How interesting it was to Henry. To be sure, the scene lacked the picturesqueness of the New York Harbor, with its unique sky line and its Liberty Statue, yet it was wonderfully fascinating. High before them towered two shafts. One was almost exactly like the Washington Monument, which was entirely familiar to Henry even though he had never seen it. He rightly guessed that this must be Bunker Hill Monument, and he was glad that it was so near at hand. If he had opportunity, he meant to visit it. The other tower was just as evidently a building. It reminded Henry of the Metropolitan Tower in New York. The captain told him it was the Boston Custom House. The remainder of the city looked much like any other city. It was a mass of buildings, some big and some little, crowded together so that one could hardly be distinguished from another. In the docks lay vessels—goodly steamships and some many-masted schooners; and of course there were tugs and smaller craft. But the harbor life was quiet indeed compared with the bustle in the waters of New York Bay. Nevertheless, it interested Henry deeply.
When the Iroquois at last lay snug in her dock in the Boston Navy Yard, Henry was almost spellbound. Never had he dreamed of seeing such a collection of vessels. Immediately across the pier from the Iroquois he saw a ship standing high in air, with her keel not only out of water, but almost at the level of the pier itself. Henry had never seen anything like this before, and his astonishment was hardly lessened when the captain told him that this was the marine railway on which ships were hauled out of water, and that the vessel on the railway was the Coast Guard cutter, Oneida. Her bottom was being scraped and painted, and she was getting some new rivets in her plates.
But if Henry was astonished to see a ship high up in the air, he was hardly less amazed to see another far down in the bowels of the earth, for on the other side of the Iroquois, at no great distance, a little lean, gray boat, was propped upright in the centre of a great hole that had been dug in the earth. She was deep down. Henry judged her keel must be a full thirty feet below the level of the surrounding earth. There was no water in the hole, and workmen were busy all about the little ship. As Henry soon discovered, this boat was in one of the Navy Yard dry docks. He asked permission to look around, and the captain told him to go where he liked, but cautioned him not to take too great liberties.
Henry stepped ashore and ran over to the dry dock. He was more amazed than ever when he stood on the edge of it and looked down into it. It was, indeed, a great hole in the ground—an excavation hundreds of feet long and many yards wide. The sides were made of massive masonry, built up like steps, of huge blocks of granite. The dry dock was as deep as a tall house is high. In shape it was long, and would have been rectangular had its inner end been square instead of rounding. The other end, the square end, was what interested Henry, for when he came to examine it, he found it was nothing but a water-gate. It was a great steel structure, tremendously braced to make it strong, though at first glimpse it seemed much like the rest of the wall. This steel end or gate held the water out, for, of course, the dry dock opened into the harbor. It was so made that water could pour through open ports, filling the dock. Then the gate itself could be swung outward to one side, so that a ship could enter the dock, and when the gate was once more swung in place and the openings closed, pumps were put at work and all the water pumped out, leaving the ship propped up securely on keel blocks. Thus the workmen could work at every part of the ship at the same time.
And they were indeed working at every part of this ship at once, for Henry now saw with even greater astonishment that the ship had been cut in two. The bow, which had been sheared off in a collision, and the after part of the boat were blocked in position, and these two parts were now being reunited. The vessel was a torpedo boat and had been in collision with a larger craft.
Henry was glad to see her, because he had never before seen a torpedo boat close at hand. She was long, low, rakish, and built much like a knife. Indeed, she had to be long and thin to attain the tremendous speed at which these boats are sometimes driven, for they travel as fast as express trains.
When he had satisfied his curiosity, Henry made a more general survey of his surroundings. He noticed the great coal bunkers, where naval vessels coaled. Little cars were traveling up an inclined railway, like a procession of elephants, and dropping loads of coal in the elevated bunkers, whence it could be shot downward to ships lying alongside. He saw great numbers of huge anchors and cables and chains, and other ship’s gear, lying on a pier. And there were several huge barges floating in a dock, each containing as many naval launches as its deck space would hold. Still other barges were laden with lumber and iron and similar stores. There were great cranes afloat and ashore.
Near by, too, an eagle boat lay in a dock. Henry was glad to see it. He had read about these submarine chasers during the war, but had never seen one close at hand. This vessel was something more than one hundred feet long, very narrow, low-lying, with some guns mounted on the low deck, and her superstructure amidships. Her wireless antennæ and her guns both held Henry’s attention. The longer he looked at her, the more he wondered that she could withstand the sea. He knew something about waves now, and he was sure that in a rough sea they would sweep across the decks of this little craft again and again. At once he gained a higher opinion of the hardy men who sailed these craft, in fair weather and foul, and guarded the shipping lanes during the war.
When Henry had seen all he could see from the immediate neighborhood of the Iroquois’ pier, he started to walk along the water-front. Almost the first thing he came upon was a submarine. He was immensely pleased to see one of these ships so close at hand. The tide was low, and the little craft sat in her dock as snug as a duck in the reeds. Like the torpedo boat and the eagle boat, the submarine was painted gray. She was some hundreds of feet long, and made Henry think of a huge log afloat. Her rounded sides rose only a few feet above the water. Amidships was the conning tower, with its periscope. There were short masts for wireless antennæ. The very top of the hull was flattened, so that the crew could walk on it. Along the sides of this narrow deck were short uprights with eyelets at their tops, which a life-line pierced, and this line was the only rail the sailors had to keep them from falling into the sea. Perhaps it was the big guns fastened to the deck that most interested Henry. There was no way to protect them from the sea, and when the ship was running submerged, he saw that these guns would stand right up in the water. The horizontal rudders, by means of which the ship was enabled to dive under the waves, were also interesting. They were pivoted, so that, when not in use, they folded back into depressions in the hull of the ship, just as a fish’s fins are sometimes folded close against its body.
When Henry walked to the next piers he was thrilled, indeed, for there lay two of our great fighting ships, the battleships Utah and Delaware. What ponderous, grim, menacing hulks they were. How high their decks were. How their superstructures towered aloft. How threatening their turreted guns appeared. And what curious structures the basketwork masts were. It seemed to Henry as though each of these ships must contain a whole village of people, for he could see sailors by the hundreds on board. Some were washing the ships’ sides, some were at work on the decks, some were up in the superstructures. Wherever he looked, he seemed to see men. And it was just like the dismissal of church or school when a party of bluejackets came ashore on leave. They poured down the gangplanks in masses, and went jauntily off toward the gate for their holiday.