WAR CORRESPONDENTS AND DESPATCH-BOATS
Few things impressed me more forcibly,
in the course of my two weeks’ stay at Key West,
than the costly, far-sighted, and far-reaching preparations
made by the great newspapers of the country to report
the war. There were in the city of Tampa, at
the time of my arrival, nearly one hundred war correspondents,
who represented papers in all parts of the United
States, from New England to the Pacific coast, and
who were all expecting to go to Cuba with the army
of invasion. Nearly every one of the leading
metropolitan journals had in Tampa and Key West a staff
of six or eight of its best men under the direction
of a war-correspondent-in-chief, while the Associated
Press was represented by a dozen or more reporters
in Cuban waters, as well as by correspondents in Havana,
Key West, Tampa, Kingston, St. Thomas, Port-au-Prince,
and on the flagships of Admiral Sampson and Commodore
Schley. Every invention and device of applied
science was brought into requisition to facilitate
the work of the reporters and to enable them to get
their work quickly to their home offices. The
New York “Herald,” for example, paid fifty
dollars an hour for a special leased wire between
New York and Key West, and set up, in the latter place
and in Tampa, newly invented, long-distance phototelegraph
instruments, by means of which its artist in the field
could transmit a finished picture to the home office
every twenty minutes.
In their efforts to get full and accurate
news of every event at the earliest possible moment,
the war correspondents shrank from neither hardship
nor danger. A week or two before my arrival in
Key West, for example, Mr. Scovel, one of the most
daring and enterprising of the war correspondents,
landed from a despatch-boat on the coast of Cuba in
the night, with the intention of making his way to
the camp of General Gomez. As he had not had
a previous understanding with the latter, no arrangements
had been made to meet him, he could get no horses,
and, with only two or three companions, he walked
eighty miles through tropical forests and swamps,
dodging Spanish sentinels and guerrillas, living wholly
upon plantains and roots, and sleeping most of
the time out of doors in a hammock slung between two
trees. He finally succeeded in obtaining horses,
reached the insurgent camp, had an interview with
General Gomez, rode back to the coast at a point previously
agreed upon, signaled to his despatch-boat, was taken
on board, and returned safely to Key West after an
absence of two weeks, in the course of which he had
not once tasted bread nor slept in a bed.
Upon the record of such an achievement
as this most men would have been satisfied, for a
time, to rest; but Mr. Scovel, with untiring energy,
went from Key West to the coast of Cuba and back three
times in the next seven days. On the last of
these expeditions he joined a landing force carrying
arms and ammunition to the insurgents, participated
in a hot skirmish with the Spanish troops, wrote an
account of the adventure that same night while at
sea in a small, tossing boat on his way back to Key
West, and filed six thousand words in the Key West
cable-station at two o’clock in the morning.
I speak of this particular case of
journalistic enterprise, not because it is especially
noteworthy or exceptional, but because it illustrates
the endurance and the capacity for sustained toil in
unfavorable circumstances, which are quite as characteristic
of the modern war correspondent as are his courage
and his alert readiness for any emergency or any opportunity.
Owing to the distance of the seat
of war from the American coast and the absence of
telegraphic communication between Cuba and the mainland,
newspapers that made any serious attempt to get quick
and exclusive information from the front had not only
to send correspondents into the field, but to furnish
them with means of moving rapidly from place to place
and of forwarding their despatches promptly to an American
telegraph office or a West Indian cable-station.
Every prominent New York paper, therefore, had at
least one despatch-boat for the use of its correspondents,
several of them had two or three, and the Associated
Press employed four. These boats were either powerful
sea-going tugs like the Hercules and the Premier,
or swift steam-yachts of the class represented by
the Wanda, the Kanapaha, and the Bucaneer.
