs, and some of them actually did so. Every man who needed it was comfortably rigged in the togs of Uncle Sam’s Navy and told to go ashore with the clothes. You may be sure that such treatment warmed the cockles of the hearts of these forlorn derelicts from the Antilles and that they cheered the Corsair before they left her.
The yacht’s officers made room in their own quarters for the officers picked up from the Antilles. These included Brigadier-General W. S. McNair, of the United States Army; Lieutenant Commander Ghent, Lieutenant J. D. Smith, and Lieutenant R. D. Tisdale, of the Navy; Chief Officer A. G. Clancy, Third Officer R. M. Christensen, Assistant Engineer L. L. Rue, and Purser W. C. Gilbert. They were most cordial in their expressions of appreciation of the kindness and good-fellowship which they had found in the yacht during the voyage back to Brest.
A dramatic bit of gossip went the rounds of the Corsair after she reached port. A steward of the Antilles had been among those rescued and he was heartily disliked aboard the yacht, the one exception in the shipwrecked company. He was a Spaniard, by name and complexion, and he displayed a curiosity which the Corsair’s crew called “nosey.” He was discovered poking about in all sorts of places. Attempting to take a look at the radio-room, he was tersely told to beat it or have his block knocked off. The Executive Officer chased him away from the after quarters, where he appeared to be interested in the stateroom occupied by General McNair. Thereafter the movements of this gimlet-eyed passenger were vigilantly restricted.
The word came later from Saint-Nazaire that he had been arrested by the French authorities and shot as a notorious spy. The inference was that he had been endeavoring to slip away to the United States in the Antilles when fate returned him to the secret intelligence service which had information against him, and he was trapped by the heels. His last words as he faced the firing squad, so the Corsair story ran, were that the German submarines would get the Finland on her next trip home, just as they had intercepted and sunk the Antilles. This was peculiarly interesting, because after coaling ship and taking on stores, the Corsair was ordered to escort a convoy which was expected to sail from Saint-Nazaire on October 24th. The transports were the Buford, City of Savannah, and the Finland.
The flotilla of coal-burning destroyers had arrived from the Azores to reinforce the yachts of the Breton Patrol, and four of them were assigned to this escort, the Lamson, Flusser, Preston, and Smith. The yachts Alcedo and Wakiva were also detailed to join the group, and no previous convoy outward bound had been so heavily protected as this. The loss of the Antilles had aroused excitement in the United States because of the false report that the attack had been made by a whole flock of submarines. This was one of those hair-raising newspaper yarns of war-time which would have been important if true.
Steaming out to sea, the Corsair led the imposing column, with a destroyer on each bow of the Finland, the Alcedo to starboard of the Buford, the Wakiva to port, and a destroyer hovering on each quarter of the City of Savannah. There had been no intimation of danger other than the fanciful rumor of the prediction made by the suddenly deceased steward of the Antilles and the routine warning included in the Force orders, “Enemy submarines operating in war zone as usual.”
At 9.25 A.M., one day out from port, the Finland was struck by a torpedo on the starboard side. Again there was no sign of a submarine. This time, however, the Corsair heard the explosion and saw a huge column of water spout up against the ship. But the Finland had no intention of sinking and merely slowed down, then halted, blowing off steam as though waiting for the other transports to catch up with her. As seen from the Corsair, she rode on an even keel and it was impossible to realize that a torpedo had torn a hole thirty-five feet wide in her side, into which the sea was gushing like a cataract.
On board the Finland were many of the survivors of the Antilles and they were in no mood for an encore. They set the pace for the crew of the Finland in the race to abandon ship and the big transport seemed fairly to spill boats and men from every deck. They were dropping overboard before she had wholly slackened way. It was an amazing spectacle. At a distance the Finland made one think of shaking apples from a tree.
THE CORSAIR DROPS A MINE AND SHAKES UP FRITZ
Several of us were standing by the engine-room hatch [wrote Quartermaster Augustus Smith of the Corsair], watching the Finland as she steamed along in that very slow convoy. We were discussing her chances of getting through, and the story that the U-boats were laying for her, when suddenly a white burst of water rose under her bridge and climbed to the top of the foremast. It seemed to be followed by a pillar of dark smoke. At the same time the Corsair was fairly lifted out of the sea by the force of the explosion. All hands made a run for battle stations without waiting for the call.
The first boat from the Finland was dangling from the davits, half-filled with men, when somebody either cut or let go the forward falls. The bow of this big whaleboat crashed down to the water, dumping most of them out. A few managed to hang on and were struggling desperately when the after falls carried away and the boat dropped upon the heads of the men already in the sea. The next boat reached the water only to be up-ended by the headway of the ship. Other boats then waited for the ship to lose way and these got clear all right, but we saw one or two more upset and smashed.
When Commander Freeman, then on the Corsair as division commander, realized that the Finland was not sinking, he semaphored the message:
“Do you think you can make Saint-Nazaire?”
The answer came right back from the Finland’s skipper:
“Why not New York?”
The Corsair cracked on speed to search for the submarine, instructing the Wakiva and Alcedo to aid the Finland’s people who were adrift in boats or upon rafts. Three destroyers proceeded on the voyage with the two other transports while the fourth destroyer remained to operate with the Corsair. Investigation had disclosed the fact that the Finland was able to move under her own steam and the task in hand was to put the crew back on board and escort her into Brest for repairs. Meanwhile the Corsair, in quest of the enemy, was letting a real barrage of depth charges slide over her stern, and her wake was one thundering geyser after another. Eleven of these bombs jarred her rivets when they went off, and if a man had any loose teeth in his head he was liable to lose them entirely. Alas, no débris, such as dead German sailors, rose to the surface.
The report of the senior naval officer of the Finland, Captain Stephen V. Graham, is a lucid narrative and it is worth while to let him tell the tale:
Due to the congested condition at the port of debarkation, which was often serious in the early days of our transport service, the Finland had been unable to accompany the group of fast troop transports to which she belonged and which had proceeded on the return voyage about two weeks earlier. On this occasion she was in company with two freight transports of the armed-guard category which were not able to make more than eleven knots, but the three vessels had an escort of four destroyers and three converted yachts, which was uncommonly large at that time when the demand exceeded the supply. It was frequently necessary for the Finland to slow down to such a speed as would enable an enemy submarine to take a favorable position for attack.
By daylight of October 28th the convoy had reached a position near the line extending from the island of Ushant to Cape Finisterre, which experience had shown to be a particularly dangerous area. From that time on, the senior naval officer of the Finland remained on the bridge constantly and all the lookouts were exercising the utmost vigilance.
The weather was cloudy and a moderate sea running, and I was engaged in searching the water on both sides with powerful binoculars. I had just finished gazing at the starboard side when the naval signal quartermaster on watch called out, “Commander! Torpedo!” I turned and saw a torpedo about fifty or a hundred yards distant making a surface run directly toward the ship. The whirring of the torpedo’s propellers could be heard when they broke the surface of the water. To avoid it was impossible. The effect of the explosion was considerable but not as great as had been anticipated. No one on the bridge was injured.
I directed a radio operator to send out an S.O.S. call but it was found that the aerial had been carried away by the force of the explosion. The first report that reached the bridge was that the forward fire-room was flooded. At this time it did not appear probable that the ship would sink but in a short time she began to list to starboard and seemed to be settling. I ordered the lowering of the remaining boats which were hanging on their falls at the level of the promenade deck. These boats were scarcely in the water when the ship began to right herself, and the acting master, Chief Officer John Jensen, who had gone below to investigate the extent of the damage, returned to the bridge and reported to me that the destruction was confined to No. 4 hold, the bulkheads of which were intact.
In the meantime I observed Third Assistant Engineer George Mikkelson who had been on watch in the engine-room when the torpedo struck the ship, moving about the main deck with a wooden mallet in his hand and endeavoring to drive the frightened firemen back to their stations. He came to the bridge and reported to me that the boilers and engines were not damaged and that the ship could be got under way again in a short time if the men could be induced to go to work.
The damaged compartment, just forward of the fire-rooms, was used as a reserve coal bunker. At that time it contained about six hundred tons of coal. After the ship had been placed in dry-dock, upon her return to France, it was found that most of this coal had run out through the immense hole made in the side by the explosion of the torpedo.
When I received the master’s report that the damage was confined to this one compartment, I hailed the boats which were close to the ship and directed them to come alongside and also sent a signal to the escorting yachts to turn back the Finland’s boats which were approaching them and tell them to return to the ship. These yachts, the Alcedo and Wakiva, had come close to the Finland and lowered boats to rescue people who had been cast into the water by the dropping of two of the Finland’s boats.
The converted yacht Corsair and one of the destroyers were circling at high speed around the Finland and dropping depth charges in order to prevent the enemy submarine from delivering a second attack on the crippled Finland.
THE FINLAND, JUST AFTER SHE WAS TORPEDOED
DESTROYER PRESTON, WHICH WAS CAUGHT IN THE HURRICANE AND ALSO FOUND REFUGE AT LISBON
While the Finland’s boats were in the water, a heavy squall came up and rendered the return of the heavily laden boats very difficult. They could come close only on the starboard side and getting the people back on board was very slow work. Hoisting the boats was not to be thought of, for every moment that this large ship remained stopped was to risk grave danger of receiving a second torpedo. As soon as the passengers were aboard, the boats were cast adrift.
The ship got under way to return to the port of Brest, 150 miles distant. She was escorted by the Corsair and one of the destroyers, while another destroyer remained with the Alcedo and Wakiva to afford them protection until they had picked up the rest of the Finland’s crew. During the return to port it became necessary to send every one to the fire-room who could shovel coal. Deck-hands, stewards, and even passengers, including some of the discharged American ambulance drivers, responded with alacrity to this call and within a short time after starting ahead the ship was making nearly fifteen knots, which was about as good speed as she had made at any time during her employment in the transport service. The bulkheads of the damaged compartment held and there was no leakage through the water-tight doors.
It is regrettable that eight men lost their lives. The coolness and resourcefulness of the acting master and the engineer of the watch deserve commendation. Cadet Officer David MacLaren was the youngest officer on board—just eighteen years old. After I had ordered the boats lowered, this lad, who was in charge of one of them, would have been justified in leaving the ship which he believed to be sinking, but he returned to the bridge and reported to me that his boat was lowered and clear of the ship and asked if he could be of any service. He stayed on the bridge, giving valuable assistance, and displaying courage and readiness worthy of the best traditions of the sea.
One of the Navy youngsters was down in the living compartment cleaning up when the ship was struck. Some one in a boat hanging at the davits, seeing him hurry along the promenade deck, asked which boat he belonged in.
“Number Four boat,” he replied.
“This is Number Four. Jump in,” urged the other, and the boy answered:
“Not on your life! I’ve got to go to my gun.”
Unfaltering, the stricken Finland ploughed along at fifteen knots with a great chasm in her side, while the anxious Corsair and the destroyer Smith hovered close and felt unspeakable relief when the Ushant Light was seen on the port bow in the early evening. Before midnight the Finland had passed through the Raz de Sein and was safely anchored in Morgat Bay, beyond reach of submarines. Next morning her escort led her into Brest Harbor and the Finland, Smith, and Corsair, three weary ships, rested at the mooring buoys. The Corsair courteously signalled the Finland:
The officers and men of the Corsair express their admiration of the spirit shown by your officers and men in sticking by their ship and bringing her safely into port.
The Finland gratefully signalled back to the Corsair:
Thank you. I congratulate the spirit and efficiency of your command and thank you for the personal assistance in a trying time.
Ships and men are much alike. Some are tenacious, hard to knock out, standing punishment, and gallant in adversity. Others crumple under defeat and surrender at one blow. The Finland had a long record of faithful and successful service as one of the favorite passenger steamers of the Red Star Line between New York and Antwerp. She had the reputation of having lived up to the expectations of her builders. They had tried to make her a staunch ship that would hang together. When the cruel test came, the bulkheads stood fast, the water-tight doors did their duty, and the concussion failed to start the engines from the bed-plates.
The Finland was placed in dry-dock in France, but mechanics were scarce and the work dragged. Thereupon the American Army was called upon, and from the ranks came riveters, structural workers, machinists, who turned to and repaired the ship in record time. The Corsair had been spared the unhappiness of seeing this fine ship lost while under her protection. And of all the ships which went in and out while the Corsair was engaged in convoy duty, it was her good fortune to behold only the Antilles sunk by torpedo attack.
CHAPTER VI
ADMIRAL WILSON COMES TO BREST
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:
“Grim Father Neptune has his throne
In the Bay of Biscay, all alone,
And on the day of which we speak,
He served out weather rough and bleak;
He sent us hail and he sent us rain,
And ’twas not long ere Ralph D. Paine
Did hie himself to the skipper’s bunk
And swear the writing game was punk.”
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?”
CHAPTER VII
SMASHED BY A HURRICANE
On the last day of November the Corsair got under way from Brest to find and escort seven American store-ships which were bringing cargoes to France. A division of Queenstown destroyers had picked them up at fifteen degrees West and was guiding them to the rendezvous. With the Corsair went the Reid and Preston, also three French patrol craft, the Glaive, Claymore, and Marne. As the senior officer, Commander Seiss, in the Glaive, was in charge of the Allied escort group. The voyage was without notable incident, but the difficulty of working together in different languages and with a mixed British and American convoy was indicated by Commander Kittinger in his official comment:
The senior officer of our escort was in a ship lacking efficient radio communication. As it is not to be expected that an eight knot convoy from New York will ever arrive at a rendezvous on a predetermined course at a predetermined time, the Chief of Escort should be in the vessel having the best communication. This is especially necessary during the winter when the daylight periods are short. I do not believe that the ships of our convoy knew their destination. With ships on their first trip, as most of these ships were, the masters of the vessels are not prepared to have another escorting force join them and proceed to give them orders. This is especially true in the case of the British ship Anglo-Saxon, the master of which could not understand why an American patrol vessel should tell him to quit a British convoy. It would facilitate matters if the masters of all vessels, were informed of their destination and the probable time and place of their detachment from the New York convoy.
