A New Organization for the New Navy
“ I had the happiness to command a band of brothers.” —NELSON to Lord Howe.
THE growth of the navy during the last few years has been a source of gratification to the American people, especially because it has been achieved by the use of materials produced entirely in their own country, and has signified an enormous increase in their power to build ships and fortifications. This period has marked the complete break, perhaps forever, with the old line of battle-ship dependent for its motion upon an unreliable element, and the adoption of the powerful hull driven by a machine whose reliability depends only upon the care and foresight of men. The Massachusetts alone could probably have destroyed the whole American navy at the end of the rebellion. We all know how this change has come, and we are filled with thankfulness for the added strength given to us in the steam-engine, but it never occurs to us to ask if our men have been properly trained to deal intelligently with this new element. We forget what is really the most essential part of the navy in the noisy declamation over material advancement.
Any one will see that readjustment must inevitably follow the introduction of a new force into society. We are face to face with an industrial struggle going on about us, but we are accustomed to thinking of the army and navy as things organized for exceptional conditions, and consequently under different laws of development and growth from those of civil life. We find, however, the same ferment and disturbance in our navy, and the same tendencies towards the breaking up of old relations. We frequently see articles on line and staff troubles, and we usually lay them aside with a bored feeling that the quarrels of the officers might better be settled by the Department and kept out of the papers ; but the sub ject is not to be dismissed in that way, if we are to have an effective arm on the sea. The navy discontent is really only part of a great national problem, an indication of a realignment of men to grapple with new forces. Many parallels exist in history, even in the history of navies. The same kind of a struggle and readjustment occurred three or four hundred years ago. and will no doubt occur again in the coming centuries. All problems involved in the change of the relative importance of individuals are delicate, and the navy should have the aid and support of every good citizen in reaching a satisfactory solution of the difficulties connected with the personnel. It is our due that we may have efficient ships, and theirs that they may have every cause for pride in the service and for gratitude to their country.
In writing on this subject, it seems necessary to dwell more upon the relation of the engineer to the naval service than upon the position of the officers on deck, not because he is more deserving as a man than they, but because he is the newcomer and must justify his position as a military officer.
Naval organization has two ends in view : to provide materials and ships, and to train and direct men to manage them in times of peace and of war. Other matters may be important, but they are not necessarily peculiar to a naval service. We have every reason to feel proud of the rehabilitation of our navy during the past twelve years. Yet with all the advance in materials and construction, it is a serious question whether we have any cause for pride in our personnel. Notwithstanding the lessons of the war, and the advice of Gideon Welles, who conducted our naval forces through that war, in the education of our young officers we are clinging to memories and traditions. We are lashed hard and fast to a sentiment. Seamanship and sails are still considered the proper training for men who will command our ships twenty years hence. The superintendent of the Naval Academy has recentlyasked for sailing-vessels in which to educate the cadets who will see service on ships that have not a rag of sail.
The personnel of a navy divides itself naturally under three heads : administration, officers, and enlisted men; and while all of these departments need improvement or remodeling, the condition of the officers is far worse than anything else in the service. Let reorganization be effected with them, and everything else follows. The truth is, that we are passing through a period of transition when the organization of neither officers nor men quite fits the ships, and it behooves the Department and Congress to proceed to a careful study of the subject in order that our people maybe sure that all matters connected with national defense have been adequately considered.
