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Show A DAY IN THE BROOKLYN NAVY YARD. If you have long had it in mind to visit the Brooklyn Navy Yard when in New York, your first glance over the premises (easily reached from Fulton ferry by street cars) will disappoint you. You will look for the many things pictured in the illustrated papers, and when you do not find them the handsome grounds, neatly kept buildings and clean, stone-paved streets and avenues will not get a second glance from the visitor, who has expected to find a side-show on every corner. Every street within four blocks of the main entrance to the navy yard is narrow, crooked and dirty, the pavements of the worst and the sidewalks no better. A walk of two blocks from the street car brings you to the guarded gate and the blue-coast bows you in. You are then accosted by an officer who asks your name and what brought you there and when he is satisfied that you do not intend to shoulder any of the big anchors and climb the wall, he furnishes you with a blue-card pass which permits you to roam at will. Keep straight down the walk past the receiving house and you find yourself looking up at three ships hulls, two of them planked and almost finished to the rails, and the third showing its great bare ribs like some gigantic skeleton. You need not ask how long ago the keels were laid. Keel and plank and rib and stern are covered with moss and mold of years, and some of the stout hemlock supports ?????????????? youngest of the hulls was indeed for a ram, and this much had been accomplished when the end of the war came to silence the voice of the hammer and saw. The others are yet older. Somewhere in the dusty past is a record of a Congressional appropriation to build two such ships. When thus far completed the money gave out, or a new Secretary of the Navy came in, and these rusting, rolling hulls are the only representatives of the tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars drawn form the government purse. No one can say if they will ever be completed and it is no one's business in the navy yard to care. The great hulls, ready on the ways for the launching, and towering high above the shade trees, will doubtless remain where they are until time makes rust of bolt and dust of plank and rib. The only relief I could find in half a day's travel about the grounds is the prow or ram of the Confederate run Mississippi, which was removed from her stem when she fell into the hands of the Union gunboats. It is a piece of iron shaped like a big "V" and about eight or nine feet long. The beak is a solid mass of iron two or three feet thick for a distance back of four feet, and the whole was bolted to the bow of the ram in the strongest manner. The cigar shaped torpedo-boat, the old figure heads and other illustrated relics have been removed to some other yard. There are a few old cannon lying around and others in use as snubbing posts along the slips, while to the left of the main avenue are cords of round shot and shell. The flag ship Tennessee had just been put in commission, and hundreds of men were busy fitting her for a cruise. In the great store-room ship's bread, crackers, coffee and so forth were being put up to go aboard, and from the shops she was receiving ropes, chains, sails, and a hundred other needed articles. The ship had been newly painted and everything was neat and tidy. The amount of provisions going aboard for the cruise was simply astonishing. The great war steamer Vandalia, lying in the slip just beyond, waiting orders, was accessible to visitors, and a dozen or more wandered up and down her decks in a body. There were about a hundred men aboard, with but little for any one to do. Free access was to be had to all decks and all sights of interest. Roomy as the great ship is, her crew is packed away in semi darkness, where lights are needed whenever food is served, and where the hammocks have little space to keep the motion of the vessel. Across the slip which opens into East River was moored the grand Colorado, carrying forty-five guns. Sails were unbent, fires out, gangways covered, and the only sign of life aboard was the single sentinel pacing up and down behind the black guns, whose muzzles yawned form the port holes in double tier. Seen under full sail three or four miles away she would look grand. Walked over from stem to stern as she lies in her berth, her bulk strikes one as immense, and so it is. The largest ocean passenger steamer looks but half-grown beside her. In commission and at sea, she is village in herself, and down in her dark, deep hold is packed away provisions to feed the village for many months. There is only one place in the yard where you will want to go and discover a sentinel across your path. The great ark shaped bulk for the reception of recruits and the lodging of extra crows is a curiosity to the eye, but when you start out to secure a closer view you are informed that it is forbidden ground or water, as the ark is afloat. The great dry-dock is alone worth a visit to the yard. On this occasion a Spanish steamship is in dock and a hundred men are working at her