539. Heroes of the Navy
Heroes of the Navy
Jas_3:4 : ’93Behold also the ships.’94
If this exclamation was appropriate about eighteen hundred and seventy-two years ago, when it was written concerning the crude fishing smacks that sailed Lake Galilee, how much more appropriate in an age which has launched from the dry docks for purposes of peace the Oceanic of the White Star Line, the Lucania of the Cunard Line, the St. Louis of the American Line, the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse of the North-German Lloyd Line, the Augusta Victoria of the Hamburg-American Line; and in an age, which, for purposes of war, has launched the screw-sloops like the Idaho, the Shenandoah, the Ossipee, and our ironclads like the Kalamazoo, the Roanoke, and the Dunderberg, and those which have already been buried in the deep like the Monitor, the Housatonic, and the Weehawken, the tempests ever since sounding a volley over their watery sepulchres, and the Oregon and the Brooklyn, and the Texas, and the Olympia, the Iowa, the Massachusetts, the Indiana, the New York, the Marietta, of the last war, and the scarred veterans of war shipping, like the Constitution, or the Alliance, or the Constellation that have swung into the naval yards to spend their last days, their decks now all silent of the feet that trod them, their rigging all silent of the hands that clung to them, their port-holes silent of the brazen throats that once thundered out of them. If in the first century, when war vessels were dependent on the oars that paddled at the side of them for propulsion, my text was suggestive, with how much more emphasis and meaning and overwhelming reminiscence we can cry out, as we see the Kearsarge lay across the bows of the Alabama and sink it, teaching foreign nations they had better keep their hands off our American fight, or as we see the ram Albemarle of the Confederates running out and in the Roanoke, and up and down the coast, throwing everything into confusion as no other craft ever did, pursued by the Miami, the Ceres, the Southfield, the Sassacus, the Mattabesett, the Whitehead, the Commodore Hull, the Louisiana, the Minnesota, and other armed vessels, all trying in vain to catch her, until Captain Cushing, twenty-one years of age, and his men blew her up, himself and only one other escaping, and as I see the flag-ship Hartford, and the Richmond, and the Monongahela, with other gunboats, sweep past the batteries of Port Hudson, and the Mississippi flows forever free to all Northern and Southern craft, and under the fire of Dewey and his men the Spanish ships at Manila burn or sink, and the fleet rushing out of Santiago harbor are demolished by our guns, and the brave Cervera surrenders, I cry out with a patriotic emotion that I cannot suppress if I would, and would not if I could, ’93Behold also the ships.’94
Full justice has been done to the men who at different times fought on the land, but not enough has been said of those who on ship’92s deck dared and suffered all things. Lord God of the rivers and the sea, help me in this sermon! So, ye admirals, commanders, captains, pilots, gunners, boatswains, sailmakers, surgeons, stokers, messmates and seamen of all names, to use your own parlance, we might as well get under way and stand out to sea. Let all land lubbers go ashore. Full speed now! Four bells!
Never since the sea fight of Lepanto, where three hundred royal galleys, manned by fifty thousand warriors, at sunrise, September 6th, 1571, met two hundred and fifty royal galleys, manned by one hundred and twenty thousand men, and in the four hours of battle eight thousand fell on one side, and twenty-five thousand on the other; yea, never since the day when at Actium, thirty-one years before Christ, Augustus with two hundred and sixty ships scattered the two hundred and twenty ships of Mark Antony and gained universal dominion as the prize; yea, since the day when at Salamis the twelve hundred galleys of the Persians, manned by five hundred thousand men, were crushed by Greeks with less than a third of that force; yea, never since the time of Noah, the first ship captain, has the world seen such a miraculous creation as that of the American navy in 1861.
There were about two hundred available seamen in all the naval stations and receiving ships, and here and there an old vessel. Yet orders were given to blockade thirty-five hundred miles of sea coast, greater than the whole coast of Europe, and beside that the Ohio, Tennessee, Cumberland, Mississippi, and other great rivers, covering an extent of two thousand more miles, were to be patrolled. No wonder the whole civilized world burst into guffaws of laughter at the seeming impossibility. But the work was done, done almost immediately, done thoroughly, and done with a speed and consummate skill that eclipsed all the history of naval architecture. What brilliant achievements are suggested by the mere mention of the names of the rear admirals! If all they did should be written, every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. But these names have received the honors due. The most of them went to their graves under the cannonade of all the forts, navy yards, and men-of-war, the flags of all the shipping and capitals at half-mast.