It must not be forgotten that our new ships are designed largely on theory. Their weaknesses have not been developed by war. They are therefore products of the brain, and not of experience. The rebellion gave us some useful lessons in naval warfare under steam and without sails; but the improvements in armor, guns, and machinery since 1865 have been too great for any certain application of those lessons to present conditions. The battle of the Yalu in the Japan-China war, though a great victory in fleet-fighting, teaches us little except to avoid wood and other inflammable materials in the decks and bulkheads of a ship. For two or three centuries during the sailing period, experience had demonstrated just the kind of casualty the sailor might look for. He had acquired by warfare, shipwreck, and hazard on evei-y sea that seamanship which enabled him to prepare beforehand with almost mathematical exactness for emergencies. But our question is, Is modern seamanship the same as it was in Nelson’s or even in Farragut’s time ? The answer is almost self-evident. It cannot be, for the modern ship is a machine, and its casualties can best be foreseen by men with engineering education. We know by experience that when a ship suffers detention, it is because a shaft, or a boiler, or a valve has given out. What will happen on a battle-ship in action ? Will a shell jam one of the turrets so that it cannot be turned ? Will the communication between the bridge and the engine-rooms be cut by a shot ? Will the splitting of a boiler-tube, a breakage in the steeringengine, the bursting of a steam-pipe, or the filling of a compartment render the ship helpless ? W e do not know. But we do know that the ship whose parts are in the most perfect order, so that every nerve responds promptly to the call of the commanding officer, will stand the best chance ; and we do know, besides, that the crew must be fitted to the machinery if all parts, guns, dynamos, torpedoes, and engines, are to be kept in this complete readiness for service, and if the effects of casualty are to be most quickly minimized.
For thirty years there has been a struggle between the line and the staff of the navy, or those officers who may succeed to the command of ships and those who may not. This struggle has developed the greatest bitterness between the line and the engineer corps, inasmuch as their duties, which essentially affect the fighting efficiency of the ships, have clashed at many points. Neither can be spared, for although other men may be sent out of the ships without decreasing their effectiveness, the men in the compartments containing guns and ammunition, and the men in the engine and boiler rooms must stay. They belong to the fightingmachine. What is more, they must work in entire harmony towards the same ends, if we are to attain the highest qualities in our ships. For the sake of peace and good fellowship, questions between the line and the engineers are carefully avoided at most well regulated mess tables ; but let any one imagine himself penned up in the crater of a volcano for three years with the absolute certainty that it may become active at any moment, and it will be readily understood why so many graduates of the Naval Academy have left the service.
This antagonism, which is entirely official, has existed so long that Congress is tired of hearing about it, and has come to expect it as a part of the navy discontent in time of peace. The disposition is to “ let them alone,” for “ they will sink their differences in the presence of a common danger.” The trouble is that past difference may sink them and thenships. It takes three years to build a modern ship, and nearly as long to train the men, and the country cannot afford to overlook differences which are undermining the discipline and efficiency of a service destined to take the first shock of war, and whose effective preparation and readiness form the surest guarantee of peace.
Leaving out the long series of controversies between the line and the engineers, the cause of friction is not far to seek. On every ship there are two sets of officers and men, more or less numerous according to the class of the ship. They are divided, sometimes in almost equal numbers, between the deck, where they man the guns, and the machinery, where they drive engines and boilers. The officers are graduates of the same school; and yet if accident happens to a deck officer, an engineer cannot by law take his place, whatever be the emergency ; on the other hand, if an engineer is disabled, a deck officer would be entirely at a loss what to do in his place. This separation by law and custom forces upon them different interests. The line officer, who alone has the right to command men and ships, will sometimes use his power for the benefit of a class; and the engineer overruled, in many cases connected with his men and machinery, has nevertheless to take the responsibility for the result. The auxiliary machinery which is put into the ships by three or four bureaus is managed by as many officers, and yet the chief engineer is by naval regulations held responsible for all repairs and adjustments, without having had any voice in the training of the men, or the care of this machinery, to prevent accident. It would seem that the naval regulations tend to invite controversy and bad feeling, and to instill into officers the conviction that their corps interest must be supreme. In the entire separation of the two corps, the country is found to be the loser, and no ship will be studied as a unit until they are brought together. The remedy was suggested by Secretary Welles, in his reports for 1864 and 1865. The case cannot be stated better than in his own words : —
“ Preliminary measures have been taken to carry into effect the law of the last session of Congress authorizing the education at the Naval Academy of cadet engineers.
