The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1906-09-25
WE'VEACITIZEN WORTH WHILE
NANNY jacobson, ONCE A. b.,
GETS HIS PAPERS AT LAST.

the Cable on Santiago do Cuba FOR
the st.. Louis 20 Cut-He's Proud 70
he One of Us and We're Glad He h.
Nanny ~Jsckobson, the Swedish sailor
who coxswained a cutter with six men from
Rear, Admiral SIMPSONS feet that dashed
into the channel in front Of Santiago de Cuba
under a hot fir from FL Moro and lifted the
cable during the Standardization war,
realized the dream ana the ambition OF his
life yesterday by being nsturalized a an
American citizen.
It's an ambition which he has cherished
since his ~boyhood, even before he packed
his clothes into a chest when he was II years
old and came over here, with the idea that
this was the greatest country on earth and
that he wanted to be one OF its citizens.
Nanny yesterday exhibited with pride
the Congressional medal and the certificate
Of promotion to chief petty officer which
his exploit won him.
As soon as J.. B. Cartwright and John
Donovan, the naturalization clerks, and
Deputy Commissions Alexander GiIchrist
and all the other officers of the District Court
had shaken him by the hand and told how
proud they we're to help in making a real
American of Nanny the cable cutter, hecon-
scented to tell through how many adventures
the ambition to be an American citizen had
led him.
Nanny is 20 years old and a fine specimen
Of the man-o'-war's man, broad shouldered.
brown skinned, deep chested. He comes Of
good people in Stockholm. His brother.
DR.. I. Jundell J~ackobson, Is royal physician
to King Oscar, director of.the Royal Hospital
OF Stockholm, and was president Of the
International tuberculosis Congress at
Vienna three years ago.
Things began to happen to me the day /
landed in New York. l wanted to be nat
uralized the minute got here. but l was told
to wa a few years and aoqujle a residence.
as they said, Nanny started of.
THAT night my clothes and trunk were
stolen in the sailors boarding house l
went to. There l was with only the clothes
I stood in, hardly any money and no kn0wl-
edge Of the English language. When I
fell into the hands Of a wv edish runner
for IN employment agency a few days
later l chung to him like a brother, and
woke up to find myself shanghaied on a
steamer that ultimately put me aboard
a big oyster dredge with a lot Of other
Swedes dow in Chesapeake Bay.
Il got along in that hel-that was in
'95 or '96-for three months. The food was
awful. 1 lost forty pounds in that time.
l picked an oyster out OF a shell one day
and ate it. The captain sawm me and knocked
me ~senseless with a hammer. l saw one
Of my mates murdered with a club by the
niger first mate.
THE mate stabbed me one day. and
when it looked as il l was going to die they
took me to Baltimore and left me in a vacant
lot on the outskirts Of the city. Luckily
a policeman found me and had me taken
to a hospital. When ] got out six weeks
later with seven stitches in the wound in
my side, l complained to the Swedish Con
sui. but it was no use.
Then | went back TO New York and
made up my mind to enlist in the navy.
] heard that this in itself made man an
Am erlcan citizen. 1 won the notice Of
Capt. Cook Of the Brooklyn, and when the
call for volunteers to dash in and cut the
cab les went through the feet lying before
San tiago ne sent me over to Capt. Good
rich Of the st. Louis with his recommended
I ton. Capt. Goodrich chose me to COM
mand and coxsw ain the whaleboat ex-
petition.
"On MAY II, 1898, the st. Louis tried and
failed to pick up the cable on shore. had
five men abundant lines and graphing irons
At midnight on May 10 we act out from
the st. Louis fourteen miles OF FL MORO.
With sail and later with oars we crept
right into the narrow channel. The waves
Tapped the rocks not a hundred yards away
at our right and up there TOW ered the black
citadel, picked out here and there by the
lights from the and sentry boxes.
Everything went all right until we
picked up the cable, in about ten fathoms
OF water. The contact with the iron grap-
ping hook gave the Spaniards the tip hat
we were busy some whore along the line.
All OF a sudden the alarm was raised in
FL Moro, the searchlights began to sweep
the sea and all sorts OF guns began to crash,
sending their missiles over our heads.
1T wouldn't have helped the job any
for us to lie there and be discovered. So
we hauled up the cable and rove a running
bovine around IL. Then we let it drop,
paying out our line, and slipped in close to
the shore right beneath Fl Moro. There
was a little cave behind a rock that COM
cealed us. The searchlights swept the
channel where we had just been.
Three little gunboats came peeking out.
We could have thrown our caps on their
decks. All the time the Spaniards were
yelling and shooting the guns up in the fort
and We lying in there tied up snug to that
cable, but wishing all the same that they'd
stop and let us go home with our line.
In the mid OF the ~bombardment the
body Of a COW came tumbling down out OF
the bushes around FL MORO. IL had been
killed by a Spanish shell. That was the
only casualty those gun caused. Some
people said it was a mule, but It was a cow.
We could Just zee il in the dark and hear
it bubble out it's last breath in the water
on the shore.
after a while when it was quiet we rowed
pack to the st. Louis, pulling the bOwline
along the cable. They hoisted 1t with the
steam winch and cut 200 fathoms Of it out.
l was promoted to chief petty officer and,
with the other men in the boat, got the
Congressional medal.
when l was honorably discharged from
the navy I thought I could get my ape
right away But there was some hitch
there, and only to-day, through the kind
enss Of Mr.. Cartwright and Mr.. Donovan
and these other gentlemen, I've been able
to get EN- at last. I've got a job as sta
tionary engineer on the lsthmus now, and
l wanted to DO sure and be fully naturaliSed
this time before l went of rolling around
the world again.
ITS the ambition Of my life, and, az l
said, / never felt prouder. No, not even
when l went up the side Of the ST. Louis
with the line to that dinky cable in my
A-AA anA aaaA - g. n~-A-f-A --sw