I recite today the deeds of our naval heroes, many of whom have not yet received appropriate recognition. ’93Behold also the ships.’94 As we will never know what our national prosperity is worth until we realize what it cost, I recall the unrecited fact that the men of the navy in all our wars ran especial risks. They had not only the human weaponry to contend with, but the tides, the fog, the storm. Not like other ships could they run into harbor at the approach of an equinox, or a cyclone, or a hurricane, because the harbors were hostile. A miscalculation of a tide might leave them on a bar, and a fog might overthrow all the plans of wisest commodore and admiral, and accident might leave them not on the land ready for an ambulance, but at the bottom of the sea, as when in our civil war the torpedo blew up the Tecumseh in Mobile Bay, and nearly all on board perished. They were at the mercy of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, which have no mercy. Such tempests as wrecked the Spanish Armada might any day swoop upon the squadron. No hiding behind the earthworks. No digging in of cavalry spurs at the sound of retreat. Mightier than all the fortresses on all the coasts is the ocean when it bombards a flotilla.
In the cemeteries for Federal and Confederate dead are the bodies of most of those who fell on the land. But where those are who went down in the war vessels will not be known until the sea gives up its dead. The Jack tars knew that while loving arms might carry the men who fell on the land, and bury them with solemn liturgy, and the honors of war, for the bodies of those who dropped from the ratlines into the sea, or went down with all on board under the stroke of a gun-boat, there remained the shark and the whale and the endless tossing of the sea which cannot rest. Once a year, in the decoration of the graves, those who fell in the land were remembered; but how about the graves of those who went down at sea; Nothing but the archangel’92s trumpet shall reach their lowly bed. A few of them are gathered into naval cemeteries of the land, and we every year garland the sod that covers them; but who will put flowers on the fallen crew of the exploded Westfield and Shawsheen, and the sunken Southfield, and the Win-field Scott? Bullets threatening in front, bombs threatening from above, torpedoes threatening from beneath, and the ocean, with its reputation of six thousand years for shipwreck, lying all around, am I not right in saying it required a special courage for the navy in 1863 as it required especial courage in 1898?
It looks picturesque and beautiful to see a war vessel going out through the Narrows, sailors in new rig singing,
A life on the ocean wave,
A home on the rolling deep!
the colors gracefully dipping to passing ships, the decks immaculately clean, and the guns at Quarantine firing parting salute. But the poetry is all gone out of that ship as it comes out of that engagement, its decks red with human blood, wheel-house gone, the cabins a pile of shattered mirrors and destroyed furniture, steering-wheel broken, smoke-stack crushed, a hundred-pound Whitworth rifle shot having left its mark from port to starboard, the shrouds rent away, ladders splintered and decks ploughed up, and smoke-blackened and scalded corpses lying among those who are gasping their last gasp far away from home and kindred, whom they love as much as we love wife and parents and children.
Oh, men of the American navy returned from Manila, and Santiago, and Havana, as well as those who are survivors of the naval conflicts of 1863 and 1864, men of the Western Gulf squadron, of the Eastern Gulf squadron, of the South Atlantic squadron, of the North Atlantic squadron, of the Mississippi squadron, of the Pacific squadron, of the West India squadron, and of the Potomac flotilla, hear our thanks! Take the benediction of our churches. Accept the hospitalities of the nation. If we had our way, we would get you not only a pension, but a home, and a princely wardrobe and an equipage and a banquet while you live, and after your departure a catafalque and a mausoleum of sculptured marble, with a model of the ship in which you won the day. It is considered a gallant thing when in a naval fight the flag-ship with its blue ensign goes ahead up a river or into a bay, its admiral standing in the shrouds watching and giving orders. But I have to tell you, O veterans of the American navy! if you are as loyal to Christ as you were to the government, there is a flag-ship sailing ahead of you, of which Christ is the admiral, and he watches from the shrouds, and the heavens are the blue ensign, and he leads you toward the harbor, and all the broadsides of earth and hell cannot damage you, and ye whose garments were once red with your own blood shall have a robe washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb. Then strike eight bells! High noon in heaven!