“ Before this plan shall be put into operation, it is respectfully submitted, in view of the radical changes which have been wrought by steam as a motive power for naval vessels, whether steam engineering should not be made to constitute hereafter a necessary part of the education of all midshipmen, so that in our future navy every line officer will be a steam engineer and qualified to have complete command and direction of his ship. Hereafter every vessel of war must be a steam vessel. . . . The Department is not aware that any line officer, whatever attention may have been given by him to the theoretical study of steam, is yet capable of taking charge of an engine, nor are all steam-engine drivers capable of taking charge of a manof-war, navigating her, fighting her guns, and preserving her discipline. . . . Half the officers of a steamship cannot keep watch, cannot navigate her, cannot exercise the great guns or small arms, nor, except as volunteers under a line officer, take any part in any expedition against the enemy. On the other hand, the other half of the officers are incapable of managing the steam motive power or of taking charge of the engine-room in an emergency, nor can the commander of a vessel, though carefully taught every duty of a sailor and drill officer, understand of his own knowledge whether the engineers and firemen are competent or not. The remedy for all this is very simple, provided the principle were once recognized and adopted of making our officers engine drivers as well as sailors, . . . Objection may be made that the duties are dissimilar, and that steam-engine driving is a specialty. The duties are not more dissimilar than seamanship and gunnery. . . .
“ Fortunately, our naval officers are taught seamanship, gunnery, and the infantry drill, and the service saved from distinct organizations in these respects, which would inevitably have impaired its efficiency. It only remains to commence at this time, and, as preparatory to the future of the navy, to teach the midshipman steam engineering as applied to running the engine. This would be independent of the art of designing and constructing, which is purely a specialty, and nowise necessary in the management and direction of the ship. And to this specialty, as a highly scientific body of officers, would the present corps of engineers be always required as inspectors and constructors of machinery. With the adoption of the suggestions here made, we shall in due time have a homogeneous corps of officers, who will be masters of the motive power of their ships in the future as they have been of seamanship in the past. By this arrangement there will be in each ship double the number of officers capable of fighting and running the vessels without additional appointments or expense. Innumerable other advantages commend the plan as worthy of trial, and it is presented for favorable consideration.”
The report of 1865 adds : “The naval vessel is no longer dependent on the winds, nor is she at the mercy of currents ; but the motive power which propels and controls her movements is subject to the mind and will of her commander, provided he is master of his profession in the future as he has been in the past. To retain the prominence which skill and education gave him when seamanship was the most important accomplishment, the line officer must be qualified to guide and direct this new element or power. Unless he has these qualities, he will be dependent on the knowledge and skill of him who manipulates and directs the engine. To confine himself to seamanship without the ability to manage the steam-engine will result in his taking a secondary position as compared with that which the accomplished naval officer formerly occupied.”
Mr. Welles was the ablest secretary that the Navy Department has ever had, and it is our misfortune that his advice has not been followed, and that no material change of the old system has been made even though the sails of his day have been stripped from the ships. The only solution of the matter lies, as he intimated, in fusing together the line and the engineers, and in making them all the line except a small number selected for high technical attainment in engineering to do the duties of chief engineers on board and on shore. All officers except the chief engineer, surgeon, and paymaster would then be available for deck or machinery duties. As Mr. Welles says, it is not too much to ask of the deck officers to learn to drive machinery and, it may be added, to take care of it under the direction of a competent head. The navy could not fail to gain enormously by the greater engineering knowledge of the commanding officer and the increased interest of the chief engineer, in whose hands must be placed everything connected with machinery, whatever be its nature, on board a ship.
Similar changes and combinations have taken place in the past, and we find a very fair historical parallel in the English navy during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Before that the sailor occupied somewhat the place of our engineer, and the soldier the place of our sailor.
A man-of-war in the Greek and Roman period was carried into action by means of oars. The crew was divided into two distinct parts, those on the rowers’ benches and those bearing arms on the more elevated parts of the ship. A sea fight consisted in laying alongside and boarding so that soldiers might meet on the decks hand to hand as they would on shore. The soldier element commanded, and the master and his rowers were impressed or employed for transportation purposes. This organization answered very well so long as it had for its main object the transportation of troops to shores not far distant or the interception of landing parties. The captain did not require a knowledge of navigation, and he was a soldier purely and simply.
