The Old Navy

by Daniel P. Mannix

  We had two notable experiences that summer, although of very different natures. The Pan American Exposition was being held in Buffalo and President McKinley was there. More important, Wurzburger beer was introduced into the United States for the first time. It was a memorable experience to visit the “German Village” accompanied by a young lady and with your arm around her waist sing, “Down Where the Wurzburger Flows”, to the music of a military band. Everything seemed calm and peaceful but as usual in military life, one never knows what will break the next moment.

  A few hours after we had left Buffalo, we were overtaken by a frantic tug. The skipper shouted at us through a megaphone, “President McKinley has just been assassinated by anarchists at the Exposition! The IWW has declared a revolution! Rioters have seized the city and it’s a national emergency!”

  The president had indeed been murdered by an anarchist named Czolgosz. While McKinley was shaking hands with the crowd, the murderer approached him with a bandage wrapped around his left hand. A small revolver was concealed in it. He offered his right hand to the president and simultaneously fired with his left. A senseless, brutal crime.

  We spun around and raced back to Buffalo. A landing force was prepared, rifles and ball cartridges were issued, and a corps of “pioneers” was organized carrying axes and crowbars to break through possible barricades. I was the adjutant. We all expected a desperate resistance and when we reached the beach and the anchor dropped, we flung ourselves into the boats unshaven and wearing flannel shirts. The IWW (International Workers of the World) were regarded as murderous fanatics intent on destroying all order and authority and we intended to be ready for them.

  After we had charged up the beach like the Rough Riders at San Juan Hill, we found to our chagrin that there were no riots; all we were supposed to do was to escort the slain president’s body from Milbourne House to the railroad station. We did it although we were a pretty rough-looking escort. On the way, I saw for the first time a number of men with their caps turned on backwards peering at us through queer-looking boxes and cranking busily away. I had never seen such devices before, but I recognized them as motion picture cameras, having read about these curious inventions in the newspapers. This was the first time I had ever encountered them.

  It was natural, I suppose, that the landing force was subject to a good deal of ridicule from both the press and my fellow officers for our dramatic sortie into Buffalo under the impression that we were putting down a revolution. As adjutant, I was prime target. My classmates accused me of “playing soldier” — in the Navy, the worst of insults. I was given the ironic title of “Armstrong Hobson” after the rather flamboyant officer who sank the Merrimac in the entrance to Santiago Harbor and later made something of a fool of himself posing as a hero. I was described as a “double-reflecting, triple-flattering” individual who had supposedly rushed up the beach waving a cutlass over my head while shouting, “Follow me, men!” I don’t suppose anyone likes to be made a fool of, and I took it rather hard.

  Still, the incident, minor though it was, taught me something about organizing and directing a landing force. Getting men into boats, seeing that they all hit the beach at the same time, keeping them together and directing their movements is quite a complicated procedure for which none of us had had any training. Also for the first time I had had to consider what to do if we were confronted by a dangerous mob. The standard order was to fire a volley over their heads to disperse them, but now I realized how impractical this would be. By the laws of physics, what goes up must come down and a bullet fired into the air will descend with the same velocity with which it left the rifle’s muzzle. If there were innocent hangers-on milling about behind the belligerents, some of these would surely be hit. If we fired directly into the crowd, we would be sure to kill a number of people, quite possibly women and children. In those few minutes while trying to plan my future strategy, I felt a profound sympathy for the British officer in command of the company which fired on the crowd of drunken patriots in the so-called Boston Massacre of 1770, an act which many historians believe precipitated the American Revolution. In spite of the ribbing I received, I spent a great deal of time reviewing my actions and planning what to do if such a situation ever arose again.

