Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 124, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 June 1917 — SPLENDID DNITED STATES FLEET PUTS TO SEA, READY TO MINUTE [ARTICLE]

SPLENDID DNITED STATES FLEET PUTS TO SEA, READY TO MINUTE

. Gouvemeur Morris Visits a Fleet of American Warships “Somewhere in American Waters” and Gives a Vivid Picture of Life Aboard a Fighting Ship Men and Ships Fit to Meet Any Foe.

By GOUVERNEUR MORRIS.

(International News Staff Correspondent.) Somewhere Near America. —On Friday, May 11, I received permission to visit a fleet of United States warships, was told where to find it, how to reach it, and that until Thursday, the 24th of May, I must not convey to the newspapers which I represent any of the impressions that it should make upon me, nor all of' the ithpressiOns until the end of the war. It may be of Interest to the public to know that the fleet which—l visited is somewhere in American waters, and that, backed by the proper authority, it may be reached In s'everal ways. More than this I am not permitted to say, nor may I give the composition of the fleet, nor the names of the ships composing it, nor of any of the officers governing those ships. I must deal in impositives. If I saw faults or virtues I must not particularize. In short, I must teTT about the fleet without telling a general impression with most of the impressions left out. --- J Battleship a Man. I shall deal, then rather with the humanities of the fleet than with its mechanics; with its aspects rather than its potentialities. And with one particular ship rather than with many. t , . It has been said that a modern battleship is a machine. It is not. It is a man. His eyes may no longer have the vision of youth, but he sees through a hundred pairs, whose vision is twenty-twenty magnified many diameters by lenses exquisitely adjusted ; his hands may not be large or strong, but they have within them almost a god’s power to destroy. It is as if his brain had multiplied his eyes and made telescopes of them, tad tncrensertdiis body to an ominous and beautiful abomination, displacing 30,000 tons, and had lengthened his arms and strengthened his handsuntil they could reach out clear away over the rim of the world, and there smash and crush and tear and kill. It was twenty years since I had set foot on a battleship. There was something familiar about him and something strange. It was like meeting a promising friend of your boyhood after he had grown into a man. (I will ■not be-she warships, nor be-her them. They are men.) He had grown older,wiser, grayer, stronger, broader, taller and swifter. And though neither of us had forgotten the best, nor the worst of those things which we had once had in common, he eyed me askance, and I felt embarrassed and shy. Warship Now More Kind. The officer of the deck spoke to a seaman. And by the tone of the voice I knew that friend battleship had not only grown stronger and greater, but so sure of himself that he could afford to be more courteous and more kind. Things A meal came and went. One threw dice for the cigars. One lost. One.listened und one talked, anfl one began to associate in the back of one’s head this face with the: rightfuL name- of its that insignia with lire office of its wearer. No two faces of the uniformed men around the long, narrow table of the ward room mess were, alike. But ithey were all fine, clean-cut faces of rigorously educated men in the pink of phyiscal condition. Like all travclefs, —they —were broad-minded, and like all men who have been brought up among true values, they were without affectation of any kind. I have said that a battleship is a man. It is not. It is a city. That it is a waljed city, defended by terrible cannon, every man knows. So I shall not here and now speak of the magic eyes with which it sees the approach of the enemy, the thick armor with which it repels his blows, nor of the terrible cannon with which It returns them. The government is the flagship. The admirals are the governors of states and the captains and commanders are the mayors of cities and towns. It is a complete civilization, a floating country, to which the devotion of its seamen and firemen is as necessary as that of its admirals, captains and commanders., ; But to return to our city. It differs from land cities in that it recognizes neither night nor day. There are more people awakel time than at night; but the city’s eyes are never closed,. And during each minute of his waking hours each cltl- . mm knows what he must do. or what he may do. ’ Our Ships at Sea.. One day I learned that on the following morning we were “going out” Close to my room was one of the steel tubes through which the anchor chains slide, and very early I was wakened by a sound that was as if, on a dozen adjoining alleys, giants were bowUng and making ten-strikes. A llttje later I felt the first revolutions of the engines. I did not need to look at -my watch. The captain bad said that we were going, out at 5:15, and I laid learned by now that when the na/y says 5:15, it means 5:15 to the secbnd. : ' ‘ v . ■ ’

I breakfasted at eight and went on deck. There was nothing to be seen but water and blue sky, a close-up battleship which resembled ours as one pea resembles another, and several far-off battleships that looked as if they had been cut out bf cardboard. All the time that we were out I kept away from charts and compasses, _Qnly the sun by day and the stars "by night gave me any notion of our whereabouts. It was a restful feeling. We were moving at the rate of 15 knots an hour. There was nothing vague about this. That was our speed to the inch and second. It was also the leisurely rate maintained by the close-up battleship, and his distance from us at the end of a given hour was within Inches of what it had been at the beginning. A marvel of battleships Is the precision with which they move and keep their distances and mind their manners. It Is only less marvelous than the mobility of their turrets and their gri?ar--gtt»s.— -A--turret revolver, with---out a sound. It may be turned so fast that if you got in the way the business end of the gun would knock your head off, or It may be turned so slowly that to the eye It is not turning at all. That day I attached myself to a grpup of boys who were learning to be a gun crew and who that afternoon would hear a gun fired for the first time in their Ilves.wouldfire one and would try to hit a target. Although I did none of the hard work, I think that I shared as an equal in Illi their mental processes and I know that I suffered just as much as they did when, after rehearsals and dress rehearsals, the gun finally and y§ry suddenly and horribly went joss.

