is at least 5 feet 4 inches tall, weighs 128 pounds, has a 33-inch
chest, possesses normal vision, a moderate number of sound teeth, is
free from disease or deformity, and is an American citizen. Sometimes
men shy on some measurement are passed if above average otherwise. A boy
seventeen (the youngest enlistment age) must be 5 feet 2 inches and
weigh 110 pounds. When a boy or a man enlists he goes at once on the
payroll. With his pay goes a clothing allowance sufficient to cover all
service demands; with his pay also goes nourishing and abundant food.
Enlistments are of four years for men. A boy's enlistment runs to his
majority. A man may work up to be a C. P. O. (chief petty officer) in
his first enlistment. The navy is full of men who have done that. During
this war many a recruit should make his C. P. O. quickly, for there is
nothing in the Regulations to prevent a recruit from making his C. P. O.
overnight. The habit of most officers is to rate up good men in their
divisions as fast as vacancies will permit.
A C. P. O.'s base pay may run up to $77 a month. With re-enlistment that
base pay is increased. A man re-enlisting without delay gets a bounty of
four months' pay. (Figure that extra re-enlistment money--four months'
pay every four years, the same with interest at the navy savings-account
rate of 4 per cent--and see what it amounts to after thirty years'
service.) That extra re-enlistment money is not figured into the pension
probabilities, as stated in the beginning of this article. Consider that
and then consider how many men have to work until they are too old to
work any further and who, after all their years of labor, go on the
scrap-heap without a dollar against the poverty of their old age.
Besides the base pay of a man's rating there is extra money for men
doing special work. (Neither has this been reckoned in the pension
possibilities.) Certain gun-pointers, gun-captains, coxswains, stewards,
and cooks get extra money up to $10 a month. Men in submarines get $1
extra for every day their boat submerges up to $15 a month. Men acting
as mail-clerks draw up to $30 a month extra; ship's tailors up to $20 a
month extra. Men in the Flying Corps get 50 per cent more than the base
pay their rating calls for. Every man in the service draws a small extra
sum for good conduct.
A chief petty officer is not the highest rating of the enlisted service.
There is a most efficient body of men called warrant-officers, who wear
a sword, are called "Mr.," and draw up to $2,400 a year. There are
warrant boatswains, gunners, machinists, carpenters, pharmacists, and
pay-clerks. But they must remain in service, even as most commissioned
officers, till they are sixty-four, before they draw their pension of
three-quarters pay. Also, like commissioned officers, they get no
clothing allowance and have to pay for their food.
The matter of becoming a commissioned officer may interest the recruit.
One hundred appointments may be made to Annapolis every year from among
the younger enlisted men of the navy. Young fellows who wish to try for
this are given special opportunities for study. The proviso that an
applicant must be under twenty years of age and have been at least one
year in service to make Annapolis is going to bar the way to some. For
such there is another way--warrant. A warrant boatswain, gunner, or
machinist of four years' standing and still under thirty-five years of
age may take an examination for ensign. Twelve warrant-officers may be
made ensigns annually. If they pass, they thereafter go on up exactly as
any Annapolis graduate. A warrant pay-clerk may go up to be junior
paymaster, where he will rank with an ensign.
The foregoing is for the business or ambitious side. Somebody may ask:
Will the young fellow who looks on the navy as a business proposition
make a good fighting man?
Well, in the judgment of men who study the game, almost any young fellow
you meet along the street has it in him to make a good fighting man. The
fighting habit is more a habit of mind than of body. Habituating the
mind to the fighting game is what makes our sailors, soldiers, and
marines do the right thing almost automatically in crises; and this
almost automatically correct action makes for the greater safety of
shipmates or comrades in time of peril.
In this book only the work of our destroyers in this war has been spoken
of. That is because only our destroyers have come in contact with enemy
ships; but all along the line the personnel is of equal caliber.
Our navy is crowded with men who will face any danger. Some years ago
one of our battleships was on the battle-range, with bags of powder
stowed in her turrets to save time in loading and firing the guns. A
spark got to the bags of powder. There was an explosion and a fire.
