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. ❦ 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.