  From the Michigan I was transferred to the Dolphin and spent the winter taking deep-sea soundings near Haiti and Santo Domingo. We were supposed to have found a famous “deep” of some sort. I’m sure it’s still there, if you want it. Afterward, I was lucky enough to be assigned to the Kearsarge that had New York City as a home port. This was one of the best tours of duty I ever had. After several days cruising up and down the coast running through combat drill, we would return to the Brooklyn Navy Yard for an overhaul period during which we were given shore leave. We never slept. When we were on duty we had regular “heel and toe” night watches to stand (we were not permitted to sit down while on duty) and when we were off we went ashore where it was far too entertaining to sleep.

  On the Kearsarge, Mannix was in command of turret gun crew that established world record.

  There were five watch officers and, in order to provide “time off”, the watches were arranged like this: starting a tour you came on at midnight and were on until 4 A.M. (the Mid Watch); then you came on once more at 8 A.M. and had the duty until 12:30 P.M. (the Forenoon Watch); then you were on from 4 P.M. until 6:30 P.M. (the First Dog Watch); then from 8 P.M. until midnight (the First Watch); then from 12:30 P.M. until 4 P.M. (the Afternoon Watch); then from 6:30 until 8 P.M. (the Second Dog Watch); and then from 4 A.M. until 8 A.M. (the Morning Watch); after which you were off for two days and nights and then the cycle started over again.

  When I say you were “off” I mean that you had no watches to stand but “on” or “off” your regular day duties, drills, paper work, etc., continued. There was no chance to sleep in the daytime; had there been, the noise of the pneumatic riveters would have made it impossible. Time and again, when I finished a tour of duty, I was so tired and sleepy that I determined to stay on board that night and make up some sleep, but when night came it would find me trotting up and down Broadway as usual. The final watch, from 4 to 8 A.M., always was a refresher as decks were scrubbed with sand and we rolled up our trousers and paddled around in our bare feet, looking with virtuous disdain at such of our messmates as were returning, bleary-eyed and often a little unsteady on their feet, from shore.

  On the Kearsarge, Mannix is in the rear rank.

  At the turn of the century New York was wide open and, to put it mildly, TOUGH. The old Tenderloin district, west of Herald Square, flourished, and all along West Twenty-ninth Street there was a series of dance halls that, without injustice, might be termed dives; the Cairo, Bohemia, The German Village and so on. As for the ladies of the trottoir, they operated, not singly as scouts or spies, but in companies, battalions, regiments.

  The entire district was spotted with “Raines Law Hotels”. State Senator Raines, in an honest effort to abate the drink evil, had sponsored a law restricting the sale of liquor after certain hours to hotels having rooms for hire and requiring guests to register. The unexpected result of this law was that a swarm of places came into being that had the appearance of hotels (somebody called them “hotels for single men and their wives”) and, judging from their registers, entertained guests that were both illustrious and extraordinary. The pages of their registers contained such names as “Mr. and Mrs. M. Aurelius”, “Mr. and Mrs. J. J. Rousseau”, “Benvenuto Cellini and Wife”, and “Thomas Katt and Wife”.

  A famous resort of those days was the Haymarket, located at the southeast corner of Sixth Avenue and Thirtieth Street. It was a big dance hall with a balcony of loges or boxes overlooking the dance floor. Ladies were admitted free; gentlemen for twenty-five cents. There were small tables where drinks were served. There was an elegant and slender floor manager (Ike) but the dominant figure of the establishment was the bo
uncer, Big Bill. Bill maintained strict discipline; apart from his bouncing duties he saw to it that the ladies of the ensemble conducted themselves in a ladylike manner; any rough stuff, any pilfering or other unfair treatment of male patrons, and the offending fair one was cast into the outer darkness with orders to stay away for a week or whatever her sentence might be.

  I recall one lady who had joined a gentleman at his table and the man gallantly called, “Waiter, bring this lady a glass of beer!” The lady, who naturally got a percentage on the price of all drinks purchased for her, coquettishly replied, “Aw, I want a stylish drink,” to which her escort shouted, “Waiter, bring the lady a bucket of water.” The furious fair exploded, “You think you’re a smart &%#$@, don’t cha?” The next moment she was headed for an exit propelled by Big Bill.

  I have always been interested in physical culture and it was a matter of wonder to me how a man who lived such an unhealthy life and who virtually never had a breath of fresh air could keep his pristine vigor. Of course, Bill’s home life may have been simple and virtuous in the extreme and he certainly was a teetotaler as, indeed, were most bartenders. Whatever it was, he certainly kept his vigor. On one occasion a very famous football player from a very famous eastern university got rowdy in the Haymarket; Bill politely suggested that he go somewhere else; the visitor impolitely replied that he wouldn’t, and in a moment the gridiron hero was being dragged toward the door. En route he seized an iron railing that separated the tables from the dance floor; Bill gave a jerk and out came a section of the railing still in the visitor’s grasp; then football hero and railing were cast into the middle of 6th Avenue. He didn’t come back.

  Yes, New York was tough. There were gangs of streetcar rowdies (especially on the cars going to and from Coney Island) who, when the cars were crowded, used to climb through the windows and molest the women passengers, usually spitting tobacco juice on their victims in contempt after having finished with them. If a man whose wife or girl had been molested dared to object, he would be beaten to a pulp; if he was husky the whole gang would jump on him.

  This sort of thing was ended by a police captain who, himself, had a tragic end — Captain Charles Becker. Becker was executed for his share in the murder of the gambler Rosenthal. The actual killers were Lefty Louie, Gyp the Blood, Dago Frank, and one or two others I don’t recall, but Becker was the mastermind.

  Becker, as an old policeman, knew perfectly well that the streetcar rowdies didn’t mind being arrested and sent to the “Island” where they had a pleasant vacation at the expense of the city and returned heroes in the eyes of their comrades. What they did dread, like all those tough babies, was to be beaten up themselves. This is something most reformers never seem able to grasp. Becker organized a “Strong Arm” squad composed of the most powerful members of the Force. This squad operated in plain clothes and roamed all over the city. At the first indication of rowdy activity on a car or bus, the vehicle would be stopped and the rowdies dragged out on the sidewalk where, instead of being decorously conducted to the nearest police station, the erstwhile beaters were themselves “beaten to a pulp”.

  This highly irregular procedure, curiously enough, instead of tending toward anarchy, had the opposite effect and the streetcar rowdies vanished like the snows of yesteryear.

  A few vignettes linger in my memory. I recall one morning as we were returning to the Navy Yard I saw two women fighting, tearing each other’s hair out, while a crowd of spectators, composed of cabbies and other night hawks, shouted encouragingly, “Go to it, old girl!” On another evening I saw a drunk being assisted into a patrol wagon by a policeman; the officer could not have been more solicitous or careful. Once in the wagon he carefully seated his charge and took the place opposite him. Just then the drunk, with a wild swing, smashed the officer’s helmet down over his eyes (yes, the Force did wear helmets then). The officer very gently put him back on his seat, took off his helmet (it required an effort) and smoothed out the dent in it. A spectator near me said, “It’s amazing how patient that officer is.” Another spectator, more cynical or, perhaps, more knowing, replied “Just you wait until he gets that bum on a back street.”

  Amid all this chaos, there was one obscure little saloon which was a haven of peace. Nothing untoward every happened there. The reason for this immunity lay in a sign over the bar:

  No Discussions on Race, Religion or Politics!

  THIS GOES!

  Directly below this sign, and within easy reach of the bartender’s hand, was a heavy wooden mallet of the type used to loosen bung stoppers in beer kegs. No, there were never any disturbances in that place.

  There was a tremendous amount of misery in New York then. In going back to the Navy Yard we used to take the Sixth Avenue El to Park Place and then walk across City Hall Square to the old Brooklyn Bridge. On bitter cold winter nights the benches in the square used to be crowded with men, women, and little children wrapped in newspapers in an effort to keep warm.

  There were also pirates in New York, but they had none of the glamor of Captain Kidd or Blackbeard. They operated mainly in the Inner Harbor, Buttermilk Channel, and the East River. Any yacht careless enough to leave a boat in the water overnight, especially if tied up astern, would find by the dawn’s early light that cushions, oars . . . in fact, everything movable had disappeared. Not infrequently the boat itself would disappear if the anchor watch wasn’t on the job.

  These pirates even invaded the Navy Yard. You see, that while the Navy had absolute jurisdiction inside the Yard, which was federal territory, if a thief with government property still in his arms succeeded in getting over the wall or fence he was in the City of Brooklyn and could thumb his nose at the US Navy and Marine Corps. If we wanted him arrested we had to send for a policeman. If our Marine Guard or Naval Shore Patrol attempted to arrest him screams of rage would issue from every city official down to and including the dog catcher. The civil authorities are ever watchful for encroachment on the part of the brutal military.

  One night a Marine sentry saw a shadowy figure busily engaged in filling a bag with some valuable electrical fittings that had been received at a late hour, too late to be stored properly. The young marine (he was twenty-one), in accordance with his orders, brought his rifle to the ready and challenged: “Halt, who goes there?” Ignoring the challenge the intruder grabbed the bag and fled toward the nearby fence. Twice more the sentry challenged and then, still in accordance with his orders, raised his rifle and fired. The thief, in the act of climbing to safety, fell dead — on the Brooklyn side of the fence.

  Well, there was the devil to pay. For more than a year afterwards a three-cornered correspondence was kept up between the Navy Yard, the Navy Department in Washington and the City of New York. The dead man had been a notorious gangster and killer; one would have thought that the city would have presented the sentry with the croix de guerre for the public service he had rendered in ridding the community of his victim. Far from it. The city demanded that the young marine be turned over to them to be tried in the civil courts for MURDER! They never got him but for nearly a year that very efficient young soldier was kept in semi-confinement so as to be available in case Washington decided to turn him over to the tender mercies of a local court and jury. Another example of military brutality.

  Of course, had the gangster been killed by a police officer, there would have been no trouble whatever.

  The pirates were especially daring and cunning. One afternoon our sister ship, the Kentucky, was holding open house and was crowded with visitors. She was moored directly opposite us and only a short distance away. Naturally there were lots of women among the visitors. A group of hoodlums, just outside the Navy Yard fence where they knew they’d be safe, walked down to the East River, took off their clothes and proceeded to disport themselves in and out of the water, stark naked and making indecent gestures. We thought they were merely trying to annoy, but it t
urned out that they had a strategic reason. Phoning the police did no good, as usual, so the ship, because of her women visitors, hung up some bunting to serve as a screen, their verbal protests having been answered by filth from the hoodlums.

  Naturally everybody’s attention had been directed to the bathing episode. That being settled, as well as possible, some of us happened to look at the Kentucky once more and were utterly amazed to see that a boat, manned by some tough-looking characters, was busily engaged in taking off her scupper lips; scoop-shaped pieces of metal fitted under the scuppers to prevent dirty water from running down the side of the ship. They obviously intended to sell them for old metal.

  It was broad daylight and the boat was well inside the Navy Yard and in plain view of half a dozen Navy ships manned by hundreds of men. I must say there was really something sublime in the pirates’ nerve. We on the Kearsarge commenced screaming at the Kentucky, “Look! Look!” The people on board her, thinking we were cheering their party, gaily waved back. Finally, leaning over the side, they discovered what was going on. They commenced throwing holystones at the thieves which the robbers caught and threw back at them. Then the nozzle of a fire hose appeared over her side and a stream of high pressure cold water did the job. If ever you want to get rid of rowdies or tomcats, don’t use kicks or blows — use cold water. The pirates drew away cursing and leisurely rowed to their landing, just outside the Yard limits.

  They didn’t get away with their loot for they were pursued by a picket boat which, in direct disobedience of the city authorities, followed them to the landing, took their boat in tow and brought it back to the Yard, followed by curses and cries of “Bring back that boat!” What happened later I don’t know but I’m sure the thieves all wrote to their congressmen.