I am sorry to notice a marked reluctance on the part of my colleagues to accept the suggestion made a year ago in a letter to Captain Brownson that the PROCEEDINGS OF THE NAVAL INSTITUTE become a storehouse of naval anecdote. These gentlemen are, of course, well within their rights when they exclaim that the responsibility for the first move in this direction lies with me. Conceding the validity of this argument, I submit for the consideration of the Institute's members a few yarns about my excellent and worthy old shipmate, the late Rear-Admiral Louis M. Goldsborough.
Admiral Goldsborough was one of the most able and thoughtful of our officers, a close and a faithful student of the naval profession. I remember many years ago seeing his book containing the computations by which he had evolved a sailing sloop-of-war of the Portsmouth class starting with the sole datum of the number and caliber of the guns comprising her battery. At no time while I was associated with him on duty did I ever know him to be idle. The moments which could be spared from his immediate duty he devoted mainly to the reading of technical works and to keeping abreast of the progress of his profession. He was a very large man, reputed to be six feet four inches tall and to weigh nearly four hundred pounds. How near the truth these figures come I cannot say, but as I was a midshipman at the time we served together, and he a Rear-Admiral, I am feign to confess that to me he looked as tall as a sequoia and as large as a mountain.
My first remembrance of Admiral Goldsborough was in 1864 (I think) when he came to the Naval Academy as a member of the Board of Visitors that year. His size, his rank, his uniform, his dignity, all tended to make a deep impression on my youthful mind. I can see him even now as he rolled up toward the mess table in the dining room of the old Atlantic House at Newport, Rhode Island, where I sat, with Downes Wilson, the smallest kid in the Academy, on my right. Downes' feet were tucked up on the highest rung of his chair and he was plying a very excellent knife and fork, making great havoc with the ration which lay on the plate before him. The smallness of this midshipman, the largeness of his portion of food, the brilliancy of his knife and fork play could not fail to attract the attention of so keen an observer as was old Goldsborough, who paused and, addressing Downes in a deep gruff voice, asked, "Well, youngster, can you eat your weight in beef?" Little Downes, cocking up his eye, caught sight of this enormous man and with the self-possession of his years lisped back in a childish tremble, "No, thir, can you?" It was the genial whole souled officer who took the leading part in the laughter which followed this response.
I had the good fortune to serve on board his flagship, the Colorado, which sailed for Europe in the spring of 1865. The flag officer took a very keen interest in us midshipmen. I fear we regarded his interest with holy awe and much personal solicitude, much as his subjects regarded King Stork. Our consternation may be imagined when, walking the poop one day, he paused at its break, and looking down on some of us who were promenading the quarter deck, muttered, in what sounded to us as the tones of an ogre, " Ah, young gentlemen, how I should like to examine you; " and we immediately whispered to each other "The Lord forbid."
He had a great way at night while at sea of sending for the "gentleman of the watch," as the midshipman of the quarter deck was then called, and plying the latter with questions relating to the wind, the weather, the sail carried, the barometer, the thermometer, the course and speed of the ship, etc. It got to be a duel of wits in which, I must admit, the junior was invariably worsted, although sometimes the battle was long drawn out. Some point was always neglected and the old salt would discover it and chuckle in his berth as the rapier of his interrogation pierced the armor of our preparedness. One night Bob Caldwell (dear fellow, I wonder where he is now) declared that he would have an answer for any question the admiral could possibly ask, for he had all the deck log and pretty much all the steam log committed to memory—but, alas, Bob counted without his host. At about five bells of the mid watch the summons came and down the ladder Bob shot full of confidence. He was gone a long while, but it was another and a different Bob who crept to the quarter deck, silent, vexed and depressed. It took much coaxing to worm the story out of him. "I told him the speed and course, the lights in sight, the local deviation of the compass, the barometer, thermometer, wet bulb and dry bulb, wind, force and direction, sail carried, weather, revolutions of the screw, steam pressure, vacuum, and a lot of other things, but he got me at last, blankety, blank, blank, when I couldn't give him the temperature of the bilge injection! And he lay in his bunk and just croaked like a blankety, blank, blank, old frog, blankety, blank, blank."