While we are heartily greeting and banqueting the sailor-patriots just now returned, we must not forget the veterans of the navy now in marine hospitals, or spending their old days in their own or their children’92s homesteads. Oh, ye veterans! I charge you bear up under the aches and weaknesses that you still carry from the war times. You are not as stalwart as you would have been but for that nervous strain and for that terrific exposure. Let every ache and pain, instead of depressing, remind you of your fidelity. The sinking of the Weehawken off Morris Island, December 6th, 1863, was a mystery. She was not under fire. The sea was not rough. But Admiral Dahlgren, from the deck of the flag steamer Philadelphia, saw her gradually sinking, and finally she struck the ground; but the flag still floated above the wave in the sight of the shipping. It was afterward found that she sank from weakness through injuries in previous service. Her plates had been knocked loose in previous times. So you have in nerve, and muscle, and bone, and dimmed eyesight, and difficult hearing, and shortness of breath, many intimations that you are gradually going down. It is the service of many years ago that is telling on you. Be of good cheer. We owe you just as much as though your life blood had gurgled through the scuppers of the ship in the Red River expedition, or as though you had gone down with the Melville off Hatteras. Only keep your flag flying las did the illustrious Weehawken. Good cheer, my boys! The memory of man is poor, and all that talk about the country never forgetting those who fought for it is an untruth. It does forget. Witness how the veterans sometimes had to turn the hand organs on the street to get their families a living. Witness how ruthlessly some of them were turned out of office that some bloat of a politician might take their place. Witness the fact that there is not a man or woman now under forty-five years of age who has any full appreciation of the four years’92 martyrdom of 1861 to 1865, inclusive. But while men may forget, God never forgets. He remembers the swinging hammock. He remembers the forecastle. He remembers the frozen ropes of that January tempest. He remembers the amputation without sufficient ether. He remembers the horrors of that deafening night when forts from both sides belched on you their fury, and the heavens glowed with ascending and descending missiles of death, and your ship quaked under the recoil of the one hundred pounder, while all the gunners, according to command, stood on tiptoe with mouth wide open, lest the concussion shatter hearing or brain. He remembers it all better than you remember it, and in some shape reward will be given. God is the best of all paymasters, and for those who do their whole duty to him and the world, the pension awarded is an everlasting heaven.
Sometimes off the coast of England the royal family have inspected the British navy, manoeuvred before them for that purpose. In the Baltic Sea the Czar and Czarina have reviewed the Russian navy. To bring before the American people the debt they owe to the navy, I go out with you on the Atlantic ocean, where there is plenty of room, and in imagination review the war shipping of our four great conflicts’971776, 1812, 1865 and 1898. Swing into line all ye frigates, ironclads, fire-rafts, gunboats and men-of-war! There they come, all sail set, and all furnaces in full blast, sheaves of crystal tossing from their cutting prows. That is the Delaware, an old revolutionary craft, commanded by Commodore Decatur. Yonder goes the Constitution, Commodore Hull commanding. There is the Chesapeake, commanded by Captain Lawrence, whose dying words were: ’93Don’92t give up the ship;’94 and the Niagara, of 1812, commanded by Commodore Perry, who wrote on the back of an old letter, resting on his navy cap: ’93We have met the enemy, and they are ours.’94 Yonder is the flag-ship Wabash, Admiral Dupont commanding; yonder, the flag-ship Minnesota, Admiral Goldsborough commanding; yonder, the flag-ship Philadelphia, Admiral Dahlgren commanding; yonder, the flag-ship San Jacinto, Admiral Bailey commanding; yonder, the flag-ship Black Hawk, Admiral Porter commanding; yonder, the flag steamer Benton, Admiral Foote, commanding; yonder, the flag-ship Hartford, David G. Farragut commanding; yonder, the Brooklyn, Rear-Admiral Schley commanding; yonder, the Olympia, Admiral Dewey commanding; yonder, the Oregon, Capt. Clark commanding; yonder, the Texas, Capt. Phillip commanding; yonder, the New York, Rear-Admiral Sampson commanding; yonder, the Iowa, Capt. Robley D. Evans, commanding.
