The _San Diego_, which was one of the crack shooting-ships of the navy,
and had made seven round trips to France in convoy work without ever
having seen a submarine, was on her way from the Portsmouth, N.H.,
navy-yard, where she had been completely overhauled in dry-dock and
coaled, to New York, where her crew were to have had short liberty,
preliminary to another voyage to France. She carried a heavy deck-load
of lumber which she was to take to France for the Marine Corps. She had
in her bunkers some 3,000 tons of coal.
On the morning of July 19, the cruiser, shortly after 11 o'clock, had
reached a point about seven miles southeast of Point o' Woods. The sun
was shining brilliantly, but the coast-line was veiled in a heavy haze.
There was a fair ground-swell running, but no sea. The _San Diego_ was
ploughing along at a fifteen-knot clip, not pursuing the zigzag course
which it is customary for vessels to follow in enemy-infested waters.
No submarine warning had been issued, and, as the vessel was only seven
miles offshore, there may be no doubt that the officers of the war-ship
did not consider the trip as any more hazardous than the hundreds of
journeys she had made along our coast from port to port. The crew were
engaged in the usual routine, with the added labor of getting the vessel
ship-shape after the grimy operation of coaling at Portsmouth. The
explosion came without warning at 11.15 o'clock. It was extremely heavy,
accompanied by a rending and grinding of metal and by the explosion of
the after-powder magazine, which destroyed the quarter-deck and sent the
mainmast, with wireless attached, crashing overboard.
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