With the Battle Fleet Part 25

7:30--Hammocks.

8:00--Relieve watch, wheel and lookouts. Signal and searchlight drill as ordered. Signal (1) lat.i.tude; (2) longitude.

At sea when meals are piped the duty section will remain on deck until relieved by the next section for duty. When, however, the ship is cruising singly at sea and there is no immediate necessity for the services of the section on deck, or when cruising at sea in company and it is apparent that the services of men on deck, other than those actually on watch at stations, is unnecessary, then mess gear will be spread for all sections at the same time, and all sections will go to meals at the same time, except those men actually on duty, but reliefs must get their meals and relieve their stations promptly. In any case the duty section must stand by to answer an emergency call. In bad weather, or when engaged in manoeuvres, or when in the immediate vicinity of land, the duty section shall remain on deck until relieved by the next section.

There is a daily port routine, similar in general outline to the one for cruising. It calls for the ceremony of colors, hoisting or lowering the flag, boat duty and other things which can come only when a ship is in port. But these two schedules only hint at the full story.

Probably the first impression that a stranger to all this ship routine gets is that a warship is one of the most discordant places in the world. They are everlastingly blowing bugles, each bugle out of key with all the others. One bugler will sound a lot of hippety-hoppity notes and then another will take up the same refrain with a blare and a mean half note or quarter note variation and then two or three others will join in, on decks, below decks, and the jangling jumble rolls in on your ear drums in such a discord that you feel as if you'd like to punch the man who told 'em to do it. At the same time you see men, hundreds of whom must have no ear for note discrimination, jump to the tasks to which they are summoned and you wonder how they know what the bugles are telling them.

There are ninety-eight of these bugle calls on a man-o'-war and how the men differentiate them pa.s.ses your understanding. It aggravates you that you can't make them out yourself. You begin to study them and you do get so that you are able to recognize two or three, and then you get lost and you begin to have an admiration for the men who have mastered them all, just as you admire an ironworker who can walk a beam 400 feet in the air. He can do something that you can't do and you respect him for it.

Still you keep trying to master those calls. Finally you learn the trick partly. You a.s.sociate certain words with certain jingles--perhaps it would be better to say certain jangles--and then you pat yourself on the back and feel that you are pretty nearly half as good as a sailorman in Uncle Sam's navy. The trick is the same as with the army calls and many of the jingles are the same. For example, you soon learn reveille, for the refrain,

We can't get 'em up; we can't get 'em up; We can't get 'em up in the morning.

fits the call so completely that one who has once learned it can never forget what it means.

Again when the bugles sound the sick bay call you find yourself unconsciously saying to yourself:

Come and get your quinine, quinine.

When the officers' call for quarters is sounded you feel like saying to the one nearest you:

Get your sword on; get your sword on.

When the mess call is blown you know that the bluejackets are saying to themselves as the notes blare out:

Soupy, soupy, soup, without a single bean; Porky porky, pork, without a streak of lean.

When a.s.sembly sounds you join with the rest in the warning:

You'd better be here at the next roll call.

When the swimming call comes you say to yourself:

Bought a chicken for fifty cents; The son of a gun jumped over the fence!

When the call for pay day is made you know how the men feel as they say:

Pay day; pay day; come and get your pay.

And when tattoo is over and then comes taps you feel drowsy as the sweet notes, one of the very few in army or navy calls that are sweet, sing to you:

Go to sleep; go to sleep; go to sleep.

Oh, yes, you finally get to know many of these calls and then somehow the discord seems to leave them, and, like the ship that found herself, you begin to find yourself on shipboard and you feel that you are getting on. That bugling ceases to trouble you further.

