One of the great guns of the “Albemarle,” a hundred-pounder, protruded from a broadside port directly in front of them, and they could see the gun-crew frantically training the gun and trying to depress the muzzle enough to bear on them. It was a matter of seconds now. Who would fire first? Cushing had lowered the torpedo-spar, and as soon as he had it well under the overhang he detached it, then waited until he heard the torpedo strike the hull, when he pulled the trigger-line. He was not a fraction of a second too soon, for the two concussions were almost simultaneous. There was a muffled roar from below the great vessel, and a column of water shot out from under her as she lifted on the wave. The shock of the hundred-pounder was terrific, and it seemed as if the frail launch had been blown to pieces. But Cushing had been too quick for them. The charge of canister passed a few feet over their heads and scattered in the river beyond.
The work of the gallant crew was done. Cushing had made a hole in the “Albemarle” large enough to have driven a wagon through. The great wave of the torpedo rose and went completely over the launch, swamping her alongside and throwing her men into the water. All of them got to the booms safely. Here Cushing paused a moment to throw off his outer clothing, while the Confederates on the banks were shouting to the men to surrender. Several of them, being unable to swim, did so; but Cushing, calling to the others to follow him, plunged boldly into the water and struck off down the stream. He was a powerful swimmer, but the night was cold, and he knew that he could not keep up very long. But he swam for half an hour, and he came upon Woodman in the middle of the stream, almost exhausted. Though almost entirely fagged out himself, he tried to help the mate towards the shore. Finding that he was being pulled down and unable to save the other, Cushing struggled on, and reached the shoal water more dead than alive. Here he lay among the reeds until dawn, when he learned from a negro how complete had been his success. At last, after almost twenty-four hours’ exposure, he succeeded in finding one of the enemy’s deserted picket-skiffs, and managed under cover of the second night to pull off to the Federal “Valley City,” which he reached at eleven o’clock at night, and was hauled aboard completely exhausted from his labor and exposure. Only one other of his crew reached a place of safety. Woodman and Samuel Higgins, the fireman, were drowned. The others went ashore and surrendered or were captured.
This service, because of the great benefit to the Union cause and the daring manner in which it had been performed, made Cushing the hero of the year. Congress passed a vote of thanks and promoted him to the rank of lieutenant-commander, which he held until 1872, when he became a commander.
He did not long enjoy his honors, for two years later he died of brain fever, in Washington, at the age of thirty-two. Had he lived he would have been but fifty-six years of age at the outbreak of the war with Spain, and would have been one of the ranking officers in active service of the new navy.
SOMERS AND THE “INTREPID”
Among the young officers of Commodore Preble’s squadron before Tripoli there was a tall, dark, melancholy-looking fellow of about twenty-five. His name was Richard Somers and his command was the “Nautilus,” a little schooner of twelve guns and a hundred men. He had been with Decatur and Stewart, a junior officer on Commodore Barry’s “United States” in the war with Spain, and the friendship formed in those early days had been cemented by a score of thrilling adventures which had drawn them more closely together than brothers. Charles Stewart, before Decatur’s promotion to post-captain, had been the second in command to Preble, and his vessel, the “Siren,” had taken a prominent part in all the many actions with the Tripolitan forts and gunboats. He was a year or so older than his companions and had drifted a little away from them. But Decatur and Somers were inseparable. Some bond outside of mere professional sympathy and environment existed between them, and there seemed to be no thought of the one that the other did not share. The difference in their temperaments was marked. Decatur was bold, domineering, and impetuous. Somers was quiet, mild, and ever avoided the quarrel which Decatur too often sought. But under the quiet exterior men had found a will like iron and the willingness to dare and do anything that came within the province of his profession. He was thoughtful, but not so quiet that he could not enter into the gayety of the mess; he was mild, but not so mild that he would overlook shortcomings among his men or brook any slight upon his office or his reputation.
