Evening Star Newspaper, January 13, 1924, Page 65

D. '0! JANUARY 13! 1924—PART 5. 3 UNCLE SAM AS A “LISTENER IN” RADIO SENDER HEADS LIST FIRST WOMAN SEA CAPTAIN REALIZES LIFETIME DREAM “Capn” Jennie Crocker and Her Husband Have Financial Interest in Vessel That Car- ries Them Up and Down the Coast. fihe Is Uncertain Whether or Not It's a Good Thing for Women to Vote. AND Navy Probably plays Larg‘est Part in World Sygstem of Communication by This Means. Trade, Shipping, Relief Work, Mili-. tary Protection and Other Activ- ities Are Assisted by Stations. NERVE system of communiea- BY W. RENWICK SMITH. WOMAN sea captain—and th very first at that! “Cap'n” Jennie Crocker, if you please, or soon it will be, for Mrs. Jennio Crocker, a native of the state of Maine and wife of Capt. Nelson A. Crocker, for more than twenty years a licensed master of sailing vessels, will soon be awarded her own license. tion that employs more than 1.000 high-powered radio transmitting stations—fibe that tap every important agricultural <omme: al and political seetion of the world-——has been built up by Un- «le Sam within the past few years. Fvery move our foreign neighbors make s instantly registered over the Eystem and studled at Washington by the government speciali; in charge RADIO ROOM OI' THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, WHERE NEWS FOR THE FARMERS IS ©f each line of activity. The wheat crop in Mesopotamia is ®ut in haif by a drought, and the news is instantly flashed by radio to the Department of Agriculture, thence rebroadeast over the United States to farmers and the trade. Ten thousand African chieftains | in the market for plug hats. The fact is dispatched at once to the De- Wartment of Commerece, and Ameri- ©an manufacturers get the jump on the foreign-trade need. Germany makes a move of political | significance; the State 1 rtment nstantly apprised of it. An inter- hational crook embarks for America; %y radio the Department of Justice s fnformed, and detectives zrest the man. There is a call of distress on Jand or sea; the world is told of it by radio, and ald is rushed to the sn ers, The United States plavs the largest part wide system of Jand and sea the Navy operatos than 500 ship and shore r tions. Practically every naval ves- sel from submarine to dreadnaught is a radio statlon constantly alirt to recetve and broadeast weather warn- ings, -time signals and distress calls Tt was an American warship tha told the world by radio that Smyrna was burning and summoned afd from all over the seas. In the Japanese disastor. Commander Bell of the Na- val Hospital at Yokohama, was able | finally ¢o get through the mes: relayed around the world: strovers, Yokohama. Americans in £reat distress.” One hundred and thirfy-five Navy shore stations on the American coast lines keep mariners informed of weather and ocean conditions, the menace of icebergs, submerged wwrecks and shifting sand bars. Forty of these stations have a range up to .000 miles; ninety-five stutions a| yange of S00 miles. Fifty radio com- puss stations along American shores furnish bearings to mariners on re- quest, in darkness, fog and storm and were the means last year of preventing fifteen serious maritime disasters. N the eastern seaboard the Navy radio station at Bar Harbor, Me., receives all dispatches from Europe ®mnd from the fleet. The messages ere then relaved over leased land wire to Navy headquarters at Wash- ington. Other leading stations on the Atlantic coast are Sayville, Long Jsland; Annapolis, Md.: Arlington, Va.; Cayey, P. R.; Guantanamo and Panama. The Sayville statlon is a transmit- ting station to the fleet, and Annap- olis the principal Atlantic coast] transmitting station to Europe and to the Pacific, both stations being oper- ated by remote control from Wash- ington. In the Pacific, the Navy radio serv- §ce is practically the only means of handling press dispatches to the Phil- ippines, the Associated Press sending 70 Honolulu and 800 words to Manila. Several radio circuits are operated by the Navy in the Pacific, connecting with Guam, Cavite and Tutuila, in) the Samoan Islands. The Cavite sta tion is in constant communication with French Indo-China, the Dutech Ilast Indies, Peking and Shanghai. The Alaskan chain of Navy stations at Sitka, Ketchikan, Seward, Kodlak, Cordova, Dutch Harbor and St. Paul, | in Bering sea, cable Is frequently out of repair. “Without radi development through the protection of American |Oma greatly | Tex.; Fort D. A. Russel. Wyo.; Fort| Maritime losses have been Douglas, Utah; Fort Leavenworth, reased through the use of arning ships of Impend The giving of aid to suffer- ers In shipwrecks, earthquakes, fires|miles and plagues, of real| Within the corps areas there are would, in many cases, be | “Through timely warnings made pos sible by radio, and throyeh its relief | quarters. FARMERS ALL work, made more effective by radio, the Navy has saved the lives of many thousands of people.” The “radio net” of the Army, en- radio-telegraph radio telephone transmitting and re- | ving stations at Army posts and headquarters all is of more recent establishment. the outgrowth of the radio systerth of communication established in France Quring the world war, and which was regarded as a model achievement. of War Weeks, in estab- the United pmpassing 112 the country, lishing the system 000 words a day from San Francisco | States, felt there was urgent need communications ganized on a military basis to handle every concelvable ci emergeney, service or- il and military and an entire year was to developing “radio net” coverihg every part of the country. N uine corps areas into which the BROADCAST. tary purposes there are fourteen ma- | forces can be rushed to the scene often the only means |for radio stations with a radious of the frozen[1,000 miles each. This “radio net n |proper” cost Uncle Sam $500,000 and includes stations at Washington, D. d Secretary |C.; Governor's Island, N. Y.; Balti- avy Denby, In a signed state- [ more, Md.; Atlanta, Fort Hayes, Ohio; Fort Benjamin Harrison, Ind.: Chicago, 11.; Jefferson Barracks, Mo.; Neb.; Fort Sam Houston, Kan.; and San Francisco, Calif. All | stations are operated by remote con- trol at a distance of one-half to ten also 98 stations at Army posts to cult, if not impossible, without radio. | provide intercommunication between | posts and with respective corps head- OVER THE COUNTRY ARE GETTING THE M. KET REPORTS DIRECTLY FROM WASHINGTON EACH DAY Assume a military emergency on the Mexican border. Fort McAllen or any one of the other seven posts on the border equipped with radio flashes the news to Fort Sam Hous- ton. The message is relayed to Fort | Leavenworth, where a modern high- | powered transmitter relays it to the War Department at Washington. Re- verse the Drocess and it becomes pos- sible for the War Department at Washington simultaneously to in- struct all the border posts. When the steamship Honolulu caught fire off the Pacific coast, an Army transport picked up the distress signals, flashed the news ashore and proceeded to the rescue. Recently an arrangement was made for tying the American Radio Relay League into the Army net, as a re- sult of which greater speed and cffi- ciency in handling local emergencies when towns and villages are devas- tated by fire or engulfed in floods are made possible. By getting news Tnited States is divided for mili- with a minimum of delay. The serv- lce is operated with military precision and is backed by the nation's com- plete military strength. The radio broadcasting system of the Department of Agriculture is now capable of flashing weather, crop and market news to the remotest sections of the farming community. Approxi- ately 130 radio-telephone broad- asting statfons operated by state and unicipal government agricultural agencies, commodity exchanges, news- papers and banks d dispatch cur- rent agricultural news to farmers, The primary system of the Agricul- tural Department ludes the Navy statio at Arlington, Great Lakes and an Irancisco, which literally blan- ket the major portion of the agri- cultural territory with crop and mar- ket advices, The m ages are dis- patched by radio-telegraph and picked up by the secondary chain of stations for re-broadeasting by radio- telephone. The phone stations are in close touch with the numerous branch offices of the department over the country and receive direct the news in local markets “The number of receiving sets on farms is rapidly appre hing a quar- ter of a million,” declared Secretary of Agriculture Wallace, in his recent annual report to President Coolidge. Thousands of letters from farmers In the files of the Department of Agri- culture attest this fact and the prac- tical value of the service Appropriate warnings of frost have often saved the west coast frult grow- ers millions of dollars, through en- abling them fn time to place heaters in orchards. In the southwest, ad- vance information