The Chief of Escort did not require the ships to zigzag nor to assemble in line formation as per doctrine. I do not believe it is advisable for the Chief of Escort to be a French officer acting with large convoys of American and English ships.
After this cruise the Corsair was placed in dry-dock at Brest, where a week was occupied in scraping, painting, and such overhauling as was necessary. The ship was in surprisingly good condition after six months of far more severe and punishing activity than she could have been reasonably expected to perform. Chief Engineer Hutchison and Assistant Engineers Mason and Hawthorn had kept things running down below without a serious mishap or delay, although the yacht’s engines had shoved her through 19,427 miles of sea during this half-year period. The fires had not died under the boilers for a stretch of five months. It seemed no longer quite fair to the Corsair to think of her as a pleasure craft. The words were incongruous. She had proved herself to be a brawny toiler of the sea.
An examination in dry-dock showed that the hull was almost as undamaged as when the yacht had sailed overseas. A few butts of the plates needed calking. A small dent in the keel required new rivets and two blades of the port propeller had been bent by hitting something submerged. The crew very much hoped that the obstruction might have been the submarine which the ship attempted to ram on that moonlit night of October.
On December 13th the Corsair returned to her mooring buoy after this little respite in dry-dock and undertook the sooty job of filling the bunkers. Next day she stood to the southward and found a convoy waiting in Quiberon Bay. There the transports and supply-ships were split into two groups. The escort of the fast convoy, fourteen knots, was in charge of Commander Kittinger and comprised the Corsair with the three destroyers, Warrington, Roe, and Monaghan, which had been added to the flotilla. The slow convoy escort, twelve knots, was under the orders of Lieutenant Commander Slayton in the Reid, who had with him the Flusser, Lamson, Smith, and Preston. The whole destroyer force then available was therefore employed on this cruise, with the Corsair as the only yacht.
The German submarines had been creeping in to lay mines in the channels outside of Quiberon, and the yacht Guinivere and four American mine-sweeping vessels were busy clearing the fairways for the outward-bound convoys. In clear, pleasant weather the two groups of transports gained the open sea without running afoul of any mines and were well on their way by nightfall of December 15th. The sea was smooth, unseasonably so for the time of year. The air had a nipping edge, but the temperature was well above freezing and the deck watches kept warm and dry in the wind-proof clothing which the Navy supplied for this service. The Corsair and Monaghan held positions on the right flank of the transports Madawaska, Occidente, and Lenape, while the two other destroyers trailed or scouted off to the left.
There was no premonition of terrific weather. For several days the barometer had been almost steady, at 30.50 inches or thereabouts. During the watch from eight o’clock to midnight of this first day, the sky clouded and the breeze blew stronger, hauling from northeast to north with steadily increasing force. The barometer began to drop and was at 30.00 when the watches were changed. There came a lull in the early morning, the 16th, when the rain squalls passed over, and with calm water the convoy steamed at fourteen knots. The Corsair was somewhat short-handed for this trip. Lieutenant Tod, the navigator, had been granted leave of absence to go to the United States and Lieutenant McGuire was acting in his stead. Boatswain Rocco Budani was also absent on leave.
By noon of this second day the wind had risen again, and this time it was boisterously in earnest, with a weight that swiftly tore the sea into foam and tumbled it in confusion. The barometer was still “falling gently,” as noted in the ship’s diary, and hung at 29.30 until the weather was at its worst. The Corsair pluckily clung to her station with the tall transports until 2.30 in the afternoon, although the seas had begun to pile on board of her. The destroyers of this escort group concluded to turn tail to it and run for shelter before the storm increased to hurricane violence, but the five other destroyers with the twelve-knot convoy, the Smith, Reid, Lamson, Flusser, and Preston, stubbornly held on and so were fairly caught in it along with the Corsair.
When it became impossible to smash ahead any longer without suffering serious damage, every effort was made to signal the senior naval officer of the transports, by semaphore and flag hoists, but no response could be made out. The big ships, riding high, were able to snore through the wicked seas at ten or twelve knots, but the yacht and the wallowing destroyers had to slow down and ease up or be swept clean.
HOW THE HURRICANE SEAS POUNDED THE YACHT. “THE POOR OLD SHIP WAS A MESS”
Aboard the Corsair it was decided to make for Brest as a refuge, but this course brought the sea too much abeam, as was discovered after three hours of reeling progress which slowed to ten knots. When the afternoon darkened into dusk, the shouting gale had so greatly risen in fury that it menaced destruction. The destroyers had vanished in the mist and murk, endeavoring to save themselves and fairly rolling their funnels under. The Bay of Biscay earned an evil reputation long, long ago, but very seldom does it brew such wild weather as this great blow of December, 1917. French pilots and fishermen could recall no storm to match it in twenty years.
It was the supreme test for the Corsair, a yacht which was, after all, handicapped for such a struggle. Officers and men prepared her to face it as best they could, but she could not be “battened down” like the rugged ship that is built to tramp the world. The deck-houses, contrived for comfort and convenience, presented an expanse of large windows and mahogany walls and were exposed to the battering of the seas. There was no passageway below to connect the fore and after parts of the yacht. As a war-vessel, she was already stripped of all extra fittings, and all that could be done was to make everything secure and meet it in the spirit of that famous old chantey of the Western Ocean:
“She is bound to the west’ard,
Where the stormy winds blow;
Bound away to the west’ard,
Good Lord, let her go!”
The medium-sized destroyers, like the Reid and Preston, which also weathered this hurricane, had a narrow beam and a shallow draft that made them roll terrifically, but, on the other hand, they could be sealed up like bottles, and they dived through it with no great risk of foundering even when swept from end to end. With less than half the tonnage of the Corsair they had ten thousand horse-power to whirl their triple screws. The decks might be washed clean of gear, but there were no houses to be knocked to pieces. The popular fancy that the destroyer is a fragile craft was disproved in the war zone. There were no more seaworthy, tenacious ships afloat.
Concerning what happened during this black night when the Corsair seemed to be washing to pieces and her holds were flooding, there were various versions and opinions. Most of the youthful landsmen, convinced that the yacht was going to the bottom, were frightened out of a year’s growth and not in the least ashamed to admit it. If they said their prayers, it was to be counted in their favor. The professional seafarers had their own misgivings, but with the stubborn, unreasonable confidence of their kind, they somehow expected to pull her through, believing in the ship as long as she was able to float. This was particularly true of Lieutenant Commander Porter, who had lived with the Corsair for so many years that she was almost a part of himself. He knew her moods, her strength and her weakness, and because she had never failed him he could not have been persuaded that she was unable to survive.
Man has contrived many cunningly ingenious structures, but none of them nobler than a staunch and well-found ship. The Corsair was a shell of thin steel plates, but every line and curve and hollow of them had been influenced by the experiences of centuries of warfare with the sea. A good ship is, in a way, the heritage from unnumbered builders who, patiently, intelligently, wrought in wood by rule of thumb to fashion the frames and timbers and planking of frigates and barks and stately clippers long since vanished. The Corsair was given beauty, to a sailor’s eye, but there was more than this—the indomitable quality of resistance which is like the will to endure.
What may be called the professional language of mariners is curiously restrained and matter-of-fact. It is to be found in the pages of ship’s log-books, which are, as a rule, the dryest possible reading. This hurricane, for instance, in which so many amazing and heart-quaking things happened, in which the Corsair all but foundered, is dismissed in such entries as these, so far as the ship’s record is concerned:
8 P.M. to Midnight:
8.25 changed course N.N.E., speed 7 knots. 8.45 changed course N. Hurricane blowing from North. Sea very rough. Ship making no headway and shipping a great deal of water forward and over stern. 11.00 reduced speed to 5 knots. Possible to steer ship only by using propellers as well as rudder.
R. J. McGuire
Lieutenant (J.G.), U.S.N.R.F.
Commences and until 4 A.M.:
Hove to with head to wind, speed about 2 knots, whole gale with frequent hurricane squalls from N. At 3.00 a heavy sea came on board and stove the forward deck-house. Seas also carried two French mines overboard and both mines exploded astern. Changed course to South and ran before gale at 5 knots. Manhole plate to lazarette washed off and large quantity of water entered, flooding engine-room. Water waist-deep in crew quarters and six feet deep in No. 1 hold.
W. B. Porter
Lieutenant Commander, U.S.N.R.F.
4 to 8 A.M.:
Running before heavy Northerly gale on South course, speed 6 knots. Very heavy following seas which broke on board very frequently. At 7.30 motor sailer broke loose but was secured with some injuries. Very heavy rain and hail squalls. Ship’s decks continually flooded.
R. J. McGuire
Lieutenant (J.G.), U.S.N.R.F.
8 A.M. to Meridian:
Steaming on course S. by W.—112 W. Speed 7 knots. Sea very rough. Hurricane blowing from North. Frequent heavy rain and hail squalls. Ship taking considerable water over the stern. Continued running before storm.
A. K. Schanze
Ensign, U.S.N.R.F.
Meridian to 4 P.M.:
Steaming on course S. by W.—112 W. Speed 7 knots. At 12.42 changed course S. 31 W. Hurricane blowing from North. Seas very large and coming over quarter-deck and both sides.
J. F. W. Gray
Ensign, U.S.N.R.F.
The war diary compiled by Commander Kittinger for the Navy Department is somewhat more explicit, but displays no signs of emotion. One begins to catch glimpses of the situation, however, and even to conclude that this intrepid naval officer would have felt much safer ashore. He also commits himself to the statement that the wind blew with hurricane force. A sailor will seldom go as far as this. When he does, you may be sure that old Boreas is giving the ship about everything he has in stock. What the agitated land-lubber calls a storm, and refers to it as a narrow escape, the skipper jots down as “a strong breeze”; or if it blows hard enough to snatch the hair from a cat’s back he may stretch a point and log it as a “moderate gale.” There seems to have been no disagreement among the experts that the Corsair poked her nose into a bona-fide hurricane, to be certified as such.
It was believed at this time, 8.25 A.M. [states the commander’s report], that the storm had reached the maximum and in a few hours it would moderate and permit shaping the course and returning to the base. The sea kept getting higher and higher and speed was reduced to six and then to five knots. The ship steered poorly and it was necessary to use the engines to keep her headed to the sea. At 9.20 P.M. took a heavy sea over port side which stove in the deck-house abreast the engine-room hatch. The sea was kept about one point on the starboard bow to prevent taking water in large quantities down the engine-room hatch. The gangways were awash and it was impossible to keep water from going down the breach.
The condition of the wind and sea did not improve and at 2.55 A.M., December 17th, a heavy sea broke forward and completely carried away the hatch covering of No. 2 hatch and demolished the forward bulkhead of the forward deck-house and stove in the roof forward to about half way aft. This admitted great quantities of water below and conditions became dangerous.
Two French mines were washed overboard which exploded about two minutes apart. These mines had been set in a safe position and were inspected before dark. Apparently the safety pins had worked out of position during the buffeting of the heavy seas. The others stowed on deck were inspected and it was found that some of the safety pins had worked out of position.
At 3 A.M. the ship turned and ran before wind and sea. The water below had gotten about one foot over the engine-room floor plates but was soon under control. The ship made better weather but was by no means out of danger. Fortunately no seas broke over the stern although quantities of water were taken over which came through the after skylights which had been damaged earlier. At daylight the next morning it was found that a great deal of damage had been done to all skylights, deck-houses, boats, and deck fittings, and that both the after deck-houses had been started on the port side.
WHAT WAS LEFT OF THE EMERGENCY WHEEL
WHEN THE HURRICANE SLAPPED THE WINDOWS
At 10.00 A.M. took a heavy sea over starboard quarter which stove in the starboard side of the engine-room deck-house. The wind and sea continued. It was evident that the ship would not reach a French port as her safety lay in running before the sea. At noon got a doubtful fix by observation and shaped course to pass west of Finisterre. At 3.00 P.M. got a good fix by observation which verified the course. At 12.50 A.M., December 18th, passed Cape Villano abeam, distance eight miles.
Consideration was given to a port of refuge. The nearest available Allied port was Lisbon which could not be reached until nightfall. As there was no information concerning entrance to this port, nor a code for radio communication, I decided to make Vigo, Spain, and rest there until Lisbon could be made by daylight. Anchored the ship at Vigo at 8 A.M. and communicated with the American Consul and with the Spanish Military, Naval, and Health authorities. Received weather reports and other information.
At 5 P.M. got under way and arrived off Lisbon about 8.30 A.M., December 19th. Took a pilot on board and obtained permission to enter port at Cascaes Bay. Moored to buoy off Lisbon at 10.30 A.M. Got into communication with the Portuguese Naval authorities who viewed the damage and said that repairs could be effected without difficulty. At 3 P.M., December 20th, took berth alongside of dock at Naval Arsenal and started repairs.
In their own diaries and letters home, the men of the Corsair managed to get more excitement out of the hurricane than one might infer from the tabloid narrative of the skipper. There were unusual features, such as the explosion of the depth charges which washed overboard and “functioned perfectly,” blowing up so close astern that many of the crew supposed the yacht had hit a German mine or the boilers had gone up. Other “ash cans” were adrift on deck, thumping about with the drunken motion of the ship or unreeling the cable which detonated them. In the tumult and commotion of wind and sea, petty officers and seamen groped to find these perilous metal kegs, diving after them as though they were so many footballs and trying to hold them fast.
Dave Tibbott, for example, was discovered with a depth charge jammed against his stomach while he clung to it and the rail. E. L. Houtz won a letter of commendation from the Secretary of the Navy for clambering down into the blackness of the lazarette and hoisting out a depth charge which had plunged into this compartment when the hatch cover was washed off. The cable had unwound and he followed it down, hand over hand, so locating the infernal machine. He floundered about with it, managing to get a footing upon some boxes, and so hung on by the eyelids until comrades could help him and his burden up the ladder. One of the quartermasters wrote his own impressions, somehow finding a dry spot in which to use a pencil:
December 16th. Pretty heavy sea, and gale blowing and hitting us hard. At 2 P.M. asked permission of the convoy to leave for Brest before the big storm breaks. Later. This may be the last entry I’ll ever make. We are in a hurricane and a mountainous sea. Unable to proceed without swamping and are now hove to in the teeth of the gale, barely making headway. The water is about four feet deep on the decks.... 17th. A terrible day and none of us expected to live through it. At 2.45 A.M. there was an awful crash and then a flood of water poured below. We all thought she had foundered and fought our way to the topside through water and wreckage.
