Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1907-12-20
Mistellaneplls &eaains.
EvANs's MEN WON'T DESERT.
Pacific Fleet Sailors Likely to Stick it
Ont

Out.
"Bob Evans-it makes him lighting
mad to be called Fighting Bob'-al-
ways did have more luck than a blue
gummed dinge in crap game" re-
marked a man who knows lot about
the American navy. Granting him
his aggressiveness, he ought really to
be called Lucky Bob He always
gets a break. Things have a way Of
coming his way.
Take this stunt he's just embark
ing upon-guiding the battleship fleet
around to the west coast. That In it
self is the swellest assignment ever
pulled down by an American admiral
in a time of peace. or course, the
job belongs to him. He's the man In
line for It, But doesn't that fact in
itself help to brace up my assertion
and don't imagine that I'm alone
in making the assertion-that Evans
is one of the luckiest heavy weather
men we ever had?
but l didn't start to talk about his
luck in being in line for the fat as
signment That's been pretty well
famed over already. What I'm think
ing about particularly as an element
Of his unfailing luck Is the soft time
he's going to have Of 1t with his ships
crews on the way round to San Fran
cisco.
nr1t ,i1t q n
takes a fleet off on a distant sea hike
of this character he's got to figure
and does figure upon a most shocking
and irritating thinning out of the
freshly shipped enlisted force by de-
sertion. Admiral Bob doesn't have to
make any calculations on that at all.
He'll have his ships companies for
ard right up TO their full strength
when the fleet pulls through the Gold
EN- Gate. Why? Simplest thing In
life. Because he'll only touch on the
cruise at South American and Central
American and Mexican ports to do his
fleet coaling, and man-o'-war's men
don't jump their ships in South or
Central America or in Mexico. You
can gamble they don't. Some Of 'em,
the new ones, are pretty raw, but they
know better than to go over the sides
of their ships In countries where bust
ed Americanos don't even class with
billygoats in popular esteem and
where they've got just about as much
chance to do any good for themselves
as spangled aigrette d have in a
coke oven.
Raw ships companies will hop
ship first port they make anywhere
else in the world, but nay, nay for the
ship jumpers when they get into
South or Central American or Mexican
ports. They're too wise for that, and
IL they're not the old timers among
the enlisted fatfeet will put them
wise. A ship hopping gringo isn't
anybody's baby in a Latin American
country. He's a leper, that's what he
is-or might as we'll be for any lift
he'll get, except maybe the lift at the
toe of a boot. There are too many
how, to pick up an occasional crumb
to leave any room for ship jumping
Yankee man-o'-wars men to lam for
those beaches-even If the greasers
that have got something possessed or
ever did possess the slightest inclina-
ton to lend an assistful hand to a
down and out gringo And they new
er did possess and don't possess any
such feeling toward United Statesians
Of any class.
when a native of this country gets
himself into the position Of a beach,
comber in any Latin American coun-
try his plight is miserable beyond de-
piction. Better far better, for ship
jumping sailorman to be combing the
beach of any Of the mid-Pacific or
South Sea islands. II he doesn't get
much on the islands they won't run
him, anyway; they sort Of let him
alone and permit him to mooch
around, doing the best he can, till he
sees a chance to shake a shovel or
swab paint or something on ship
or steamer bound for some American
port The gringo beachcomber In
Latin American country is herded
with the sand flies and fiddler crabs.
"Man-o'-war's men know these
things, and that's what gives Bob
Evans his fine, close hauled, housed
over, battened down cinch on his heap
big wise cruise he's starting on. He'll
carry his ships companies into Cali
fornia's chief port with him. They'll
stick along with him just like little
brides that've got clipped wings.
They'll stand for the constant
coaling all right-they'll have to stand
for it. They wouldn't have to, as l
say, and wouldn't in any other mess
Of ports than the Latin American
ports-but down that way they'll
stand for and by any old thing.
IF, for limbering up purposes,
Evans had, for example, to take his
fleet down to Havana and then bring
1t back to some United States port be-
fore the final get-away-to Charleston
or Savannah, We'll say-why, then
the aggressive Robley would have
something to keep him tossing in his
admirars bunk about. For at the
American port to which he returned
in such a presumed case 1 guess may
be Admiral Bob wouldn't lose hands
so fast that there'd be some embar-
rassment about spreading mess gear!
That's what he would. The new chaps
with the cooled out deep sea ambi-
ton would do that hand over hand
scamper from the battleships at the
American port in such numbers that
they'd look like an overestimated
school of porpoises, and the gang OF
them that would get absent minded
while on liberty and quite forget that
they'd ever been aboard Of a guardo
for recruiting purposes would be
something mournful for Robley to
contemplate.
ITS all the coaling. That's the