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Show Recalling An Heroic Deed ofi8Q8 ; w 3 1 - ' . i : ' K . . t . " - - j i iv - ' - . . i A ( - ui . .i ' J' -Vi iCqtx ' . - - - , ' ' - , J- The Sinking of the Collier Merrimac slyC " f " " ' Froma Contemporary Drawing Lieutenant r" V Richmond Pearson HobSOn "s " tearing into the Merrlmac, crashing clear j, through, while the plunging shots from the fort r " Sl !. broke through her decks. I t , '"Not a man must move!' I said; and It was ' s only owing to the splendid discipline of the -rw-' ' men that we were not all killed. We must lie J1 ' ' Vt v--i- X'l ' there till daylight, I. told them. Now and again ' ? , ?f one or the other of the men lying with his face 1 f 't- t " , " ' 1 f- glued to the deck and wondering whether the 'J' -4ji J, ' s ' L' next shell would not come our way, would say , " w " , " t K, I ...i 'Hadn't we better drop off now, sir?' but I said 57"' ' 'H 'Wait till daylight' It would have been Impos- i if 1.sll 3st-. I sible to get the catamaran anywhere but on to s ji.o''''' " Yp j the shore, where the soldiers stood shooting, and : r ".-r ,l r - kO iAwv lhora ihat bJ daylight we might be recog- AVf'v . -. ' AiW4 nized and saved. JSv W V x r "It: was sPlen3i3 the way those men behaved. i .J' V The fire of the soldiers, the batteries and the WW.; VIzcaya was awful. When the water came up on the Merrimac's decks the catamaran floated y amid the wreckage, but she was still made fast yVJ - x - " ,j s, Hy J 'i' - to the boom, and we caught hold of the edges TYl6 Msdal of Honor and clunS on, our heads only being above water. Morro Castle of the United StateS "At daylight the fire ceased and a Spanish 5inkinq of the Collier Merrimac From a Contemporary Drawing tearing Into the Merrlmac, crashing clear through, while the plunging shots from the fort broke through her decks. " 'Not a man must move !' I said ; and It was only owing to the splendid discipline of the men that we were not all killed. We must lie there till daylight, I told them. Now and again one or the other of the men lying with his face glued to the deck and wondering whether the next shell would not come our way, would say 'Hadn't we better drop off now, sir?' but I said 'Wait till daylight' It would have been Impossible Impos-sible to get the catamaran anywhere but on to the shore, where the soldiers stood shooting, and I hoped that by daylight we might be recognized recog-nized and saved. "It was splendid the way those men behaved. The fire of the soldiers, the batteries and the VIzcaya was awful. When the water came up on the Merrimac's decks the catamaran floated amid the wreckage, but she was still made fast to the boom, and we caught hold of the edges and clung on, our heads only being above water. "At daylight the fire ceased and a Spanish 4 By ELMO SCOTT WATSON F- Ir2'TI 1 1 10 oilier day congress authorized 1 I lie presentation of a medal of honor to a man who, as a Iieuten-; Iieuten-; ant In the United States V navy during the Spanish-. Spanish-. Pt o American war, had won U vSir worldwide fame overnight. U JL He was the Col. Lindbergh V of llis day- Ile "fts the h leader of an expedition, the Al3! Jl story of which thrilled the IQ- whole nation and put his CrlYSys name on the lips of every American. Of him the author ify" of an article in a Boston W magazine ln September, 1898, said : "The Spartans who held the pass at Thermopylae Ther-mopylae may be forgotten, the 600 Englishmen who made the charge at Balaklava may go unsung, un-sung, but In this land under the Stars and Stripes forever will linger the memory of the gritty Christian gentleman, Richmond Pearson Hob-son Hob-son of Alabama." "Sic transit gloria mundl . . ." Indeed! For Richmond Pearson Hobson had to wait nearly S5 years for the official recognition of his deed and when it finally caiue, the newspapers, which had once emblazoned his name in streaming headlines, recorded the award of the medal of honor In a news story of only a few brief paragraphs. para-graphs. Hobson was born at Greensboro, Ala., August 17, 1S70. F.ducated In the Greensboro public schools and In the Southern university, he became be-came Interested ln the navy during a visit to New Orleans and won an appointment to the United States Naval academy at Annapolis, from which he was graduated In 1SS9. In the academy he had devoted himself to naval construction con-struction nnd In 1891 he was made an assistant assist-ant naval constructor with the rank of lieutenant, lieuten-ant, which he held at the outbreak of the Spanish-American war. Just before Dewey's