I had just reached the deck when there was a tremendous explosion and the ship took a bad list. Water poured in everywhere. I heard some one yell, “My God, we’re torpedoed,” but I thought it was one of the boilers. Some of the men were manning the boats, and I had some battle to get to my station on the bridge without being washed off like a chip. I had just climbed to the bridge when there was another explosion, and a flash. My first thought was that we had struck a mine-field and then I heard one of the officers say that our own mines were going off.
Ensign Schanze ran aft to see if our stern was gone and found the watch chasing loose mines all over the deck. As fast as they were caught, the detonators were removed and they were pitched overboard to get rid of them. I stood at my post on the bridge expecting the ship to sink under my feet at any minute. I had made up my mind not to try to go in a lifeboat on account of the size of the sea, but to grab something wooden if I could. At this time a heavy rain squall swept over us. When I saw that the ship was not sinking, I went below to the engine-room to get warm.
I found conditions pretty serious there, with two feet of water around the engines and the engineers and firemen working in water up to their knees. The word was passed that we had turned and were running before the sea, and as long as the waves did not start breaking over the stern we could stay afloat. At 7 A.M. the seas got worse and began coming over. First to go was the engine-room bulkhead. It caved in with a frightful crash. Our radio also went down. Things looked mighty unpleasant, believe me, and after a conference with the executive officer, our commander decided to run straight ahead and try to fetch the coast of Spain. It was our only chance to save our skins, so we plugged ahead at a few knots.
Early in the afternoon the seas rose sixty feet high, at a safe guess, and began combing over our stern again. The after bulkheads were now giving way and it looked like our finish. The skipper had passed the word for all hands to turn to and save ship. We tore down doors, lockers, anything for lumber, and set to work reinforcing bulkheads. As soon as one carried away, we built another. The deck had tons of water on it and was leaking badly. Also the fire-room was filling up. The pumps were set going and we kept about even with the water. It was a flip of a coin whether we would win through and every man was fighting for his life.
At 6 P.M. the wind and sea decreased a little and the water stopped coming over. At 10 o’clock we sighted the lighthouses on the Spanish coast and felt that we had better than an even break of getting into port. It was a tough experience, one that we don’t care to repeat, and the poor old Corsair is all in, pretty much of a wreck barring her hull and engines. The ship’s company are a smashed-up, tired-out lot. There is hardly a man aboard without an assortment of bruises. My back is almost broken.
ASSISTANT ENGINEER HAWTHORN AND HIS WATCH
THE CREW OF NUMBER THREE GUN
Throughout the ship men were endeavoring to do their duty and to perform the allotted tasks, just as this quartermaster had struggled to his station on the bridge when he thought that the Corsair had been blown up. When one of the boats was in danger of being whisked away by a breaking sea, young Henry Outwater climbed into it and rove new falls, sticking to it until he had finished the job of working the stiff rope through the blocks. He was under water part of the time, and the fury of the wind was such that “he whipped straight out like a pennant,” as he afterwards told his mates. At any moment he and the boat were likely to go careering off together on the back of a thundering sea. No officer of the Corsair would have ordered him to risk his life in this fashion. He did it because he thought it ought to be done, a detail in the line of duty. The same spirit was shown by Boatswain’s Mate Mulcahy, who noticed that the port anchor needed to be secured. The ship was plunging her bows clean under as he crawled forward and fought the smothering seas while he wrestled with the lashings.
It was bad enough on deck, but worse to be far down below in the engine- and fire-rooms where the black water swashed to and fro and rose higher and higher. The pumps had choked with coal and ashes and it was touch and go before they were finally cleared. In this immensely difficult task, working mostly under water, Carpenter’s Mate Evans bravely helped to free the bilge suctions. Engineers, oilers, water-tenders, and the grimy watches of the furnace gang had dumbly, courageously run the chance of death by a torpedo through voyage after voyage. Now the sea had become an enemy even more ferocious than the U-boat, showing every intention of drowning them where they stood; but these were no quitters and the ship had steam enough to hold her hove to or to send her surging off before it. They were alert and steady for the signals from the bridge and they kept the heart of the ship beating strong and responsive to the need.
The twin screws helped to steer her, now with a thrust to starboard, again with a kick to port, whenever the hurricane would have rolled her helpless. One of the bridge watch, yarning about it in Lisbon, recalled this incident:
“I went below to roost on the steam pipes and thaw out, and you couldn’t call that outfit excited at all. What made a hit with me was a kid of an oiler who stood in the water between the two throttles, with a grip on each of ’em while he nursed the engines along. He had to help steer the ship as he got the word, opening up a little on one, shutting off on the other. Getting drowned was the least of his worries. All he had on his mind was coaxing the ship as she needed it, and the water was splashing around his legs, at that.”
“It reminds me,” chipped in another of this reminiscent group. “In the morning of the big blow, a guy of my division appeared on deck all dressed up in his liberty blues. The bo’s’n’s mate asked him what he meant by turning out all dolled up like that. ‘Why, Jack,’ answered this cheerful gob, ‘I have a date with a mermaid in Davy Jones’s locker.’”
“Like a couple of huskies of the black gang,” said some one else. “They were in their bunks snoring away like a pair of whistling buoys, dead to the world, although the fo’castle was flooded and the water was sloshing under ’em. The hurricane had worked itself up and was going strong, but they were off watch and the important business was to pound their ears. The first depth charge exploded and shook the ship up, and all hands were beating it for the deck, leaving their clothes behind. These two birds rolled over and sat up and yawned. ‘Say, bo, do you suppose we’re torpedoed?’ observes one, sort of casual-like. ‘It sounds and feels like that same little thing,’ replies the other. ‘I guess we might as well dress and see what it looks like.’ They were calm and deliberate, just like that, waiting to put on their shoes and pea-jackets and oilskins, and sort of strolling topside. My theory is that they had dreamed of being torpedoed and talked about it until the real alarm had no pep to it at all.”
“Do you fellows remember this? Somebody found ‘Tex’ on his knees, just after the whole wet ocean spilled into the after hatch. He was not a prayerful man, as a rule, so the spectator stood by to listen to ‘Tex’ at his supplications. He wasn’t praying for his own life, but for the safety of Shelton Farr who had tried hard to make ‘Tex’ follow the course of a virtuous sailor. ‘Oh, Lord, don’t bother about me, but save Fair,’ was the petition. ‘He is entirely too good to die.’”
“I said my prayers earnest and often,” confessed a stalwart gunner’s mate. “On the whole, the crowd behaved pretty darn well. I happened to see two or three boys sort of sticking to each other for comfort, and there were tears in their eyes and maybe one did blubber a little, but they were mere kindergarten infants, sixteen or seventeen years old, and it was a rough deal to hand ’em. A quartermaster came off watch from the bridge and one of these babies stopped him to ask what the skipper and Captain Porter thought about it. ‘They say the ship is going to pull through,’ the quartermaster tells these children. That was all they wanted to hear. They bucked right up and began to grin.”
To have the deck-houses smashing about their ears was enough to make the battered crew unhappy, but the most serious accident was the loss of the heavy round hatch plate which covered the entrance to the store-room or lazarette. Into this opening the sea poured in torrents as it broke and roared aboard, and it might have sunk the ship in a short time. You may be able to fancy how they labored to plug this hole with anything that came handy, while searching parties crawled and groped to find the missing hatch plate. Never was a game of hide-and-seek so desperately energetic. Luckily the metal cover had not gone overboard and before the holds filled with water it was found and screwed down to stay.
TEMPORARY REPAIRS, AFTER THE HURRICANE
WHAT THE FORWARD DECK-HOUSE LOOKED LIKE WHILE RUNNING FOR LISBON
Much water flowed down the stairways and ladders when deck-houses and bulkheads were rent and twisted, and the living quarters were as wet as a duck farm, but such damage was not vital. When the spacious forward house, used as the officers’ dining-room, was crushed for half its length, among the débris flung this way and that was the panel with the carved couplet:
“North, East, South and West,
The Corsair sails and knows no rest.”
It was fished out from under the deck planking which had been pried up by the sea, and the seaman who found it eyed the oaken board in a pensive manner as he said:
“Truer words were never spoken. The old boat has sailed every which way in the last two days, including upside down, and you can take it from me that there’s been nothing restful about her, nothing at all.”
Ensign Schanze tried to tell what happened when next he wrote to the folks at home and he succeeded very well, adding details and touches which might otherwise have been overlooked:
Picture to yourself the situation of a ship partly filling with water, at three o’clock in the morning, in a storm of ever-increasing violence, everybody on board wet and cold and exhausted, and then suddenly having a few beer-kegs loaded with dynamite going off just astern of her. It was a five-reel thriller and no mistake. We took the seaman’s forlorn hope of turning in that sea and trying to run before the storm, and we got away with it. The danger in that point of sailing lies in the possibility of having a sea board you from astern, and when that happens the ship usually founders.
When I say that the Corsair was wet, I mean wet, not merely moist. There was not a deck or a room in her, excepting the chart-house, which had at any time less than six inches of water sloshing about in it. At the instant just preceding the big smash that made us turn tail, I had left the bridge to go aft and look the ruins over. The big sea that squashed us, after doing its dirty work, rushed aft just as the ship rose to climb the next oncoming wave. At that moment I had reached the foot of the ladder that leads from the lower bridge to the main deck. As she was rolling hard and had a foot of water all over that deck, I was hanging to the hand-rail that runs along the deck-house. I heard the crash and knew what was stepping in my direction, so I clawed onto the hand-rail with both hands. The water came racing aft and piled up against my back until I was in a depth of at least six feet. My hold on the rail was useless and I was carried down the deck about a hundred feet in a most undignified attitude, to wit—in a posture halfway between sitting and lying on my back. Just as I regained my feet, the first mine went off. You can imagine my thoughts on the subject.
As it was out of the question to sleep in any of the regular living quarters, our men clustered around the engine-room hatch and in the blower-rooms and got what sleep they could in that manner. None of the officers got any sleep for thirty-six hours. At one time, when we were running before the storm, I looked into one of the blower-rooms and saw a man seated in about six inches of water, fast asleep. Tommy, the ship’s cat, was asleep in his lap. A comber boarded us over the side and increased the depth of water so that the next roll of the ship got Tommy very wet. He jumped from a sound slumber in the man’s lap to a wide-awake and frightened posture upon the man’s shoulder. Another sea climbed aboard to disturb poor Tommy again, so he perched himself upon the man’s head and there he stayed for two hours.
I saw Commander Porter get into an argument with a big boarding sea and my next view showed him lying alongside the outer rail in water two feet deep. There is no sense in arguing with a sea like that. One must go where it takes him and be glad when he is jammed into a secure corner.
Several boxes and packages came aboard for me just before this trip, each marked “To be Opened on Christmas,” so I carefully stowed them away. The hurricane flooded my room, of course, and drenched all my precious holiday packages. Despite the big flood, everything came through in fairly good order, barring the Christmas cakes, which turned into a beautiful clinker after they had been dried out on a steam radiator. Now we have to dig them apart with an ice-pick.
The walnuts and Brazil nuts sent by my loving friends did very well in the storm. They went adrift early in the excitement and got caught in the bilge strainer during the time we were pumping the water out of the ship. The chief engineer found them all when he put on his diving suit to see what kept the pumps from working, and I claimed the whole bunch, knowing full well they were mine. Several odd socks also mingled with the bilge strainer, but they were not mine. The captain, Gray, and I had a nut party in my room on Christmas night and very much enjoyed the bilged nuts.
Yeoman Connolly was not likely to forget the night of the storm which caused him to say of his own emotions:
All went well, except for a few seas we took over the side, until three o’clock Monday morning. I was in my bunk below decks at the time and, by the way, all I had on in the line of clothing was my underwear and the heavy sweater sent me from home. It was the first time since the day I watched the Antilles go down that I had turned in without all my clothes on. We figured that we were free from the danger of submarine attack in such a rough sea, hence our “nighties.” I fell asleep about midnight and was slumbering peacefully when I heard and felt an explosion and woke to find everybody making for the hatches. Dazed, I ploughed through about four feet of water, almost naked, and popped on deck. There it looked to me as though the old ship had been almost blown in two. Deck-houses and hatches were all messed up and the yacht seemed to be slowly settling. We made for the boats only to find them smashed, and then waited for orders.
The cry went round, “All hands save ship,” and if you hear that once you’ll never forget it. By this time I had scooted through the yeoman’s office and grabbed enough clothing together so I could lend a hand on the topside. It was the coolness of the officers and men that saved us from watery graves. We tore apart every table and door below decks to mend things until we could make port. I don’t believe the ship will ever go to sea again, except that she may be put in good enough shape to take us back to France from Lisbon about the middle of February or thereabouts.
Of the destroyers which were caught offshore and rode out the hurricane, the Reid was blown into Oporto, severely knocked about. Her log recorded:
December 17th. Torpedo truck carried away and washed overboard. Lost machine lathe and wherry. Whaleboat smashed and ice-box, life-preserver locker and vegetable locker broken loose by seas breaking aboard. Lost life-buoy light, compass binnacle light, guard to wheel chains, etc. 8 A.M. to noon, steaming as in previous watch. Having serious main engine bearing trouble, due to salt water in lubrication system. At 9 A.M. passed U.S.S. Corsair close aboard and asked her to stand by and assist us back to Brest. (Corsair had answered our S.O.S. from near by.) Lost sight of Corsair at 10.30 A.M., due to rain squalls and heavy weather. Foot of water in firemen’s compartment through hatch, and engine-room and all other compartments flooded.
The engine-room log of the Reid makes interesting reading, for the Corsair was in much the same plight:
Heavy sea swept over engine-room hatch at 4.30 A.M., carrying away ventilators and lathe and flooding engine-room. Glass covering to oil manifold carried away and settling tank flooded. Bearings running warm. Too much water running from sea.