keel and bottom. The basin is of solid stone; dry as a table, and when you stand and look down into vast depths you are frightened at the distance. Stone steps run all the way around, but one must have a light foot and clear head to descend them. Into this dock can be floated the largest ship in the world, except the Great Eastern, and when the water has been pumped out 500 men can work in the basin and have plenty of room for the handling of material. The gale is a curious piece of mechanism which has several times been illustrated and written up. One of the pleasantest buildings in the yard has two stories set apart as a naval museum, and a curious place it is. Floors, stairs and tables shine with neatness and everything is arranged in the nicest order. One feature of the museum is its rare old engravings and paintings. There is a portrait of every naval commander in the history of the Republic, with others of Franklin, Morse, Hamilton, Fish, Washington, Lafayette, etc. Some of them are the only likenesses extant, while others were presented by important personages. There is no weapon of warfare, except the big cannon, which cannot be found here, and each weapon has a written history. Here hangs a sword, which was the only article saved from gunboat or sloop which went down in storm or fight. There hangs a broken and shattered musket which did service at Tripoli, here rests an anchor which was fished up in the Bay of Biscay or the Red Sea; over there is a ten foot model of a man-of-war burned at Gibraltar in 1845. Every craft loves its legends, and none better than sailors. Every good old ship of Paul Johns days is here remembered in some form or other. If a piece of plank or frame could not be had, there is an engraving to keep memory alive. Ships which have skirted strange coasts have brought home native war canoes, battle axes, bows, arrows, clubs, knives, head-dresses, shields and other curious things, and grinning in a diabolical manner at you from a glass case is an Egyptian mummy with part of the wrapping torn off to reveal the black shriveled flesh. More than half a century ago, Mrs. Hamilton Fish presented the United States steamer Unadilla with the ship's bell here before the visitor, and deep in its metal is carved a hope and a prayer that American valor may ever maintain American independence. Among the relics of past wars are two great unexploded shells, which were fired from the castle of St. Juan D. Ullos?, Vera Cruz, at the American forces together with swords, knives, muskets and other things taken from the enemy under more or less singular circumstances. The museum contains shells from every sea, geological specimens from every land, and its store of interest is being added to every time a government vessel returns home from a cruise. The derrick, which stands near the dry-dock, is a curious structure, operated by steam, and intended to swing the great guns and other heavy articles from dock to ship or vice versa. There is not another like it in the country, and it picks up and swings twenty tons as easily as the ordinary derrick lifts a barrel of flour. Not far from the great basin are two subbing posts in the wharf which have a history. There are two old iron cannon, chipped and defaced, which were captured just before the battle of Vera Cruz. Filled with patriotism and liquor, a number of Mexicans put these two guns aboard of a small steamer and started out from Vera Cruz to annihilate the American men-of-war getting into position for the bombardment. They didn't annihilate very much. A shot from a frigate disabled the steamer, and boat, guns, greasers fell into the clutches of Uncle Sam. When the guns were overhauled it was found that each one was loaded to the muzzle, and had they been discharged they must have knocked the steamer to pieces. Wandering here and there I came upon a marine pacing up and down a lonely wharf. There was no ship in the slip, no buildings behind him, and yet the planks were chafed with his walking. "Are you on duty here?" I asked. "Yes'r." "Can I pass?" "Yes'r." "Can anybody pass here?" "Yes'r." "Are you guarding a ship?" "Nozur." "Officer's quarters?" "Nozur." "Store-houses?" "Nozur." "Then what is the object of placing a sentry here?" "I don't know." "Ever had any instructions?" "Nozur." "Well, you go ahead and walk. If you should stop walking for two minutes on this cold December day, do you what would happen?" "Nozur." "Well, the War Department would get such a set-back that the shock would be felt all over Europe." "Yes'r." And he looked anxiously around and resumed his monotonous pace. Roaming at will over the grounds and along the slips and basins, one will see something at every turn to halt his feet, and half a day is none too much time for one who wants to remember what he saw. He will see much to wonder over, much to admire, and sentiment will be strongly appealed to as he looks last upon the great rusty anchor with its broken fluke and reads the legend upon the pedestal. "Faithful in storm and tempest and danger, rest ye here in helpless old age rest ye, with a sailor's blessing." <br><br> M. Quad, in Detroit Free Press. |