Lieutenant McGuire, bred to the sea and experienced in ships, thought it over after he came home and wrote these opinions of the Corsair’s company and the work they did:
It was a pleasure to watch how eagerly the boys took hold of their new jobs and how rapidly they became good sailors. For a comrade to stand by in danger, give me first of all a plain, every-day, American gob. He is not so much on the parade stuff, but offer him a chance to risk his skin or his life for his friend or his flag and he is there every time.
If this war has helped us as a nation in no other way, it has, I believe, taught hundreds of thousands of men the meaning of their country’s flag, taught them to love it as their own, and that to die for it is an honor to be prized.
While the duty abroad was pretty strenuous at times, yet the average American has the faculty of making friends in every port, which helped to pass the few hours at his disposal when not engaged in coaling ship. How we did envy the boys in the oil-burners!
The chief petty officers and petty officers of the American Navy are exceptionally intelligent and proficient in their duties, and on many occasions helped the average Reserve officer over rough places. I also felt great admiration for the officers with whom I served and came in contact, both Regular and Reserve.
CHAPTER XIII
HONORABLY DISCHARGED
Of the old crew, the crew which had sailed with Pershing’s First Expeditionary Force, only two officers and eighteen men watched the frowning headlands of Brittany sink into the sea as the Corsair turned her bow to follow the long trail that led to the twin lights of Navesink and the skyline of New York. A day at the Azores for coal and she laid a course for Bermuda and another brief call before straightening out for the last stretch of the journey. On May 28th she steamed into her home port after an absence just a little short of two years. There was no uproarious welcome when the gray Corsair slipped through the Narrows and sought a berth at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The war had ended more than half a year earlier. It was already an old story, but the ship had done her duty and was content with this.
A few days later she ceased to be enrolled in the United States Navy. There was no ceremonious formality and the documents in the case were exceedingly brief, but they signified the end of a story which had added a worthy page to the annals of American manhood. “Ships are all right. It is the men in them,” said one of Joseph Conrad’s wise old mariners. This was true of the Corsair and the other yachts of the Breton Patrol. And so the Navy Department spoke the last word in this concise order:
Headquarters of the Third Naval
District, Brooklyn, New York
June 6, 1919
From: Officer in Charge, Material Department.
To: Commanding Officer U.S.S. Corsair, S.P. 159.
Subject: Orders.