WAR CORRESPONDENTS AND DESPATCH-BOATS
Few things impressed me more forcibly, in the course of my two weeks'
stay at Key West, than the costly, far-sighted, and far-reaching
preparations made by the great newspapers of the country to report the
war. There were in the city of Tampa, at the time of my arrival, nearly
one hundred war correspondents, who represented papers in all parts of
the United States, from New England to the Pacific coast, and who were
all expecting to go to Cuba with the army of invasion. Nearly every one
of the leading metropolitan journals had in Tampa and Key West a staff
of six or eight of its best men under the direction of a
war-correspondent-in-chief, while the Associated Press was represented
by a dozen or more reporters in Cuban waters, as well as by
correspondents in Havana, Key West, Tampa, Kingston, St. Thomas,
Port-au-Prince, and on the flagships of Admiral Sampson and Commodore
Schley. Every invention and device of applied science was brought into
requisition to facilitate the work of the reporters and to enable them
to get their work quickly to their home offices. The New York "Herald,"
for example, paid fifty dollars an hour for a special leased wire
between New York and Key West, and set up, in the latter place and in
Tampa, newly invented, long-distance phototelegraph instruments, by
means of which its artist in the field could transmit a finished picture
to the home office every twenty minutes.
In their efforts to get full and accurate news of every event at the
earliest possible moment, the war correspondents shrank from neither
hardship nor danger. A week or two before my arrival in Key West, for
example, Mr. Scovel, one of the most daring and enterprising of the war
correspondents, landed from a despatch-boat on the coast of Cuba in the
night, with the intention of making his way to the camp of General
Gomez. As he had not had a previous understanding with the latter, no
arrangements had been made to meet him, he could get no horses, and,
with only two or three companions, he walked eighty miles through
tropical forests and swamps, dodging Spanish sentinels and guerrillas,
living wholly upon plantains and roots, and sleeping most of the time
out of doors in a hammock slung between two trees. He finally succeeded
in obtaining horses, reached the insurgent camp, had an interview with
General Gomez, rode back to the coast at a point previously agreed upon,
signaled to his despatch-boat, was taken on board, and returned safely
to Key West after an absence of two weeks, in the course of which he had
not once tasted bread nor slept in a bed.
Upon the record of such an achievement as this most men would have been
satisfied, for a time, to rest; but Mr. Scovel, with untiring energy,
went from Key West to the coast of Cuba and back three times in the next
seven days. On the last of these expeditions he joined a landing force
carrying arms and ammunition to the insurgents, participated in a hot
skirmish with the Spanish troops, wrote an account of the adventure that
same night while at sea in a small, tossing boat on his way back to Key
West, and filed six thousand words in the Key West cable-station at two
o'clock in the morning.
I speak of this particular case of journalistic enterprise, not because
it is especially noteworthy or exceptional, but because it illustrates
the endurance and the capacity for sustained toil in unfavorable
circumstances, which are quite as characteristic of the modern war
correspondent as are his courage and his alert readiness for any
emergency or any opportunity.
Owing to the distance of the seat of war from the American coast and the
absence of telegraphic communication between Cuba and the mainland,
newspapers that made any serious attempt to get quick and exclusive
information from the front had not only to send correspondents into the
field, but to furnish them with means of moving rapidly from place to
place and of forwarding their despatches promptly to an American
telegraph office or a West Indian cable-station. Every prominent New
York paper, therefore, had at least one despatch-boat for the use of its
correspondents, several of them had two or three, and the Associated
Press employed four. These boats were either powerful sea-going tugs
like the _Hercules_ and the _Premier_, or swift steam-yachts of the
class represented by the _Wanda_, the _Kanapaha_, and the _Bucaneer_.
Exactly how many of them there were in West Indian waters I have been
unable to ascertain; but I should say not less than fifteen or twenty,
with almost an equal number of naphtha-and steam-launches for harbor and
smooth-water work. In these despatch-boats the war correspondents went
back and forth between Key West and Cuba; watched the operations of the
blockading fleet off Havana, Matanzas, or Cardenas; cruised along a
coast-line nearly a thousand miles in extent, and, if necessary, went
with Admiral Sampson's squadron to a point of attack as remote as
Santiago de Cuba or San Juan de Porto Rico. Whenever anything of
importance happened in any part of this wide area, they were expected to
be on the spot to observe it, and then to get the earliest news of it to
the nearest cable-station--whether that station were Kingston, Cape
Haitien, St. Thomas, Port-au-Prince, or Key West. All of the newspaper
despatch-boats were small, many of them had very limited coal-carrying
capacity, and some were nothing but sea-going tugs, with hardly any
comforts or conveniences, and with no suitable accommodations for
passengers. The correspondents who used these boats were, therefore,
compelled to live a rough-and-tumble life, sometimes sleeping in their
clothes on benches or on the floor in a small, stuffy cabin, and always
suffering the hardships and privations necessarily involved in a long
cruise on a small vessel in a tropical climate and on a turbulent sea.