In the old days on the “United States” there happened an affair which immediately established his reputation as an officer and a man. At first he was not understood. His brother midshipmen, mistaking the reserve of his manner for weakness, did not hesitate before they had been aboard with him a month to take advantage of him in the steerage and on deck in every possible way. Not only did they slight him, but, after the manner of the cadet midshipman of recent years, they made him the butt of most of their practical jokes below-decks. Somers stood it for a while in silence. He dearly loved peace, and, beyond a good-humored protest, let everything pass for what it was worth. But as the weeks went by and the bantering continued, instead of laughing it off as before, Somers became more and more quiet and self-contained.
Decatur, ever humorous and mischief-making, had himself been one of the worst to chaff his comrade; but he knew what Somers’ silence meant, and he desisted. He had been his school-mate in Philadelphia, and he had seen that ominous quiet before. Decatur would have fought for him to the last drop of his blood, but he felt that his comrade was well able to look out for himself.
Somers went about his duties quietly, never giving a sign that there was anything upon his mind until the day before coming into port, then he went to Decatur, and said, —
“Stephen, to-morrow I want you to go ashore with me, for I am going to meet three men.”
The next afternoon a cutter containing Somers, Decatur, and three midshipmen, with their seconds, went ashore and found a secluded spot upon the beach where they would be free from interference. He had challenged all three to fight at the same time and would take them in succession.
In the first two duels Somers received two shots in the body, the latter one of which caused him to sink upon the sand as though dangerously hurt; but he rallied quickly, and, seeing that the third midshipman was standing waiting to see if the battle could be continued, he tried to struggle to his feet. He found he could not get up, and Decatur offered to take his place and receive the fire of the third midshipman. But Somers, though suffering greatly, was not to be deterred, and bade Decatur prop him up in a sitting posture, in which position he exchanged shots with the third man. Fortunately, none of the injuries resulted fatally, and in a few weeks Somers was on deck again. He went about his duties as quietly as before, but never after that did they call him milksop.
It was Somers who led one division of the gunboats to attack the Tripolitan fleet while Decatur was leading the other. Finding that he could not reach them by the eastern entrance, he sailed into the northern entrance of the harbor and single-handed boldly sent his little vessel into the midst of five of the enemy. His gunboat was smaller than any one of those of his adversaries; but so well was his long gun served and so true was the fire of his musketry that he held them at bay for half an hour, and not one of them succeeded in getting alongside of him to board. They were all bearing straight down upon the rocks, though, and Somers could not spare enough men from the guns to man his sweeps. But Preble, on the “Constitution,” saw his danger, and, coming up in time, sent a broadside of grape among the pirates, and they got out their sweeps and retreated, when, in spite of the doggedness of the defence, one united attack would have made the victory theirs. But as they drew off, instead of returning, as Preble wished, to the “Constitution,” Somers pursued them until within less than a cable’s length of a twelve-gun battery, which had not fired before for fear of damaging the fleeing Tripolitans. When she opened fire at this close range the destruction of Somers’s valiant little vessel seemed inevitable. But by a lucky chance a bombard exploded in the battery, blew up the platform, and drove the Tripolitans to cover.
Before they could recover and train their guns, Somers managed to bring his craft out in safety. In a later action, as Somers stood leaning against a flag-staff on his little vessel, a shot came directly for him. The officer saw it in time, and jumped aside to see the spar carried away at just the spot where his head had been. He was spared for more deadly work.
While these many attacks were being made upon the gunboats and batteries, the “Intrepid,” in which Decatur had recaptured and destroyed the “Philadelphia,” was being rapidly prepared as a fire-ship. Their plan was to load her with a hundred barrels of powder in bulk, with bags of grape and solid shot, and under cover of the night explode her in the midst of the Tripolitan war-vessels. Somers, who had been frequently in the harbor of Tripoli and knew its reefs and rocks so that he could readily thread his way through the narrow channels, asked for the opportunity to command this expedition. But Decatur’s success in boarding the “Philadelphia” had raised the chivalry of every officer and man in the fleet to a point rarely equalled in our own history, and Somers, while he did not begrudge Decatur his two epaulettes, was filled with the passion to do a deed as great, if not greater. They had been rivals since youth, and he felt that now was the opportunity to attempt a great deed for his country, though he and every man in the fleet knew that the chances of coming out alive were but one in a hundred. Somers went to Commodore Preble and urged his knowledge of the harbor as his chief claim to the service. It was an honor that a half-dozen other men sought, and not until the old commodore had weighed the chances fully did he at last agree to let Somers go. But, before consenting, Preble repeatedly warned the young officer of the desperate character of the work, and told him that on account of the Napoleonic wars the Tripolitans were short of ammunition, and that so much powder must not fall into the hands of the enemy. But Somers needed no warning. A day or two afterwards, when the preparations were nearly completed, Preble and some other officers were trying a fuse in the cabin of the “Constitution.” One of the officers, watch in hand, ventured the opinion that it burned too long and might enable the enemy to put it out before it exploded the magazine. Hearing this, Somers said, quietly, —
“I ask for no fuse at all.”
