COURSE TWOTHE MAINE
In a few months the division was carefully recruited and when the drill season started it was little effort for jack o’ the dust to report a tidy sum in the treasury. The division parlor was artistically decorated. Along the frieze was painted a stretch of blue water of dipsy hue on which was developed some of the most startling advances in shipbuilding. A craft of the time of Hiero, a Roman galley, a Viking ship, a French frigate of the sixteenth century, a warship of Revolutionary days, one of the time of Hull and then the battleship Indiana were pictured. In a way the series traced the development of sea power.
The months of that drill season wore by pleasantly, the boys at work mainly at infantry, for somehow in those days the real province of naval militiamen was not clearly lined out, but with a bit of single-stick work and some signalling, and when the end of the season arrived most of the men were well acquainted with the work which had been laid out.
It was on the battleship Maine that the yearly lessons afloat were learned. The battleship Texas had been assigned for the duty, but it became necessary to dry dock her for repairs, and her sister ship took her place. Ensign Louis F. Middlebrook with Boatswain’s Mate Crowell, Quartermaster Wightman, Coxswains Osgood and Meek and Seamen Doran, Mather, J. Morgan Wells, Gilbert and Baxter constituted the baggage detail, whichsailed from the steamboat landing at 7:30 on the morning of Saturday, July 17, on the tug J. Warren Coulston for Fisher’s Island.
The detail pitched camp on rising ground in the rear of the Hotel Munnatawket, not far from the site of the battalion’s camp some five years later.
The Maine lay at anchor in Fisher’s Island Sound. The remainder of the division went by rail to New Haven on the following Monday morning and sailed for the island on the steamer Richard Law. The two divisions with the engineer branch and the staff made the battalion nearly 140 strong.
Captain Sigsbee was in command of the ship, the same officer who was in command when the tragedy in the harbor of Havana happened seven months later. His face became familiar to most of our men, as did also that of Lieutenant Wainwright, executive officer at the time of the explosion, and when that tragedy came the horror had a personal as well as a patriotic interest for many members of the Second Division, who remembered by name and face many a man in the ship’s complement.
Most of the work was at Camp Long or in small boats, but not a little was on the ship, where gun drill was among the most interesting of the branches. A lecture on the Whitehead torpedo was a feature of the curriculum.
One afternoon during the tour of duty on the Maine, the signal squads of the First and the Second Divisions met in a contest for a trophy cup and the squad from the Second won. The winning team included Quartermasters Cheney and Wightman and Seamen Bosworth and V. Morgan.
It is interesting to hark back to the Maine days and to record that a racing cutter crew was evolved and that it received some, if not much, instruction and encouragement from men on the Maine. Out of the mist of thatweek it is recorded that this crew was made up of these oarsmen: First, Seaman Baxter; Second, Quartermaster Wightman; Third, Coxswain Osgood; Fourth, Seaman Wells; Fifth, Gunner’s Mate Root; Sixth, Seaman Havens; Seventh, Seaman Gilbert; Eighth, Boatswain’s Mate Morrell; Ninth, Coxswain Northam; Tenth, Seaman Ingalls; Eleventh, Gunner’s Mate Cuntz, and Twelfth, Seaman J. Morgan. Without experience the crew contested with the crack twelve of the New Haven Division and was beaten only by three-quarters of a boat length.
The Hartford Division returned on the tugs Coulston and Mabel, arriving at the steamboat landing in the early evening.