1901

With gun ranges and ship speeds increasing, it was damnably hard to hit anything at all. Worse, the Alabama ’s secondary batteries, set as they were in the hull of the ship, could easily be rendered useless in a heavy sea, as the waves would crash right over them. There had to be a better way, Evans had thought. That was why he had experimented with the new Royal Navy way of aiming and firing that was being developed by their brilliant young innovator Percy Scott. So far, Evans had been impressed with the results.

Scott’s technique was called “continuous aim” and required a telescopic sight for each gun, an elevating wheel to raise the gun so that the target did not become lost in the pitch and roll of the seas, and practice, practice, practice. The result was that a gunner did not have to find his target each time the guns fired; thus the rate of fire as well as the accuracy were increased. Evans had recalled the humiliating misses at Santiago where hundreds of shells splashed all over the ocean but rarely near the Spanish ships. The newspapers had crowed over the terrible shooting by the Spanish but had apparently not noted the almost equally bad American gunnery.

The Alabama had made Guantanamo without incident. What had been a bright and gleaming example of American naval pride in Rio had been transformed into a dark and lethal weapon, at least as lethal as Evans could possibly make it. He knew that only a handful of his crew had ever seen battle, and that had been in the one-sided victories against the totally overmatched Spaniards. How would they react? All the drilling and practice in the world could not compensate for the real thing. For all intents and purposes, his ship was a virgin.

There were other problems as well. The numbers of men in the navy’s officer corps had not kept pace with the ongoing expansion. The Alabama, like virtually every other ship, was short more than 20 percent of its allotted complement of officers. This resulted in junior officers having serious responsibilities. Evans did not relish the thought of going to war without a full complement of officers or enlisted men.

But Evans had the experience his ship did not. An 1863 graduate of Annapolis, he had been wounded late in the Civil War, at Fort Fisher. His previous commands included the armored cruiser New York and the battleships Indiana and Iowa. The Iowa was his during the battle of Santiago. Had the Spanish war lasted longer, there was talk of giving him a cruiser squadron to send against the mainland of Spain. The Alabama was not supposed to have been his, but the sudden illness of Captain Brownson had given him an unexpected opportunity for independent command, and he had relished it.

A powerfully built man, Evans was clean shaven in a time of beards and bushy mustaches, and he parted his thinning brown hair directly down the middle. With his strong demeanor and colorful vocabulary, he could intimidate as well as charm. He liked everything about his navy except his small marine contingent. He considered them useless mouths on his ship and quietly urged that the Marine Corps be abolished. In his midforties, he was considered a man with a future.

At Guantanamo they had received a coded message directing the Alabama to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. So totally unexpected was this order that Evans had it decoded several times before accepting it as true. Canadian waters? He had hoped someone knew just what the hell they were up to.

He hadn’t planned to be anywhere near Saint Augustine, but one of his crewmen had been badly hurt in a gun-loading accident and needed help that was well beyond the scope of his medical officers. Besides, Evans had rationalized, it would be a grand opportunity to pick up some additional supplies and the latest news of the war. Perhaps someone would cancel the puzzling orders to make for Canada.

And now they heard the sound of guns. His crew had been bending and peering over their weapons for what seemed an eternity while lookouts tried to make visual sense of what they were hearing.

“Mr. Lansing, anything?”

Heavy guns could only mean the presence of the Germans. Yet in what strength? Was the Alabama being led to a slaughter? Running away was anathema to Evans, but so was running aground. Thus they prudently kept their speed agonizingly slow.

“Captain, the lookouts say they can now see the horizon.”

Evans smiled thinly. “Well, that confirms we are still on this earth!”

There were a few forced chuckles. The captain had made a joke. When Capt. Robley Dunglison Evans made a joke, regardless of the circumstances, you laughed. The lookouts in their cramped platforms above had the best view. There was a school of thought that held that the captain belonged up there as well, but Evans disagreed. Although the view might be somewhat better, the command apparatus was here, on the navigating bridge, twenty feet below, where half a dozen officers and men were jammed into the little lookout post.