THE KIND OF “GOBS” THE COUNTRY WAS PROUD OF MOST OF THIS GROUP WON COMMISSIONS
Photograph by Underwood and Underwood, N.Y.
THE GERMAN SUBMARINE WAS A TINY TARGET EVEN WHEN ON THE SURFACE
These were tired and grateful sailors aboard the Corsair, for the slow-gaited transports, thirteen days on the voyage, had caused continual anxiety among the war vessels of the escort. The first group had been attacked by submarines, as reported by Rear Admiral Gleaves, and it was an auspicious omen that every ship and every soldier had been carried across unharmed. The Corsair had been compelled to drop back and join the second group, but it was not her fault. As her skipper in former days, Lieutenant Commander Porter was unhappy, as you may imagine, although he knew that the yacht would vindicate herself when in proper trim and with a “black gang” that could make steam and hold it.
Extra coal and stores had made the draft two feet deeper than normal. One boiler-room was used for coal stowage, but a speed of fourteen knots was to be expected under these conditions. The firemen, trained in a battleship, were green to their task and were bowled off their pins by seasickness. It indicated the spirit of the ship when the petty officers, deck force and all, and as many other volunteers as could find space to swing slice-bar and shovel, toiled in the sultry heat of the furnaces to shove the ship along. Never again was the Corsair a laggard. Month after month on the Breton Patrol or with the offshore convoys, the destroyers were the only ships that could show their heels to her.
The process of “shaking down,” of welding a hundred and thirty men into a crew, and teaching them what the Navy was like, had begun with the hard routine at the docks in Hoboken and Brooklyn. The voyage was the second lesson and it wonderfully helped to hammer home the doctrines of team-work and morale, of cheerful sacrifice and ready obedience. Those who grumbled repented of it later and held it as a privilege that they were permitted to play the great game. It was while they sweltered to make more steam and urge the ship to greater speed that an Irish stoker expressed himself as follows:
“I have heard tell of the meltin’-pot, but ’tis me first experience with it. Hotter than hell wid the lid off, and ye can see thim all meltin’, and will ye listen to the names of the brave American lads, Brillowski, Schlotfeldt, Aguas, and Teuten that signed on to juggle the coal. An’ will ye pipe off the true-blue Yankee sailors, Haase, and Skolmowski, Fusco, Kaetzel, and Balano, not to mintion such good old Anglo-Saxon guys as De Armosolo, Thysenius, and Wysocki. I will make no invidjous distinctions, but what kind of a fightin’ ship would this be if ye hadn’t Gilhooley, Mullins, Murphy, Mulcahy, Egan, Sullivan, and Flynn? The meltin’-pot! ’Tis a true word. An’ may the domned old Kaiser sizzle in a hotter place, if there is wan.”
One of the boyish bluejackets noted his own change of heart in a diary which contained such entries as these: