The Atlantic Fleet was, indeed, converted into a huge
workshop of war, turning out its finished products--fighting men. A
visitor to the fleet, writing under date of May 14, expressed amazement
at the amount of well-ordered activity which characterized a day on
every one of the battleships. Here were men being trained for
armed-guard service on merchantmen, groups of neophytes on the after
deck undergoing instruction on the loading-machines; farther along a
group of qualified gunners were shattering a target with their 5-inch
gun. Other groups were hidden in the turrets with their long 14 and 12
inch guns, three or two to a turret. Signal-flags were whipping the air
aloft--classes in signalling; while from engine-room and fighting-tops
each battleship hummed with the activities of masters and pupils
teaching and learning every phase of the complicated calling of the
modern navy man.
And there were days when the great fleet put to sea for target practice
and for battle manoeuvres, the turrets and broadsides belching forth
their tons upon tons of steel and the observers aloft sending down their
messages of commendation for shots well aimed. It is the statement of
those in a position to know that never were jackies so quick to learn as
those of our war-time personnel. Whether the fact of war is an incentive
or whether American boys are adapted, through a life of competitive
sport, quickly to grasp the sailorman's trade, the truth remains that in
a very short space the boy who has never seen a ship develops swiftly
into a bluejacket, rolling, swaggering, but none the less deft, precise,
and indomitable.
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