With the Battle Fleet Part 23

The umpires have their watches in hand, the crew prepares to load. Now the buoy is abeam. A red flag goes up to the forward yardarm, the whistle blows and then the command is heard:

"Commence firing!"

That is all the command that is given. For the small guns a given number of shots must be fired as quickly as possible. For the big guns as many shots may be fired as possible within a certain number of minutes. The shots are counted carefully for the small guns, and when the given quota is fired the order is given:

"Cease firing!"

When the time limit has expired for the big guns a whistle is blown by the umpire who has the watch and the same command is given, but the crew has the right to fire one more shot within a given number of seconds so as to discharge any projectile that may have been in the gun when the cease firing command was given.

As soon as the command to fire is given intense activity starts. Crack goes the 3-pounder or 3-inch. Then comes the splash. A geyser jumps up out of the bay, then another and another, as the projectile hits the water. These geysers look as if Old Faithful of the Yellowstone had been brought down to give a special performance. The spurts are not in a straight line, for the curvature of a small wave deflects the course of the projectile and sends it careening this way or that. You can tell from the position of the spurt whether it was. .h.i.t or not and you count the hits and misses carefully. You forget the ear-smiting cracks of the guns and the jolt of the decks. Did he make a hit? is what you want to know. And is the pointer doing his work well? Cheers come from various parts of the ship as. .h.i.t after hit is made, and if it's a clean string there is general jubilation.

But the ship is moving steadily along the course. There is always a slight gap in the shooting when the pointers change positions and telescopes, but bang, bang, crack, crack, come the reports, and before you know it the whistle blows and the red flag is lowered and that string is over. Then the ship slowly circles around to the targets, and the repairing crew in the small boats dash over to mark the hits of the small guns with red paint and to make repairs, change targets and fix things up generally. Then comes another start for the range, and so hour after hour the ship goes back and forth until every small gun has had its say and every pointer has had his few minutes.

When the time comes for the target practice of the great guns no red paint is needed to mark the hits. You can see the projectiles as they near the target, needlelike things that seem to flee with the speed of light. You can see the holes they make if you take a gla.s.s. Their roar is dull and the shake of the ship is a powerful tremor. Your ears are not smitten, as with the smaller guns, but the shock is tremendous. You are close to the manifestation of a terrific force. But if you wish to see the best part of the work you must go into the casemate, where the firing is done. Ah, there's where team work is going on!

Take a 7-inch gun. The word to commence firing is pa.s.sed. Powder and projectiles are all ready. The gun captain throws open the breech block. The men lift the projectile and place it in the breech. Scarcely have they removed their tray before a long wooden rammer is thrust in and the projectile, which has been carefully smoothed off and oiled, is run home and seated. Get out of the way quick, rammer, for the powder bags are being thrust in! Don't make a false step, for you may hinder some one who has just one thing to do in the shortest possible time!

The charge is now home, the gun captain whisks the breech block into place, the primer is attached and then the captain slaps the pointer on the back or cries ready. All this time the gun is being trained, the range and deflection have been changed, and instantly there is a roar, a blinding flash. The members of the crew close to the gun move just far enough back to escape the recoil, like a prizefighter when he throws his head back and escapes a blow by the fraction of an inch.

Open comes the breech in a flash, then another charge on it by the various men, another slap on the back, another roar and it's a hit or a miss. Then a third charge, and another and another. The men sweat and breathe hard, their faces become strained and some of them white. The fight is on, and the work, second by second, every one of them as valuable as hours would be ordinarily, saps the strength and energy of the men in their supreme effort.

"Every shot a hit!" cries one of the crew exultingly.

"What was the time?" asks another.

"So many seconds," says the umpire.

"That beats all records!" shouts another, and then there are cheers and great rejoicing. After the first fire scarcely a man hears the noise of the gun. It is a mere pop to them. Sometimes they overreach themselves in the desire to be quick and they make a miss. They don't hear the last of that for some time, but it's all in the work and part of the general eagerness to do well.

Then come the 8-inch guns. The rumble and roar is only a little worse than the 7-inch guns. The geysers shoot a little higher and the echoes from the report come back to the ship like so many sharp thunderclaps, where the lightning is close. Indeed, if you want to have a better reproduction of thunder than any theatre can produce just manage to be on a battleship while it fires off its 8-inch guns in rapid succession.

It's the kind of thunder that comes when lightning hits and you look out to see if the tree in your front yard has been split. Crash after crash comes back to make you duck and dodge until the projectile has finished its thunderbolt career and darts into the water with perhaps the ignominious mission of killing a fish instead of shattering a battleship.

But the 12-inch guns! Pack the cotton well into your ears! Keep your mouth open! Stand as far away from the muzzle as you can on the ship!

Secure all the things in your stateroom, for if you don't you may find your shaving mug on the floor and your hairbrush mixed up with the fragments of your soap dish! Close your port or else your trinkets may be whisked into a heap and some of them broken into pieces! The whistle has blown. The seconds go by, oh how slowly! Will they never get that gun loaded? Then comes a blast. The white flame seems brighter than sunlight, the roar runs through you like an electric shock, the decks seem to sink and you wonder if the eruption of Mont Pelee had more force than that. You look toward the target. There goes the projectile, straight through the bullseye. Then an enormous geyser leaps into the air more than a hundred feet high. Surely that is Old Faithful! Then comes another half a mile away. Then another and another and you wonder if the projectile is going clear over to Europe.

And with this comes that peculiar roar that no other agent of power produces. It is more like the rush of a limited express into and out of the mouth of a tunnel. You can hear the chug, chug of the locomotive.

You hear the rumble of a fast train on a still night through a valley.

You can almost see the hills and the little river as the train dashes over bridges and noisy trestles. There it goes into the tunnel again, and before you can speak of it out it comes with another roar! More bridges and trestles, more tunnels, more chugs, and then there comes a steady roar. The train is going over the hill and out of the last tunnel, and you take a long breath. Before you expel it from your lungs there is another smiting flash and you are dancing on your toes again.

The ship seems to settle and you get the geysers, the roar of the fastest train that ever ran. And so it goes until the whistle blows and you swing around to look at the target and then repeat the performance.

You now begin to realize what a battleship means, and you are speculating about it when an officer comes around and says:

"Pretty fine, eh? Well, that's nothing to battle practice! when for a certain number of minutes we let all the guns go together. That's real noise! This is just pop-gun work."

Well, if it is not noise you begin to think that if there is ever another war you know one place where you don't want to be, and that is on a battleship. Every one of the ships had to go through this work, and when it was all over then it was that the men on these ships felt the sense of relief that none of them experienced over their safe arrival and the performance of the fleet on the way to this bay. They were ready to drop in their tracks. They were worn out, as the expression goes.

There is one moment of great suspense at every gun in such practice as this. It is when some adjustment has gone wrong, when some accident has occurred, and when there is real danger. Then the officer in charge cries sharply:

"Silence!"

That means that no more shots must be fired from that gun on that run.

With it goes a penalty that works against the ship's record. More than once such command has been heard on these ships, but it is wise, for all too sad have been the records of accidents at target practice not only in our own ships but in those of every other navy. It would have pleased any one to observe all the precautions that were taken this time. The navy has learned some lessons. Safer and safer the turrets are becoming all the time. And this element of speed which enters into all contests with the firing of guns conduces to that end. You see, it is not only the hits that count but the time in which they are made.

But why this haste, you ask. Well, it trains the men to get the drop on the enemy and also, and perhaps of just as much importance, it reveals the defects in the system. In other words, it tends more to make turrets and ordnance what the experts call "foolproof." It may be said that nearly all of our ordnance on these ships has reached that stage, the stage where some man by some unforeseen fool action, one that no one could guess would happen, endangers and probably costs the lives of himself and several others. Every breakdown of a gun on this practice has had its value and it all goes toward speeding the day when these faults will be corrected and a ship may go into action with a reasonable a.s.surance that all its mechanism will do the work it was intended to do.

Yes, speed has its advantages, very great advantages.

What a change in twenty years! There are men on this ship who used to take part in the old practice on such ships as the Saratoga or the Quinnebaugh, the one that was on the European station so long that some one in the Navy Department forgot for a year or two to put it in the Naval Register. The Saratoga had one 8-inch muzzle loading rifle that had formerly been a smooth bore 11-inch Dahlgren gun, the kind of gun that resembled a soda water bottle and was called such. It was mounted amidships between the fireroom hatch and the break of the to'gallant fo'c's'le. The bulwarks at that place were pierced by pivot gun ports that could be secured as part of the bulwarks when the gun was not in action.

The gun swung on circles and pivot bolts by using hauling and training tackles, and could be used on either broadside and about ten points forward and abaft the beam. The ship had also four 9-inch smoothbore Dahlgrens to complete its main battery. It required about twenty-two men to handle such a gun. The charges of powder were in canvas bags and rammed home. The guns could be sighted up to 2,000 yards. The recoil was taken up by a heavy hempen hawser fastened to the bulwarks and pa.s.sed through the cascabel of the gun. The range for target practice was 1,000 yards, and lucky was the gunner if he made 30 per cent. of hits.

In those days the men at the guns were not half stripped, as they are now. One-half of them were armed with cutla.s.s and pistol and the other half with magazine rifles and bayonets. This was to repel boarders.

That's all gone. No battleship ever expects to repel boarders in these days. Protection for the gunners was made by piling up hammocks and bags--about the last thing that would be thought of, with its danger from fire, in these days, even if all else failed. Nowadays the recoil is taken up hydraulically, and the gun is shot back into place with springs. Even fewer men are required to handle an 8-inch gun than twenty years ago. One of these guns will shoot five times further and do ten times--yes, one might say almost a hundredfold--more damage than the old ones. And there are eight of these on a ship like the Louisiana, to say nothing of twelve 7-inch guns, four 12-inch, twenty 3-inch and twelve 3-pounders.

In target practice on one of these ships ten shots are fired from each 7-inch gun, twenty from each 3-inch gun, twenty from each 3-pounder and as many from each 8-inch and 12-inch as can be got off in a given time.

It may be stretching the proprieties to tell even that much, and to get back to generalities it may be said that about twenty-five tons of metal were fired from all the guns. The cost? Well, put it for convenience sake at $300,000 for the fleet. Expensive? Not a bit of it! That expenditure is the best money spent by the United States Navy. It is the premium of insurance paid annually for efficiency, and it will prove its value if these ships ever get into war. There'll be no hit or miss or reckless helter-skelter shooting then. To make the practice record here each ship has to steam about 100 miles in going over the course and in a general way it may be said that each ship made from thirty-five to forty runs on the range. There, that's about all to be said in print or elsewhere about target practice by this fleet.

Well now honest, you say, didn't the ships do well, pretty well, just a little better than ever before, perhaps a great deal better? Just that much is what you want to know? Well, you'll have to ask the Navy Department about that. In its own good time and in its own way it may decide to give out such information and it may not. You'll never get an answer from the Sun's correspondent on this trip.

CHAPTER XII

ROUTINE OF A BATTLESHIP

Life and Work on U. S. Battleship--Every Day Crowded With Duties and Drills for All on Board--The Overworked Executive-- Executive--Responsibility for Everything Finally Culminates With the Captain--All Effort Has in View the Efficiency of the Ship as a Fighting Machine--Minute Care in Seemingly Minor Details Makes for Perfection in Case of Crisis--Standing Watch and General Quarters--Catering and Hygiene--Smart Signal Work-- Launch Etiquette--Reverence for Quarter Deck and National Anthem.

_On Board U. S. S. Louisiana, U. S. Battle Fleet_, PUNTA ARENAS, CHILE, Jan. 31.

Unusual and attractive as an extended cruise on a warship from the Atlantic to the Pacific is to a civilian, and however it may cause him to be envied by his acquaintances, it must also be set down, if one would chronicle the truth and nothing else, that it has its drawbacks.

Probably the first that the supernumerary cargo discovers is that there is practically no place on the decks where he may sit down. He soon realizes that a warship is not a pa.s.senger steamship, with steamer chairs, smoking rooms, deck stewards and all the other appurtenances that go to advance the traveller's comfort.

The next drawback that forces itself upon one's attention, after the novelty of looking around wears off to some extent, is that the warship pa.s.senger is a mighty lonely person, and, unless he can amuse himself or is naturally one of the reserved kind and lives in his own sh.e.l.l he'll find time hanging heavy on his hands.