memorable victory at Manila bay ln the Philippines a Spanish fleet consisting of four armored cruisers and three torpedo-boat destroyers, led by Admiral Cervera, left the Cape Verde islands for Cuban waters. Cervera succeeded In eluding the "Flying Squadron" Squad-ron" of the United States navy, commanded by Commodore Schley, which had set out to find the enemy, and entered the harbor of Santiago In safety. Schley followed him to Santiago and established a blockade of the enemy fleet while awaiting the arrival of Captain Sampson, acting rear admiral and commander ln chief of our naval na-val forces, who was hurrying to Santiago with a fleet led by his flagship, the New York. The story of how Hobson got his chance for fame is told by John R. Spears In his "History of Our Navy" as follows : "After reaching Santiago and taking one look at the narrow entrance to the harbor the possibility pos-sibility of sinking a ship there to effectually close it, and so prevent Cervera's exit, was apparent ap-parent to many of the officers of the squadron. Sampson, knowing the width of the channel, had considered the plan of sinking a ship In it . . . and in a dispatch dated May 27 had ordered Schley to sink the collier Sterling there, but Schley ignored the order. On the very day he reached Santiago, Sampson began to carry out the plan. "There was the Merrimac. She had been sold to the government at a price twice her value. She was a bad ship she could serve the nation na-tion much better In blocking the channel than In any other way, and preparations to sink her Into the channel were immediately beg-un. At the earnest request of Mr. Richmond Pearson Hobson, assistant naval constructor, he was put In charge. He had been placed on the New York to watch her workings In actual war, and write a report thereon for the chief of his bureau. His knowledge of ships fitted him for the task and he had already showed his courage when he worked the range-finder on the New York during dur-ing the bombardment of San Juan de Porto Rico. "About two hundred men were employed in stripping the Merrimac, for It was Intended to send her in just before daylight next morning. However, after stripping her, it was necessary to fit her with torpedoes that would sink her instantly in-stantly when the time came, and this took so long that day had arrived on June 2 before she was ready. Hobson was anxious to go then, but the admiral ordered him to wait. "Meantime a crew of six men had been selected se-lected from among the hundreds that crowded aft to volunteer. They were Daniel Montague, chief master-at-arms of the New York ; George Charette, gunner's mate, first class, of the New York; J. E. Murphy, coxswain on the Iowa; John P. Phillips, a machinist; Oscar Deignan, coxswain, and Francis Kelly, a watertender, all of the Merrimac. To this crew of six men Coxswain Coxs-wain Rudolphy Clausen of the New York added himself by eluding the vigilance of the officers of-ficers . . . "At 3 o'clock on the morning of June 3 these men headed away for the harbor. A steam launch from the New York under Naval Cadet Joseph W. Powell followed to pick up the crew of the Merrimac, should they succeed in getting away from her after performing their work, ln either the rowboat or the liferaft that had been provided pro-vided for them. "It was a cloudy night, but because the channel chan-nel was so narrow It was absolutely certain that the Merrimac would be discovered before she reached her destination, and that a heavy fire from the batteries of all kinds would enfilade en-filade her, while the sentinels and the troops encamped en-camped along the shore were likely to spatter her deck with Mauser bullets as a tropical rainstorm rain-storm would pelt her with drops of water. In short, there was not one chance in a thousand, apparently, for any of these men to live through that adventure and yet they had eagerly volunteered volun-teered for it, and one had stowed himself away on board without permission! Nor was the chance of Cadet Powell and his men much better, bet-ter, for It was his duty to follow the Merrimac to the mouth of the harbor where he, too, would be as easy a target as the men on the ship, and there to wait until after daylight. "Getting his bearings by the outlines of the Morro against the sky, Hobson drove the old ship into the center of the narrow channel. A hell of flame leaped out on both sides as she passed the Morro, while the Vizcaya, that was on guard just around the bend, began firing with her broadside battery. The Spaniards thought we were coming with our squadron to