The Memoirs of Charles H. Cramp

by Augustus C. Buell

“Despairing of the navy-yards, Gore-Jones turned his attention to places where merchant-ships were constructed. He heard that the Cramps, of Philadelphia, were building something that did not look merchant-like. He resolved to see it. Incidentally, he had heard rumors that the queer craft at Cramps’ was being paid for along by instalments of Russian money.

“Trouble was brewing between Russia and England. Aha! At last! Gore-Jones had struck it rich. Let him unearth this foul conspiracy to imitate in 1879 the pious example England had set with the ‘Alabama’ in 1863, and he would surely get a star. He might even get a garter.

“But how? Cramp had views of his own as to private property. He was not under diplomatic jurisdiction, as were the navy-yards. In fact, the sign was out at Cramps’, ‘No English need apply!’ This, however, was rather incentive than obstacle to Gore-Jones. He needn’t be English. Nature had endowed him with an assortment of mental and bodily peculiarities, mostly bodily, that adapted him to almost any nationality. He resolved to be an Irishman. He at once began an arduous practice of the brogue. First he had to get rid of the cockney drawl which is enjoined by regulation in the English navy. Demosthenes is said to have overcome a tendency to stutter by orating with his mouth full of pebbles. Gore-Jones got rid of the regulation cockney drawl of the English navy by talking with his mouth full of Irish whiskey.

“Finally, he considered all preliminary difficulties overcome, and began a siege of Cramps’ shipyard by regular approaches. Finding it impregnable to front attack, he resolved to flank it. This he accomplished by taking possession of an adjoining lumber yard in the night-time. Early in the morning he entered the fortress by its sally-port. Success was in his grasp,—almost. It glittered, then it glimmered, then it fizzled out. There was one peculiarity he couldn’t overcome. That was his remarkable resemblance in form and figure to ‘Punch’s’ standard cartoon of ‘John Bull.’ He could smoke a short, black pipe with the bowl turned down equal to the most Corkonian Irishman in Fishtown. He could also fairly imitate that peculiar accent produced by filtering conversation through the teeth, commonly known as the brogue, particularly when the conversation was diluted with a mouthful of Irish whiskey. But he couldn’t escape his shape. One of the Russian officers on duty at Cramps’, with that keenness characteristic of Napoleon’s ‘scratched Tartar,’ penetrated all his disguises. Then he was ignominiously ejected by one of those decrepit men who, when they get too old to build ships, are usually employed by Cramps’ as watchmen. Sic transit gloria mundi. Exit Gore-Jones. But he will remain with us. He will hold his job. He deserves to. He has done what no American has ever been able to do since the collapse of the Rebellion. He has discovered a navy—an actual, real, live navy—in the United States. The fact that it is a Russian navy and not an American one, humiliating as it may be to us, is a huge feather in the cap to him. We hasten to doff our editorial chapeau to Gore-Jones. We are confident he will get his star. We fervently hope he may get also the garter.”

At this point Mr. Cramp’s own narrative of the subsequent proceedings will be more graphic and interesting than any other form of description could be:

“Great activity marked the progress of alterations and fitting out of the vessels. The yard was filled with men, some working night and day, and the vessels were all fitted out at a very early date, considering what had to be done. They were more than rebuilt. Each ship was fitted out for an admiral and the accommodations for officers and men were ample. They were full sparred and square-rigged.

“The indications that the English would join the Sultan at any time still prevailed at the time the vessels were ready to go to sea. When the ‘Europe,’ ‘Asia,’ and ‘Africa’ were ready to depart, they had to go without any guns, because all the loose guns that the Russians could spare from the navy were mounted on forts, and none could be appropriated for these ships, so they had to depart without guns. They expected when they came here to be able to purchase guns in this country from some of the gun manufacturers, and they were very much amazed to find that our government had not permitted any gun factories to exist here. So they had to go without.

“The captains all showed great determination and pluck, but their going away was not under the conditions usually attending the departure of war vessels. They expected when they left that England would openly espouse the cause of Turkey before they arrived at the other side, and they were all prepared to sink their ships rather than surrender. They felt that their case was particularly hard and that their hands were tied, and having no guns they were at the mercy of the enemy. They could not find much satisfaction of sinking with their own ships unless they had done some damage to the enemy, so under the circumstances their sailing was a very sad occasion.

“The ‘Zabiaca’ being a new vessel, it took longer to finish her, and by the time she was finished the war with Turkey was over, and they managed to get guns to put aboard her.

“The fitting out of this small fleet of commerce destroyers had the effect that the Russians originally intended it to have. It deterred the English from going in with the Sultan. The merchant fleet of England is too great and too vulnerable to permit their country to go to war for a trifle. England would suffer more in a war than any other nation on account of the large number of merchant-men under her flag; and it was because of the great number of her ships and the danger and loss from their destruction that made the British government and its people labor so hard to have our navigation laws repealed, so that a fictitious sale could be made and the vessels of their merchant marine could be put under the protection of the American flag. As two of our statesmen said (Henry C. Carey and Judge Kelley), ‘As long as our navigation laws remain as they are, England will be under perpetual bonds of indemnity to keep the peace with all the small nations in the world, because their merchant-ships cannot fly to the protection of the American flag.’ In this case the English saw the scheme of the ‘Alabama’ applied to themselves.