Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1899-09-30

little OF incident compared Win itS
| great size, that it appealed to the eye
| as a painting rather than a drama.
The vast gathering Of water craft
maintained an average speed of eight
knots, but so magnificent was its area
that the impression was n of exceed
| ingly slow and stately movement. The
picture was continually changing, but
it melted so steadily and in such meas
ured rhythm from form to form that
the sense of motion was largely lost.
1t started under a brilliant sky, passed
at the mouth of the Hudson through
the threat of an ugly storm and emerg-
ed through a rainbow arch that
stretched from shore to shore into a
clear and brilliant sunset off the. Grant
tomb.
The night had been a busy one in the
feet of warships off Tompkinsville. The
last details of the days ceremony were
hardly settled before the day itself
broke on a scene of greater activity
than the classic anchorage had ever
witnessed before.
1t was a moving, shifting picture of
tugs, police beats, fire boats, torpedo
boats, yachts, launches, tramp steamers
and ocean liners and sailing craft of
every sort with big ferry and excursion
boats %ploughing their way through the
ruck in mysterious paths that opened
before them and closed again behind
them like the ice of an Arctic foe.
The only stable points in the scene
at that early hour were the warships.
They lay like great white grounded
bergs about which the pack ice turned
| and swirled without moving them from
their mocrings. Noon was ushered in
with a scream of whistles that sounded
like ten thousand craft. The .%serenade
lasted five minutes, during which
enough steam was wasted to have run
an ocean liner to the Azores.
The last faraway echo had hardly
| uIIlleu DdCh HUH luc oNdtOA oloL
hills, when a sudden impulse seemed to
seize the far-reaching mass of tugs and
other craft. Instead of drifting idly
round and round the warships, like
ships in an eddy, they began to steam
away to the South in parallel lines as
though some currents were
BEARING THEM OUT TO SEA.
But as they vanished in scores towards
the narrows, there were hundreds more
that swept down from up the harbOr.
Then there was a scurrying home Of
the white hooded steam cutters of the
warships. The great boat ran amid
| ships reached down their graphing
hooks and whisked the %pinnaces
aboard. Megaphone commands flung
across the water brought the torpedo
boats to keel like the greyhounds they
were at the Olympia's quarter. The
brillian code flags blossomed like
flowers on the Olympia from the bridge
10 main top. 1t was the order to
form in column. The Brooklyn's pen
nant snapped AYE, Ave." from the
signal yard and a duplicate set of flags
passed the order to the Indiana, whence
it was flung from ship to ship down
the squadron.
The black speed cones of the Olym-
pia climbed slowly to her yards as the
big cruiser got under way. The other
vessels slowly turned like a troop of
cavalry squadron front toward the
narrows, and Their fetching a graceful
sweep headed back up the harbor to-
ward the Battery, the Olympia escort
ed by the Mayors boat, the Sandy
Hook, in the lead. Back of her at a
400 yard interval came the New York,
then the powerful Indiana and Massa-
chusetts; the feet footed Brooklyn,
the sturdy old Texas, the rakish, yacht
like Dolphin, the old Lancaster, a relic
of another naval age, the powerful Chi
cage and finally the little Marietta, the
rear guard of the fighting craft. Be-
hind stretched the transports and fur
Their still, almost list in thu distance,
the yachts and miseenaneous craft hull
down ON the horizon.
THE EVOLUTION BEGAN
at 1 o'clock and in fifteen minutes the
fighting line was Strengthened out up
the harbor. Admiral Dewey was going
to his own at the head of a quadron
that would have won, at need, three
battles Of Manila bay without stopping
for breakfast.
The head of the column was a broad
arrow. Six torpedo boats spread out
as the barb, three on a side from the
Olympia's quarter. Outside Of them a
flying wedge Of police patrol boats
formed a great V. whose apex was the
Olympia. Thanking them, ahead and
astern, were the harbor fire boats,
spouting great columns of water that
turned threateningly toward the ex-
eursion boats on either side when they
attempted to crowd the line of march.
Every foot of the city water front
was n mass of humanity Tho