Evening Star Newspaper, January 13, 1929, Page 87

ILLUSTRATED FEATURES Part 7—8 Pages MAGAZINE SECTION he Sunday Stard WASHINGTON, D. UNDAY MORNING, JANUARY 1929. 18, FICTION HUMOR AND | Growth of the United States Navy and Its Heritage of Glory Exploring the Rich Store of Astounding Adventure in Little Known and Neglected American Naval Records—A Few Specimens of Valor and Bravery in the Crucial Revolutionary Days Which Gave Rise to the Most Fascinating Traditions Ever Known Among Navy Men. BY CHARLES (Author of “The American Orcl LL American naval officers yearn and pray for a bigger Navy—as blg as the biggest and a shade better. At this the peace socleties imagine a vain thing, To the naval officers, say trade and chilled-steel business. that by a figure of speech is called civil without finding another body of men budgets. It is something a million miles away from the chance of personal profit that moves them to bear up in the ran heritors of the greatest naval story and were ever known among men. No: I do not mean to strum the chords of nationalistic vaunting nor any- I mean that, looking at the record cold bloodedly and as & story of extraordinary human achievements and nothing else, there is no | fellow to the amazing story of the American Navy in the great epic days of thing of that kind. its youth. Now, here is a matter that seems beyond explanation, Set aside the Annap- olis men, and I suppose it is a safe bet that in the United States of America five persons know the story of Salamis for one who knows the exploits of the even in the Revolution that gave this country birth. Yet if we American Navy could look at these matters without the sentiment. the story of the American Navy other navy look like three old dime pieces. Again, not nationalistically—humanly. The naval officers know these as- well as they know their own names. tounding and neglected records as ‘were white-robed angels in an orchestra able to own this knowledge without a feeling of tremendous uplif and a resolve that a Navy so marvelously R i be in,a second place upon reaching maturity. . . THE Ppolicy of naval expansion about which Congress and the country are now going to the mat may be well or ill: I am not saying. But this I say, that the richest unexplored stores of veritable adventure now remaining hidden from the heed of ambitious an- nalists or fictionists are in the Ameri- can naval records. And next I note the shrieking anomaly that you will find many school children in the United States aware of the piratical perform- ances of Drake and Frobisher and few that ever heard of Truxtun, Barney, Rathbone, Daniel Waters- or Nicholas Biddle, although these were among the many that enabled this country to live and not perish. For this fact there may be some adequate explanation, but I have never heard of it. For a Sunday morning's entertain- ment and just to indicate how much the naval men may have on their side, suppose we take a few specimens of the hardihood, skill and bulldog tenacity that in the crucial Revolutionary days served the American cause and turned the world's limelight on a handful of impromptu American war ‘vessels about the size of fishing smacks. We will take them without choosing and with- out prejudice from a list of many amazing deeds. * K ko x ABRAI'AM WHIPPLE. Excm’r only for the Boston massacre, the first blood that was shed in the Revolutionary struggle was shed on the water, and the first overt act of Tesistance was by American seafaring men. By 1772 the exactions and tyrannies of the British government had stung the colonies to 80 much protest that England massed and vessels of the Wwas to hold up any- thing that looked like a wlonh?nhl’;. however harmless, and put its skipper ‘on the inquisitorial gridiron. One day in June, 1772, an English man-of-war attempted to arrest the smart sloop Hannah, which was run- ning as a packet between Providence and New York. The skipper of the Hannah refused to stop at the British fleet’s order and held its course. The admiral ‘sent his swift armed schooner Gaspe in pursuit. The Hannah’s cap- tain, who knew the Sound like the in- side of his hand, led the chase where his own vessel was safe enough, but ‘Where the Gaspe, drawing two more feet, ‘went aground in Providence River. Abraham Whipple was a sea captain courageous, living in Providence. That night he summoned the citizens to meet ein front of his house, came out on his Toof dressed like an Indian, and made a fiery harangue, ending with an ap- peal to all of his order of mind to dis- guise themselves as he was disguised and follow him. Sixty-four responding, he put them aboard