From Florida the coast of the Gulf of Mexico trends westward beyond the Mississippi delta and Galveston and down to Yucatan. In the bight formed by the Yucatan peninsula lies the historic old city of Vera Cruz, the “City of the True Cross.” It was from Vera Cruz that Cortez marched upon his conquest of Mexico in the sixteenth century. From the same port, centuries later during the Mexican war, our Army began its march to plant the American flag over the halls of the Montezumas.
Early in 1914, shortly before the outbreak of the World War, diplomatic relations between the United States and Mexico again became strained. President Madero, of Mexico, had been assassinated and Woodrow Wilson objected to the recognition of Madera’s successor, President Huerta. Mexico’s treatment of Americans finally led to the seizure of Vera Cruz by American forces and our fleet occupied the port. The military and naval operations were not of sufficient importance to seriously interfere with the scheduled maneuvers and training of the fleet after the Army had arrived to take over the control of the city. The ships in the harbor or in the offing came and went “upon their lawful occasions,” very much as usual.
One day the battleship Texas, then new and on her first cruise, arrived to join the fleet. She was soon hard at work under an energetic and driving captain, drilling the new crew and preparing herself for that record in gunnery and engineering efficiency which has rarely if ever been excelled. Just how keen the rivalries in gunnery were in those days may best be illustrated by a short story of somewhat earlier times. The battleships Oregon and Wisconsin were once competitors for the gunnery trophy, out in Manila Bay. The Wisconsin fired her target practice first and made only one hole in the target with each pair of heavy turret guns; every shot going through the bull’s eye. The Oregon was scheduled to fire the following day and her only hope of victory was to fire with equal accuracy and with greater speed. That night, smallpox broke out in Manila and target practice was suspended until all hands had been vaccinated. Vaccination might cause sore arms, and thereby interfere with handling the guns at target practice; so a “disinfecting station” was secretly prepared on the Oregon where vaccinated members of the guns’ crews might remove any danger of sore arms. Later, when this "ruse de guerre” was discovered, the explanation given was that it was preferable to risk smallpox rather than endanger the ship’s chances of beating the Wisconsin.
To return to Vera Cruz: when the Texas first joined the fleet the ship had not yet received all of her crew on board. The officers and men were still quite new to one another, almost strangers, and a draft of 200 more recruits arrived by transport from New York and joined the Texas off Vera Cruz. No sooner had the new men been mustered on the quarterdeck and their hammocks, bags and ditty-boxes accounted for, than the ship got under way and stood over across the harbor in the direction of Anton Lizardo to test her torpedoes. It was a beautiful evening. There was a quiet stillness in the air; overhead the birds were flying southward; and in the far distance, behind the white walls of the old castle of San Juan de Ulloa, the high peak of Orizaba, “The Star Mountain,” stood out, clear- cut against a golden sunset. Only the experienced seaman knew that these three signs were indications of a coming storm; the quiet air, the flying birds and the clear- cut profile of the distant mountain. Within a day or two of these forewarnings, the dreaded “norther” may descend. These “northers,” while not dangerous to a ship prepared to meet them, are terrifying to the novice, even though he may be protected from the elements by the staunchness of his ship. The wind rushes down with hurricane force, with torrents of rain, thunder and lightning, and occasionally small blue lambent flames may be seen to flicker at the weather yard arms, the wind at the same time flying about in all directions in furious gusts.
The Texas anchored that evening off Anton Lizardo, only a few miles from Vera Cruz, and began preparations for her torpedo practice, to be held on the following day. Anton Lizardo, although its waters are infested with savage man-eating sharks, was selected for this work because the depth of water made it possible to recover a torpedo which might sink; or if a torpedo should overrun its distance, the probabilities were that it would be recovered by searching the long white sandy beach a few miles inshore that stretched away towards Vera Cruz. When a torpedo is fired and runs true to form, its path for miles is easily discernible by means of its clear white wake. If it sinks there is no wake, but bubbles rising to the surface may indicate the spot, and preparations are always made in advance to mark the place in order that the torpedo may be recovered.