The Smith destroyer lost both masts and a fireman overboard who was rescued after an hour when the cook swam to him with a line. The paint locker was stove in and the yeoman’s office washed out, which meant the loss of many painful hours of paper work. The vessel spent two weeks in dry-dock in Brest. The Roe and the Monaghan were nearer the coast, and although each lost a mast they scudded for shelter in time to avoid the worst of the blow. The Flusser and the Warrington were badly battered and had to lay off for repairs. The Preston limped into Lisbon, sighting the Corsair just outside the port, and the two ships remained there together until they could be made fit for sea again.
That lively historian of the Reid, Seaman (later Lieutenant) Timothy Brown, added some bits of life in a storm which the crew of the Corsair considered appropriate to their own unhappy hours:
As the elements continued to harry us, I could notice a changing sentiment among certain members of the crew. Several expressed the opinion that she would soon break in two in the middle. It was only a question of time. Others were too far gone to have any opinion about anything, and these afflicted ones lay helpless, clutching at whatever they could gain a hold. They were attended by their close friends. Our lawyer clung to a table and scribbled on a pad. He was framing a poor devil’s will. A brave lad from the Middle West suggested that it might be well to throw out some ballast—too much water was flowing through the hatches to feel comfortable. He said we might spare a ton or two from the forward hold which was crammed with provisions. A deck-hand passed the buck to the engineering department, which he said was about to sink the ship with enough truck to outfit several auxiliary cruisers, including solder bars, sal ammoniac, bolts and nuts, brass unions, rat-tail files, tallow candles, and flake graphite. None of the engineering department people would give up a pound. The only volunteer was a seaman who said, if necessary, he could spare a guitar.
... I reached the bridge deck unobserved and was drinking in the glorious sight. It felt fine to be so high that nothing could hit you but the spray. I hooked my elbow around a metal support of the searchlight platform. The officers had no good hand-holds and were slipping about like drunken men on roller skates. Our captain was almost unrecognizable in a saffron-colored slicker that hung down to his heels, and on his head was perched a sou’wester to match. He reminded me of the old salt who swings an enormous fish over his shoulder and advertises cod liver oil. Our junior lieutenant appeared to have unusually good sea legs, for he could stand with his arms folded, shifting from foot to foot, stolid and Napoleon-like. Our ensign was staggering under the weight of a life-preserver and a number of coals, all bundled up like an Eskimo, nothing showing but his eyes. Our chief petty officers, hanging under the wings of the chart-house, had not shaved for days and looked as if they might have made good if given a try-out as modern Captain Kidds. Grotesque figures draped in horse-cloth outer clothing, topped with hoods, aviator style, hovered wherever they could find a corner.
Blown far away from her base port in France, the Corsair was thankful to find shelter in the Spanish harbor of Vigo as a brief respite. She could not be called crippled, as a matter of fact, for in a rough sea she picked up speed to twelve knots and so made a landfall. Her condition was that of a pugilist with a broken nose, blackened eyes, and a few teeth missing, who still “packs a punch” and has no idea of taking the count. The Corsair no longer resembled a trim, taut, and orderly ship of the American Navy, nor would her weary crew have cared to line up for an admiral’s inspection. They wore whatever clothes they could lay hands on, and might have spilled out of the fo’castle of a Cardiff collier. All that really concerned them was the hope of getting dry and eating a few regular meals.
There were obvious reasons why Commander Kittinger preferred to seek some other port than Vigo in which to repair and refit for several weeks. The American Consul warned him that the Spanish authorities were bound by the laws of neutrality to intern the ship until the end of the war, a fact of which he was well aware. On the other hand, the senior Spanish naval officer of the port waived such formalities aside and most courteously assured the Corsair that she would not be meddled with and was at liberty to remain for necessary repairs and to depart when they were completed.
CLEANING UP AT LISBON, AFTER THE HURRICANE
Without doubting his word in the least, it was common knowledge that pro-German sentiment was strong in the Spanish ports and the enemy’s espionage system extremely well organized. Lisbon was near at hand and Portugal was an active ally of the United States. The Corsair, therefore, went to sea, after a few hours at Vigo, and steamed into the wide bay of the Tagus next morning and so found a friendly destination and a people who welcomed her with warmest hospitality to one of the most beautiful cities of the world.
The war had touched it lightly. The contrast with France, so tragic and worn and imperilled, was singularly impressive. Brilliant with sunshine, Lisbon smiled from her seven hills and her tropical gardens, and the seafarers of the Corsair thought of Brest, gloomy and rain-swept, given over to the business of war, the gateway of the thronging transports which were hurrying the manhood of America by the million, to the blood and misery of the trenches.
CHAPTER VIII
THE PLEASANT INTERLUDE AT LISBON
I like the look of khaki and the cut of army wear,
And the men of mettle sporting it, at home and over there;
But there’s something at the heart-strings that tautens when meet
A blue-clad sailor-man adrift, on shore leave from the fleet.
From flapping togs his sea-legs win some rhythm of old romance
That’s proper to the keeper of the paths that lead to France;
For what were all the soldiers worth that ever tossed a gun,
Without the ships and sailor-men to pit them ’gainst the Hun.
His hands are often cruel cold; his heart is oftener warm,
For in its depths he knows ’tis he that shields the world from harm.
Because I know it too, my heart beats warmer when I meet
A blue-clad sailor-man adrift, on shore leave from the fleet.
M. A. DeWolfe Howe
Portuguese troops were fighting in France and the sentiment of the people was very strongly with the Allied cause. They realized that the hope of ultimate victory lay in the tremendous energy with which the United States had finally hurled itself into the war, but there had been no opportunity to behold and applaud the valiant soldiers from across the seas. Now, at length, there came into the harbor of Lisbon two war vessels of the powerful Uncle Sam, a large and graceful yacht and a bulldog of a destroyer, and the blue-clad sailors who flocked ashore were the first to set foot there since Portugal had entered the war. The Corsair and the Preston were something more than storm-tossed ships in quest of a haven. To Lisbon they were a memorable event and one worthy of a celebration.
The colony of foreign diplomats and military officers, British, French, American, Spanish, and all the rest, accepted the entertainment of the American officers and sailors as a social responsibility. And they were quick to recognize the fact that in the war-time American Navy the “gob” was as likely to be a young gentleman of manners and education as the ensign or the lieutenant. Tactfully and easily the barriers of shipboard discipline and ceremony were ignored for the time, and the invitations to teas, garden parties, receptions, and theatres seldom raised lines of distinction between the youthful seaman with the flat cap and the rolling collar, and the gold-striper severely buttoned to the neck in his service blouse. This might have been awkward in some circumstances, but the crew of the Corsair knew how to carry it off. They met the loveliest girls of Lisbon and were gallantly attentive, as was quite proper.
The American Minister to Portugal, Colonel Thomas Birch, fairly adopted the whole ship’s company. They might have been so many long-lost sons and nephews. The Legation belonged to them as long as they stayed in port, and he appeared to enjoy it all as much as they did. Captain Ross, who was representing Gaston, Williams, and Wigmore of New York, was ready with help, advice, and hospitality, and as a host and friend the Corsair found him true blue. The American Consul-General, Mr. W. L. Lowrie, was also most courteous and friendly and took particular pains to make these American exiles feel at home.
In letters written home by one of the petty officers, you may read between the lines and conclude that there might have been worse fates than to be marooned in Lisbon for seven weeks:
December 24th. You cannot imagine what a sensation it is to find yourself all of a sudden walking down fine, broad streets with rows of palm trees, and geraniums and other flowers in bloom. The leaves are falling now and the rainy season is beginning, but as they have had no rain in five months we ought not to complain. There are many picturesque street scenes, flocks of turkeys driven by small boys with long sticks, and if you want a turkey you halt the procession and pick out your bird and carry it home under your arm; little donkeys almost smothered in vegetables are led gingerly along;—everywhere women are selling fish which are carried in baskets upon their heads. Lottery tickets are shoved at you from every corner. A crowd gathers wherever we American sailors stop or loiter, and we are great curiosities. At the best hotel, the Avenida Palace, several of us ran into a bazaar for the benefit of the French and Portuguese war widows and orphans. The American Minister, Colonel Birch, a fine old boy, introduced us to all the girls, English, French, and Portuguese. There were some beauties among them, and although it is a long time since I talked to a girl I sailed right in and had no trouble.
LISBON HARBOR AND THE TUG THAT TOWED THE CORSAIR TO THE DOCKYARD
THE AMERICAN LEGATION AT LISBON, WHERE THE CORSAIR’S CREW FOUND A HOME
I also met the French and Chinese Ministers and talked to them. I get along in French now and carry a conversation with ease. One of the most attractive girls was the daughter of the chief of the British Military Mission, Lieutenant-General Barnardiston, a soldier and gentleman of the finest type. He commanded the British forces which operated with the Japanese at Kaio Chao. Yesterday I saw them after church and met the mother who is an American. She asked us to tea. Four of us went and stayed two hours. The General was tremendously interesting, of course, but he would have been more so if one of our men had not tried to talk him to death.
To-morrow being Christmas, we are trimming the ship with greens and flags and have hoisted a Christmas tree clear to the top of the foremast. Mr. J. P. Morgan, the owner, is very kindly blowing us off to a dinner by cable, and we are looking forward to the occasion. It is the first Christmas away from home and I know how you’ll miss us all, but it should be very joyous because we passed through that hurricane in safety. We have a fine large cat as a mascot and as one of the men said, “Tommy used up eight of his nine lives in the big blow.”
January 2nd. Our gaieties continue and we are having the best time since leaving New York. Colonel Birch gave us a reception at the Legation to meet the diplomatic corps. The officers and fifteen men went from this ship. All nationalities were there, from Brazil, Uruguay, Belgium, Spain, and of course Portuguese, French, and English. It was great fun to meet them, and most of the diplomatic people could talk to us in English. We had some dancing, the first I had done since February, and everybody was in the finest possible spirits. The girls were stunning. The Spanish Minister is a delightful man and has spent a lot of time in Mexico and the United States. Our host, the genial American Minister, resembles former President Taft in size and quality and seemed to be having the time of his life.
New Year’s Eve we were all on board ship and celebrated it in combination with a French destroyer which lay alongside us. At the stroke of midnight we banged out eight bells for the old year and eight more for the new, and then both ships opened up their whistles and we startled the Portuguese with the pandemonium. The Frenchies had a terrific siren. After this outburst we sang the “Marseillaise” together and the effect was stirring. Then we sang the “Star-Spangled Banner,” and the Portuguese sailors who had come aboard from the Navy Yard sang their national anthem and everybody cheered everybody else, and it was a grand old time.
On New Year’s Day I went sight-seeing with a buddy from the ship and visited several cathedrals. In one of them all their dead kings are tucked away, and they lift the lid off so you can look right down at the relics of royalty. As they have been dead for hundreds of years they are none too attractive. We had a fine dinner on board ship in the middle of the day, turkey, mince pie, etc., and another in the evening at the hotel. It is mighty pleasant to have all these distinguished people so polite to us and we also appreciate the attitude and the courtesy of the officers of the Corsair.
January 9th. Last evening six of us called on those delightful English people, the Barnardistons. The Spanish Minister and his two daughters were there. The General played the piano for us and is very musical. Miss Barnardiston played beautifully and the Spanish young ladies also performed. We were represented at the piano by Tibbott who upheld the honor of the Corsair. You ought to see the row of decorations on General Barnardiston’s coat—Victorian Order, Rising Sun of Japan, African Campaign, and so on. Yesterday afternoon we went to tea at the Girards, the French people. The night before we were invited to amateur theatricals at the British Club, given to entertain the Corsair and the Preston and the French destroyer. It was very cleverly done. The actors were Portuguese and the girls were very pretty. They sang, in English, lots of American songs. Between acts they served cake and tea and afterwards we sang the national airs. I was fussed to death to have to get up on the stage and lead the whole outfit in the “Star-Spangled Banner,” giving the key, etc., but our captain made me do it. Our jolly American Minister, Colonel Birch, gave me a wink which made me feel more comfortable.
I went to the English church last Sunday and they had a special service, appointed by the King, to pray for Allied victory, and it was fine. The English always pray for the sailors and soldiers—sailors first. They certainly are devoted to their Navy. After church another man and I went over to the Legation with Colonel Birch and sat around in his biggest armchairs for an hour. He treats us like princes and we can’t say too much in appreciation of all he is doing for us. He is to give us another party next Saturday and we are looking forward to it, for he has promised to have all the charming Portuguese girls there. We are lucky young sea-dogs to have tumbled into all this, and we are having the time of our lives. I was made quartermaster, first class, the other day, and am naturally very much pleased. I shall be glad to get back and finish my examinations for a commission, but since the hurricane little things like that don’t bother me very much. We have not forgotten the storm and still talk about it—all the acts of courage and the many close shaves.
January 14th. Last night there was another dramatic performance by the Portuguese young people, so that the whole ship’s company could see the show. This time I sat with the pretty French girls and it seemed almost like New York. I dropped in to call in the afternoon. We sat in front of a log fire and it was cozy and homelike. Their father, M. Girard, was French Minister to Haiti for two years, during a revolution down there, and had some very unpleasant experiences. The Haitian President was dragged from the Legation and butchered before their eyes, and other acts of savagery committed, but our marines and bluejackets landed soon after and promptly had the situation well in hand.
Ensign Schanze enjoyed himself as much as the rest of them and described the hospitality of Lisbon as follows:
Here we are, still in Portugal, where we have been undergoing extensive repairs and entertainments. Never in all my experience away from home have I come across people who were as strenuously cordial as our hosts of the city of Lisbon. There are two leading social elements, the native Portuguese and the foreign colony. Both have gone the limit to make us welcome and the result has been that we have never had less than two engagements a day, most of the time three.
The usual routine runs about like this—in the forenoon some Portuguese, French, or British officer blows on board to take us in charge to see the points of interest; in the afternoon there is a tea to attend at some one of the various homes or legations; and in the evening there is a dinner party followed by a theatre party or its equivalent. These things do not simply occur frequently. They are daily in their rotation.
