Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 August 1896 — HIDE AND SEEK AT SEA. [ARTICLE]

HIDE AND SEEK AT SEA.

Torpedo-Boat Practice with the Great White Cruisers. Mr. Ernest lugersoll describes ‘The Tricks of Torpedo Boats" in St Nicholas. After telling what the boats are like and wliac they can accomplish, Mr. Ingersoll says: But to insure all these line results, both officers and men must be taught how to manage and maneuver them to best advantage, as well as how to discharge the torpedoes they carry. Constant drilling is necessary; and lately one of these boats in our navy, the “Cushing” (so suitably named after the young hero of the civil war who destroyed the rebel ram “Albemarle” by means of a rude torpedoboat—one of the first actually used) has been attached to the naval station at Newport, Rhode Island, in order to carry on this-practice. One set of officers and men after another is instructed In handling her, and in the making and firing of her torpedoes; and they have plenty of fun along with the schooling. The headquarters of this work is Goat Island, which separates Newport harbor from the outer waters of N'arragansott Bay.

There is a serchlight which cammands the harbor entrances and a wide circle of the bay. One or more warships are always there. Those searchlights also can be swung in any direction. Yet the Cushing arrived one night and first annoitnced herself by suddenly blowing her whistle Vlthin pistolshot of the inner wharf of the lkland—and it was not a dark either. A few afternoons later she went down the bay, and challenged every eye to be alert to see her return In the evening. It was bright moonlight—a time in which no such boat would attempt a serious attack- yet Lieutenant Fletcher, the Cushing’s commander, crept within a third of a mile of, jthe shore before he was detected. It would have pleased you to see her that night, as she came plainly into view—a long, low streak gliding silently and swiftly athwart the mootlit sea, rolling a silvery furrow hack from her plow-llke bow, and seeming more like some great, fish with its back tins out of water than any sort of steamship. But it is on daik and stormy nights that the practice becomes exciting. Groups of officers stand upon the rampart of Fort Wolcott, or upon the bridge of each monitor or cruiser, and strain eyes and ears to obtain some inkling of tlio torpedo-boat’s presence, the long white beam of the electric searchlight sweeping rigiit and left, up and down, and every man gazing along the path it illuminates for some glimpse of the little enemy. A swing of the beam southward brings out f*.ie grim wails and numerous cannon of Fort Adams, and shows every yacht and fishing-boat at anchor inside of Brenton's Point. The main channel, the Dumplings, the far away shore of Conanicut Island, Rose Island and its ruined old fortifications, the upper bay dotted with lazy sloops and schooners slipping down with the tide, are revealed one after another, as the powerful rays are turned slowly westward and northward until at last they are shining again in the Naval War College and Training School, and on the clustered shipping and wharves of the picturesque old town.