We caught our first view of the “Yankee” as we steamed past the cob dock at the yard.  We were favorably impressed at once.  She is a fine-looking ship, large, roomy, and comfortable, with lines which show that she is built for speed.  As her record is twenty knots an hour, the latter promise is carried out.  The “Yankee” was formerly the “El Norte,” one of the Morgan Line’s crack ships, and, when it was found necessary to increase the navy, she was purchased, together with other vessels of the same company, and ordered converted into an auxiliary cruiser.  Gun mounts were placed in the cargo ports, beams strengthened, magazines inserted, and interior arrangements made to accommodate a large crew.  The “Yankee’s” tonnage is 4,695 tons; length, 408 feet; beam, 48 feet.  The battery carried consists of ten five-inch quick-firing breechloaders, six six-pounders, and two Colt automatic guns.  After events proved conclusively the efficiency of the “Yankee’s” armament.

The detail was taken alongside the “Yankee” by the tug.  We had our first meeting with our new captain, Commander W.H.  Brownson, of the regular navy.  His appearance and his kindly greeting bore out the reputation he holds in the service as a gentleman and a capable officer.  It is well to say right here that Commander Brownson, although a strict disciplinarian, was ever fair and just in his treatment of the crew.  Our pedigrees were taken for the enlistment papers, and the questions asked us in regard to our ages, occupations, etc., proved that the Government requires the family history of its fighters.  The following day each man was subjected to a rigid physical examination.  The latter ceremony is so thorough that a man needs to be perfect to have the honor of wearing the blue shirt.  Personally, when I finally emerged from the examining room, I felt that my teeth were all wrong, my eyes crossed, my heart a wreck, and that I was not only a physical ruin, but a gibbering idiot as well.  That I really passed the examination successfully was no fault of the naval surgeon and his assistants.

After the medical department had finished with us, the enlistment papers were completed, and we became full-fledged “Jackies,” as “Stump” termed it.  The members of the battalion were rated as landsmen, ordinary seamen, and able-bodied seamen, according to their skill, and a number of men, hastily enlisted for the purpose, were made machinists, firemen, coal-passers, painters, and carpenters.  Some of these had seen service in the regular navy, and they were visibly horny-handed sons of toil.  One Irishman, whose brogue was painful, looked with something very like contempt on the Naval Reserve sailors.

“Uncle Sam is a queer bird,” several of us overheard him remark to a mate.  “He do be making a picnic av this war wid his pleasure boats an’ his crew av pretty b’yes.  If we iver tackle the Spaniards, there’ll be many a mama’s baby on board this hooker cryin’ for home, swate home.”