THE CITY OF PAUL REVERE
As usual, Henry found that the captain was up and about when he
himself awoke. As he hustled into his clothes he felt ashamed to
seem to be such a laggard. He found, however, that he wasn’t so late
as he had thought. In fact, it was still early, but the captain was
such a tireless worker that one would indeed have had to get up
early to be ahead of him. As usual, he was at his desk. He rose as
Henry entered the cabin. In his hand was a red-bordered Coast Guard
radio telegraph blank.
“Good-morning,” said the captain. “How are you this morning?”
“Just the very best,” said Henry. “I hope that I am not too late. I
wanted to be up before we reached the harbor. Are we anywhere near
Boston?”
“You’re just in time. We’re off Boston Light now. I am just going to
send this message to the Commandant of the Navy Yard.”
The commander reached for his call-bell, but Henry held out his
hand. “Let me take it,” he offered.
The captain handed him the message. Henry folded the sheet, writing
innermost. The commander smiled approval. “You may read it,” he
said.
Henry opened the blank. It was addressed to the Commandant of the
Boston Navy Yard and read: “Request permission to land at Navy Yard
to obtain supplies from the _Oneida_. C. Hardwick, Commander,
_Iroquois_.”
“Do you have to get permission to enter the Navy Yard?” exclaimed
Henry.
“Yes, indeed, whether you come by land or by sea.”
Henry carried the message to the radio shack, and Mr. Sharp got it
off at once. Then he went to the bridge and bade the men on watch
good-morning, but he had little inclination for talk. The wonderful
scene that presented itself ahead fascinated him.
Already they had passed Boston Light, and the _Iroquois_ was heading
directly for a low-lying island that lay in the water like a huge,
gray-brown button. It was George’s Island, and the queer-looking,
mound-like eminence on it was Fort Warren. Henry learned that a
moment later when he stepped into the chart-room and studied the
map. He wanted to know exactly what he was seeing.
Close beside George’s Island lay Lovell’s Island, a big, hulking,
rocky bit of land that reached some little elevation. There was also
a third island, Gallup Island. And these three, like nuts between
the extended jaws of a pair of pincers, lay between the long,
tapering ends of the mainland that thrust out into the sea for
miles. Behind these pincers was a great bay, practically
land-locked, and filled with islands. Its coast line was cut and
gashed with points and inlets. Everywhere the combers were crashing
on the beaches and shining white in the morning sun. And on these
islands and points, and along the shore, stood innumerable cottages,
which Henry judged must be summer residences.
As the _Iroquois_ approached George’s Island the ship was headed
northwest one-half north. Now she steamed between Gallup and
Lovell’s Islands, and Henry examined with interest the quarantine
station on the former. Past Deer Island they went, with its huge and
gloomy-looking prison and great stone walls, and past Long Island
and Spectacle Island, which got its name because it is shaped not
unlike a huge pair of nose-glasses. And, turning as the channel
twisted, the _Iroquois_ worked her way into the ever-narrowing mouth
of the harbor, with the captain now on the bridge, conning the ship
through the tortuous passage. Thompson’s Island was passed, and
Governor’s Island, with Fort Winthrop, and now the narrow harbor was
close at hand. Meantime the radio man had handed to the captain the
answer to the latter’s wireless message, directing him where to dock
the _Iroquois_.
How interesting it was to Henry. To be sure, the scene lacked the
picturesqueness of the New York Harbor, with its unique sky line and
its Liberty Statue, yet it was wonderfully fascinating. High before
them towered two shafts. One was almost exactly like the Washington
Monument, which was entirely familiar to Henry even though he had
never seen it. He rightly guessed that this must be Bunker Hill
Monument, and he was glad that it was so near at hand. If he had
opportunity, he meant to visit it. The other tower was just as
evidently a building. It reminded Henry of the Metropolitan Tower in
New York. The captain told him it was the Boston Custom House. The
remainder of the city looked much like any other city. It was a mass
of buildings, some big and some little, crowded together so that one
could hardly be distinguished from another. In the docks lay
vessels—goodly steamships and some many-masted schooners; and of
course there were tugs and smaller craft. But the harbor life was
quiet indeed compared with the bustle in the waters of New York Bay.