The pipes of the bos'n also pierce your ears. Always shrill, they all seem to end in a piercing shriek. At first they make you grate your teeth. You feel as if you would prefer that some one would cuss you out, as the naval expression is, rather than give you orders in that mean way. And when you hear these same mates, one of whom is stationed at every place of importance where the men live and sleep, roar out something that seems to be a mixture of the blast of a cyclone, the trumpeting of an elephant and the bray of another animal you think that if you were the sailorman addressed you'd feel like saying to that mate you'd be d.a.m.ned if you'd do it, whatever it was he was ordering you to do. Why, such language as the bos'ns' pipes employ is more calculated to inspire profanity than was the term applied by Daniel O'Connell to the fishwoman when he called her out of her name by saying she was a hypothenuse. But gradually you learn some of these calls too--there are no rhymes or jingles for them--and that worry blows over.

The work on the bridge also soon excites your admiration. When you are in squadron or fleet formation it's a different game from when you are alone. Then all you have to do is to keep your course and go sailing along at the speed set for you, keep your eye on things, receive reports, give this and that order, when you are through set down a record of what has happened in the deck logbook. All that's simple and easy compared with cruising in a fleet. With a fleet you are not on the bridge five minutes before you are aware that a peculiar kind of game is being played. It is "Watch the Flagship." The watch officer, the signal officer, the quartermasters, the signal boys, are all engaged in the work. Let a signal go up from the flagship. There is a hasty peep through gla.s.ses and then a hoa.r.s.e cry for certain flags, a rush for the bunting, a quick bending of it on the halyards and then a mad rush by half a dozen lads across the bridge as the signals are hoisted. Hurry; be the first to answer, is the sentiment inspiring all. After the signal is hoisted you take a hasty look around, and you grin as this or that ship hasn't got hers up yet, and you say to yourself that it was pretty smart work. When the first sign of a flutter comes from the flagship that the pennants are coming down the hoa.r.s.e yell of "Haul down!" comes like a thunderclap; and woe betide the clumsy signal boy who gets the halyards foul and doesn't have the signals out of sight before the flagship has hers hidden.

Or perhaps it is approaching sunset and the time comes to lower the speed cones for the night and start the masthead and truck lights to glimmering. Intently all hands watch the flagship and at the first tremor of the cone the boy begins to haul down. In a jiffy not a cone is to be seen at the yards on the entire fleet.

Then there is the night signalling with the ardois red and white lights.

There flashes from the flagship a row of vertical red lights, four of them. "Cornet!" is the cry. It means that each ship must turn on the same signal as an answer to attention call. Then the flagship talks, with this and that combination of red and white lights, all flashed so fast that before the impression of one combination fades from the eye two or three others have followed and you wonder how on earth any one can make them out. But as each one is flashed a boy calls out the letter and another writes it down the cubbyhole where the navigator's chart is sheltered, and you find that these messages are recorded as fast as a telegrapher could write out his clicks.

Then the semaph.o.r.e is lighted up and the arms of lights go jiggering this way and that way, just as the gaunt black and white automata do in the daytime, and you find the boys reading off the message as easily as a grown person can spell cat when the letters are big and the print is plain. You sometimes wake up in the night when you are at anchor and look out of your port. Rare is it that you do not see a semaph.o.r.e or an ardois combination flashing. When you ask about it in the morning the officers will tell you that it probably was the signal boys talking with one another and that it is allowed because it is good practice to let them gossip when there is nothing else going on and the night watches are long and tedious. Invariably one boy will make the signal letter of another ship where he suspects a friend is on duty at the signals and this is what he says:

"How is it for a game of flat?" meaning an unofficial talk.

"All right," comes the answer: "go ahead."

Then those two boys chat over all sorts of things, chaff each other, make appointments for the first liberty, talk of the latest ship gossip, and all that, but there's one feature about it that's peculiar. The messages are always in polite form. It's always, "Will you kindly?" or "Please be good enough," or something in that fashion. No signal boy ever forgets himself or the dignity of his place in a game of talk.

Besides, there might be officers observing things and it is never nice to have your name put on the report. You are brought up at the mast and you might get five days in the brig on bread and water or something like that if you exchanged language that was not seemly for use on a warship's signals.

