Show THE LIONIZING GALLANT LYON B EDWARD Q s BY V at SOA ASHINGTON rear ad miral henry ware lyon is the highest ranking of fleer of the navy who saw service onboard the man of war trenton during its terrible experience in the samoan hurricane 21 years ago the surviving officers of the navy who faced death that day in the south pacific occasionally hold reunions in the city of washington that areas marked in their way as the yearly meetings in the capital of the officers who fought with dewey in manila bay the experience on the trenton was per fraps worse than any experience of war but admiral lyon then a lieutenant lived through it to take an acene part in bat ties which were waged against other ele ments than those of wind and wave in the samoan hurricane L aut lyon bole an active part in the saving of his ship in the rescue of the men of the bister vessel vandalia which was a total loss the trenton was carided ashore finally by tee terrific sea but through the management t her officer who maintained a per feet discipline in a soul trying time the vessel escaped de truc tion in the samoan bar bor when that tempest came up out of the sea there were gathered of three nations america germac and great britain the story of the tempest has been told time and again everyone perhaps knows how the british sailors whose vessel was the only one staunch enough to put to sea in the teete of the storm cheered cuir sailor brothers who were tattling with death it was under the orders of aleut lyou transmitted to him by capt farquhar of the tren ton that the members of the band of the flagship were lashed to the rigging in order that they might hold their places and play the star banner to the keeping up of the heart of the crew when every moment was thought to be the ships last in the face of death the band played the national altherr and the crew sang while battling with the storm for the mastery there were 47 american officers and sailors lost in that hurricane the reports of the officers of the three american ships told in full the tale of the heroism of ohp common sailors but said nothing of their own heroism the story of the deeds of capt farquhar aleut lyon and of the rest of the officers of the american ship came from the pens of admiring aliens during the spanish war admiral lyon then a eom mander a in command of the dolphin a dispatch boat A message carrier though his craft was command er lyon then baw service in which it is ordinarily con the business of the battleship to engage the dolphin w as present at sampson s bombardments of the forts at the entrance to the harbor of santiago capt lyon with the dalphin which was of such build that a single shell probably would have sunk it constantly ran his vessel in at night close to the fortifications in order to guard against any escape of the spanish craft under cover of darkness it was the dolphin under commander lyon which supported the marines in their fights at guantanamo and at cusco the dolphin constantly shelled the enemy causing them to break from cover to give the marines on shore the opportunity of fighting something besides a hidden enemy ast is i S e W e e fa it was commander lyon of the dolphin who cleared guantanamo bay of the torpedoes with which it was strewn by the spaniards every moment of the time in which he was engaged in this work his vessel was in danger of being sunk by a hidden mine but lyon kept at the task until the seaway was clear of the explosive obstructions in maclay s history of the ted states navy the method of torpedo removal that lyon em aloyed is thus described under the direction of this officer two steam cutters each towing a esst whaleboat some distance astern were employed which steaming in parallel courses passed over every navigable part of the bay between the two whaleboats was stretched a light chain some teet long As the whaleboats drawn by the steam launches moved along on parallel courses the chain swept the water under the surface until it came into contact with a torpedo anchor and cable the obstacle at re t a r d e d the ress of the boats the to r was raised to the sur face and removed As usual with a brave man m mander ly on in writ gitig of 11 e lot removals gave all the credit 1 others of two young ensigns wll cole and gateb stirling jr who commanded tomm the whaleboats lyon wrote it was as plucky an enterprise as ever I 1 witnessed day after day these young cers ventured close in shore within pistol shot of a defense chaparral where spaniards child have fired with certain aim upon them with impunity yet they went about their work as unmindful of their peril as demon a cju iba j problem in o 0 etry in a classroom on the aate r noon of ju n e 6 1898 the D 1 phin was cruls ing east bardot the entrance of S a n t i a go harbor when his vessel was close in shore corn m a n lyan saw a train of open flat cars crowd ed with troops moving along the railroad on the shore toward santiago the road ran through tunnels and cuts in the bluffs but there were occasionally open spaces hn the train appeared in one of the open inga and was ying for shelter beyond lyon opened on it with the dolphin s four inch guns and with A 11 1 if 1 the smaller arms ot the war craft the engineer of the train put on all speed and carried his hu man freight into a tunnel and there he came to a stop lyon had his tour inch guns directed at the waterside wall of the tunnel wall and the shells began to bat ter down the covering A breach was made in the wall and fear ing that the whole thing would cave in the engineer took the train out of the tunnel and gath ering headway it went at full speed for the next hiding place lyon took a flying shot and plant ed a four inch shell into the locomotive s boiler and it waa all up with the train the dolphin went in nearer to the beach and the crew opened with small arms on the troops who returned the fire with their rifles and then made a