Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 91.djvu/229

 Popular Science Monthly

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��naval affairs, for the Recruit much of a training ship as it is a recruiting center. On the other hand, citizens may visit the ship and ac- quaint themselves with the makeup and organization of a modern sea-fighter.

Under Acting Captain C. F. Pierce, life aboard the Recruit is one of ordinary naval routine. The land sailors arise at six o'clock,

��scrub the decks, wash their clothes, attend instruction classes, and then stand guard and answer questions for the remainder of the day. There is a night as well as a day- guard. From sundown to eleven o'clock all lights of the ship are turned on, including a series of searchlight projectors.

Within the ship are spacious waiting rooms for recruits and applicants, physical examination rooms both fore and aft, doctors' quarters, officers' quarters, shower baths, a big air washer and ventilating de- vice which changes the temperature ten times every sixty minutes, and numerous other accommodations for officers and men. The superstructure of the vessel con- sists of a forward cabin, main bridge, flying bridge, conning tower, two masts fifty feet above the quarterdeck', and a single smokestack eighteen feet above the cabin top. Six wooden guns, repre- senting fourteen-inch naval guns, extend seventeen and a half feet beyond the turrets and make up the main battery. The second- ary battery consists of ten wooden five-inch guns and two models of one-pound breech- loading rifles.

��The Recruit measures two hundred feet from stem to stern, with a forty-foot beam

���The equipment is that of the up-to-the-minute dreadnought with accommodations on board for day and night life of officers and men. Searchlight projectors illuminate the ship at night

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