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About 30 years old, not halfway through her 65-year career, USS Saratoga slips to windward through the Chesapeake. She was then serving as schoolship for the US Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland.
The big corvette runs in light airs with studding- ="' sails set. White trim shows form ofsharp clipper bow added in mid-1870s. lill::l•~=c
found myself in the water. I looked around and could not see the ship, I wondered how long I could stay afloat by swimming, and I wondered where the ship was. Then I touched something. Later I found it to be a fire hydrant aft of the wardroom skylight. I hung on, then someone grabbed my leg and another grabbed the leg of the person holding onto me. After a bit the water ran out through the scuppers and we went back and lay down on the deck again. There was only one wave that washed over the rail during the entire storm. The port bow was smashed in and you could stand up and walk in between the new bow and the original one, where the ship's head had been. The sea blew up the deck between the two bows, and water squirted up as high as the foreyard during the storm. We headed for Delaware Bay. A tug towed us into Lewes. Just inside the Cape, a cadet on the fore yard securing the harbor gasket and taking in the sea gasket was pulling with both hands, standing on the footrope, when the gasket broke. He made a complete somersault before hitting the water. A cadet standing near the mizzen after pinrail threw a halyard to him. Another rang the fire alarm, and another began yelling "Man overboard!" down the hatch. The tug dropped the tow and began circling back. We launched the whaleboat. The cadet in the water, hanging onto the halyard, was dragged over two floes of ice. When he hit the ice, his hands SEA HISTORY, WINTER 1980-8I
slipped on the halyard, and when the boat crew picked him up he was at the end of the line, his hands raw from the slipping rope. Dr. Harwood bandaged his hands. We proceeded to anchor in Lewes Harbor inside the breakwater. Commander Atwater went ashore in the ship's gig to take the train to Philadelphia so that he could report to the commander of the League Island Navy Yard. After the gig left the dock it started snowing, and the ship's crew were ordered to man the rail to watch out for its return. After a while a cadet yelled: "There they are!" The rest ct.id not believe him, but the Officer of the Deck ordered the whaleboat to go out in the direction the cadet said he saw the gig, but not to go beyond hailing distance. They found the gig with all the rowers unconscious and towed it back to the ship. The unconscious men were lifted aboard through a gunport, and the doctor worked on them until all had recovered. Then a German sailor and a Swede got into a fight with sheath knives, each claiming that if the other had kept on rowing, they could have reached the ship. One cadet gave a yell and both men turned to see what it was. Three or four cadets then jumped them, and that was the end of the fight. When the Commander came back from the Navy Yard with the harbor tug Juno, we had a time hoisting the anchor. As it came up we saw that another very large anchor was tangled up with it. We hoisted the
other anchor aboard and took it to the Navy Yard where the officers sold it. They said they were going to buy athletic gear for the cadets. The Navy Department made a survey of the ship and it was decided that the damage was so great she should be put out of commission and the crew sent home. They arranged to have the USS Adams, which was stationed at Samoa, brought back to the States, and in 1907 the cadets went to work to help get the vessel ready as a training ship, taking out the gun mounts, scraping black paint off the wooden hull and painting it white. I completed my two years of training in her.
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After graduating from the Academy in 1909, Captain Barron went in the German steamer Warnow to Kronstadt, Russia, and then, in 1911, as AB in the 3-masted schooner Mary B. Baird, carrying coal from Philadelphia to Key West and lumber back. In 1913 he went 3rd mate in the Army transport Meade, then 2nd mate in the tanker Wico to wartime Europe, where he saw victorious German warships returning after sea battle with the Russians off Riga. Master by age 29, he pursued a varied maritime career and maintains a lively interest in seafaring today, at age 90, living in Tampa. A native ofPhiladelphia, he admired the great Cape Horn Down Easters berthed there and just missed ending his career aboard one-see "Letters" this issue. 37