Product Description
by William G. Cassard Usn (Author)
To meet the expressed wishes of officers and enlisted men of the United States Battleship Indiana for some permanent record of the ship's doings in the war between the United States and Spain, 1898, this small book has been prepared, with the hope that it may, to some extent, answer that purpose. The illustrations are taken, for the most part, from a series of photographs made by Chaplain Cassard of the Indiana. These photographs have a war history of their own. Most of them were negatives stored in the stateroom of the Chaplain at the time the Spanish shell came on board and exploded, as told in Chapter Seven. When he entered his room after the explosion he found his camera, film rolls, etc., mingled with the rest of the contents of his room in the middle of the floor in four inches of water. Some of the undeveloped films were exposed to the rays of electric light and that accounts for the peculiar appearance of several of the illustrations in this volume, although it adds interest to them. For the benefit of friends of the ship ashore a small amount of space is devoted to general information concerning the vessel.