On this occasion one of the torpedoes from the Texas was seen to sink alongside, quite close to the ship, and a buoy was placed to mark the spot. Then motor launches equipped with sweeps and grapnels dragged the bottom in all directions, but failed to find the lost torpedo. The monetary value of a torpedo runs into thousands of dollars, but there was another and more serious consideration. A lost torpedo would mean a zero factor entering into computations for the ship’s score in the gunnery competition. The gravity of the situation in the eyes of an ambitious captain can now be more fully appreciated. The torpedo was somewhere and it must be found. Evening was again approaching. The quiet stillness of the air remained and the “Star Mountain” peak again raised 18,000 feet in.air its warning finger against a cloudless sky. There were no birds; they had flown south to safety. The captain was troubled. The lost torpedo and the weather warnings were on his mind, and the ship was scheduled to go to sea with the fleet on the following morning for maneuvers; her first day of maneuvering with the fleet. This is always a trying and tense day for a new, or “rookie” ship. It was decided to leave a motor launch at Anton Lizardo to search for the lost torpedo while the Texas went out to sea with the Fleet. The torpedo officer was to be in charge of the search party. It was suggested that the torpedo might have freed itself from the sandy bottom and run ashore, or might have drifted on the beach. The search was to continue all day, if necessary, and extra men were assigned to the motor launch to keep a constant lookout.
That night, almost exactly at midnight, the “norther” broke over the harbor with great violence, to the usual accompaniment of wind squalls, thunder, lightning and torrents of driving rain. It gave the officer-of- the-deck and the anchor watch a busy and anxious quarter of an hour, while the relief watch lent a hand with the hurried work of securing boats and awnings and hauling over hatch covers and tarpaulins. The squall soon spent itself and passed, leaving the rain-washed air quite still again and the tropic night apparently serene. Then the watch was relieved. One of the officers said to the other, “I thought I heard a cry for help just about the time that the squall broke; but it must have been the bosn’s mate rousting out the anchor watch.” Then he went below. But what he had heard was not the bosn’s mate calling the anchor watch; he had in reality heard a call for help. The mid-watch passed and in the morning watch the torpedo officer left the ship in the motor sailer with a working party to search for the lost torpedo, and to recover it if possible.
At eight o’clock the ship got under way and stood out to sea for maneuvers. At muster that morning two of the new recruits were reported absent. Nobody knew them. With the ship so recently commissioned they were, as far as the rest of the crew were concerned, mere names on the roster of more than a thousand men. There had not as yet been time for them to make any friends, or even to become acquainted with their shipmates. But to the captain it was a very different matter; he was responsible for their welfare and for their lives. The two missing men were supposed to have come on board the day before with the big draft of recruits the transport had brought from New York. Someone else might have answered their names by mistake, or intentionally, when the draft was mustered. The two men had been assigned, by name, to a certain division, but at the first muster of that division they failed to appear. The question arose as to whether the men had actually been received on board. Meanwhile the new ship, maneuvering for the first time with the fleet in the battle line, absorbed the time and attention of the captain. Now and again a lull permitted further inquiry in regard to the missing men.
A curious story grew from rumor and surmise until it seemed to offer at least a possible solution of half of the mystery. The rumor was that one of the men had fallen overboard and was drowned. But that offered no explanation of the disappearance of the other man. The long and anxious day began to draw to its ending. The fleet stood in from sea and the Texas, swinging out of column, stood over toward Anton Lizardo. The motor launch which had been left to search for the lost torpedo was seen to be at anchor near the spot where the torpedo was supposed to have sunk. The only hope—and that a faint one—was that the missing men might be in the launch, although they had not been detailed as members of its crew. A signal was sent to ask the torpedo officer whether the men were in the boat, and this was the answer, quickly semaphored back: “Yes, we picked them up.” “Alive or dead?” “They are both alive.” “Come alongside and bring them on board.” There was a slight delay on the part of the launch in starting back to the ship, and then up the gangway and through a wondering crowd came the torpedo officer and two pitifully bedraggled youths. Investigation and search of the ship at intervals during the day had focused attention upon the missing men and the ship’s company was on tip-toe with interest and excitement.
