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Authors: Kenneth Whyte
The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst (54 page)
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The officers of the
Raleigh
and
Newark
are agreeably engaged in rivaling each other by giving us meals, and it is great fun seeing uniforms again and playing with the guns and talking war. . . . Today Fred and I lunched on the
Raleigh
and during target practice Remington asked if he could shoot off the big ten inch gun with a sub caliber cartridge—his first shot hit the buoy target on which the red flag waved and the second broke the flag shaft. You should have heard the sailors cheer.
38
Finally, on December 30, the
Vamoose,
its new crew, the correspondents, and their guides were all ready to push off. Remington wrote his wife: “Dear Kid—It is now 4 o’c—we leave at six—the boat lies at the dock steaming up. The towne is wild with excitement—We have only the Custom House to fear. Two Cuban officers go with us—I am well—and feel that I am to undertake quite the most eventful enterprise of my life—I think there will be a war with Spain—I leave my effects at the Duval House
here
—Good bye little one—from Your loving old boy Frederic.”
39
Vamoose,
its new crew, the correspondents, and their guides were all ready to push off. Remington wrote his wife: “Dear Kid—It is now 4 o’c—we leave at six—the boat lies at the dock steaming up. The towne is wild with excitement—We have only the Custom House to fear. Two Cuban officers go with us—I am well—and feel that I am to undertake quite the most eventful enterprise of my life—I think there will be a war with Spain—I leave my effects at the Duval House
here
—Good bye little one—from Your loving old boy Frederic.”
39
Remington’s letter was longer than his trip. The wind had calmed but the winter seas remained rough. The
Vamoose
was twenty miles out before the new crew declared it unseaworthy and the captain turned back for Key West. Remington and Davis commiserated on deck, clinging to the rails to avoid being swept over. A Chinese cook fashioned a crude life raft from rope, wooden boxes, and a door. Davis wanted to imitate him but Remington said, “Let him make his raft. If we capsize, I’ll throttle him and take it from him.” (Asked later about the morality of his plan, Remington replied, “Why Davis alone was worth a dozen sea-cooks—I don’t have to talk of myself.”)
40
Vamoose
was twenty miles out before the new crew declared it unseaworthy and the captain turned back for Key West. Remington and Davis commiserated on deck, clinging to the rails to avoid being swept over. A Chinese cook fashioned a crude life raft from rope, wooden boxes, and a door. Davis wanted to imitate him but Remington said, “Let him make his raft. If we capsize, I’ll throttle him and take it from him.” (Asked later about the morality of his plan, Remington replied, “Why Davis alone was worth a dozen sea-cooks—I don’t have to talk of myself.”)
40
A despondent Davis wired home from Key West shortly after their return: “Unless we get steamer the game is off will either come home with Remington or return Via Havana as tourist guess I am done with Journal for ever Merry Christmas. . . .”
41
41
Both Davis and Remington thought about packing it in at this point. They had signed on for a first-class ride to rebel headquarters, and the
Journal
had not delivered. Hearst was not quitting, however. He authorized Davis and Midelson to buy or lease any boat in Florida that would take them to Cuba, and when Davis petulantly demanded a $1,000 advance on his fee, the
Journal
wired the funds. With Hearst pressing and Michelson cabling nearby marinas in search of an alternate craft, Davis, with the retreat from Ottawa still on his mind, decided he was stuck with his assignment. He returned, sulkily, to his regimen of swimming, bicycling, smoking, dining, and boot blacking. Remington began to wear on his nerves. “He always wanted to talk it over,” Davis wrote home, “and that had to be done in the nearest or the most distant café, and it always took him fifteen minutes before he got his cocktails to suit him.”
42
Journal
had not delivered. Hearst was not quitting, however. He authorized Davis and Midelson to buy or lease any boat in Florida that would take them to Cuba, and when Davis petulantly demanded a $1,000 advance on his fee, the
Journal
wired the funds. With Hearst pressing and Michelson cabling nearby marinas in search of an alternate craft, Davis, with the retreat from Ottawa still on his mind, decided he was stuck with his assignment. He returned, sulkily, to his regimen of swimming, bicycling, smoking, dining, and boot blacking. Remington began to wear on his nerves. “He always wanted to talk it over,” Davis wrote home, “and that had to be done in the nearest or the most distant café, and it always took him fifteen minutes before he got his cocktails to suit him.”
