Two Who Dared to Write

Ever since its founding in 1873, the venerable United States Naval Institute has maintained a headquarters on the Naval Academy Yard at Annapolis, Maryland. After decades of itinerancy, the Naval Institute staff gratefully occupied its first permanent home in 1938, when it moved into the building that housed the new Naval Academy Museum, which had been built by way of private funds contributed in part by the Naval Institute. Now, the organization is preparing for a move to new accommodations in a renovated wing of the Academy hospital building, vacated by the medical department in 1979. Appropriately enough, the headquarters will he named in honor of two naval officers who have personified the Naval Institute mission: Captain Edward L. Beach (1867-1943) and his son, Captain Edward L. “Ned” Beach, Jr.

Father and son have been nearly indistinguishable in the way they have lived and in what they have accomplished. Born in 1918 when his father was an eminent 51-year-old captain, Ned Beach has striven—successfully—to emulate his father, and together their names have been synonymous both with naval professionalism and with the profession of writing. As a consequence, the Beaches have engendered a singular reputation, because going down to the sea in ships, the traditional role of the naval officer, on the face of it has a tenuous association at best with the act of writing for publication. The former normally takes precedence, because mastering the practical skills employed in operating a warship in any era traditionally has been first priority. In that light, writing for publication— an intellectual skill—has seemed superfluous, if not irrelevant, to many in the profession.

Consequently, a successful naval career need never include publication of a single word. In some instances, the Navy Department has even suppressed officer-authors who had a burning desire to write on naval and foreign policy matters, especially if they expressed views contrary to the party line. Alfred Thayer Mahan is the classic example. Absorbed in writing and developing his own theories on sea power, he begged to be left alone at the Naval War College, even when told he was destined for a prestigious cruiser command. In his mind, such an assignment would be purgatory, but the Chief of the Bureau of Navigation sent Mahan to sea nonetheless. Summing up the attitude of the institutional navy, the bureau chief wrote, “It is not the business of a naval officer to write books.”

That admonition was written in 1893, five years after Beach Sr. had graduated from the Naval Academy. He was then an ensign by the grace of his own initiative and the forbearance of Commodore Francis M. Ramsay, the reactionary bureau chief who had disparaged Mahan’s book writing. This is what happened:

Edward L. Beach, Sr.

As he prepared to take his promotion exams for ensign in 1890, Passed Midshipman Beach faced a dilemma: dead- wood occupied scarce billets, and the bottom of Beach’s graduating class would be denied commissions for want of vacancies. Beach, ranking 30 of 35, despaired. A classmate (Henry Wiley, the anchor man) contrived a scheme that offered hope. Create vacancies, argued Wiley, by purging the riffraff. He had compiled their names on a list for presentation to Ramsay. Because Wiley had crossed Ramsay in the past and suspected he would be unwelcome, he had second thoughts outside Ramsay’s office. Beach later recalled in his memoirs:

[Wiley] thrust the roll into my hand and pushed me in.

This was quite unexpected, and I was unprepared. I began to talk to the Commodore in a halting way, hesitating and stammering.

“Yes, yes! Get to the point, Mr. Beach!” broke in Ramsay, impatiently.

Then I told him about the list.

“I’m interested,” said the Commodore.

I unrolled my list, which I had never seen, embarrassed and speechless.

“Come on, Mr. Beach! What’s the matter? Read your list!”

I began, fearful and faltering.

“Commander…,” I read, “wife murderer. Navy Department has given him no duty for over twenty years.”

It would be hard to express my feelings when reading these dreadful words.

Commodore Ramsay regarded me seriously.

“That was not proved,” he said. “The Commander insisted it was suicide. What’s the next case?” Gathering a little courage, I read:

“Commander…so inefficient that the Department has given him no duty for twenty years.”

“Quite correct,” commented Ramsay. “The trouble is we can only get such officers when they come up for promotion, and there is no promotion these days. But I intend to see if something cannot be done in such cases.”

I looked at him, amazed. It actually seemed that Wiley’s paper might accomplish something.

“Go ahead,” said Ramsay. “I’m much interested.”

“Lieutenant…,inefficient. It is notorious that he cannot do the simplest problem in dead reckoning. A fraud. ... It is believed that it is only regard for his distinguished father, Admiral . . . , that has made possible his retention in the Navy.”

“I’m afraid that’s all so,” said Ramsay regretfully. “It’s a pity this young officer doesn’t inherit his father’s ability and character. Proceed with your paper.”

“Ensign…,a deserter. Last seen with a group of chorus girls in tow, heading westward from Kansas City.”

“That’s absolutely true. I’ll see to it that he’s declared a deserter today.”

There were many other names on my paper. Ramsay took it from me, and dismissed us, saying: “I will give this matter earnest consideration.”

And he did. More than seventeen vacancies resulted, and for the first time in seventeen years, every member of a graduating Naval Academy class was commissioned.

