United States or Kazakhstan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
We were to get shore liberty without doubt, and the ship was to be coaled by outside labor. We took no stock in the latter rumor till an officer voiced it then we believed. Our clean blues were furbished up, lanyards scrubbed, and money counted. We understood that there was little to see at Key West; that it was a dull and uninteresting place.
We coaled at Teneriffe, putting into the harbour of Santa Cruz for this purpose; and Mick and I were much struck by the fact of the black ladies who carried the baskets of coal on their heads along the jetty from the shore to the ship, doing the job, too, in first-rate style and as good as any gang of wharfingers at home, all of them wearing the most expansive crinolines, which, with their thin dresses and black stockings, of nature's own provision, had a very comical effect!
"My father was an American an Annapolis man. He was a midshipman in the War of the Rebellion. In '66 he was a lieutenant on the Suwanee. Her captain was Paul Shirley. In '66 the Suwanee coaled at an island in the Pacific which I do not care to mention, under a protectorate which did not exist then and which shall be nameless.
Here they were coaled, cleaned, and oiled ere taking their stiff two-engine haul over the mountains to the wide, straight, pastoral and wheat-growing West, and their calling and rumbling made cheery music all the year round, excepting a short space on Sundays; while at night, as they climbed the crests of the mountain-spurs, every time they fired, the red light belching from their engine doors could be seen for miles down the valley.
Coaled and provisioned the transport had pushed on for the seven-day run for San Francisco; but the recovering of his long-lost son and the soft, reposeful atmosphere of the lovely, yet isolated island group, had so benefited Mr.
In Egypt, a land I was glad to revisit, we only stopped a week while the Star of the South, which we rejoined at Suez, coaled and went through the Canal. This, however, gave us time to spend a few days in Cairo, visit the Pyramids and Sakkara which Bastin and Bickley had never seen before, and inspect the great Museum. The journey up the Nile was postponed until our return.
I could tell you many interesting things, but I am afraid of the censor. If he deciphers all my letters home, he will probably have nervous prostration by the time the war is over. Many of the war ships are coaled by women who carry heavy baskets on each end of a pole swung across the shoulder, and invariably a baby on their backs.
All that afternoon we "lingered in the lap of luxury," as "Bill" put it. Though the workmen had left, the work was still to continue. The crew coaled till twelve o'clock, working in quarter watches. The following day another barge came alongside and part of the crew had to turn to and help the hired shovellers. "So much," said "Stump," snapping his fingers, "for the officers' assurances."
It was next heard from at Curacoa, an island in the Caribbean Sea, off the north coast of Venezuela, but before the American ships could reach it, the Spanish admiral had coaled and provisioned his ships at Willemstad, the chief city on the island, and was off again to sea.
They stopped at Port Said to coal; coaled again at Colombo and Hongkong; and then headed straight for the Korean coast, neither Drake nor Frobisher having taken particular notice of the P&O liner that had left England the day after themselves, and steamed out of Colombo harbour just as the Quernmore was entering it.
Word Of The Day