Most Americans probably think they know what a sailor is, but most do not. Sailors are truly unique entities who have been shaped by their environment, their enemies, and their past. That uniqueness makes them enigmatic to the point that non-sailors have little understanding of what sailors are, what they do, and why they are vitally important to the nation. And that lack of understanding has the potential for real danger.
The Unknown Sailor
Watching episodes of the immensely popular television series Jeopardy, one is impressed and sometimes awed by people with vast arrays of diverse knowledge. They know so much about geography, history, science, literature, music, and countless other subjects. Yet one can also detect an amazing pattern. These same people who know obscure aspects of genetic coding, who can recall who the drummer was for a rock group in the 1980s, who can bring forth the title of an 19th-century English novel when given only a few words of dialogue . . . these same people, more often than not, falter badly when confronted with questions about sailors!
They know the names of seagoing explorers and can recount the dates of some of the more significant sea battles in history, but when asked about nautical terminology or types of ships, most hold fast on their signaling buttons or respond to questions like “What are students at the Naval Academy called?” with answers like “seaman” or “plebeian.”
A discerning look at other American television programming reveals that producers have found a real comfort zone depicting doctors, lawyers, and police officers in countless dramatic and comedic shows, but that sailors have proven elusive. The very few attempts at focusing upon sailors on TV have not shared the same kind of success enjoyed by medical shows like ER and Grey’s Anatomy or legal ones like Matlock and Law and Order. Few people remember a dramatic mini-series called Pearl Harbor or a comedy starring Don Rickles as CPO Sharkey.
McHale’s Navy enjoyed more success, but had little to do with real sailors. One Navy-oriented show—starring Jackie Cooper as Hennessey—lasted several seasons (1959–1962) but was about a Navy doctor. The main character in a more recent successful series, JAG, was a lawyer in Navy uniform, and the hit series NCIS is more about police work than the Navy.
American movies have fared better with some occasional classics (offset by many failures), and there are some notable successes in American literature (Richard McKenna’s The Sand Pebbles, Edward L. Beach’s Run Silent, Run Deep, and Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny immediately come to mind), but by and large, there is relatively little in the world of entertainment that adequately captures who sailors really are. Beyond the entertainment media, journalists frequently reveal their lack of understanding, and academics who are experts in their respective fields often fail to grasp the depth of what sailors are all about.
Why are sailors such a mystery? What is it that makes them so different from civilians and even from their counterparts in the other armed services? And, most of all, why should we care?
Sailors Are Warriors
U.S. Navy sailors are first and foremost warriors—defenders of the nation and its interests. They share that role with their counterparts in the other armed services, and it is the one constant in a long history of naval evolution, in which missions have multiplied and technology has changed many times over. Yet, that existential characteristic is often overlooked.
The central role as warrior has been obscured first of all by the sailor’s successes in many other ways. Sailors have walked on the moon, flown into the eyes of hurricanes, created computer languages, explored the forbidding and frozen realms of the earth’s poles, circumnavigated the globe with a Great White Fleet and a nuclear submarine, provided timely humanitarian relief after catastrophic natural disasters, descended into the deepest trench of the world’s oceans, pioneered new technologies such as electricity and nuclear propulsion . . . the list goes on and on. All of which, while impressive as hell, can be confusing and misleading.
Despite many peripheral taskings and diverse achievements, the primary mission of the sailor is to ensure the freedom of the seas by keeping ocean highways open to commerce, by defending our shores from intrusion or attack, and by projecting American power overseas to protect vital interests and to deter potential enemies from threatening our national security. The problem with that vital mission is that when it is successfully accomplished, it is virtually invisible to the untrained eye. Only when there is a failure—and some form of combat is required as a result—does the average American citizen become actively aware of the importance of the Navy. In other words, it is when sailors are doing their job best that they are least appreciated.
The Navy’s combat record in World War II is generally remembered and rightfully revered by most Americans, yet fighting the Japanese in the Pacific was necessary because the nation had let its guard down in the decades before, allowing cost-cutting measures and misguided priorities to weaken the nation’s defenses and to invite aggression, which ultimately required the Navy to fight its way back to ensuring peace in the Pacific.
Most of the nation’s wars are not known for epic naval battles, yet that is not because the Navy was not doing its job, but precisely the opposite. When done right, the exercise of American sea power lacks drama and appears benign, yet it is the main factor that ensures that when American wars become necessary, they primarily occur in faraway places and not on American soil.
