SOLDIERS WHO SERVE AFLOAT
Soldiers who serve afloat--such are the men composing the United States
Marine Corps. Lack of military qualities in the sailor led to the corps'
formation in the first days of the navy, nor has the passing of the
years wrought any material change in the character of Jack Tar.
Formidable in impetuous assaults, he lacks the steadiness and discipline
necessary in sustained conflicts and in the effective use of the rifle,
and so with the navy's growth the Marine Corps has come to constitute
one of its most important branches.
The marines are useful in times of peace for police duty in the navy
yards and on shipboard, but it is when the country is engaged in war
that they most fully justify their existence. Then it is their duty to
man the rapid-firing guns of our warships, fill vacancies at the other
guns, with their rifles scour the decks of the enemy from the tops, the
poop and the forecastle, cover boarding parties with their fire and
repel boarders with fixed bayonets. Should the enemy gain a foothold
they must gather at the mainmast, so as to command the deck. They must
make the small arms effective and disable the enemy's men while the
great guns, with which the marines have nothing to do save in case of
emergency, play havoc with his ship.
However, all naval fighting, as recent events have proved, is not done
on the decks of men-of-war; the surprise of camps or posts and the
escalade of forts frequently render shore operations necessary, and at
such times picked men are sent with the attacking sailors, known as
pioneers, while the rest of the marines form a supporting column to
cover the retreat and embarkation of the sailors in case the undertaking
fails. In times of fire on shipboard the marines guard the boats' falls
and officers' quarters, prevent panic or pillage, compel compliance with
orders of officers and allow no one to throw overboard any property or
fitting or abandon the ship until duly authorized. Finally a frequent
duty of the marines abroad is to guard the American legations and
consulates and the interests of American citizens in times of revolution
or public disorder.
With duties so varied and exacting ahead of him, the making of a marine
is a process well worth studying. Recruits for the corps come from all
stations of life. In its ranks may be found well-educated men, now and
then a college graduate among them, who have become reduced by
misfortune or bibulous habits, country boys who have left the farm for
the city to seek their fortunes and found want instead, and men who have
lost their occupations. All find a refuge in the corps, provided they
are physically and mentally sound, at least five feet six inches in
height, between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five, unmarried and of
good habits.
The recruit as an essential part of his training must learn how to do
well many different things. He begins, if a stranger to military
science, by mastering the drills and manual of arms and every evolution
possible to a body of men on foot, since he must leave the ship when
there is work to be done and be able to move quickly and with precision
under the most galling fire. The ax, the shovel and the pick must also
become familiar tools in his hands, and that he may fight to the best
possible advantage he is taught to delve and heap until a breastwork is
built. After that he must accustom himself to the dragging straps of a
light artillery piece and learn how to haul it at a breakneck pace down
into the ditch he has dug and up on the other side to the crown of the
intrenchment. Then, as no one else comes up to load, aim and fire it for
him, he must learn all that a field artilleryman knows and become
skillful in the handling and quick and sure in the aim of his howitzer.
When so much of his apprenticeship has been accomplished the marine
climbs the ship's side and makes acquaintance with his duties as a
marine policeman. The end of the first month afloat finds him on guard
at every post in the ship. He knows each compartment and gangway; has
been instructed in the working of the guns from the heavy turret pieces
to the six-pounders; has watched the magazines and carried messages to
the officers, and has even gone down to the coal bunkers, if the ship
happens to be coaling in a hurry, and taken his turn at passing coal.
However, he is still only a marine in the making, and this fact is
brought home to him when the ship goes out for target practice and, with
a bluejacket for a teacher, he learns to handle and supply ammunition to
the lifts in the magazines and to work the lifts themselves, so that
when the need comes he can take Jack's place and do his work. In the old
days of sailing ships the marines had to know how to splice a rope or
furl a sail; nowadays he does not need to, but he must learn to make his
way quickly and nimbly to the fighting tops. In doing so he does not
have to climb to a ratline, one minute almost in the sea and the next
at the very top of the heavens, but he gets painfully dizzy when for the
first time he feels the ship sinking away from under him as he looks
down. In the end he masters that also and, with practice, is soon able
to make the little guns in the fighting tops talk as fast as the best of
the jackies. When he has learned to descend from his aerial nest to the
deck at a dignified pace and to land safely upon his feet, his education
is practically completed, and it has taken him from six months to a year
to get it.
