Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 October 1898 — THROUGH THE STRAITS. [ARTICLE]

THROUGH THE STRAITS.

Experience of the Battleship Oregon Passing from Pacific to Atlantic. Tudor Jenks contributes to the St. Nicholas an account of “The Voyage of the ‘Oregon,’ ” with Illustrations by an artist with the fleet. Mr. Jenks says: Thursday, April 7, the Oregon sailed, In a dense tog, ran by the city of Valparaiso one night without giving the Spanish residents a chance to carry out any plots they might have formed, and within nine days was off the Strait of Magellan, near Desolation Island. Entering the strait, the Oregon anchored for the night in a small bay, thirty miles inside. In the darkness a little fishing-vessel passed not far from the Oregon* and the Yankee sailors were at their guns quicker than the searchlight could be turned on the stranger. At daybreak next morning she was under way again, making 165 miles in eleven hours, with her men at the gnns, and cleared for action, ready for the torpedo-boat—which, as a matter of fact, was thousands of miles away. At half-past six In the evening the Oregon reached Pnnta Arenas (Sandy Point), a settlement devoted to selling coal and provisions, and stopped to coal—the men leaving their hammocks in the nettings, and sleeping about the decks in the short intervals of their hard work. The Marietta arrived next day, with dispatches she had brought from Valparaiso. These dispatches showed that matters were coming to a warlike situation, and whenever a strangef vessel appeared thereafter, the sailors ait once went to the guns, ready for trouble. At daybreak on Thursday, April 21, the anchor was raised, and under light forced draught the battleship started through the strait, always on the keen lookout for the tiny torpedo-boat that was supposed to be lurking there like a coiled rattlesnake In a path. At the narrowest point, called the English Narrows, the channel is but half a mile wide; and here the speed was reduced, and all the sailors peered about for the treacherous little foe—the only thing a battleship dreads. The scenery in the strait was superb —lofty snow-covered mountains, great glaciers coming to the water’s edge, and inlets opening here and there. Once in the Atlantic Ocean, the great vessel gladly swung around and pointed her prow toward home—and Cuba. As yet the people on board knew nothing of what was going on between America and Spain. They met two merchant steamers, but could hear nothing later # than they already knew. And yet, while the Oregon was on her way to her next port, Rio de Janeiro, war had been declared; Dewey had set sail for Manila; the Spanish torpedoboat “Temerario” had left Buenos Ayres; and Spain’s fleet, four cruisers and three torpedo-boats under Cervera, being ordered away by Portugal, had left the Cape Verde Islands.