The Corsair in the war zone

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

I have to acknowledge the receipt of your memo. of January 5th concerning the firing in the Arsenal Compound during the evening of January 4th. Personal representations have been made and I trust there will be no recurrence of the rioting, although as you are fully aware conditions here just now are most unsettled. I am extremely thankful that no one was hurt during the rioting and that no damage was done.

Beginning January 3rd it was noticed that conditions in Lisbon were unsettled politically. On that night some rifle-firing took place in the streets between Portuguese sailors and soldiers on patrol duty. Shots were exchanged nightly up to January 8th when the counter-revolution took place. The situation briefly is this:

The Portuguese Navy has been the controlling factor in the politics of the country. The Army has been the opponent, but has been negligible because of its ineffectiveness. The Navy deposed the King in 1910 and set up a Republic which has been perpetuated until the present time, the last incumbent being President Machado. When Portugal entered the war, the Army was largely increased and equipped, and forces were sent to the Western Front and to the Portuguese African colonies. Army preparations continued in Portugal and there is a large mobilization at present.

On December 5, 1917, the Army started a revolution and succeeded in overthrowing the Government two days later, the President being exiled on that date. As a precautionary measure, the naval forces present at Lisbon were disarmed. In spite of this, the Navy prepared plans for a counter-revolution. The present Provisional Government took steps to send the majority of the sailors to the Portuguese African colonies because of the serious reverses suffered by their troops in Africa while fighting the Germans.

The Navy took steps to defeat this manœuvre and on January 8, 1918, the Vasco da Gama (flagship) anchored off Lisbon. At 10.45 A.M. a battery of three field pieces at Saint George’s Castle in the middle of the city, opened fire on the Vasco da Gama. The flagship fired five shots in return and hoisted a red flag under the ensign. The shots of the shore battery were dispersed, but some seemed to strike the ship. Shrapnel and projectile were fired. At 11.10 A.M. the Vasco da Gama hauled down her flag and hoisted a white flag at the foremast and abandoned ship. A number of shots were then fired at the destroyers Douro and Guardiana, which also struck their colors and hoisted white flags. The cruiser Almirante Reis, a transport, and several gunboats did likewise. At 11.20 A.M. firing ceased at the shore battery. Rifle fire continued in the city streets. The Arsenal plant closed down at the beginning of the firing and the workmen employed on board the Corsair stopped about 11 A.M. No further work was done by the Arsenal force that day.

On January 9th (the next day) the Arsenal resumed operations as usual, and I was informed that the trouble was over and work would continue as before. The Vasco da Gama, with the Guardiana and Douro, stood down the river on January 11th, apparently undamaged.

The crew of the Corsair felt a personal interest in the Provisional President, Sidonio Paes, as some of them had sat at the table next to him in the dining-room of the hotel and one or two of the officers had met him at the theatre. One of the street spectacles was a huge parade in honor of Sidonio Paes, and a bluejacket described it as “tremendous enthusiasm, everybody yelling to beat the band and waving their hats, and the Portuguese thought it was great, but it wasn’t as good a show as when the Seventy-First Regiment came back from the Mexican Border and marched up Fifth Avenue.”

What the Corsair considered the big moment of the long stay in Lisbon was when the landing party marched off the yacht to rescue the two officers and the four men who had gone ashore to look for the coxswain and find out what the row was all about. The ship’s searchlight was turned and held to illuminate the bright folds of the Stars and Stripes while the gun crews stood ready for action, every sight-setter, plugman, and shell-handler taut upon his toes and blithely confident that the Corsair could knock the adjacent buildings into a cocked hat.

It was discovered that the first party had been mistaken for Portuguese sailors and fired at from a window only fifty feet distant. The bullets spattered the doorway into which they turned, and they proceeded upstairs to hold emphatic discourse with an excited Portuguese naval officer and the chief of the radio service who were earnestly telephoning to ascertain what the ruction was and who had started it. Coxswain Lindeburg had the largest grievance, however, for he had been almost potted while securing his motor-boat at the wharf, and it was solemnly affirmed that he was combing the bullets out of his hair after being escorted aboard by the comrades who had sallied forth to find him.

It seems extraordinary that in this affair at Lisbon the Corsair should have seen more actual fighting, with rifle and shell fire, than during her many months of active service with the American naval forces in the Great War. And even when the fleets in European waters, under the general direction of Admiral Sims, had increased to four hundred ships and seventy thousand men, none of them saw as much action as this almost bloodless little outbreak in Portugal, as action had been regarded in the days before the German doctrines of submarine warfare. It goes to show how new and vastly different were the problems which had to be solved by the Allied navies.