Directly underneath was the handling-room. Burning pieces of cloth fell
from the turret down into the handling-room. The crew of that
handling-room could have jumped into the passageway, made their way up a
ladder, and so on to the free and safe air of the open deck. What they
did was to stand by to stamp out what fire they could.
Leading from the handling-room were the magazines. The doors of the
magazines were open. Men jumped into the magazines and buttoned the keys
of the bulkhead doors so that there would be no crevice for sparks. In
doing that they locked themselves in; and once in they had to stay in.
Above them, they knew, was a turret full of men and officers dead and
dying; they knew that fire was raging around them, too, and that the
next thing would be for the people outside to flood the magazines. The
magazines were flooded; when things were under control and the doors
opened, the water in the magazines was up to the men's necks.
While that was going on below decks, in the turret were other men and
officers, including the chaplain, not knowing what was going on below,
and expecting every moment to be blown up into the sky; but there they
were, easing the last moments of the men who were not already dead.
Thirty all told were killed in the turret. All concerned behaved well,
but no better than they were expected to behave.
A few years ago there was a destroyer off Hatteras. It was before
daybreak of a winter's morning in heavy weather. A boiler explosion blew
out her side from well below the water-line clear up through to her main
deck. Men were killed by the explosion; others were badly scalded. A
steam burn is an agonizing thing, yet some of these scalded men went
back into that hell of a boiler-room and hauled out shipmates who, to
their notion, were more badly burned than themselves. One such rescuer
died of his burns. The hole in the deck and top side of that destroyer
was twelve feet across, yet her commander and crew got her to Norfolk
under her own steam. Commander and crew behaved well, but no better than
they were expected to behave.
There is a chief boatswain in the navy who had the duty of taking a
ship's steamer with a crew to look after the ship's target at battle
practice. A target is a frame of canvas set up on a raft of logs. The
duty of the steamer was to stand off to one side and make a record of
the hits.
This boatswain likes to joke, to try out new men. On the run from the
ship he called the roll and said: "Now, boys, in this work one of you
will have to stay on the raft to count the hits. Of course it is
dangerous work. I won't say that it isn't. The man going may not come
back. The chances are"--he eyed them one after another--"that whoever
goes will never come off the raft alive. Now, I can name the one who
will have to do that work. But I don't want to have to name him. I'll
let you draw lots."
He took a sheet of paper and cut it into strips. His crew--all
apprentice boys, all fresh from the training-school--drew the slips. The
lad who drew the short slip was no better or braver to look at than most
of the others. He looked at his slip of paper and then in a sort of
wonder at the sea and sky.
He came back to his short slip. His lips trembled. He prayed to himself.
Then he went down into his blouse pocket and fished out a stub of a
pencil. He was whiter than ever, and shaking. "Can I have a sheet of
paper, sir?"
"What do you want a sheet of paper for?"
"I'd like, sir, to write a note to my mother before I go."
To pick out a few isolated instances from service records and shout:
"There is the proof of general efficiency, of courage, of--"
whatnot--that would be idle. These were not taken from the service
records. Officers and men in the turret explosion, in the destroyer
accident, in the raft incident, are mentioned here because the writer,
at different times, has cruised with them.
They all behaved well; but no better than they were expected to.
When I asked the boatswain in the raft case if he expected the boy to
quit, he said: "Quit! They never quit."
This talk of heroism and pensions in the same breath may not seem to
jibe; somebody is going to wonder if the man who thinks of the money
side of the navy in the beginning isn't going to think too much of it in
the end. But there is a point of view which should be reckoned with, and
a type of man, of a good fighting man, who should be listened to in this
matter. Why should not a man who risks his life in his daily calling
have the normal comforts and his family the ordinary necessities of
life?
I know a fireman, an efficient, brave man--a man with a record. One
night--we were in a drug store in a crowded city--he was answering the
argument of a man working in a big factory.
