Page:America Fallen!.djvu/181

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The Battle of the Caribbean
169

15,000 yards began to plant their salvos on the Oklahoma and Nevada.

Their shells, falling at a steep angle, were dropping on our decks; and it was one of these that pierced the protective deck of the Nevada, smashed her low pressure turbines, and threw this fine ship out of the line. She stopped and drifted astern. When I last saw her, she was blazing away with her 5-inch batteries at a swarm of German destroyers, which had rushed in, like a crowd of angry terriers, to get her with the torpedo.

The fight had now been on for half an hour and we were asserting our superiority. The battle-cruiser Von der Tann had been badly hit and was settling by the stern. The fire from the German dreadnoughts had perceptibly slackened, and the Thuringen, at the tail of the column, was again in trouble with her steering-gear and had fallen behind. Although our ships had