Nevertheless, it interested Henry deeply.
When the _Iroquois_ at last lay snug in her dock in the Boston Navy
Yard, Henry was almost spellbound. Never had he dreamed of seeing
such a collection of vessels. Immediately across the pier from the
_Iroquois_ he saw a ship standing high in air, with her keel not
only out of water, but almost at the level of the pier itself. Henry
had never seen anything like this before, and his astonishment was
hardly lessened when the captain told him that this was the marine
railway on which ships were hauled out of water, and that the vessel
on the railway was the Coast Guard cutter, _Oneida_. Her bottom was
being scraped and painted, and she was getting some new rivets in
her plates.
But if Henry was astonished to see a ship high up in the air, he was
hardly less amazed to see another far down in the bowels of the
earth, for on the other side of the _Iroquois_, at no great
distance, a little lean, gray boat, was propped upright in the
centre of a great hole that had been dug in the earth. She was deep
down. Henry judged her keel must be a full thirty feet below the
level of the surrounding earth. There was no water in the hole, and
workmen were busy all about the little ship. As Henry soon
discovered, this boat was in one of the Navy Yard dry docks. He
asked permission to look around, and the captain told him to go
where he liked, but cautioned him not to take too great liberties.
Henry stepped ashore and ran over to the dry dock. He was more
amazed than ever when he stood on the edge of it and looked down
into it. It was, indeed, a great hole in the ground—an excavation
hundreds of feet long and many yards wide. The sides were made of
massive masonry, built up like steps, of huge blocks of granite. The
dry dock was as deep as a tall house is high. In shape it was long,
and would have been rectangular had its inner end been square
instead of rounding. The other end, the square end, was what
interested Henry, for when he came to examine it, he found it was
nothing but a water-gate. It was a great steel structure,
tremendously braced to make it strong, though at first glimpse it
seemed much like the rest of the wall. This steel end or gate held
the water out, for, of course, the dry dock opened into the harbor.
It was so made that water could pour through open ports, filling the
dock. Then the gate itself could be swung outward to one side, so
that a ship could enter the dock, and when the gate was once more
swung in place and the openings closed, pumps were put at work and
all the water pumped out, leaving the ship propped up securely on
keel blocks. Thus the workmen could work at every part of the ship
at the same time.
And they were indeed working at every part of this ship at once, for
Henry now saw with even greater astonishment that the ship had been
cut in two. The bow, which had been sheared off in a collision, and
the after part of the boat were blocked in position, and these two
parts were now being reunited. The vessel was a torpedo boat and had
been in collision with a larger craft.
Henry was glad to see her, because he had never before seen a
torpedo boat close at hand. She was long, low, rakish, and built
much like a knife. Indeed, she had to be long and thin to attain the
tremendous speed at which these boats are sometimes driven, for they
travel as fast as express trains.
When he had satisfied his curiosity, Henry made a more general
survey of his surroundings. He noticed the great coal bunkers, where
naval vessels coaled. Little cars were traveling up an inclined
railway, like a procession of elephants, and dropping loads of coal
in the elevated bunkers, whence it could be shot downward to ships
lying alongside. He saw great numbers of huge anchors and cables and
chains, and other ship’s gear, lying on a pier. And there were
several huge barges floating in a dock, each containing as many
naval launches as its deck space would hold. Still other barges were
laden with lumber and iron and similar stores. There were great
cranes afloat and ashore.
Near by, too, an eagle boat lay in a dock. Henry was glad to see it.
He had read about these submarine chasers during the war, but had
never seen one close at hand. This vessel was something more than
one hundred feet long, very narrow, low-lying, with some guns
mounted on the low deck, and her superstructure amidships. Her
wireless antennæ and her guns both held Henry’s attention. The
longer he looked at her, the more he wondered that she could
withstand the sea. He knew something about waves now, and he was
sure that in a rough sea they would sweep across the decks of this
little craft again and again. At once he gained a higher opinion of
the hardy men who sailed these craft, in fair weather and foul, and
guarded the shipping lanes during the war.