You see you can't go up to an officer and gossip when he's drilling a crew in loading sh.e.l.ls in a gun. You can't pounce upon the Captain whenever you see him on the deck and make him chat to you. You can't exercise conversational powers when general quarters or fire drill is on. You don't feel like asking for what is called a gabfest when the other fellow is figuring out problems in navigation. It is not the time to be chummy when every man on the bridge is watching signals from a flagship and hurrying things so as not to be the last to send up the proper pennant or to haul it down. When the red and white lights of the ardois signal system are flashing at night or the stiff arms of the semaph.o.r.es are throwing themselves about in a helter-skelter fashion day or night it is not wise to ask what they are saying.

There is so much going on entirely foreign to the average man that he feels as if he were in a new world with busy people all about him speaking a strange language and doing strange things and he's literally alone. Gradually it is borne in on him that he's a cat in a strange garret. There's plenty of civility all around, but for hours and hours a day there is no companionship; no one with whom he can form a pool on the day's run, or sit down with a steward at his elbow to play a friendly game, or one for blood; no yarn spinners handy when you want 'em; no luxuries in travelling.

Of course one may find easy chairs in the wardroom with plenty of reading matter, and you have a chair and a desk, in addition to your bunk, in your room, but no one can stay below at sea unless the weather is foul, and even then he chafes at it. No matter how fine your house is at home you take more comfort in seasonable weather in sitting on your porch than in your library, and the same holds true at sea on a warship when it comes to sitting in an easy chair in the wardroom or in your own room.

There are excellent reasons for these two drawbacks, the lack of creature comforts, luxuries, if you please, and of genial companionship at any hour, in going to sea as a civilian on a warship. Only one need be mentioned. That is that a warship is a tremendously busy workshop where the boss, his a.s.sistants and the workmen have a peculiar kind of work on hand, such as exists nowhere else in the world, and there is no time in which to pander to the whims and desires of an outsider sent on board by the order of executive authorities higher up.

The work on hand is to move a floating fort of steel swiftly through the water in complete synchronism with a lot of other floating forts and then to prepare those who are engaged in work in this fort for just one thing, to destroy and kill. Everything is subservient to one idea--to be ready to fight at the swiftest pace for just about one hour; for be it known that if one of the warships in this great battle fleet were fought at its swiftest and fullest capacity it would be all over, one way or the other, in an hour or less. You see fighting a warship is not a long distance race; it's a hundred yard dash, to change the figure. Getting ready for that dash, that supreme effort at the fastest speed, calls for all the concentration and hard, unremitting toil that years of education in a complex specialty and years of experience can employ.

When this work is going on those engaged in it want outsiders out of the way, and if you're a wise outsider you want to get out of the way. Hence at such times it is likely that you'll get pretty tired standing around on your feet, with no place to rest your weary bones and no companion with whom you can even be bromidic. Yes, it's fine and great to cruise 14,000 miles on a splendid warship, but truly it has some drawbacks.

It must not be inferred from this that one lacks for comfort, complete comfort, or for genial companionship on a battleship. Far from it. The ship abounds in reading matter. There are easy chairs in plenty in the wardroom. And as for companionship, a more genial set of good fellows never existed in any profession than these same busy naval officers, from the Captains down. There are many diversions. You can watch the drills, the signalling; you can have a game of cribbage or whist in the evening; you have a fine band to play for you at dinner and on deck in the warm evenings; you can make friends with the pets on board, tease the dog, play with the cats, watch the monkeys, talk with the poll parrots and stroke the goat's head, all the time watching lest he tries to b.u.t.t you, you can figure out the course, estimate lat.i.tude and longitude; you can talk with the men when the smoking lamp is lighted, although you must never be chummy, but sometimes you can get an old quartermaster who has been all over the world and draw him off into a secluded place and let him spin his yarns to you, and also let him growl out his growls and try to convince you that everything in this world, especially in the navy, is rotten, after which he feels better and you have had a pleasant hour of amus.e.m.e.nt, knowing full well that when he gets to port and meets another quartermaster of another navy he'll be blowing himself hoa.r.s.e in his contention that our navy is the best in the world and that there's no calling equal to that of a real sailorman, and he's ready to fight to prove it.

So it isn't all work and no play on a warship, but it comes mighty near to it for days and days, for, like a woman's work the work is never done. You'd realize it if some night after a hard day's work is over you heard the bells and bugles crying out for general quarters for you to tumble out of your hammock or bunk when you had earned a good night's rest. You'd realize it if you had been straining your eyes for hours in the daylight at target practice and then had to go at it again at night.