The regatta at Cowes, on the Isle of Wight, on Aug. 6, 1921, was a gay and notable affair. King George V and Queen Mary appeared amid pennants and bunting, and the town swarmed with bluejackets from the U.S. battleship Utah, which lay offshore. One of them, Chief Yeoman Ralph Everett Crawshaw, a quiet young man, was mail clerk on the Utah. Whether or not he exercised a sailor's prerogative and got drunk that gala day was a question which for 30 years was to bother Navy brass, four U.S. Presidents and seven sessions of Congress.
When Yeoman Crawshaw returned to the...
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