When Henry had seen all he could see from the immediate neighborhood
of the _Iroquois_’ pier, he started to walk along the water-front.
Almost the first thing he came upon was a submarine. He was
immensely pleased to see one of these ships so close at hand. The
tide was low, and the little craft sat in her dock as snug as a duck
in the reeds. Like the torpedo boat and the eagle boat, the
submarine was painted gray. She was some hundreds of feet long, and
made Henry think of a huge log afloat. Her rounded sides rose only a
few feet above the water. Amidships was the conning tower, with its
periscope. There were short masts for wireless antennæ. The very top
of the hull was flattened, so that the crew could walk on it. Along
the sides of this narrow deck were short uprights with eyelets at
their tops, which a life-line pierced, and this line was the only
rail the sailors had to keep them from falling into the sea. Perhaps
it was the big guns fastened to the deck that most interested Henry.
There was no way to protect them from the sea, and when the ship was
running submerged, he saw that these guns would stand right up in
the water. The horizontal rudders, by means of which the ship was
enabled to dive under the waves, were also interesting. They were
pivoted, so that, when not in use, they folded back into depressions
in the hull of the ship, just as a fish’s fins are sometimes folded
close against its body.
When Henry walked to the next piers he was thrilled, indeed, for
there lay two of our great fighting ships, the battleships _Utah_
and _Delaware_. What ponderous, grim, menacing hulks they were. How
high their decks were. How their superstructures towered aloft. How
threatening their turreted guns appeared. And what curious
structures the basketwork masts were. It seemed to Henry as though
each of these ships must contain a whole village of people, for he
could see sailors by the hundreds on board. Some were washing the
ships’ sides, some were at work on the decks, some were up in the
superstructures. Wherever he looked, he seemed to see men. And it
was just like the dismissal of church or school when a party of
bluejackets came ashore on leave. They poured down the gangplanks in
masses, and went jauntily off toward the gate for their holiday.
There were other ships, too. One was evidently a new vessel. It was
fiery red in its first coat of paint, and had peculiar lines,
different from those of any ship Henry had yet seen. The
superstructure appeared to be but one story high and to extend
nearly the length of the vessel. It was perfectly level, with no
railings about it. Henry was so astonished at the unusual appearance
of the craft that he stepped up to a group of workmen and asked what
the ship was.
“That’s the _Whitney_,” said one of the men. “She was just launched
a few days ago. She’s a submarine tender.”
“What a queer top she has,” remarked Henry.
“Yes,” agreed the workmen. “She was designed for an aëroplane
carrier, but they changed her into a submarine tender.”
“Oh, I see,” responded Henry. “I suppose that explains the long,
flat top of her superstructure. That’s where the aëroplanes were to
alight at sea.”
Henry thanked his informant and hurried on. He saw the great collier
_Neptune_, and an oil carrier, the _Arethusa_, and the scout cruiser
_Chester_. The latter two lay side by side, and it made Henry
actually laugh to see the difference in their build. The swift scout
cruiser was lean and high, the oil carrier lower and fat, with sides
that actually bulged. The two ships were as different in appearance
as a lean greyhound and a fat collie.
But of all the craft in the Navy Yard none so fascinated Henry as
the old battleship Constitution. For there, close beside these
modern ships of war, lay old _Ironsides_, the frigate of forty
battles, in which she never knew defeat, the oldest and most famous
vessel in the United States Navy. There she lay, almost as old as
the nation itself, for she was built in 1797, and she was yet sound.