He was more gentle than ever in those last few days, and as he and Decatur leaned over the hammock-nettings of “Old Ironsides,” looking towards the line of white where the sea was breaking over the outer roofs, the melancholy look seemed to deepen and the far-away expression in his eyes was of another world. Decatur knew that rather than give up his ship and his powder, Somers would blow the ship and himself to eternity.
When volunteers were called for, the desperateness of the enterprise was fully explained; but the crew of the “Nautilus,” Somers’s own vessel stepped forward to a man. He selected four, – James Simms, Thomas Tompline, James Harris, and William Keith. From the “Constitution” he took William Harrison, Robert Clark, Hugh McCormick, Jacob Williams, Peter Penner, and Isaac Downes. Midshipman Henry Wadsworth (an uncle of the poet Longfellow) was chosen as second in command. Midshipman Joseph Israel, having vainly pleaded with Somers to be allowed to go, at the last moment smuggled himself aboard the “Intrepid,” and when discovered Somers had not the heart to send him back.
Decatur and Stewart went aboard the “Nautilus” on the evening that the attempt had been planned. The three had been so closely united all their lives that Stewart and Decatur felt the seriousness of the moment. Even professionally the attempt seemed almost foolhardy, for several Tripolitan vessels had come to anchor just within the entrance, and to pass them even at night seemed an impossibility. Somers felt a premonition of his impending catastrophe, for just as they were about to return to their own vessels he took a ring from his finger and, breaking it into three pieces, gave each of them a part, retaining the third for himself.
As soon as the night fell the “Intrepid” cast off her lines and went slowly up towards the harbor. The “Argus,” the “Vixen,” and the “Nautilus” followed her, while shortly afterwards Stewart on the “Siren” became so anxious that he followed, too. A haze that had come up when the sun went down hung heavily over the water, and soon the lines of the fire-ship became a mere gray blur against the dark coast-line beyond. The excitement upon the guard-ships now became intense, and both officers and men climbed the rigging and leaned out in the chains in the hope of being able to follow the movements of the ketch. Midshipman Ridgley, on the “Nautilus,” by the aid of a powerful night-glass aloft, managed to follow her until she got well within the harbor, and then she vanished. The suspense soon became almost unbearable, for not a shot had been fired and not a sound came from the direction in which she had gone. At about nine o’clock a half-dozen cannon-shots could be plainly heard, and even the knowledge that she had been discovered and was being fired on was a relief from the awful silence.
At about ten o’clock Stewart was standing at the gangway of the “Siren,” with Lieutenant Carrol, when the latter, craning his neck out into the night, suddenly exclaimed, —
“Look! See the light!”
Stewart saw away up the harbor a speck of light, as if from a lantern, which moved rapidly, as though it were being carried by some one running along a deck. Then it paused and disappeared from view. In a second a tremendous flame shot up hundreds of feet into the air, and the glare of it was so intense that it seemed close aboard. The flash and shock were so stupendous that the guard-ships, though far out to sea, trembled and shivered like the men who watched and were blinded. The sound of the explosion which followed seemed to shake sea and sky. It was like a hundred thunder-claps, and they could hear the echoes of it go rolling down across the water until it was swallowed up in the silence of the night.
That was all. The officers and the men looked at one another in mute horror. Could anything have lived in the area of that dreadful explosion? The tension upon the men of the little fleet was almost at the breaking point. Every eye was strained towards the harbor and every ear caught eagerly at the faintest sound. Officers and men frequently asked one another the question, “Have you heard anything yet?” with always the same reply.