The introduction of sails, guns, and the bowline created as great a revolution in the fifteenth century as steam has created in the nineteenth. Genuine naval tactics made possible, a new system of warfare grew up in which fleets manœuvred for position, and attacked each other from a distance. With the growing importance of sails, the seamen became more numerous and their duties more responsible, although still subordinate, and the soldier element, or that part of the crew which commanded and fought, grew less essential to the ships. The inevitable struggle between soldier and sailor began, lasted for two centuries, and finally ended in the welding of the two into one ; but tradition and custom survive long on the sea, and we still have the old soldier element in the small detail of marines carried by our own ships. The command is, however, in the hands of the man who knows seamanship. He inherits the knight’s pennant which every commanding officer now flies at the mast. At times the quarrel between the gentleman officer and Jack Tarpaulin grew more bitter than the present misunderstanding between the line and the engineers. The consolidation did not come by the sailor’s driving the soldier out of the ship, but by the gradual acquirement of each other’s duties. Some of the soldiers learned seamanship, and some of the sailors learned the handling of guns, so that it was seamanship rather than the sailor that captured the command. Holland first felt the effect of this union, but England had adopted it so thoroughly by the end of the sixteenth century that her sailors soon obtained the mastery of the sea, and their descendants still hold it.
Too little prominence is given to this change in the English system, in the histories of the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Queen Elizabeth had been shrewd enough to intrust her fleet to genuine sailors, as the names of Drake, Hawkyns, and Frobisher attest, while the Spaniards had clung to the ancient system, with soldiers in control, and seamen subordinate and despised. The poor equipment of the Spanish ships, and the ease with which they were rounded up like a herd of cattle, forms one of the most melancholy pages in history.
A few lines from Admiral Sir William Monson’s Naval Tracts, written in the early part of the seventeenth century, exhibit this phase of the subject very forcibly : —
“In the year 1588, there was not above one hundred and twenty sail of men-of-war to encounter that Invincible Armada of Spain, and not above five of them all, except the queen’s great ships, were two hundred tons burthen, and did not exceed those rates in all Queen Elizabeth’s time ; so that our seamen were by their experience and courage rather the cause of victory than the ships ; but if we should attribute these misfortunes to ships which are made all of one sort of wood and iron, and after one manner of building, it were great folly ; but give Cæsar his due, and allow the ships their due ; for a ship is but an engine of force used for offense or defense, and when you speak of the strength of ships, you must speak of the sufficiency of men within her. The Spaniards have more officers in their ships than we: they have a captain in their ship, a captain for their gunners, and as many captains as there are companies of soldiers, and, above all, they have a commander in the nature of a colonel above the rest. This breeds a great confusion, and is many times the cause of mutinies among them ; they brawl and fight commonly aboard their ships, as if they were ashore. Notwithstanding the necessity they have of sailors, there is no nation less respectful of them than the Spaniards, which is the principal cause of their want of them ; and till Spain alters this course, let them never think to be well served at sea. Our discipline is far different, and indeed quite contrary, as I have showed before.”
He refers in the last sentence to part of an essay on seamen and officers which is worth quoting almost entire : —
“ The experienced valiant sea soldier and mariner who knows how to manage a ship and maintain a sea fight judicially for defense of himself and offense of his enemy is only fit to be a captain or commander at sea ; for without good experience, a man otherwise courageous may soon destroy himself and his company. . . .
“ The seaman’s desire is to be commanded by those that understand their labor, laws, and customs, thereby expecting reward or punishment according to their deserts.
“ The seamen are stubborn or perverse when they receive their command from the ignorant in the discipline of the sea, who cannot speak to them in their own language.
“ That commander who is bred a seaman and of approved government, by his skill in choice of his company will save twenty in the hundred, and perform better service than he can possibly do that understands not perfectly how to direct the officers under him.
“ The best ships of war in the known world have been commanded by captains bred seamen ; and merchants put their whole confidence in the fidelity and ability of seamen to carry their ships and goods through the hazard of pirates, men-of-war, and the danger of rocks and sands, be they of never so much value ; which they would never do under the charge of a gentleman or an inexperienced soldier for his valor only.
“ The seamen are much discouraged of late times by preferring of young, needy, and inexperienced gentlemen captains over them in their own ships ; as also by placing lieutenants above the masters in the king’s ships, which have never been used until of late years.
“ The seaman is willing to give or receive punishment deservedly according to the laws of the sea, and not otherwise according to the fury or passion of a boisterous, blasphemous swearing commander.