Said the fireman: "You're making your five or six--yes, and eight--dollars
a day, in lively times like now. All right. But the lively times will
pass, and there'll come weeks when you won't make any four or five or
six dollars a day, and there'll come weeks when you'll be on half-time.
Average it up and you won't get any more than I will in the long run. And
when I'm through, when I'm fifty-five, I get a pension, and with a few
good years left to me. And where are you then? Out on the street or some
home for the aged--if they will take you.
"Save money as I go along? I don't figure on it--not with a family and
trying to give them the kind of food they need and the little things
that live boys and girls--especially girls--care as much for as the grub
they eat and the clothes they wear. But if I do spend all my pay, my
family are getting the good of it, I don't go into the discard at the
end. And when I'm up on a shaky roof in a bad fire, maybe I'll be more
ready to take a chance, knowing that if I go through and cripple myself,
there's something coming to the wife and family after it."
The fireman's argument holds for the navy, except that in the navy they
get through younger and with a bigger pension.
Is there any romance in the navy nowadays? Who can answer for all?
Probably as much now as ever there was. Why should substituting
smoke-pipes for spars, and propellers for sails, kill the thing that
thrills us? I've seen men washing down decks of a tropic morning, and,
ninety miles inland, old Orizaba showing his white head above the
clouds; and some of those men thought it was slow work and others
thought it was great.
On a scout cruiser to African ports, or a thousand miles up a Chinese
river on a gunboat, among the South Sea Islands on a light cruiser, some
men return with dumb lips and others can keep you awake till morning
with the tales of what they've seen.
A nineteen-year-old big-gun pointer sits atop of his bicycle saddle, and
the enemy fleet is swinging into range. Will it be like shooting clay
pipes in a gallery or will a warmer wave go rolling through his veins as
he presses the button?
Romance! Is it something always dead and gone, or something a man carries
around with him?
Whatever it is, the navy is there to try it out, and no danger of starving
while we try it.
THE SEA BABIES
Submarines have been cutting a large figure in this war. There is
probably a general curiosity to know how they are operated. I know I was
curious to know, and, _Collier's_ having secured me permission from the
Electric Boat Company, I went over to Cape Cod to take in a trial trip
or two of some boats they were building for the British Government.
There was one all ready for sea.
Long and narrow, and modelled like a stretched-out egg she was, with one
end of the egg running to a point by way of a stern, and the other
flattened to an up-and-down wedge-like bow. A heavy black line marked
her run.
Below her run she was tinted to the pale green of inshore waters, and to
a grayish blue above. Everything above her deck, which was only a raised
fore-and-aft platform for the crew to walk on, with countless little
round scupper-holes in its sides--above the deck her conning-tower, and
above that again her periscope casing--all were blue-gray.
The feeling of the morning was of heavy wind and rain or snow to come;
and a hard, cold breath of the sea and a taste of the rain were already
on us as we crossed the plank from the mother ship to the deck of the
"sub" and, one after the other, fitted ourselves into the main hatchway
and wiggled down into her.
Our submarine, from the inside, was an amazing collection of engines,
tanks, gauges, tubes, pipes, valves, wheels, torpedoes, tube heads,
electric registers, electric lights, and whatnot. A flat steel floor ran
from the forward end to the engine-room aft. Between the floor and the
arched deck overhead were three heavy steel bulkheads with heavy steel
doors. A narrow iron skeleton ladder led up to her conning-tower; small
steel rungs bolted to the casing showed the way to a square after-deck
hatch.
When all the others of us were below, the captain came squeezing down
from the conning-tower hatch and took his position at the periscope.
To the captain's left stood a man whose job it was to hold the sub to
the depth of water desired. This was the diving-rudder man, a most
expert one, we were told, who had been known to hold a submerged sub at
full speed to within six inches of one depth for two miles at a stretch.
