Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 91.djvu/228

 The "Recruit"— Our Only Land Battleship

��It is New York's recruiting center for en- listment in America's first line of defense

���The battleship in Union Square, New York city, on Memorial Day

��Two hundred American Junior Naval and Marine Scouts on the Recruit

��WHEN Rear Admiral Bradley A. Fiske published his great article on "If Battleships Ran on Land," in the Popular Science Monthly for November, 191 5, showing, as it did, the tremendous energy of a battleship on land and the destruction it would work while crashing down Broadway, New York city, he little dreamed that a real battleship would be anchored close to the subway in Union Square in the year 191 7. Need- less to say, the land man-o'-war that now overlooks Broadway is the antithesis of the land monster conceived by Rear Ad- miral Fiske. Although it looks formidable enough, it is simply the headquarters for Naval re- cruiting in the New York city district of America's first line of defense. It has been aptly christened the U. S. S. Recruit. It is a fully-rigged battleship. On the starboard side of the ship flies the flag of the Navy,

��while from the port side flies the emblem ol the Marine Corps, the "Soldiers of the Sea." At the present time the ship houses thirty-nine bluejacket guards from the Newport Training Station — young fellows who have seen from two to six months' service. Their duties on board

the Recruit I will not hinder their

���The Recruit in process of construction. It was sev- eral days before she resembled a superdreadnought

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