force the harbor, and all the guns, big and little, that would bear and many that would not, were fired with feverish rapidity. Immediately the shots began to reach the ship but no vital damage was done. "Then the time to sink her had come, and Hobson pressed the electric button. Three of the torpedoes that were placed at her water-line water-line exploded tearing open her sides. The man at the anchor cut it loose, bringing up her head just opposite the point, while her stern swung slowly around with the tide. It seemed for a moment that she must sink as they wished, right across the channel, but she filled so slowly, that she lay lengthwise of the channel and well at one side before she finally struck bottom." Spears then quotes Hobson's narrative of the rest of the action as follows: "We were all aft, lying on the deck. Shells and bullets whistled around. Six Inch shells from the Vizcaya came launch came toward the wreck. We agreed to try capturing her and running for the open sea, but as she drew near a dozen Spanish marines aimed their Mausers at us and I saw that, in western parlance, they had the drop on us. 'Is there any officer In that boat to receive a surrender sur-render of prisoners of war?' I shouted. An old man leaned out under the awning and waved his hand. It was Admiral Cervera. The marines lowered their rifles and we were helped into the launch. "Then we were put in cells in Morro castle. It was a grand sight a few days later to see the bombardment, the shells striking and bursting burst-ing around El Morro. Then we were taken into Santiago. I had the court martial room in the barracks. My men were kept prisoners in the hospital." In his prison Hobson was visited by Spanish officers who asked permission to shake his hand and congratulate him for his courage. At his request a message was sent to Admiral Sampson, Samp-son, telling the commander that he and his men were safe and, except for minor wounds of two, Kelly and Murphy, that they had come through their terrible experience unscathed. . At first the Spanish authorities refused to exchange ex-change the prisoners. But at last on July 6 Hobson and his men were marched blindfolded through the Spanish lines to a place halfway beeween the Spanish trenches and the American Amer-ican lines and the formalities of exchange were completed by Spanish and American officers under un-der a big ceiba tree. Even before Hobson's release from prison the news of his deed had made him the man of the hour in America. So when he was sent up to New York with instructions to report to the secretary sec-retary of the navy at Washington on the condition con-dition of the Spanish ships wrecked in the battle bat-tle of Santiago which followed soon after his exploit, he was given such an ovation as no man, since his time, except Colonel Lindbergh, has known. Next followed the "kissing bee" which made him almost as famous as his deed in Santiago harbor. At Long Beach in August, 1S9S, a St. Louis girl asked permission to kiss the Merrimac hero and he, blushingly, gave permission. After that the deluge! Wherever he went, hundreds of women mobbed him for the privilege of paying pay-ing their osculatory respects. Other honors came to him rapidly. Alabama, his native state, was the first to propose giving him a jeweled sword. He was raised ten numbers num-bers in the ranks of naval constructors and was made a captain. For more than a year he enjoyed en-joyed the hero worship of the nation. Then the fickle public began to forget him when the newspapers news-papers ceased to chronicle his every movement. He was put In charge of raising the wrecks of Spanish ships and in the course of this duty he went to China to superintend the repairing of the Spanish ships sunk by Dewey at Manila. While there he began having trouble with his eyesight and he asked to be retired from active service. By this time the newspapers and the public had definitely turned against him. His heroism at Santiago was either forgotten or minimized. min-imized. Ris request to be retired was denied and in 1903 he resigned his commission. After his retirement he began making speeches throughout the country advocating a large navy and as early as 1902 he predicted the World war which came 12 years later. In 1900 he was elected to congress from his home district in Alabama and during his eight years in con-ress he served on the . committee on naval affairs Since his retirement from congress he has de voted his time to the cause of prohibition and to fighting the spread of the use of narcotics. ( by Western Newspaper Union.) |