Still more extraordinary, the captain of this marvelous new submarine
craft of war was known to be a boy of sixteen--Jack Benson, after whom
the new navy-destroyer had been named.
Newspaper readers were beginning to be familiar with the name of Captain
Jack Benson. Though so young he had, after a stern apprenticeship,
actually succeeded in making himself a world-known expert in the handling
of submarine torpedo boats.
Those lighter readers of newspapers, who scoffed at the very idea of a
sixteen-year-old boy handling a costly submarine boat, were sometimes
reminded that the same thing happens at the United States Naval Academy
at Annapolis, where the young midshipmen are given instruction and often
are qualified as young experts along similar lines.
More remarkable still, as faithful readers of newspapers knew, Captain
Jack Benson had associated with him, on the new torpedo boat, two other
sixteen-year-old boys, by name Hal Hastings and Eph Somers. It was also
rumored, and nearly as often believed, that these three sea-bred young
Americans knew as much as anyone in the United States on the special
subject of submarine boat handling.
Be that all as it might, it was known to every man, woman and child at
Spruce Beach that the "Benson" was due to arrive on this December day
and the whole picnicking population was out to watch the incoming from
the sea of the strange craft.
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