Let the torpedo officer now tell his story. After leaving the ship that morning the motor launch had headed inshore for the beach, several miles distant, hoping to find the lost torpedo stranded there. A lookout was stationed in the bow of the boat, and as they approached the shore line the bow lookout called, “Man overboard.” The engine was reversed and the coxswain ran fairly alongside of a man in the water and hauled him aboard. They asked the rescued man, or boy, what ship he was from, and to their astonishment he replied, “From the Texas,” and fainted. The dumbfounded crew of the launch were not allowed to stand lost in amazement, for the bowman cried, “Look, there’s another one,” and they hauled the second man aboard. The castaways were fed and allowed to rest in the launch all day, but they were still very weak when they marched up on the bridge to face the irate captain. A kindly heart lay under the captain’s bluff exterior and the boys were placed under the care of the ship’s surgeon and allowed to sleep in the sick bay until they recuperated. Then, at the mast, they told the captain their story. Not uninterruptedly, but with occasional characteristic remarks and questions from the captain. “We wanted to go home,” said the spokesman. “And where is ‘home’?” asked the captain. “Brooklyn,” said the boy. “My God!” said the captain, “I’ve heard of people being homesick; but I never before heard of anybody being that anxious to get back to Brooklyn!” The story proceeded. The two boys had come aboard two days before with the draft, and had felt lost and homesick among a thousand strangers and in a new environment. After the long sea voyage from New York to Vera Cruz on the transport—their first experience at sea—the shores of the harbor, under the shadow of the lofty mountains, seem invitingly near. They decided to swim ashore and go home— to Brooklyn! That the Mexicans were hostile and would probably shoot them on sight, did not deter them. That there were other insuperable difficulties and dangers did not occur to them. They were going home—that was all. Those who understand the extremes to which nostalgia will drive its victims will hardly be surprised. It leads strong men at times to the borderline of insanity and to the grave. The human adjustments necessary on a newly commissioned battleship offer an interesting field of study to the psychologist. There was on the Texas at that very time a man in the full maturity of his powers, a man of fine character and training, who had actually proposed to attempt the same wild venture the boys had attempted; but he was prevented. Of the two boys, one could not swim. The other was not an expert swimmer. They decided to leave the ship at midnight, and did so. They had twenty dollars between them, which they divided equally. Ten dollars each—if they gotashore—for the trip from Vera Cruz to Brooklyn, through hostile Mexico! Their uniforms of blue, so brightly new, they rolled and tied upon their shoulders, to the life preservers, “to try to keep them dry!” Then, “at midnight, in the silence of the sleep-time,” they lowered themselves gently from the propeller booms near the stern of the ship, and slipped unobserved into the shark-infested waters. Even if they had known enough to detect the ominous signs of the oncoming “norther,” they were too wholly engrossed in avoiding detection to note the signs of bad weather. Once in the dark water their hearts began to fail them; and no wonder! The tidal current swept them astern, and as the lights of the sleeping ship and the loom of its great dark hull began to recede, they cried aloud for help. It was too late. Just as they called there was a flash of lightning, followed by the crash of thunder and rush of wind and rain. The promised “norther” had arrived at last. The boys continued to call for help, but their voices were drowned by the noise of the thunder and wind and by the driving sea. For eight hours they drifted helplessly. After the motor launch picked them up and the boys had rested sufficiently to give some account of themselves, they said that ever since daylight “great big fish” had been swimming slowly around them. The sharks! Only heaven knows why the sharks did not devour them.
Only one thing more remains to be told. When the signal was sent to the torpedo officer to bring the absentees on board the Texas, the launch had some difficulty with its anchor, so the anchor chain was huoyed and slipped. Later, when the launch returned to the buoyed spot to recover the anchor they hoisted with it the lost torpedo. Thus the lost torpedo was recovered by a fluke, for the fluke of the anchor was hooked neatly around the end of the tail.