The Florida Strait between Key West and the north Cuban coast is as
uncomfortable a piece of water to cruise on as can be found in the
tropics. It is the place where the swiftly running Gulf Stream meets the
fresh northeast trade-winds; and in the conflict between these opposing
terrestrial forces there is raised a high and at the same time short,
choppy, and irregular sea, on which small vessels toss, roll, and pitch
about like corks in a boiling caldron. I was told by some of the
correspondents who had cruised in these waters that often, for days at a
time, it was almost impossible to get any really refreshing rest or
sleep. The large and heavy war-ships of the blockading fleet rode this
sea, of course, with comparatively little motion; but it is reported
that even Captain Sigsbee was threatened with seasickness while crossing
the strait between Havana and Key West in a small boat.
Discomfort, however, was perhaps the least of the war correspondent's
troubles. He expected discomfort, and accepted it philosophically; but
to it was added constant and harassing anxiety. As he could not predict
or anticipate the movements of the war-ships, and had no clue to the
plans and intentions of their commanding officer, he was compelled to
stay constantly with the fleet, night and day, in order to be on the
scene of action when action should come. This part of his duty was not
only difficult, but often extremely hazardous. As soon as night fell,
every light on the war-ships was extinguished, and they cruised or
drifted about until daybreak in silence and in darkness. Owing to their
color, it was almost impossible to follow them, or even to see them at a
distance of a mile, and the correspondent on the despatch-boat was
liable either to lose them altogether if he kept too far away, or be
fired upon if he came too near.
On my visit to the flagship _New York_ I was accompanied by Mr.
Chamberlain, one of the war correspondents of the Chicago "Record." Just
before we went over the side of the ship on our return to the "Record's"
despatch-boat, Mr. Chamberlain said to Admiral Sampson: "Can you give me
any directions or instructions, admiral, with regard to approaching your
fleet in hostile waters? I don't want to be in your way or to do
anything that would imperil my own vessel or inconvenience yours."
"Where do you propose to go?" inquired the admiral.
"Anywhere," replied the war correspondent, "or rather everywhere, that
you do."
The admiral smiled dryly and said: "I can't give you any definite
instructions except, generally, to keep away from the fleet--especially
at night. You may approach and hail us in the daytime if you have
occasion to do so, but if you come within five miles of the fleet at
night there is likely to be trouble."
This was all that Mr. Chamberlain could get from the admiral; but the
officer of the deck, whose name I did not learn, had no hesitation in
explaining fully to us the nature of the "trouble" that would ensue if,
through design or inadvertence, a newspaper despatch-boat should get
within five miles of the fleet at night. "We can't afford to take any
chances," he said, "of torpedo-boats. If you show up at night in the
neighborhood of this ship, we shall fire on you first and ask questions
afterward."
"But how are we to know where you are?" inquired the correspondent.
"That's your business," replied the officer; "but if you approach us at
night, you do it at your own peril."
When we had returned to the despatch-boat, Mr. Chamberlain said to me:
"Of course that's all right from their point of view. I appreciate their
situation, and if I were in their places I should doubtless act
precisely as they do; but it's my business to watch that fleet, and I
can't do it if I keep five miles away at night. I think I'll go within
two miles and take the chances. Some of us will probably lose the
numbers of our mess down here," he added coolly, "if this thing lasts,
but I don't see how it can be helped."
The difficulty of keeping five miles away, or any specified distance
away, from a blockading fleet of war-ships at night can be fully
realized only by those who have experienced it. Except on Morro Castle
at Havana there were no lights on the northern coast of Cuba; if it was
cloudy and there happened to be no moon, the darkness was impenetrable;
the war-ships did not allow even so much as the glimmer of a binnacle
lamp to escape from their lead-colored, almost invisible hulls, as they
cruised noiselessly back and forth; and the correspondent on the
despatch-boat not only did not know where they were, but had no means
whatever of ascertaining where he himself was. Meanwhile, at any moment,
there might come out of the impenetrable darkness ahead the thunder of a
six-pounder gun, followed by the blinding glare of a search-light.
Unquestionably the correspondents were to be believed when they said
privately to one another that it was nervous, harassing work.
But the list of difficulties and embarrassments which confronted the
correspondent in his quest of news is not yet at an end. If he escaped
the danger of being sunk or disabled by a shell or a solid projectile at
night, and succeeded in following a fleet like that of Admiral Sampson,
he had to take into serious consideration the question of coal. Fuel is
quite as essential to a despatch-boat as to a battle-ship. The commander
of the battle-ship, however, had a great advantage over the
correspondent on the despatch-boat, for the reason that he always knew
exactly where he was going and where he could recoal; while the
unfortunate newspaper man was ignorant of his own destination, was
compelled to follow the fleet blindly, and did not know whether his
limited supply of coal would last to the end of the cruise or not. When
Mr. Chamberlain sailed from Key West at night with the fleet of Admiral
Sampson, he believed that the latter was bound for Santiago, on the
southeastern coast of Cuba. The _Hercules_ could not possibly carry coal
enough for a voyage there and back; in fact, she would reach that port
with only one day's supply of fuel in her bunkers. What should be done
then? The nearest available source of coal-supply would be Kingston,
Jamaica, and whether he could get there from Santiago before his fuel
should be wholly exhausted Mr. Chamberlain did not know. However, he was
ready, like Ladislaw in "Middlemarch," to "place himself in an attitude
of receptivity toward all sublime chances," and away he went. Nothing
can be more exasperating to a war correspondent than to have a fight
take place while he is absent from the scene of action looking for coal;
but many newspaper men in Cuban waters had that unpleasant and
humiliating experience.
The life of the war correspondent who landed, or attempted to land, on
the island of Cuba, in the early weeks of the war, was not so wearing
and harassing, perhaps, as the life of the men on the despatch-boats,
but it was quite as full of risk. After the 1st of May the patrol of the
Cuban coast by the Spanish troops between Havana and Cardenas became so
careful and thorough that a safe landing could hardly be made there even
at night. Jones and Thrall were both captured before they could open
communications with the insurgents; and the English correspondents,
Whigham and Robinson, who followed their example, met the same fate.
Even Mr. Knight, the war correspondent of the London "Times," who landed
from a small boat in the harbor of Havana with the express permission of
the government at Madrid and under a guaranty of protection, was seized
and thrown into Cabanas fortress.
If a war correspondent succeeded in making a safe landing and in joining
the insurgents, he had still to suffer many hardships and run many
risks. Mr. Archibald, the correspondent of a San Francisco paper, was
wounded on the Cuban coast early in May, in a fight resulting from an
attempt to land arms and ammunition for the insurgents; and a
correspondent of the Chicago "Record" was killed after he had actually
succeeded in reaching General Gomez's camp. He was sitting on his horse,
at the summit of a little hill, with Gomez and the latter's chief of
staff, watching a skirmish which was taking place at a distance of a
quarter of a mile or more, between a detachment of insurgents and a
column of Spanish troops. One of the few sharp-shooters in the enemy's
army got the range of the little group on the hill, and almost the first
ball which he sent in that direction struck the "Record" correspondent
in the forehead between and just above the eyes. As he reeled in the
saddle Gomez's chief of staff sprang to catch him and break his fall.
The next Mauser bullet from the hidden marksman pierced the pommel of
the saddle that the staff-officer had just vacated; and the third shot
killed Gomez's horse. The general and his aide then hastily escaped from
the dangerous position, carrying the "Record" correspondent with them;
but he was dead. In the first two months of the war the corps of field
correspondents, in proportion to its numerical strength, lost almost as
many men from death and casualty as did the army and navy of the United
States. The letters and telegrams which they wrote on their knees, in
the saddle, and on the rocking, swaying cabin tables of despatch-boats
while hurrying to West Indian cable-stations were not always models of
English composition, nor were they always precisely accurate; but if the
patrons of their respective papers had been placed in the field and
compelled to write under similar conditions, they would be surprised,
perhaps, not at the occasional imperfection of the correspondents' work,
but at the fact that in so unfavorable and discouraging an environment
good work could be done at all.