We, on our behalf, make our best effort to counter with teas on board the ship; also lunch parties and dinners whenever we can wedge them in crosswise. Functions have become so numerous that the captain has found it necessary to detail certain officers to attend certain festivals daily. There have not been enough of us to go around, even at that. This is the first war that ever made me keep such late hours.
It should not be inferred that life was an incessant round of parties, teas, and receptions for all hands of the Corsair while at Lisbon. Many of the young men had other inclinations and fought shy of “the society stuff.” The city itself was fascinating to those who liked to wander and explore with their eyes open. In groups they loitered through the dark and narrow streets of the ancient quarter of the Alhama or enjoyed the noble prospect of fine buildings and open spaces along the Tagus, or strolled with the colorful crowds in the Praca do Commercio and investigated the luxurious shops and cafés of the Rua Augusta and the Rua da Prata. Automobiles could be hired, and parties of bluejackets might have been seen in the royal palaces, the storied old churches, and the monastery whose walls were built in 1499, on the spot where another sailor, Vasco da Gama, had embarked on a famous voyage two years earlier.
The water-front of every large seaport is notorious for low-browed rascals who look at Jack ashore as easy prey, and it was not in the least to the discredit of the hospitality of Lisbon that a pair of Corsair men should have run afoul of one of these land-sharks when they first hit the beach. The business-like manner in which the youthful seafarers handled the matter discouraged further attempts to molest them. One of the pair mentioned it in his diary:
Got shore liberty and landed in jail one hour later. The way it happened was that the driver of the car we had chartered tried to rob us and we refused to stand for it, so he had us pinched. We explained the case in French to a generalissimo and he turned us loose at once and said we were dead right. He would see that it didn’t happen again. The tough driver was laying for us when we walked back to the ship and he tried to get me with a knife and a machinist’s hammer. Dave stopped him, and I got a big club and we organized to clean up, but a crowd gathered, so we decided to quit and go on our way as a bunch of sailors from the Corsair and Preston hove in sight and were all set to make a battle royal of it. I knew this would get us into serious trouble, although I did hate to let that auto bandit get away with it, so we withdrew in good order.
THE CORSAIR IN DRYDOCK AT LISBON
AT HER MOORING BUOY, BREST
Yeoman Connolly improved the opportunity to see the sights of Lisbon and some of his impressions ran like this:
The city is the finest I have seen in Europe, barring Paris only. The public buildings are works of art and you see splendid architecture everywhere. The street cars are the most modern I have seen since leaving home, but why shouldn’t they be? I was sitting in a car the other night and happened to look around at the advertisements when I alighted on the builder’s name, “John Stephenson, Elizabeth, N.J.” It made me homesick to see the familiar name. I didn’t hesitate to tell some of the Portuguese sitting alongside me that Elizabeth was my home town, and they seemed very much interested.
I was taken through one fine building yesterday by a very distinguished-looking gentleman, elderly and good-natured, who showed a lot of interest in me and who introduced me to the Lord Mayor of the place and to some of the Cabinet members. He himself is a member of the Cabinet and one of the best-known men in Portugal, I later learned. I walked through some of the streets with him and his gold-headed cane, and almost everybody bowed to him or looked at him with awe. He understood English very well and told me a whole lot of the history of the country. As a plain American gob I got all I deserved, and then some.
This is a great old town. I suppose you have heard of the revolution that is going on here. We came just in time to see the skirmishes that are featured daily. A funny thing occurred last night. We were loafing along one of the main avenues when we came to a big bulletin in front of a newspaper office. About a thousand people were gathered in front of it and reading a notice. To catch your eye there was printed a huge hand holding a dagger dripping with blood, and beneath it the announcement of another episode of the revolution which was scheduled to take place on the following Saturday afternoon. Some class to this burg. They are not satisfied with trouble as it comes along, but even advertise it in advance.
We are all going uptown to see a bull-fight on Sunday. They have them two afternoons a week, but we have picked Sunday as we want to take in part two of the revolution as duly announced for to-morrow. In spite of the political rough-house the city is really wonderful and we are very lucky to be laid up here, even if we do miss out on a few weeks of the war. The only thing that gets me is how the deuce to talk this Portuguese lingo. We were all learning French very rapidly and can get along O.K. in that language, but the stuff these people patter is simply terrible to make out. Here we have to turn to and learn a third language, and by the time we return to God’s country we ought to be linguists of note.
The money here is very different from France. It is the reis, not the franc, that demands your careful attention. It takes sixteen hundred reis to make an American dollar, and when you get change for ten dollars or so, you get a basketful of junk that looks like so many United Cigar Store coupons. It costs about a million reis to buy a good meal, but the food is excellent and we get real honest-to-goodness hot rolls, just like back home, but about as big as a football. I brought a dozen back to the batteau last night and when I came to pay for them I handed the gink about seventeen hundred thousand reis, more or less. It makes you swell up and feel richer than Rockefeller to be handing out fortunes in this careless way, and it’s lucky for us, as the ship has not been paid off in the Lord knows when and most of us are flat broke. However, the moving-picture theatres are good and fairly cheap, and Charlie Chaplin is here, and we are allowed to stay ashore until eleven-thirty at night, which is a long liberty for a foreign port.
It was difficult for the officers of the Corsair to maintain the customary round of duty and discipline while the ship was under repair, with a crowd of Portuguese artisans aboard, many distractions ashore, and things more or less upset, but they succeeded in enforcing the high standards of the United States Navy aboard. No more gratifying evidence of this could be desired than the following letter from the Secretary of the Navy:
March 11th, 1918
To Commanding Officer, U.S.S. Corsair.
” ” ” ” Preston.
Subject: Good Behavior of Men in Lisbon.
The Department is much gratified to receive through the State Department an excellent report of the behavior of the men of the Corsair and Preston during their stay in Lisbon. The following is an extract from the letter of the American Minister:
I am sure that the Department will be pleased to know, as well, that all the men behaved splendidly and made a very creditable impression in Lisbon. It is needless for me to say that I was very much gratified by it all and personally felt that our men were worthy of the cordial attention and generous hospitality bestowed upon them by the Portuguese people and others.
This evidence of good discipline reflects credit alike on the officers and men of the ships and on the Naval Service.
(Signed) Josephus Daniels
To be caught in the midst of a Portuguese revolution caused the crew of the Corsair more amusement than alarm, and the only regret was that they could find no lawful excuse for taking a hand in the shindy. It was largely a local affair, between the military and naval forces of the Provisional Government, and Lisbon seemed less disturbed about it than if the street railways had gone on strike. The shooting and commotion were mostly confined to the water-front, and the experience of Quartermaster Bayne, for example, would indicate that the American sailors really enjoyed it:
January 1st. It was my day’s duty on board, so could not go to the party at the American Legation. Everybody said it was a bully good game. We created a large disturbance last night. When we blew our siren to welcome the New Year, it brought the entire town out all standing, as they thought it was the signal for another revolution. The Portuguese troops were ordered out and started to march at the double-quick to the Navy Yard, as they took it for granted that the Navy had touched off an uprising. The situation might have been serious, but some general or other found out that it was us and what we were doing, and the soldiers were ordered back to the barracks. The Lisbon newspapers gave us a write-up, and we ran true to form as the gallant but quite unexpected and unaccountable Americans.
January 4th. This has been an exciting day. I went ashore at two in the afternoon and was to meet the rest of the crowd for dinner at seven. They did not show up, and I learned later that the harbor was so rough that the ships had to shove off and anchor in mid-stream for a while, and no boats could come ashore. I spent the evening at General Barnardiston’s and then started to foot it back to the ship. The gates of the Navy Yard were locked, but the Portuguese guard let me pass through. As I wandered along to the wharf, I noticed that all lights were out in the buildings, but I didn’t think much about it, although several squads of soldiers looked me over pretty carefully.
When I got back aboard the Corsair, I saw that our guns were manned, and I was greeted with, “Thank God, you got through. How did you do it?” I asked what was up, and got this story. The Army and Navy were pulling off another revolution. Fighting had been going on between the War Ministry and the Naval Ministry buildings. Our ship was close to both. One of our coxswains, Lindeburg, was in a motor-boat at the foot of the Army Building and as he left the boat and started to beat it for the ship, he was fired at while running along the wharf. He ducked back to his boat, and the Corsair, getting uneasy about him, ordered a rescue party away. They were shot at, too, and had to seek cover.
This was a bit too much, so the battery was loaded and trained on the buildings, while an armed guard, carrying the Stars and Stripes, marched to both buildings. Meanwhile the captain had sent a radio message to the authorities, demanding an instant explanation and apology for firing on our men. This second party of ours was not attacked and soon returned with the other men. Half an hour later we received an official apology. Knowing nothing about all this ruction, I had walked through the Navy Building, right between the lines, and aboard ship. Copeland and Ashby were with me and for some reason we were not shot at.
That about ended the trouble, as far as we were concerned, but it looked like business for a little while, because if they had fired on our flag we should have knocked their buildings over for sure. I understood that our skipper sent them the message, “If you fire on our flag we shall attack at once.”... During the afternoon the wind and sea had been so high that most of the ships in the harbor dragged their anchors and the French destroyer next to us had to move out after knocking a hole in our side which probably means dry-dock again.
January 7th. The revolution is still on, and we are advised to keep off the streets, more or less, as there is plenty of rifle-firing, and when these Portuguese get excited they mistake our uniforms for their own Navy and so take pot shots at us.... January 8th. Big revolution to-day. The Army opened up with about a hundred shells on the flagship Vasco da Gama, and it was lots of fun. The shells passed almost over us and we watched the scrap. The Navy didn’t shoot back. The shrapnel was falling fast and the ships hauled down their colors. The whole Portuguese Navy tried to crowd aboard the Corsair for protection, but we wouldn’t stand for that. There was a good deal of machine-gun and rifle shooting uptown all day. There was no liberty, but the captain sent for me and five others and gave us special liberty to go to Mme. Girard’s for tea. Had a fine time. We were warned to be careful, as the soldiers fired at any naval uniform they happened to see. They did not bother us, although we passed a lot of infantry heavily armed.
“DOC” LAUB AGREES THAT “THIS IS THE LIFE IF YOU DON’T WEAKEN”
COXSWAIN DAVE TIBBOTT WAITS WITH THE LAUNCH
At dinner ashore, the programme was interrupted by a battle in front of the hotel, and almost everybody, excepting ourselves, left the dining-room because the bullets were popping about. We refused to budge, for there was a corking good dinner on the table and the Portuguese soldiers are pretty rotten shots. They played a dirty German trick to-day. Some of their Navy men shoved off unarmed in small boats and tried to row ashore, but the troops opened fire on them, not far from our ship, and killed a couple of the poor Portuguese gobs. It made us so sore that we felt like cutting loose on them.
January 9th. No revolution to-day. The French officers on the destroyer Intrepide have behaved splendidly to us chaps. Of course, association with enlisted men is unknown in the French service, that is, in a social way. At first they couldn’t quite understand how we happened to meet them at these various teas and receptions, but after a time or two they grasped the situation and have since put themselves out to be agreeable to us.
The report of Commander Kittinger is an accurate and interesting summary of the episodes of this sputtering little revolutionary outbreak in which the Corsair played a part during her pleasant interlude at Lisbon. He wrote as follows:
About 9 P.M., January 4, 1918, the U.S.S. Corsair, being moored to the dock at the Naval Arsenal, desultory small-arms firing broke out in the Naval Compound. The firing was observed to come from the windows of the second floor of the east wing of the building forming the Arsenal Compound. It was reported that the coxswain of the motor dory was in the immediate vicinity, securing his boat for the night. At intervals the firing was resumed, but the object which drew the fire could not be made out from the ship. Lieutenant Commander Porter and Ensign Schanze, with four bluejackets, left the ship for the Arsenal offices to arrange for the safety of the coxswain. On approaching within about fifteen feet of the door in the centre of the north wing, firing was opened, apparently at the Corsair party, from the same place, the bullets hitting the walls and pavement near them. The party entered the building without casualty.
Intermittent firing continued after this. After waiting a reasonable time for the return or for news of the first party, a second party led by Lieutenant McGuire left the ship, carrying a flag. The searchlight from the ship was used to illuminate the flag. This party was not molested and returned with the first party and the coxswain. It developed that the firing came from the windows of the Colonial Office and was directed at Portuguese bluejackets passing across the open space from the shore end of the wharf to the main entrance.
About 11 P.M. a military aide of the President called on board and presented the compliments of that official with the usual courtesies, and inquired as to casualties, if any, in our force. He was informed of what had taken place and that no damage was done. A report of the riot was made to the American Consul-General, Mr. W. L. Lowrie, whose reply is herewith attached:
From American Consul-General, Lisbon,
To Commanding Officer, U.S.S. Corsair.
I have to acknowledge the receipt of your memo. of January 5th concerning the firing in the Arsenal Compound during the evening of January 4th. Personal representations have been made and I trust there will be no recurrence of the rioting, although as you are fully aware conditions here just now are most unsettled. I am extremely thankful that no one was hurt during the rioting and that no damage was done.
Beginning January 3rd it was noticed that conditions in Lisbon were unsettled politically. On that night some rifle-firing took place in the streets between Portuguese sailors and soldiers on patrol duty. Shots were exchanged nightly up to January 8th when the counter-revolution took place. The situation briefly is this:
The Portuguese Navy has been the controlling factor in the politics of the country. The Army has been the opponent, but has been negligible because of its ineffectiveness. The Navy deposed the King in 1910 and set up a Republic which has been perpetuated until the present time, the last incumbent being President Machado. When Portugal entered the war, the Army was largely increased and equipped, and forces were sent to the Western Front and to the Portuguese African colonies. Army preparations continued in Portugal and there is a large mobilization at present.
On December 5, 1917, the Army started a revolution and succeeded in overthrowing the Government two days later, the President being exiled on that date. As a precautionary measure, the naval forces present at Lisbon were disarmed. In spite of this, the Navy prepared plans for a counter-revolution. The present Provisional Government took steps to send the majority of the sailors to the Portuguese African colonies because of the serious reverses suffered by their troops in Africa while fighting the Germans.
