CHAPTER XXVIII
HOBSON AND THE SINKING OF THE "MERRIMAC"
An Heroic Deed Worthy of the American Navy
SOME of us know what a dark night is and some of us don't. Those who live in cities, under the glare of the electric light, hardly ever see real darkness. One must go far into the country, and be out on a cloudy night, to know what it means to be really in the dark. Or to be out at sea, with not a light above or below.
It was on such a night that a great black hulk moved like a sable monster through the waters off the coast of Cuba. This was the night of June 3, 1898. There was a moon somewhere in the sky, but thick clouds lay over it and snuffed out its light. And on the vessel not a light was to be seen and not a sound could be heard. It was like a mighty beast gliding on its prey.
This vessel was the Merrimac, which had carried a load of coal to the American fleet that lay outside of Santiago de Cuba. Inside the harbor there were four fine Spanish ships-of-war. But these were like foxes run into their hole, with the hunters waiting for them outside.
The harbor of Santiago is something like a great, mis-shipen water-bottle, and the passage into the harbor is like the neck of the bottle. Now, if you want to keep anything from getting out of a bottle you drive a cork into its neck. And that is just what the Americans were trying to do. The Merrimac was the cork with which they wanted to fasten up the Spanish ships in the water-bottle of Santiago.
The captain of the Merrimac was a young officer named Richard P. Hobson, who was ready to give his life, if he must, for his country. Admiral Sampson did not like to send anyone into such terrible danger, but the daring young man insisted on going, and he had no trouble in getting seven men to go with him.
Most of the coal had been taken out of the Merrimac, but there was enough left to sink her to the bottom like a stone. And along both sides there had been placed a row of torpedoes, filled with gunpowder and with electric wires to set them off when the right time came.