The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1904-06-01
ALL SUFFER ALIKE.

On torpedo boat officers and men
suffer alike. The sea IS no respecter of
persons, and losses the Lieutenant and
the apprentice boy abost and keeps them
awake with absolute impartiality. The
officers and men of the torpedo boat
fotilla employed on the Cuban coast
during the Spanish war suffered greatly
from inability to sleep in the long spells
when the nervous little craft were kept
scouting about amid the blockading
squadron. or running on their frequent
crews used to arrive at Key West. The
crews used to arrive at Kew West half
dead for want of sleep. and as soon as
the boat was alongside the dock all
hands made for their hunks.
A man who has had much service on
a torpedo boat said to the writer:
1t is not only sleep with which you
have to play catch as catch can on board
a torpedo boat, but you have to play tag
with your food as well. If there was
anything like sea on, we never used to
think of sitting down to table, but took
such food as we could get in one hand
and ate it while we held on with the
other
"A great part of the time cooking was
next to impossible, and cold canned
stuff. or what was left over of the stuff
which had been cooked in port, had to
suffice us, and we grabbed that as we
could and when we could.
The cook always, or almost always,
used to make coffee for us, though how
he managed it was a mystery, for.
though he used to lash the coffee pot
TO the top of the stove and tie down
the lid the pitching and the rolling of
the boat in heavy seaWay would spill
large portion of the contents of the pot
out through the spout.
Then cookey would put cork in the
mouth Of the spout, and when the boil
ing coffee generated steam enough the
lid would blow off, or the cork would
fly out. Altogether, it was only by the
exercise of interchangeable energy and
skill OF the sort which ought to have
been recognized in general orders that
finally enough coffee would be manu-
featured to give each man a cupful
we used to get an outfit of crockery
about every time we came into port dur
ing the Spanish war, and smash II up
the first day out. probably If not the
first day, then little later.
SORE MUSCLES.
when a man first goes to sea in
torpedo boat" said a man OF experience
III lAldI SOil u lilliS' MS liIloNtSS- JJ4iito
and even his bones at first become sore
and strained from the perpetual short,
nasty, vicious witches, Jerks, rolls, pitch
es and jumps of the craft. 1t IS so en-
tirely different from the motion of a
larger vessel.
But the body becomes accustomed to
the motion. adjusting itself autonatical-
". so that it is not strained. in Won
derfully short time. \ sort of physical
intelligence is brought into play by the
body, which works independently OF the
mind. All that the man has to remember
IS to hang on-he must not forget that.
His body does the rest automatically in
adjusting itself to its new conditions, as
far as the motion of the boat is con-
cerned. so that there is little wrenching
and strainiug of the muscles.
If a man does not remember to h0'
on to something when on the dec -
torpedo boat in seaway he is likely .-
De sent spinning overheard to waJery
grave. as was poor Breckenridge from a
torpedo boat running across the Florida
straits.