For a century, The Bluejacket’s Manual has instructed and enlightened generations of sailors in the U.S. Navy.
A century ago, the U.S. Navy was in the middle of its largest peacetime expansion. In the decade between 1899 and 1910, the authorized strength of the enlisted force nearly tripled, from 13,750 sailors in 1899 to 44,500 in 1909. By the entry of the United States into World War I in 1917, that strength again had almost doubled, to 74,000.
This growth was not without pain. Severe manpower shortages occurred as the Navy expanded its enlisted workforce to meet the demands of a new steel-and-steam Navy. But hardship for some would be opportunity for others. Some who enlisted in the early years of the decade would rise to chief petty officer in less than six years.
Into that Navy, The Bluejacket's Manual was born in 1902. It was not the first manual written for sailors, but it has lasted through 23 formal editions by publishing information that every "Man-of-Warsman" needs to know. It still is the first book issued to new recruits in Boot Camp and to midshipmen at the Naval Academy.
Roots
For most of its first 30 years, the U.S. Navy filled its crews almost exclusively with experienced seamen, recruiting only in seaports. This system saved time, as even those with merchant sailing experience were at least familiar with life at sea. The downside was that crews tended to have a small percentage of native or naturalized Americans and, at times, had few sailors and petty officers who spoke English.
"The difficulties which arose in procuring men for our little Navy in the war with England are well known, large bounties were given and a considerable portion of our Seamen and Ordinary Seamen of those days were such as would not pass muster at the present time," wrote Lieutenant Matthew Calbraith Perry to Secretary of the Navy Samuel Southard in 1824.
Perry's letter proposed to the Secretary that the Navy should train its own sailors. His idea was to enlist boys aged 13 to 18 years who would serve as apprentices until age 21. These young apprentices would be paid half the wages of Navy ordinary seamen and would "receive as their reward, education, clothing, and promotion as high as the rank of Master's Mate should their conduct deserve such advancement." Perry argued that the boys would grow up accustomed to Navy life and feel a sense of loyalty to the service, which would lead to higher reenlistment rates.
Southard lobbied for the program, but it would be 13 years before Congress approved the idea. On 2 March 1837, the law passed, and by June, boys were being enlisted in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Norfolk.
The Kedge Anchor
As the apprentices reported to ships and stations, classes began. Textbooks for reading, writing, and "ciphering" were easy to come by. But to teach the boys about living and working on ships, the Navy would have to rely on oral instruction. No texts or manuals existed on those subjects.
In 1841, Boatswain William Brady published The Kedge-Anchor or Young Sailors' Assistant, containing detailed explanation of how to do just about anything with the care and rigging of the heavily masted ships of the day. Brady was stationed at the New York (Brooklyn) Navy Yard at the time. The yard was under the command of then-Commodore Matthew Perry and the training of apprentices was given top priority. Serving as the yard boatswain and later sailing master, Brady had direct contact with apprentices. By the early 1840s, the yard had many of these young boys assigned to the receiving ship North Carolina and the yard itself.
Though apprenticeship programs came and went in the 19th century, The Kedge Anchor stayed. Brady's book was revised and reprinted for 30 years. It was Brady's desire that the book be used primarily by young sailors just learning their trade. Unfortunately, literacy was not high among the ranks of ordinary and able seamen, so mostly officers and midshipmen used The Kedge Anchor.
Luce and Seamanship
In 1862, Lieutenant Commander Stephen B. Luce was head of the seamanship department at the U.S. Naval Academy, which moved during the Civil War to Newport, Rhode Island. A month after assuming his new job, he wrote to the Commandant of Midshipmen, Lieutenant Commander C. R. P. Rodgers, on how the department and course of instruction could be improved.
Luce told Rodgers that he believed seamanship was best learned while under way on sailing ships, adding that having a proper textbook on the subject would be "indispensable to both student and instructor." Luce considered using The Kedge Anchor, but did not feel it was a true book of "seamanship." As a result, Luce wrote, "I have been compelled to prepare a course for the class, making selections from such works as seemed most reliable."
In fact, he simply cut out parts from 18 U.S., English, and French nautical texts, organized them as best he could, and delivered them to the printer. The result was the first edition of what came to be called Luce's Seamanship. This textbook lasted into the 20th century, going through many revisions and printings. When the final training tall ship left the Naval Academy in 1909, so did Luce's book.
By the Civil War, Luce was one of the Navy's strongest advocates for enlisted training. He wrote often on the subject and pushed hard for the reestablishment of training boys as apprentices, which became a reality in 1871. The service adopted Luce's idea of training all apprentices first in a central location.
Into the "New Navy"
By 1891, the apprenticeship training was being touted as a success, although not enough to sustain the Navy's workforce needs as it started on its peacetime buildup. The Naval Personnel Act of 1899 allowed the Navy to expand on the apprenticeship training idea and enlist adult males as "landsmen for training."
Unlike the apprentice training, which was based at Newport, this new program would have no permanent home. Instead, it was "proposed to give these men eight or ten months' training at sea on board cruising training ships, with the idea of making them man-of-warsmen," wrote Rear Admiral Arent S. Crowninshield, chief of the Bureau of Navigation, in his annual report to Secretary of the Navy John D. Long in 1899.
The apprenticeship and landsmen training systems would combine in 1906 to become the shore-based training system still in use today. But in the meantime, the mission of turning these thousands of young men into sailors fell to the chief petty officers and petty officers in the fleet.
"It is desirable that petty officers be utilized as instructors," wrote Secretary of the Navy William H. Moody in a circular letter dated 16 September 1902. He directed all commissioned officers to encourage petty officers to qualify as instructors: "Require them to assume a greater degree of responsibility and authority over the men under their charge, and to actively use such authority in the instruction and drilling of enlisted men afloat and ashore."
A Classic Is Born
With thousands now in training, Lieutenant Ridley McLean compiled the first edition of The Bluejacket's Manual in 1902. The U.S. Naval Institute published 3,000 copies.
McLean was not alone. A number of texts dedicated to the enlisted sailor appeared that same year. Along with The Bluejacket's Manual, smaller texts known as The Recruit's Handy Book and The Petty Officer's Drill Book also hit the fleet that year, both written by Lieutenant Commander William E Fullam, who later commanded Great Lakes Naval Training Station and became the Superintendent of the Naval Academy.
Sized to fit in a sailor's pocket, the Handy Book was the first text to catch the eye of the Navy's leadership. On 17 November 1902, the Navy Department issued General Order 114 requiring every recruit be issued a copy of the book and be required to know its content.
The Bluejacket's Manual and the Handy Book spoke about pay, promotion, discipline, and shipboard routine, but The Bluejacket's Manual also went into depth on small arms, infantry drill, and the details of sails and sailing under wind as well as steam power. Another feature of the early Bluejacket's Manuals was discussions of ratings and the things petty officers in each rating should know to advance. What set The Bluejacket's Manual apart was that it spoke to the sailor as an individual and communicated what was expected of him as well as what he could expect from the Navy.
Revolutionary Changes
The Navy would help carve out a permanent place for The Bluejacket's Manual when Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels issued General Order 63 on 16 December 1913, requiring every nonrated sailor to get two hours of daily instruction in the "basics every seaman should know" during his first two years in the Navy. To make his order stick, and to ensure that training was uniform throughout the fleet, he needed a textbook.
Daniels talked the U.S. Naval Institute into allowing the Navy to take over The Bluejacket's Manual, and in 1913 the Naval Institute agreed to waive its copyright to the "title, text and plates." Full responsibility for updating the manual was assumed by the enlisted division of the Navy's Bureau of Navigation. Daniels directed the bureau to "revise and rearrange" the manual, making it the cornerstone textbook for his "school of the ship."
Educating sailors, he believed, improved morale and discipline on ships and made sailors "much more efficient, more ambitious, and conducive to a general uplifting," he wrote in the order. "The Bluejacket's Manual will outline this general instruction for 'all hands.'"
For the first time, a section was included for chief petty officers. Along with rating-specific instruction, it also included a general section that defined the chief's role on board ship and in the Navy. "The position of chief petty officer is one of special honor," the manual states. "The uniform of the chief petty officer shows, therefore, that not only are you serving honorably now, but that you have served honorably for years, and have by your own successful effort risen to the top of the petty officers of your own branch. . . Make your life and your actions both on board ship and on shore such as to increase rather than to decrease the difference between the bluejacket's uniform and that of the chief petty officer."
The massive revision was completed in 1914. Daniels then mandated the manual be "issued to the service." Securing the copyright allowed Daniels to get more books published through various printing houses to meet the Navy's growing needs.
Growing Pains
The book was revised each year until 1918, and again in 1924 and 1927. The most noticeable change in the 1927 edition was in the title. The singular "Bluejacket's" was replaced with the plural "Bluejackets"' to reflect the Navy's position that this manual was for everyone. The name was changed back in the 22nd edition in 1998.