And now all the squadrons of all departments, from smallest tug-boat to mightiest man-of-war, are in procession, decks and rigging filled with men who on the sea fought for the old flag ever since we were a nation. Grandest fleet the world ever saw! Sail on before all ages! Run up all the colors! Ring all the bells! Yea, open all the port-holes! Unlimber the guns and load, and fire one great broadside that shall shake the continents in honor of peace and the eternity of the American Union! But I lift my hand, and the scene has vanished. Many of the ships have dropped under the crystal pavement of the deep, sea-monsters swimming in and out the forsaken cabin, and other old craft have swung into the navy yards, and many of the brave spirits who trod their decks are gone up to the Eternal Fortress, from whose casements and embrasures may we not hope they look down today with joy upon a nation in reunited brotherhood?
All those of you who were in naval service during the war of 1865 are now in the afternoon or evening of life. With some of you it is two o’92clock, three o’92clock, four o’92clock, six o’92clock, and it will soon be sundown. If you were of age when the war broke out, you are now at least sixty. Many of you have passed into the seventies. While in our Cuban war there were more Christian commanders on sea and land than in any previous conflict, I would revive in your minds the fact that at least two great Admirals of the civil war were Christians, Foote and Farragut. Had the Christian religion been a cowardly thing they would have had nothing to do with it. In its faith they lived and died. In Brooklyn navy yard Admiral Foote held prayer-meetings and conducted a revival on the receiving ship North Carolina, and on Sabbaths, far out at sea, followed the chaplain with religious exhortation. In early life, aboard the sloop-of-war Natchez, impressed by the words of a Christian sailor, he gave his spare time for two weeks to the Bible, and at the end of that declared openly, ’93Henceforth, under all circumstances, I will act for God.’94 His last words, while dying at the Astor House, New York, were: ’93I thank God for His goodness to me. He has been very good to me.’94 When he entered heaven he did not have to run a blockade, for it was amid the cheers of a great welcome. The other Christian admiral will be honored on earth until the day when the fires from above shall lick up the waters from beneath, and there shall be no more sea.
Oh, while old ocean’92s breast
Bears a white sail,
And God’92s soft stars to rest
Guide through the gale,
Men will him ne’92er forget,
Old heart of oak’97
Farragut, Farragut’97
Thunderbolt stroke!
According to his own statement, Farragut was very loose in his morals in early manhood, and practiced all kinds of sin. One day he was called into the cabin of his father, who was a ship master. His father said, ’93David, what are you going to be, anyhow?’94 He answered, ’93I am going to follow the sea.’94 ’93Follow the sea,’94 said the father, ’93and be kicked about the world and die in a foreign hospital?’94 ’93No,’94 said David: ’93I am going to command like you.’94 ’93No,’94 said the father; ’93a boy of your habits will never command anything,’94 and his father burst into tears and left the cabin. From that day David Farragut started on a new life.
