Worth Bagley’s career at the Naval Academy was a triumph of the heart
rather than of the mind. While he loved the service and hoped some day to
fill a useful place in it, he found more to attract him in football and
athletics than in calculus and least squares. But no man who ever entered
was more beloved than he, and no man had better friends in the service and
out of it. He was turned back twice, but entered, in 1891, the class of
’95, in which year he was graduated. He was a member of the “Five B’s,”
composed of Bennett, Barnes, Bagley, Breckinridge, and Baldwin, men who
were close friends while they were at the Academy.
But football was Bagley’s ruling passion. During this time, too, the
great series of games between West Point and Annapolis, between the army
and navy, over which the entire United Service went mad, were played,
and Bagley was on the victorious team of ’93, and was named for the
“All-America” team.
Bagley roomed during the four years’ course with his chum Breckinridge,
who was washed off another torpedo-boat, the “Cushing,” and drowned, as
he was trying to get into Havana a few days before the blowing up of the
“Maine.”
“Worthless” Bagley (as his intimates called him) and Breckinridge were
never left much to themselves in their quarters, for their room was always
crowded during recreation-hours with cadets skylarking or asking advice
or assistance. There was another intimate and classmate of Bagley, D.
R. Merritt, who was killed in the “Maine” disaster a few days after the
drowning of Breckinridge.