The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-10-02
BURNING COAL ABOARD SHIP
THE NATAL ENGINEER,S NIGHT
 MARE.
HOW Many "Jackics" Missed Being with Dewey in the Battle of Manila

When the Olympia-yacht-like, spiel
 and span, beautiful to the eye of maya
 expert as well as lubber-went int
 commission at the Mare Island navy
 yard, in February, 1895, she wa!
 manned by an almost wholly greer
 crew. Seamen were scarce just then
 moreover, old-time naval ue-jacllets uo not like 10 break in' new ships
 They prefer to ship for men -of-wal
 that have been imbered up It takes
 two or three years to grease up" a
 AeW man-of-War and get her into
 workable shape according to the wise
 oid philosophers of the forecastle. Sc
 that the old-timers who were due to
 Te-enlist steered clear of the Olympia.
 She'll be proper workhouse," they
 said to each other sagely and to avoid
 being sent to the Olympia, willy nily,
 upon shipping over many of them cut
 across the continent and re-enlisted on
 board the eastern receiving ships
 Thereby they missed a nice three-year
 cruise in Asiatic waters, and the final
 glory of participation in that miracu-
 lous battle of Manila alongside O
 Dewey" to their unspeakable and eter-
 nal disgust as the vituperatlon which
 they have been inflicted upon them
 selves since plainly evidences.
 So it came to pass that the Olympia,
 one of the statelest ships of war that
 ever bent new set of colors, had to
 take to the water for the first time
 with pack of new men to work her.
 A few old-timers were collared to
 lxnnp6 ba ofp
 the great majority of the material com
 prising the Olympia's first crew con
 sisted of "slopers" pat phrase em-
 ployed by bluejackets of eastern nativ-
 ity to describe California lubbers.
 Four-fifths of the men of the Olympias
 first crew were foot-loose young San
 Francisco chaps, who shipped for the
 Olympia because the report had been
 spread around out on the coast that the beautiful new cruiser was going to start on cruise of the world after try ing out her machinery a bit in Cali fornia waters. What they didn't would have stuffed an exceedingly cumbersome volume.
 The Olympia slid out of the Mare Island dry-dock and was anchored in that swift-running stream that they call Napa Creek. Then the greenhorn crew, with hamocks and dity bags, cambered aboard of her. They were just about given time to ascertain their locker numbers and the hammock billets when the old bosuns mate a the gangway worked his pipe shrilly for couple of minutes, and then threw this sensation into them by word of mouth:-
 .'All hands coal ship!'
 That's a shipword that even old- timers hate. Its effect upon green hands ie correspondingly gloomy. When the Olympia's green crew assembled on deck to respond to the call they locked | over the ships sides and saw two large, l prosaic, inartistic 100-ton coal barges, | both loaded to the point of sinking, | anchored alongside, starboard and | port. They had to heave to, with their | nice new working suits on, and "coal ship After dark that first night, the | yellow, turbid waters of Napa creek were plowed by the arms and legs of | quite a percentage of the Olympia's green hands. They swan ashore without leave" "Coaling ship had got on their nerves thus early in the game. More went the next night Their places were filled from the ''guardo' old receiving ship Inde- pendence But the green men, aweary of ship coaling, went faster than they could be recruited, so that when the Olympia started on her first little baby cruise down the coast to San Diego, where flower fiesta was in progress, she was right short-handed. There was more coaling ship down in San Diego, and then the verdant sailors began to go the Olympias side like rats escap- ing from a leaky wind -Jammer at a dock. The coaling ship proposition was something they hadn't figured on In their dreams of circumnavigating the globe, and it had broken their ten der hearts, the poor lads. ] When the Olympia crawled back to the Mare Island navy-yard she only ( had about half crew left. Ship coal { Ing accounted for all the deserters, { When by the way, the Olympia re- ( turned to the navy-yard that time she { had already achieved the name of a ( 'hoodoo ship" for three men had been ( killed on board of her in various acci- 1 lents since she had started out. She t vas still known as 'hoodoo ship 2 when she started TOT Cnlna waters. ( But the things that have happened to C fer since have punctured that grisly g lppellation e This however, is an aside. The point q S that all hands on a man-of-war c ore and aft, hate coal. If ever the 0 ime arrives when coal for ship driv- S ng and auxiliary working purposes | hall be abandoned great happiness vii fl bound in the worlds navies Coal is a he cause of ceaseless bother fore and S fit. Coal gets the nerve of fleet com c handlers, ship commanders, chief and a ssistant engineers on edge for long pe- t iods at stretch. Coal has served to a ,iden the old-time breach between line t nd staff--the staff, which Is practi- Il ally no more. Coal-which is intend | | to include coaling-causes more de- Ii artions from the navy than any other e aature of the service. The growls over s pal and coaling aboard men-of-war a re never ending. When the potency ts f coal for rendering chief engineers b alf insane is considered, it is no won 1 a CT that so many of them go to pieces 1T hysically and are forced to retire ''1 i "a t,1 iys ,,,tt44 '