“ I must say, and with truth, that all her majesty’s ships are far undermanned : for when people come to be divided into three parts, the one third to tackle the ship, the other to ply their small shot, and the third to manage their ordnance, all the three services fail for want of men to execute them. Neither do I see that more men can be contained in the queen’s ships to the southward, for want of storage for victuals and room to lodge in.
“ And lastly, for the men that sail in the ships, without whom they are of no use, their usage has been so ill at the end of their voyages that it is no marvel they shew their unwillingness to serve the queen ; for if they arrive sick from any voyage, such is the charity of the people ashore that they shall sooner die than find pity, unless they bring money with them.”
To a large extent we are following in the footsteps of our ancestors. The engineers and firemen occupy much the same position as the masters and seamen of old. The boisterous, blasphemous, swearing commander is gone as our officers have become better educated and more enlightened ; and the logical growth of our service is toward the same kind of a union which occurred during Queen Elizabeth’s reign. The machine is here. Even our guns are called machine guns, and the tendency is inevitably towards a homogeneous crew to handle them. “ The sailor will not swallow the engineer, nor the engineer the sailor.” It will be the triumph of steam over sails, and the victory of engineering over that seamanship upon which we shall always be proud to look back as one of the chief factors in the formation of our country. The line officers fear that the engineers wish to command the ships. Let the commanding officers become engineers, and let engineers rule our ships, then all fears will be dispelled, and the navy will quickly become a unit.
There are now two bills before Congress for the improvement of the personnel, one relating to promotions in the line, and the other to an increase of numbers of engineers, with a better definition of their status and rank. Neither of these bills has any prospect of passing both Houses, on account of the line and staff quarrel. Many officers are ready to endure martyrdom for what seems to them a principle, forgetting that the true principle to die for is the future welfare of our country, and not the triumph of a corps in the navy. When the cases are examined, it will be found that sentiment plays a large part in the discussion, and that the wisest reforms can best be effected by a fair and considerate examination of the subject in the Navy Department, under the personal direction of the Secretary or Assistant Secretary. No serious effort has been made in the past to deal adequately with the organization of the men as a whole to fight the ships, for most questions have been decided by the line without consultation, or by boards whose members have not possessed one another’s confidence. The late Board of Visitors to the Naval Academy recommended that all cadets shall pursue the same course of studies, in order that officers may be educated alike for deck and engine-room duties. At first blush, this plan seems to the older officers of the service a process of converting the aspiring cadet into an anaconda, but a little experience would without doubt prove it to be extremely practical and sensible. All the problems on a modern battle-ship are engineering in their nature, and there is no problem which cannot be solved by the man whose early education has been largely in mechanics and engineering. Questions of organization of men, tactics, and international law must be learned by study and experience after graduation, and in these matters the graduates from a school where engineering is emphasized would be as well off as those from a school of seamanship.
The present system at the Naval Academy does not supply the needs of a modern navy, and it too often instills into the youthful minds of the cadets the vicious notion that the commanding officer is above the knowledge of every detail of his own ship. During the course, considerable attention is given to mathematics, seamanship, gunnery, and navigation, and a comparatively small amount to engineering, language, and the natural sciences. At the end of three years, the cadets are separated into two divisions, one of line cadets and one of engineer cadets. The latter receive one year in engineering, and the former an additional year in seamanship, navigation, and gunnery. By seamanship is here meant the handling of a ship under sail. Those who pass the examinations graduate at the end of their fourth year, and serve two years at sea before receiving commissions. These two years are supposed to give the graduates a more practical knowledge of their professions. The line cadets usually find themselves on sailless vessels, and proceed to pick up what they can about boats, guns, and the management of men on deck. They are required to spend some time in the engine-rooms when the ship is steaming, but without responsibilities or duties, very much as tourists crossing the Atlantic visit the engineroom. After two years at sea, they are ordered home for examination, and receive commissions in the line of the marine corps, if vacancies can be found for them. The engineer cadets pass through the same stage, except that their two years at sea are spent with the machinery. They receive commissions as assistant engineers. Two or three “ star ” graduates are yearly transferred to the Corps of Naval Constructors and remain on shore for duties at navy yards and at the Department, in connection with the design and building of the hulls of ships.