The 1938 edition marked the return of the manual to the Naval Institute for revising, though the Navy kept an active interest in the content. With war clouds on the horizon, the manual was revised again in 1939 and 1940. The 11th edition, issued in 1943, had more than a million copies, the largest print run in the book's history.
As the book approached its 50th birthday, it again underwent a major review. So much debate went into the preparation that Lieutenant Frederick Dyer, a reservist, was brought on active duty in 1948 to help prepare the 14th edition, issued in 1950.
As the chief compiler of information for the manual, he encountered many different opinions as to what the manual should be. Dyer saw three main difficulties. "First, to keep it a really general training book that is as useful for the cook and baker as it is for the boatswain and sonarman," he wrote in a 1951 Proceedings article. Second, he wanted to write the book in a in a way that it would form the basis of a "body of instruction" every sailor would find helpful in learning what he need to know to do his job in the Navy. Third, it should "neither duplicate needlessly other parts of the program nor yet leave such blanks that other training courses must be unbalanced in order to cover its deficiencies."
To accomplish his revision, Dyer sought help from the largest consumer of the manual, as part of its final review before publication. "The manuscript was taken to the Recruit Training Center, Great Lakes, Illinois, and there reviewed with the instructors of all departments for the accuracy and balance of the subjects required of all recruits and of all bluejackets."
From 1957 until 1968, the manual received only minor revisions, and by 1972, the Navy again believed a major revision was needed. Fourteen months of work went into producing the 19th edition, according to retired Lieutenant Commander Arnold S. Lott in an article he wrote in TRA Navy, a magazine published by the Chief of Naval Training, in 1973.
His research turned up a few holes. "Fifty pages were spent on marlinspike seamanship and boats, but nothing was said about life on board submarines or aircraft carriers," he wrote. 16 pages were on the folding of clothes, only 6 lines describing what a nuclear reactor was, and 2 paragraphs on what a recruit could expect in boot camp.
Lott's solution was to structure the book along the lines of a recruit's career. The book would start with the basics and build from there. Physical fitness, personal relations, military duties, and uniforms first greet the reader. Ships, aircraft, and weapons come next, with a discussion of life at sea. Lott put new emphasis on the role of senior enlisted sailors, and the intimation was made that women might soon see duty on ships. Chapters were added to cover communications, electronics, and the Navy's new preventive maintenance system.
By 1978, and the release of the 20th edition, the manual would change again. Most prevalent was the elimination of much of the small-arms familiarization that had been a mainstay since the early days. This move reflected the Navy's gradual movement away from small-arms training in the 1970s. Sailors, it was thought, would fight a long-distance war with ship-fired missiles and carrier-launched aircraft, not repel boarders with small arms.
Into the Future
By 1998, the manual had a new author, retired Navy Commander Tom Cutler. Cutler has just completed his second rewrite of the manual, resulting in publication of the 23rd or "Centennial Edition."
Cutler says there are resemblances between the 1902 and the 2002 editions. Military drill, discipline, and seamanship still are part of the book. "That's always in there and should always be in there, though it does evolve some," Cutler said. "Every sailor needs to know how to march and handle a line." But where much of the earlier books worked to teach sailors their responsibility to get back from liberty on time and the consequences of "overstaying your leave," the new manual discusses sexual harassment, hazing, and personal relations.
Like his predecessors, Cutler developed a network of the Navy's trainers of new sailors, the Recruit Division Commanders at the Navy's only remaining Recruit Training Command in Great Lakes, Illinois.
"I went up to Great Lakes and met with the Recruit Training Command's Command Master Chief, Mike McCalip," Cutler said. "Those are the experts in training sailors and I first wanted to make sure the material was relevant to what they were teaching." McCalip split the manual among his chief petty officers. They were told to come back with either a thumbs-up on the content or to recommend changes to make it better.
Making a return appearance is a beefed-up section on small arms, reflecting a change in the fleet as increased security has meant more weapons in sailors' hands on a daily basis. "This was in the works before 11 September," Cutler said, "but it's certainly more relevant since."
For 100 years, The Bluejacket's Manual has guided sailor and officer alike. "I advise you to keep your BJM hand and make frequent use of it," wrote retired Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy John Hagan in the foreword of the Centennial Edition. Hagan believes sailors and officers will use the manual to refresh their memories and settle arguments, as well as a guide in official tasks. "It is safe to say that every sailor—active, retired and veteran—either has their originally issued BJM or deeply regrets the loss of it."
Mr. Faram is the senior staff writer with Navy Times and specializes in covering enlisted sailors. He is also a research specialist with the Center for Naval Analyses.