his sailed down to where the Gaspe lay eground. He had loaded up with a choice cargo of cobble stones, which seemed unusual lading, but this Whipple person knew what he was about. When he got within hailing distance of the Gaspe he demanded surrender. ‘The English replied with a shot, to ahich Whipple’s men answered with itheir own firearms, and the master of the Gaspe was shot through the body. Whipple ran in close, hopped aboard Iwith his men, cobblestones in hand, ‘-nd delivered the cargo with neatness and dispatch where it would do the imost good for the purposes intended. After a brief struggle the British sur- ‘rendered at discretion. When they had /been removed ngpple set the Gaspe on fire and stood by at a safe distance ‘until she blew up. The news struck the royal governors ‘ol' the colonies almost speechless with ‘indignation, but the British government Was not so'dumb. It offered a reward of $5,000, extremely he~vy for those days, for information on” which the doers of this deed could be prosecuted, including immunity as well as pay for informers. . Everybody in Providence knew who burned up the Gaspe, but neither gold nor immunity, nor both, could produce information. The King appointed an extraordinary commission, consisting of three governors and a chief justice, to conduct an unremi ting search. Even these eminent men were foiled, and Whipple continued to 80 in and out of Providence unmolested. Reasoning persons might have known then that the attempt to walk on the necks of such pzople would be a chancy adventure, but six years of hard fighting | Wwere required to pound this into the British head. ‘When the war began Whipple entered the slender Navy of the new republic and served it with energy and success. The English, who knew well enough of his part in the Gaspe business, desired above all things to capture him. The admiral of the Sound fleet sent word to him that he would “hang him at the yard's arm as a common pirate.” At this Whipple apnlied his right thumb to the end of his nose and his Jeft thumb to his right little finger and agitated violently the fingers of both ;hands. Then he wrote back to the sdmiral: “It is necessary to catch your man before you hang him.” He served with distinction in the operations around Charleston and else- where, and after the war removed with his family to Ohio, where he became one of the founders of Marietta. JEREMIAH O'BRIEN. Amn the battles of Lexington and Concord and before Bunker Hill, the British war schooner Margaretta was at Machias, Me, convoying two other vessels loaded with lumber for e, at Boston. The townspeople, who heard from Lexington a few days L The more ships, the more jobs. Not if I know anything about the American Navy. The whole of the thing vessel and | V! EDWARD RUSSELL, hestra and Theodore Thomas.”) groan, extremists rage and the captious these last, it is just a matter of their lization could be passed through a sieve that bother less about their personal ks of the Navy expansionists. They are most fascinating service traditions that enchantments of classical romance and makes the story of the Greek or any If the; of golden harps, they would probably hg aureoled in its beginning should not R were at church on Sunday, March 10, Th> English got word of the attempt, and, jumping out of the church win- dows, beat it to their vessel. Once on board, they lost no time in unmooring and dropping down to a safer anchor- age. Machias men got out their rifles and shotguns, also scythes, axes and crowbars, seized a sloop and gave chase. The schooner tried to get away, but the sloop outfooted her and the two vessels came to a _hand-to-hand grapple some distance off the mouth of the harbor. The schooner had 4 guns and 14 swivels. The sloop was without heavy guns, but the men on board were in- finitely the better shots. With their handy rifles they kept the quarterdeck of the Margaretta swept clear of helms- men until the sloop ran alongside, when & battle began on the schooner deck. The Machias men proved their fighting qualities and soon had the schoonor crew prisoners. The leader of this fight, the,first naval encounter of the Revolution, was a Machiasan named O'Brien—Jeremiah 80 :X;E}I‘l. From l;l,:dn::ln:b nhnd his deeds ave surmi been of Irish descent. s rgaretta to his sloop and setting out after further captures. When the British heard of the loss of their schooner they sent out two war vessels to get the valorous O'Brien. He ma- neuvered his sloop until he had separated his pursuers, when he returned and captured them, one after the other, and took them into Watertown, Mass,, where the Massachuseits ', being then in session, voted him high honors and a captain’s commission. LAMBERT WICKES. Nm months before the Declaration of Independence, and whilé a re- nental Congress started the beginning of the foundation of the American Navy public was only dreamed of, the Conti- b been Torel 8. . Between them, Wickes and Connyng- ham, according to indubitable hipping goods English bottoms. They did even more than that, because they helped convince by ordering two cruisers to be built, one of 10 guns, the other of 14. Two months later they voted for 13 addi- tional cruisers. Aspiring young seamen, eager to serve the Revolution, sought command of these vessels. One of them was a Yankee named Lambert Wickes, then about 35. He had command of a small sloop-of-war called the Reprisa]l and took her to Europe, being the first American war vessel to appear in European waters. He did not idle as he went along, but captured everything he saw afloat and arrived with a trail of prizes. This being good business, he immediately chased out after more; but not before the British Ambassador, stung to fury by the American impudence, had begun the protests that angered the French and helped to drive France into the ar. ‘Wickes scoured the English Channel and captured prize after prize, among them a richly ladden royal packet run- ning between Falmouth and Lisbon. ‘When these arrived in French ports, the British renewed their protest, and the French, to avoid a breach of peace, obliged Wickes to sell his prizes outside of the three-mile limit, which he did handily and with profit. The money he reaped in this way was of invaluable advantage to the American commis- sioners then in France, for it not only enabled them to maintain themselves in impressive state, but to buy and equip ships for the new navy, which immedi- ately became additional thorns in the British side. ‘When his last prize had been dis- posed of, Wickes, with two other vessels flying the American flag, boomed out from Nantes, and for weeks harried the British Channel of everything smaller than a frigate, and spreading a novel terror in the best commercial circles. Once he was chased desperate- ly by a British line-of-battle ship, but escaped safely into a French port. His exploits were now ably seconded by another of his own stripe— * ok K * GUSTAVUS CONNYNGHAM. 'HIS was a gentleman and a sailor, one of whom it would seem we know too little. With the proceeds of ‘Wickes’ amazing string of prizes the American commissioners secured, with many other things, a fast cruiser, to which they gave the name of Surprise, though it was not long before she seemed to have merited rather the name of the Astonisher. Connyngham sailed up and down the ' English and Irish channels, making so many prizes that at last he had scarcely | men enough ta handle his own ship. In | a few weeks he and Wickes had shaken the business of England with an un- precedented terror. Merchants no longer dared to ship their goods under the English flag, and at one time as many as 40 French vessels were counted in the Thames loading with English freight —something never known before. In- surance rose to unprecedented rates. Even for the passage of 18 miles, from Dover to Calais, almost under the guns of Dover Castle and in sight of the naval station, 10 per cent additional was | | charged. Not an English merchant ves-; sel would leave port for Ireland with- | | out armed escort. Capt. Connyngham seems to have had his nerve with him. When the Surprise, after many fights and adventures, was in need of repairs, | | he painted out the name of his ship, painted in another, hoisted the British flag and ran into a British port, where he hired British workmen to put his ship in order. Then he ran across to France that America not only meant grim business in the war, but had men m knew how to make that business In the meantime men of the Wickes and Connyngham type were command- vessels in American waters -and giving life on the ocean wave another complexion. In the year 1776, 342 British vessels, many of them armed, had been cap- tured on the seas by the American crulsers, public and private. The next year the number of captures rose to 467 and British merchants, disgusted with their losses, were beginning to doubt the wisdom of trying to coerce such a stiff-necked people. In spite of the appearance of 70 British men-of- war on the American coasts, with crews totaling 26,000 men, the American pri- vateers and national vessels continued to make captures and to bring them into port. Yet, oddly enough, the total of men employed on all the American ships, according to Macaulay, the