Every navy yard in the country has its detachment of marines, but the
barracks at the Brooklyn yard are the most popular, and as the marines
have their choice of stations when they return from a cruise, the
largest number, seldom less than three hundred, are usually quartered
there. In the part of the yard set aside for the marines is a long and
narrow building of gray brick, with a piazza running its entire length,
shaded by a line of trees. This is the barracks, the living quarters of
the men. A roomy parade ground stretches out in front, and in a group
of trees to the left, with a garden behind, is the house of the
commandant of marines, while at about the same distance to the right are
the quarters of the other officers, each approached by a stone walk
canopied and shaded by rows of pear trees.
Visit the Brooklyn barracks of a summer morning and you will find the
marine there in every condition known to the corps and in every stage of
his development. Out on the parade ground is a squad of raw recruits
being commanded and marched about in the effort to trim off their
individuality of motion, and here comes Private Dougherty, with his
wheelbarrow and sickle, a bronze-faced old man who was retired awhile
back because his thirty years of service had been completed. There is
hardly a seaport in the world that Dougherty is not familiar with, and
he will tell you, when in the mood, how he killed the Corean general.
The Colorado, flagship of Rear Admiral Rodgers, steamed up the Salee
river, in Corea, for the purpose of effecting a treaty with the Coreans
for the protection of shipwrecked American sailors and to make surveys
and soundings. Her survey boats were treacherously fired upon by the
forts in the river and a fight began. After one of the forts had been
captured and its former occupants driven out, Dougherty jumped over the
parapet, ran down to where the Corean leader was rallying his forces and
shot him dead. For this service to his country Congress voted Dougherty
a medal of honor. And well he had earned it.
Ashore or afloat, the daily life of the marine is one of hard work and
plenty of it. At 6:30 in the morning, when in barracks, the men must be
out of bed and ready fifteen minutes later for the "setting-up" drill,
which is gymnastic exercise without apparatus. Then the mess call is
sounded and they file into the long messroom, furnished with two tables
extending the whole length, and breakfast on hash, pork and beans or
beef stew, according to the day in the week, and bread and coffee.
After breakfast the order is given, "To the colors!" and the flag is
raised on the pole in front of the guardhouse. Then the guards take
their posts and the routine of the day begins, reaching a climax at
10:30 o'clock, the hour of dress parade, when the marines are out in
full force.
Each remaining hour of the day has its allotted duty, but every marine
with a clean record has twenty hours out of every forty-eight to
himself. Many of the marines stationed at the Brooklyn yard spend their
idle hours in the library, a light, airy room on the second floor of the
barracks, furnished with a goodly collection of books and with a number
of the weekly and monthly magazines. But as to the books, some of the
most assiduous readers know the contents of them all, and long for more.
Nor need the private of marines end his life in the ranks unless he be
so minded. A school is provided for him where, if he elects to do so, he
may conquer fractions and cube root, and in time, after his studies have
raised him to the grade of sergeant-major in the ranks, should there
chance to come a war the line is open to him, and once his ivory-hilted
officer's sword and gold lace are worn he has the entree to any
officers' mess and a place that no man but one of his own line can fill.
That the men in the ranks who choose to employ their leisure hours in
study get their reward was proven in the war with Spain, which raised no
less than thirty sergeant-majors to the dignity of shoulder straps.
The dominant desire of the ambitious young marine is, of course, to get
to sea. The work there is harder than in the barracks, but he does not
consider that when he thinks of life afloat and the foreign ports to
which it will take him. During his five years' enlistment in the corps
each capable marine makes two sea voyages, extending over a period of
three years. On shipboard the shore drills are continued as far as
practicable and to them, as already hinted, is added target practice.
His time off duty the marine spends in the forecastle and amidships
reading, sleeping, writing up his diary or twanging the strings of his
favorite instrument, the guitar.
The things which chiefly occupy his thoughts, however, are rations and
going ashore. As to the former, they are considerably better than he
gets at the barracks and may be augmented from the bumboats--a genuine
boon to the luxury-loving marines. These bumboats approach the
men-of-war at every port with articles of utility and food in great
profusion, and the American marine has a worldwide reputation among
their proprietors for his generosity. Ah Sam, of the port of Hong Kong,
the greatest man in the world in his line, whose boats are fifty and
sixty ton junks, is said to have made his fortune from sales to American
men-of-war. At any rate, when one enters or leaves the harbor he fires a
salute of twenty-one guns.