The division into line and engineer cadets at the end of the third year is on the basis of aptitude and preference. This does not work out well in practice. Few young men at the age of twenty really exhibit marked aptitude for line or staff duties, and it is impossible for the Academic Board to divide the class by aptitude. Then, the men who stand highest in the class have the first choice, and preference discloses a lamentable outlook for engineering in the navy. No young man will go into a corps which seems to him discredited from the start. He knows, from what he hears of the service, that his standing as an officer of a military force will not be fixed so definitely that a foolish commanding officer cannot humiliate him in the sight of his own men. When President McKinley visited the Naval Academy in the spring, the engineer cadets were shut up in their rooms, because the commanding officer either could not, or would not, find a place for them in a review before the commander-in-chief. Preference can be exercised where pride does not influence the choice, and where the rewards are equal, and no young man will express a preference for a corps in which he is sure to become the victim of tradition. This is not fancy ; for the Board of Visitors to the Naval Academy have had brought plainly before them the difficulty of getting volunteers for the engineer corps. Only those cadets who cannot help themselves enter the corps, and even then too often with a mental reservation to resign as soon as possible. To borrow a phrase from Sir William Monson, “ Let them never think to be well served at sea ” in their engineering matters so long as this condition lasts. The country may well ask for improvement here, even though officers of the service do not see fit to devise a better method of selection or rewards for the engineer corps, which will make it equally attractive with the line and marine corps.
Another consideration which necessarily weighs with every young man is the hope of reaching high rank in command of other men, and of obtaining the opportunity to distinguish himself before his countrymen. There is no reason why this road should not be open to every graduate of the Naval Academy, at least until he has learnt that credit is earned by faithfulness and zeal, and that high rank is not necessarily a distinction, or even a worthy ambition, when it may often be achieved simply by entering the navy young and living sixty-two years. After men have been some years in the line, and have reached an age when their aptitudes declare themselves, it is time to set some of them apart in a staff corps which does not command ships, but which does have the higher ranks and pay open to it. While the union of the two corps as above indicated would remove the grievance of the young engineer by removing him to the line, and would promote the harmony of shipboard life, an engineer corps would still be an absolutely essential part of the organization. The number in the present corps could be reduced by half, as all subordinate positions would be filled by the younger officers of the line. Its members would serve as chief engineers of ships, and as designers and constructors of machinery for the navy. They should be men of first-rate engineering ability, and all responsibility for technical matters connected with materials on board ship and machinery on shore should be placed upon them. The law should be changed so as to give them rank and command over men in divisional and other ship duties, while the succession to the command of the ships should remain in the line as at present.
The engineer question once settled, the most complete and efficient organization of the crew would follow, as the same officers would have had experience both above and below decks ; but a very sore spot would still remain in the promotion during peace. The young graduate commissioned ensign in the line finds himself in a sorry position. His pay is small, and he is confronted with a hopeless stagnation in promotion. A man of twenty-eight with a wife and children, and still an ensign on twelve or fourteen hundred dollars a year, is not a cheering spectacle; and he gets this pay only at sea away from his family. If he has duty on shore, and lives with them, his pay is even less. The long list of lieutenants, lieutenant-commanders and commanders, brought in just at the end of the war, blocks the way for many years to come. They are themselves passing through a slough of despond out of which they will emerge more fit to dandle their grandchildren than to command ships. The writer assisted a few years ago in the celebration of a brother officer’s attaining his majority on the lieutenant’s list. Twenty-one years of his life had been literally thrown away on the deck of a ship in a subordinate grade, without any prospect of reaching command rank under fifty or fifty-five. Can the country expect much zeal and energy from an old gentleman doing duty as senior watch officer, when he ought to be in command of a fleet ?
When men form the essential part of a naval force, it is their promotion which gives life to the deadly monotony of ship routine and drill, and which turns their energies into work rather than discontented wrangling with other corps, or other parts of their own corps. Even in business and social life, we are all stimulated by the hope of promotion in one form or another, and, if we are to obtain the greatest efficiency, the country must recognize this fact in its own service. There is not a more conscientious, willing body of men in the world than the officers of the navy, both line and staff. Notwithstanding their very trying surroundings, their separation from their families for long periods and their inadequate promotion and pay, we know that our flag is still borne with honor by gentlemen who will not discredit their country in the sight of foreigners. It is our shame that their rewards are so few.
