There aren’t too many naval veterans left from the vintage days of the Spanish-American War. I’ll be eighty-three on my next birthday and have lived a full life. My years in the U. S. Navy are still my most precious memories. A prime reason for this conclusion was perhaps the remarkable personality of our commander in the Pacific, George Dewey. The many younger readers of the Proceedings may be interested in two treasured personal anecdotes about him here published for the first time.
In 1892 I joined the Navy as an apprentice boy at Newport, Rhode Island, and served my first enlistment aboard the cruisers Philadelphia and Charleston. After signing on for a second hitch, I reported to the Raleigh, which joined Commodore Dewey’s Asiatic force in February, 1898, just as the news was received of the Maine’s tragic destruction. Late in the fall of 1898 after we had fought and beaten the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay, over one hundred American enlisted men, including myself, were transferred to the Olympia because we still had considerable service time remaining.
Soon after I reported aboard the Olympia the distinguished Catholic chaplain, William Henry Ironsides Reaney, with whom I had been shipmates twice before, invited me to play the part of Uncle Sam in the forthcoming New Year’s party, particularly since I had previously served in that capacity in the Charleston. Upon acceptance I went ahead with the many and varied necessary arrangements, selecting men for the different parts, planning the program, and having uniforms, decorations, and props made for the occasion. We rigged the ship’s catamaran as a brig, painted “A Happy New Year” on the foresails, and painted dates of significant naval battles with Spain on the mainsails. 1957]
At noon on January 1, 1899, we boarded the catamaran and pulled away from the Olympia’s port gangway and proceeded around the bow and down the starboard side. When we were abeam, the Boatswain called, “All hands, bring ship to anchor,” and a wooden anchor was dropped. Naturally, the anchor floated and this provoked much laughter from the personnel aboard the flagship. Then I ordered a 19-gun salute to Dewey, which was fired from old 45-caliber rifles lashed to the side of the catamaran in order to keep them from going overboard. Finally, resplendent in my Uncle Sam’s red, white, and blue costume, I was piped aboard the Olympia, with twelve side-boys manning the rail.
Admiral Dewey stepped forward, shook my hand warmly, and thanked me for coming all the way from Washington to see him. Then he frowned gravely and asserted that in my role as Uncle Sam I had made a great mistake, because on my orders a 19-gun salute had been fired, whereas according to Navy regulations, he rated only thirteen. “Never mind,” I replied, “Uncle Sam is never wrong and he will see that you get the nineteen guns.” Shortly afterward, I forgot the whole incident.
Four months passed quickly and one day Dewey’s orderly told me to report at once to our commander in his cabin. Dewey sternly directed me to sit down, remarking ominously, “You know what you said about me.” Completely astonished, I could not recall having said anything which might have been considered objectionable. Dewey kept repeating his question, then finally said, “Weren’t you Uncle Sam on New Year’s Day?” After I acknowledged this, he thrust a coded cablegram toward me, saying “Read it!” Of course, I was unable to decipher it, whereupon he relaxed, smiled broadly, and said, “I know you cannot read it, Sneath, because it is coded, but your words on the first of January have come true. You are the first man in the world to know that I have been made Admiral of the U. S. Navy and therefore I am now entitled to that 19-gun salute!” He then reached for a bottle of Cyrus Noble, a sour mash bourbon, filled two glasses, and together we drank a toast to his promotion.
How modest an officer was Dewey and what was his affection for the American bluejacket? Few, if any, of the thousands who have looked at the official Dewey photograph in his biography or at the Dewey painting now in the Naval Academy’s Memorial Hall at Annapolis have realized that the tangible answer is before their eyes. Some time after my return to the United States following the war, I went to Philadelphia to attend memorial services aboard the Olympia, then at League Island. While there, Harry E. Neithercot, National Commander of the Dewey Congressional Medal Men’s Association, showed me a recent letter from the Admiral which enclosed his official photograph and the recommendation that our organization use it instead of other pictures we had been publishing.
Admiral Dewey’s letter directed attention to the way in which he had reversed the Congressional medal which he was wearing in the official picture. The side depicting a halfnude gunner seated upon a gun and holding a flag horizontally across his lap, was uppermost, whereas the obverse, representing his own figure, was deliberately turned inwards toward his uniform. “This is the way I want it,” wrote Dewey, “and so I had the link that holds the medal to the bar cut and I reversed it.”
I firmly believe Admiral George Dewey is the only man in the world who would have dared to do such a thing. In this manner he demonstrated his appreciation of the men who served with him in the Pacific. Truly, the man behind the gun was his first concern. To those who were privileged to fight alongside Dewey, he has remained an heroic figure, strengthened rather than diminished by time’s passage.