The Navy took steps to defeat this manœuvre and on January 8, 1918, the Vasco da Gama (flagship) anchored off Lisbon. At 10.45 A.M. a battery of three field pieces at Saint George’s Castle in the middle of the city, opened fire on the Vasco da Gama. The flagship fired five shots in return and hoisted a red flag under the ensign. The shots of the shore battery were dispersed, but some seemed to strike the ship. Shrapnel and projectile were fired. At 11.10 A.M. the Vasco da Gama hauled down her flag and hoisted a white flag at the foremast and abandoned ship. A number of shots were then fired at the destroyers Douro and Guardiana, which also struck their colors and hoisted white flags. The cruiser Almirante Reis, a transport, and several gunboats did likewise. At 11.20 A.M. firing ceased at the shore battery. Rifle fire continued in the city streets. The Arsenal plant closed down at the beginning of the firing and the workmen employed on board the Corsair stopped about 11 A.M. No further work was done by the Arsenal force that day.
On January 9th (the next day) the Arsenal resumed operations as usual, and I was informed that the trouble was over and work would continue as before. The Vasco da Gama, with the Guardiana and Douro, stood down the river on January 11th, apparently undamaged.
The crew of the Corsair felt a personal interest in the Provisional President, Sidonio Paes, as some of them had sat at the table next to him in the dining-room of the hotel and one or two of the officers had met him at the theatre. One of the street spectacles was a huge parade in honor of Sidonio Paes, and a bluejacket described it as “tremendous enthusiasm, everybody yelling to beat the band and waving their hats, and the Portuguese thought it was great, but it wasn’t as good a show as when the Seventy-First Regiment came back from the Mexican Border and marched up Fifth Avenue.”
What the Corsair considered the big moment of the long stay in Lisbon was when the landing party marched off the yacht to rescue the two officers and the four men who had gone ashore to look for the coxswain and find out what the row was all about. The ship’s searchlight was turned and held to illuminate the bright folds of the Stars and Stripes while the gun crews stood ready for action, every sight-setter, plugman, and shell-handler taut upon his toes and blithely confident that the Corsair could knock the adjacent buildings into a cocked hat.
It was discovered that the first party had been mistaken for Portuguese sailors and fired at from a window only fifty feet distant. The bullets spattered the doorway into which they turned, and they proceeded upstairs to hold emphatic discourse with an excited Portuguese naval officer and the chief of the radio service who were earnestly telephoning to ascertain what the ruction was and who had started it. Coxswain Lindeburg had the largest grievance, however, for he had been almost potted while securing his motor-boat at the wharf, and it was solemnly affirmed that he was combing the bullets out of his hair after being escorted aboard by the comrades who had sallied forth to find him.
It seems extraordinary that in this affair at Lisbon the Corsair should have seen more actual fighting, with rifle and shell fire, than during her many months of active service with the American naval forces in the Great War. And even when the fleets in European waters, under the general direction of Admiral Sims, had increased to four hundred ships and seventy thousand men, none of them saw as much action as this almost bloodless little outbreak in Portugal, as action had been regarded in the days before the German doctrines of submarine warfare. It goes to show how new and vastly different were the problems which had to be solved by the Allied navies.
This does not mean that American ships and sailors went clear of danger and disaster, but almost never was the chance offered to fight the hidden foe. The fine destroyer, Jacob Jones, of the Queenstown flotilla, was blown to pieces by a torpedo and sixty-four officers and men died with her. The Coast Guard vessel Tampa was blown up and vanished with all hands, a crew of more than a hundred. Many a time the naval guard of a merchant steamer stood by their guns and were drowned when the ship went down. These, and the yacht Alcedo, and all the other brave ships which are listed upon the American Navy’s roll of honor, were worthy of the spirit and the traditions of John Paul Jones, although to them was denied the privilege of signalling the enemy, “We have not begun to fight.”
THE CHEERY FRENCH PILOT, LIEUT. MEJECK
CHIEF QUARTERMASTER BENTON
The badly damaged Corsair required a long and costly overhauling to make her ready and fit for service, and this work was undertaken, and well done, by the organization of the Portuguese naval docks and arsenal. With a most admirable spirit of friendship and coöperation between two allies in the struggle against a mutual enemy, the Government of Portugal refused to accept any payment whatever, although every effort was made to obtain a bill for services rendered. Commander Kittinger explains this handsome incident in the following report:
The U.S.S. Corsair arrived at Lisbon, Portugal, on December 19, 1917, in need of repairs to make her seaworthy. The matter was taken up with the Portuguese naval authorities by the American Consul-General and the Commanding Officer. An engineer and a naval constructor were immediately sent off to the ship from the Naval Arsenal to estimate and report. The same day the Director of the Arsenal stated that he could and would do the work, and that the ship would be berthed at the Arsenal on the following day.
As promised, the Arsenal workmen came on board and started the work, and in the afternoon the ship was moored to the Arsenal dock. An estimate of time and cost was requested. The time was estimated at from one month to six weeks, but the cost estimate could not be given. It was suggested that the cost be made actual for labor and material, plus a reasonable overhead. To this the Director replied that the Minister of Marine had ordered the work done free of charge to the U.S. Government, stating that repairs had been done to British and French Government vessels gratis.
The work proceeded rapidly and efficiently. I made periodical calls at the office of the Chief Engineer and Naval Constructor to obtain a cost estimate. This was promised for my information, but never received. Finally I was told that if the Consul-General would write a letter on the subject to the Minister of Marine, the estimate would be given and a basis of payment arranged, but that the money would be turned over to the Red Cross.
The reply to the Consul-General’s letter is herewith attached, the substance of which is a refusal on the part of the Portuguese Government to accept payment.
I requested the Consul-General to keep at the business of trying to obtain a basis of settlement. Later on, I was informed through the Consulate that the Provisional President, to whom the Minister of Marine had referred the matter, had decided to accept payment. This was the status of the question until January 25th, the day before the Corsair’s departure, when the Commanding Officer, accompanied by the Consul-General, made leave-taking calls upon the Arsenal officials.
The Director of the Arsenal at this time stated that he had orders from the President to render no bill to the U.S. Government. As our Government had not recognized the officials in power in Portugal during this time, the American Minister could take no action.
The cost of repairs to the U.S.S. Corsair by the Portuguese Government during the period from December 20th to January 25th is a gift to the U.S. Government.
A translation of the letter in which the naval authorities of Lisbon, with the most courteous obstinacy, decline to permit the Corsair to pay for the valuable services received, reads as follows:
Office of the Minister of Marine
Administration of Repairs and
Equipment, Naval Arsenal
I have the honor to accept the receipt of your communication dated the second instant and to transcribe the decree of the fourth instant by His Excellency, the Minister of Marine, concerning the matter, viz:
The Minister of Marine, appreciating the spirit of the note, No. 830, and taking into consideration the fact that the damages were suffered in the service of the Allied Cause which we jointly defend, and desiring to have the approval of His Excellency, the Consul-General, and therefore of the Government which he represents, has decided that payment cannot be accepted for the repairs made.
It is our pleasure and privilege to give all that is within our power, and we pledge our word to coöperate with our most earnest efforts for the cause of humanity and justice.
(Signed) Pelo, Director
To His Excellency “To our Welfare and Fraternity”
The Consul-General of the
United States of America
CHAPTER IX
UNCLE SAM’S BRIDGE OF SHIPS
When the Corsair again meets a blow,
The crew they will surely all know,
Tho’ the distance be great,
They’ll work early and late
To make the good port of Lisboa.
It’s hither and thither and there,
But divil a bit do we scare,
For the captain and crew
Will see the thing through
In the dear little gray Corsair.
The Fo’castle Glee Club
Ready again to tussle with the wintry seas offshore, the Corsair sailed from Lisbon on January 26, 1918, and returned to her base at Brest at the usual cruising speed of fourteen knots. There were many pleasant memories of the smiling, gracious city on the Tagus, and a few broken hearts which were soon mended among the Yankee mariners who had sterner business and were anxious to get on with the war. They found a greatly increased activity at Brest, where the largest transports were pouring the troops ashore in swelling volume and thousands of negro stevedores emptied the holds of supplies which overflowed the wharves and the warehouses. The bold prediction of an American bridge of ships across the Atlantic was rapidly becoming a reality and the German confidence in ruthless submarine warfare was an empty boast, thanks to the skill and courage of the Allied naval forces.
In one of the American yachts, as a seaman, was Joseph Husband, a trained writer who portrayed the swift expansion of activity in such words as these:[4]
The flag has come into its own again. In the bright sunshine almost a hundred ships swing slowly at their anchor chains, a vast floating island of steel hulls, forested with slim, sparless masts and faintly smoking stacks. Our anchor is lifted and the chain rumbles up through the hawse-pipe. Slowly we steam past a wide mile of vessels to our position.
Here are the flags of the nations of the world, but by far the most numerous are the Stars and Stripes. The red flag of the English merchantman is much in evidence, and so are the crosses of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, and the Tri-Color of France. From a big freighter flies the single star of Cuba. The red sun of Japan and the green and yellow ensign of Brazil snap smartly in the breeze. A few of the freighters are painted a leaden gray, but for the most part they are gay with camouflage. The spattered effects of the earlier days are now replaced by broad bands of flat colors. Black, white, blue, and gray are the favorites, slanting to the bow or stern and carried across life-rafts, boats, superstructures, and funnels. Some appear to be sinking by the head, others at a distance seem to be several vessels. It is a fancy dress carnival, a kaleidoscope of color. One and all they are of heavy and ugly lines. On forward and after decks the masts seem designed only to lift the cargo booms and spread the wireless. The oil-burners are even more unshiplike, for a single small funnel is substituted for the balanced stacks of coal-burning steamers.
Fore and aft on the gun-decks the long tubes of the guns point out over bow and stern. Yankee gun crews, baggy blue trousers slapping in the breeze, stand beside them and watch us pass. Blue-clad officers peer down at us from the bridges. Aloft, hoists of gay signal flags, red, yellow, white, and blue, flutter like confetti in the air. From signal bridges bluejackets are sending semaphore signals with red and yellow flags. A big American ocean-going tug churns through the fleet. On our right is a French mine-layer, long rows of mines along her deck. Fast motor-boats slide in and out among the vessels. Above, like dragonflies, three seaplanes soar.
The outward-bound convoy of empty freighters is ready. Bursts of steam from bows indicate that anchor engines are lifting the big mud-hooks from the harbor’s floor. One by one the ships steam slowly out of port; converted yachts and small French destroyers on either side. Out where the entrance broadens to the open sea, a big kite balloon tugs at the small steamer far beneath it and seems to drag it by a slender cord of steel.
THE HOME OF THE AMERICAN NAVAL OFFICERS’ CLUB IN BREST
Instead of a few American naval officers ashore in Brest, there were scores of them from transports, supply ships, and the escort divisions. Their social headquarters, which had become almost indispensable, was the spacious building of the American Naval Officers’ Club on the Place du Château, conveniently near the water-front. The club had been organized in September, 1917, by a group of naval officers among whom Lieutenant Robert E. Tod, of the Corsair, was the most active in promoting its interests and making it successful. Captain Fletcher, later a rear admiral, was the first president and was succeeded by Admiral Wilson when he arrived in November. Lieutenant Milton Andrews served as secretary, and a board of directors administered the affairs of the club whose membership was strictly naval.
The comfortable French mansion was well furnished and equipped, with a restaurant, reading-room, billiard-room, and bedrooms, and during 1918 there were more than six hundred members who enjoyed this haven when they came in weary of the sea. The name was changed to the Naval Officers’ Mess, as more appropriate. The club-house had been purchased by Lieutenant Tod personally, in order to facilitate matters, and when the war was over and the naval fleet was homeward bound, he presented the building to the French Government as a permanent club for the officers of the Allied naval services. All members of the Naval Officers’ Mess were to retain their connection in this new organization which is called “The Cercle Naval.”
Here the officers of the Corsair foregathered when they returned from Lisbon, to catch up with the gossip of their trade. They found the club filled with new members and visitors, the Regular Navy enjoying reunions and swapping yarns of bygone cruises on the China station or in the Mediterranean, or of service in the Spanish War when these sedate captains and rear admirals had been flighty youngsters or consequential two-stripers. The captain of a huge transport fetching in ten thousand doughboys sat in a corner with the skipper of a little “fish boat” from Gloucester which was trawling for German mines in the channels of the Gironde or the Loire. The officers of the Reserve Force met college chums or formed new friendships and compared notes on the ways and means of scuppering Fritz.
Admiral Wilson had perceived that with more escort vessels at his command and an increasing force promised, he could gain efficiency by distributing his ships at several bases along the French coast, from Brest to Bordeaux, under district commanders. This would enable him to give better protection and to move the convoys more rapidly as they went in and out of the other ports of American entry. In accordance with this plan, the Corsair was detached from the Brest force and ordered to make her headquarters on the river Gironde below Bordeaux. The area was in the patrol district of Rochefort which was in charge of Captain Newton A. McCully, U.S.N., who was later made a rear admiral. The Corsair found it highly satisfactory to operate under this capable and energetic officer who made two cruises in the yacht, in March, when she went out to meet laden troop convoys and escorted them in to France. The coöperating French naval force was directed from the station ship Marthe Solange which was anchored at Verdon on the Gironde.
After coaling ship at Brest, the Corsair started for her new base on January 31st, escorting several supply ships which were bound for Bordeaux and loaded with aeroplane equipment and munitions. How rumor flew about and was eagerly, solemnly discussed is indicated in these bits from a sailor’s diary:
January 31st. Hauled out of Brest with our convoy at three in the morning, proceeding at nine knots. At Quiberon we picked up the rest of them and headed for Bordeaux, the destroyers Warrington and Monaghan with us. I understand that we are not to go all the way up to Bordeaux, but will base at our own Navy aviation camp some thirty miles down the river. Hear they will work us to death. Hope we will have a chance to run up and see the city.
February 1st. Steamed up the river and stopped at aviation camp at Pauillac. Incidentally there are a thousand sailors here and not one flying machine. About five hundred Austrian prisoners and six hundred Germans are helping build the camp. Got Bordeaux liberty and arrived there after dark. The city is under military law and there are all sorts of fussy Army rules and regulations. We went to fourteen hotels before we found a place to sleep. We couldn’t see the town, as it was in darkness. Everybody has to be off the streets at 10.30 P.M. The only criticism I have to make of the town is that there are altogether too many soldiers in it.
February 4th. Got another liberty to-day. Heard some big news. The America, on her way over here and loaded with troops, was torpedoed. She was not seriously damaged and by dropping depth mines brought the German submarine to the surface. The officers and crew were captured alive and have been carried into Brest, along with the submarine. Also, a few days ago a U-boat came up and surrendered to the Dixie, the crew having killed the captain. The submarine was absolutely out of provisions and supplies and the men were in bad shape. This is a fine omen. (Note:—I later discovered that these stories are untrue.)
February 6th. More big news. A German submarine came into Brest harbor flying a white flag, and surrendered. We have her at a mooring buoy all intact and fit for sea. They had run out of fuel oil and grub and were fed up with the service. There wasn’t a chance of getting back to Germany with the boat, so she sensibly gave herself up. I hope they are all in the same rotten bad shape. (Note:—This story of the submarine surrendering at Brest is found to be all bunk.)
The yachts Wakiva and May now joined the Corsair for escort duty and the Aphrodite and Nokomis were added to the division force a little later. In addition to the orders received from the American commander of the naval district, the most explicit instructions came from the French senior officer of the “Division des Patrouille de Gascogne.” With the courtesy to be expected of him, he sent also a translation in order to save trouble for his comrades of the American Navy. At times the English phrasing had a Gallic twist, not enough to perplex the Corsair whose officers had become adepts at the French nautical lingo, but the effect was a trifle confusing to the eye of a layman, as for instance:
Signals between convoy and escort are to be done by the besides code. Do signals only if necessary. The last ship in each line don’t show any stern lights be ready to show navigation lights if necessary.
Zigzags are to be done according to the orders of the escort’s do (see diagramms besides). All the ships show the flag K. Manœuvring is to be executed only when the K is getting down all the ships do K, is to be taken like the origin of the diagramm, which is to be sailed by the beginning. Manœuvre when the signal gets down or when the least stations according to the regular numerotage.
By fog, and on order of the escort if necessary by WT, each column will steer like a special line each behind the escort ships on the same side. The right line will then steer ten degrees right hand and the left line five degrees left hand from the primitive curse of the convoy.
Escort and convoy ships are ordered not to bring anything overboard. Burn all you can and if impossible to burn, bring overboard rubbish altogether at once in the beginning of night. All the rubbish spread over the sea are precious indice for the submarine to know the curse of the convoy.
During the rest of the winter and through the spring of 1918, the Corsair was with the convoys and continued to base in the Gironde. The work seemed humdrum and monotonous to the crews, who pined for excitement and encounters, but this very fact was proof that the Navy was achieving the result expected of it, which was to keep the road open to France. Submarines ran amuck now and then and strafed a coastwise convoy of slow ships or sank an empty transport homeward bound, but never for a moment was the prodigious movement of troops and material interfered with or delayed. Grouping the steamers together and screening them with escort vessels, as far as possible, had baffled the high hopes of Von Tirpitz and his murderous gang.
The captains of these ships which moved deep-laden through the war zone were learning the tricks of the trade and intelligently adapting themselves to the exactions of the convoy system. Admiral Sims said of them:
The advantages of the convoy were so apparent to me that, despite the pessimistic attitude of the merchant captains, there were a number of officers in the British navy who kept insisting that it should be tried. In the discussion I took my stand emphatically on the side of this school. From the beginning I had believed in this method for combating the U-boat warfare. Certain early experiences had led me to believe that the merchant captains were wrong in underestimating the quality of their own seamanship. These intelligent and hardy men did not know what splendid ship handlers they were. In my discussions with them they had disclosed an exaggerated idea of the seamanly ability of naval officers in manœuvring their large fleets. They attributed this to the superior training of the men and the special qualities of the ships. “Naval vessels are built so they can keep station and turn at any angle at a moment’s notice,” they would say, “but we have no men in our ships who can do such things.” They particularly rejected the idea that when in formation they could manœuvre their ships in fog or at night without lights. They believed they would lose more ships through collision than the submarines could sink.
AMERICAN YACHTS CLUSTERED INSIDE THE BREAKWATER, BREST
As a matter of fact, these men were entirely wrong and I knew it. Their practical experience in handling ships of all sizes, shapes, and speeds under a great variety of conditions is in reality much more extensive than naval officers could possibly enjoy. I was sure that they could quickly pick up steaming and turning in formation under the direction of naval officers, the convoy commander being always a naval officer. Indeed, one of my experienced destroyer commanders reported afterwards that while he was escorting a convoy of twenty-eight ships of different sizes, shapes, speeds, nationalities, and manœuvring qualities, they kept their stations quite as well as battleships. This ability was displayed when the convoy executed two fleet evolutions in order to avoid a submarine.
This well-earned tribute to the master mariners who risked their lives and their ships, voyage after voyage, finds confirmation in the records of the Corsair. During the first cruise of February one finds such entries as these:
At 11.45 P.M. ran into a thick fog. During the mid watch (February 11th) the Munindies increased speed and came up close under the stern of the Corsair. Later on she passed and at 6 A.M. was about 700 yards on port bow of Corsair. At daylight the fog lifted and all ships were in sight but somewhat scattered. Convoy reformed in good order and began to zigzag.
On the night of February 12th, about 1.50 A.M., sighted two boats on the port quarter, distance 1000 yards. Boats made signals with rockets and flash lamps. About this time the escort vessel Wakiva opened fire, the shells falling about 600 yards astern of the Corsair. Signalled to Wakiva that she was firing at survivors and ordered her to pick them up. The convoy stampeded, assuming a submarine attack, and was reformed in good order about 3 A.M.
Running through fog and darkness, again startled by the sound of guns, the steamers of this convoy “reformed in good order” and steadily, pluckily held on their blindfolded course. Only a sailor could realize the immense difficulties of the job and how well it was carried on by the plodding merchantmen who won no glory. The convoys were growing larger and more complex to handle as the success of the system was demonstrated. Where the Corsair had escorted two or three steamers in a group, fifteen or twenty were now sent out together. Her next tour of sea duty in February was a fair sample of the work which was to continue through many wearisome weeks, with little more diversion than a variety of uncomfortable weather.
In obedience to radio orders [runs the report] the U.S.S. Corsair anchored at Verdon 11.45 P.M., February 16th. Upon arrival found the U.S.S. Aphrodite, U.S.S. May, and French sloop Regulus for the same duty. On the morning of February 17th was informed that the convoy would be delayed one day on account of the non-arrival of some of the ships. At 3 P.M. commanding officers of convoy and escort present reported aboard the French station ship Marthe Solange for orders and conference with the commanding officer of the Sixth Patrol Squadron of the French Navy. The additional escort, the French destroyer Aventurier, arrived during the conference. Orders and information sheets were given to all concerned and explained or discussed with the convoy captains. It was decided to show no stern lights.
On February 18th the Aphrodite got under way, followed by convoy vessels Numbers 1 to 6 inclusive, in column. The Regulus preceded the Aphrodite as pilot vessel. At 7.30 A.M. the Corsair got under way, followed by convoy vessels Numbers 9-10-11-12 in column, and when clear the May followed with convoy vessels Numbers 13-14-15. Number 16, the American steamer Camaguey, did not arrive to join the convoy. When the Aphrodite cleared the net she proceeded at six knots and convoy formed in double columns—ships 1-2-3-4—May—13-14-15 in left column, and ships 5-6-7-8—Corsair—9-10-11-12 in right column. After passing the last buoy of Matelier Channel, convoy formed in four columns and took up speed eight knots. Aphrodite (chief of escort) patrolled ahead; Corsair and Aventurier on starboard flank; May and Regulus on port flank. A motor patrol boat escorted until about 3 P.M. and then turned back. The sortie was preceded by French aeroplanes.
Zigzagged until dark, then convoy steered base course. Fine weather, heavy swell running from NW which did not retard the eight knot ships.
February 19th, convoy zigzagged during daylight. Good weather for convoy operations.
February 20th, steamed with convoy until 10 A.M., then dispersed as per orders. The Aphrodite, Corsair, and May returned to Pauillac for coal and the French escort shaped course for Brest.
In the search for incident during this long period of hard work and few thrills, one must have recourse to the letters and diaries of the Corsair’s crew and pick out bits here and there. These hardy young salts were playing the game in a fashion something like this:
On a run one night in March (to La Pallice) after leaving a Verdon convoy, the Corsair and Aphrodite ran into a pretty stiff blow. We were doing about fourteen knots or better with the wind and sea a little on the port bow. A good-sized sea slapped into the port side forward, by the petty officers’ quarters, smashing in one of the deadlights of that compartment. The crash was tremendous. Everybody asleep down there woke up with visions of the ship torpedoed, and out of the hatch they boiled on the jump, mostly arrayed in the costume which Nature provides for sailors. All were dazed and excited. One of them no sooner hit the deck than a wave lifted our bow and he skidded aft, nearly half the length of the ship, on the seat of his trousers or where his trousers should have been. It was fortunate for that sailor that our executive officer kept the decks smooth and well-cared-for. The outfit couldn’t see the humor of the situation, being soaking wet and unable to dope out what had happened.
March 4th. The ship was a mad-house to-day. They told us there would be admiral’s inspection and we had to turn to on everything from the bilges to the crow’s-nest. Every stitch of clothing in our boxes had to be stowed somewhere. I was never so bored in my life. We sat around from noon to four o’clock waiting for the blinkin’ admiral, but, of course, he never showed up. These admiral’s inspections always give me a pain in the eye. We have made ready several times and it’s always a false alarm.
March 10th. The Aphrodite spotted a floating German mine and opened fire on it. She fired thirty-five shots and never hit it. We turned around and sunk it on the third shot. It did not explode, but filled with water and went down after a hole was put through it.
April 4th. Picked up our convoy consisting of the troop-ships Powhatan, Martha Washington, and El Occidente, all packed with Yankee soldiers. There are six destroyers with the escort, including the Caldwell, one of the new flush-deckers. At 1 P.M. the Occidente sighted a periscope. We at once started submarine tactics, screening the convoy while the Winslow and Sampson went back to look for the sub. They dropped eighteen depth charges. Fritz must have been shaken up some. He did not get a chance to shoot a torpedo, for the destroyers were too alert.
April 5th. Captain Porter left the ship, going back to America on leave. The rumor is that he will not return to this ship. It would certainly be a big loss to us, as he is one fine seaman and navigator as well as a splendid character of a man. We gave him three cheers when he shoved off, and it seemed to touch him considerably. He stood at salute in the boat until out of sight.
April 6th. This is the first anniversary of our entry into the war. In consequence, all the American vessels had to dress ship. We coaled all day and will finish to-morrow. In again, out again, coal again, Finnegan! The Martha Washington discharged her troops. They were cavalry and nigger infantry. They were held up for several hours and the darkies had us rocking all the time. They claimed they saw four submarines sunk the other day after being attacked by eleven or nine.
April 9th. I got in trouble to-day. In the storm last night an American ship came in and anchored four miles off. I was on signal watch and read her flag hoist as LDBC, the Rangely, and reported her as such. Discovered to-day that she was the LDQC or Graster Hall. I caught all the blame. The Q they had up was so terribly dirty that in the distance and bad light it could not be taken for anything else than a B. There was no alibi for me, however, and I don’t know whether the bawling out I got will be all of it or not. It was my mistake, an unavoidable one, but in war-time that makes no difference in this man’s navy.
May 10th. Captain Kittinger is to be transferred to command a big transport and Commander Porter is coming back to take this ship. I shall be glad to see Captain Porter, but we are mighty sorry to see Skipper “Bill” Kittinger go. The Wakiva dropped over one of the new 300-pound depth bombs and pretty near blew herself up. She busted several things in her engine-room.
May 22nd. Just as we came off watch at 4 A.M. in a dense fog we got an S.O.S. from our old friend, the Wakiva. She was rammed and sunk by the Wabash of her convoy. She went down rather deliberately and only two men were lost. We are sorry to cross her off the list, as she was a willing worker, although slow. At 8 P.M. we met the largest convoy of troop-ships that has come overseas. The first group of fourteen ships carried forty-five thousand soldiers, to say nothing of the naval crews aboard, and there were twelve destroyers in the escort. The second group of nine ships had twenty-five thousand troops. It was a great sight. They will be landed at Brest.
THE FAITHFUL WAKIVA, WHICH WAS SUNK IN COLLISION
BIG TRANSPORTS IN BREST HARBOR
May 24th. Hooray! We have thirty-five German prisoners to shovel the coal from the lighters into the buckets. And, by gosh, these square-heads went on strike and the kindly French let ’em get away with it. If any prisoners went on strike in Germany it’s a cinch they’d be shot full of holes. They don’t treat ’em rough enough in France.
After looking over several of these Corsair diaries, Commander Kittinger had this shrewd and good-humored comment to offer:
The impressions which these youngsters jotted down were amusing and often inaccurate, but they caught the spirit of the service and the day’s work. When one of them felt aggrieved because he was “bawled out,” he never stopped to take an inventory of his professional qualifications and the duties thrust upon him as well as upon other untrained and unseasoned lads. Nor did he always realize that he was allowed to perform functions whereby he had the safety of a hundred and twenty-five lives and a million dollars worth of irreplaceable property between his two hands. There was no time to learn by experience and every “bawling out” was, I hope, driving an important fact home. Where else could one of these boys have learned such valuable lessons and be on a pay-roll at the same time? Of course they could not understand such methods, but the system soon separated the sheep from the goats—the latter remaining at the business end of a deck swab. Many times the skipper was not as angry as he appeared. The first lesson was to say “Aye, Aye, Sir,” when told something important instead of trying to explain. When a young man explains, he is not listening to the order, but thinking up a reply.