42
Davis was also beset with competitive jealousies. Cuba was the hot story in America, and Florida had become a magnet for ambitious reporters. Platoons of them were crowding hotels from Jacksonville to Key West, all looking for a ride to rebel territory. With a high proportion of filibusters failing to make the crossing, they were almost all as frustrated as Davis. But some correspondents at least had great stories to tell of their attempts to reach the island. One of these was his fellow
Journal
correspondent, the Yale rowing hero Ralph Paine.
Journal
correspondent, the Yale rowing hero Ralph Paine.
ANOTHER MINISTER’S SON, and a native of Jacksonville, Paine had been working as a professional journalist since grade school, earning enough to pay his own way to university. At Yale, in addition to rowing, playing football, and winning the school’s highest social honors, he wrote athletic news for more than twenty papers. He was two years into a thriving career as a Philadelphia news reporter when the insurrection in Cuba captured his imagination. He traveled to New York to coax the Junta into letting him join a filibuster and, with the Junta’s approval, he visited Hearst at the
Journal
in hopes of a paying assignment. The two men chatted amiably, the editor sitting on the edge of his desk, his hands restless and his long legs swinging. Hearst told Paine of a recent benefit for Cuba held in Madison Square Garden where he had contribution $2,000 to a fund to purchase a ceremonial sword for General Gómez. He asked Paine if he would like to see the sword.
43
Journal
in hopes of a paying assignment. The two men chatted amiably, the editor sitting on the edge of his desk, his hands restless and his long legs swinging. Hearst told Paine of a recent benefit for Cuba held in Madison Square Garden where he had contribution $2,000 to a fund to purchase a ceremonial sword for General Gómez. He asked Paine if he would like to see the sword.
43
With dazzled eyes I beheld the costly weapon as it rested in a mahogany case. The scabbard was ornately adorned, the hilt plated with gold and sparking with small diamonds. It had been made by a famous firm of Fifth Avenue jewelers. Here was a sword which looked like two thousand dollars. Displaying the blade, Mr. Hearst called attention to the engraved inscriptions, such as “To Maximo Gómez, Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Cuban Republic,” and “Viva Cuba Libre.”“Very handsome,” said I. “Old Gómez will be tickled to death, when he gets it.”“That is the idea,
when he gets it
,” observed the bland, debonair Mr. Hearst. “I have been trying to find somebody foolish enough to carry this elegant sword to Gómez. I am perfectly frank with you. These inscriptions would be devilish hard to explain to the Spanish army, if you happened to be caught, wouldn’t they?”“And you want me to try to present this eighteen-karat sword to Gómez, with your compliments?” I suggested.“If you don’t mind,” was the hopeful reply. “I swear I don’t know what else to do with the confounded thing. Of course if you are nabbed at sea, you can probably chuck it overboard in time—”“And if I get surrounded on land, perhaps I can swallow it, Mr. Hearst. Never mind that. I am the damn fool you have been looking for. . . .”
44
A few weeks before Christmas, Paine packed the sword with his two revolvers and headed for Jacksonville to meet his ship. He lounged around town a few days, renewing old acquaintances, before an anonymous Cuban sauntered up to him in a piazza and told him to report to a freight yard at midnight. Paine appeared at the appointed hour with his bags and his sword and found some forty Cuban and American volunteers ready to board a commandeered freight train loaded with machetes, Mauser rifles, field artillery, and millions of rounds of ammunition. As they all climbed aboard, Paine literally tripped over the very nervous man who would become his traveling companion: Ernest McCready of the
New York Herald.
The rebels fired up the engine and rolled for a few hours through the pines and palmetto to an isolated port where the filibuster the
Three Friends
was at dock.
New York Herald.
The rebels fired up the engine and rolled for a few hours through the pines and palmetto to an isolated port where the filibuster the
Three Friends
was at dock.
The
Three Friends
was a seagoing towboat captained by the legendary “Dynamite Johnny” O’Brien. A graying terrier of a man, O’Brien had run guns all over Latin America. He served as the Junta’s unofficial fleet commander, and he had never failed to make a landing in Cuba. Once the insurgents stowed their contraband belowdecks (in barrels and crates labeled “salted codfish” and “prime lard”), the captain pointed the
Three Friends
up the coast. The passage to Key West took four days. With dirty weather and rough seas, the Cubans spent much of the trip leaning over the rails. Paine and McCready slept fitfully on deck between sacks of coal. O’Brien dodged a U.S. Revenue cutter not far out of Jacksonville and later slipped quietly at night between Davis’s favorite dining spots, the
Newark
and the
Raleigh,
anchored a mile apart off Key West for the purpose of discouraging filibusters. As the
Three Friends
steered into the Yucatán Channel, Paine was struck by the romance of the voyage: “It had the flavor of bygone centuries, of an era when the little ships of England had sailed to the West Indies and the South Sea to singe the beards of the viceroys of Spain and to laugh at all the tall galleons with their tiers of cannonades and culverins.”
