Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 116, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 October 1904 — NEW WARSHIP AFLOAT. [ARTICLE]

NEW WARSHIP AFLOAT.

The Connecticut, Most Powerful Type in Navy, Is Launched, . •As the bands on the several warships at the New York navy yard played “The Star-Spangled Bunner," a new United States battleship slid down the ways into the water'at 11:16 a. in. Thursday and Miss Alice Wylies, granddaughter of President Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy, broke a bottle of champagne over the vessel’s prow, naming it Connecticut. The launching was without hitch of any kind and was entirely successful. Many thousands of people witnessel the launching of this, the first battleship built in a government yard since the ill-fated Maine; large crowds gathering nt thd navy yard mid nt various points on the Manhattan and Brooklyn sides of the East river. More than 30,000 invitations were issued and few were not used. Streamers and bunting were displayed in profusion everywhere around the navy yard, particularly on the scaffolding surrounding the enormous hull of the new battleship. The bow was tastefully draped with a large American flag. Engineer W. F. Kimball and Fireman William Clmpmnn were killed nnd thirty others InjurST in a collision between a passenger train and n freight on the Mains Gsutral railroad near Lewiston, Ma