| Show tllt RAKESCHLf Navy Department Gives Out Another An-other Report I NO LET UP ON ADMIRAL t I MANEUVERING OF THE BROOKLYN BROOK-LYN AT BATTLE OP JULY 3 I Testimony of Lieutenant Commander Command-er Hodgson as to What IReally Occurred On the Bridge of the Ship Schleys Request For a Letter Let-ter of Denial t I WashIngton June 19The occurrences occur-rences on the bridge of the Brooklyn during the battle of July 3 having been the subject of a controversy in the newspapers the navy department recently re-cently undertook an investigation of the various allegations Lieutenant Commander Hodgson and Lieutenant I Commander Heilner who have figured in the controversy were both called on for explanations of the utterances attributed I at-tributed to them and the former was 3 ta I directed to report for examination I to Captain Chadwick at Boston The department has now given out for publication Captain Chadwicks report re-port on the matter I is not ei determined de-termined whether or not the answer or Lieutenant Commander Heilner will be made public at this time Chadwicks report Is a follows U S S New York Boston Mass June 17 7899 Sir In obedience to your orders of the 12th instant I have to report the following as to the statement state-ment by Lieutenant Commander Hodg son of the conversation between Rear Admiral Schley and himself during the action of July 3 iSIS He states as follows As we were approaching the Spanish Span-ish ships I heard Admiral Schley port or starboard several times to Captain Cook in the conning tower the admiral being on the platform surrounding the tower I had been on the bridge above and was just coming down to report the position of the ship when I heard the admiral say Hard a port The Maria Teresa was then hauling abaft our port beam The Brooklyn was heading about northeast What He Told Schley I told the admiral or at least suggested sug-gested to him that the Texas was very close on our starboard hand and that turning to starboard would bring us close to her I dont know that I used the word collision I did not say you mean starboard I intended in-tended him to understand there was danger of running into the Texas He said all right or words to that effect I cannot repeat verbatim When I knew he was going to turn to starboard I suggested backing the starboard engine in order to make a smaller circle and give the Texas a wider berth but he decided against that as decreasing the speed of the turn He did not say that I know of we are < near enough to them the Spaniards already The only thing I gathered from what he said was that if we turned to port we should get so close that we should expose ourselves to torpedo attacks I suppose he meant torpedo boats and replied to him that I had not seen them Lieutenant Commander Hodgson states he did not intend to convey in his note of denial sent at the request of Admiral Schley and published in the AAashington Post the idea that no such colloquy took place He states regarding regard-ing this as follows Asked For a Denial Admiral Schley wrote me enclosing an editorial from a New York paper of June 1 asking me to write a denial of what he phrased an oftrepeated calumny ca-lumny He said he had no recollection of any such conversation I wrote a lengthy letter of explanation giving my recollection of the conversation as nearly near-ly as possible Aamirat acmey wrote me saying There is much In your letter which I should not like to use as It would provoke pro-voke an assault upon you which I would not like to happen What I want to show is that the dialogue did not occur oc-cur I then wrote a denial of the colloquy certainly not intending that no such colloquy occurred but that it was not as printed At the same time I sent with this an explanatory letter explaining to the admiral that the letter of denial was a denial of the dialogue as It appeared ap-peared in print and that I had told the correspondent of the paper that the substance of the conversation was correct cor-rect In writing the letter I wished to refute the fact of any controversy existing ex-isting at a critical stage of ie battle It the letter was a denial of the words as they stood in the published article a denial of their literal correctness and not a denial of the substantial correctness correct-ness of the statement A copy of the letter has not been retained re-tained by him he had a rough draft which has been mislaid Lieutenant Commander Hodgson aopends his signature sig-nature as a voucher for the accuracy with which the foregoing Is given Very respectfully F E CHADAA1CK Captain U S N A G HODGSON Lieut Commander U S N To the secretary of the navy |