Thrilled by the sight, Henry stood on the pier beside her and
examined her every rope and spar. Her hull was one of those blocky,
bulky, upstanding structures typical of the long ago. High above the
water line, at intervals of a few feet, open ports reached from stem
to stern, and from each open port projected the grim and threatening
muzzle of a cannon. Her three masts were the most enormous spars
Henry had ever seen. Scores of feet they towered aloft, for mast
stood upon mast, the topmast being surmounted with still a third
mast, until there was a most bewildering array of shrouds and
rigging. And such rigging! Often enough had Henry seen the rigging
of modern sailing ships. He knew well enough what these rope ladders
that lead to the crosstrees look like in modern boats. But here,
instead of the customary three stays on a side, were stays after
stays, with their crosspieces, so that many men at a time could
swarm up and down the rigging, and out on those enormous spars to
furl the sails, for the ship was a square rigger. And at the
crosstrees were great platforms where a dozen men could stand. Henry
saw right away the reason for these platforms. Sailors could stand
here after furling the sails. Sharpshooters could be stationed here,
where they could see over the smoke cloud, to pick off officers and
men on opposing vessels, for in those days vessels fought side by
side, and even sought to grapple each other so that crews could
fight hand to hand. The old ship’s bowsprit, too, was of
unbelievable dimensions, extending yards and yards beyond the bow
and reaching an incredible elevation.
Henry saw that visitors were permitted on board, and he walked up
the gangplank. The deck of the _Constitution_ was not unlike the
deck of any other sailing ship. But the gun deck, below, was
fascinating. It was a great bare section of the ship, whence
projected the gun muzzles, and in it was nothing but an ancient
stove amidships, for heating cannon balls red hot, and the rows of
cannon on either side. Henry was amazed at the number of these guns.
A placard told him that the ship originally carried forty-four.
These were bulky, chunky affairs, mounted on heavy wooden carriages,
with small wheels beneath, and great hawsers and tackles holding
them in place. There were no breechloaders in the days when the
_Constitution_ fought. Then each gun had to be run through its port
and swabbed out and loaded through the muzzle, and then it was run
out again with the tackle, blocked in place, and fired.
Henry could have spent hours examining the old craft, but he did not
know how long the _Iroquois_ would lie in the Navy Yard, and he
wanted to see all he could while he was in Boston. So he reluctantly
took a last look at this famous old frigate, and made his way
rapidly back to the _Iroquois_. On the way he took note of the huge
shops, some of them covering as much ground as a city block, the
great traveling cranes, the shifting engines, and all the other vast
equipment in the Navy Yard. It was like a city in itself, and it
made Henry proud to think that he was an American.
Captain Hardwick informed Henry that there was some delay about the
stores, and that it would require several hours at least to
transship them. The _Iroquois_ could not leave before late
afternoon, and might not get away before the next day. He secured a
pass for Henry and told him to look at Boston to his heart’s
content, but to be sure not to get lost.
“I’ve heard that it is hard to get around in Boston,” agreed Henry.
“You’ll get lost, sure,” laughed the captain. “Everybody does.”
“Where could I get a map?” inquired Henry. “I wouldn’t get lost with
a map.”
“You may have mine,” said the commander. And he got for Henry a fine
little book of maps that folded between stiff covers. One of these
maps was of Boston.
On his way to the gate Henry noticed numerous buildings, like the
commissary stores. And there was a long row of houses, evidently for
the use of officers attached to the Navy Yard, with the commandant’s
house standing conspicuously near by. The row of houses looked out
on a small park, with a band stand in it, and Henry thought it must
be very delightful to be in the park on summer evenings and listen
to the marine bands.
Once outside the gate, Henry found it was no trick at all to reach
Bunker Hill Monument. That was just around the corner, as it were,
up on a bit of high ground. A few minutes’ walk brought Henry to it.
He found that the monument stood at the very apex of a considerable
mound, that was the size of a city block or two, and was laid out
very pleasingly with lawns and walks. Attractive residences faced
the monument on all four sides of the square. Henry found a
policeman patrolling the grounds, and the man seemed very willing to
answer questions. He showed Henry where the American fortifications
lay, and where the British troops swarmed the hill. A stone memorial
marked one corner of the redoubt. The monument itself, which was
something more than two hundred feet high, was exactly like the
Washington Monument, Henry learned, for the guide told him that the
Washington Monument had been modeled after it.
