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Updated: June 18, 2025
But a medical officer unfortunately lost his life over these proceedings, and a momentary sadness settled over the fleet. The New Zealand section went ahead of the main fleet a day or two before reaching Colombo in order to proceed with coaling and watering.
This treaty grants to the United States in perpetuity the exclusive right to construct a canal by way of the San Juan River and Lake Nicaragua, and leases to the United States for ninety-nine years a naval base on the Gulf of Fonseca, and also the Great Corn and Little Corn islands as coaling stations.
As we approached the harbor there came to head us off, an official steam launch, with men in uniform, who hailed and commanded us to stop. Two officers with an intense expression of authority came aboard, and we had to give a full and particular account of ourselves. Why were we there? Coaling. Where were we from? Manila and Hongkong. Where were we going? San Francisco.
"If the vessel is coaling or is otherwise restricted in its movements it must nevertheless keep within this distance. If at any time the flagship makes signal which is not visible to any vessel, such vessel must at once approach the flagship or retreating vessel to a point where it can read the signal.
It was Lieutenant Rose's birthday, and, incidentally, the Kaiserin's also. So no loading or coaling was done, but the band on the Wolf most of the members with the minimum of clothing and nearly all with faces and bodies black with coal-dust lined up and gave a musical performance of German patriotic airs.
It was black with coal-dust, and in one corner was heaped a pile of shallow baskets, such as are used in coaling vessels at Japanese ports, being slipped from hand to hand in unbroken chain up the ship's side and down again to the coal barge. The work was finished. The lighter was empty except for a crowd of coal-stained coolies which it was bringing back to Nagasaki.
The frigate Galatea, Captain McGuire, arrived at the port. This was the ship that H.R.H. Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh went around the world in. She was to take us back to Halifax. Previous to that she went to Hayti to see what could be done with these people for insulting the British flag. She soon destroyed the batteries, returning to Port Royal, and after coaling embarked us for Halifax.
But the Little Brown Brother only smiled; for the fleet hadn't coal to steam five hundred miles without hiring foreign colliers to follow around with supply of fuel. "Fine fleet! To be sure we have the ships," exploded a rear admiral in San Diego Bay a few years ago; "but look here!" He pointed through the port at an insignificant coaling dock such as third-rate barges use.
Meantime I watch the lascars taking off the effect of the coaling last night; how blue and sharp the reflections of the sky are on the wet deck and their dark feet. It is my business to paint things, not to write, about them, still, both occupations dissipate the time wonderfully.
There was no particular cause of difference between them. But when Commercial and Colonial expansion became a definite and avowed object of the former's policy, she found, whereso she might look, that Britain was there, in the way "everywhere British colonies, British coaling stations, and floating over a fifth of the globe the British flag." Could anything be more exasperating?
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