of storms has en- abled the stock ralsers to rush their live stock to cover. In the corn and wheat regions radio advice of im- pending devastation from insects has enabled gro; to take prompt ste to meet the oncoming hordes. = % % % THE radio service on crops is = tion-wide in scope, information on acreage and condition of crops coming by radio and cable from for- eign representatives who have made contacts with foreign agricultural sources. The size of crops in other parts of the world 1s of vital inter- est to American growers, particularly as regards crops such as cotton and wheat, which compete with American products on world markets. In less time than it takes to tell about jt messages are filed at European radio stations, received at Washington, analyzed, and then rebroadcasted over the country for the information of agricultural interests. Tt you're a business man and next Friday night hear over your radio set that 10,000 Chinese babies are bare- footed for want of 10,008 pairs of American booties, or that a similar number of Burmese ladies crave calico dresses, you'll recognize the new radlo service of the Department of Com- merce. More than 1,000 government foreign-trade representatives, consuls, commissioners and attaches in as many places all over the world are daily combing the markets for sales outlets for American goods. The news is flashed to the United States by ca- ble or radlo, and then prepared for simultaneous release by radio and the quickly to the Army posts, armed press throughout the country. Here's a woman who says she'd rather battle angered waves in a sailing ship any day than take her place fn a town somewhere and be- come the “respected wi of a high- ly respected landlubber. It's the temptest on the perilous water for Jennle Holmes Crocker rather than the tempest in a teapot in a home. Mrs. Crocker is delightfully fem- inine and let you in on the maritime secret, lives in a “cretonned cabin” when at sea, but she has never had time for the ordinary sort of life a woman leads in a small town—it would bore her to death, she says. “My life has been on the ccean wave for more than twenty years and I'm content to live the rest of it at THE FOUR-MASTED SAILING VESSEL. THE JENNIE CROCKER. THE JOINT OWNER OF THE SHIP 1= “You just have to go to sea and work it out, but-you never do—not really. 1 came from seafaring stock | and wo did Capt. Crocker. Neither THE FIRST WOMAN SEA CAPTAIN. 1 and worn in long plaits down her back. They were childhood sweet- bearts in & small town . X % ’Cu’r NELSON A. CROCKER | been around the rid sev [times and, with his wife, has be |to Africa three times and into t of us could help it, I guess—geing |"T'HE Jennie Crocker, the xurm':rl('unbl»l-hn waters numbers of tin to sea. My father, the late Edgar Holmes, was at sea most of his life. My brother Leonard went to sea as an engineer on a steam vessel, but poor Leonard one day disappeared whether he was drowned we never heard, but I guess it was the sea that got him. for he's never come back, and it's been over twenty years ago. “Now take, for instance, the per- Ruth Martin, is a four-masted | achooner with a net tonnage of 792 or thereabouts. At present she is in | the service of a New England ship- ping company and for the past six months has been hauling lumber from Florida ports to the east. From time to time during her brief career of three years—for the Jennie Crocker was built in 1920 at Portland, Me.— | she has carricd fertilizer, eoal and {as well as having made several dire {trips to Portugal. There's hardly | promontory along either the Atlanti o rPacific coast that is not a familic ght to Loth the Crockers. For |past few vears Capt. Crocker I een master of schooners plylng u {and down the At {ploved in hauling st long t ON THE DECK OF THE JENNIE CROCKER. CAPT. NELSON CROCKER AND HIS WIFE, CAPT. JENNIE CROCKER. sea, and when it comes my time to die I want to die at sea. The sea is my very life. Of course, I like to go ashore now and then to see some of my relatives and get a few new clothes—even a lady captain you know, must have a few pretty things around her—but to live on land steadily—I could think of nothing more impossible.” Though Mrs. Crocker knew as much about navigation ten years ago as she knows today she “just mever bothered” about applylng for a sail- ing master's license until recently. It was because of a suggestion of a friend who said she “might as well have a license as long as she could