Part 1

A HISTORY of the SECOND DIVISION NAVAL MILITIA CONNECTICUT NATIONAL GUARD

_By_ DANIEL D. BIDWELL

Hartford, Conn. 1911

Copyrighted 1911

By DANIEL D. BIDWELL

The Smith-Linsley Company Hartford, Conn.

Dedicated to All Friends of the Naval Militia Connecticut National Guard

SLIGHTLY ADAPTED

“Here’s to the land that gave us birth, Here’s to her smiling skies, Here’s to her Tars, the best on earth, Here’s to the flag she flies.”

CONTENTS

PAGE

Before the Launching 1890 to 1896 11

The Launching 1896 13

THE LOG

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Course 1, The Cincinnati 1896 16

Course 2, The Maine 1897 18

Course 3, The War 1898 21

Course 4, The Prairie 1899 25

“Dewey Day” September 30, 1899 26

Course 5, The Prairie Again 1900 32

Course 6, Camp Newton 1901 34

Course 7, The Panther 1902 38

Course 8, At Niantic 1903 42

Course 9, The Hartford 1904 46

Course 10, The Columbia 1905 51

Course 11, The Minneapolis 1906 55

Course 12, Again the Prairie 1907 58

Course 13, And Again the Prairie 1908 62

Course 14, The Machias 1909 65

Course 15, The Louisiana 1910 66

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(For the Future to Reveal)

Course 16, 1911

Course 17, 1912

Course 18, 1913

Course 19, 1914

Course 20, 1915

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Appendix A 68

Appendix B 70

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

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PAGE

Frontispiece—First Commanding Officer of the Division, Lieutenant Felton Parker

Captain Louis F. Middlebrook 10

Division Boat Race in Boston Harbor 24

Lieutenant-Commander Lyman Root 26

Camp Parker 36

Boat Crew at Charles Island 41

Furling Sail on the U. S. S. Hartford 46

Lieutenant Howard J. Bloomer 49

Lieutenant-Commander Robert D. Chapin 53

Lieutenant Carroll C. Beach 56

Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Charles L. Hogan 59

Ensign Frank H. Burns 65

Lieutenant William G. Hinckley 67

Tailpiece, Division Pin 76

JACOB’S LADDER

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Founding of the Division April 29, 1896

Duty on the U. S. S. Maine July 10–16, 1897

War Company Mustered In June 15, 1898

“Dewey Day” Parade September 30, 1899

First Battalion Field Day May 23, 1900

Salute to the New Century January 1, 1901

Personal Escort of President Roosevelt in Yale Bi-Centennial Parade October 16, 1901

First Annual Indoor Meet February 21, 1902

Camp Parker Dedicated July 4, 1902

In Army and Navy Maneuvers, August 30 to September 6, 1902

Beat Champions in Eleven-Inning Game of Indoor Baseball March 11, 1903

Duty at Camp Reynolds August 22–29, 1903

Re-stocking of the Library November 18, 1903

Elfrida in Hartford Waters June 19–25, 1904

On the U. S. S. Hartford September 6–13, 1904

Indoor Baseball Champions for Season 1904–1905

Hampton Roads August 1–6, 1907

In Bridge Parade October 8, 1908

Wall-Scaling Champions April 29, 1909

First Memorial Sunday June 13, 1909

Off Bermuda July 26–29, 1910

FIRST COMMANDING OFFICER

FOREWORD

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That the Naval Division is worthy of a history in enduring form is undeniable: that it is worthy of a historian of more philosophy and patience is also undeniable. But if the principle is correct that “any weather is better than none,” as Mark Twain, who once produced a treatise on navigation which he called “Following the Equator,” summarized his opinion of the elements, then it may be correct to allege that this history is better than no attempt. From newspaper files which have long lain in unhallowed dust, from scrap-books long undisturbed, from orders and records and literature which has received no generic name and from the lips of survivors of a glorious but ancient day the historian has drawn the facts which follow. The research work has been difficult and a task of no mean proportion, as well, and the work of arrangement and assimilation has not been inconsiderable, and there is reasonable excuse for any errors which may appear in the printed result. For these the historian begs indulgence. He desires to add that the task has been a pleasant one in spite of the difficulty and that his only regret is that a history-more adequate is not the result.

In any case the trail has been blazed, or, to use a more appropriate metaphor, the channel has been buoyed for him who is destined to produce a suitable volume when the Second Division shall have arrived at its twenty-fifth anniversary. That the command may continue to prosper and that it may ever be as efficient and successful as in its most honorable days is the earnest wish of its chronicler.

Thanks are expressed to Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Charles L. Hogan and Quartermaster Palmer (the division librarian) of the actives and to Victor F. Morgan, historian of the Veteran Association, for aid given in the collating of material for this little volume. Thanks are also given to Captain Louis F. Middlebrook and Mr. Fred E. Bosworth.

HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT, June 28, 1911.

BEFORE THE LAUNCHING

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In the early nineties the so-called, and perhaps miscalled movement for “Naval Reserves” came into Connecticut. In 1893 it gathered shape in New Haven and on the petition of Edward G. Buckland and forty-four others. General Edward E. Bradley of New Haven, adjutant-general under Governor Luzon B. Morris, issued an order for the formation of the First Division, Naval Militia, C. N. G. In November of that year a division was organized, a month pregnant with meaning in the annals of the naval establishment of Connecticut, for it marked the institution of a branch destined to endure and to be a just cause of pride to the state of Hull, Gideon Welles and Foote.

The formation of the First Division followed barely two years after that of the First Naval Battalion in New York state. Massachusetts had preceded the Empire State by more than fifteen months, and Rhode Island by about a year, and when the command in New Haven organized, the states which boasted naval militia organizations were Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, California, Pennsylvania and Illinois. The total strength of the naval militia in these states was about 2,100 officers and enlisted men.

It was in March, 1890, that the first command of the kind appeared in Massachusetts, and in the following May that the Naval Battalion, Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, pioneer among “Naval Reserve” organizations in the United States, was organized. From that germ has grown a system which now includes naval militia bodies in twenty-three states and has on the rosters between seven thousand and eight thousand officers and enlisted men; and has recorded several times that number of alumni who are in part trained for the country’s hour of need on salt water.

Interesting stories about the First Division of New Haven came to the ears of many lovers of salt water in Hartford. Stories they were of the splendid success of that crack command, the good times which the fun lovers of the company enjoyed, the good fellowship shown, the capacity for hard technical work and the growing esteem in which it was held both by the adjutant-general’s office and the Navy Department at Washington. And so it was that a little knot of similar spirits in Hartford was formed, men with fondness for yachting on the Sound or with patriotic pride in the Navy who gravitated together after a nucleus had been developed.

The proposition for a naval company was received with a diversity of opinion. One military man of ripe experience raked it fore and aft in print, but in after years he discovered the error of his range finder and became a firm friend of the command in fair weather and foul. His memory long remained green with the company.

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THE LAUNCHING

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It is recorded that most of the originators of this movement were employees of the Pope Manufacturing Company or were members of the Hartford Canoe Club, and that some were luminaries in a social body known to fame as The Bachelors, but this last declaration is disputed. It was on March 14, 1896, that an application to Governor O. Vincent Coffin of Middletown, Commander-in-chief of the Connecticut National Guard, for the establishing of another division was drafted. The paper was guardedly circulated by Louis F. Middlebrook, then a member of the Brigade Signal Corps, to whom in large measure the credit of the subsequent birth of the command is due. On April 11 the application was presented to His Excellency together with details as to the cost of equipment, armory quarters and like matters. Just eighteen days later the governor’s consent was signified in an order which Adjutant-General Charles P. Graham issued for the formation of the Second Division, Naval Battalion, Connecticut National Guard. That date is entered in the division’s log as its natal day.

On the evening of May 12, Commander Edward V. Reynolds of the battalion and officers from the division in New Haven materialized in the even then ancient armory on Elm Street, never before that night used for any naval object. A division was formed and officers were elected as follows:

Lieutenant, Felton Parker.

Lieutenant, Junior Grade, Lyman B. Perkins.

Ensigns, Louis F. Middlebrook and Robert H. C. Kelton.

Mr. Parker was a graduate of Annapolis, who had left the Navy at the reduction in 1882, and was at the time in the employ of the Pope Manufacturing Company in the patent department. Mr. Perkins had graduated in 1881 from Annapolis as a cadet engineer. He was a general agent for the Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company. Mr. Middlebrook was in the same company’s employ and possessed large executive ability. Mr. Kelton was a mechanical engineer in the employ of the Hartford Rubber Works. He had been a member of Division C of the First Naval Battalion of Massachusetts.

The enlisted men were forty in number. Their names follow:

Alden, H. W. Baxter, G. S. Beale, G. W. Bevins, V. L. Bissell, H. G. Bosworth, F. E. Burnett, A. E. Burnham, P. D.[1] Caswell, L. S. Cheney, T. S.[1] Cochran, L. B. Crowell, E. H. Cuntz, H. F. Fairfield, E. J. Field, E. B. Field, F. E. Gilbert, E. R. Harlow, M. P. Heymann, H. B. Hunt, B. A. Ingalls, F. C. Larkum, H. H. Larkum, W. N. Maxim, H. P. Miller, G. P. Miller, H. I. Morgan, J. H. Morrell, D. S. Newell, J. L. Northam, R. C. Osgood, W. J. Rice, C. D. Root, Lyman Stevens, H. Walsh, J. G. Wightman, A. H. Williams, C. C. Wilson, L. B. Winslow, F. G. Woodward, C. S.

