A Gunner Aboard the Yankee | Page 5

the crew. Our
pedigrees were taken for the enlistment papers, and the questions asked
us in regard to our ages, occupations, etc., proved that the Government
requires the family history of its fighters. The following day each man
was subjected to a rigid physical examination. The latter ceremony is
so thorough that a man needs to be perfect to have the honor of wearing
the blue shirt. Personally, when I finally emerged from the examining
room, I felt that my teeth were all wrong, my eyes crossed, my heart a
wreck, and that I was not only a physical ruin, but a gibbering idiot as
well. That I really passed the examination successfully was no fault of
the naval surgeon and his assistants.
After the medical department had finished with us, the enlistment
papers were completed, and we became full-fledged "Jackies," as
"Stump" termed it. The members of the battalion were rated as
landsmen, ordinary seamen, and able-bodied seamen, according to their
skill, and a number of men, hastily enlisted for the purpose, were made
machinists, firemen, coal-passers, painters, and carpenters. Some of
these had seen service in the regular navy, and they were visibly
horny-handed sons of toil. One Irishman, whose brogue was painful,
looked with something very like contempt on the Naval Reserve
sailors.

"Uncle Sam is a queer bird," several of us overheard him remark to a
mate. "He do be making a picnic av this war wid his pleasure boats an'
his crew av pretty b'yes. If we iver tackle the Spaniards, there'll be
many a mama's baby on board this hooker cryin' for home, swate
home."
"Hod," a six-footer, who played quarter-back on a famous team not
long ago, took out his notebook and made an entry.
"I'll spot that fellow and make him eat his words before we get into
deep water," he said, quietly. He was not the only one to make that vow,
and it was plain that Burke, the Irishman, had trouble in store for him.
On our return to the "New Hampshire," the battalion was placed under
the regular ship's routine. All the men were divided into two watches,
starboard and port. The port watch, for instance, goes on duty at eight
bells in the morning, stands four hours, and is then relieved by the
starboard watch; this routine continues day and night, except from four
until eight in the afternoon, when occur the dog watches, two of them,
two hours long each, stood by the port and starboard men respectively.
The dog watches are necessary to secure a change in the hours of duty
for each watch.
From now on we were given a taste of the actual work of the service.
Details were made up each morning and sent to the "Yankee" to assist
in getting her in readiness for service. One of the first duties was to
carry on board and stow away in the hold one hundred kegs of mess
pork. As each keg contained one hundred pounds, the task was not easy
for men unaccustomed to manual labor. Still there was no complaint. In
fact, the only growling heard so far had come from some of the men
who had seen service in the regular navy. Burke, the fireman,
declaimed loudly against the "shoe leather an' de terrer-cotter hard-tack
which they do be tryin' to feed to honest workers. As for the slops they
call coffee, Oi wouldn't give it to an Orangeman's pig!"
The food served out on board the "New Hampshire"--being the usual
Government ration of salt-horse, coffee, and hard-tack--was vastly
different from that to which the majority of the boys were accustomed,

but it was accepted with the good grace displayed by the members of
the Reserve on every occasion. All these little discomforts are, as the
Navigator (a commissioned officer of the regular navy) remarked,
"merely incidental to the service."
As the time approached when we were to board the "Yankee" for good,
the ordinary watches were abandoned, and only anchor watches kept.
An anchor watch is a detail of five or six men, selected from the
different parts of the ship, who do duty, really, as watchmen, during the
night. Two days before the order arrived to leave the "New
Hampshire," it was found necessary to station several men, armed with
guns and fixed bayonets, on the dock near the ship, to stop men from
taking the "hawser route" ashore. The firemen and coal-passers had
been refused shore leave, or liberty, as it is called, because of their
habit of getting intoxicated, pawning their uniforms, and loitering
ashore. Truth to tell, the guns and bayonets had little effect, as the
offenders were old in the business.
The second night after the order was put in force it happened that
"Hod," who was