Show r WA ADMIRAL TItYON DEUNUP Poultney Bigelow Hore Than Hints at the True Eeason For the Less of a Great BattleShip Admiral Tryon whose name recalls te loss of the great British1 ironclad V toria nearly four years ago off the Syrian coast was one of the largest and tallest ne I have ever seen and enjoyed the complete confidence of those who served under him His biography written by a fello admiral is soon to appear but I woider whether it will prove an interesting inter-esting monument considering the fact that he is known to the average Englishman English-man only because he committed the monstrous mon-strous blunder of turning Ironclads In a so ce too small for them His biosri Sber has a hard task before him for Tryons official career lacked the incident inci-dent calculated to stir the readers mind says Poultney BIgelow In Harpers Weekly I remember the late admiral telling me that he was connected with the Tryon whom ail American boys have to learn about as the last English governor of New York On Admiral Tryons last visit to America he made an effort to look up some namesakes of his but was sndlv disappointed by the result His rame Is a familiar one to New Yorkers for we still have our Tryon row near tho city hall Vhst Is there to prevent a recurrence of such a blunder as sent the Victoria and its clever admiral to the bottom of the Mediterranean Very little I regret to say either in the American or he En gUsh service Some years before this calamity I was Tryons guest on board his flagship and there learned to appreciate appre-ciate the qualities which made him non ular among his professional brethren But in those interesting weeks I saw a state of thines dangerous to any service Admiral Ad-miral Tryon loved the pleasures of the table Inordinately but had not at the KUCO time the habit of taking proper physical exercise He was rarely seen on deck and then but for a few minutes before dinner He never dined with the oncers of the ward room but lived In solitary majesty as though discipline might suffer if his lieutenants saw too j much of him Examples arc frequent of croat minds tottering under the effect of i too much food and stimulating drink pent up in a body which refuses to as i similate this material by physicial exer I tlon The larger the body the longer can H bear the strain but the day must come when something will snap and this happens usually in the neighborhood of the brain with men so keenly intellectual as Tryon There Is no good reason why the commander com-mander of a manowar should not meet his brother officers on terms of social equality at least once a day la the ward r I room Did Generals Grant or Sherman or ilcCIellan lose importance because they Tcro in constant intercourse with their subordinates Certainly their authority ould have been Impaired if they had been shallow men boosted Into their positions po-sitions by favoritism and such men might be expected to oppose anything which forced them into unfavorable comparison v Uh their juniors but men at sea wo are often told must act differently Yet can we suppose that a Farragut or a Nelson could have loweed himself in the I eves of his ship because his fellow officers offi-cers saw much of him Tho disease which was growing upon Tryon was largely encouraged by the isolation In which naval tradition permitted per-mitted him to live on board ship Had he been in daily contact with the thirty odd officers of his ship the navy department depart-ment would have learned by private correspondence J cor-respondence that something was wrong and there would not have been a Trvon on board the Victoria Or rather might to not justly say that this gifted man rould have resisted his lower apDetites effectually had he been daily exposed to th < j critical observation of his fellows Our navy has inherited the tradition current cur-rent in that of England and for that reason I sincerely hope that the lesson taught by Tryons disaster shall not have been wasted upon us |