Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 August 1896 — ALMOST CERTAIN DEATH. [ARTICLE]

ALMOST CERTAIN DEATH.

The Gunner in the Tower Will Be in Great Danger. In that Opining nayfl 1 battle between the steel fleets of. two first-class powers, to which nautical authorities have been looking forward ever; since modern battleships became tile mighty engines of problematical forces' that they are, the military mast and fighting top will play a deadly part and be the station of dinger and heroism? ■ . ■ w— — As .everybody knows, the old mast,, the mast of yards and sails, has vanished-. from the modern ship of war The Newark is the only modern ship in the United States liavy .which has sailcarrying masts. The place of the mast that was greeted for sail-carrying purposes is taken oil the modem warship by a steel tower, which rises from the deck to support one or maybe three or four circular galleries, where rapid fire or machine guns are placed, which,,in time of action, pour their hail of bullets at the decks and ports of the hostile ship. ' ~ —• The object.is to kill the gunners, for it is self-evident that the most powerful gUn is powerless if its crew is dead. Take the twenty rapid-fire guns distributed along the superstructure of the Indiana. Prom a fighting top such a storm of lead could be driven upon these great guns as would make it impossible for men to work them. Therefore it will be one of the first duties of a warship to shoot away with its heavy guns the military mast of its adversary. ' <- As one well-directed shot will send the mast tumbling, it is not probable that any ship will come out of an engagement with its military mast standing, The shooting away pf the mast will, of course.,Jliean the death of every man in tile fighting tops. Men sent there will know as they climb the dark ladder to their stations that they go to almost certain death, and will have only one duty before them, to kill as many of the enemy as they can before the crash conies. Men Who in turrets- and below are handling the great guns have overj- hope of life aud victory before them, but the meu in the tops go to their duty with no such hopes and expectations. To man the fighting tops in •action will be a kind of martyrdom especially hard to endure. To perform devils of valor in the face of contending armies or to suffer with fortitude in the gaze of admiring thousand* is one tiling; to climb up calmly inside a steel post and work away at such an unpoetical mechanical device as a rapid-fire or machine gun until Such time as it may please the enemy to blow one into “kingdom come" is quite another thing. , Yet the modern man-of-warsman is enthusiastic over the advantages of the military mast, and would obey an order to nlan a gun In the fighting top as read ily as lie would the bugle call which suni\ mons him to by meals.—New 1 York, Press.