Santiago & Sequel

Like many another outraged oldster throughout the land, Richmond Pearson Hobson sat up late in Manhattan one night last week discussing the depravity of President Roosevelt's plan to rejuvenate the Supreme Court. Most of the nation's unofficial denouncers that night were content to vent their spleen in talk, go modestly to bed. But Richmond Pearson Hobson was a professional zealot who, in 30-odd years of windy crusading against alcohol, narcotics and un-Americanism, of drumming up fears of Japanese invasion and Communist infiltration, had never forgotten that he was once the No. 1 U. S. Hero. Before he retired, Richmond Pearson Hobson sat self-importantly down, wrote the President of the U. S. a letter announcing his regret that "I am not able to go with you on this Supreme Court fight." Having thus given the President fair warning, 66-year-old Richmond Pearson Hobson slept soundly, ate a hearty breakfast next morning, but toned up his overcoat for the trip to his office, fell dead of a heart attack.

In the spring of 1898, Spanish Admiral Pascual Cervera, handicapped by wretched ships, equipment and support, sailed his rusty little fleet of four cruisers and three destroyers across the Atlantic, straight through the operations centre of an over whelmingly superior U. S. fleet set to catch him, and safe into harbor at Santiago, Cuba without once sighting or being sighted by a U. S. warship. Navy censor ship hid that inglorious episode from the U, S. public, gagged war correspondents for another fortnight while the Navy made up its mind as to just where Cervera was. After Commodore Winfield Scott Schley had ventured close enough to sight a Spanish cruiser lying in plain view near the entrance to Santiago harbor, Admiral William T. Sampson determined to bottle up the enemy fleet by sinking a ship across the narrow harbor entrance. Because of his knowledge of ship construction, Lieutenant Richmond Pearson Hobson, nine years out of Annapolis, was chosen for the attempt. With seven volunteers aboard the stripped old collier Merrimac* he steamed up to the harbor in the dark of the moon on June 3. Everything went wrong. Eight of the ten torpedoes with which Hobson had planned to scuttle his ship refused to explode. The Spaniards were execrable marksmen, but they shot away his rudder chains and the Merrimac drifted helplessly past its mark into open harbor. There two Spanish torpedoes sank it in a spot where it did no one any harm.

Clinging to a raft, Lieutenant Hobson and his men were fished out of the water by a Spanish launch at dawn, imprisoned with utmost courtesy.

Though Hobson's exploit had been a total failure, bored correspondents pounced on it as the first exciting story of the war. When the handsome, 28-year-old officer returned to the U. S., he found himself a national hero worshipped with a hysteria which was not to be equaled until young Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlantic 29 years later. For months he traveled about the land being kissed by hundreds of adoring women, until his original fame paled before his notoriety as the "most kissed man in America." A candy manufacturer put out a caramel called "Hobson's Kiss," and the young hero's glamour faded still further when, pleading poor eyesight, he applied for retirement from the Navy at 32. His request was refused and he resigned to begin his career of reform, eight years of it spent in the U. S. House of Representatives. Not until 1933 did Congress vote him a Congressional Medal of Honor, rank of Rear Admiral and retirement pay of $4,500 per year. "One of the basic evils of hero worship," observed old Richmond Pearson Hobson two years ago, "is its effect on a private career."

*Not to be confused with the Confederate ironclad Merrimac, which fought the U. S. S. Monitor at Hampton Roads in March, 1862.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.