FIGHTING A TYPHOON.
By A. P. Taylor, Chief of Detectives, Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands.
The story of the most disastrous voyage in the annals of the United States transport service. The steamship “Siam” left San Francisco with a cargo of three hundred and seventy three picked army horses and mules, destined for “the front” in the Philippines. She landed two mules alive at Manila. In this narrative Mr. Taylor, who was a passenger on the ill-fated vessel, tells what became of the remainder.
When the Japanese Government recently offered for sale the former Austrian steamship Siam, a prize of the late war, there was concluded one of the most remarkable romances of the United States army transport service. Four flags have so far flown over this steamer, but her career is not likely to conclude under the ensign of the Land of the Chrysanthemum.
Christened on the banks of the Clyde in the early ’nineties as the British tramp steamer Resolve, the vessel later passed into the hands of an Austrian corporation at Fiume, and was renamed the Siam. Fate and charterers sent her to the Pacific Ocean in the second year of the Filipino insurrection, and she was chartered by an American firm of San Francisco, and entered the coal trade between Nanaimo and the Bay City.
In the summer of 1899 the United States War Department assembled at Jefferson City, Missouri, one of the finest trains of experienced army mules and horses ever organised for foreign service. From Cuba, from the northern borders of the United States, from frontier army posts, and, in fact, from every part of the United States where the quartermaster’s insignia were in evidence, these animals were brought to the common rendezvous in Missouri. They were the pick of the army—staid old mules and horses that had been in the service for years, and knew almost as much of military discipline as the men in blue. Their transhipment to the Presidio at San Francisco followed in July, and then the War Department cast about for a vessel in which to ship them to Manila, where General Otis was even then delaying important army movements in order that these animals might accompany the troops to “the front.”
THE AUTHOR, MR. A. P. TAYLOR, CHIEF OF DETECTIVES, HONOLULU, HAWAIIAN ISLANDS.
From a Photograph.