And then in bridge work in cruising there is that difficult job of keeping distances. The favorite cruising formation in this fleet is at 400 yards distance from the preceding ship. The Louisiana was fourth in whatever line was formed. That meant 1,200 yards from the flagship. Now the engines of no two ships move the 16,000 tons of those ships at exactly the same speed through the water. You may know theoretically how many revolutions of the propellers are needed to go at the rate of ten, eleven, twelve or even more knots an hour, but even then one ship will inch up, so to speak, foot up might express it better, and you have got to correct this all the time or you will be crawling up on the quarter deck of the ship in front of you, or lagging so behind that the ship after you will be in danger of crawling up on your own deck.

You have a midshipman using the stadimeter all the time, every fifteen or twenty seconds or so, and then you are kept signalling to the engine room to make one or two or three revolutions faster or slower, until you get your right place and you don't have to fly your position pennant, confessing to the flagship that you are making a bad job of your work and have got more than forty yards out of your position. You see, coal varies in its steaming qualities from time to time, and sometimes the engine room force gets a little slack or orders get mixed and it is one perpetual struggle to keep exactly where you ought to be.

Then you have to sail on the course announced, and the helmsman and quartermaster have to be continually moving the rudder back and forth to correct the yaws from the seas and other influences that throw you off that exact line.

Then there is the routine bridge work, giving orders, receiving reports, making decisions, tasting the food of the crew that is brought always to the officer on watch, sighting ships and other things and always notifying the Captain day or night of all important things going on. Oh, yes, there is plenty to do on a bridge in a fleet, and you watch its progress with fascination for hours until you suddenly begin to realize the presence of that drawback mentioned first in this article, that there is no seating place up there, and you go below to read or get some rest sitting down.

As one becomes accustomed to the naval routine there are some ceremonies that he skips as a matter of course and some that he does not. One of the latter is the general muster of the officers and crew on a Sunday morning once a month. Quarters are sounded as usual and then comes the inspection of the ship and the men in their stations, while the band is playing lively airs. When this is over the entire ship's company not engaged in actual duty in running the ship is summoned aft. The officers and their divisions come to the quarter deck, and each officer reports his division "up and aft" to the executive officer, who in turn reports that fact to the Captain. The latter then orders the ship's roll to be called. The paymaster steps out from the group of officers with the roll. On the Louisiana he calls:

"Richard Wainwright!"

Capt. Wainwright responds:

"Captain, United States Navy."

"E. W. Eberle!"

"Lieutenant-Commander, United States Navy," the executive officer responds.

"C. T. Jewell!"

"Lieutenant-Commander, United States Navy," says the navigator, and so on down the roll of officers the Paymaster proceeds, each man saluting as he answers to his name. Then the Paymaster retires and the pay clerk steps up and takes up the call. He reads the names of the members of the crew. As each man hears his name called he answers with his designation on the roll, John Jones will answer "Coal pa.s.ser, United States Navy,"

and William Smith will declare that he is an ordinary seaman, and so on.

As each man answers to his name he drops out of the ranks, proceeds aft and walks by the Captain, hat in hand. When the name of a man on duty somewhere in this ship, in the engine rooms or the bridge or elsewhere, is called, the ship's writer, who stands beside the executive officer, says.

"On duty, sir."

The absentee is marked "accounted for." Men in the sick bay are accounted for in the same way. It requires almost an hour to go through the nearly 1,000 names, and when it is all over the Paymaster reports to the executive officer that all are present or accounted for and that fact is duly communicated to the Captain. By that time the deck is clear of the men and only the officers remain, and these are dismissed.

It's a fine thing to see a fine crew individually and size up each man.

When the President was on the Louisiana it is said that he took the keenest interest in this personal appearance of every man on the quarter deck in answer to the call of his name and showed his satisfaction over the appearance of the men as he stood beside the Captain and watched each one of the husky lads pa.s.s by.

Once a month on a Sunday morning the crew is also summoned aft to have the Articles of War read. The executive officer does the reading. Here is propounded the law and the gospel of a man-o'-war's duties and responsibilities. The men are told what they must do and what they must not do. The punishments inflicted for certain offences are read out, offences in time of peace and similar offences in time of war. More than once are heard the words "shall suffer death." All through the idea pervades that there must be instant and complete obedience of orders.