scramble for cover it is said that in this affair spaniards were killed or wounded rear admiral lyon Is spoken of by his comrades in arms as the gallant lyon lie Is a fine sailor and doubtless he regrets that he has come to the end of active duty cruise ana is in the port of retirement rear admiral bowman mccalla Is an old american sailor who has been obliged by the fixed law of the service to seek a land berth for the rest of his life he is active enough to go through his country s sake more storms and more battles tor but the youngsters must be given a chance and so me of the noise of calla has stowed away within earshot the sounding sea which he loves heroism during the spanish war and heroism at tien feln during the inva sion of china brought honors to mccalla to be added to the accuro of honors earlier and worthily won ears ago admiral mccalla then a commander went ashore at colon on the isthmus of panama and backed by oa 00 blue jackets and marines thrashed a regiment of panama insurgents who were erecting barricades and were attempting to interfere with the central and south american cable offices it was said that mccalla thrashed the insurgents he thrashed them without firing a shot he did not care to involve his government in possible far reaching trouble and so he took means of his own to teach the troublesome ones a lesson without has it that the shedding their blood veracious history american commander atter a showing ot force captured the insurgent leaders and spanked them the cable cutting operations which admiral mccalla conducted wl he in command of the marblehead during the spanish war were among the most notable achieve ments of that conflict being carried on under the beahl est kind of fire not only from the great guns of the forts but from the small and deadly firearms in the hands who lined the shore sharpshooters of hidden spanish during the second week in may 1898 the Maible heads commander made up his mind that there was a chance that the cables of the submarine company in cuba lead ing from cientuegos harbor might be cut it a daring plan which he evolved could be carried out successfully successfully and it brought the plan was carried out it but to the fame not only to the man who conceived younger officers and to the seamen who dared death in fact courted death that they might obey orders to the letter the marblehead and the nashville were brought range ot the shore fortifications their two commanders stood where for hours they were fair marks for the enemy s guns on that day mccalla of the marblehead and his colleagues of the nashville gave their men an example of heroism that to day shines on the pages of naval history it they were heroic their juniors were none less heroic and two boats crews of seamen boni that day the recognition of their government as being men ready to dare anything tor the flag s sake aleut cameron mckae winslow of the nashville took command of the cable cutting outfit consisting 0 launches from the marblehead and its sister ship the orders of the launch commanders were to run la close to colorados point and there to grapple for the cables and to cut them just back of the launches corn ing as close as they could and to avoid grounding were the marblehead and the nashville with the men at the guns ready to cover the work of the heroes commander mccalla directed that because the men in the launches probably were going to their deatha no man should be ordered to the autv but that volunteer should be asked for every man on both ships volun leered for the service the sailors and marines were told by aleut anderson under the orders of commander mccalla that it was extremely likely that those who went would never come back and that it must be dis dundei stood that no man was to go unless he wanted to go they all wanted to go and went in each boat but not all returned mccalla ran the marblehead into a favorable position and opened fire on the rifle pits of the spaniards which ran at right angles to one face of the cable house the nashville shelled the chaparral beyond the launches started toward the beach and reached a point only feet distant from the breaking surf there a cable was grappled lifted and after extreme exertion was cut there were yet other cables and the launches started for the point beneath which one was supposed to lie they found it lifted it and cut it when suddenly the enemy who had been using rifles opened with machine guns which had apparently been brought up in response to a message from the cable house that the enemy was attacking there was a third cable and with the bullets cutting the waves about them like hall on the sea the boat crews worked on aleut winslow was shot through the head he paid no attention to the wound though it was severe robert volz a seaman was shot four times patrick reagan herman W kuchmeister and harry iten dr ickson were mortally wounded and six other men of the command were struck vol came back to life after the surgeons said he must die the work was done and it was costly but naval author atles declare that t was worth the price all the time that the operations in the launches were proceeding commander mccalla standing on the bridge of his ves sel was made the target of the heavy guns and the small guns of the enemy he ran perhaps a greater risk than did the men at work in the small boats but death passed him by it was rear admiral mccalla who at that time had been promoted to a captaincy who took personal corn mand of a hundred seamen and marines and started for the walls of tien tsin his little detachment of sailors and sailor soldiers was the of the forces of the allies to arrive at the chinese city for his services tien tsin fight capt mccalla was advanced three numbers gallant and meritorious as the record puts it at the in his naval rank he as now living at santa barbara probably regretful that his days of active duty aj s ej in the past |