A Sailor's Log: Water-Tender Frederick T. Wilson, USN, on Asiatic Station, 1899-1901 (review)

A Sailor's Log, the unique memoir of Frederick T. Wilson, ably edited by James R. Reckner, presents unexplored aspects of naval life in the Far East at the beginning of the twentieth century. While previous accounts of the Asiatic Station concern naval officers, their relations with each other, and with diplomats and civilians, Wilson's story illuminates the lives of enlisted men on ships as well as ashore, providing fresh glimpses of the Asiatic Fleet of that time. Water-Tender Wilson was on the cruiser New Orleans when she was dispatched from the Atlantic to the Far East. She took on coal in the Azores, at Gibraltar, Suez, Aden, Colombo, and Singapore, and finally reached Manila.

For Wilson, Manila was hell. Americans were still fighting Aguinaldo's insurgents. Hundreds of coffins of American dead stood in stacks on the wharf awaiting transport to the States. Most upsetting to Wilson, Manila's terrific heat rendered New Orleans insufferable. Relief from that hell came in February 1900 when New Orleans was ordered to cool Nagasaki, a beautiful city of beautiful women, where Wilson would have been happy to settle. He hated leaving Nagasaki and his dear Japanese friends when New Orleans forsook that heaven for return to hellhole Manila.

Wilson was again rescued from hot Manila when he was transferred to the battleship Oregon, then at Hong Kong. Oregon, however, soon ran aground off the coast of Shantung as she rushed to aid foreigners menaced by Boxers in North China. Once refloated, she proceeded to the Japanese navy yard at Kure on the Inland Sea for bottom repairs. Wilson and other crewmen enjoyed the pleasures of Kure during five days of liberty.

That fall and early winter, Oregon lay at anchor off Woosung about fifteen miles down the Hwang Pu River from Shanghai. Wilson enjoyed several 48-hour liberties during which with the help of friendly Chinese he explored tea houses and theaters of the foreign concessions, had his tattoos enhanced by superb Japanese artists, and roamed the ancient walled city. Chinese girls he found attractive—except for their bound feet.

After lying five months off Woosung, Oregon shifted to Hong Kong, where Wilson climbed the peak and explored the handsome Queen's Road and the red light district of Ship Street. The climax of this visit came when he took in a Japanese circus with a beautiful Japanese lady, confirming his judgment that Japanese ladies were the most charming women in the Far East.

When Oregon was ordered to San Francisco with sailors whose enlistments were expiring, Wilson was transferred to the gunboat Concord, whose schedule took her first for a brief call at Amoy, then to Yokohama for coal, and finally to patrol the Aleutians. The cold of the Aleutians beat the heat of Manila.

In addition to recounting experiences ashore in various ports, Wilson exposed wretched conditions aboard the Navy's ships: deplorable food and housing associated with corrupt management of naval stores, abuse of rookies, inadequate policy on liberty, and flagrant mistreatment of enlisted men by officers. Wilson particularly condemned "Jack the Ripper," the executive officer on Oregon, who devoted himself to scouring the ship for supposed offenders to punish. But Wilson's bitterest criticism was against "bolo-men"—untrained warrant officers, sometimes recruited from the ranks of hobos—who supervised engine rooms. The pejorative naval slang "bolo-men" alludes to fierce Filipino knife-wielding guerrillas. Experienced and conscientious, but lower in rank, Wilson watched with disgust the ignorant and reckless behavior of these rough, untrained bolo-men warrant officers.