This was in the hotel bar here, where a bunch of us were easing off after a hard cruise, when he comes along. He doesn't like the names of our destroyers. In his navy there was significance in the names they gave to a class of ships.
"Take Viper, Adder, Moccasin, and so on—they suggest things y' know. Dangerous to meddle with and all that sort of thing, y' know. But your people name your ships after men evidently—David Jones, Conyngham, McDonough. I say, who are they—Presidents or senators or that sort, or what?"
Lanahan was there—the hell-with-her-ram-her-anyway Lanahan—and we all just naturally turned him over to Lanahan, who had west-of-Ireland forebears, and never did believe in letting any Englishman put anything across—nothing like that anyway.
"You never read much, I take it, of our history?" says Lanahan.
"Your history? My dear chap, I had hard work keeping up with my own."
"No doubt. But you've heard of the American Revolution?"
"I dessay I have—Oh, yes, I have!"
"Well, you spoke of Jones. If you mean John Paul, then there was a naval fight one time in the North Sea—the Serapis and the Bonhomme Richard."
"I say, old chap, I didn't mention John Paul Jones. David Jones is the name of your destroyer out in the harbor now."
"David Jones? Let me see. Why, sure, David Jones was a New England parson who boarded around among the God-fearing neighbors for his keep on week-days and preached the wrath of God and hell-fire for his cash wage—five pound a year—on Sundays. He was a devout man. If thy finger offend thee, cut it off. But a sort of muscular Christian, too. If thy enemy cross thee, go out and whale the livers and lights out of him—same as we're trying to do to the U-boats now.