And yet, for the Navy to carry out this seemingly specific but absolutely vital mission, sailors must face real hazards and make constant sacrifices in order to be ultimately ready for the crucible of combat when it becomes necessary. Sailors must be ready to exchange salvos at sea, to attack land targets from the air, to engage in firefights on narrow waterways, to board merchant ships infested with pirates, and to capture or eliminate the likes of Osama bin Laden. For sailors, combat preparation goes well beyond the obvious elements of weapons training and physical and mental fitness. While they share many of the same requirements of their counterparts in the other services—discipline, training, teamwork, etc.—sailors are unquestionably different, and those differences contribute to the sailor’s mystique and, unfortunately, to a potentially hazardous misunderstanding.
What Makes Sailors Different?
Even though sailors frequently operate—and sometimes fight—in the skies above the sea, in the depths of the ocean, on land, and, more recently, in space and cyberspace, they remain most often associated with the unique environment of the sea, and that has helped shape how they think, how they operate, and how they fight.
Sailors face a host of diverse enemies, some of them natural, some manmade, but all capable of doing various kinds of harm. The consequent requirement to recognize those dangers and to compensate for them has much to do with being a sailor.
The most obvious natural enemy is the sea itself. Ever ready to exploit oversight or to punish unpreparedness, the same sea that grants buoyancy to the well-built vessel is quick to take it away when the opportunity arises. The true sailor does not fear the sea but respects it, honors its rules, and pays homage to its awesome might by being continuously prepared for the worst it might bring forth. The sea can be a gentle companion providing comfort and a sense of well-being that “land-lubbers” can never know. But, when coupled with the driving engine of weather, the sea can be a raging tyrant, hell-bent on destruction. Sailors must never let their guard down and must develop a sixth sense able to read the moods of the sea.
While flooding is the obvious arch-enemy of the sailor, fire is a close rival. The earliest ships were built largely of flammables such as wood, canvas, and fiber lines, so that the possibility of fire was an ever-present danger. As time went on, the danger only increased as cooking fires, paint, and gunpowder, were added. Even when much of the wood was replaced with metals, the addition of fuels such as coal and oil only made the situation worse. Consequently, just as every Marine must first be a rifleman, so must every sailor be a firefighter.
The technology that serves the sailor can also be his or her enemy. For example, the introduction of electricity into the sailor’s world has proven to be one of the greatest boons to naval warfare: lighting, communications systems, radar, sonar, fire-control systems, and iPads are but a few of the many electronic marvels that improve the sailor’s existence. But, as with most good things, there is also a downside.
This was once illustrated by an old Navy training film that referred to electricity as a “deadly shipmate.” Although the film had several shortcomings and would be considered dated today, it successfully conveyed that electricity was indeed a “shipmate” in the sense that it was ever-present and capable of doing many wondrous and important things, but it also made it clear that this “shipmate” was potentially deadly if not treated with caution and respect. Ships are teeming with high-voltage currents that, coupled with the presence of many potential conductors (such as steel decks and a wet environment), can bring about death or serious injury in one careless instant. Such things as electrical “tag out procedures” and constant awareness are mandatory for today’s sailors. Similar dangers reside in the presence of nuclear reactors, explosives, propellants, etc., making safety procedures a prime concern to sailors and, once again, helping to shape who they are.
There are other hazards that are not overtly dangerous to sailors themselves, but can spell disaster to the sailor’s ship and its equipment if ignored. When ships were primarily constructed of wood they were highly vulnerable to insidious enemies like rot, insects, worms, and barnacles. As metals replaced wood, rust became a new prime enemy; beginning as a blemish, it can become a deadly cancer that, left untreated, will destroy its victims.
Further, the world of the sailor is naturally humid and often characterized by extremes of temperature. It is also a world that is nearly always in motion, resulting in near-constant vibration, the frequent stresses of pitching, rolling, and yawing, the strains of weapon firing or catapult launches, and occasional encounters with the violence of powerful storms. These things are not merely sources of discomfort; they threaten the performance and reliability of the technological wonders that sailors rely on to accomplish their many missions. To ensure that radars can “see,” screws can propel, and weapons can fire, sailors must be devotedly married to preventive maintenance as an antidote to these potential ills. Testing, calibration, lubrication, and a host of other preventive measures help ensure that man-made equipment can stand up to environmental challenges and perform at design standards. That a ship is often the sailor’s home as well as his or her place of business only magnifies the devotion to these practices. From the admiral to the seaman apprentice, preventive maintenance is an essential component of the sailor’s routine and goes a long way toward defining who they are.
And then there are the human enemies. As already indicated, when the Navy is doing its job best, through forward presence and deterrence, these enemies are contained and pose no serious threat. But these strategic advantages are not foolproof, and sailors must therefore be ready for combat in a wide variety of ways. In eras past, sailors faced the gaping maws of French and British cannons, cutlass-wielding pirates, and cascading Confederate mortar rounds. In more modern times, they have contended with armor-piercing rounds, kamikazes, depth charges, surface-to-air missiles, and small boats armed with shape charges. Today, there are added challenges in the cyber world, and in the near future, new enemies and technologies are sure to emerge.
