With the Battle Fleet: Cruise of the Sixteen Battleships of the United States Atlantic Fleet from Hampton Roads to the Golden Gate, December, 1907-May, 1908Matthews, Franklin
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With the Battle Fleet: Cruise of the Sixteen Battleships of the United States Atlantic Fleet from Hampton Roads to the Golden Gate, December, 1907-May, 1908
Matthews, Franklin
United States. Navy. Atlantic Fleet -- Cruise, 1907-1909
One might fill columns with the songs that were sung. There is room for
the chorus of just one more. The game is for about one-half of the
company to sing the chorus and just before the finish the others shout
an interrogatory of astonishment at the top of their voices. The chorus
runs:
Dreamin', dreamin', dreamin' of dat happy lan,'
Where rivers ob beer aboun',
Where big gin rickeys fill de air
And highballs roll on de groun'.
_Great shout_:
What! Highballs roll on de groun'.
_Melody_:
Yas, highballs roll on de groun'.
The merriment on the Louisiana was not exceptional. It was a mere copy
of what was going on in sixteen wardrooms. Every ship was sure it had
the merriest dinner and the merriest time all around in the fleet, and
that was true strictly.
The bluejackets had their own fun, and they yielded to none in their
belief that they had the best time of all. Of course they were right.
Look at this menu that Uncle Sam provided for their dinner:
Cream of Celery Soup
Roast Turkey
Roast Ham
Sage Dressing Giblet Gravy
Cranberry Sauce
Mashed Potatoes Lima Beans
Peach Pie
Mixed Nuts Raisins
Coffee.
And here is the music that Bandmaster Cariana provided:
1 March "The Man Behind the Gun" _Sousa_
2 Overture "The Bridal Rose" _Lavaller_
3 Waltz "I See Thee Again" _Estrada_
4 Selection "Woodland" _Luders_
5 Habanera "Escamilla" _Redla_
Star Spangled Banner.
And didn't the first class men have liberty to go ashore? Didn't they
come back loaded down with souvenir postal cards, baskets of fruit,
parrots and monkeys? And wasn't every man of them able to toe a seam as
he answered to his name on the liberty list? If there was a suspicion of
a rolling gait in two or three couldn't they lay it to the heat? Certain
it was that not one of them had drunk any of that stuff down here that
they call biograph whiskey, the kind that makes you see moving pictures,
for the only moving pictures that any of them saw that night were the
dozen sparring matches and two wrestling contests on the quarter deck,
where the bluejackets were piled high on high under the awning clear up
over the turret to the after bridge--as packed a house for the space as
Caruso ever sang to.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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