Instead of a few American naval officers ashore in Brest, there were scores of them from transports, supply ships, and the escort divisions. Their social headquarters, which had become almost indispensable, was the spacious building of the American Naval Officers’ Club on the Place du Château, conveniently near the water-front. The club had been organized in September, 1917, by a group of naval officers among whom Lieutenant Robert E. Tod, of the _Corsair_, was the most active in promoting its interests and making it successful. Captain Fletcher, later a rear admiral, was the first president and was succeeded by Admiral Wilson when he arrived in November. Lieutenant Milton Andrews served as secretary, and a board of directors administered the affairs of the club whose membership was strictly naval. The comfortable French mansion was well furnished and equipped, with a restaurant, reading-room, billiard-room, and bedrooms, and during 1918 there were more than six hundred members who enjoyed this haven when they came in weary of the sea. The name was changed to the Naval Officers’ Mess, as more appropriate. The club-house had been purchased by Lieutenant Tod personally, in order to facilitate matters, and when the war was over and the naval fleet was homeward bound, he presented the building to the French Government as a permanent club for the officers of the Allied naval services. All members of the Naval Officers’ Mess were to retain their connection in this new organization which is called “The Cercle Naval.” Here the officers of the _Corsair_ foregathered when they returned from Lisbon, to catch up with the gossip of their trade. They found the club filled with new members and visitors, the Regular Navy enjoying reunions and swapping yarns of bygone cruises on the China station or in the Mediterranean, or of service in the Spanish War when these sedate captains and rear admirals had been flighty youngsters or consequential two-stripers. The captain of a huge transport fetching in ten thousand doughboys sat in a corner with the skipper of a little “fish boat” from Gloucester which was trawling for German mines in the channels of the Gironde or the Loire. The officers of the Reserve Force met college chums or formed new friendships and compared notes on the ways and means of scuppering Fritz.