New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1914-06-04
IKE a FLOATING METROPOLIS
IS THE BATTLESHIP NEW YORK
Wonders in Equipment and convenience OF "0'0
Greatest Warship Rival in Diversity Its
Municipal Namesake.
Rv RICHARD HARDING DAVIS.

carried 800 barrels Of flour, $4,000 pounds
of fresh meat. $500 cans OF timed fruit
$4,000 cans dried fruit, IS kinds OF break
fast foods, every vegetable meat anu
sauce you can think OF and many Things
that you might not, like picked Iee''
kippered herring, frankfurterS, oysters
pumpkins and watermelons. | am quot
ing from the list Of Paymaster Nenaple.
The navy has solved the high cost OF
living. Three meals assembled from THIS
choice list cost the department for All
three just 81 cents.
But the bluejacket goes ashore, and IN
the best hotel in Vera Cruz spends four
times that sum for a tough beefsteak
smothered in garlic and flies, and those
flies he cannot take TO the mast. There
are too many.
In this floating village Of his there Is
a clothing store which does business OF
S,9.o 900 dollars a year, general store
where he can buy everything from wrist
watches, cold cream. gumdrops' sweet
meat puffs and velvet kisses to razors,
mug tobacco and fourteen kinds OF soap
There is a barber shop. a drug store.
hospital. telephone exchange with tele-
phone numbers up TO 2oS. post once IN
which the clerks are under bond 10 the
United States Post Office Department
with regulation letter boxes on each deck,
and a bank where the bluejacket can de-
post his pay and receive per cent In
terest Seventy-fve per cent OF the en-
listed men either put their pay in this
bank or send it home. So many send all
their pay home that II is necessary to
warn them TO keep enough out for cloth
ing. Paymaster Venable is authority for
this statement. Fer the rerlainiE: % Pc
cent can testify that their pay Is spent
on parrots, watermelons. cabs and post
CARDS. Other shops and industries in the
village Of New York are laundry printing
offices, blacksmith shop, carpenter shop,
machine shop and evaporater that takes
from the ocean 1000 gallons Of salt water
a day and then changes II into drinking
water, and an ice plant that manufactures
, Ice for the refrigeratng plant and to
keep the powder from going off before it
Is needed.
Home in Two Reels.
At night, when work is finished. al
though on the battleship it seems as if it
never were, everybody goes to the NOV
les" Having purposely sde.stepped writ
ing of any OF those things that make her
a ship Of war. OF the New York as a
village this evenings entertainment is
one of the most curious features. Far
astern is stretched a square of canvas.
Z Df,,cv 81 an thA 1a11r
dreds of khaki clad marines and white
bloused bluejackets. In the electric
lights you see on every hand the EVIL
dences OF war-gray guns. gray turrets.
gray military masts. AS far up as you
/ can peer into the night, from booms to
lighting tops. are white. ghostlike figures.
bareheaded. swinging bare feet Then,
suddenly all OF ths-guns. turrets. fight
Ing men-vanish. and on the screen, like
square hole punched in the night, Is
a country lane, prairie. crowded
street, in which trolley cars roll past and
Young girls walk, laughing, into the VII
lage Of men.
As in a Looking Glass.
Peace has her victories as we'll as war.
and OF all the marvels OF the greatest
fighting ship in the world there is only
one thing more uncanny than these pict.
uies that lift us out OF the Vera Cruz and
carry W. home. That one thing is a
piece Of glass as large as a bread board.
on the glass are painted the outline OF a
ship and various lines. 1t is in a burglar
proof cell in the bowel. Of the battleship.
When all the rest OF the steering gear
above deck is shot away il Is from this
bombproof steel vault that the New York
will be navigated. and it is on this piece
of glass. illuminated from the rear, thai
the ships of the enemy will be seen, their
speed and position noted. and. seeing them
only as they pass upon this glass, the
guns OF the New York. from a range OF
seven or eight miles. will sink them