With interest Henry saw where the British troops had formed at the
foot of Breed’s Hill and marched up to the redoubt, only to be
hurled back twice by the unbearably deadly fire of the American
marksmen. To be sure, the land was now covered with solid blocks of
buildings, but Henry tried to picture to himself the field as it was
in 1775, with long, waving grass and a straggling stone wall behind
which some of the American troops took position.
His heart was filled with emotion as he left this spot, sacred to
liberty, and made his way down the hill again. His map showed him
that he was not far from Faneuil Hall. He wanted to see that old
building almost as much as he had wanted to see Bunker Hill. He
found his way to it, and was much interested in the curious old
structure.
The great market house filled an entire small block, for, from its
birth, Faneuil Hall had been primarily a market. Henry walked
completely around it. Dozens of market dealers in dozens of stalls
offered all sorts of green foodstuffs for sale. Their wares were
temptingly displayed along the sidewalk. Celery, onions, apples,
potatoes, and all the various vegetables and green foods that we
commonly eat were here to be found. When he entered the market house
itself, he found it divided into two parts, through each of which
went a long, central aisle, with stalls on each side. Meats and
poultry were to be had here. It made Henry hungry to see the
countless cuts of beef and veal and mutton.
A wide stairway led from the sidewalk at one end of the building up
to the second floor. Henry entered and went up the steep steps. He
soon found himself in a roomy and convenient auditorium, encircled
by an elevated gallery. The place was interesting, not only because
of its historic associations, but also because of its beautiful old
woodwork and mouldings and decorations.
The third floor Henry found to be the quarters of one of the Boston
troops. The huge floor was cleared, so that it could be used for
drilling or for dancing. Around the walls were hung the likenesses
of all the men who had been captains in this organization, and there
were pictures of the famous battles in which these troops had
fought.
There was so much to see that Henry found he could never get over it
all, so he decided that he would see the famous old North Church, in
the belfry of which the lanterns were hung to notify Paul Revere
which way the British would journey to Lexington on that famous
night in ’75. Near by was the very house in which Paul Revere lived.
So Henry, following his map closely, hastened through a most
bewildering labyrinth of streets, and soon found himself in a region
that was, to all appearances, a part of Italy. The narrow, crooked
streets were filled with Italian children. In doorways sat shawled
Italian women gossiping and sewing. Italian shops lined the way. It
was interesting and novel to Henry. He had never before been in an
Italian section of an American city. But he had little time to look
about. He hurried on until he came to a little house so unlike any
other building in the block that he did not need his guidebook to
tell him it was the home of Paul Revere. It was a curious brown
house, with tiny diamond-shaped panes in the little leaded windows.
The roof was low, and the second story seemed to be hardly more than
half a story in height. Henry saw that he could gain admission by
the payment of a small fee, but he thought he scarcely had time to
examine the house.
So he went on around a corner or two, and presently he found himself
standing before the old North Church. It was still a sightly
structure, with its shapely spire rising above its plain brick
walls. An iron fence rose in front of it. On the wall was a bronze
tablet calling attention to the fact that here were hung the
lanterns that guided Paul Revere.
When Henry had examined the old church from every possible angle, he
turned away and headed for the _Iroquois_. At least, he turned away
from the church. Such curious rambling streets he had never seen. He
knew well enough that he would have been hopelessly lost without the
captain’s map. And even with that in his hand he was sometimes
bothered to know which way to go, so poorly were the streets marked.
Many were the new and interesting things he saw on his way back to
the Navy Yard. “I’m surely coming back to Boston again some time,”
he thought. “It is a wonderfully interesting place.” And then the
idea occurred to him that if he succeeded in becoming a Coast Guard
man, it might be possible for him to visit not only Boston, but also
many other American cities. He was more determined than ever that he
would persist in his effort until he won the place he wanted. Then,
too, he could be of some real service to this commander he loved,
for Henry had become very loyal to Captain Hardwick. The time when
he could be of service to the commander of the _Iroquois_ was a
great deal nearer than Henry dreamed. Perhaps it was as well he did
not realize that, or understand the trying experiences that lay so
close before him.