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On being ordered aboard the ship, we were assigned to quarters, instructed as to our stations for boat drill, fire drill, large gun drill, abandon ship, arm and away, strip ship for action, collision drill, and the positions of alignment on the quarter-deck, where the “present arms,” the courtesy extended to military and civil dignitaries at home and abroad, had to be daily executed.

The New York, which had been the “flag-ship” of Rear Admiral Bunce, who commanded the “North Atlantic Squadron,” and later the “flag-ship” of Rear Admiral Sampson at the battle of Santiago, was in 1900 the show ship of the navy, making a magnificent appearance while under way. She carried a complement of six eight-inch guns, twelve four-inch, and ten six-pounders, and had a speed of more than twenty-one knots per hour.

A feature of the New York was her enormous engine strength compared with her weight, the battleship Indiana developing nine thousand horse-power on a ten thousand two hundred ton displacement, while that of the cruiser New York was seventeen thousand horse-power on a displacement of eight thousand two hundred tons.