It came about like this: in April, 1914, the U. S. S. Dolphin anchored in the bay of Tampico, Mexico, and the paymaster of the ship and some marines went over to town in a launch. Their object in going ashore was to buy some gasoline but before they had gone very far a number of Huerta’s Mexican soldiers arrested them, led them through the streets with a howling mob of greasers after them and then threw them into jail.
Rear Admiral Mayo of the Dolphin soon learned of the predicament of his men and demanded of the Commander of the Mexican army to set them free immediately, if not sooner. The Commander, knowing full well what would happen if he tried to hold the marines, let them go and apologized for the mistake, as he called it.
But the Admiral was not the kind of an officer to let the Army or any other branch of the Mexican Government insult our men and get away with it. He therefore avowed that the Huerta government should salute our flag by firing guns and that this must be done on or before a certain hour.
In the meantime the Admiral communicated the incident to our government at Washington and this was done by sending wireless messages from his flagship to our Darien wireless station at Camento, Panama, and from there it was retransmitted to Arlington. The Darien station which had been completed only a little while before, has a sending apparatus equal in power to the Arlington station but it can send and receive farther than the latter station because all three of its towers are 600 feet high.
Mr. Bryan, who was then Secretary-of-State, got in touch with Mr. O’Shaughnessy, the U. S. chargé d’affaires in Mexico City, and he took up the matter with President Huerta. The erstwhile President of Mexico also apologized profusely, believing that he could in this way get out of saluting our flag. Our government insisted that apologies were not enough but that the Mexican Government must salute our flag as Rear Admiral Mayo had ordered, and this Huerta finally agreed to do.
Knowing the Mexican disposition, whose watchword is mañana (which means to-morrow), and having every reason to believe that there would be a hitch in the proceedings, the Admiral extended the time in which the salute was to be given to May 12.
As before, the 12th went by and the New York papers stated that Huerta had failed in his promise to salute the flag. I doped it out that there would be big doings down there and, unlike the greasers, I did not let mañana interfere with my patriotic obligations to Uncle Sam, but I went right over to a recruiting station on 23rd Street and enlisted in the Navy as an “electrician for wireless telegraphy.”
At that time a man who wanted to enlist in the Navy as a wireless operator had to have “a working knowledge of telephones, measuring instruments, call bells, etc., and he must be able to connect up same to batteries and make minor repairs to them.” Also “familiarity with ordinary telegraph instruments while an aid in acquiring a working knowledge of wireless telegraph instruments, is not an essential qualification for enlistment as a wireless telegraph operator.”
This is what the enlistment circular I was given to read said but, of course, it was meant for men who knew a little about electricity and nothing about wireless telegraphy to start with. But here I was a full fledged operator, who had worked with Marconi and had helped to install the equipment in the Arlington station!
The circular went on to say that “applicants would be enlisted as electricians, third class, at $30 per month.” Some come-down for a man who had been a first wireless officer on a transatlantic liner and who had earned, at least on one round voyage, $200 a month, to say nothing of one who had worked with Marconi!