And it is only fair that the marine should have a salute fired on his
own account now and then, for he is a leading and important figure in
all the pomp and ceremony of man-of-war life. Indeed, it is an
interesting and pretty sight to watch the ceremonies which take place
on board ship on the arrival of a high official, such as an ambassador,
an admiral, a general or a consul. As the cutter dashes up to the side
with spray flying from the oars the ship's bugle sounds "Attention." The
side boys offer the man ropes as the official steps on the gangway and
the captain receives him as he steps on the quarterdeck. As the two walk
aft the marine officer, in quick, sharp tones, commands, "Present arms,"
and the whole marine guard, drawn up in line on the port side of the
quarterdeck, bring their rifles up in salute, while the bugle sounds a
flourish and the drum a roll, two for an admiral, three for an
ambassador and four for the President. The marines on a ship are
collectively called the guard; the ceremony is called parading the
guard. It takes place on the arrival or departure of any official of
rank. If the official does not visit the ship it takes place when his
flag passes by, and it also takes place when two ships of war pass each
other.
The landsman visiting an American warship finds the marine everywhere
in evidence. At the door of the captain's cabin stands a marine, doing
duty as an orderly, and no one can enter that officer's presence until
he has first taken in the name. Down below a marine guards the storage
rooms, and up on the berth deck another stands sentry over the
torpedoes, while still farther along on the same deck is the "sentry
over the brig," for the brig, be it known, is the ship's prison, where,
in complete solitude and on a bread and water diet, an offender can
meditate and see the error of his ways. Finally in the crowded
forecastle the marine keeps order among the crew and an occasional eye
on that fishing boat floating down with the tide, for Jack sometimes
goes fishing and makes queer hauls. With a coin as a bait, he drops over
his line, gets a nibble, hauls in a little brown bottle--and does not
show his catch to the sentry.
The marines, in a word, do the sentry duty of the ship, but this does
not prevent these sea soldiers and the sailors from getting on well
together. Occasionally, a marine recruit, just assigned to a ship, will
develop symptoms of a disease known as "duty struck," and blindly lay
the foundation for years of unpopularity for himself by taking advantage
of his authority to make it as warm as he can for the blue jackets, but
such a recruit is quickly called to order by the older men of the guard.
As a rule, the marines and blue jackets are on the most friendly terms,
and there are few liberty parties of blue jackets bound for a good time
ashore that are not accompanied by a favorite marine or two, invited
along to help the sailormen dispose of their money, for, out of his $13
a month, the marine does not have a deal for shore use.
The guard duty performed by marines on American ships is of an arduous
and exacting kind. On some vessels, usually the smaller gunboats, the
marine guard soldier is on post for two hours, and then gets only two
hours off before buckling on his belt again, month in and month out.
This sort of thing involves a breaking up of sleep that tells severely
on marines serving on small ships, and it is for this reason that sea
soldiers are so partial to flagships, and exhaust all the means in their
power to be assigned to such large vessels of war. However, on every
warship, no matter what its size, there is at least one first-rate
billet for the private marine; that is the mail orderly's job. The mail
orderly is the messenger between the ship and the shore, attends to all
sorts of errands for officers and men, and is a general buyer of
trinkets for all hands. A good deal of money passes through his hands,
and his commissions are good, not to speak of the tips which are given
to him for performing little diplomatic tasks ashore for the men
forward. A marine mail orderly usually leaves the service at the
expiration of a cruise with a snug sum tucked away.
The first sergeant of a marine guard on a ship too small to rate one or
more marine officers fills a responsible and exacting place, and is
treated with great consideration by the officers, since, to all intents
and purposes, he is an officer himself. He may go ashore when he
chooses without putting his name down on the liberty list, and when he
comes back to the ship from shore leave, he is not searched for liquor,
an immunity which he enjoys in common only with the ship's chief
master-at-arms. The first sergeant is responsible for the conduct of his
men, and, if they do wrong, he is reproved much as if he were an
officer. For the preservation of discipline, he is required to hold
himself aloof from the members of his guard as much as possible, and he
associates and frequently messes with the ship's chief petty officers.
Semper fidelis--always faithful--is the legend worn upon the flags,
guidons and insignia of the Marine Corps, and, in its hundred years of
existence, it has never been false to its motto. It was one of the
orderlies of the corps, Corporal Anthony, who, when the Maine was
sinking, and nearly all who could do so were hastily leaving, made his
way toward Captain Sigsbee's cabin, and, on meeting him, calmly gave the
report the duty of the occasion required of him. And this quiet
performance of duty in the face of impending death, has had a hundred
parallels in the history of the Marine Corps.
During the bombardment of Tripoli, in 1803, and the desperate
hand-to-hand fighting which occurred between the vessels on both sides,
Decatur boarded one of the Tripolitan gunboats and engaged the captain
in a duel with swords. One of the enemy coming up from behind was about
to cleave Decatur's skull with his sword, when a marine interposed his
arm. The arm saved Decatur, but it was severed to the skin. In the same
battle, Lieutenant Trippe, of the Vixen, boarded a Tripolitan gunboat
and singled out the commander for a personal combat. A Turk aimed a blow
at the lieutenant, but before he could strike, Sergeant Meredith, of the
marines, ran him through the body with his bayonet. It was also an
officer of marines, Lieutenant O'Bannon, who, with Midshipman Mann,
hauled down the Tripolitan ensign, after having stormed the principal
defense of Derne, and planted the flag of the Republic on that ancient
fortress.
The marines participated gallantly in the War of 1812, and in the
expedition against Quallah Battoo, a few years later, formed the van of
the attacking party, and were in the thickest of the fight with the
Malays. This Quallah Battoo expedition furnished a stirring passage for
our naval history that is well worth recalling. In February, 1831, the
American ship Friendship was loading on the coast of Sumatra. While the
captain, two officers and four of the crew were on shore the Friendship
was attacked by the crew of a Malay pepper boat, who, after killing the
first officer and several of the seamen, succeeded in cutting off the
ship and plundering her of every article of value on board. The attack
was clearly concerted, and the Achense rajah, Chute Dulah, received the
spoils, refusing the restoration even of the ship.
Time moved with leisure steps in those days, but as soon as news of this
wanton outrage reached the United States, prompt measures were taken to
punish its authors. On February 5, 1832, the frigate Potomac, commanded
by Commodore John Downes, anchored off Quallah Battoo and landed a force
of 250 men to attack the town. The assaulting party, composed mainly of
marines, did its work in a thorough and practical manner. The town and
the four forts defending it were captured and destroyed, and several
hundred Malays killed, including the rajah chiefly concerned in the
plunder of the Friendship and the massacre of its crew. The surviving
rajahs begged for peace, and this was finally granted by Commodore
Downes, but the lesson taught at the cannon's mouth is still remembered
on the Sumatran coast.
The Marine Corps participated with brilliant results in the Florida
Indian War, and in the siege of Vera Cruz and the march to the City of
Mexico their services were of the first order. In fact, General Scott is
authority for the statement that at all times during the Mexican War
they were placed where the hardest work was to be done. At the storming
of Chapultepec, Major Levi Twiggs, of the marines, led the assaulting
party and was killed. This fortress having been captured, the marines in
General Quitman's division moved directly on the City of Mexico, and
were accorded the honor of first entering the palace and hoisting the
American flag.
The marines who accompanied Commodore Perry to Japan, in 1852, took an
important part in that expedition. A force of a hundred marines was
landed, and, together with a like number of soldiers and two brass
bands, marched through Yeddo to the palace of the Mikado, creating a
most favorable impression on the foreign officials. A similar display
was made by Perry when he returned to Japan in 1854, to receive the
answer of the Japanese Government to his representations previously made
regarding the advantages of foreign trade.
It was a force of marines who captured John Brown at Harper's Ferry, in
1859. While the militia of Virginia was assembling by the thousand to
attack the little band of abolitionists, a force of one hundred marines
was sent from Washington, and a squad of eight of them battered down the
door of John Brown's fort, and captured his party, to the chagrin of the
hundreds of other military men near by who hoped to have a hand in the
affair.
Again and again during the Civil War the marines proved themselves brave
and stubborn fighters. In the encounter between the Merrimac and the
Cumberland, the marine division was under Lieutenant Charles Heywood,
later commander of the corps. The first shot from the Merrimac killed
nine marines, yet the division was so little demoralized by the loss
that it not only continued fighting, but actually fired the last shot
discharged from the Cumberland at the Merrimac. For services rendered
between 1861 and 1865, thirty-seven officers and men of the Marine Corps
received the thanks of Congress, medals or swords, and twenty-eight were
brevetted for gallantry.
In the brush with Corea in 1871, the marines, as before stated, were in
the assault on the Salee forts, and Lieutenant McKee, in carrying the
works, fell, as his father fell in Mexico, at the head of his men, and
first inside the stormed works.