Because Beach had seized the moment, fresh blood and fresh ideas finally were allowed to enter the naval officers’ corps and to begin its reform. The Class of 1888 was particularly distinguished. Of its 35 members, nine became flag officers, including a future Chief of Naval Operations, Charles F. Hughes; three became general officers in the Marine Corps, including a future Commandant, John A. Lejuene; and yet another, Curtis Wilbur, later became Secretary of the Navy. Wiley rose to the rank of full admiral.

Beach Sr. himself was shocked at the corruption of naval officers exposed in Wiley’s indictment, and (up to then) the willingness of the Navy to tolerate it. Thereafter, and for the remainder of his career, he was scrupulous in conforming to ethical behavior as he understood it. While he recognized that in some circumstances rules could arguably be bent, certain principles could not be compromised. “I do not mean that naval officers are paragons,” he later wrote. “They are very human. But the fact remains that an officer who does not rise to a high standard of personal honor must leave the service. He is made to realize that his honor is not only personal to him, but affects the whole naval service. His efficiency, his worth to the service, his attention to his duties, are all bound up with this obligation.”

Beach Sr. incorporated his system of values into his 13 juvenile novels about the lives of midshipmen and young naval officers. “Written in the tradition of the Horatio Alger stories,” observed biographer Edward F. Finch, “these novels extol the virtues of honesty, self-reliance, and hard work to achieve the American dream of rising from poverty to success. . . Using his own life as a framework, Beach, Sr., wove tales that offer situations where clear moral choices can be and are made.”

The senior Beach was commissioned an ensign and ordered to the new cruiser Philadelphia. “I cannot possibly describe my exultation at these orders,” he later wrote. “I plunged into my work with joy.” He never changed. Beach would undertake all his sea-duty assignments with gusto, for his was a life of adventure—serving on Commodore George Dewey’s flagship in the Battle of Manila Bay, blockading Filipino insurgents, commanding the repair ship Vestal during the occupation of Vera Cruz, or commanding the flagship Washington during the pacification of Haiti and Santo Domingo in 1915. When the United States saw fit to coerce stability in the tumultuous Caribbean, Beach Sr. was one of its principal enforcers, leading landing parties to intimidate rioters, bargaining with corrupt politicians to arrange settlements, and protecting U.S. interests with shows of force.

His hitherto faultless reputation as a master mariner took a damaging blow, when, with scant warning, a tsunami (tidal wave) sank his command, the cruiser Memphis, as he tried desperately to get under way from anchorage in Santo Domingo in 1916. A court-martial found him culpable on a technicality. Given the opportunity to redeem himself, he returned to sea to command the battleship New York at the close of World War I. Choosing principle over expediency, he infuriated his embarked squadron commander by refusing to obey an ill-considered order that Beach Sr. felt would endanger his ship. He retired in 1921 with the rank of captain.

What of Beach Sr. the writer? It is astonishing that, as a lieutenant commander and commander, totally engaged in his duty assignments, he found the time and inspiration to write his first 12 novels in a span of seven years. Yet he is self-deprecating in his memoirs, proclaiming his inadequacy as a Naval Academy English instructor when he told his students to man the boards and emulate the style of famous writers:

After some minutes I examined what they had written.

“My God, Mr. Smith!” I asked with unconcealed scorn. “Is this your conception of Hawthorne’s style?”

“Yes, indeed, sir; I’m sure I’ve quite caught it.” “That’s rotten stuff! Rub it out! Try again!”

“Mr. Jones, do you think your effusion bears the slightest resemblance to Shakespeare?”

“Yes, sir; if you examine it closely you will detect a striking similarity.”

“Mr. Jones, if Shakespeare were in this room, dead in his coffin, he would rise to protest—and then drop dead again. Rub it all out!”

“Lieutenant Beach,” responded Midshipman Jones. “Would you please write a real imitation of Shakespeare’s style, so I’ll know how to do it?”

“Section dismissed!”

I also marched out, and wrote to the Department asking for orders to sea.

His disclaimer of literary talent to the contrary, Beach Sr. in all likelihood developed his writing skills through articles in the Naval Institute Proceedings (5 in all before his first novel, 11 altogether). His initial association with the business of books came through the Naval Institute, as well, where he served in 1902 as its secretary-treasurer, a collateral duty while on the Naval Academy staff. During his (albeit brief) tenure as de facto editor and publisher, the Naval Institute produced the first edition of The Bluejackets’ Manual—the sailor’s catechism—setting the precedent for the Naval Institute to supply text and reference books both to the Naval Academy and to the service, which it has done ever since.* Moreover, he expressed the essence of the special relationship between the Naval Institute and the Sea Services in a 1907 article entitled “The Naval Profession.” He wrote: “The chief value of the articles published in the Naval Institute Proceedings must be in the discussion and inquiries they produce.” True then, true today, true tomorrow.

Edward L. Beach, Jr.

Ned Beach was but three years old when his 54-year-old father retired from the Navy, took a job as professor of history at Stanford University, and moved his family to Palo Alto. “My time in the Navy began there too ... at my father’s knee,” Ned Beach has written, “for my earliest recollection ... is constantly asking the poor man to describe the disaster that overtook the powerful armored cruiser Memphis while under his command.” Beach Sr. responded (“possibly in self defense”) to his young son’s obsession with the Navy by giving him history and picture books, which, said Beach, he literally “read to shreds. ... To me, the world consisted of ships, and the sea, and people like my father who sailed in the ships and on the waters.”