One day, during the summer of 1866, we were steaming down the English Channel over a sea as smooth as a mill pond, under a cloudless sky. The ship was under all plain sail, the breeze quartering and light. Nothing could have been more peaceful than the scene. It was the hour in the afternoon when the flag officer was accustomed to taking his constitutional on the quarter deck. Passing out of the gun deck cabin he glanced at the mercurial barometer mounted just inside the cabin door and, following his invariable practice, read the height of the mercury, something over thirty inches. With a serene mind he mounted the companion way to the spar deck, where he proceeded to pace up and down, throwing some of the lustre of his dignity upon everything which happened within his view. Shortly afterwards, the captain, whose stateroom adjoined the general cabin, for at this time the commander-in-chief, his fleet captain and the commanding officer of the Colorado messed together, being moved by the beauty of the glorious day, thought that he too would go up and see how things were getting along on deck. In his turn he also approached the barometer. He read its vernier and then began to examine more particularly into the construction of the instrument. Possibly some parts of its mechanism had never appealed to him before. However that may be, his evil genius directed his glance toward the screw at the bottom of the admiralty pattern by which the pressure on the leather bulb containing the mercury is varied for the purpose of initial adjustment. Curious to know the purpose of this screw the captain ran it up and down two or three times seeking in vain a solution of the mystery when, unhappily, turning it too far to the left, a quantity of the mercury spilled out and ran over the cabin carpet. In dismay, but with great promptness, he hastily ran the screw up before very much of the liquid had escaped. After vainly endeavoring to make it read more than twenty-eight inches he went on deck, doubtless in great perturbation of spirit. An hour or so later old Goldsborough descended to the cabin and as he entered the door mechanically swung to the left to read the barometer afresh. To his horror during his brief abscence the mercury had fallen over two inches. Then there arose a clamor which pervaded every part of the ship, waking the captains of the holds and even arousing us midshipmen from our afternoon naps on the transom in the steerage. Call bells were ringing in all directions, orderlies were yelled for and sent on the run to the captain of the ship, to the first lieutenant directing the immediate calling of all hands to shorten sail, hasty orders reached the officer-of-the-deck to take in all canvas at once, put on sea gaskets and prepare for a gale, etc., etc., in fact in about two minutes the whole ship was a perfect bedlam and no one outside of the admiral knew what it all meant. In the meanwhile he was pacing up and down the cabin wanting, in stentorian tones, to know why something was not done before the fearful cyclone should strike us and carry us to the bottom. "God bless my soul," he ejaculated, "I never knew such a drop in the barometer in all my going to sea. It's horrible." In this turmoil the captain of the ship and the fleet captain took no special interest except that the former was zealously seconding his chief's efforts to make everything snug and to batten down the hatches while there was yet time, and the latter, writing in his stateroom at the time, had observed the mishap to the barometer occasioned by the inquisitiveness of the captain and being fond of a jest was inwardly chuckling over the whole commotion. It so happened that on one of his excursions to the forward bulkhead in the cabin old Goldsborough observed some globules of mercury lying on the cabin carpet and a moment's investigation revealed the true cause of his alarm. Mad as a hatter, he turned toward the fleet captain and bellowed out in a voice that would have done credit to a bull of Bashan case, "What d—d fool has been meddling with my barometer?" The captain stepping from his room and pulling his long beard in a nervous manner in which his habitual hauteur was strongly tempered with deprecation, replied: " It was I, admiral, it was I." Things on board were speedily restored to their former condition of repose, but it was some little time before the secret of our sudden, strange and overwhelming disaster reached the steerage, and when it did the midshipmen felt as if the long score of despotism, tyranny, oppression, and maltreatment to which, in their midshipman way, they felt they had unjustly been subjected, was entirely squared. For once they had the joke on the "old man" and their glee, proportional to this unusual order of things, was manifested in methods appropriate to the occasion and common in those days to the steerage of a steam frigate.
One more story and I shall, for a while, doubtless permanently, quit this (to me) very attractive subject, but I hope that some one who had the pleasure of serving under him will tell the Institute a few of the many score of excellent stories relating to that Picturesque individuality and able officer, the late Rear-Admiral S. W. Godon.
In spinning this last yarn about old Goldsborough, I am really broaching on the preserve of another, for it is my particular friend and classmate, Rear-Admiral C. H. Davis, who told it as happening to himself, to Rear-Admiral Jewell (I think) and one or two others of our mess of midshipmen on board the Colorado.
These youngsters had gone from Leghorn, where the ship was moored, to Florence on a short leave and not having grasped the opportunities of this great gem of the renaissance concluded to ask for a twenty-four hours' extension. The captain not being in town it occurred to them, most unhappily, that Admiral Goldsborough, who was then stopping at the Hotel D'Italie, might be willing to grant their request. I am assured that the choice of a spokesman for the party was by no means easy, for each member firmly and repeatedly waived his privilege in favor of his neighbor. In some fashion or other Davis was selected to lead the forlorn hope. I have reason to believe that it was with many fears and tremblings that the party made their way to the admiral's hotel and sent up their cards. The admiral was a thoroughbred, a gentleman of the old school, and he received his youthful visitors with as much courtesy and distinction as if they had been princes of the royal blood, making them entirely at home and expressing himself as greatly flattered by their polite attention. They had been ushered in by the admiral's body servant, "John," who discreetly retired through the doorway into the adjoining room, but who, in this instance, as on all others, kept himself within call. The admiral asked these midshipmen where they were staying, how they enjoyed the place, what museums, galleries and churches they had visited, how they liked the opera and he drew upon his abundant store of history and anecdote for their instruction and edification. All the while they were shaking in their boots lest it should transpire that the object of their call was not so much to pay honor to their commander-in-chief as to ask a favor at his hand. Gradually screwing up his courage to the sticking point, Davis, after many hems and haws, gradually working round to the object in view, hinted that Florence contained so much that was valuable and instructive as to require rather a longer stay in order to do it full justice and offered the humble request that the party be allowed to remain another twenty-four hours. Stiffening himself with more than official rigidity, the admiral glowered at the unfortunate midshipmen from beneath his overhanging brows and deigned no response other than to say in imperative tones "The door, John, the door." Exeunt four crestfallen midshipmen hurrying to catch the first train back to Leghorn.
Admiral Goldsborough possessed a great fund of service anecdote upon which he was wont to draw from time to time for the edification of his guests. If he has left written memoranda or journals describing the life in the old navy they would be of great value. One of his yarns which I remember hearing him tell illustrates the condition of things in the first half of the last century. The scene is the Bay of Naples, upon whose calm, blue waters the seventy-four gun-ship Columbus is riding at anchor, her lofty masts in line, stepped with a rake increasing from forward to aft as was the custom of those days, her yards square, her sails neatly furled and rigging taut, the awnings spread in one flat sheet from stem to stern, her running gear flemished down on the deck in coils, whose patterns varied according to the aesthetic tastes of the different "Captains of the parts of the ship." The mainmast-man with his multitudinous ropes differing entirely in his opinion of what is beautiful from the less artistic rough-handed "Captain of the fo'casle." The boats of the ship had been exercising under sails, as well as oars, during the forenoon and at lunch time the events of the drill were discussed with animation at the ward-room mess. "Jimmie" Glynn, the second lieutenant, was very loud in his praises of the third cutter and of the great abilities and perfect training of her crew of negroes commanded, be it understood, by the same Jimmie who it was, as some still remember, in 1855, when the so-called "Star Chamber Board" was formed, expressed to Matthew C. Perry, its president, his hearty approval of the scheme, adding, "Don't forget, Perry, be sure and cut deep," and Perry did cut deep,—in fact just below Jimmie, who with many others was summarily retired. Jimmie was a little chap and like most small men the earnestness and vigor of his arguments were only rivaled by the shortness of his stature. Now, to some members of the mess, Jimmie's eulogy of his boat's crew savored of the vainglorious, so much so that the late Rear-Admiral F. H. Gregory, who was the first lieutenant, felt called upon to restrain Jimmie in his remarks. "You are boasting, Jimmie, and I am afraid we will have to cut your comb." "Oh! no, Mr. Gregory," said Glynn, "I am not boasting, I am only telling the solemn truth." "Jimmie, if you don't stop bragging about your boat's crew I shall give you a lesson you will never forget." "Well. I do not know about that, Mr. Gregory, but I do know my boat's crew can out-pull and out-thrash any other in this ship." "Nonsense, Jimmie," said Gregory. " I will take the first cutter, pull all around you, chuck your crew overboard and yourself too, and tow you alongside the ship stern first." "I would like to see you do it," said Jimmie. "Well, all right," said Gregory. "We will try it after the hands are turned to." In those days any duty outside of the ship involved the wearing of cocked hat and epaulettes, so when Jimmie manned his boat and shoved off from the starboard gangway, he was in, what we would now consider, full uniform, standing up proudly in the stern sheets of his cutter, which pulled out a short distance and then lay on its oars waiting for its challenger. Gregory mustered the first cutter's crew in the port gangway after Glynn had shoved off. They all wore, what was habitual at that time in cool weather, short monkey jackets over blue shirts. "Go down to the purser," said Mr. Gregory, "tell him to give you some black pepper and put a handful of it in your pockets every one of you and then come back here." So said, so done. In a few minutes the first cutter was manned and Gregory was pulling around the stern of the ship to line up alongside of Glynn in his second cutter with her dusky crew. He passed between the ship and the second cutter and then around the latter, thus carrying out his original prediction, and when he got well to windward he first held water, then lay on his oars and then ordered his crew, "Now, boys, give it to the darkies." In an instant the second cutter's crew were all weeping and gasping and sneezing, their eyes blinded with the pepper. "Now then, first cutters," said Gregory, "board them and throw them all overboard," which was done, leaving only Jimmie standing in the stern sheets surprised by the strange and unexpected nature of the attack. "Throw Mr. Glynn overboard," said Gregory. "For God's sake don't do that," said Glynn. "Yes, Jimmie," said Gregory, "you bragged too much a while ago and you have got to have your lesson." Over with him lads, but give him a painter so that he may have something to hang on to." So the first cutter's crew put the painter in Jimmie's hand and chucked him into the water. His boat was then towed stern first back to the ship, the crew in the water hanging onto the gunwales and the gallant Jimmie bringing up the rear, clinging to the painter.
It was thus in the thirties and forties that the boaster was humbled—but, it might be suggested, "nous avons change tout cela."