(3 of 5)
Pilot and cameraman were rescued with minor injuries, certain parts of the ship salvaged, and the rest left, half submerged, on the beach.
On a bleak, rainy afternoon, years later, in an office in a northern navy yard, a group of men talked idly, as sailors will. What more natural than that their memories should revert to sunnier scenes, and several having served in Samoa, the talk soon turned on this very incident. As the event was illuminated from different points in time the following sequel developed.
After the Navy was finished with the wreckage the native population took up their own investigation of the affair. This investigation was no less thorough and weighty than the Navy's, and, for that matter, no less official, for chiefs came, with their official advisers, from far and near to participate in the deliberations. Qualified experts carefully examined the wreck above and below waterline, and reported in detail to the august conferees, ranked in due order of precedence on the beach. After mature consideration the congress of chiefs pronounced the following findings for the information and guidance of their people:
a) Minute inspection failed to disclose any evidence, not even a feather, to support the contention that the white man's contraption might be able to fly.
b) According to testimony of reputable witnesses, when by means of a powerful bow which the cruiser carried, the thing was shot into the air, it had fallen ignominiously into the water. It was not even a good arrow.
c) The white man was a fool. He had tried to build a bird, had achieved only a dead fish, although in strict fairness, it was admitted that he might have something in the big bow, if he ever learned to make a proper arrow.
Thereafter when the white man told tall tales about flying machines he was politely listened to with visible tolerance, but if he pressed his story, or attempted to substantiate it with pictures, he was ceremoniously escorted to the beach to view the bleached remains of the white man's folly, and to listen to the proper member of the local chief's staff comment sadly on "white man's lies."
Let Captain Musick cure his impatience with the knowledge that the cause of his annoyance was not the simple curiosity of ignorant natives, but the consternation of a thoughtful people whose considered and long settled opinion has suddenly exploded in their faces. ORIN SHINN
Palo Alto, Calif.
De Mortuis
Sirs:
My attention has been focused upon the diatribe in TIME, of March 29, directed against the memory of the late Admiral Richmond Pearson Hobson, quite obviously written by one unfamiliar with the text of the old Latin proverb enjoining upon all persons of good breeding to de mortuis nil nisi bonum.
It has apparently escaped the attention of that writer that embraced in Admiral Cervera's squadron, were four armored cruisers each more heavily gunned than any vessels of the corresponding type in the U. S. Navy and of almost equal speed. These are the fine vessels that the writer contemptuously refers to:—"wretched ships, equipment and support, sailed his rusty little fleet of four cruisers and three destroyers across the Atlantic, etc."