To the Corsair’s company the most interesting happenings during the long period of convoy duty were the changes and promotions which shifted many of the family to other ships and stations and brought new faces aboard. Commander Kittinger had been advanced a grade on the Regular Navy list since joining the Corsair and was in line for transfer to a larger ship. He was given the stately armed transport Princess Matoika, formerly the Princess Alice of the North German Lloyd, and thereafter carried many thousand American troops in safety to France. In this ship the roster of officers was more imposing than in the yacht which served so faithfully, for Commander Kittinger now gave orders to two lieutenant commanders, eleven lieutenants, and twenty ensigns. Toward the Corsair he felt affection and loyalty and was glad that his war record had included a year with her, crossing with the first American troops and battering about in the Bay of Biscay. Drilled in the exacting school of the regular service, he had only praise for the spirit, intelligence, and devotion of the Reserves, officers and men, who had fitted themselves to circumstances and played the game to the hilt.
After the war Commander Kittinger was sent to the Fore River Ship Building Company as Naval Inspector of Ordnance. While there he received the following letter:
July 23, 1919
From: Director of Naval Intelligence,
To: Chief of the Bureau of Navigation:
Subject: Award of the Legion of Honor.
The Bureau is informed that by a decree of the President of the French Republic the award of Member of the Legion of Honor with the rank of Chevalier has been made to Commander Theodore A. Kittinger, U.S.N., with the following citation:
Commander Kittinger, in command of the yacht Corsair, escorted the O.V.H.N. convoys, etc.
It is requested that a copy of this letter be filed with this officer’s record.
Lieutenant Commander Porter became the commander of the Corsair on May 31st, and held the position until the yacht returned home one year later. It gratified him, of course, to have his own ship, and in the opinion of his officers and crew the honor was well deserved. It was a distinction also, and without precedent in a combatant ship, for a Reserve officer to be given a vessel of the size and class of the Corsair. He was later advanced to the naval rank of commander and finished his service as a three-striper.
Lieutenant Commander Tod was detached to join the organization of Admiral Wilson at Brest as Port Officer and was afterwards appointed Director of Public Works. Both positions were important and involved varied and arduous responsibilities. He was later promoted to the rank of Commander. At a dinner given by the American naval officers of the club in Brest, this rousing song of the Breton Patrol was rolled out with a vigor that rattled the windows:
1. Oh we sing of a squadron patrolling the coast
From Cre-Ach to old Saint-Nazaire.
On the job for a year, we still say with a cheer,
Nous resterons pendant la guerre.
Chorus:
Though the bar’s consigné and we’ve clumbed up to stay
At the very tip-top of the pole,
Still our drinks, short or tall, will be “Wilson, that’s all,”
The Chief of the Breton Patrol.
2. It’s a squadron that’s doing its best over here
Towards keeping command of the seas;
For by day or by night, standing by for a fight,
It’s the Breton Patrol of H. B.[5]
3. To the Point of Penmarch it is not very far;
Some forty-five miles of blue sea,—
That’s where some day poor Fritz will be blown into bits
By the Breton Patrol of H. B.
4. If we sail on request of the C.D.P. Brest,
With a convoy that’s bound for its goal;
If it’s rain, hail, or snow, the convoy must go,
That’s the job of the Breton Patrol.
5. If a depth charge turns over and falls in the sea,
And next moment your stern is no more,
There’s just one thing to do,—Prenez vite le you-you,
And pull for the Brittany shore.
CHIEF QUARTERMASTER FARR STANDS WITH FOLDED ARMS AND
INDICATES THAT HE HAS HIS SEA-LEGS WITH HIM
COMMANDER KITTINGER SAYS GOOD-BYE TO LIEUTENANT COMMANDER
PORTER AS THE LATTER TAKES OVER THE COMMAND
6. If the ship is trop fort, and you need a corps-mort,
Just to keep her quite safe in the bay,
You have only to go to brave Captain Loiseaux,
Il nous faut le chameau, s’il vous plaît.
7. When they’re coming too strong, and you find you’re in wrong,
In trouble at sea or on land,
There’s just one man to see and his name’s F. T. E.,[6]
To clear out the gear box of sand.
8. There’s a gallant French sailor who’s with us to-night,
He’s bound for a trip ’cross the sea;
So here’s Merci beaucoup, bon voyage, Admiral Grout,
From the Breton Patrol of H. B.
9. There are brave men in plenty and well known to all,
Who have come over here for the war,
But the best known of all is the one that we call
Old Robert E. Tod—Commodore.
10. If you want a good man, just to unload a van,
Or to anchor a ship in the Rade,
Or to work night and day, you have only to say,
“Where in hell is old Robert E. Tod?”
Lieutenant McGuire was made executive officer of the Corsair when Captain Porter took over the command. In time of peace Lieutenant McGuire had been first officer of the yacht, so he was really stepping into his old berth. Ensign Schanze, the efficient gunnery officer, had been commissioned a lieutenant in December. In May he was transferred from the Corsair to the staff of Rear Admiral McCully, the District Commander at Rochefort. For some time he acted as liaison officer on board of the French station ship Marthe Solange, and his scientific training was later employed in experimenting with and testing listening devices for detecting enemy submarines.
Ensign Gray, the communications officer who had helped to make the radio service of the Corsair notable throughout the fleet, was anxious to have a whirl at the destroyer game, like any proper-minded young Navy man, and on May 28th he was transferred to the Monaghan of the Brest flotilla. Assistant Surgeon Laub was sent to the Moccasin in April and Assistant Surgeon R. H. Hunt exchanged billets with him for a short time, shifting from the Corsair to the destroyer Nicholson. Chief Engineer Hutchison stood by the ship until September, although his health was poor and he had been compelled to seek hospital treatment ashore. After leave at home he regained his strength and sailed in the big transport Agamemnon. His position in the Corsair was filled by Lieutenant J. J. Patterson as engineer officer. Assistant Engineer Mason received an appointment as ensign in May and went ashore for staff duty at Bordeaux in the autumn. His partner in the engine-room, Assistant Engineer Hawthorn, left the Corsair in June and was assigned to the naval auxiliary service as a senior engineer officer. Boatswain Budani, who had polished off the aspiring bluejackets and taught them to be regular, sea-going gobs, was summoned to the Naval Aviation Headquarters at Paris and later sent to Italy.
At the ward-room table were new officers to be welcomed into the briny brotherhood of the Corsair, Ensign A. H. Acorn, Jr., Lieutenant Gerald Nolan, Ensign J. W. McCoy, Ensign P. F. Wangerin, Ensign C. R. Smith, Ensign S. K. Hall, Ensign R. V. Dolan, several of whom were promoted to be lieutenants, junior grade. After the armistice and while the Corsair was in the North Sea and at Queenstown, there were other changes which will be noted later.
Through the winter and spring the task of studying for commissions which had bred so many headaches in the bunk-rooms below was getting on famously. There were gloomy moments when, as has been said, one candidate felt sure that the captain would recommend him for nothing else than a firing squad, or another had believed that a “bawling out” had utterly wrecked his prospects, but such dark forebodings were mostly unfounded. Examining boards of officers were duly convened, or recommendations made for the intensive course at Annapolis, and the Corsair was like a college grinding out diplomas at Commencement time, excepting that the Navy course was far stiffer than the requirements of the campus. There were no “snap courses” in the Bay of Biscay and no bluffing the faculty.
The following enlisted men, with one warrant officer, were examined, qualified, and given commissions with the rank of ensign:
| Enlisted as | ||
| W. F. Evans, Jr. | Seaman | Sent to Annapolis |
| David Tibbott | Seaman | ” ” ” |
| R. G. Seger | Seaman | ” ” ” |
| E. B. Prindle | Q.M. 2c. | ” ” ” |
| E. L. Houtz | Seaman, 2c. | ” ” ” |
| C. N. Ashby | Seaman, 2c. | ” ” ” |
| W. J. Rahill | Seaman | ” ” ” |
| H. F. Breckel | Elec. 1c. Radio | Commissioned Overseas |
| A. C. Smith, Jr. | Q.M. 2c. | ” ” |
| C. S. Bayne | Seaman | ” ” |
| A. L. Copeland | Seaman | ” ” |
| J. T. Herne | Seaman | ” ” |
| A. J. Marsh | Seaman | ” ” |
| A. V. Mason | Machinist | ” ” |
Chief Quartermaster F. S. Fair and Chief Commissary Steward H. A. Barry passed the examinations successfully, but failed on the tests for eyesight and were thereby disqualified for commissions, a misfortune which keenly disappointed them and their shipmates. Commander Kittinger volunteered this high opinion of them: “Two of the best men we had, I regret to say, received no rewards and it was a loss to the service. Fair and Barry get 100 per cent from me in every department. If they were physically fit to be bluejackets it might seem as though they were physically fit to be officers, but such were the regulations.”
FROM THE LEFT, LIEUT. SCHANZE, ENSIGN GRAY, LIEUT. COMMANDER PORTER, CHIEF ENGINEER HUTCHISON, COMMANDER KITTINGER, AND LIEUT. McGUIRE
AT ROSYTH. BACK ROW, FROM RIGHT, LIEUT. NOLAN, DR. AGNEW, COMMANDER PORTER, LIEUT. McGUIRE, ENSIGN ACORN FRONT ROW, LIEUT. PATTERSON, ENSIGN WANGERIN, PAYMASTER ERICKSON
Ensign Carroll Bayne stayed in the Corsair for a little while as an officer and was then transferred to staff duty at Brest, assisting Lieutenant Commander Tod who was Port Officer at the time. In his diary Bayne indicated what his duties were, and they suggest that the Naval Reserve officer was expected to turn his hand to almost everything, and at very short notice:
Mr. Tod took me around to-day to call on all the French admirals, etc., and they were very courteous. I got an awful call down from an American three-striper for not saluting him. I started to, but he did not see me, so I knocked off. However, he came back and gave me particular fits.... The Leviathan came in to-day with ten thousand troops. She is the most enormous thing I ever saw. It took three hours to moor her. She bumped a tanker coming in, almost sank the Burrows destroyer, and ended by sinking a French tug. The soldiers began coming ashore before she was moored. That packet needs considerable elbow-room. I went aboard the Leviathan at 6 A.M. and almost got lost in her. In fact, I did. Her bridge is much higher than the Corsair’s foretop. Weather beastly and we spent most of the day getting coal barges to and from her....
June 25th. The Leviathan sailed for the States. I was out there until she left, helping to unshackle her and get her under way. I have the night trick, so will have to sleep in the office. This is some job.... The Great Northern and Northern Pacific came in with troops and will leave to-morrow night. They are certainly making speed back and forth these days.... July 1st. Started out at 6 A.M. and boarded fifteen ships. One had run aground on a rock and her bow was smashed and the fore-peak full of water. I made arrangements to dock her to-morrow.
July 4th. Big parade to-day, but I saw none of it. Twenty-three American transports came in and I had to board them all, a four-hour job. We are expecting more troop-ships to-morrow. It is up to me to get them coaled, watered, and ready to turn around.... July 11th. The Von Steuben left to-night in a heavy storm. Commander Tod, Major O’Neil, and I went out to meet a convoy of thirteen ships, all carrying troops. The Major got very sick in the rough sea. We had the devil of a time, and no other word applies. Got back at 3 A.M. and had to anchor and then board all these ships in total darkness. Another one of those ships from the Great Lakes broke down and that means work for me to-morrow. This is the fourth one of the kind that has gone to pot here. I wish they could be left at home.
July 18th. Roughest day yet, seas very high. I went over to assist in getting the Leviathan under way. She started off at seventeen knots and her back-wash came within an ace of upsetting us. Had a tough time making landings on this batch of troop-ships. When I got alongside the Westerdyke a huge wave slammed my boat against her, carrying away all my superstructure and chewing things up generally. We managed to get clear and stay afloat.
I got in wrong with the Army who claimed I stole a ship from them. A collier came in, and as the Navy was badly in need of coal, I refused to look at her manifest and sent her over to our repair ship Panther and began to coal her. The Army got wise and put up a yell, but it was too late and I got away with it. They say that if the trick is done again they will report it to Pershing. Let ’em go to it, as long as the Navy gets the coal when it needs it.
While the Corsair was driving through the blustering winds and seas of March, there came bright days now and then which were a harbinger of springtime in Brittany. In a letter written on Palm Sunday, Chief Quartermaster Farr depicted the following contrast with the grim routine of the war by sea and land:
I have had a delightful day. In the first place, the weather is like June and now it is moonlight and a dead calm is resting on the bay and I feel the joy of life and the beauty of Nature. This morning I went ashore to the Catholic church, and the entire population of the little Breton fishing town must have been there. Of course I couldn’t understand what was going on, but it was restful and soothing to say your prayers and think a little and listen to the organ. A Frenchman with a good voice sang “Hosanna, Glory to God,” and I prayed hard for the English armies in the great battle which is now raging. Their losses are heavy and I think of the terrible anxiety in England for their boys. Not that there is any doubt of the outcome, but so many brave men are dying, and when you read of the Ninth Division, say, as particularly distinguishing itself, you can imagine the feelings of the mothers of those men.
This afternoon several of us walked out to a little château built in the time of Louis XVI which was very interesting. The old French people were extremely hospitable, gave us tea, and showed us everything. They had a beautiful little garden with lots of vegetables growing, peach and cherry blossoms, wonderful hawthorn hedges, spring flowers everywhere, the birds singing, and the whole landscape peaceful and happy. It was hard to realize that the greatest battle of the war is raging in the north.
We walked back to the Y.M.C.A. where we each had four fried eggs with some of the Army engineer troops. They come from California and Oregon, and are the best and huskiest-looking soldiers I’ve seen yet. A darky was in the party, a Navy cook, and he was as good as a minstrel show. He ordered six eggs, and as soon as they came on the table he ordered another half-dozen. He said he was honin’ and pinin’ for to get to Dunkirk, and would probably get killed by a bomb if he did, but “befo’ the Lawd, boss, I jes’ itches to go anyhow. It’s mah destination, she sure is.”
I am mighty glad to have had this service in the ranks. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. It is the only way to know the real Army and Navy.