Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1903-08-08
THEY HAD THE NERVE

ut would be wide OF the mark. Of course,
to say that the natural-born reprobates in
the naval service are the exclusive pos
SCISSORS Of the quality known as devil-may-
care nerve. but, nevertheless. I've seen
some mighty hard nuts extricate them
selves from exceedingly bad scrapes by
these sudden exhibitions Of Unborn pluck"
remarked a naval officer. on duty at An
napolis. who was in Washington the other
day.
"A few years ago, for example. I was
attached to a gunboat on the Pacific sta
ton that had every chance in the world
to go up into the air in extremely minute
steel splinters had it not been for the
quick thinking ability and the nerve Of an
enlisted man who at the time he performed
the heroic feat was awaiting trial by gen
eral court-martial on the charge of having
attempted to strike the officer of the deck
charge that would unauestionably have
landed him for long term in one OF the
naval prisons.
1T was a deck hand attached to one Of
the gun divisions, whose cleaning station
was in the after magazine, who succeeded
in putting the ship in jeopardy. He was
in such a hurry to get through with his
work in that after magazine that, when
he entered the magazine through the berth
deck hatch and found that. for some
reason or other the electric light was not
turned on he sneaked into the engine room
and grabbed hold of lantern and took II
into the magazine, to enable him to do
his lick-and-a- promise cleaning. NOW,
there Is, of course, no more stringent rule
in the American navy than that no open
light shall ever, under any circumstances
whatsoever. be taken into a magazine. So
scrupulously careful are the rules to pre-
vent any sort Of fire contact with any part
Of the magazines that smoking Is absolute
ly prohibited on the berth deck. for officers
&c mi zine matches be-
ing usually situated on the berth decks OF
ships of war. There is not. of course.
chance in thousand of a cigar or cigar
cite stump ever finding Its way through
the tightly battened magazine hatches but
the rule holds, any way, in order to provide
even degree of safety that might seem to
outsiders foolishly theoretical
And here a woOden-headed and criminal
ly reckless lout of the deck force had de-
liberately, If furtively, carried a lantern,
which to all intents and purposes Is an
open light when the danger OF the break
ing of the sheltering glass is considered,
into the magazine containing the fixed am
munition.
That which was virtually inevitable, or
which always seems to be inevitable In all
of these instances where there is hagrant
disobedience of rules fashioned for human
safety, happened in this case. Some OF the
hofsting gear rugged on the main deck gave
way, a pulley fell into the after magazine
and, striking the disobedient deck hand on
the head, knocked him senseless. The pull
ley glanced from his head and struck the
lantern, shattering the glass. but not ex-
tinguishing the light. The lantern was
overturned, of course. and there was the
wick of it resting against can OF fixed
ammunition for the six-inch guns. Even
a landsman doesn't have to be told that
there was just about as precarious situa-
ton on board a man-owar as could have
been framed up by stealthy enemy.
But the fellow with the nerve happened
to be in the neighborhoOd. The chap
awaiting general court-martial for trying
to knock the head off the officer of the deck
had been brought aft to draw tobacco and
small stores from the paymaster's office,
the door of which was only few feet from
the open magazine hatch. The irons had
been removed from the prisoners wrists to
enable him to carry his tobacco and other
gear aft, and consequently, so far as his
hands and arms were concerned, he was
free agent. But his ankles were manacled.
This, however, didn't detain him. He
was swinging down the magazine in 1iffy,
with the consciousness, of course, that he
was just as liable as not to be going up in
the air with the ship at any instant. His
manacled feet first stamped out the light
of the wick, and then he grabbed hold of
the big can of ammunition which was pref
ty hot at the spot at which the burning
wick had rested against it, and yelled for
the deck hands to pull away at the hoisting
gear. They yanked him, clinging with one
arm to the pulley. and with the other to the
heavy can to the deck, and when he reach
ed the deck he raced to the rail as best he
could with his manacled feet and tossed
the can over the side into the water. The
can Missed with the heat when 1t was buried
in the water. showing that it had been
more or less miraculous that 1t hadn't ex-
ploded before the prisoner had ever got 1t
up the main deck. A way was found to
fellow-the navy will stretch point to
spare to the service fellows of that make
up. He always behaved himself after he
was restored to duty for his signal exhibit
tiOp nj and he still haha
about year later, on board another
Pacific station ship to which I was at
tached, another nervy reprobate won his
way out Of the swamp of trouble by a SIM
liar exhibition of natural-born nerve. He
was fireman, and he had been under sus-
picion for some time as a liquor smuggler
AS matter of fact, the maSter-at-armS
had found about dozen quart bottles OF
that unspeakable stuff called 'swipes' in
his locker, and the only reason the fire.
man was not put under arrest in the brig
was that the master alarms was waiting
for chance to actually catch the fireman
in the act of slowing the liquor in his
locker.
We'll, one morning, while we were
steaming along the California coast and
the black gang, or engineers force, were
at work at their cleaning stations below,
one Of them tipped into one Of the fire
room bilges the contents of fifteen-gallon
can of turpentine, which was being used
for cleaning purposes. There was another
bilges were mighty hot, made SO from hot
ashes that had rested on the bilge covers
and the proximity of the furnaces. The
fire room gang became panic stricken. A
good many of the black gang simply hus-
tied for the deck to let the situation take
care of itself. A few of them Intellectually
dumped water into the bilge containing the
turpentine. One of them tried to crowd
the situation by spreading a tarpaulin over
the bilge, but there was no sense In that.
The turpentine had just burst into flame
in the open bilge when the fireman who
was booked for a whole lot of trouble did
the right thing. He rugged a steam hose
to a steam pump in a jiffy, and poured the
flood of steam in upon the flaming bilge
and that did the business. 1t was head
work, pure and simple, and yet 1t was the
sort of head work that saved an American
man-o'-war to the naval list. That flaming
turpantine was liable. If it had been al
lowed to go on flaming, to heat up the
parts of the ship leading to the forward
magazine, and then the three hundred and
a half of us would have been up in the air
to a certainty. That smudge-faced sailor
mans 'swipes' indiscretions were over
looked upon his fair promise that he'd
abandon them in the future.
"And then there was an instance of nerve
of a more deliberate but equally fine sort
that exhibited by a seaman, and a black
seaman at that, in taking care of a ship
mate afflicted with Asiatic cholera. That