ON THE EDGE OF WAR
Until the illuminating search-light of war was turned upon the island of
Key West, it was, to the people of the North generally, little more than
a name attached to a small, arid coral reef lying on the verge of the
Gulf Stream off the southern extremity of Florida. Few people knew
anything definitely about it, and to nine readers out of ten its name
suggested nothing more interesting or attractive than Cuban filibusters,
sponges, and cigars. In less than a month, however, after the outbreak
of hostilities, it had become the headquarters, as well as the chief
coaling-station, of two powerful fleets; the news-distributing center
for the whole Cuban coast; the supply-depot to which perhaps a hundred
vessels resorted for water, food, and ammunition; the home station of
all the newspaper despatch-boats cruising in West Indian waters; the
temporary headquarters of more than a hundred newspaper correspondents
and reporters, and the most advanced outpost of the United States on the
edge of war. In view of the importance which the place had at that time,
as well as the importance which it must continue to have, as our naval
base in Cuban waters, a description of it may not be wholly without
interest.
The island on which the city of Key West stands forms one of the links
in a long, curving chain of shoals, reefs, and keys extending in a
southwesterly direction about a hundred miles from the extreme end of
the peninsula of Florida. It is approximately six miles long, has an
average width of one mile, and resembles a little in shape a huge comma,
with the city of Key West for its head and a diminishing curve of low,
swampy chaparral and mangrove-bushes for a tail. The shallow bay of
pale-green water between the head and the tail on the concave side of
the comma is known as "the bight." It is the anchorage of the
sponging-fleet, and is the eastern limit of settlement on that side of
the island. Beyond it are sandy flats and shallow, salt-water lagoons,
shut in by a dense growth of leather-leaved bushes and low, scrubby
China-berry, sea-grape, and Jamaica-apple trees. The highest part of the
Key is occupied by the city, and the highest part of the city is the low
bluff on its western side, where the slender shaft of the lighthouse
stands at a height of fifteen or eighteen feet above the level of
tide-water. Owing to its geographical position in a semi-tropical sea,
just north of the Gulf Stream and within the zone of the northeast
trade-winds, Key West has a climate of remarkable mildness and
equability. Twenty years' observations show that its lowest monthly mean
of temperature is 70 deg. F. in January, and its highest 84 deg. in August--an
annual range of only 14 deg.. Between the years 1886 and 1896 the highest
temperature recorded was 92 deg., and the lowest 40 deg.--a range of only 52 deg.
between maximum and minimum in a period of ten years. New York and
Chicago often have a greater variation of temperature than this in the
course of ten days.
Equability, however, is not the only noteworthy characteristic of the
Key West climate. It is also remarkable for its sunniness in winter and
its breeziness at all seasons of the year. The average number of cloudy
days there is only sixty-four per annum, and between October and April
the sun often shines, day after day, in a cloudless sky, for weeks at a
time. But even more constant and continuous than the sunshine are the
cool breezes from the foam-crested waters of the Atlantic, which temper
the heat of the almost perpetual summer. From the reports of the Weather
Bureau it appears that the average number of calm days at Key West is
only ten per annum. In 1895 only three days were calm, and in 1894 there
were only twenty-seven hours, of day or night, in which there was not
breeze enough to ripple, at least, the pale-green water of the harbor.
For all practical purposes, therefore, the sea-breeze at Key West may be
regarded as perennial and incessant. It varies in strength, of course,
from day to day and from hour to hour; but in the two weeks that I spent
there it was never strong enough to be unpleasant in the city, nor to
necessitate the reefing of small sail-boats in the comparatively open
and unsheltered bay.
The average annual rainfall on the island is about thirty-nine inches,
and nearly the whole of this precipitation is confined to the so-called
"rainy season," between May and November, when showers fall, now and
then, at irregular intervals of from three to ten days. For their fresh
water the inhabitants depend entirely upon this rainfall, which is
carefully collected and saved in large roof-covered cisterns. There are
a few wells on the island, but the water in them is generally brackish,
or is so impregnated with lime and earthy salts as to be unfit either
for drinking or for irrigation. To sum up briefly, the climate of Key
West may be roughly described as mild and dry in winter, warm but
showery in summer, and breezy and sunny at all seasons.
In this geographical and climatic environment there has grown up on the
island an interesting but rather sleepy and unprogressive city of
twenty-two thousand inhabitants. The most important of the elements that
go to make up its population are, first, whites from the United States,
who are chiefly engaged in shipping or commerce; second, Cubans of mixed
blood, employed, for the most part, in the cigar factories; third,
immigrants from the Bahamas, known as "conchs," who devote themselves
mainly to fishing, sponging, and wrecking; and, fourth, negroes from
America and the West Indian Islands, who turn their hands to anything
they can find to do, from shoveling coal to diving into the clear water
of the bay after the pennies or nickels thrown by Northern tourists from
the deck of the _Mascotte_ or the _Olivette_. Nothing in the shape of
fruit, grain, or vegetables is raised on the island for export, and the
greater part of the city's food-supply comes either from Florida or from
the islands of the West Indies.
