United States or Puerto Rico ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
If General Shafter had had competent and experienced officers to put in command of these boats, and steam-launches to tow them back and forth in strings or lines of half a dozen each, and if he had made provision for communication with the captains of the steamers by means of wigwag flag-signals, so as to be able to give them orders and control their movements, he might have landed supplies in this way with some success.
Bands played, swift steam-launches darted to and fro, and a mighty volume of cheering from twice ten thousand throats was borne to those who listened on land like the roar of a breaking tempest. The American army and navy had met at last, and were joined in a common cause. For an hour our young trooper watched with swelling heart this wonderful meeting of his countrymen.
Steam-launches darted out from the piers carrying war correspondents to their respective despatch-boats, and naval officers to the monitors and the huge four-masted colliers; a long line of party-colored flags was displayed from the signal-halyards of the Miantonomoh; two or three fast sea-going tugs carrying the naval commandant and other harbor officers started seaward at full speed, with long plumes of black smoke trailing to leeward from their lead-colored stacks; and the eight hundred marines on the auxiliary cruiser Panther swarmed on deck and crowded eagerly aft to gaze at the dim, distant outlines of the newly arrived vessels.
Cat-boats and yachts flitted past in the fair wind like large white-winged moths; row-boats filled with pleasure-parties dipped their oars in the wake of the "Eolus;" steam-launches with screeching whistles were putting into their docks, among old boat-houses and warehouses, painted dull-red, or turned of a blackish gray by years of exposure to weather.
Commodore Riveros, bearing in mind his own attempt on the Peruvians at Arica, and feeling convinced that their fleet must be somewhere close at hand, gave the strictest orders that no men should be allowed to go ashore, and that a patrol of steam-launches should ply up and down the harbour the whole night through, in order to prevent the attempt of similar tactics on the part of the enemy.
At night, when the danger from the Spanish torpedo-boats was greatest and when Cervera's fleet was most likely to escape, a powerful and piercing search-light was held constantly on the mouth of the narrow cañon between Morro and Socapa; the battle-ships closed in so as to diminish the radius of their semicircle by nearly one half; the cruisers and gunboats, under cover of the blinding radiance of the search-light, moved a mile nearer to the mouth of the harbor; and three steam-launches patrolled the coast all night within pistol-shot of the enemy's batteries.
Now, Chinese junks, Malay prahus, a few Chinese steamers, steam-launches from the native States, and two steamers which call in passing, make up its trade. There is neither newspaper, banker, hotel, nor resident English merchant, The half-caste descendants of the Portuguese are, generally speaking, indolent, degraded with the degradation that is born of indolence, and proud.
I'll take you through all the Courts! His home-sickness had quite slipped away from him, and for the moment he was the skipper of the canary-coloured vessel driven on a shoal by the reckless jockeying of rival mariners, and he was trying to recollect all the fine and biting things he used to say to masters of steam-launches when their wash, as they drove too near the bank, used to flood his parlour-carpet at home.
They went before luncheon to the river and sailed up and down in a small steam-launch named The Swan of Avon. Jean thought privately that the presence of such things as steam-launches were a blot on Shakespeare's river, but the boys were delighted with them, and at once began to plan how one might be got to adorn Tweed.
Exactly how many of them there were in West Indian waters I have been unable to ascertain; but I should say not less than fifteen or twenty, with almost an equal number of naphtha-and steam-launches for harbor and smooth-water work.
Word Of The Day