his- torian, did not exceed 5,000. DANIEL WATERS. HE was in command of the privateer Thorn, 16 guns, sailing out of Bos- ton. In the Summer of 1778 he fell in with two British armed ships—the Governor Tyson, of 16 guns, and the Sir William Erskine, of 18. Waters tackled the Tyson first and beat her to a sur- render, after which he started for the Erskine and fought her until she struck her colors. With a crew on board his prize, he returned to pick up the Tyson, which managed to elude him in the night, but next day he sighted the Sparlin, of 18 guns, with which he had a rattling fight, captured her and a port in Ireland, entered boldly, bought supplies, gave in payment orders on an agent in Spain and coolly sailed away. before, had a different idea. They Jaid & plot to capture the captain and officers of the Margaretta while they As the British navy in these ports was engaged at that time in scouring the seas for him, he seems not to have ’ “DON'T GIVE UP THE S‘HIP”»THE BATTLE, BETWEEN THE CHESAPEAKE AND THE SHANNON. (From s lithograph of the painiing by J. C. Schetky, reproduced through courtesy of Kennedy & Co., New York.) steered both of his prizes safely into Boston. JOHN MANLEY. AMONG the daunting difficulties that confronted Washington when he took command of the American Army was a lack of anything to fight with— most of all, of the fairly essential item of powder. His correspondence pub- M .|in five of these vessels the treriches. i seems most bed as ‘hellion. most these adventurers was Je ' |such ferocity that he turned away his lished a few f!‘ll'l light on this evnf.:tfrolz situation. Ac- tually he found himself without enough powder to so much as prime the mus- kets of his sentries, and if a battle had come he must have fought it with ‘wooden sticks, if at all. " From this deadly peril he rescued himself by sending out ships and sailors to capture the supplies intended for casts a strange THE FIRST SALUTE TO THE STARS AND STRIPES. (Prom » copyrishted painting by Edward Moran, reproduced through courtesy of Fishel, Adler & Schwarts, eopyright owners.) ' where the sunny b antagonist and brought his prize safely | 1™ into Plymouth. A little later, when he was in com- mand of the Hancock, oné of the first regular American war vessels, he was ¢hased by an English frigate that could have blown him out of the water. Manley, being outsailed, ran his ship ashore. The British with joy sent boat parties to capture her. Manley sum- moned the inhabitants. The militia appeared on the grounds. The boat parties took one satisfying survey of the reception prepared for them and put about for their ship., When the Irigate had disappeared Manley got the Hancock afloat and resumed the busi- ness of capturing supply vessels. In this profitable industry he carried on a good trade. Once he sighted a British war vessel that he thought Jooked about his own size and quite attractive and took out after her. A few rounds impressed the British com- mander with the thought that he had had enough for that day and he started to leave. Manley hung on like a terrier and ran down upon the fugitive. They fought for an hour and a half, when the British ship, in a way to being bnmsnd not before he had made his name con- spicuous from one end of the war area to the other. When he was brought on board he came cursing his consort and declaring if she had stood by the o 160, "as ey sat ohiaid Nothing could he %y hnhx:‘;xever discussed the presidency. two would have licked the whole British squadron. He was exchanged after a year and a half, skipped back to the scene of ac- tion, and got command of the privateer Cumberland. While he was annexing prizes in the ‘West Indies the British got him again and carried him to the Barbadoes, where he was locked up in jail and treated as a felon, and badly at that. He broke out of jail by bribing the jailer, got to the water front, seized a sloop, and made his way to Martinique and so to Boston, where he took command of an- other privateer and resumed prize-tak- ing operations, which he carried on with his usual assiduity and success. Once the British thought they had him again off Portsmouth, but a terrific storm arose, in which the British ships disap- peared, and Manley again escaped, al- though badly injured. * ok ok * NE great trouble that beset the American naval operations through- out the war was the lack of men. The land army continually demanded the first supplies and never an American ship went to sea fully manned. What was worse, so great was the dearth of man power that captains were fre- quently forced to make up their crews from prisoners and other disaffected