The first thing that strikes a newcomer in Key West is the distinctly
and unmistakably foreign aspect of the city. In spite of the English
names on many of the sign-boards over the shops, the American faces on
the streets, and the crowd of American officers and war correspondents
smoking or talking on the spacious piazzas of the Key West Hotel, one
cannot get rid of the impression that he has left the United States and
has landed in some such town as San Juan de Guatemala or Punta Arenas,
on the Pacific coast of Central America. Everything that meets the eye
seems new, unfamiliar, and, in some subtle, indefinable way,
un-American. The vivid but pale and delicate green of the ocean water;
the slender, fern-headed cocoanut-palms which stand in clumps here and
there along the streets; the feathery Australian pines and dark-green
Indian laurels which shade the naval storehouse and the Marine Hospital;
the masses of tamarind, almond, sapodilla, wild-fig, banana, and
cork-tree foliage in the yards of the white, veranda-belted houses; the
Spanish and Cuban types on the piers and in front of the hotels; the
unfamiliar language which strikes the ear at almost every step--all
suggest a tropical environment and Spanish, rather than American,
influences and characteristics.
The two features of Key West scenery that appear, at first glance, to be
most salient, and that contribute most to the impression of strangeness
and remoteness made by the island as a whole, are, unquestionably, the
color of the water and the character of the vegetation. The ocean in
which the little coral key is set has a vividness and a delicacy of
color that I have never seen equaled elsewhere, and that is not even so
much as suggested by the turbid, semi-opaque water of the Atlantic off
the coast of Massachusetts or New Jersey. It is a clear, brilliant,
translucent green, pale rather than deep in tone, and ranging through
all possible gradations, from the color of a rain-wet lawn to the pure,
delicate, ethereal green of an auroral streamer. Sometimes, in heavy
cloud-shadow, it is almost as dark as the green of a Siberian
alexandrite; but just beyond the shadow, in the full sunshine, it
brightens to the color of a greenish turquoise. In the shallow bay known
as "the bight," the yellowish brown of the marine vegetation on the
bottom blends with the pale green of the overlying water so as to
reproduce on a large scale the tints of a Ural Mountain chrysolite,
while two miles away, over a bank of sand or a white coral reef, the
water has the almost opaque but vivid color of a pea-green satin ribbon.
Even in the gloom and obscurity of midnight, the narrow slit cut through
the darkness by the sharp blade of the Fort Taylor search-light reveals
a long line of green, foam-flecked water. Owing to the very limited
extent of the island, the ocean may be seen at the end of every street
and from almost every point of view, and its constantly changing but
always unfamiliar color says to you at every hour of the day: "You are
no longer looking out upon the dull, muddy green water of the Atlantic
coast; you are on a tropical, palm-fringed coral reef in the remote
solitude of the great South Sea."
Next to the color of the ocean, in its power to suggest remoteness and
unfamiliarity, is the character of the vegetation. The flora of Key West
is wholly tropical, and in my first ramble through the city I did not
discover a single plant, shrub, tree, or flower that I had ever seen in
the North except the oleander. Even that had wholly changed its habits
and appearance, and resembled the pot-grown plant of Northern households
only as the gigantic sequoia of California resembles the stunted
Lilliputian pine of the Siberian tundra. The Key West oleander is not a
plant, nor a shrub; it is a tree. In the yard of a private house on
Carolina Street I saw an oleander nearly thirty feet in height, whose
branches shaded an area twenty feet or more in diameter, and whose
mammoth clusters of rosy flowers might have been counted by the hundred.
Such an oleander as this, even though its leaves and blossoms may be
familiar, seems like a stranger and an exotic, and, instead of modifying
the impression of remoteness and alienation made by the other features
of the tropical environment, it deepens and intensifies it. Among the
vines, plants, shrubs, and trees that I noticed and identified in the
streets and private grounds of Key West were jasmine, bergamot,
poinsettia, hibiscus, almond, banana, sapodilla, tamarind, Jamaica
apple, mango, Spanish lime, cotton-tree, royal poinciana, "Geiger
flower" (a local name), alligator-pear, tree-cactus, sand-box,
cork-tree, banian-tree, sea-grape, cocoanut-palm, date-palm, Indian
laurel, Australian pine, and wild fig. Most of these trees and shrubs do
not grow even in southern Florida, and are to be found, within the
limits of the United States, only in southern California and on the
island of Key West.