Exactly how many of them there were in West Indian
waters I have been unable to ascertain; but I should
say not less than fifteen or twenty, with almost an
equal number of naphtha-and steam-launches for harbor
and smooth-water work. In these despatch-boats
the war correspondents went back and forth between
Key West and Cuba; watched the operations of the blockading
fleet off Havana, Matanzas, or Cardenas; cruised along
a coast-line nearly a thousand miles in extent, and,
if necessary, went with Admiral Sampson’s squadron
to a point of attack as remote as Santiago de Cuba
or San Juan de Porto Rico. Whenever anything of
importance happened in any part of this wide area,
they were expected to be on the spot to observe it,
and then to get the earliest news of it to the nearest
cable-station whether that station were
Kingston, Cape Haitien, St. Thomas, Port-au-Prince,
or Key West. All of the newspaper despatch-boats
were small, many of them had very limited coal-carrying
capacity, and some were nothing but sea-going tugs,
with hardly any comforts or conveniences, and with
no suitable accommodations for passengers. The
correspondents who used these boats were, therefore,
compelled to live a rough-and-tumble life, sometimes
sleeping in their clothes on benches or on the floor
in a small, stuffy cabin, and always suffering the
hardships and privations necessarily involved in a
long cruise on a small vessel in a tropical climate
and on a turbulent sea. The Florida Strait between
Key West and the north Cuban coast is as uncomfortable
a piece of water to cruise on as can be found in the
tropics. It is the place where the swiftly running
Gulf Stream meets the fresh northeast trade-winds;
and in the conflict between these opposing terrestrial
forces there is raised a high and at the same time
short, choppy, and irregular sea, on which small vessels
toss, roll, and pitch about like corks in a boiling
caldron. I was told by some of the correspondents
who had cruised in these waters that often, for days
at a time, it was almost impossible to get any really
refreshing rest or sleep. The large and heavy
war-ships of the blockading fleet rode this sea, of
course, with comparatively little motion; but it is
reported that even Captain Sigsbee was threatened
with seasickness while crossing the strait between
Havana and Key West in a small boat.
Discomfort, however, was perhaps the
least of the war correspondent’s troubles.
He expected discomfort, and accepted it philosophically;
but to it was added constant and harassing anxiety.
As he could not predict or anticipate the movements
of the war-ships, and had no clue to the plans and
intentions of their commanding officer, he was compelled
to stay constantly with the fleet, night and day,
in order to be on the scene of action when action
should come. This part of his duty was not only
difficult, but often extremely hazardous. As soon
as night fell, every light on the war-ships was extinguished,
and they cruised or drifted about until daybreak in
silence and in darkness. Owing to their color,
it was almost impossible to follow them, or even to
see them at a distance of a mile, and the correspondent
on the despatch-boat was liable either to lose them
altogether if he kept too far away, or be fired upon
if he came too near.
On my visit to the flagship New
York I was accompanied by Mr. Chamberlain, one
of the war correspondents of the Chicago “Record.”
Just before we went over the side of the ship on our
return to the “Record’s” despatch-boat,
Mr. Chamberlain said to Admiral Sampson: “Can
you give me any directions or instructions, admiral,
with regard to approaching your fleet in hostile waters?
I don’t want to be in your way or to do anything
that would imperil my own vessel or inconvenience yours.”
“Where do you propose to go?” inquired
the admiral.
“Anywhere,” replied the
war correspondent, “or rather everywhere, that
you do.”
The admiral smiled dryly and said:
“I can’t give you any definite instructions
except, generally, to keep away from the fleet especially
at night. You may approach and hail us in the
daytime if you have occasion to do so, but if you
come within five miles of the fleet at night there
is likely to be trouble.”
This was all that Mr. Chamberlain
could get from the admiral; but the officer of the
deck, whose name I did not learn, had no hesitation
in explaining fully to us the nature of the “trouble”
that would ensue if, through design or inadvertence,
a newspaper despatch-boat should get within five miles
of the fleet at night. “We can’t afford
to take any chances,” he said, “of torpedo-boats.
If you show up at night in the neighborhood of this
ship, we shall fire on you first and ask questions
afterward.”
“But how are we to know where
you are?” inquired the correspondent.
“That’s your business,”
replied the officer; “but if you approach us
at night, you do it at your own peril.”
When we had returned to the despatch-boat,
Mr. Chamberlain said to me: “Of course
that’s all right from their point of view.
I appreciate their situation, and if I were in their
places I should doubtless act precisely as they do;
but it’s my business to watch that fleet, and
I can’t do it if I keep five miles away at night.
I think I’ll go within two miles and take the
chances. Some of us will probably lose the numbers
of our mess down here,” he added coolly, “if
this thing lasts, but I don’t see how it can
be helped.”
The difficulty of keeping five miles
away, or any specified distance away, from a blockading
fleet of war-ships at night can be fully realized
only by those who have experienced it. Except
on Morro Castle at Havana there were no lights on
the northern coast of Cuba; if it was cloudy and there
happened to be no moon, the darkness was impenetrable;
the war-ships did not allow even so much as the glimmer
of a binnacle lamp to escape from their lead-colored,
almost invisible hulls, as they cruised noiselessly
back and forth; and the correspondent on the despatch-boat
not only did not know where they were, but had no means
whatever of ascertaining where he himself was.