get one” that Jennte Holmes Crock- er, veteran seawoman, made her ap- plication. She was informed by the New England steamboat inspection office, which aiso controls safling craft, that her license would be is- sued within two months. Many's the time “Cap'n” Jennie has “manned” the Jennie Crocker when Capt. Nelson, her husband, lay sick a-bed in the cabin below with an agonizing fever, and though her wifely and womanly heart was with the man below, she guided the sailing vessel through a tropical storm to calm waters. It was on a return voyage from Africa that “Cap/n” Jennle Crocker was called on to meet what was, perhaps, the greatest test of her nautical career. Capt. Crocker had contracted a terrible tropical fever while in Africa, and for three days was unable to leave his bed. It was during this near-tragic situation ithat Mrs. Crocker had to assume virtual control of the Jennle Crock- er. She seems to regard her dutles at the time as quite unimportant and rather hesitates to go into detail However, she did say this’ much about it: “There was redlly nothing else to do. I simply had. in & way, to as- sume commsand, for the mate nat- urally didn’t know some of the things a captain has to know, and I knew them, so it was up to me to— well, you might say, ‘save the ship’ Capt. Crocker couldn’t even raise hi: héad from the pillow—even bro nauseated him. All I really did was to calculate latitude and longitude from the sun readings so we could keep our course. My husband was too 111 even to glve me a coherent answer to a technical question. It was, after all, a pretty good. thing that I knew a little somethinx about the business® of reckoning, wasn't 1t 0 * %k ¥ % the belief of Mrs. Crocker that ‘when the sea’s in a person’s blood there 1s no way of getting it out. sonnel of the Jennie Crocker. In- cidentally, did I tell you Captain and I own soveral shares of stock in her? She was formerly the Ruth Martin and safled out of Boston. On the Jennie Crocker is my father-fn-law, Charles A. Crocker. He's our stew- ard. Mr. Crocker, sr, has been at sea ever since he was a boy. Then there's our nephew, or rather Capt. Crocker's nephew—Charles Raymond Delaney. Charlie’s just sixteen, but he's got the sea bug, too, and his uncle gave him a job on the crew. “Charlie's brother Ralph, who lives in Saugus, Mass., spent two years with his uncle and me at sea. Then still another brother, the late Harold Delaney, was with the captain awhile-—In fact, until he was drown- ed. You see, ‘that old devll, Sea,’ as they say in that Eugene O'Neill play of seafaring folks, ‘Anna Christie,’ takes his toll sooner or later. “Harold was drowned a few years ago when he fell off a launch in which kb and Capt. Crocker were rid- ing out to 2 naphtha boat nearby, the Florence and Lilllan, the captain's sailing ship at that tfme. His mother, Mra Delaney-Beardsley of Boston, was almost crazy and tried her best to keep her two other boys from tak- ing a fiihg at the sea, but she couldn’t keep them off it, not even after the sad fate of her eldest son Harold. “T firmly believe there’s no use in trying to stifle the desire to go to sea. Maybe not many women have it, but ever since I was a little girl I have had a great love for the water, and my father used to take me on short voyages with him when I was growing up, so I guess this made me more crazy about it. I well remem- ber reading sea storles behind my big geography béok up in a lttle country school In Maire. “When Capt. Crocker and I married he was just & mate. He was then crazy for me to go along on voyages with him, but it wasn't 50 easy for a mate/s wife as for a real captain, so I told him to hurry up and get a captainship, and then I could go along. He worked hard and studied and- it wasn't long before he was a captain, “I've been going to sea with my husbend for twenty years. I mever thought of applying for a license be- fore. It always seemed somewhat like & college diploma—the only use one has for it after one gets it is to hang it up in the parlor.” Nelson A. Crocker and Jennie Holmes went to school together in the Httle town of Machias, Me. Theirs was a romance that ‘started when Mrs. Crocker's halr, which s auburn nows Was & real old-fashioned ‘red” salt. Only last month the Jennie Crocker put in at New York with a cargo of more than 600,000 feet of yellow pine which she brought up from Florida. . Last fall the owners of the Jennie Crocker had her gone over and made spick and span for the coming win- ter season. “Cap'n” Jennie had a say in her “interior decoration,” for she, with Capt. Neison, has a small fn- Island hostess or soclety woman in town ever took greater pride in hav- ing everything “just right” about the “quarters” than did “Cap'n” Jennie | Crocker. Mrs. Crocker is far from being a masculine type of woman. Were she on 1and she would never wear a tal- lored coat suit, Tow-heeled tan walk- ing shoes and a man's sport hat, with man's collar and cravat—never. “Cap'n” Jennie Crocker. while she is really an “old salt.” is about the most charming and feminine a person one could wish to meet. ‘Witness the fact that her cabin on the Jennle Crocker is done in cre- tonne! In the tiny “reception room" adjoining Mra. Crocker’s cabin aboard there are blue and white cretonne hangings at the port hole, and for the couch there i{s a cretonne cover to match; a nautical material, to be sure— white-capped waves, sailing ships and seagulls. Besides the couch in the reception room there are to be found two leather chairs, also cretonned in summer; a Morris chair, “specially bought for Capt. Nelson Crocker.” ac- cording to his wife, and a library table. There are shaded wall lights with soft blue silk and a bridge lamp for the captain to read or study by. ‘The Crocker library is not solely nautical, either. There are recent works of selence, religion and fiction on the captain’s shelves. Both the cabin and reception room aboard the Jennle Crocker have hardwood, inlald floors. The “bedroom” is simply fur- nished with plain white enameled twin beds, a chiffonier, dresser and two chairs. There is running hot and cold water in the cabin. Many a small steam-propelled vessel becomes insignificant, In point of camfort, or, one might say, luxury, in cora¥u3ison with the Jennie Crocker. In a way, it would seem that both Capt. Nelson and Cap'n Jennie have at last realized a dream of a life- time—they have a real dollars-and- cents interest In their present “home" on the sea. It's been the,cherished desire all these years that they should some day own a salling ship and just now they are pretty close 20’ the realization of their hope. terest in the schooner. No Long| said Cap'n Jennie Crocker. “I recal |at Grana Basan, for instance—nev having seen such high breakers—w couldn't even think of going near th: shore with our ship. It was a stranig arrangement we w forced to ri sort to—we had t approach the shore In canocs. From au derrick « the pier a large boxlike thing w lowered for us to climb into fror the canoe. Ve really should ha been acrobats, but even 1 managed finally # get transferred, althous I thought several times I should tumbling into the angry sea. “I understand that it's virtual impossible for any vessel to dock a Grand Basan. “I remember the first view T had o the African coast. It was quite flat looking, and, because of the ecarly morning light, looked like a long black mud bank, but as we got neares and it got lighter we could see thick growth of scrubby trees. T w standing on deck with the mate, and I happened to look over into the water—what a terrible shock I got there were about two dozen canoes made from the bark of trees, beins paddled alongside our ship by fierce looking, semi-nude native “I called to my husband and aske him not to let those ‘savages’ aboard I remember the captain was quit amused. He told me they weren't dangerous—they wouldn't harm me that they were only hungry. W threw “them several lurge cans « corned beef and some Americn crackers, and I've never seen such scramble. They knacked each oth out of those paperlike canoes ai turned numerous somersaults into 1l water, but most of them finally . a bite or two of the beef and cracker and chattered to us like monkes their thanks and approval.” Mrs. Crocker hesitates to comment or what women are doing “on land” thes. days, for she has been a ‘“sailor” long she feels sort of detached “I really don’t know whether I this it's a good thing for women to vote not. It seems to me the average won an is better off looking after her hu band and children than spending 1 time bothering about who should o should not be the next governor. As | say, I'm on land so little T really shouldn’t comment on women's positic | today in politics.” Mrs. Crocker says that she and th. captain own a little bungalow in suburb of Boston and if the tim. ‘ever comes that they can't sail th briny any more she supposes they wili retire there to spend the remaind of “thelr days.