A thin brass scale and a curved tube of colored water with an air bubble
in it helped out the diving-rudder man's calculations. The least
deviation of the sub's course from the horizontal and these two
instruments, lit up by electric lamps, showed it at once. There was a
big dial, with a long green hand, which also marked the depth of the
sub; but that was an insensitive and rather slow-acting gauge--all right
for the crew to look at from half the length of the sub, but not fine or
quick enough for the diving-rudder man.
He was the busy man while we were under water. The others could now and
again grab a moment of relaxation from their tenseness, but while the
sub was moving the diving-rudder man never took his eyes off the little
brass scale with the electric light playing on it. Stop and consider
that our sub had only to get a downward inclination of ever so little
while running hooked-up under water, and in no time she would be below
her lowest safety depth of 200 feet, where the pressure is 7 tons to
every square foot of her hull. And should she collapse there would be no
preliminary small leak by way of warning. She would go as an egg-shell
goes when you crush it in your palm. Plack!--like that--and it would be
all over. Above this same middle compartment, the smallest and most
crowded of all, up through the grilled spaces of a steel grating, we
could see the wide feet and boot-legs of the man who held the ship to
her compass course; and for a wheel, we knew, he was holding a little
metal lever about as long and thick as his middle finger, with a little
black ball about as big as the ball of his thumb on the end of it.
To the right of the foot of the conning-tower ladder stood the
ballast-tank man; and when the captain from the foot of his periscope
gave the word--after first looking forward, aft, and to each side of him
to see that all hands were at their proper stations--it was the
ballast-tank man who went violently at once into action. He grabbed a
big valve and gave it a twist; grabbed another and gave it a twist; and
another, and one more; and, standing near by, we could hear--or thought
we could--the in-rush of great waters.
[Illustration: In the engine-room of a submarine. The Diesel engines,
driven by crude petroleum, propel the ship on the surface. Electric
motors supply the power when running submerged.]
A man got to wondering then what would happen if this chap got his
valves mixed. But a look around showed every lever and every valve,
everything marked with its own name and number. Nothing was left
unmarked--in deep-cut black lettering on brass plates generally, but
here and there colored-light signs, too. After another look at the
multiplicity of them, almost any man would agree that it is a good
scheme.
But to get back: the tank man has done his part and our sub is sinking.
There is no unusual feeling to inform a man she is sinking. Only for the
starting of the engines, the diving-rudder man getting busy, and the
wide-faced gauge's long green finger beginning to walk around, a man who
didn't know could easily believe that the sub was still tied up alongside
her supply-ship. But the long green finger is walking, and marking 5
feet, 10 feet, 11, 12, as it walks. At 16 feet the finger oscillates and
stops, and to that depth our diving-rudder man holds her while she speeds
on for a mile or so.
That first little dash is by way of warming her up. The officer for
whose government this submarine was built is aboard. He now asks for a
torpedo demonstration. So two 1,500-pound dummy torpedoes are got ready,
the breeches to two of the four forward tubes opened, the torpedoes
slipped in, the breeches closed. The bow caps are then opened.
The captain, during all this time, has never left the periscope, which--to
have it explained and over with--is no more than a long telescope set on
end, with a reflecting mirror top and bottom. From the lower end of the
periscope project two brass arms, by means of which the skipper now swings
the periscope all the way around. In this way he is able to look at any
quarter of the sea he pleases.
Running at the depth we were then, the periscope showing about six feet
out of water, the captain at the periscope was, of course, the only man
who could see anything outside of her.
The captain gave the needful preliminary orders; and at the proper time,
sighting through the periscope as he did so, he pressed the button of a
little arrangement which he held, half concealed, in the palm of his
hand. There was a soft explosion, a sort of woof!--and a torpedo was on
the way to a hypothetical enemy, with only the captain able to see that
it reached its mark.
As the torpedo left the sub the rudder man gave her a "down" rudder,
which was to offset the tendency of the sub to shoot her nose to the
surface; when the torpedo had gone the tank man turned on the
air-pressure, which blew out what water had entered the torpedo chamber.
By and by the other torpedo was fired.
One reason for this trial run was to prove that she could run so many
miles an hour under water by the power of her storage-batteries alone.
And soon she went at that. And no mild racket inside her then; for a
sub's engine power and space are out of all proportion to her tonnage.
Not to decrease the noise, the man to whom the trial meant most was
standing by with a stop-watch, and every half-minute or so he would yell
at the top of his lungs, "Go!" or "Hold!" to the engineer, who was
imprisoned in a narrow alleyway with engines to right and to left and
below him. The engineer would look at a register and yell back at the
manager, who would then set some figures in a book and rush over to the
man who was reckoning up the decreasing or increasing amperes or
kilowatts or whatever they were of her storage-batteries, and set down
more figures; and if the boss had to yell his head off to make himself
heard, be sure that the others had to yell even louder. Only on trial
trips, probably, where tests have to be proved, does all this yelling
happen; but the total effect was to make a shore-goer feel, not as if
he were in a ship under water, but rather in a subway section under
construction, or some overdriven corner of some sort of night-working
machine-shop, or some other homelike place ashore. The bright electric
lights helped out the machine-shop illusion.
For a time during the run the diving-rudder man had his troubles keeping
her on a level, whereupon the skipper--an easy-going man ordinarily--jerked
his head away from his periscope and had a peek for the reason. Through
the forward bulkhead door he spied the torpedo man, who, feeling pleased,
perhaps, at the successful execution of his part of the programme, was
fox-trotting fore and aft for himself in his section of the ship. "Would
you mind picking out one spot and staying on it?" asked the skipper, at
which the torpedo man took his camp-stool, picked out his one spot, and
planted himself on it, and piously read the stock-market quotations of a
week-old newspaper for the rest of the run.
While this hour run--full speed, submerged--was in progress, a tickling
in our throats set most of us to coughing. A naval constructor of note,
who was also a shark on chemistry, explained how this coughing was not
caused by the chill in the air, but by the particles of sulphuric acid
thrown off by the action of the storage-batteries. These little particles,
it seems, went travelling about in the air seeking a home--some place,
any place where they could tuck in out of the way; but all the air homes
being already occupied by other tenants--the usual ingredients or
components of the air--they could find no place to butt in; and so they
went around and about till innocent people like ourselves made a home for
them by breathing them in out of the way. After which explanation--yelled
above all the other noises--these sulphuric hoboes caused less suspicion
and discomfort. It was good to hear that what we were swallowing was not
the chlorine of a hundred stories of fiction.
The sub had now to prove her diving qualities. So tanks were blown out
and up she went to the surface again; and there, while she was resting
like a bird on the water, ballast-tanks were suddenly filled and down she
went. Down, down, down she went--the long green finger on the broad-faced
gauge walking around at a fine clip. Dropping so--on an even keel, by the
way--she gave out no sense of action such as a man gets on an aeroplane.
Flying around in the air, you see what's doing every second. If anything
happens, you know you will see it coming, and--perhaps--going: your eyes,
ears, brains, and nerves prove things to you.
But action in a submarine lies largely in a man's imagination, unless he
be the periscope man; and even there, when she is completely submerged,
he sees no more than the others. However, a man did not need to have too
much imagination to think of a few things as he looked at the long green
finger walking around: 30 feet, 40 feet, 50 feet--This particular
observer had no idea she could drop so fast; and as she dropped, he
could not help wondering how deep the ocean was around there--this in
case anything happened. Sixty feet, 70 feet--she was gathering great
speed by then, but at 82 feet she stopped--a pleasant thing to see. And
then, maybe to show it was no accident, she did it all over again. Did
we feel any difficulty in breathing during all this? We did not, nor
during the three to four hours we were under that morning. And let a man
listen to these submarine enthusiasts telling how they can live three or
four weeks on their compressed air, if they have to, without coming to
the surface! Only give them food enough, of course. And coffee--they
have an electric range to make the coffee. As it happened, they made
coffee for us--not that day, but next morning going home. It was good
coffee. The 82-foot-drop stunts were done with each of the crew at his
station, ready at any instant to check her.