From Niantic the division went to the receiving ship Minnesota at the Congress Street slip in the Charlestown Navy Yard. At one time and another officers were detailed and men were drafted to vessels of the “Mosquito fleet,” and these were scattered all the way down the coast to Key West and the Havana Blockade, Ensign Cuntz on the Sylvia having the good fortune to see the Morro.
Following the excitement of the war summer came a reaction. The membership dropped nearly to the danger point. For a time it was a long and hard beat to windward, a trying fight with wind, wave and tide. Like every command from Connecticut which served in the war with Spain, the division found many of its best members returning to civilian ranks, and that to replace them either numerically or in quality required time and activity. But new blood—or what might be called a saline infusion—came, and before the snows melted the division had weathered the worst.
It was the Prairie which was the division’s floating home on the cruise taken in the following August. On the 16th the battalion sailed from New Haven harbor. Two days later the ship was off Gloucester, home of daring fishermen, and the next day she was in Bar Harbor. On the 21st she put out to sea. She passed outside Nantucket Shoals Lightship and opportunity was given to the men for target practice with great guns at sea, after sub-caliber coming full service charges. On their return members of the division spun exciting yarns concerning diluted saltpeter, embalmed horsehide, hammock ladders and raids on the officers’ refrigerator.
It is to be chronicled that thirteen states were represented in naval militia cruises on the Prairie in 1899 and that Connecticut took third rank among them; also that the Hartford division won first place among the three divisions from Connecticut, Bridgeport having organized the Third Division.
Probably the most memorable occasion in the history of the command was September 30, 1899, “Dewey Day,” the day of the giant procession in New York City in honor of the fine old hero of Manila Bay. When the organizations to represent this state were selected, it was the Naval Battalion which headed the list of honor. The First Regiment was not upon the list, but with honorable patriotism officers of the regiment who had served in Camp Alger requested of Lieutenant Lyman Root, Lieutenant Parker’s successor, permission to wear the sailor blue and carry Springfields in the division ranks. Men who had served in distant years in the wooden navy and men who had fought under Dyer in Manila Bay and Wainwright in the combat with the Furor and the Pluton and had returned to Hartford, also asked and received the same permission.