east one despatch-boat for the use of its
correspondents, several of them had two or three, and the Associated
Press employed four. These boats were either powerful sea-going tugs
like the _Hercules_ and the _Premier_, or swift steam-yachts of the
class represented by the _Wanda_, the _Kanapaha_, and the _Bucaneer_.
Exactly how many of them there were in West Indian waters I have been
unable to ascertain; but I should say not less than fifteen or twenty,
with almost an equal number of naphtha-and steam-launches for harbor and
smooth-water work. In these despatch-boats the war correspondents went
back and forth between Key West and Cuba; watched the operations of the
blockading fleet off Havana, Matanzas, or Cardenas; cruised along a
coast-line nearly a thousand miles in extent, and, if necessary, went
with Admiral Sampson's squadron to a point of attack as remote as
Santiago de Cuba or San Juan de Porto Rico. Whenever anything of
importance happened in any part of this wide area, they were expected to
be on the spot to observe it, and then to get the earliest news of it to
the nearest cable-station--whether that station were Kingston, Cape
Haitien, St. Thomas, Port-au-Prince, or Key West. All of the newspaper
despatch-boats were small, many of them had very limited coal-carrying
capacity, and some were nothing but sea-going tugs, with hardly any
comforts or conveniences, and with no suitable accommodations for
passengers. The correspondents who used these boats were, therefore,
compelled to live a rough-and-tumble life, sometimes sleeping in their
clothes on benches or on the floor in a small, stuffy cabin, and always
suffering the hardships and privations necessarily involved in a long
cruise on a small vessel in a tropical climate and on a turbulent sea.
The Florida Strait between Key West and the north Cuban coast is as
uncomfortable a piece of water to cruise on as can be found in the
tropics. It is the place where the swiftly running Gulf Stream meets the
fresh northeast trade-winds; and in the conflict between these opposing
terrestrial forces there is raised a high and at the same time short,
choppy, and irregular sea, on which small vessels toss, roll, and pitch
about like corks in a boiling caldron. I was told by some of the
correspondents who had cruised in these waters that often, for days at a
time, it was almost impossible to get any really refreshing rest or
sleep. The large and heavy war-ships of the blocka