Identifier: cinderellasoffle00nutt (find matches)
Title: Cinderellas of the fleet
Year: 1920 (1920s)
Authors: Nutting, William Washburn, 1884-1924
Subjects: Submarine chasers World War, 1914-1918--Naval operations--Submarine
Publisher: Jersey City, N.J. : Standard Motor Construction Co.
Contributing Library: Virginia Beach Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: LYRASIS members and Sloan Foundation

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otwelve inches thick. We had no heating systems, but we lived aboard just the same,and many a morning, with the thermometer hovering around and oftenunder zero, engines were started only after a thorough application of ablow torch on frozen cylinders. When March came blustering along, we hunted subs—Americanones to be sure, but we had all the local color of the English Channel,produced by the fog and winds of Block Island and old )\Iontauk. In those days, alas, few of us had our sea stomachs, and many aseaman locked arms with a civilian inventor or two over the rail.Speaking of inventors, there \\as one little Southerner in command ofa chaser whose luck had run to inventors for several weeks, andon all his trips he had to feed them oi:ie or two meals daily.He was decidedly out of pocket and his mess accounts groaned underthe added burden. And then one day he smiled. It was noticed thatthe long hairs, as they were known, avoided his chaser. When asked 86 THE CIXDERELLAS OF THE 1-LEET
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L THE CINDERELLAS OF THE ILEET 87 how he did it, he repHed, Well, I got blamed tired of their bigappetites, and the way they guzzled hot coftee was a caution, so I justbought me a pound of chicory to mix with a few beans of Java, andwhen they hit the )\acc with thai in their stDniachs the)- ju^t naturallypassed out. As March merged into April, chasers arrived in increasing num-bers to be equipped with all the gadjets, spend a few weeks underinstruction, and then slip quietly out for foreign waters. This out-fitting was done at the Marine Iron \\orks, and it was there one daythat all of us first got into action. The affair was informally knownas the Battle of the Marine Iron Works. It seemed that one chaserout of the twenty or thirty at the dock had just mounted her Y-gunas well as the two 400-lb. depth charges, which the gun was used tohurl clear of the ship—3-in. blank charges being used for this purpose.The gunners mate of this particular chaser was testing out his am-munition and

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