While sailors are unquestionably shaped by their environment and by their various enemies, they also are affected by their past. Seagoing traditions are a part of the sailor’s unique culture. Some of those traditions originated in ancient times when Greeks and Romans ventured onto the great waters, many others stem from our ties to Great Britain, which once ruled the waves to protect a far-reaching empire, and still others have grown out of our own experience over the past two centuries.
Outsiders often see sailors as “talking funny” (decks, bulkheads, aye-aye, and the like), as overly devoted to what appear as mere slogans to the uninitiated (“Don’t Tread on Me,” “Don’t Give Up the Ship,” etc.), and as quaint or romantic, or even hidebound and inflexible. Those outsiders do not understand that embedded in those traditions are ties to a proud heritage that are both inspirational and instructional, links to proven methods that have helped sailors contend with challenges that their land counterparts can never fully understand, and bonds that build essential teamwork and give an almost mystical meaning to the word “shipmate.”
All of these factors combine to make sailors unique and unfamiliar. Even though this creates a mystique that can be a source of pride to sailors who are “members of the club,” it can also have perilous consequences.
A Source of Danger
That same unfamiliarity that prevents the entertainment media from effectively portraying sailors can also cause citizens who hold positions of power or influence to underestimate the importance of a navy. Because it is an inescapable fact that navies have always been and always will be expensive, there is a natural reluctance to spend precious dollars on them, and unfamiliarity can be misconstrued as a lack of need.
In December 1949, with the world adjusting to a new order in the aftermath of the greatest war in history, Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson declared:
The Navy is on its way out. There’s no reason for having a Navy and Marine Corps. . . . We’ll never have any more amphibious operations. That does away with the Marine Corps. And the Air Force can do anything the Navy can do nowadays, so that does away with the Navy.
Half a year later, North Korean Communists launched a surprise invasion of South Korea that would have succeeded were it not for the presence of Navy ships and aircraft that were able to slow the enemy’s momentum, and the successful amphibious landing at Inchon in the enemy’s rear turned the tide of battle at a crucial moment.
In earlier times, while the nation was quite young and still finding its financial footing and its place in the world, President Thomas Jefferson attempted to do without a deployable Navy, opting for a less-expensive and purely defensive fleet of gunboats. Besides the cost-saving factor, the nation’s third president understood that navies are potentially offensive in nature—a source of strength or of danger, depending upon an individual’s outlook on the world. Jefferson was not alone—then and even today—in believing that isolation from the world is the best way to avoid foreign trouble. But threats to the nation’s commerce (and its honor) by the so-called Barbary pirates and the failure of the gunboats to adequately defend the nation during the War of 1812—resulting in the burning of the nation’s capital, among other indignities—eventually proved Jefferson’s well-intended strategy untenable.
The allure of isolation continues to exert a degree of influence on American thinking, and the need for fiscal discipline is undeniable. These factors make today’s Navy vulnerable to well-intended but potentially dangerous cost-cutting measures. This does not mean that the Navy should receive everything it asks for; competition among the services for finite resources and other factors make the budget and procurement procedures less than perfect, making some degree of restraint justified and necessary. The struggles to find the right balance between foreign engagement and debilitating entanglement, between sound fiscal policy and harmful cost-cutting, are healthy debates, but only if the debaters understand that sea power—and the freedom of the seas that it provides—is a prerequisite to the success and even the survival of a maritime nation such as ours. Just as the citizen—or the Congressman—does not need to understand the biology underlying the growth of viruses in order to make important decisions about disease control, neither do civilian decision-makers need to feel the sting of salt spray to trust that navies—and those enigmatic individuals who comprise them—are essential to the nation’s defense. It is a harmless source of humor when a reporter refers to a destroyer as a “battleship,” but is a major cause for alarm when a Secretary of Defense believes that “the Air Force can do anything the Navy can do” as Louis Johnson did on the eve of the Korean War.
It is little wonder that most people do not understand what a sailor is. These warriors, who do so much more than fight, are shaped by their environment, honed by a spectrum of enemies, and polished by their past. As a result, they are unquestionably unique and frustratingly enigmatic. But these characteristics must not cloud the judgment of those who make important decisions that can determine the safety and survival of this great nation. If true understanding and appreciation are unobtainable, then trust must suffice. Just as we put our lives in the hands of doctors without being physicians ourselves, so must we put our trust in sailors and the sea power and protection they provide. Sailors are a vital component to the survival of this great nation and must not be sacrificed to the false gods of misguided policies or blissful ignorance.