persons who usually skulked in a fight. Somet| they tried to capture the ship and mutinied when they could. Never but once with John Manley. Drawing his cutlass and roaring like®a bull, he ran in upon the mutineers— slashed right and left—sending them reeling. Probably his fierce counte- nance struck as much terror as his bare sword. Anyway, he closed that incident within three minutes. In July, 1779, he captured two British privateers; brought in a string of prizes and going to sea again ran against the British war vessel Surprise. She 28 guns and 230 men. Manley, in the Jason, had but 18 guns and 170 men, had | they would not but he fought his enemy to a standstill, nevertheless. These are but samples. Joshua Bar- ney was a master’s mate in the fleet at 16, a lieutenant at 17, in command of a vessel the same year, fought in many desperate engagements, was seven times captured by the British, twice shut up in the filthy and notorious Mill prison, twice made his escape, accused of piracy by the British seeking revenge, narrowly escaped hanging at their hands and lived to torment them throughout the War of 1812. This astounding career, which makes fiction seem tame and tasteless, was for more than 100 years unnoticed in the dusty records of the Navy Department until it was provi- dentially rescued by Mr. Ralph D. Paine and became the subject of one of the most brilliant books of recent years. Richard Dale, after much success in an American brig, being captured by a British frigate and imprisoned in Eng- land, made his escape, wandered about the country enduring privations, smug- gled himself aboard a packet bound for Dunkirk, was seized almost in sight of safety, brought back again to prison, again escaped, made his way to America and immediately reappeared as the commander of another vessel inflicting injury upon the enemy. Nicholas Biddle, John Barry, Alex- ander Murray, James Nicholson—time and space fail me to recount the per- formances of the long list whose names are still bright in the Navy Department files, if forgotten elsewhere. But what was true of the Revolutionary epoch is still more brilliantly true of the War of 1812 and has reappeared in every other national crisis. Because they have inherited this phe- nomenal accretion of great deeds and incredible daring, the officers of today are zealously wishing that the Navy shall not remain in a secondary place when otherwise their country has suc- ceeded to the first. If they were nice white-robed angels have this wish. They are not white-robed angels, now, but some of them may be, some day. BY THOMAS CARENS. ‘T _WAS 11 o’clock in the morning at Bohemian Grove, that wilderness retreat among the redwoods ‘where the tired business men of San Francisco annually forget their cares, Eleven o'clock in the morning of August 2, 1927. It was 1 o'clock in the Black Hills of South Dakota and 3 o'clock in the afternoon in Wall street, New York—facts not unrelated to the story, but which did not seem important at all to Herbert Hoover and George Aker- canvas wnmmtmammauuem tackle. earby Russian River, the annual| all Bohemians, lay of the , scheduled for following week. Washington was 3,000 miles away, and so were all the details which engage a cabinet officer’s e. Just after 11 o'clock came an inter- A telephone message for Mr. Hoover. A m\m of disappointment that the civill world had located him his retreat. ‘See if it's imj t, .” And off went Akerson through the message were d'? give some one a “Breeze” back in his undergraduate days at Harvard, years before. Apparently the important. 4 the younger man’s face. “It’s important all right, Chief,” said Akerson. “That was the A. P. in San Francisco. The President just gave out a statement in Rapid City that he won't te .next year. Says he be a candidal doesn’t choose to run.” ‘The two men looked into each other’s eyes. Unspoken thoughts, dreams of the future raced through the mind of each. In more than a year of close association ey the overwhelming opinion of the country that President Coolidge would be renominated and re- And now his sensational re- nunciation changed the whole course of politics. What was to be done? * ok ok W!LL. there was fishing near by in the Russian River, and Mr. Hoover had not completed the tinkering with his tackle. The two men decided to proceed with their vacation plans. But such admirable sang-froid could not continue. The news was all over Bo- hemian Grove. Friends, fellow - Bo- hemians, “original Hoover men” by the score, came trooping up toward the Hoover tent. And as the hours went by the l';;wer m': in :kll parts gl fi:lhe country began to