Corsair will coal to-day!
There were temptations enough, Heaven knows, to live recklessly when the liberty boats hit the beach, but the Corsair’s record was excellent and her officers were proud of it. During July and August of 1917, when the crew was new to the game and the tendency to run wild was perhaps strongest, almost all the offenses for which the commander held mast and which were passed upon by deck court-martials comprised overstaying liberty by a narrow margin of minutes and other small infractions of the strict disciplinary code of the Navy. And it should be mentioned that the enlisted force was permitted to be ashore no later than nine-thirty o’clock in the evening. During the whole sojourn of the Corsair in foreign waters, not a member of her company was punished by a general court-martial. By way of indicating how naval justice was dispensed, the entries in the log will be found to read like this:
| 20 minutes overtime from liberty. | Lose pay amounting to $5.00 |
| 35 ” ” ” ” | ” ” ” ” ” |
| 47 ” ” ” ” | ” ” ” ” ” |
| Smoking below decks. | ” ” ” ” ” |
| Disorderly and creating a disturbance after pipe down. | ” ” ” ” ” |
| Insubordination and insolence to a warrant officer. | Warned. |
| Not keeping an efficient lookout. | ” |
| Not making up bunk. | ” |
| Not relieving watch on time. | Excused. |
“COAL ON THE CORSAIR, FILL EVERY BIN.”
“WE WORK LIKE HELL, BOYS, TILL IT’S ALL IN.”
As was bound to happen, an occasional “drunk and disorderly” was included in these lists, but there were many kinds of men aboard and such entries were amazingly infrequent when one considers the circumstances. And the exiles of the Corsair learned that there was possibly as much truth as poetry in the jingle which ran through the ships of the Breton Patrol: “The Guy that Rates the Croix de Guerre”:
’Tis not the man who, single-handed,
Kills ten or fifteen raging Huns,