OCR Text |
Show THE NAVAL PARADE. lnsiurliif.- .Speotaele. of llunclrrcls of Vessels Ves-sels in Proi-ession. New York, Sept. .(0. 'J lie naval pa rade from the vantage points of the warships, was an immense marine picture, pic-ture, a water pageant with so little of incident, compared with its great size, that it appeared to the eye as a painting paint-ing rather than a drama. The vast gathering of water craft maintained an average speed of eight knots, but so magni licet) t was its area that the impression was one of exceedingly exceed-ingly slow and stately movement. The picture was continually changing, chang-ing, but it melted so slowly and in such measured rythm from form to form that the sence of motion was largely lost. It started under a brilliant bril-liant sky. passed at the mouth of the Hudson through the threat of an ugly storm, and emerged through a rainbow arch that stretched from shore to shore into a clear and brilliant sunset oft' the Grant tomb. The wharves and piers and rocky heights and grassy noles were black with frantic, enthusiastic people, who strived weakly to make their shouts heard above the perfect bedlam of tooting whistles that accompanied the admiral ashore and afloat. As the tomb of General Grant on Riverside drive was reached, the fleet paid its tribute to the memory of the great warrior with a national salute of twenty-one roaring guns. The fleet then anchored and reviewed the almost endless procession of craft that steamed past, so burdened with humanity that they looked as if they would turn turtle tur-tle before they got back to their piers. Toward the end the parade became disorganized, and it took hours for the heterogeneous flotilla to geThj " Immediately after Admiral returned from the Sandy i , f? wig-wagger on the bridges, Ja, ' Meet to prepare to get under way . gangways were hauled p am tht booms rigged. Au old quart,.,.,,1, " hurried a dark-, small roll oflninj-1" the main, hand over fist, j( "e, there while the bugle sounded the""? to quarters, and the marinus were tered aft. Then, just as the j,1" weight was giveu, a pull on yards opened the roll and spread four-starred Hag which Farracrut fj' ' as he ran the Fort in New Orleans ' was the Hag which was presented Admiral Dewey. As it broke, sailors at their statioi and the marines on the fpin.rter-d(.,-greeted it with the hip, hip, hooray n got from our ancestors. The flat: float,; proudly all through the pageant. the most precious possession of l'ar gut's pupil, and when it is struck 0n Monday, it "ill probably be forever as it is altogether unlikely that Admiral Ad-miral Dewey will ever command an. other fleet. At 1 o'clock sharp the squadron go' under way. It was an inspiring tin ment, as the column started up tl harbor and the great naval parade be. gan to be a reality. The brilliant code tiags blossomed like flowers on the Olympia from bridge to maintop. It was the order to form in column. The Brooklyn's pennant snapped "Aye, aye" from the signal : 3'ard, and a duplicate set of tlagspassei r the order to the Indiana, whence it , flung from ship to ship down the sqund-ron. sqund-ron. The black speed cones of the Olympia climbed slowly to her yard? as the big cruiser got under way. The other vessels slowly turned like a troop of cavalry, squadron front toward to-ward the Narrows, and then fetching! graceful sweep, headed back up the harbor toward the battery, the Olympia, Olym-pia, escorted by the mayor's boat, the Sandy Hook, in the lead. Hack other, at a 400-yard interval, came the Xett York, then the powerful Indiana ami Massachusetts, the fleet-footed Brooklyn, Brook-lyn, the sturdy old Texas, the rakish, yacht-like Dolphin, the old Lancaster, a relic of another naval age, the powerful pow-erful Chicago, and finally the little Marietta, the rear guard of the fighting craft. Behind stretched the transports and further still, almost lost in the distance, the yachts and miscellaneous craft, hull clown the horizon. The evolution began at 1 o'clock an in 15 minutes the fighting line na; straightened out up the .harbor. Ac miral Dewey was g'oing to his or place at the head of a squadron fa', would have won at need three batte of Manila bay without stopping lo breakfast. The head of the column was a broad arrow. Six torpedo-boats spread out as the boats, three on a side, from tin Olympia's quarter. Outside of them a flying wedge of police patrol boat? formed a great V, whose apex was tht Olympia. Flanking them, ahead and astern, were the harbor fire boats, spouting great columns of water thai turned threateningly toward the excursion ex-cursion boats on either side when they attempted to crowd the line of march. Hut the pageant back of this powerful power-ful vanguard, was not limited to a single nor a sextuple line of ships. was a sinuous marine monster haft mile wide, whose vertebrae were the ships of the white spuadrou. and whose ribs were rows upon rows of every sort of floating thing that had ever run by steam in New York harbor. When the fleet reached the tiirnina point the Olympia dropped out "J Admiral Dewey reviewed the parade-As parade-As the vessels passed the Olympia the crews vied in doing honor to her com- i mander. When evening fell. Dewey. cxauidf-by cxauidf-by the strain, retired to the cabin, am' the Olympia dropped down into the harbor to witness the pyrotccnic diy play. Never before in its history has 'ff York witnessed so great a py roteerj-c display. The great hulks of the h'j tleships of Oowe.vs licet silhouetted against the dark background of ,ll' sky shone from stem to stern "ith myriads of incandescent lights, n'hilf all around innumerable brilliantly decorated yachts and oilier river era. honored the nation's hero. From the bay the letters on llu' bridge, "Welcome, lVwcy." 'f' plainly disccrnable and were cue the features of the celebration. 'lu night was dark and nature lent'"' forces to the display of lirevvorUs an" the sky was illuminated fri-quo"1'! with Hashes of lightning accouipa""'1 by showers which interrupted the rockets, but the good nature of tl , crowds was not dampened. New York has never witness'''1 l' fore anything approaching t'"s "l derful, remarkable demonstration- " Columbian naval parade, the l'u '. ' tiou of Grant's tomb and the reeep u of the North Atlantic squndiv" a fall, all pale before this :V""li0.'",K, tiou to the sailor who, in morning, destroyed an enemy without the loss of n mini ,"' " '"'"''ji is not beyond l ne m. irk I" s!1' u! a, 000,000 people viewed the l'''( , from shore, mid thai a qiuutv'' 0 million were nlhut. |