COURSE FIVETHE PRAIRIE AGAIN
That summer’s cruise was on the Prairie and led to Penobscot Bay. The division sent in a whaleboat crew to race against one from the First Division on that water, and its crew defeated that from the Elm City by a quarter of a length, one of the New Haven officers marveling at this result and asserting that it was a mystery of the deep. It also captured two other boat races.
Later in the summer camping parties spent week-ends in Paradise, the narrow strip between Bodkin Rock and the river a short distance below Middletown. The division’s steamboat and the pulling boats which had come a season or two before were in popular favor. They gave silent lessons to the boys in boat engine work and in the stowing of dunnage, thereby adding variety to the oarsmen’s drill of the early spring.
December 22, Lieutenant Parker died at his home in South Lancaster, Mass. mourned by all who knew him. A patriotic officer, a loyal friend, he had won the affection of the command.
One minute prior to midnight December 31, two gun crews unlimbered in the rear of the City Hall and on the dot of midnight, the opening of the new century, Gunner’s Mate Chapin fired the first shot in a salute of twenty-one guns, a welcome to the newborn heir of time.
Century No. Twenty’s first gift to the division was an indoor baseball team. The sport was new to the armory and it jumped (or slid) into instant favor. Thefirst game was with a team from Company A and to the astonishment of everybody and most of all themselves the sailors won, by a score of 17 to 12. They contended with a hurricane of batting in the second inning and dragged anchor, but they weathered the storm and won with an inning to spare. One of the division advocated a diamond of this kind:
Home plate on the forecastle near the foremast, for baseline the starboard foremast shrouds and for first base the foretop; along main topmast stay to second base, the main top-masthead; down main topmast rigging to third base, the main top; then down the mainstay and on to the point of beginning. None of the other teams would play on that diamond.
In a sham battle held in the armory in Governor McLean’s honor the division had a conspicuous part and in the spring the battalion had its field day in the South Meadow. Governor McLean had appointed Mr. Middlebrook to be naval aide on his staff, with the rank of captain, the highest rank which any member has obtained in the Connecticut naval militia, later naval-aides having the rank of lieutenant-commanders.