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Updated: May 14, 2025
While the Alcedo was the first war-vessel to be sunk by a submarine, the first war-ship to be stricken in torpedo attack was the destroyer Cassin, one of the vessels that raced out of Newport to rescue the victims of the ravages of the German U-boat off Nantucket, in October, 1916. The Cassin was on patrol duty and had sighted a submarine about four miles away.
Two writers, Coleti and Alcedo, who almost two centuries later mentioned the same epitaph as marking the grave in Santo Domingo, must have copied from Castellanos.
Alcedo, La Cruz, Olmedilla, and many other geographers, have mistaken the situation of this small town of the Llanos of Barcelona, confounding it either with San Juan Bauptisto del Pao of the Llanos of Caracas, or with El Valle del Pao de Zarate.
No stronger proof of this need be asked than that which Alcedo gives in connection with the proposal by Gogueneche, the Biscayan pilot, to open communication by the Atrato and the Napipi. "The Atrato," says the historian, "is navigable for many leagues, but the navigation of it is prohibited under pain of death, without the exception of any person whatever."
For once, popular opinion had the advantage over scientific dissertations and philosophic denials; there, where, according to the Dictionary of Alcedo, nothing had been discovered but mines of pewter! where Jacques Baegert had indeed acknowledged the presence of gold, but in meagre veins; where Raynal had named as curiosities only fishes and pearls, declaring, in California, the sea richer than the land; where in our own times M. Humboldt discovered nothing but cylindrical cacti, on a sandy soil, remained buried, as a deposit for future ages, this treasure of the world, which seemed to be waiting in order to leave its native soil, the moment of falling into the hands of a commercial and industrious people, that of the United States.
They proved, however, to be of a different species from those found in the other islands, and come nearest to the bird originally described by Linnaeus under the name of Alcedo dea, and which came from Ternate. This would indicate that the small chain of islands parallel to Gilolo have a few peculiar species in common, a fact which certainly occurs in insects.
I had a young lad in my crew, a yeoman, and one day I sent for him and told him that if we were ever torpedoed he was to save the muster-roll, so that when it was all over it would be possible to check up and find who had been saved. Well, the Alcedo was torpedoed at 2 o'clock one morning, and in four minutes she disappeared forever.
Only three fighting ships have been lost as a result of enemy action the patrol ship Alcedo, a converted yacht, sunk off the coast of France November 5, 1917; the torpedoboat destroyer Jacob Jones, sunk off the British coast December 6, 1917, and the cruiser San Diego, sunk near Fire Island, off the New York coast, on July 19, 1918, by striking a mine supposedly set adrift by a German submarine.
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