The vessels beat to and fro between the harbor-entrances, firing rockets and guns for the guidance of possible fugitives. And the doleful sound of that gun made the silences the more depressing. All night long did the fleet keep vigil, but not a shot, a voice, or even a splash came from the harbor.
With the first streaks of dawn the Americans were aloft with their glasses. On the rocks at the northern entrance, through which the “Intrepid” had passed, they saw a mast and fragments of vessels. When the mist cleared they saw that one of the enemy’s largest gunboats had disappeared and two others were so badly shattered that they lay upon the shore for repairs.
The details of the occurrence were never actually known, but it is thought that Somers, being laid aboard by three gunboats before actually in the midst of the shipping, and feeling himself overpowered, fired his magazine and destroyed himself and his own men in his avowed purpose not to be taken by the enemy.
Thus died Richard Somers, Henry Wadsworth, the midshipman, Joseph Israel, and ten American seamen, whose names have been inscribed on the navy’s roll of fame. Nothing can dim the honor of a man who dies willingly for his country.
THE PASSING OF THE OLD NAVY
OLD SALTS AND NEW SAILORS
Since ballad-mongering began, the sea and the men who go down to it in ships have been a fruitful theme; and the conventional song-singing, horn-piping tar of the chanteys is a creature of fancy, pure and simple.
Jack is as honest as any man. Aboard ship he goes about his duties willingly, a creature of habit and environment, with a goodly respect for his “old man” and the articles of war. Ashore he is an innocent, – a brand for the burning, with a half-month’s pay and a devouring thirst.
Sailor-men all over the world are the same, and will be throughout all time, except in so far as their life is improved by new conditions. Though Jack aboard ship is the greatest grumbler in the world, ashore he loves all the world, and likes to be taken for the sailor of the songs. In a week he will spend the earnings of many months, and go back aboard ship, sadder, perhaps, but never a wiser man.
He seldom makes resolutions, however, and so, when anchor takes ground again, his money leaves him with the same merry clink as before. Though a Bohemian and a nomad, he does not silently steal away, like the Arab. His goings, like his comings, are accompanied with much carousing and song-singing; and the sweetheart he leaves gets to know that wiving is not for him. With anchor atrip and helm alee, Jack mourns not, no matter whither bound.
The improved conditions on the modern men-of-war have changed things for him somewhat, and, though still impregnated with old ideas, Jack is more temperate, more fore-sighted, and more self-reliant than he once was. His lapses of discipline and his falls from grace are less frequent than of yore, for he has to keep an eye to windward if he expects to win any of the benefits that are generously held out to the hard-working, sober, and deserving.
But the bitterness of the old days is barely disguised in the jollity of the chanteys. However we take it, the sea-life is a hardship the like of which no land-lubber knows. Stories of the trials of the merchant service come to him now and then and open his eyes to the real conditions of the service.
Men are greater brutes at sea than ashore. The one-man power, absolute, supreme in the old days, when all license was free and monarchies trod heavily on weak necks, led men to deeds of violence and death, whenever violence and death seemed the easiest methods of enforcing discipline. Men were knocked down hatchways, struck with belaying-pins, made to toe the seam on small provocation or on no provocation at all. The old-fashioned sea-yarns of Captain Marryat ring true as far as they go, but they do not go far enough.
In England the great frigates were generally both under-manned and badly victualled, and the cruises were long and sickening. The practice of medicine had not reached the dignity of the precise science it is to-day, and the surgeon’s appliances were rude and roughly manipulated. Anæsthetics were unknown, and after the battles, the slaughter in which was sometimes terrific, many a poor chap was sent to his last account by unwise amputation or bad treatment after the operation.
The water frequently became putrid, and this, with the lack of fresh vegetables and the over use of pork, brought on the disease called scurvy, which oftentimes wiped out entire crews in its deadly ravages. Every year thousands of men were carried off by it. A far greater number died from the effects of scurvy than from the enemy’s fire. Lieutenant Kelly says that during the Seven Years’ War but one thousand five hundred and twelve seamen and marines were killed, but one hundred and thirty-three thousand died of disease or were reported missing. Not until the beginning of this century was this dreadful evil ameliorated.