The Navy Department and the officers have petitioned Congress times innumerable to regulate by statute the flow of promotion; but as all the plans suggested involve an increase of the retired list and the establishment of a reserve list for men who have grown too old in the lower grades to make responsible commanding officers, Congress has held off through fear of increased appropriation for the navy. It may be well to note that the increase will not be great, as the officers will go on the retired list in the lower grades where their pay will be less ; besides, the resulting improvement in zeal and effectiveness will save more in cost of materials than the additional outlay on personnel. The whole cost must be reckoned, not a part.
Another grave difficulty in our service is the lack of strong military control. The influence of politicians is too often felt in matters which vitally affect discipline and legitimate service. When the cruiser Charleston returned from the chase of the Itata, she was detailed to visit all the watering-places along the coast of California in order to demonstrate that, although located upon the open coast, they possessed excellent harbors and very desirable booms in real estate.
At present we have no body of officers charged with the preparation of plans for war. We have a War College, which is doing much in a general way to encourage the study of strategy, tactics, history, and international law ; a naval intelligence office, to collect information about foreign ships and naval defenses ; and a board of bureau chiefs to decide upon contracts and the types of ships for national defense. What we really need is a general staff to coördinate the three. In spite of the anomalies and conflicts in the duties of the bureaus, the present division of the Department into independent bureaus for details of building and manning the navy would be fairly efficient if we had besides a naval staff to whom might be referred all questions of types, strategy, and tactics. The plans heretofore put forward to this end have failed through the fear that such a staff might in course of time absorb all the functions of the Navy Department, to the great detriment of efficiency in details of personnel and materials. If the officers of this staff were made simply the military advisers of the Secretary, with duties limited by law to the preparation of plans for war and the general movements of ships for defense and attack, and with no authority over the technical details allotted to the bureaus, the danger would be remote. The chief of staff should be a man who has served with distinction in the command grade at sea for a number of years.
To state briefly the present requirements of the naval personnel, there are three or four principles which must be recognized in a reorganization for the new ships. These are, the amalgamation of the line and engineers, the selection of an engineer corps from the line after some years of service with the machinery and on deck, the regulation of the flow of promotion, and the formation of some kind of a general staff. Nearly every bill in Congress has looked at the subject from the point of view of a corps, and it is high time for the Department to suggest legislation for the general good of the navy.
The following project has been suggested as promising much towards this desirable end : —
1. To make the coui*se at the Naval Academy the same for all cadets, with a strong emphasis on engineering.
2. To give all graduates, except those entering the marine and construction corps, commissions as ensigns in the line.
3. To require all line officers to spend their first six years at sea, equally divided between responsible duties on deck and in the machinery department.
4. To permit any line officer to specialize in engineering during his second six years as a commissioned officer, and at the end of this time to transfer him to the engineer corps after thorough examination in engineering.
5. To require at least one officer of the engineer coiqxs on every ship, and to place under his charge all that pertains to machinery on board, including the men required for engineering matters.
6. To give all watch duties connected with repairing and driving machinery to line officers under the direction of the chief engineers.
7. To promote all officers of the line and engineer corps at the same rate and to the same ranks.
8. To make the total number of line officers and engineers together what it is now by law, with a minimum of about one hundred officers in the engineer corps.
9. To regulate the flow of promotion by permitting a limited number of officers to retire after thirty year’s service.
10. To provide a “reserve list” for officers who do not reach command rank young enough to be effective.
11. To promote all ensigns after three years’ service in that grade.
12. To transfer to the line all officers of the present engineer corps who have held their commissions less than twelve years.
13. To establish a general staff in whose hands shall be placed all matters connected with the preparation for war.
It is not to be expected that these changes would eradicate all the troubles incident to military service or to infirmities of temper, but they would tend toward the complete unification of the two corps which must bear the burdens of the ships in time of peace and the brunt of action in time of war. The increase of harmony among our officers would likewise lead to clearer views on the organization of enlisted men, and to higher efficiency, and thus to the greater glory of our flag and country.
Ira N. Hollis.