Footnote 1:

Deceased.

The division was the armory’s baby and the sailor uniform and the sailor drill were observed with the greatest of kindly interest; and, by the way, that interest survives to this day.

By the middle of June the company was in fairish shape in regard to uniform and equipment, but was shy of flat caps. On the evening of June 24 the first petty officers were appointed, the selections being awaited with the keenest curiosity. The appointees were:

First Class—Boatswain’s Mate, Daniel S. Morrell; Gunner’s Mate, Louis B. Wilson.

Second Class—Boatswain’s Mate, Edward H. Crowell; Gunner’s Mate, Walter L. Meek; Quartermasters, Thomas S. Cheney and Edwin R. Gilbert.

Third Class—Gunner’s Mate, Charles D. Rice; Coxswains, Robert C. Northam, Frank H. Peltier and Herman F. Cuntz, and Bugler Herbert G. Bissell.

On the same June evening, orders were read to stand by for the division’s first cruise. That duty was on the U. S. S. Cincinnati, a protected cruiser.

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COURSE ONE ❦ THE CINCINNATI

At 6:45 Saturday morning, July 11, the division to the number of forty-six entrained for New Haven and by 8 o’clock was on board the Cincinnati, as she lay off the breakwater. An hour later the cruiser weighed anchor and headed down the Sound, landing the divisions of the battalion on Gardiner’s Island, where they went into camp. Till late Sunday evening it was hard work and plenty of it, but the mettle of the division was shown in the test. Part of Sunday evening was spent in “hustling ice,” as one member expressed it in a letter. Near by were naval militiamen from Rhode Island and New York.

Monday morning found the division embarking for the Cincinnati, on which instruction was given during the day in gun, fire and collision drills. For the great majority of the men it was their first real experience in work on a warship, and the novelty and excitement were fascinating. The following day there was drill in pulling boats with the new coxswains on their mettle.

A couple of days more of life in camp and on the Cincinnati with good weather did much towards starting the men toward man-o’-war form, or so some of them began to think. Tanned faces, pipes and plug tobacco came into full evidence. For some it was, perhaps, a picnic in the open salt air, but an outing in which discipline was strictly preserved and much practical information was acquired.

Thursday morning reveille was sounded at Camp McAdoo at 5 o’clock and simultaneously rain began to fall. After mess the battalion struck the tents, turned to on camp gear and transferred nine boatloads from the island to the Cincinnati. Most of the men were in water to their waists. Between the fresh and the salt they were not incompletely drenched, but their hearts were gay and when the boats were hove up they tailed on the falls with a will.

In New Haven there was a short street parade and when, in the Meadow Street Armory, the First Division boys saluted and cheered the Second, the tour of duty was pronounced to be a glorious success. On the station platform in Hartford on the arrival of the Second Division that evening was a motley of fathers and mothers, kid brothers, best girls and other landlubbers, all eager to welcome the home-faring tin tars. The men fell in on the platform and gave this highly original cheer:

“Hi, ye-ke, hi! Ree, Ree, Ree! Naval Battalion, C. N. G. Second Division.”

This may sound at this distant day like a rather slender battle cry, but the boys of the division ranked it with the “Brek-e-Ke-Kex” of the Yale Gridiron.

The historian admits giving undue prominence to that tour of duty, but begs indulgence on the ground that it was the division’s first service on salt water.

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COURSE TWO ❦ THE 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, which sailed 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 that week 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.

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COURSE THREE ❦ THE WAR

Barely was the next drill season well inaugurated when the Maine sailed for Havana, and then came the terrible disaster in which many of the division’s shipmates were hurled into eternity, and next the preparation for the approaching conflict with Spain. In April, the First Regiment marched away, the division remaining eager for the coming call. Each drill evening the men put heart, energy and sustained attention into the work. Drills took place on the park in the presence of citizens who paid their tributes of respect to the sailor blue. Each member was urged to train physically, as well as to learn the drills. Seamanship, signalling and such boat work as could be taught were the backbone of the instruction.

Finally the call came and over ninety per cent. of the division volunteered at roll call to enlist in the United States Navy for the entire conflict. On June 6, the division paraded in heavy marching order up Main Street and by Trumbull and Asylum Streets to the railroad station, escorted by posts of the Grand Army and by veteran and active military commands, and entrained for the State Military Rendezvous in Niantic.

On June 15, Commander Field, U. S. N., mustered in the command thenceforward known as the “war company.” Following are the names and the ages with ratings obtained before the mustering out and with the names of the ships on which each individual mainly served: