 THE SPANISH STAGE IN THE TIME OF LOPPE DE VEGA by Stephen F. Austin. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Bologna Times. THE SPANISH STAGE IN THE TIME OF LOPPE DE VEGA To the student of world drama, THE SPANISH STAGE IN THE TIME OF LOPPE DE VEGA by Professor H. A. Renart of the University of Pennsylvania should prove of interest. The book was published by the Hispanic Society of America in 1910, but despite the fact that it has been on the market for over a year, it appears to be little known. This is unfortunate in view of the much valuable and detailed information it contains concerning the origin and development of the Spanish drama in a period which corresponds both in point of time and of attainment to our own Elizabethan epoch. Beginning with the inception of the drama in Spain, which, as in England, was at the very altar of the Church, Dr. Renart traces its course through the autos sacramentales and all their forms to the comedia which found its perfection at the hands of Calderón and Lope de Vega. In Spain, as in England, the drama rapidly became secularized, passing successively from the hands of the Church to those of the municipalities and the trade guilds. The religious drama, however, did not die out, as in England, but persisted side by side with a more popular form of amusement. Indeed, some of Lope's most successful compositions were written for performance during the Corpus Christi Festival in Madrid. To the student of English drama, the histories of the Globe and the Blackfriars theatres in London are matters of prime interest. But to him who widens his field and views the drama not in its national but in its world aspect, the accounts of the Coral de la Cruz and the Coral de le Principe, which Dr. Renart has given us, should prove of equal importance. And scarcely second those of the Huerta de Doña Elvira and the Caliceo in Seville, where many of the masterpieces of Spanish dramatic literature were performed for the first time. These, like most of the public theatres in Spain, were founded by charitable organizations as a source of revenue, and continued under their control for many years, being least to the managers of various theatrical companies. As to their structure, their equipment, the conditions under which they operated, and the restrictions to which they were subject, we find an admirable account in our book. Those who have pondered similar problems in connection with the Elizabethan stage will appreciate the fullness of detail. The student will not be balked at every turn by that meagerness of data, which makes all accounts of our own early theatres largely matters of conjecture. In no country did the drama receive so much encouragement as in Spain. Nowhere did it become so much a part of the national life. In view of this fact, it is not surprising to find the theatres mentioned again and again in the public records of the times. The city often undertook theatrical productions, especially those of a religious nature, and the entries of disbursements, still preserved, are often illuminating. Indeed so important and adjunct to the community did the theatre become that when the Colosseo and Seville was destroyed by fire, the city ordered it rebuilt, and then, not being satisfied with the job, tore it down and remodeled it at its own expense. Such interest on the part of the municipality as such is significant. As with the public theatres in England, scenery and stage devices of all kinds were comparatively late acquisitions. But on the other hand, the church autos and the court representations early acquired a magnificence of scenic effect. This was imported from the Italian stage, and, as might be expected, in the course of time the public theatres began to follow the example at first slowly and with the utmost naiveté, but finally becoming more sophisticated, more and more ingenious, until in the days of Olope de Vega they had acquired a remarkable skill in staging. Indeed that great poet was driven to complain more than once, quote, that in these days the people come to see a comedy, not to hear it, unquote. The costumes, too, became more elaborate, more expensive, and much more immodest, with what effect we shall presently see. Despite the fact that the theatres became so popular, certain cities threatened to close them, because they kept the labourers from their work, acting, as a profession, was and always continued in disrepute. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Spain was overrun with bands of strolling players. As a rule they were a happy-go-lucky, shiftless lot, recruited from the lower classes. They led a hand-to-mouth existence, often giving a performance in exchange for a meal, and even in those days were marked people, by reason, quote, of the looseness of their lives, especially the women, unquote. But even among the better and more prominent companies, blatant immorality was rife. This brought about much opposition on the part of the clergy, and also a good deal of restrictive legislation. It was unfortunate that professional players were often engaged to perform the Easter autos, and the appearance of some exceptionally notorious actor or actress in a saintly role was a subject of more than one phallipic against the stage. But under the circumstances it was not surprising that virtue retired from the boards at an early date. The nomad life to which their professions subjected them, coupled with the demands made upon the players by the dreaded musketero, or pit, which delighted in all lasciviousness, were by no means conducive to clean living. Moreover the architecture of the theatres was unfortunate. The dressing-room was often a community affair, and the managers seemed to experience the greatest difficulty in excluding the public from them. So demoralizing did these conditions become that the authorities sought to remedy them by legislation. From time to time heavy fines were imposed upon the violation of what privacy the dressing and green rooms afforded. In 1596 legislation went further and closed the profession to unmarried women. These decrees, however, like all similar ones, seemed to have had little effect. As might be expected, this immorality showed itself not only behind the scenes, but before the footlights as well. The dance had long had its place in all forms of public amusement, and by the end of the 16th century it had become the most powerful attraction of the comedia, almost displacing the more legitimate forms of acting. As public fancy, wary to one, another was invented, and each was an improvement over its predecessor in point of impropriety. The climax was reached in 1588 when the Escaraman, the Shacona, and the Pestiferous Zarabanda were introduced. It was in reference to these that the laws regulating costume were passed. Under these circumstances it is but natural that the church should have headed the opposition against the stage, but in Spain it never went to the same lengths we find in England after the Reformation, in that blessed climb the stage found no puritans to contend with. Nevertheless because of its position the church often was able to bring great pressure to bear upon the town councils, even upon the king, and what regulation there was is traceable directly to its influence. In the king, however, the church usually found a poor ally. This is especially true of Philip IV. During his reign the comedia attained the zenith of its development. From his earliest youth Philip had been an ardent supporter of the theatres, often sending them comedias from the royal pen. But his enthusiasm, as Dr. Bennet points out, appears to have been due as much to his extraordinary weakness for actresses as to any genuine love of art. His courtiers followed his example, and under their lavish patronage the actors became a turbulent and unruly class. Whatever the origin of this royal support it ripened conditions for a glorious epoch in the history of Spanish drama. The king drew to his court all who became imminent in their connection with the stage. Among the writers who thronged Dither, Calderón, and Lope de Vega were the most famous. Their compositions were often performed at court under the direction of most noted managers, and the poets personally superintended the stage of their work. In these days the representations attained a magnificence never before dreamed of. Even the autos at the corpus festival surpassed in the matter of expensive stage device. Philip interfered with the public theatres in the most arbitrary fashion, sometimes summoning an actor or even a whole company right in the midst of a performance. In view of these facts it is no great wonder that by the middle of the century we find the theatrical profession as dependent upon the king as upon the public. But in regard to the drama the effects of Philip's rule could not be staved off by any amount of royal patronage. At the latter half of the seventeenth century the country had become poverty-stricken, bankrupt. Honest labour had come to be held in contempt, and because of royal extravagance taxation was excessive. In the theatres this found expression in a waning popularity, and the managers were no longer able to meet expenses without the aid of the king. Moreover, with the single exception of Calauron the great poets who had reared the fabric of a wonderful national drama were dead. The comedias that were produced were inferior, and failed to stimulate the dying public interest. It was easy to see that the end was near, and that another great period in the history of dramatic art was drawing to its close. Dr. Inert's book is an admirable commentary upon the conditions under which the Comedia grew, flourished, and declined. Where detail would prove of value to the student, detail is not lacking, and those who read the book with a more superficial interest will find much to hold their attention. The text is enlivened from time to time with eyewitness accounts of various performances, or with reminiscences, often autobiographical in nature, of the many vicitudes of some strolling player. The book should come as a welcome addition to the library of anyone interested in the drama from its historical side, and the fact that the book is published by the Hispanic Society, and so far as we know, is being pushed by no publisher, makes it in a special duty of the reviewer to call attention to its critical interest and scholarly importance. End of The Spanish Stage in the Time of López de Vega by Stephen F. Austin To Write or Not to Write by Susan Andrews Rice, from the writer, Volume 6, April 1892. This is a LibriVox recording, all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org To Write or Not to Write When anyone living in this age of the world feels that he has thoughts clamoring for utterance, he seeks advice from someone who has attained success in the profession of literature. In most instances he receives no satisfactory criticism and is compelled to act on innate conviction of his right to enter the thorny path and fight his way up to the top, where, we are told, there is always room. There seem to be two literary factions pitted against each other. Those of one class employ their best effort in dissuading young writers from writing. Those of another set forth in author's life in glowing colors. One faction will tell you that half the manuscripts sent to editors are not even accorded the courtesy of an examination and less signed by a well-known name. Another says that editors are keenly on the outlook for original matter, seizing with avidity anything that promises to make a new element in current literature. A noted author writes to a young aspirant, sweet and natural though your utterance seems to be, let me ask you in the friendliest spirit not to write at all. The toil is great, the pursuit incessant, the reward not outward. To the same young woman writes another equally well-known writer, your work is excellent, you can and will succeed. The fact is obvious that there is a literary aristocracy in America, born in an intellectual atmosphere with inherited talent wrapped in their own dreams, knowing little of the struggle and toil of their less fortunate co-workers. Its members stand aloof, saying, thou shalt not enter here. The old Italian poet quaintly puts it, for singing loudly is not singing well, but ever by the song that soft and low the master's singer's voice is plain to tell. You have it, and yet all are masters now, and each of them can trill out what he calls his ballads, kinsenets, and madrigals. The world with masters is so covered o'er, there is no room for pupils any more. Therefore, the individual who contemplates becoming an author must be a law unto himself. If he finds his truest expression his greatest delight in literary work, let him persevere all the world to the contrary, notwithstanding. There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, can circumvent, can hinder, or control the firm resolve of a determined soul. Gifts count for nothing, will alone is great. An editor, noted for his gentleness and courtesy, tells us that all writers must go through an evolutionary process of rejected manuscripts and cites the instance of Mrs. Harriet Prescott Spofert, who awoke one morning to find herself famous. She had written The Amber Gods. When congratulated as the first author who had attained reputation by a single effort, she replied, No, that is not true. I have been writing for years under an assumed name. End of To Write or Not to Write by Susan Andrews-Rice Read by Craig Campbell in Appleton, Wisconsin, in 2009. By Thomas Jefferson In Congress, July 4, 1776 The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness. Prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes, and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to write themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed, but when a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same object evences a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security, such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present king of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world. He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained, and when so suspended he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a long time after such dissolutions to cause others to be elected, whereby the legislative powers incapable of annihilation have returned to the people at large for their exercise. The state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without and convulsions within. He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states, for that purpose obstructing the laws of naturalization of foreigners, refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands. He has obstructed the administration of justice by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislatures. He has effected to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation. He has made large bodies of armed troops among us, for protecting them by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states, for cutting off our trade with all parts of the world, for imposing taxes on us without our consent, for depriving us in many cases of the benefits of trial by jury, for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses, for abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute role into these colonies. For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments, for suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated government here by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages and totally unworthy of the head of a civilized nation. He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions. In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms. Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a time-rent is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. Nor have we been wanting an attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must therefore acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our separation and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace, friends. We therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in general Congress assembled, appealing to the supreme judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved, and that as free and independent states they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledged to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. Instead of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America, read by Bologna Times. What I found in my pocket by G. K. Chesterton. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Sean Craig Smith. Once when I was very young, I met one of those men who have made the Empire what it is. A man in an Astrakhan coat, with an Astrakhan moustache, a tight black curly moustache. Whether he put on the moustache with the coat, or whether his Napoleonic will enabled him not only to grow a moustache in the usual place, but also to grow little moustaches all over his clothes, I do not know. I only remember that he said to me the following words, a man can't get on nowadays by hanging about with his hands in his pockets. I made a reply with quite obvious flippancy that perhaps a man got on by having his hands in other people's pockets, whereupon he began to argue about moral evolution, so I suppose what I said had some truth in it. But the incident now comes back to me, and connects itself with another incident, if you can call it an incident, which happened to me only the other day. I have only once in my life picked a pocket, and then, perhaps through some absent mindedness, I picked my own. My act can really, with some reason be so described, for in taking things out of my own pocket, I had at least one of the more tense and quivering emotions of the thief. I had a complete ignorance and a profound curiosity as to what I should find there. Perhaps it would be the exaggeration of eulogy to call me a tidy person. But I can always pretty satisfactorily account for all my possessions. I can always tell where they are, and what I have done with them. So long as I can keep them out of my pockets. If once anything slips into those unknown abysses, I wave at a sad, Virgilian farewell. I suppose that the things that I have dropped into my pockets are still there. The same presumption applies to the things that I have dropped into the sea, but I regard the riches stored in both these bottomless chasms with the same reverent ignorance. They tell us that on the last day the sea will give up its dead, and I suppose that on the same occasion long strings of extraordinary things will come running out of my pockets. But I have quite forgotten what any of them are, and there is really nothing accepting the money that I shall be at all surprised at finding among them. Such, at least, has hitherto been my state of innocence. I here only wish briefly to recall the special, extraordinary, and hitherto unprecedented circumstances which led me in cold blood, and being of sound mind, to turn out my pockets. I was locked up in a third-class carriage for a rather long journey. The time was towards evening, but it might have been anything. For everything resembling earth or sky or light or shade was painted out, as if with a great wet brush by an unshifting sheet of quite colorless rain. I had no books or newspapers. I had not even a pencil and a scrap of paper with which to write religious epic. There were no advertisements on the walls of the carriage, otherwise I could have plunged into the study, for any collection of printed words is quite enough to suggest infinite complexities of mental ingenuity. When I find myself opposite the words, sunlight, soap, I can exhaust all the aspects of sun worship, Apollo, and summer poetry before I go on to the less congenial subject of soap. But there was no printed word or picture anywhere. There was nothing but blank wood inside the carriage, and blank wet, without. Now I deny most energetically that anything is or can be uninteresting. So I stared at the joints of the walls and seats, and began thinking hard on the fascinating subject of wood. Just as I had begun to realize why, perhaps, it was that Christ was a carpenter, rather than a bricklayer or a baker or anything else, I suddenly started up right and remembered my pockets. I was carrying about with me an unknown treasury. I had a British museum and a South Kensington collection of unknown curios hung all over me in different places. I began to take the things out. The first thing I came upon consisted of piles and heaps of Battersea tram tickets. There were enough to equip a paper chase. They shook down in showers like confetti. Primarily, of course, they touched upon my patriotic emotions, and brought tears to my eyes. They also provided me with the printed matter I required, for I found on the back of them some short but striking little scientific essays about some kind of pill. Comparatively speaking, in my then destitution, these tickets might be regarded as a small, but well chosen, scientific library. Should my railway journey continue, which seemed likely at the time, for a few months longer, I could imagine myself throwing myself into the controversial aspects of the pill, composing replies and rejointers pro and con upon the data furnished to me. But after all, it was the symbolic quality of the tickets that moved me at most. For as certainly as the cross of St. George means English patriotism, those scraps of paper meant all that municipal patriotism which is now, perhaps, the greatest hope of England. The next thing that I took out was a pocket knife. A pocket knife I need hardly say would require a thick book full of moral meditations all to itself. A knife typifies one of the most primary of those practical origins, which, as upon low, thick pillows, all our human civilization reposes. Metals, the mystery of the thing called iron, and the thing called steel, led me off half days into a kind of dream. I saw into the entrails of dim, damp wood, where the first man, among all the common stones, found the strange stone. I saw a vague and violent battle, in which stone axes broke and stone knives were splintered against something shining and new in the hand of one desperate man. I heard all the hammers on all the anvils of the earth. I saw all the swords of feudal and all the wheels of industrial war. For the knife is only a short sword, and the pocket knife is a secret sword. I opened it and looked at that brilliant and terrible tongue which we call a blade, and I thought that perhaps it was the symbol of the oldest of the needs of man. The next moment I knew that I was wrong, for the thing that came next out of my pocket was a box of matches. Then I saw fire, which is stronger even than steel, the old fierce female thing, the thing we all love, but dare not touch. The next thing I found was a piece of chalk, and I saw in it all the art and all the frescoes of the world. The next was a coin of a very modest value, and I saw in it not only the image and superscription of our own Caesar, but all government and order since the world began. But I have not space to say what were the items in the long and splendid procession of poetical symbols that came pouring out. I cannot tell you all the things that were in my pocket. I can tell you one thing, however, that I could not find in my pocket. I allude to my railway ticket. End of What I Found in My Pocket by G. K. Chesterton Read by Sean Craig Smith Wildflowers of the asphalt by William Dean Howells This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Reading by Bologna Times Wildflowers of the Asphalt by William Dean Howells Looking through Mrs. Caroline A. Creavies' charming book on the flowers of field, hill, and swamp the other day, I was very forcibly reminded of the number of these pretty wilding growths which I had been finding all the season long among the streets of asphalt and the sidewalks of artificial stone in this city. And I am quite sure that anyone who has been kept in New York, as I have been this year, beyond the natural time of going into the country, can have as real a pleasure in the Sylvan invasion, as mine, if he will but give himself up to a sense of it. Part One Of course it is altogether too late to look for any of the early spring flowers, but I can recall the exquisite effect of the tender blue hepatica fringing the center rail of the gripped cars all up and down Broadway, and apparently springing from the hollow beneath where the cable ran with such a brook-like gurgle that any damp living plant must find itself a home there. The water-pempernel may now be seen by any sympathetic eye blowing delicately along the track in the breeze of the passing cabs and elastically lifting itself from the rush of the cars. The reader can easily verify it by the picture in Mrs. Creavy's book. He knows it by its other name of Brookweed, and he will have my delight, I am sure, in the cardinal flower which will be with us in August. It is a shy flower, loving the more sequestered nooks, and may be sought along the shady stretches of Third Avenue, where the elevated road overhead forms a shelter as of interlacing boughs. The arrowhead likes such swampy expanses as the converging surface roads form at Deadman's Curve, and the corners of 23rd Street. This is in flower now, and will be till September. And St. John's Wart, which some call the false Goldenrod, is already here. You may find it in any moist low ground. But the gutters of Wall Street, or even the banks of the Stock Exchange, are not too dry for it. The real Goldenrod is not much in evidence with us, for it comes only when summer is on the way. The other night, however, on the promenade of the Madison Square Roof Garden, I was delighted to see it growing all over the oblong dome of the auditorium, in response to the cry of a homesick cricket which found itself in exile there at the base of a potted evergreen. This lonely insect had no sooner sounded its winter boating note, than the fawn flower began sympathetically to wave and droop along those tarry slopes, as I had seen it on how many hillside pastures. But this may have been only a transitory response to the cricket, and I cannot promise the visitor to the roof garden that he will find Goldenrod there every night. I believe there is always golden seal, but it is the kind that comes in bottles, and not in the gloom of deep, cool, moist woods where Mrs. Creavy describes it as growing, along with other wildings of such sweet names or quaint as Selendine, and Dwarf Larkspur, and Squirrelcorn, and Dutchman's Breaches, and Pearlwort, and Wood Swirl, and Bishop's Cap, and Wintergreen, and Indian Pipe, and Snowberry, and Adder's Tongue, and Wakerobin, and Ragonroot, and Adam and Eve, and twenty more, which must have got their names from some fairy of genius. I should say it was a female fairy of genius who called them so, and that she had her own sex among mortals in mind when she invented their nomenclature, and it was thinking of little girls, and slim pretty maids, and happy young wives. The author tells how they all look, what they find sense of their charm in her words, but one would know how they looked from their names, and when you call them over, they at once transplant themselves to the depths of the Dells between our skyscrapers, and find a brief sojourn, and the cavernous excavations whence other skyscrapers are to rise. Part 2 That night on the roof-garden, when the crickets cry flowered the dome with golden rod, the tall stems of rye growing among the orchestra sloped all one way at times, just like the boughs of violins, in the half-dollar gale that always blows over the city at that height. But as one turns the leaves of Mrs. Cravey's magic book, perhaps one ought to say turns its petals, the forests and the fields come and make themselves at home in the city everywhere. By virtue of it, I have been more in the country in a half hour than if I had lived all June there. When I lift my eyes from its pictures or its letter-press, my vision prints the idyllines of wildflowers everywhere, as it prints the image of the sun against the air after dwelling on his brightness. The rose-mallow flaunts along Fifth Avenue, and the golden threads of the daughter embroider the house fronts on the principal cross-street. And I might think at times that it was all mere fancy. It has so much the quality of a pleasing illusion. Yet Mrs. Cravey's book is not one to lend itself to such a deceit by any of the ordinary arts. It is rather matter of fact in form and manner, and largely owes what magic it has to the inherent charm of its subject. One feels this in merely glancing at the index, and reading such titles of chapters as Wet Meadows and Low Grounds, Dry Fields, Waste Places, Waysides, Hills and Rocky Woods, Open Woods, and Deep Cool Moist Woods. Each a poem and itself, lyric or pastoral, and of a surpassing opulence of suggestion, the spring and summer months pass in stately processional throughout the book, each with their fillet inscribed with the names of her characteristic flowers, or blossoms, and brightened with the blooms themselves. They are plucked from where nature bade them grow in the wild places, or their own wayward wills led them astray. A singularly fascinating chapter is that called Escaped from Gardens, in which some of these pretty renegades are catalogued. I suppose in my liberal ignorance that the bouncing bet was the only one of these, but I have learned that the pansy and the sweet violet loved Gad, and that the caraway, the snap dragon, the princess feather, the summer savoury, the star of Bethlehem, the daylily, and the tiger lily, and even the sluggish stone prop are of the vagrant, fragrant company. One is not surprised to meet the tiger lily, and that must always have had the jungle in its heart, but that the baby's breath should be found wandering by the roadsides from Massachusetts and Virginia to Ohio gives one a tender pang as for a lost child. Perhaps the poor human tramps, who sleep in barns and feed at back doors, along those dusty ways, are mindful of the baby's breath and keep a kindly eye out for the little trot. Part three. As I was writing those homely names, I felt again how fit and lovely they were, how much more fit and lovely than the scientific names of the flowers. Mrs. Cravey will make a botanist of you, if you will let her, and I fancy a very good botanist, though I cannot speak from experience, but she will make a poet of you in spite of yourself, as I very well know, and she will do this simply by giving you first the familiar name of the flowers she loves to write of. I am not saying that the day-lily would not smell as sweet by her title of hemorrhochalis fallava, or that the homely, hearty, bouncing bet would not kiss as deliciously in her scholar's cap and gown of saponaria aficionalis. But merely that their college degrees do not lend themselves so willingly to verse, or even melodious prose, which is what the poet is often after nowadays. So I like best to hail the flowers by the names that the fairies gave them, and the children know them by, especially when my longing for them makes them grow here in the city streets. I have a fancy that they would all vanish away if I saluted them in botanical terms, as long as they talk of cattail rushes, the homeless gremelkins of the areas and the back fences help me to a vision of the swamps thickly studded with their stiff spears. But if I call them typha latifolia, or even typha angustifolia, there is not the heartiest and fiercest prowler of the roof and the fire escape, but would fly to the sound of my voice and leave me forlorn amid the withered foliage of my dream. The streetsperos, pastiferous and persistent as they are, would forsake my silvan pageant if I spoke of the bird-foot violet as the viola pirata, and the commonest cur would run howling if he heard the gentle poison dogwood maligned as the rus veninata. The very milk cans would turn to their native pumps and disgust from my attempt to invoke our simple American cow slip as the dotacathion media part four. Yet I do not deny that such scientific nomenclature has its uses, and I should be far from undervaluing the side of Mrs. Creavy's book. In fact, I secretly respected the moor for its botanical lore, and if ever I get into the woods or fields again, I mean to go up to some of the humblest flowers such as I can fill myself on easy terms with and tell them what they are in Latin. I think it will surprise them, and I daresay they will some of them like it and will want their initials inscribed on their leaves, like those signatures which the medicinal plants bear or are supposed to bear. But as long as I am engaged in their culture, amid the stone and iron and asphalt, I find it best to invite their presence by their familiar names, and I hope they will not think them too familiar. I should like to get them all naturalized here so that the thousands of poor city children who never saw them growing in their native places might have some notion of how bountifully the world is equipped with beauty, and how it is governed by many laws which are not enforced by policemen. I think that would interest them very much, and I shall not mind their plucking my barmeside blossoms and carrying them home by the armfuls. When good will costs nothing, we ought to practice it, even with the traps, and these are very welcome in their wanderings over the city pave, to rest their weary limbs in any of my pleached bowers they come to. End of Wild Flowers of the Oswald by William Dean Howells The Third CV-5 Displacement 19,800 tons Length 809 feet 6 inches Beam 83 feet 1 inch Draft 28 feet Speed 32.5 knots Compliment 2,919 Armament 8 5-inch guns 22-50 caliber machine guns Aircraft Carried 81-85 Class Yorktown The Third Yorktown CV-5 was laid down on 21 May 1934 at Newport News, Virginia by the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Duck Company. Launched on 4 April 1936, sponsored by Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, and commissioned at the Naval Operating Base, NOB, Norfolk, Virginia, on 30 September 1937. Captain Ernest D. McWhorter in command. After fitting out, the aircraft carrier trained in Hampton Roads and in the southern drill grounds off the Virginia capes into January of 1938, conducting carrier qualifications for her newly embarked air group. Yorktown sailed for the Caribbean on 8 January 1938 and arrived at Culbera, Puerto Rico on 13 January. Over the ensuing month, the carrier conducted her shakedown, touching at Charlotte Amali, St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, Ganeves, Haiti, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Cristobal, Panama Canal Zone. Departing Columbay, Cristobal on 1 March, Yorktown sailed for Hampton Roads and arrived there on the 6th and shifted to the Norfolk Navy Yard the next day for post-shakedown availability. After undergoing repairs to the early autumn of 1938, Yorktown shifted from Navy Yard to NOB Norfolk on 17 October and soon headed for the southern drill grounds for training. Yorktown operated off the eastern seaboard, ranging from Chesapeake Bay to Guantanamo Bay into 1939. As flagship for carrier division, Cardiff II, she participated in her first war game, Fleet Problem 20, along with her sister ship Enterprise, CV-6, in February 1939. The scenario for the exercise called for one fleet to control the sea lanes in the Caribbean against the incursion of a foreign European power while maintaining sufficient naval strength to protect vital American interest in the Pacific. The maneuvers were witnessed in part by President Roosevelt, embarked on the heavy cruiser Houston, CA-30. The critique of the operation revealed that carrier operations, a part of the scenarios for the annual exercises since the entry of Langley, CV-1, into the war games in 1925, had achieved a new peak of efficiency. Despite the inexperience of Yorktown and Enterprise, comparative newcomers to the fleet, both carriers made significant contributions to the success of the problem. The planners had studied the employment of carriers and their embarked air groups in connection with convoy escort, anti-submarine defense, and various attack measures against surface ships and shore installations. In short, they worked to develop the tactics that would be used when war actually came. Following Fleet Problem 20, Yorktown returned briefly to Hampton roads before sailing for the Pacific on 20 April. Transiting the Panama Canal a week later, Yorktown soon commenced a regular routine of operations with the Pacific fleet. Operating out of San Diego into 1940, the carrier participated in Fleet Problem 21 that April. Fleet Problem 21, a two-part exercise, included some of the operations that would characterize future warfare in the Pacific. The first part of the exercise was devoted to training and making plans and estimates, and screening and scouting, and coordination of combatant units, and employing fleet and standard dispositions. The second phase included training and convoy protection, the seizure of advanced bases, and ultimately, the decisive engagement between the opposing fleets. The last pre-war exercise of its type, Fleet Problem 21 contained two exercises, comparatively minor at the time, where air operations played a major role. Fleet Joint Air Exercise 114A prophetically pointed out the need to coordinate Army and Navy defense plans for the Hawaiian Islands, and Fleet Exercise 114 proved that aircraft could be used for high altitude tracking of surface forces, a significant role for planes that would be fully realized in the war to come. With the retention of the fleet in Hawaiian waters after the conclusion of Fleet Problem 21, Yorktown operated in the Pacific off the west coast of the United States and in Hawaiian waters until the following spring, when the success of German U-boats preying upon British shipping in the Atlantic required a shift of American naval strength. Thus, to reinforce the Atlantic fleet, the Navy transferred a substantial force from the Pacific, including Yorktown, a battleship division, and accompanying cruisers and destroyers. Yorktown departed Pearl Harbor on 20 April 1941, in company with Warrington DD383, Somers DD381, and Duet DD396. Headed southeast, transited the Panama Canal on the night of 6 and 7 May, and arrived at Bermuda on the 12th. From that time to the entry of the United States into the war, Yorktown conducted four patrols in the Atlantic, ranging from Newfoundland to Bermuda and logging 7,642 miles steamed while enforcing American neutrality. Although Adolf Hitler had forbidden his submarines to attack American ships, the men who manned the American naval vessels were not aware of this policy and operated on a wartime footing in the Atlantic. On 28 October, while Yorktown, battleship New Mexico, BB41, and other American warships were screening a convoy, a destroyer picked up a submarine contact and dropped depth charges while the convoy itself made an emergency starboard turn, the first of the convoy's three emergency changes of course. Late that afternoon, engine repairs to one of the ships in the convoy, Empire Pentail, reduced the convoy's speed to 11 knots. During the night, the American ships intercepted strong German radio signals indicating submarines probably in the vicinity reporting the group. Rear Admiral H. Kent Hewitt, commanding the escort force, sent a destroyer to sweep a stern of the convoy to destroy the U-boat or at least drive him under. The next day, while cruiser scout planes patrolled overhead, Yorktown and Savannah, CL42, fueled their escorting destroyers, finishing the task just at dusk. On the 30th, Yorktown was preparing to fuel three destroyers when other escorts made sound contacts. The convoy subsequently made 10 emergency turns while Morris DD417 and Anderson DD411 dropped depth charges and Hughes, DD410, assisted in developing the contact. Anderson later made two more depth charge attacks, noticing considerable oil was slick spreading but no wreckage. The short of war period was becoming more like the real thing as each day went on. Elsewhere on 30 October and more than a month before Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor, U-562 torpedoed the Reuben James, DD245, sinking her with a heavy loss of life, the first loss of an American warship in World War II. After another neutrality patrol stent in November, Yorktown put into Norfolk on 2 December and was there five days later when American fighting men in Hawaii were rudely awakened to find their country at war. The early news from the Pacific was bleak. The Pacific fleet had taken a beating. With the battle line crippled, the unheard American carriers assumed great importance. There were, on 7 December, only three in the Pacific, Enterprise, Lexington, CV2, and Saratoga, CV3. While Ranger CV4, Wasp, CV7, and the recently commissioned Hornet, CV8, remained in the Atlantic, Yorktown departed Norfolk on 16 December 1941 and sailed for the Pacific. Her secondary gun gallery studied with new 20mm Orlican machine guns. She reached San Diego, California on 30 December 1941 and soon became flagship for rear Admiral Flatjack Fletcher's newly formed task force, TF-17. The carrier's first mission in a new theater was to escort a convoy carrying marine reinforcements to American Samoa. Departing San Diego on 6 January 1942, Yorktown and her consorts covered the movements of Marines to Tatulia and Pago Pago to augment the garrison already there. Having safely covered that troop movement, Yorktown and Company with sister ship Enterprise departed Samoan waters on 25 January. Six days later, TF-8 built around Enterprise and TF-17 built around Yorktown, party company. The former headed for the Marshall Islands, the latter for the Gilberts, each bound to take part in the first American offensive of the war, the Marshall Gilberts raids. At 0517 hours, Yorktown, screened by Louisville, CA-28, and St. Louis, CL-49, and four destroyers, launched 11 torpedo planes, Douglas TBD-1 devastators, and 17 scout bombers, Douglas TBD-3 Dauntlesses, under the command of commander Curtis W. Smiley. Those planes hit what Japanese shore installations and shipping they could find at Jalut, but adverse weather conditions hampered the mission in which six planes were lost. Other Yorktown planes attacked Japanese installations and ships at Macon and Mill atolls. The attack by TF-17 on the Gilberts had apparently been a complete surprise since the American force encountered no enemy surface ships. A single 4-engine Kawanishi E-7K Mavis patrol bomber seaplane attempted to attack American destroyers that had been sent astern in hope of recovering planes overdue from the Jalut mission. Anti-aircraft fire from the destroyers drove off the intruder before he could cause any damage. Later, another Mavis, or possibly the same one that had attacked the destroyers, came out of low clouds 15,000 yards from Yorktown. The carrier withheld their anti-aircraft fire in order not to interfere with the combat air patrol, CAP fighters. Presently, the Mavis, pursued by two Wildcats, disappeared behind a cloud. Within five minutes, the enemy patrol plane fell out of the clouds and crashed into the water. Although TF-17 was slated to make a second attack on Jalut, it was canceled because of heavy rainstorms and the approach of darkness. Therefore, the Yorktown force retired from the area. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz later called the Marshall-Gilbert raids well-conceived, well-planned and brilliantly executed. The results obtained by TF-8 and 17 were noteworthy, Nimitz continued in a subsequent report, because the task force had been obliged to make their attacks somewhat blindly due to lack of hard intelligence data on the Japanese mandated islands. Yorktown subsequently returned to Pearl Harbor and replenished there before she put out the sea on 14 February bound for the Coral Sea. On 6 March, she rendezvoused with TF-11, formed around Lexington and under the command of rear Admiral Wilson Brown, and headed towards Rabaul and Gasmada to attack Japanese shipping there in an effort to check the Japanese advance and to cover the landing of Allied troops in Nomia, New Caledonia. However, as the two flat tops screened by a powerful force of eight heavy cruisers, including the Australian HMAS Australia and 14 destroyers steamed towards New Guinea, the Japanese continued their advance towards Australia with a landing on 7 March at the Huan Gulf and the Salamala Ley area on the eastern end of New Guinea. Word of the Japanese operation prompted Admiral Brown to change the objective of TF-11's strike from Rabaul to the Salamala Ley sector. On the morning of 10 March 1942, American carriers launched aircraft from the Gulf of Papa. Lexington flew off her air group commencing at 0749 hours and 21 minutes later, Yorktown followed suit. While the choice of the Gulf as a launch point for the strike meant that the planes would have to fly some 125 miles across the Owen Stanley Mountains, a range not known for the best flying conditions, that approach provided security for the task force and ensured surprise. In the attacks that followed, Lexington's SPDs from Scouting Squadron VS-2 commenced dive bombing Japanese ships at Ley at 0922 hours. The carriers Torpedo Squadron VT-2 and Bombing Squadron VB-2 attacked shipping at Salamala at 0938 hours. Her fighters from Fighter Squadron VF-2 split up in the four plane attack groups, one strafe Ley and the other Salamala. Yorktown's planes followed on the heels of those from Lady Lex. VB-5 and VT-5 attacked Japanese ships in the Salamala area at 0950 hours, while VS-5 went after auxiliaries more close to the shore at Ley. The fighters of VF-42 flew over Salamala on CAP until they determined that there was no air opposition and then strafed surface objectives and small boats in the harbor. After carrying out their missions, the American planes returned to their carriers and 103 planes of the 104 launch were safely back on board by noon. One SB-32 of VS-2 had been downed by Japanese anti-aircraft fire. The raid on Salamala and Ley was the first attack by many pilots of both carriers, and while the resultant torpedo and bombing accuracy was inferior to that achieved in later actions, the operation gave the fliers invaluable experience which enabled them to do so well in the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway. Task Force 11 retired at 20 knots on a south-easterly course until dark when the ship steered eastward at 15 knots and made a rendezvous with Task Group TG-11.7, four heavy cruisers and four destroyers under rear Admiral John G. Grace Royal Navy, the group that had provided cover for the carriers on their approach to New Guinea. Yorktown resumed her patrols in the Coral Sea area, remaining at sea into April out of reach of Japanese land-based aircraft and ready to carry out offensive operations whenever the opportunity presented itself. After the Ley-Salamala raid, the situation in the South Pacific seemed temporarily stabilized, and Yorktown and her consorts in TF-17 put into the undeveloped harbor at Tonitangu and the Tonga Islands for needed upkeep, having been at sea continuously since departing from Pearl Harbor on 14 February. However, the enemy was soon on the move. To Admiral Nimitz, there seemed to be excellent indications that the Japanese intended to make a seaborn attack on Port Moresby the first week in May. Yorktown accordingly departed Tonga Tabu on 27 April, bound once more for the Coral Sea. TF-11, commanded by rear Admiral Aubrey W. Fitch, who had relieved Brown in Lexington, departed Pearl Harbor to join Fletcher's TF-17 and arrived in the vicinity of Yorktown's group southwest of the new Hebrides Islands on one May. At 15.17 hours the next afternoon, two dauntlesses from VS-5 set at a Japanese submarine running on the surface. Three devastators took off from Yorktown, sped to the scene, and carried out an attack that only succeeded in driving the submarine under. On the morning of the 3rd, TF-11 and TF-17 were some 100 miles apart, engaging in fuel line operations. Shortly before midnight, Fletcher received word from Australian-based aircraft that Japanese transports were disembarking troops and equipment to Lagi in the Solomon Islands. Arriving soon after the Australians had evacuated the place, the Japanese landed to commence construction of a seaplane base there to support their southward thrust. Yorktown accordingly set course northward at 27 knots. By daybreak on 4 May, she was within striking distance of the newly established Japanese beachhead and launched her first strike at 0701 hours. 18 F-4F-3s of VF-42, 12 TBDs of VT-5, and 28 SBDs from VS and BV-5. Yorktown's air group made three consecutive attacks on enemy ships and shore installations at Tulagi and Gavuti on the south coast of Florida Island in the Solomon Islands. Expending 22 torpedoes and 76 1,000 pound bombs in three attacks, Yorktown's planes sank a destroyer, Cacuzzi, three Minecraft, and four barges. In addition, air group V destroyed five enemy seaplanes, all at the cost of two F-4Fs lost, the pilots were recovered, and one TBD whose crew was lost. Meanwhile that same day, TF-44, a cruiser destroyer force under rear Admiral Grace, R.N., joined Lexington's TF-11, thus completing the composition of the Allied force on the eve of the crucial battle of the Coral Sea. Elsewhere, to the northward, the enemy was on his way. 11 troop-laden transports escorted by destroyers and covered by the light carrier Shoho, four heavy cruisers, and a destroyer, steamed towards Port Moresby. In addition, another Japanese task force formed around the two Pearl Harbor veterans, carriers Shikaku and Zuikaku, screened by two heavy cruisers and six destroyers, provided additional air cover. On the morning of the 6th, Fletcher gathered all Allied forces under his tactical command as TF-17. At daybreak on the 7th, he dispatched Grace, with the cruisers and destroyers under his command, toward the Louis VIII archipelago, to intercept an enemy attempt to move toward Port Moresby. Meanwhile, while Fletcher moved northward with his two flat tops in their screens in search of the enemy, Japanese search planes located the oiler Niosho AO-23 and her escort Sims, DD-409, and identified the former as a carrier. Two waves of Japanese planes, first high-level bombers and then dive bombers, attacked the two ships. Sims, her anti-aircraft battery crippled by gun failures, took three direct hits and sank quickly with a heavy loss of life. Niosho was more fortunate in that, even after seven direct hits and eight near misses, she remained afloat, until on the 11th, her survivors were picked up by the Henley, DD-391, and her hulk sunk by the rescuing destroyer. In their tribulation, Niosho and Sims had performed a valuable service, drawing off the planes that might otherwise have hit Fletcher's carriers. Meanwhile, Yorktown and Lexington's planes found Shoho and punished that Japanese-like carrier unmercifully, sending her to the bottom. One of Lexington pilots reported this victory with the radio message, Scratch One Flat Top. That afternoon, Shoeikaku and Zuikaku, still unlocated by Fletcher's forces, launched 27 bombers and torpedo planes to search for the American ships. Their flight proved uneventful until they ran into fighters from Yorktown and Lexington, who proceeded to down nine enemy planes in the ensuing dogfight. Near Twilight, three Japanese planes incredibly mistook Yorktown for their own carrier and attempted to land. The ship's gunfire, though, drove them off, and the enemy planes crossed Yorktown's bow and turned away out of range. Twenty minutes later, when three more enemy pilots made the mistake of trying to get into Yorktown's landing circle, the carrier's gunners splashed one of the trio. However, the battle of the Coral Sea was far from over. The next morning, 8 May, Lexington's search planes spotted Admiral Tagogge's carrier striking force, including Zuikaku and Shoeikaku, the flat tops that have proved so elusive the day before. Yorktown planes scored two bomb hits on Shoeikaku, damaging her flight deck and thus preventing her from launching aircraft. In addition, the bomb set off explosions and gasoline storage tanks and destroyed an engine repair workshop. Lexington's Dauntless's added another hit. Between the two American air groups, the hits scored killed 108 Japanese sailors and wounded 40 more. While the American planes were bedeviling the Japanese flat tops, however, Yorktown and Lexington, alerted by an intercepted message which indicated that the Japanese knew of their whereabouts, were preparing to fight off a retaliatory strike. Sure enough, shortly after 1100 hours, that attack came. American C.A.P. Wildcats slashed into the Japanese formations, downing 17 planes. Some, though, managed to slip through the fighters, and the Cates that did so managed to launch torpedoes from both sides of Lexington's vows. Two fish torn to Lady Lex on the port side. Dive bombers, vows, added to the destruction with three bomb hits. Lexington developed a list with three partially flooded engineering spaces. Several fires raised below decks, and the carrier's elevators were out of commission. Meanwhile, Yorktown was having problems of her own. Skillfully maneuvered by Captain Elliot Buckmaster, her commanding officer. The carrier dyesed eight torpedoes. Attacked then by vows, the ship managed to evade all but one bomb. That one, however, penetrated the flight deck and exploded below decks, killing or seriously injuring 66 men. Yorktown's damaged control parties brought the fires under control, and despite her wounds, the ship was still able to continue her flight operations. The air battle itself ended shortly before noon on the 8th, and within an hour Lady Lex was on an even keel, although slightly down by the bow. Her damaged control parties had already extinguished three out of the four fires below. In addition, she was making 25 nuts, and was recovering her air group. At 1247 hours, however, disaster struck Lexington, when a heavy explosion, caused by the ignition of gasoline vapors, rocked the ship. The flames raced through the ship, and further internal explosions tore the ship apart inside. Lexington battled for survival, but despite the valiant efforts of her crew, she had to be abandoned. Captain Frederick C. Sherman sadly ordered a abandoned ship at 1707 hours. Her men went over the side in an orderly fashion, and were picked up by the cruisers and destroyers of the carrier's screen. Torpedoes fired by Phelps, DD 361, hastened the end of Lady Lex. As Yorktown and her consorts retired from Coral Sea to lick their wounds, the situation in the Pacific stood altered. The Japanese had won a tactical victory, inflicting comparatively heavy losses on the Allied force. But the Allies, in stemming the tide of Japan's conquest in the South and Southwest Pacific, had achieved a strategic victory. They had blunted the drive toward strategic Port Moresby, and had saved the tenuous lifeline between America and Australia. Yorktown had not achieved her part in the victory without cost, but had suffered enough damage to cause experts to estimate that at least three months in a yard would be required to put her back in fighting trim. Unfortunately there was little time for repairs, because Allied intelligence, most notably the cryptographic unit at Pearl Harbor, had gained enough information from Dakota Japanese Naval Messages to estimate that the Japanese were on the threshold of a major operation and at the northeastern tip of the Hawaiian chain. Two islets and a low coral atoll known as Midway. Thus armed with this intelligence, Admiral Nimitz began methodically planning Midway's defense, rushing all possible reinforcement in the way of men, planes and guns to Midway. In addition, he began gathering his naval forces, comparatively meager as they were, to meet the enemy at sea. As part of those preparations, he recalled TF-16, Enterprise and Hornet, CV-8, to Pearl Harbor for a quick replenishment. Yorktown too received orders to return to Hawaii, and she arrived at Pearl Harbor on 27 May. Miraculously, yard workers there, laboring around the clock, made enough repairs to enable the ship to put the sea. Her air group, for the most part experienced but weary, was augmented by planes and flyers from Saratoga, CV-3, which was then headed for Hawaiian waters after modernization on the West Coast. Ready for battle, Yorktown sailed as a central ship of TF-17 on 30 May. Northeast of Midway, Yorktown, flying rear Admiral Fletcher's flag, rendezvoused with TF-16 under rear Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, and maintained a position 10 miles to the northward of the latter. Over the days that ensued, as the ships proceeded toward a date with destiny, few men realized that within the next few days the pivotal battle of the war in the Pacific would be fought. Patrols both from Midway itself and from the carriers proceeded to pace during those early days in June. On the morning of the fourth, as dawn began to streak to eastern sky, Yorktown launched a 10-plane group of Dauntless's from VB-5, which searched a northern semi-circle for a distance of 100 miles, but found nothing. Meanwhile, PBY's flying from Midway has cited the approaching Japanese and broadcast what turned out to be the alarm for the American forces defending the Kiatol. Admiral Fletcher, in tactical command, ordered Admiral Spruance with TF-16 to locate the enemy carrier force and strike them as soon as they were found. Yorktown's search group returned at 08.30 hours, landing soon after the last of the six-plane CAP had left the deck. When the last of the Dauntless's had landed, a flight deck ballet took place in which the deck was spotted for the launch of the ship's attack group, 17 Dauntless's from VB-3, 12 Devastators from VT-3, and six Wildcats from Fighting III. Enterprise and Hornet meanwhile, launched their attack groups. The torpedo planes from the three American flat tops located the Japanese carrier striking force but met disaster. Of the 41 planes from VT-8, VT-6, and VT-3, only six returned to Enterprise in Yorktown collectively. None made it back to Hornet. The destruction of the torpedo planes, however, had served a purpose. The Japanese CAP had broken off their high altitude cover for their carriers, and had concentrated on the Devastators, flying low on the deck. The skies above were thus left open for Dauntless's arriving from Yorktown and Enterprise. Virtually unopposed, the SBD dove to the attack. The results were spectacular. Yorktown's dive bombers pummeled Soryu, making three lethal hits with 1,000-pound bombs that turned the ship into a flaming inferno. Enterprise's planes, meanwhile, hit Akagi and Kaga, turning them to and directs within a very short time. The bombs from the Dauntless has caught all of the Japanese carriers in the midst of refueling and rearming operations, and the combination of bombs and gasoline proved explosive and disastrous to the Japanese. Three Japanese carriers have been lost. A fourth, however, still roamed at large, Hiryu. Separated from her sisters, that ship had launched a striking force of 18 vows that soon located Yorktown. As soon as the attackers had been picked up on Yorktown's radar at about 1329 hours, she discontinued the fueling of her CAP fighters on deck and swiftly cleared for action. Her returning dive bombers were moved from the landing circle to open the area for anti-aircraft fire. The Dauntless's were ordered aloft to form a CAP. An auxiliary gasoline tank of 800 gallons capacity was pushed over the carrier's fan tail, eliminating one fire hazard. The crew drained fuel lines enclosed and secured all compartments. All of Yorktown's fighters were vectored out to intercept the oncoming Japanese aircraft and did so some 15 to 20 miles out. The Wildcats attacked vigorously, breaking up what appeared to be an organized attack by some 18 vows and 18 zeros. Plains were flying in every direction, wrote Captain Buckminster after the action, and many were falling in flames. Yorktown and her escorts went to full speed, and as the Japanese raiders attacked, began maneuvering radically. Intense anti-aircraft fire greeted the vows and Cates as they approached their release points. Despite the barrage though, three vows scored hits. Two of them were shot down soon after releasing their bomb loads. The third went out of control just as his bomb left the rack. It tumbled in flight and hit just a BAF 2 elevator on the starboard side, exploding on contact and blasting a hole about 10 feet square in the flight deck. Splinters from the exploding bomb decimated the crews of the two 1.1-inch gun mounts after the island and on the flight deck below. Fragments piercing the flight deck hit three planes on the hangar deck starting fires. One of the aircraft, a Yorktown Dauntless, was fully fueled in carrying a 1,000-pound bomb. Prompt action by Lieutenant A.C. Emerson, the hangar deck officer, prevented a serious conflagration by releasing the sprinkler system and quickly extinguishing the fire. The second bomb to hit the ship came from the port side, pierced the flight deck, and exploded in the lower part of the funnel. It ruptured the uptakes for three boilers, disabled two boilers themselves, and extinguished the fires in five boilers. Smoke and gases began filling the firerooms of six boilers. The men at number one boiler, however, remained at their post despite their danger and discomfort and kept its fire going, maintaining enough steam pressure to allow the auxiliary steam systems to function. A third bomb hit the carrier from the starboard side, pierced the side of number one elevator, and exploded on the fourth