Learning to Shoot. First, they were taught how to loaxL, For this business a short dummy gun with a genuine brush, screw box and plug is provided. I am not nojy speaking of great turret guns, but of lesser guns, whose bark, however, is much higher pitched and less tolerable to the ears, eyes, nose, spleen, liver, toes, spine and scalp. I am speaking of a gun which has the highest muzzle velocity of any gun in the world, and much the most disagreeable voice. This Is how”you load it: The plug man with his right hand swings a lever, the plug swings out of the breech or screw box, and to one side. With his left hand the plugman slips into Its chamber in the plug a primer (possibly a ,44-callber blank cartridge) to replace the exploded one which has been automatically extracted. Then

the plugman swings- his lever again and closes the breech of the gun. That is what the plugman does. White he Is doing ~ffy®ve other men are doing other things of equal Importance. The moment the gun is open the trayman slaps Into the form box a metal contrivance which protects its fine gears and edges from being Injured by the sharp point of the heavy wheel, and which guides the shell Itself into the bore of the gun. The brush being open and the tray in place, the first shellman with all his might hurls Into the opening the shell that he has been holding, the first powderman hurls after it a bag of powder, and then even as the tray comes out and the breech closes, the first shellman has turned, without using his feet, and received from the second shellmamr'fresh shell, and the first powderman has turned and received from the second powderman a fresh bag of powder. . • That is how the gun is loaded. It is a matter of seconds. In practice the shell and the powder bag (omission by censor?) to keys the junction of two lines that cross each other at a right angle on the exact center of the bull’s-eye. A third pointer does the same, thing with another pair of crossed lines, but the wheel elevates the muzzle of the gun end or depresses it. And of all the men in the compartment of that particular gun he is the luckiest, for he is the only one who knows the exact moment when the bang Is coming. He causes it by pressing a button. At any moment while a certain buzzer is buzzing, and the crossed lines are on the bulTs-eye, he is at liberty to fire the gun.

Blast of the Guns. We steamed slowly down the range a number of times, and all the compartment guns on our side of the ship swung slowly from left to right, as the pointers kept the crossed lines on the bull’s-eye. And we all got a line because we knew that each practice run brought us nearer to that real run when~the-awful blasts—that we anticipated would have to be endured somehow. We turned and steamed slowly toward the range. We were In the compartment, the gun crew and the officer in charge, myself and twenty or, thirty fledgling seamen, who were there to pick up what they could by eye and ear. I have never in one time or place seen so many forced smiles. One of them was mine. We had beejn served, with absorbent cotton and had plugged our ears. The cotton made men’s voices sound numb and far-off. It had no effect whatever upon the voice of the cannon. The steel doors of the compartment had been closed and locked. There was no escape. The range came over the speaking tube. The first pointer repeated it and made an adjustment. There come a voice, even through cotton, a bellowing voice: “Coming on the range! Coming on the range 1” There was a dead silence. Then low, clear and insistent, like the deadly rattle of our most infamous native snake, the buzzer. I had forgotten about the gun in the next compartment. I shall never forget it again. It went off. Lifted by the Concussion.

I was sitting at the moment and my feet were swinging clear of the deck. I.'.had nothing <sto jump into. But i rose in the air and came down. Then our gun went,'The .flash was brighter than sunlight. It was of an intolerable brightness, and all but intolerable was the bang that went with it. The assault was less upon the body than upon the soul. My ears did not suffer at all. I went out to see how many shots were fired. I did not get used to it. I know that, for not once did I see the gun recoil and go back into place. Try as I would, that white, hot, deafening flash shut my eyes tight for me. I watched a second run from the btidge. It was pleasanter. The bangsticks were even farther off and-_you could see the tall, white splashes of the ricochetting shells. I got so that I could keep my eyes open. I have said that a battleship is a man. I have said that it Is a city. It is neither. It is a romance. I recall searchlights that searched the hear,ens and the face of the waters, thiit Crossed and crisscrossed; the starry calls of the bugles and the .sea-salt- immes-of things.—-Have you lived in Arcadia? Well, I have lived in the “Junior Officers’ Country.” I remember a night of firing of shells that gave off fire so that you could watch the long, lovely curves of their flights; and of searchlights which spoke to each other as easily and as freely as a man speaks to a man. > But what is best in our navy is not the machines, nor the drives, nor the -controls, nor any of the death-dealing or life-saving appliances. It is the spirit of these men who, through discipline'and self-sacrifice, have learned to find the-true values of life and the true meaning of that flag for which at any moment they are ready to lay dowfi their lives.- — ——’ I speak not ohly of admirals and captains, of wardroom officers and junior officers, biM of the boatswain’s mate and the eql/sted men.