I had almost forgotten to mention the drug store on board ship. Each
man-of-war has a small pharmacy on the second floor. It is open all
night, and prescriptions are carefully compounded. Pure drugs, paints,
oils, varnishes and putty are to be had there at all times. The ship's
dispensary is not a large room, but two ordinary men and a truss would
not feel crowded there. The druggists treated me well on board both
ships, and offered me my choice of antiseptics and anodynes, or anything
else I might take a fancy to. I shall do my trading in that line
hereafter on board ship.
The Atlanta has many very modern improvements, and is said to be a
wonderful sailor. She also has a log. I saw it. It does not look exactly
like what I had, as an old lumberman, imagined that it would.
It is a book, with writing in it, about the size of the tax-roll for
1888. In the cupola of the ship, where the wheel is located, there is
also a big brass compass about as large as the third stomach of a cow.
In this there is a little index or dingus, which always points towards
the north. That is all it has to do. On each side of the compass is
a large cannon ball so magnetized or polarized or influenced as to
overcome the attraction of the needle for some desirable portion of the
ship. There is also an index connected with the shaft whereby the man at
the wheel can ascertain the position of the shaft and also ascertain
at night whether the ship is advancing or retreating--a thing that he
should inform himself about at the earliest possible moment.
The culinary arrangements on board these ships would make many a hotel
blush, and I have paid $1 a day for a worse room than the choky at the
guard-house.
In the Navy-Yard at Brooklyn is the big iron hull or running gears of
an old ship of some kind which the Republicans were in the habit of
hammering on for a few weeks prior to election every four years. Four
years ago, through an oversight, the workmen were not called off nor
informed of Blaine's defeat for several days after the election..
The Democrats have an entirely different hull in another part of the
yard on which they are hammering.
The keel blocks of a new cruiser, 375 feet long are just laid in the
big ship-house at the Brooklyn Navy-Yard. She will be a very airy and
cheerful boat, I judge, if the keel blocks are anything to go by.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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