speak, throug e- grams relayed from Palo Alto and San Francisco. Late in the afternoon Mr. Hocim made a deemnmh P = sorry, George,” he as- sistant, “but it looks as if we’ll have to 80 back to Palo Alto and get to work.” So _they went. Hoover and Akerson, the “Chief” and “George,” to plunge into the biggest of all the jobs of Her- * bert Hoover had ever undertaken, a job that was to engross every waking mo- ment of both for 15 trying months, but which came to a glorious conclusion on the night of November 6, 1928. And through all those months there Hoover’s Right-Hand Man a Specialist in Politics ulty relieved the solemnity of the White House in war time—there will tenant, in the person of George Edward Akerson of Minnesota as the secretary to the new Pre:ldent;' % * AS @ newspaper man in ‘Washington and in Minneapolis, at the benches in half a dozen national ventions, and at other con- We see him first on his uncle's s in Southern Minnesota, where he spen the Summers of his youth. He had beén born in sepummi’;a:o.‘rkht in , but a resh air possible, and those Summers on the farm helped develop the sturdy frame—so curiously similar to that of his chief, a powerful torso on long, slender legs—which stood up so well in a grueling political campaign. George's mother intended that her boy should spread happiness as he jour- neyed through life, and to that end she provided him with & thorough mu- sical education. Even today, when his piano remains untouched for weeks at a time, he is ready at any time to switch from a discussion of the tariff to an expression of opinion on the comparative merits of Bach, Debussy or MacDowell. But music did not hold first place in the dreams of the growing boy. His high school days came in the midst of the Roosevelt era, and the man in the White House was the boy's idol. When he read somewhere that Roosevelt had defined politics as the “science of gov- ernment” young George determined to dabble a little in that science. He read all he could about it. A history, par- ticularly of his own country, fascinated him far more than the stories of Indian fighters and of newsboys destined come captains of industry—the sort of literature provided for adolescent America at r.he‘mm‘ ‘o{‘nu century. SOM!WHAT automatically George en- tered the University of Minnesota, but he was not entirely satisfied. That institution naturally put its greatest emphasis on the problems of Minnesota and its farming population. It could not satisfy a lad who wished to study politics with an introspective eye. His closest friend and adviser, Andrew Ben- ton, a business man in Minneapolis, made some inquiries and reported that the ancient university of Harvard could tell him all he desired to know about political science. There was a hitch, however. Harvard demanded crtain perliminary credits in the classics and dead languages. George lacked them. But he decided to get them in the Eeast, and his steps finally took him to Allegheny College in Penn- pal reason for se- lecting Allegheny was that he had the promise of a job near by, by which he could pay his way and perhaps save money for the years ahead at Harvard. The job was to serve as organist in a little Catholic Church. ‘This breezy youngster, with Presby- terian upbrtnfings, saw nothing unusual in such employment. Neither did the saintly old pastor of the church. They got along famously together. George could no more understand religious in- tolerance then he can now, and were very few days when Aker- | Son was not at his chief’s shoulder. | Not just a secretary, carrying out orders, but everything that his official status the campaign, “assistant to Mr. . Contact man with the lef” and who should not, radiating cheer and optimism when others were gloomy, the key man in as smooth a bit of political machinery as this country has ever seen. And so while the newspapers of the ocountry speculate about cabinet places, discuss the decision, of the new Presi- dent toward Borah and Mellon and Morrow and Donovan and Work, refash- fon Cooll policies into Hoover poli- other ways try to foresee beyond March 4, one place traf is already t room in not dences of a tighter-lipped superior, B of Jos Tum~ T S nothing made him happier than the clear-cut pronouncement on that ques- tion by his Quaker chief during the bit- terness of a national campmgr. Today, George can put his Catholic friends to by vincing them that he Plleltgl.nl. and for two years he stee] himself in ;hlen historical m = an( a study great who moved througl “(n'nnlu 8 few manths :‘mm & whirlwind courtship. met Blake, freshman at Wellesley, whose home was T (Continusd on Siih. Paged