The evils of impressment and the work of the crimp and his gang – so infamous in England – had no great vogue here, for the reason that, during our wars of 1776 and 1812, the good seamen – coasters and fishermen, who had suffered most from the Lion – were only too anxious to find a berth on an American man-of-war, where they could do yeoman’s service against their cruel oppressor.
“Keel-hauling” and the “cat” were relics of the barbarism of the old English navy. Keel-hauling was an extreme punishment, for the unfortunate rarely, if ever, survived the ordeal. In brief, it consisted in sending the poor sailor-man on a voyage of discovery along the keel of the vessel. Trussed like a fowl, he was lowered over the bows of the ship and hauled along underneath her until he made his appearance at the stern, half or wholly drowned, and terribly cut all over the body by the sea-growth on the ship’s bottom. He bled in every part from the cuts of the barnacles; but “this was considered rather advantageous than otherwise, as the loss of blood restored the patient, if he were not quite drowned, and the consequence was that one out of three, it is said, have been known to recover from their enforced submarine excursion.”
Think of it! Recovery was not anticipated, but if the victim got well, the officer in command made no objection! Beside the brutality of these old English navy bullies a barbarous Hottentot chief would be an angel of mercy.
Flogging and the use of the cat were abolished in the American navy in 1805. This law meant the use of the cat-o’-nine tails as a regular punishment, but did not prohibit blows to enforce immediate obedience. Before that time it was a common practice for the punishment of minor offences as well as the more serious ones.
Flogging in the old days was an affair of much ceremony on board men-of-war. The entire ship’s company was piped on deck for the punishment, and the culprit, stripped to the waist, was brought to the mast. The boatswain’s mate, cat in hand, stood by the side of a suspended grating in the gangway, and the captain, officer of the deck, and the surgeon took their posts opposite him. The offence and the sentence were then read, and the stripes were administered on the bare back of the offender, a petty officer standing by to count the blows of the lash, while the doctor, with his hand on the victim’s pulse, was ready to give the danger signal when absolutely necessary.
The men bore it in different ways. The old hands gritted their teeth philosophically, but the younger men frequently shrieked in their agony as the pitiless lash wound itself around the tender flesh, raising at first livid red welts, and afterwards lacerating the flesh and tearing the back into bloody seams.
The effect upon the lookers-on was varied. The younger officers, newly come from well-ordered English homes, frequently fainted at the sight. But the horror of the spectacle soon died away, and before many weeks had passed, with hardened looks, they stood on the quarter-deck and watched the performance amusedly. Soon the spectacle got to be a part of their life, and the jokes were many and the laughter loud at the victim’s expense. The greater the suffering the more pleasurable the excitement.
Many yarns are spun of Jack’s tricks to avoid the lash or to reduce to a minimum the pain of the blows. Sometimes the men had their flogging served to them regularly, but in small doses. To these the punishment lost its rigor. For the boatswain’s mate not infrequently disguised the force of his blows, which came lightly enough, though the victim bawled vigorously to keep up the deception, and in the “three- and four-dozen” cases he sometimes tempered his blows to the physical condition of the sufferers, who otherwise would have swooned with the pain.
One Jacky, who thought himself wiser than his fellows, in order to escape his next dozen, had a picture of a crucifix tattooed over the whole surface of his back, and under it a legend, which intimated that blows upon the image would be a sacrilege. When next he was brought before the mast he showed it to the boatswain and his captain. The captain, a crusty barnacle of the old harsh school, smiled grimly.
“Don’t desecrate the picture, bos’n,” he said; “we will respect this man’s religious scruples. You may put on his shirt,” he said, chuckling to himself, “but remove his trousers, bos’n, and give him a dozen extra. And lay them on religiously, bos’n.”
All this was in the older days, and it was never so bad in the American as in the English navy. The middle period of the American navy, from before the Civil War to the age of iron and steel cruisers, presents an entirely different aspect in some ways.
Illegal punishments were still inflicted, for there were always then, as now, a certain percentage of ruffians forward who were amenable to no discipline, and could be managed only by meeting them with their own weapons. The “spread-eagle” and the ride on the “gray mare” were still resorted to to compel obedience.
They “spread-eagled” a man by tricing him up inside the rigging, taut lines holding his arms and legs outstretched to the farthest shrouds, a bight of rope passed around his body preventing too great a strain. He was gagged, and so he could not answer back.
The “gray mare” on which the obstreperous were forced to gallop was the spanker-boom – the long spar that extends far over the water at the ship’s stern. By casting loose the sheets, the boom rolled briskly from side to side, and the lonely horseman was forced in this perilous position to hold himself by digging his nails into the soft wood or swinging to any of the gear that flew into his reach. At best it was not a safe saddle, and a rough sea made it worse than a bucking broncho.
Paul Jones had a neat way of disciplining his midshipmen aloft. He would go to the rail himself, and casting loose the halyards, let the yard go down with a run, to the young gentleman’s great discomfiture.
But the life of the old salt was not all bitterness. It was not all shore-leave, but there was skittles now and then for the deserving and good-conduct men. Jack’s pleasures were simple, as they are to-day. There was never a crew that did not have its merry chanter and its flute, fiddle, or guitar, or the twice-told tale of the ship’s Methuselah to entertain the dog-watches of the evening or the smoking-hour and make a break in the dreary monotony of routine.
On public holidays, when everything was snug at sea or in port, a glorious skylark was the order of the afternoon. At the call of the bos’n’s mate, “All hands frolic,” rigorous discipline was suspended, and the men turned to with a will to make the day one to be talked about. Mast-head-races, potato- and sack-races, climbing the greased pole, and rough horse-play and man-handling filled the afternoon until hammocks were piped down and the watch was set. Purses from the wardroom and prizes of rum and tobacco – luxuries dear to Jack’s heart – were the incentives to vigorous athletics and rough buffoonery. The rigging was filled from netting to top with the rough, jesting figures, and cheer upon cheer and laugh upon laugh greeted a successful bout or fortunate sally.
Jack is a child at the best of times and at the worst, and he takes his pleasures with the zest of a boy of seven, laughing and making merry until he falls to the deck from very weariness. And woe be at these merry times to the shipmate who has no sense of humor. His day is a hideous one, for he is hazed and bullied until he is forced in self-defence to seek the seclusion granted by the nethermost part of the hold. A practical joker always, when discipline is lax, Jack’s boisterous humor knows no restraint.
The ceremony of “crossing the line,” the boarding of the ship by Neptune and his court, seems almost as old as ships, and is honored even to-day, when much of the romantic seems to have passed out of sea-life. It is the time when the deep-sea sailor has the better of his cousin of the coasts. Every man who crossed the equator for the first time had to pay due honor to the god of the seas. They exacted it, too, among the whalers when they crossed the Arctic Circle.
The wardroom usually bought off in rum, money, or tobacco, but forward it was the roughest kind of rough man-handling; and the victims were happy indeed when they got their deep-water credentials. The details of procedure in this remarkable rite differed somewhat on different ships, but the essential elements of play and torture were the same in all cases.
The day before the line was to be reached both wardroom and forecastle would receive a manifesto setting forth the intention of the god of the seas to honor their poor craft and ordering all those who had not paid tribute to him to gather forward to greet him as he came over the side. At the hour appointed there was a commotion forward, and a figure, wearing a pasteboard crown that surmounted a genial red face adorned with oakum whiskers, made its appearance over the windward nettings and proclaimed its identity as Neptune. Behind him was a motley crew in costumes of any kind and all kinds – or no kind – who had girded itself for this ungentle art of bull-baiting. The deep-water men intended to have an ample return for what they themselves had suffered, not many years back, when they had rounded the Horn or Cape of Good Hope.
The unfortunates, stripped to the waist, were brought forward, one by one, to be put through their paces. After a mock trial by the jury of buffoons, the king ordered their punishment meted out in doses proportioned directly to the popularity of the victims as shipmates. The old long boat, with thwarts removed and a canvas lining, served as a ducking-pond. After vigorous applications, of “slush,” – which is another name for ship’s grease, – or perhaps a toss in a hammock or a blanket, they were pitched backward into the pool and given a thorough sousing, emerging somewhat the worse for wear, but happy that the business was finally done for good and all.