A mere perusal of this long list of unfamiliar names will enable the
reader to understand why the vegetation of the island reinforces the
impression of strangeness and remoteness already made by the color of
the sea.
Key West, after the outbreak of war, had two chief centers of interest
and excitement: first, the harbor, between Fort Taylor and the
government wharf, where lay all the monitors, cruisers, and gunboats of
the North Atlantic Squadron that were not actually engaged in sea
service; and, second, the Key West Hotel, which was the headquarters of
the war correspondents, as well as of naval officers assigned to shore
duty, and visitors on all sorts of business from the North. I found it
hard to decide which of these two centers would offer better
opportunities and facilities for observation and the acquirement of
knowledge. If I stayed on board a vessel in the harbor, I should miss
the life and activity of the city, the quick delivery of daily papers
from the North, the news bulletins posted every few hours in the hotel,
and all the stories of fight, peril, or adventure told on shady piazzas
by officers and correspondents just back from the Cuban coast; while, on
the other hand, if I established myself at the hotel, I could not see
the bringing in of Spanish prizes from the Florida Strait, the arrival
and departure of despatch-boats with news and orders, the play of the
search-lights, the gun practice of the big war-ships, the signaling, the
saluting, and the movements generally of the fleet.
After having spent a week at the hotel, I decided to go on board the Red
Cross steamer _State of Texas_, which was lying off the government
wharf, nearly opposite the custom-house, and within one hundred yards of
the two big monitors _Puritan_ and _Miantonomoh_. I made the change just
in time to see, from the best possible point of vantage, the great event
of the week--the arrival of the two powerful fleets commanded
respectively by Admiral Sampson and Commodore Schley. Early Wednesday
morning the graceful, black, schooner-rigged despatch-boat of the New
York "Sun" came racing into the harbor under full head of steam,
followed closely by the ocean-going tug of the Associated Press and two
or three fast yachts in the service of New York papers, all blowing
their whistles vigorously to attract attention from the shore.
Something, evidently, had happened, and, looking seaward with a powerful
glass, I had no difficulty in making out on the horizon, at a distance
of eight or ten miles, the cruiser _Brooklyn_, the battle-ships _Texas_
and _Massachusetts_, and two or three smaller cruisers and gunboats of
the United States navy. The Flying Squadron from Hampton Roads had
arrived.
The harbor at once became a scene of rapid movement and intense
activity. Steam-launches darted out from the piers carrying war
correspondents to their respective despatch-boats, and naval officers to
the monitors and the huge four-masted colliers; a long line of
party-colored flags was displayed from the signal-halyards of the
_Miantonomoh_; two or three fast sea-going tugs carrying the naval
commandant and other harbor officers started seaward at full speed, with
long plumes of black smoke trailing to leeward from their lead-colored
stacks; and the eight hundred marines on the auxiliary cruiser _Panther_
swarmed on deck and crowded eagerly aft to gaze at the dim, distant
outlines of the newly arrived vessels.
About the middle of the forenoon the swift, heavily armed gunboat
_Scorpion_ entered the harbor flying the commodore's pennant, and was
received with a salute of eleven guns from the monitor _Miantonomoh_.
The remainder of the day passed without any other unusual or noteworthy
incident, but sometime in the night the fleet of Admiral Sampson joined
the Flying Squadron in the offing, and Thursday morning the people of
Key West saw, in their harbor and at sea off Fort Taylor, the largest
and most powerful fleet of war-vessels that had ever assembled, perhaps,
under the American flag.
All day Thursday the harbor was the center of incessant movement,
activity, and excitement. The lighter vessels of the Flying Squadron,
which had come in to coal, rejoined the heavier cruisers and
battle-ships in the offing, and their places were taken by the big
monitors _Amphitrite_ and _Terror_, the cruisers _Detroit_ and
_Marblehead_, and the gunboats _Wilmington_, _Helena_, _Castine_, and
_Machias_, which steamed in one after another from the fleet of Admiral
Sampson. When all these vessels had anchored off Fort Taylor and the
government wharf, there were in the harbor more than twenty ships of
war, including three torpedo-boats and four monitors; six or eight armed
yachts of the mosquito fleet; twelve or fifteen big transports,
troop-ships, and colliers awaiting orders; twenty-two Spanish prizes of
all sorts, from the big liner _Argonauta_ to the little brigantine
_Frascito_; and, finally, a fleet of newspaper tugs, launches, and
despatch-boats almost equal, numerically, to the fleets of Commodore
Schley and Admiral Sampson taken together. The marine picture presented
by the harbor with all these monitors, cruisers, gunboats, yachts,
transports, troop-ships, torpedo-boats, colliers, despatch-boats, and
Spanish prizes lying at anchor, with flags and signals flying in the
clear sunshine and on the translucent green water of the tropics, was a
picture of more than ordinary interest and beauty, and one that Key
West, perhaps, may never see again.
About two o'clock in the afternoon I was able, through the courtesy of
Mr. Trumbull White in offering me the use of the Chicago "Record's"
despatch-boat, to go off to the flagship _New York_ and present my
letter of introduction from the President to Admiral Sampson. I was
received most cordially and hospitably, and, after conferring with him
for half an hour with regard to the plans and work of the Red Cross, so
far as they depended upon or related to the navy, I returned to the
_State of Texas_. The fleet sailed again at half-past ten o'clock that
night for the coast of Cuba.
After the departure of the blockading fleet and the Flying Squadron on
May 19 and 20, the small army of war correspondents at Key West had
little to do except watch for the arrival of vessels with news from the
Cuban coast. Most of them regarded this work--or rather absence of
work--as tedious and irksome in the extreme; but if they had been living
on board ship instead of at the hotel they would have found a
never-failing source of interest and entertainment in the constantly
changing picture presented by the harbor. Six or eight war-ships,
ranging in size and fighting power from monitors to torpedo-boats, were
still lying at anchor off the custom-house and the Marine Hospital;
transports with stores and munitions of war were discharging their
cargoes at the piers; big four-masted schooners, laden with coal for the
blockading fleet, swung back and forth with the ebbing and flowing tides
as they awaited orders from the naval commandant; graceful steam-yachts,
flying the flag of the Associated Press, were constantly coming in with
news or going out in search of it; swift naphtha-launches carrying naval
officers in white uniforms darted hither and thither from one cruiser to
another, whistling shrill warnings to the slower boats pulled by sailors
from the transports; officers on the monitors were exchanging "wigwag"
flag-signals with other officers on the gunboats or the troop-ships; and
from every direction came shouts, bugle-calls, the shrieks of
steam-whistles, the peculiar jarring rattle of machine-guns at target
practice, and the measured beats of twenty or thirty ships' bells,
striking, at different distances, but almost synchronously, the
half-hours.
Interesting, however, as Key West harbor might seem in the daytime, it
was far more beautiful and impressive at night. One clear, still
evening late in May, when the rosy flush of the short tropical twilight
had faded, and the Sand Key beacon began to glow faintly, like a setting
planet, on the darkening horizon in the west, I went up on the
hurricane-deck alone and looked about the harbor. The city, the
war-ships, and the massive square outlines of Fort Taylor had all
vanished in the gathering darkness and gloom, but in their places were
rows, clusters, and constellations innumerable of steadily burning
lights. A long, slender shaft of bluish radiance streamed out from the
corner of Fort Taylor, widening as it extended seaward, until it struck
and illuminated with a sort of ghostly phosphorescence the whitish hull
of a gunboat stealing noiselessly into the harbor from the direction of
the Cuban coast. The strange craft hung out a perpendicular string of
red and white lights, which winked solemnly once or twice, changed color
two or three times, and then vanished. A second search-light from the
monitor _Miantonomoh_ sent another slender electric ray of inquiry in
the direction of the intruder, as if still doubtful of its character;
but when the straight blue sword of the Fort Taylor search-light rose to
the clouds and fell to the water three times, as if striking a whole
league of ocean three successive and measured blows, the _Miantonomoh_
understood that all was well, and her own search-light left the gunboat
and swept across the starry sky overhead like the tail of a huge blue
comet swinging at its perigee around a darkened sun.
In a moment the monitor itself hung out a string of lights which winked,
changed color, vanished, reappeared, and again vanished, leaving only a
red light at the masthead. In a moment an answering signal-rocket was
thrown up by an invisible war-ship in the direction of Fort Taylor, and
instantly two powerful search-lights were focused upon a pale, whitish
object, far out at sea, which looked in the bluish, ghostly glare like
the mainsail of the _Flying Dutchman_. Before I had time to form a
conjecture as to the significance of these mysterious signals and
apparitions, I was startled by a sudden flash and the thunder of a heavy
gun from the darkness ahead; and away out at sea, in the strip of green
water illuminated by the search-lights, a heavy projectile plunged into
the ocean, near the sail of the _Flying Dutchman_, and sent a column of
white spray thirty feet into the air. Then I understood what it all
meant. The _Wilmington_, was engaged in night gun practice. For half an
hour or more the war-ship threw solid shot and explosive shells into
that illuminated strip of green water, and the thunder of her cannon,
which could be heard all over the island, suggested to the startled
negro and Cuban population that the Spanish fleet had arrived and was
bombarding the city. Then the _Miantonomoh_ hung out another string of
colored lanterns, the uproar ceased, and the pallid, ghostly canvas of
the _Flying Dutchman_ suddenly vanished as the search-lights left it and
resumed their slow, sweeping exploration of the harbor, the channel, and
the open sea.