deck, starting a persistent fire in the rag storage space, adjacent to the four gasoline stowage and the magazines. The prior precaution of smothering the gasoline system was CO2, undoubtedly prevented the gasoline's igniting. While the ship recovered from the damage inflicted by the dive bombing attack, her speed dropped to six knots, and then, at fourteen forty hours, about twenty minutes after the bomb hit that had shut down most of the boilers, Yorktown slowed to a stop, dead in the water. At about fifteen forty hours Yorktown prepared to get underway again, and at fifteen fifty hours the engine room force reported that they were ready to make twenty knots or better. The ship was not yet out of the fight. Simultaneously, with the fires controlled sufficiently to warrant the resumption of fueling operations, Yorktown began fueling the gasoline tanks to the fighters then on deck. Fueling had just commenced when the ship's radar picked up an incoming air group at a distance of thirty three miles away. While the ship prepared for battle, against smothering gasoline systems and stopping the fueling of the planes on her flight deck, she vectored four of the six fighters of the CAP in the air to intercept the incoming raiders. Of the ten fighters on board, eight had as much as twenty three gallons of fuel in their tanks. They accordingly were launched as the remaining pair of fighters of the CAP headed out to intercept the Japanese planes. At sixteen hundred hours, Yorktown churned forward, making twenty knots. The fighters she had launched and vectored out to intercept had meanwhile made contact. Yorktown received reports that the planes were Cates. The Wildcats downed at least three of the attacking torpedo planes, but the rest began their approach in the teeth of a heavy anti-aircraft barrage from the carrier and her escorts. Yorktown maneuvered radically, avoiding at least two torpedoes before two fish tore into her port side within minutes of each other. The first hit at sixteen twenty hours. The carrier had been mortally wounded. She lost power and went dead in the water with a jammed rudder and an increasing list to port. As the list progressed, Commander C. E. Aldrich, the Damage Control Officer, reported from Central Station that without power, controlling the flooding looked impossible. The engineering officer, Lieutenant Commander J. F. Delaney, soon reported that all fires were out. All power was lost, and worse yet, it was impossible to correct the list. Faced with that situation, Captain Buckmaster ordered Aldrich, Delaney and their men to secure and lay up on deck to put on life jackets. The list meanwhile continued to increase. When it reached twenty six degrees, Buckmaster and Aldrich agreed that the ship's capsizing was only a matter of minutes. In order to save as many of the ship's company as possible, the captain wrote later, he ordered the ship to be abandoned. Over the minutes that ensued, the crew left ship, lowering the wounded to life rafts and striking out for the nearby destroyers and cruisers to be picked up by boats from those ships. After the evacuation of all wounded, the executive officer, Commander I. D. Wiltsie, left the ship down a line on the starboard side. Captain Buckmaster, meanwhile, toured the ship for one last time, inspecting her to see if any men remained. After finding no live personnel, Buckmaster lowered himself to the water by means of a line over the stern. By that point, water was lapping the port side of the hangar deck. Picked up by the destroyer Hammond, D.D. 412, Buckmaster was transferred to Astoria, C.A. 34, soon thereafter, and reported to rear Admiral Fletcher, who had shifted his flag to the heavy cruiser after the first dive bombing attack. The two men agreed that a salvage party should attempt to save the ship, since she had stubbornly remained afloat despite the heavy list and imminent danger of capsizing. Interestingly enough, while the efforts to save Yorktown have been proceeding apace, her planes were still in action, joining those from Enterprise and striking the last Japanese carrier, Hyru, late that afternoon. Taking four direct hits, the Japanese flat top was soon helpless. She was abandoned by her crew and left to drift out of control and manned only by her dead. Yorktown had been avenged. Yorktown, as it turned out, floated through the night. Two men were still alive on board her. One attracted attention by firing a machine gun that was heard by the sole attending destroyer Hughes. The escort picked up the men, one of whom later died. Meanwhile, Buckmaster had selected 29 officers and 141 men to return to the ship in an attempt to save her. Five destroyers formed an anti-submarine screen while a salvage party boarded a listing carrier. The fire and the rag storage still smoldering on the morning of the 6th. Viru, AT-144, summoned from Pearl Harbor and Hermes Reef, soon commenced towing the ship. Progress, though, was painfully slow. Yorktown's repair party went on board with a carefully predetermined plan of action to be carried out by men from each department. Damage control, gunnery, air, engineering, navigation, communication, supply, and medical. To assist in the work, Lieutenant Commander Arnold E. True brought his ship, Hammon, alongside the starboard aft, furnishing pumps and electric power. By mid-afternoon, it looked as if the gamble to save the ship was paying off. The process of reducing topside weight was proceeding well. One five-inch gun had been dropped over the side, and a second was ready to be cast loose. Planes had been pushed over the side. The submersible pumps, powered by electricity provided by Hammon, had pumped out considerable quantities of water from the engineering spaces. The efforts of the salvage crew had reduced the list about two degrees. Unbeknownst to Yorktown and the six nearby destroyers, the Japanese submarine I-158 had achieved a favorable firing position. Remarkably, but perhaps understandable in light of the debris and wreckage in the water and the vicinity, none of the destroyers picked up the approaching I-boat. Suddenly, at 1536 hours, lookouts spotted a salvo of four torpedoes turning towards the ship from the starboard beam. Hammon went to General Quarters, a 20-millimeter gun going into action in an attempt to explode the fish in the water. One torpedo hit Hammon, her screws turning the water beneath her fan tail as she tried to get under way, directly amid ships and broke her back. The destroyer jackknifed and went down rapidly. Two torpedoes struck Yorktown, just below the turn of the bills at the after-end of the island structure. The fourth torpedo passed just a stern of the carrier. Approximately a minute after Hammon's stern disappeared beneath the waves, an explosion rumbled up from the depths, possibly caused by the destroyer's depth charges going off. The blast killed many of Hammon's and a few of Yorktown's men who had been thrown into the water. The concussion battered the already damaged carrier's hull and caused tremendous shocks that carried away Yorktown's auxiliary generator, sent numerous fixtures from the hangar deck overhead crashing to the deck below, sheared rivets in the starboard leg of the foremast and threw men in every direction, causing broken bones and several minor injuries. Prospects for immediate resumption of salvage work looked grim, since all destroyers immediately commenced searches for the enemy submarine, which escaped, and commenced rescuing men from Hammon in Yorktown. Captain Buckmaster decided to postpone further attempts at salvage until the following day. Vario cut the tow line and doubled back to Yorktown to pick up survivors, taking on board many men of the salvage crew while picking up men from the water. The little ship endured a terrific pounding from the larger ship, but nevertheless stayed alongside to carry out a rescue mission. Later, while on board the tug, Captain Buckmaster conducted a burial service. Two officers and an enlisted man from Hammon were committed to the deep. The second attempt at salvage, however, would never be made. Throughout the night of the 6th and into the morning of the 7th, Yorktown remained stubbornly afloat. By 0530 hours on the 7th, however, the men in the ships nearby noted that the carrier's list was rapidly increasing to port. As if tired, the valiant flat top turned over at 0701 hours on her port side and sank in 3,000 fathoms of water, her battle flags flying. Yorktown, CV5, earned three battle stars for her World War II service, two of them being for the significant part she had played in stopping Japanese expansion and turning the tide of war at Coral Sea and at Midway. End of Yorktown Entry and Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships by the U.S. Naval Historical Center. Recording by James Christopher, JX Christopher at yahoo.com.