“[My father] was, quite properly, the greatest influence on that early period of my own life,” Beach has written, “and I revere his memory.” Beach entered the Naval Academy with the class of 1939 and excelled, graduating second in class standing and serving as regimental commander. Even then, writing was part of his life, and he wrote for the two midshipmen magazines, The Log and Trident. During World War II, Beach engaged in submarine war patrols against the Japanese, and his writing was largely restricted to patrol reports signed by his commanding officers. On one such patrol his commanding officer had fallen into the periscope well as the periscope was descending. Seeking to enliven an otherwise routine report, Beach included the embarrassing accident in the narrative, which was so cleverly written that the commanding officer chuckled and then signed it.

It is the way of the service that junior officers are frequently ghost writers for their seniors, and several in the ranks of the subordinates long for recognition as authors in their own right. Beach was among them. While serving as naval aide to the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Army General Omar Bradley, he wrote his first book, Submarine! (1952), a story of the USS Trigger (SS-237), in which Beach had served during the war. It sold well, and his publisher liked his writing style, suggesting he try his hand at fiction. The result was Run Silent, Run Deep (1955), a signal book by all measures of critical and commercial success, and now a selection of the Naval Institute’s “Classics of Naval Literature” series.

That Ned Beach wrote it at all is, on the face of it, miraculous, for he concurrently served as naval aide to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the kind of all-consuming assignment notorious for not allowing an aide a life of his own. Beach proved to be among that special class of writers who have the talent and the grit necessary to make time under such constraints. “I wrote two and a half pages every night after putting the children to bed,” he later explained. “And I wrote while others played golf.”

His naval career meanwhile flourished, for, like his father, Ned Beach was a consummate professional. Having already commanded three diesel submarines and an oiler, Beach became nuclear-qualified and commissioned the USS Triton (SSN-586), a huge (for her day) one-of-a-kind submarine ostensibly designed as a radar picket. She also had long legs, and on her first cruise Beach spectacularly displayed the capabilities and potential of nuclear power. Afterward, his third book, A round the World Submerged: The Voyage of the Triton (1962), told the story.

Retiring in 1966 after a career rich with achievements and awards, Beach intensified his writing, producing two more novels and five major nonfiction works, all centered on the soul of the Navy. The difference between the two genres, Beach recently explained, is not what one would imagine. “In history you can change it,” he said. “In fiction you can’t.” If an author made a mistake in a book of history, it could be corrected in a revised edition. But fictional characters are immutable, and the author is stuck with them, says Beach, for better or for worse.

Beach’s articles, book reviews, monographs, and papers have been so prodigious that the bibliography alone would fill pages. The Naval Institute Proceedings and the Naval Institute Press have been privileged to publish much of what Beach has written, an association begun in 1935 when Beach Sr. enrolled his son as a member upon his entering the Naval Academy. “Once again,” Beach recently wrote, “Father’s example colored my life, for, with a much wider audience, the Naval Institute has maintained the standards of the Navy . . . .”

Always it has held that new and sometimes unusual ideas should be heard, and it has often gone out of its way to carry forward consideration of them. It is not a stranger to controversy, always seeks both sides to professional arguments, will give them space in its pages, and editorial assistance for presentation.

It well merits its international reputation as the best, most professional, most thoroughly nonpartisan organization of this nature in the world. Foreign navies put as much store by it as ours does, keeping in mind, always, its never questioned loyalty to the interests of the United States.

As Ned Beach has expressed here, the U.S. Naval Institute is indeed unique, and no other armed forces journal can match the prestige, the worth, and the influence of its Proceedings. This reputation has been well earned, because it provides a forum for officers of the naval service freely to express responsible ideas, opinions, and criticisms without retaliation. Nonetheless, the threat of censorship from officials is ever present. As its predecessors have in the past, the editorial board (on which Beach Jr. served for four years) must be vigilant to resist coercion to toe the line, and to say no to the powers in Washington. The consequences of appeasement could be fatal, for should it ever be perceived as a house organ, the Naval Institute Proceedings would promptly—and properly—forfeit its stature and credibility, and its value to the Sea Services and the nation would wither.

As stated previously, writing for publication—an intellectual skill—has seemed to many in the profession as superfluous, if not irrelevant, and a successful naval career need never include having produced a single word in print for public consumption. Why, then, write for publication at all? The answer is that published writing by naval officers has been, and remains, one of the most dynamic influences for change and reform within the naval service. Whether that work be The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, a prize essay in the Naval Institute Proceedings, or a professional note that passes vital knowledge down the line, the intrinsic value of naval writing is incalculable.

The United States Naval Institute is the impetus for this kind of writing, without which our Navy would suffer. And how fitting that the new headquarters, Beach Hall, will be named in honor of the father and son who have set the bar for the naval profession, both in terms of taking ships to sea and in writing. Their spirit and inspiration will safely guide the fortunes of the Naval Institute.