Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/60

42 never seen Ireland, but that did not prevent the warm-hearted people of Queenstown from hailing them as their own. This cordiality was appreciated, for the trip across the Atlantic had been very severe, with gales and rain-storms nearly every day.

The senior officer in charge was Commander Joseph K. Taussig, whose flagship was the Wadsworih. The other vessels of the division and their commanding officers were the Conyngham, Commander Alfred W. Johnson; the Porter, Lieutenant -Commander Ward K. Wortman; the McDougal, Lieutenant-Commander Arther P. Fairfield; the Davis, Lieutenant -Commander Rufus F. Zogbaum ; and the Wainwright, Lieutenant -Commander Fred H. Poteet. On the outbreak of hostilities these vessels, comprising our Eighth Destroyer Division, had been stationed at Base 2, in the York River, Virginia; at 7 P.M. of April 6th, the day that Congress declared war on Germany, their commander had received the following signal from the Pennsylvania, the flagship of the Atlantic Fleet : " Mobilize for war in accordance with Department's confidential mobilization plan of March 21st." From that time events moved rapidly for the Eighth Division. On April 14th, the very day on which I sent my first report on submarine conditions to Washington, Commander Taussig received a message to take his flotilla to Boston and there fit out for " long and distant service." Ten days afterward he sailed, with instructions to go fifty miles due east of Cape Cod and there to open his sealed orders. At the indicated spot Commander Taussig broke the seal, and read the following document a paper so important in history, marking as it does the first instructions any American naval or army officer had received for engaging directly in hostilities with Germany, that it is worth quoting in full:

Secret and Confidential

To: Commander, Eighth Division, Destroyer Force, Atlantic Fleet, U.S.S. Wadsworth, Flagship.

Subject: Protection of commerce near the coasts of Great Britain and Ireland.