Meanwhile, at any moment, there might come out of
the impenetrable darkness ahead the thunder of a six-pounder
gun, followed by the blinding glare of a search-light.
Unquestionably the correspondents were to be believed
when they said privately to one another that it was
nervous, harassing work.
But the list of difficulties and embarrassments
which confronted the correspondent in his quest of
news is not yet at an end. If he escaped the
danger of being sunk or disabled by a shell or a solid
projectile at night, and succeeded in following a
fleet like that of Admiral Sampson, he had to take
into serious consideration the question of coal.
Fuel is quite as essential to a despatch-boat as to
a battle-ship. The commander of the battle-ship,
however, had a great advantage over the correspondent
on the despatch-boat, for the reason that he always
knew exactly where he was going and where he could
recoal; while the unfortunate newspaper man was ignorant
of his own destination, was compelled to follow the
fleet blindly, and did not know whether his limited
supply of coal would last to the end of the cruise
or not. When Mr. Chamberlain sailed from Key
West at night with the fleet of Admiral Sampson, he
believed that the latter was bound for Santiago, on
the southeastern coast of Cuba. The Hercules
could not possibly carry coal enough for a voyage
there and back; in fact, she would reach that port
with only one day’s supply of fuel in her bunkers.
What should be done then? The nearest available
source of coal-supply would be Kingston, Jamaica,
and whether he could get there from Santiago before
his fuel should be wholly exhausted Mr. Chamberlain
did not know. However, he was ready, like Ladislaw
in “Middlemarch,” to “place himself
in an attitude of receptivity toward all sublime chances,”
and away he went. Nothing can be more exasperating
to a war correspondent than to have a fight take place
while he is absent from the scene of action looking
for coal; but many newspaper men in Cuban waters had
that unpleasant and humiliating experience.
The life of the war correspondent
who landed, or attempted to land, on the island of
Cuba, in the early weeks of the war, was not so wearing
and harassing, perhaps, as the life of the men on the
despatch-boats, but it was quite as full of risk.
After the 1st of May the patrol of the Cuban coast
by the Spanish troops between Havana and Cardenas became
so careful and thorough that a safe landing could
hardly be made there even at night. Jones and
Thrall were both captured before they could open communications
with the insurgents; and the English correspondents,
Whigham and Robinson, who followed their example, met
the same fate. Even Mr. Knight, the war correspondent
of the London “Times,” who landed from
a small boat in the harbor of Havana with the express
permission of the government at Madrid and under a
guaranty of protection, was seized and thrown into
Cabanas fortress.
If a war correspondent succeeded in
making a safe landing and in joining the insurgents,
he had still to suffer many hardships and run many
risks. Mr. Archibald, the correspondent of a San
Francisco paper, was wounded on the Cuban coast early
in May, in a fight resulting from an attempt to land
arms and ammunition for the insurgents; and a correspondent
of the Chicago “Record” was killed after
he had actually succeeded in reaching General Gomez’s
camp. He was sitting on his horse, at the summit
of a little hill, with Gomez and the latter’s
chief of staff, watching a skirmish which was taking
place at a distance of a quarter of a mile or more,
between a detachment of insurgents and a column of
Spanish troops. One of the few sharp-shooters
in the enemy’s army got the range of the little
group on the hill, and almost the first ball which
he sent in that direction struck the “Record”
correspondent in the forehead between and just above
the eyes. As he reeled in the saddle Gomez’s
chief of staff sprang to catch him and break his fall.
The next Mauser bullet from the hidden marksman pierced
the pommel of the saddle that the staff-officer had
just vacated; and the third shot killed Gomez’s
horse. The general and his aide then hastily escaped
from the dangerous position, carrying the “Record”
correspondent with them; but he was dead. In
the first two months of the war the corps of field
correspondents, in proportion to its numerical strength,
lost almost as many men from death and casualty as
did the army and navy of the United States. The
letters and telegrams which they wrote on their knees,
in the saddle, and on the rocking, swaying cabin tables
of despatch-boats while hurrying to West Indian cable-stations
were not always models of English composition, nor
were they always precisely accurate; but if the patrons
of their respective papers had been placed in the field
and compelled to write under similar conditions, they
would be surprised, perhaps, not at the occasional
imperfection of the correspondents’ work, but
at the fact that in so unfavorable and discouraging
an environment good work could be done at all.