[American Merchant Ships and Sailors by Willis J. Abbot]@TWC D-Link book
American Merchant Ships and Sailors

CHAPTER II
54/55

We have seen it in the armed branch of the seafaring profession only within a few months.

When the fine old sailing frigates vanished from the seas, when the "Constitution" and the "Hartford" became as obsolete as the caravels of Columbus, when a navy officer found that electricity and steam were more serious problems in his calling than sails and rigging, and a bluejacket could be with the best in his watch without ever having learned to furl a royal, then said everybody: "The naval profession has gone to the dogs.

Its romance has departed.

Our ships should be manned from our boiler shops, and officered from our institutions of technology.

There will be no more Decaturs, Somerses, Farraguts, Cushings." And then came on the Spanish war and the rush of the "Oregon" around Cape Horn, the cool thrust of Dewey's fleet into the locked waters of Manila Bay, the plucky fight and death of Bagley at Cardenas, the braving of death by Hobson at Santiago, and the complete destruction of Cervera's fleet by Schley showed that Americans could fight as well in steel ships as in wooden ones.


<<Back  Index  Next>>

D-Link book Top

TWC mobile books