45
Three Friends
was a seagoing towboat captained by the legendary “Dynamite Johnny” O’Brien. A graying terrier of a man, O’Brien had run guns all over Latin America. He served as the Junta’s unofficial fleet commander, and he had never failed to make a landing in Cuba. Once the insurgents stowed their contraband belowdecks (in barrels and crates labeled “salted codfish” and “prime lard”), the captain pointed the
Three Friends
up the coast. The passage to Key West took four days. With dirty weather and rough seas, the Cubans spent much of the trip leaning over the rails. Paine and McCready slept fitfully on deck between sacks of coal. O’Brien dodged a U.S. Revenue cutter not far out of Jacksonville and later slipped quietly at night between Davis’s favorite dining spots, the
Newark
and the
Raleigh,
anchored a mile apart off Key West for the purpose of discouraging filibusters. As the
Three Friends
steered into the Yucatán Channel, Paine was struck by the romance of the voyage: “It had the flavor of bygone centuries, of an era when the little ships of England had sailed to the West Indies and the South Sea to singe the beards of the viceroys of Spain and to laugh at all the tall galleons with their tiers of cannonades and culverins.”
45
The only unpleasantness on the trip, so far as Paine and McCready were concerned, was that Sylvester Scovel had boarded the
Three Friends
somewhere along its coastal route. The
World
had chartered him a dispatch boat in imitation of Hearst’s
Vamoose
but, like the
Vamoose,
it had foundered in rough conditions. So Scovel used his impeccable connections among the insurgents to catch up with Dynamite Johnny. Paine and McCready would henceforth share their adventure with the famous correspondent.
Three Friends
somewhere along its coastal route. The
World
had chartered him a dispatch boat in imitation of Hearst’s
Vamoose
but, like the
Vamoose,
it had foundered in rough conditions. So Scovel used his impeccable connections among the insurgents to catch up with Dynamite Johnny. Paine and McCready would henceforth share their adventure with the famous correspondent.
On the evening of December 19, with the rebels singing on deck and Paine rehearsing a speech with which to present General Gómez his sword, the
Three Friends
approached the mouth of the Rio San Juan in Puerto Principe province. The ship’s surfboats were just about to hit the water when someone spotted a shadow moving against the wall of the jungle inside the bay. It was a Spanish gunboat, and it almost immediately fired its engines to give chase. Dynamite Johnny lunged back to sea as the Spaniards lobbed shell after shell at his wooden hull, but despite smooth seas and a brilliant moon, none came close to landing. The insurgents fired back with their new Mausers. One of the Americans pulled a bugle out of his gear and let loose with a series of cavalry calls, a move that seemed to puzzle the Spaniards—the gunboat swerved and slowed. The insurgents next pulled out a Hotchkiss field gun and mounted it on the bow of the
Three Friends.
A first round spat a red streak but missed the mark. A second round swept the gunboat’s decks. The Spaniards made a sudden halt and launched a series of distress rockets. The
Three Friends
had won the first naval battle of the insurgency.
Three Friends
approached the mouth of the Rio San Juan in Puerto Principe province. The ship’s surfboats were just about to hit the water when someone spotted a shadow moving against the wall of the jungle inside the bay. It was a Spanish gunboat, and it almost immediately fired its engines to give chase. Dynamite Johnny lunged back to sea as the Spaniards lobbed shell after shell at his wooden hull, but despite smooth seas and a brilliant moon, none came close to landing. The insurgents fired back with their new Mausers. One of the Americans pulled a bugle out of his gear and let loose with a series of cavalry calls, a move that seemed to puzzle the Spaniards—the gunboat swerved and slowed. The insurgents next pulled out a Hotchkiss field gun and mounted it on the bow of the
Three Friends.
A first round spat a red streak but missed the mark. A second round swept the gunboat’s decks. The Spaniards made a sudden halt and launched a series of distress rockets. The
Three Friends
had won the first naval battle of the insurgency.
Running low on coal and in need of a new plan, Captain O’Brien dumped his cargo and passengers on No Name Key for safekeeping while he headed back to the mainland. Paine and McCready were annoyed to be left behind, especially as the latecomer, Scovel, remained on board. The
World,
it appeared, had made the larger contribution to the expenses of the
Three Friends.
Captain O’Brien at least agreed to arrange for the stranded reporters’ copy to be forwarded to New York. Out of tobacco and low on rations, Paine and McCready spent an unpleasant week marooned with the Cubans on the swampy islet with its “evil smell of rotten vegetation and tidal mud.”
46
A Junta schooner finally arrived and sailed the ragged correspondents back to Key West.
World,
it appeared, had made the larger contribution to the expenses of the
Three Friends.
Captain O’Brien at least agreed to arrange for the stranded reporters’ copy to be forwarded to New York. Out of tobacco and low on rations, Paine and McCready spent an unpleasant week marooned with the Cubans on the swampy islet with its “evil smell of rotten vegetation and tidal mud.”
46
A Junta schooner finally arrived and sailed the ragged correspondents back to Key West.
The day after their return, Paine ran into Davis at a Key West barber-shop and heard the good news that his bylined story had made the front page of the
Journal.
The bad news was that Scovel had beaten him into print by a week. Davis remarked that Paine’s adventures had the delightful flavor of piracy, which turned out to be prescient. A few days later, returning from another ill-fated attempt to reach Cuba, Paine read that the
Three Friends
had been impounded and that he had been indicted by a federal grand jury, along with Dynamite Johnny and several others. The charge was indeed piracy, an offense carrying the death penalty. Paine went underground with the help of his father, who hid him in the home of a church elder. The charges were eventually dropped for lack of prosecution witnesses, but Paine’s career as a filibuster was over. He reluctantly gave up his ambitions to reach Gómez, returned the jeweled sword to Michelson, and resumed his old newspaper job in Philadelphia.
Journal.
The bad news was that Scovel had beaten him into print by a week. Davis remarked that Paine’s adventures had the delightful flavor of piracy, which turned out to be prescient. A few days later, returning from another ill-fated attempt to reach Cuba, Paine read that the
Three Friends
had been impounded and that he had been indicted by a federal grand jury, along with Dynamite Johnny and several others. The charge was indeed piracy, an offense carrying the death penalty. Paine went underground with the help of his father, who hid him in the home of a church elder. The charges were eventually dropped for lack of prosecution witnesses, but Paine’s career as a filibuster was over. He reluctantly gave up his ambitions to reach Gómez, returned the jeweled sword to Michelson, and resumed his old newspaper job in Philadelphia.
Davis was cranky. “This new journalism is beyond my finding out,” he wrote home. “It is not news they want. They send Gómez a two-thousand-dollar sword and two medicine chests and a keg of rum . . . and then the Journal publishes pictures of the sword and the
Vamoose
and the other fake freaks, and lets the news be written in the office or Key West.” And yet he had done less: “Anybody can run a boat into a dark bayou and dump rifles on the beach and scurry away to sea again but only heroes can sit for a month on a hotel porch or at the end of a wharf, and wait.”
47
Vamoose
and the other fake freaks, and lets the news be written in the office or Key West.” And yet he had done less: “Anybody can run a boat into a dark bayou and dump rifles on the beach and scurry away to sea again but only heroes can sit for a month on a hotel porch or at the end of a wharf, and wait.”
47
The most painful part for Davis was that he really had no appetite to do much beyond sit on that hotel porch. He was headed to Cuba out of fear of losing his self-respect and “getting laughed at and paragraphed as the war correspondent that always Turned Back.”
48
One brief face-saving, image-burnishing tour of Cuba would allow him to pass on any future assignments in war zones, since he would have already had his moment. Paine, however ridiculous his luggage, could already say as much. So, too, could Stephen Crane.
48
One brief face-saving, image-burnishing tour of Cuba would allow him to pass on any future assignments in war zones, since he would have already had his moment. Paine, however ridiculous his luggage, could already say as much. So, too, could Stephen Crane.
CRANE HAD WAVED GOODBYE to New York and his Tenderloin troubles on November 27. He had boarded a train for Jacksonville carrying in his chamois belt seven hundred dollars in gold, courtesy of the Bacheller Syndicate. America’s most notorious war novelist had accepted an assignment to sneak into Cuba and report on the fighting from the insurgent ranks. “The same lad who longs to fight Indians and to be a pirate longs to embark secretly on one of these dangerous trips to the Cuban coast,” he wrote. Like Paine, he viewed filibustering as a “delicious bit of outlawry in the evening of the nineteenth century.”
49
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BOOK: The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst
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