Commander, afterward Admiral, Kimberly stated in his report that to the
marines belonged the honor of "first landing and last leaving the shore.
Chosen as the advance guard on account of their steadiness and
discipline, their whole behavior on the march and in the assault proved
that the confidence in them had not been misplaced."
The marines again distinguished themselves in 1885, when an insurrection
in Panama compelled the landing there of a force, which stayed until all
danger was over, and several times, in more recent years, the officers
and men of the corps have plucked a fresh branch for their laurels. When
the big railroad strike in California was in progress in the summer of
1894 the marine guard stationed at the Mare Island Navy Yard was called
out to serve with the regular troops at Sacramento, Truckee, Stockton
and other towns. In alertness, activity and general soldierliness they
showed themselves quite the equals of the army troops, and the colonel
of artillery who commanded the entire brigade, did not fail to dwell
upon this fact in his report to the War Department. One of the marines
at Truckee bent the stock of his rifle in clubbing a violent rioter, who
afterward was convicted as an accessory in ditching a train and causing
the deaths of four soldiers. The marine was reproved by his company
commander, and narrowly escaped a court-martial, on the charge of
destroying government property. "Bullets," said the commander, "are
cheaper than rifles."
The American marine has never been known to show the white feather, no
matter what the odds against him. When, some years ago, Antonio Ezeta,
the Central American agitator, was being chased by the government
authorities of the Republic of Salvador, he took refuge in the residence
of the American consul at La Libertad. The populace raged around the
consulate, and word was sent to the garrison on the outskirts of La
Libertad of Ezeta's hiding-place. An American gunboat was lying in the
harbor, and the marine guard of twenty men, under command of a sergeant,
was sent ashore by the commanding officer at the request of the consul,
to protect the latter's residence and the refugee within it, for Ezeta
was a citizen of the United States. The marine guard reached the
consulate at the same moment with a battalion of 250 Salvadorean
soldiers. The marines, not a whit dismayed, surrounded the consulate,
and for eight hours stood off the swarthy Salvadoreans. Then, by a ruse,
Ezeta, in disguise, was slipped to the beach and taken to the warship,
which carried him to San Francisco to stand trial in the United States
courts for violation of the neutrality laws. He would have been torn
limb from limb by the citizens and soldiers of La Libertad, had it not
been for the score of marines. The captain of one of the Salvadorean
companies was an American free-lance from Western New York. He raved
over the cowardice of the dark skinned soldiers he commanded, and
profanely declared that, with half a dozen marines of the United States
at his back, he would undertake to whip the entire Salvadorean army. His
men, it may be stated in passing, did not understand English.
Finally, in the war with Spain and the more recent operations in China,
the Marine Corps added another moving and glorious chapter to its
history. At Guantanamo the marine battalion, commanded by Colonel R. W.
Huntingdon, fought the first serious land engagement of United States
forces on foreign soil since the Mexican War. The fact that this
battalion was attacked by the enemy in overwhelming numbers, and for
over three days and nights was under constant fire, and that on the
fourth day a portion of the battalion attacked and repulsed a superior
force of Spaniards, shows, to quote the words of their chief, "that
Colonel Huntingdon and his officers and men displayed great gallantry,
and that all were well drilled and under the most effective
discipline." One of the men under Huntingdon's command was Sergeant
Thomas Quick, a lithe and fearless native of the mountains of West
Virginia. At a critical stage of the operations, while the marines were
engaged with the enemy firing from ambush, it became necessary to
dislodge them, and it was desired that the Dolphin should shell the
woods in which they were concealed. Quick volunteered to signal her, and
standing on a hill wigwagged her, while bullets backed the dust about
him. For his action, described as "beautiful" by his commander, he, in
due time, received a medal of honor and a lieutenant's commission.
The headquarters of the Marine Corps are at the barracks in the City of
Washington, where are located the commandant and his staff. Besides
those previously mentioned, there are marine barracks at Portsmouth,
Boston, League Island, Norfolk and Annapolis. But the fouled anchor
running through a hemisphere traced with the outlines of the two
American continents, which adorns the front of the marine's fatigue cap,
tells that he is at home both on sea and land, and when on either,
shrewd, sharp blows are to be struck he is ready for them. Nowhere in
the world, size taken into account, is there a more efficient
organization than this corps of 6,000 brave fighting men.