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Even experienced watch officers will find it useful.
Congratulations Silver Members!
This year marks the 25th year of membership for Naval Institute members who joined in 1967. In commemoration, we are mailing handsome silver- embossed certificates to the 552 members who qualified. We are proud to extend our special thanks to them for their loyal and continuous support of the Naval Institute.
Members Drive for Less
As you look ahead to making spring and summer travel plans, don’t forget about one of the newest Naval Institute membership benefits—rental car dis- c°unts with Alamo, Hertz, and National.
If you compare our discounts to those offered through other programs, We’re sure you’ll agree they are outstanding!
Toll-free numbers to call for information, as well as the respective Naval Institute account numbers, appear below.
Be sure to present your Naval Institute membership card when you check in, to ensure that you’ll get the special Institute member’s rate.
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Alamo 1-800-327-9633 BY233430
Hertz 1-800-654-6511 220795
National 1-800-CAR-RENT 5131461
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If you are unsure of your membership expiration date, check the upper left corner of your Proceedings mailing label— this will tell you when your membership is due to be renewed. Don’t lose your benefits—renew today!
Seminar Attendance Equals Drill and Retirement Points
The Department of the Navy has au-
Proceedings / April 1992
Where We Were
April 1922 Proceedings—Things didn’t always work out for Admiral Richmond K. Turner in World War II. His reputation was diminished at Guadalcanal when he pulled out his warships and transports, abandoning the Marines ashore, and at Tarawa, his “calculated risk” regarding the tide on D-Day backfired. But nobody ever accused him of not having a fighting heart. In “A Fighting Leader for the Fleet,” Lieutenant Commander Turner contends that what kept Napoleon on his side of the English Channel was Lord Nelson’s control of the sea. To invade England, he says, “would have required, not a Napoleon, but a greater Nelson.”
Why, indeed, in two years’ time, could not the greatest soldier of the age, the absolute master of the continent, cross those 20 wet miles of Britain’s frontier? Turner’s answer: “Had Napoleon been an admiral, he would have succeeded in reaching England.” But his words turn to dust when he departs the past and looks at a future war that will be won or lost by the battleships. “All other forces,” he says, (aircraft, cruisers, destroyers, and submarines) “will be used merely for the preliminary work and to make ready for the effective use of the battleship.” Sounds a bit—um—conservative, doesn t it?
April 1942 Proceedings—The Katahdin article (January 1942) must have driven retired Commander L. J. Culliver bananas, as Rear Admiral Potter wove one colorful yarn after another into his tapestry. One can almost hear Culliver: “The ram, man! Tell us more about the damn ram!” Because Potter never really tells Gulliver—whose travels must have involved many trips to the library—does. His Comment and Discussion letter includes everything but the joke about the ram that charged over the edge of the cliff because he didn’t see the ewe turn.
Gulliver says that the ramming ship Katahdin was a good idea—after all, the Merrimac sank the Cumberland by ramming in 1862—whose time had come and gone by the time she was commissioned in March 1898. The British were partial to them until they began sinking their own ships by accident—causing them to build a new version with a detachable ram for peacetime duty. Jacky Fisher wanted to put a long one on his Dreadnought—“to promote aggressiveness.”
Ramming, if not rams themselves, made a comeback in World War I, as men-of-war rammed and sank 18 submarines during the first two years of the war. Not bad. The wolves of the sea were falling prey to tactics inspired by the wrath of a rutting billygoat.
April 1962 Proceedings—Those who know John Carrothers, who wrote this month’s “The Titanic Disaster,” might agree that he personifies Samuel Johnson’s view that “Curiosity is one of the permanent characteristics of a vigorous intellect.” John, a former chief engineer for the Matson Lines, has an almost insatiable curiosity, along with a related hobby: he spends much of his own time and money investigating maritime disasters.
But he does more than pore over charts, transcripts, and archives. He attunes his seaman’s eye, his engineer’s ear, and his own personal nose-for- news to the event. What emerges in this instance is a gripping account of the actions of the Titanic’s captain, the inaction of the captain of the California—near enough to help, but failed to—and those of the redoubtable skipper of the Carpathia, who was 58 miles away when he got the dreaded SOS. There is no more electrifying message in the annals of the sea than the simple two-word message the Carpathia’s captain sent to save the Titanic: “Coming Hard!” But, because the ship that took three years to build sank in less than three hours, he couldn’t come hard enough to save the Titanic’s captain and the other 1,502 who perished. The Carpathia’s captain was knighted for rescuing 712. .
Clay Barrow