Captain Pennington, an honored elder of my Brooklyn church, was with him in most of his battles and had his intimate friendship, and he confirmed what I had heard elsewhere, that Farragut was good and Christian. In every great crisis of life he asked and obtained the Divine direction. When in Mobile Bay the monitor Tecumseh sank from a torpedo, and the great warship Brooklyn, that was to lead the squadron, turned back, he said he was at a loss to know whether to advance or retreat, and he says, ’93I prayed, ’91O God, who created man and gave him reason, direct me what to do. Shall I go on?’92 And a voice commanded me, ’91Go on,’92 and I went on.’94 Was there ever a more touching Christian letter than that which he wrote to his wife from his flag-ship Hartford? ’93My dearest wife, I write and leave this letter for you. I am going into Mobile Bay in the morning, if God is my leader, and I hope He is, and in Him I place my trust. If He thinks it is the proper place for me to die, I am ready to submit to His will in that as all other things. God bless and preserve you, my darling, and my dear boy, if anything should happen to me. May His blessings rest upon you and your dear mother.’94
Cheerful to the end, he said on board the Tallapoosa in the last voyage he ever took, ’93It would be well if I died now in harness.’94 The sublime Episcopal service for the dead was never more appropriately rendered than over his casket, and well did all the forts of New York harbor thunder as his body was brought to the wharf, and well did the minute guns sound and the bells toll as in a procession having in its ranks the President of the United States and his cabinet, and the mighty men of land and sea, the old admiral was carried amid hundreds of thousands of uncovered heads on Broadway, and laid on his pillow of dust in beautiful Woodlawn, September 30th, amid the pomp of our autumnal forests.
But just as much am I stirred at the scene on warship’92s deck before Santiago last summer, when the victory gained for our American flag over Spanish oppression, the captain took off his hat, and all the sailors and soldiers did the same, and silently they offered thanks to Almighty God for what had been accomplished, and when on another ship the soldiers and sailors were cheering as a Spanish vessel sank, and its officers and crew were struggling in the waters, and the captain of our warship cried out, ’93Don’92t cheer! The poor fellows are drowning.’94 Prayers on deck! Prayers in the forecastle! Prayers in the cabin! Prayers in the hammocks! Prayers on the lookout at midnight! The battles of that war opened with prayer, were pushed on with prayer, and closed with prayer, and today the American nation recalls them with prayer.
We hail with thanks the new generation of naval heroes, those of the year 1898. We are too near their marvelous deeds to fully appreciate them. A century from now poetry, and sculpture and painting and history will do them better justice than we can do them now. A defeat at Manila would have been an infinite disaster. Foreign nations not overfond of our American institutions would have joined the other side, and the war so many months past would have been raging still, and perhaps a hundred thousand graves would have opened to take down our slain soldiers and sailors. It took this country four years to get over the disaster at Bull Run at the opening of the civil war. How many years it would have required to recover from a defeat at Manila in the opening of the Spanish war I cannot say. God averted the calamity by giving triumph to our navy under Admiral Dewey, whose coming up through the Narrows of New York harbor day before yesterday was greeted by the nation whose welcoming cheers will not cease to resound until tomorrow; and next day in the Capitol of the nation the jeweled sword voted by Congress shall be presented amid booming cannonade, and embannered hosts, and our autumnal nights shall become a conflagration of splendor, but the tramp of these processions, and the flash of that sword, and the huzza of that greeting, and the roar of those guns, and the illumination of those nights will be seen and heard as long as a page of American history remains inviolate.
Especially let the country boys of America join in these greetings to the returned heroes of Manila. It is their work. The chief character in all the scene is the once country lad, George Dewey. Let the Vermonters come down, and find him older, but the same modest, unassuming, almost bashful person that they went to school with and with whom they sported on the playground. The honors of all the world cannot spoil him. A few weeks ago at a banquet in England, some of the titled noblemen were affronted because our American minister-plenipotentiary associated the name of Dewey with that of Lord Nelson. As well might we be affronted because the name of Nelson is associated with that of our most renowned admiral. The one name in all the coming ages will stand as high as the other. So this day, sympathizing with all the festivities and celebrations of the past week, and with all the festivities and celebrations to come this week, let us anew thank God and those heroes of the American navy who have done such great things for our beloved land. Come aboard the old ship Zion, ye sailors and soldiers, whether still in the active service or honorably discharged and at home, having resumed citizenship. And ye men of the past, your last battle on the seas fought, take from me, in God’92s name, salutation and good cheer. For the few remaining fights with sin and death and hell make ready. Strip your vessel for the fray; hang the sheet chains over the side. Send down the topgallant masts. Barricade the wheel. Rig in the flying jib-boom. Steer straight for the shining shore, and hear the shout of the great Commander of earth and heaven as he cries from the shrouds, ’93To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the Paradise of God.’94 Hosanna! Hosanna!
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage