Lecture delivered at U. S. Naval War College, July 30, 1897.
Mr. President and Gentlemen of the College:
I appear before you this morning, by request, to read a paper on the subject of "Naval Administration in Time of War," a subject difficult to handle, from the fact that its fullest consideration would perhaps imply a too free discussion at this official place of Department conclusions, methods, and orderings; and if. at times, I seem to stray outside the topic proposed, I but bespeak the indulgence given the parson when he wanders away from his text.
Precisely what interpretation to put on the phrase "Naval Administration in Time of War," is an open question. Wherefore I beg that I may change the wording of the topic considered to this—"Some Aspects of Naval Administration in War, with its Attendant Belongings of Peace"; for this paper will be discursive, historic, and reminiscent, rather than pertaining to departmental methods and the administrative incidents of ships and fleets.
The very able and instructive paper on naval administration—read before the Naval Institute, at Annapolis, in 1888, by Admiral Luce—is doubtless on the shelves of the college library, a work of such thoroughness and grasp that it would be a matter of supererogation to go over the same ground again. And if, in this paper, I seem to differ on one or two points from the conclusions of my distinguished friend, the founder and first president of this institution, he will, I am sure, receive with indulgence such differences frankly expressed.
Let me premise here that the bedrock of a naval service is organization; its soul, honor; its necessity, subordination; its demand, courage; its inspiration, love of country; its crown, honor. Wise administration blends all these into one harmonious whole, and makes it an arm of the national defense, superb in its ideal, chivalric in devotion, and invincible in endeavor. To what extent our naval organization and the administration of its affairs have attained to such excellence must be determined by our own conceptions and experiences, present needs and conditions, and by what has gone before.
We are inclined, in our individual lives and personal affairs, to look upon our own geese as all swans, but when, as service men and free-handed critics, we look about us and abroad, contrasting the admiralty doings of other peoples, we are prone to think that other nations possess the swans of naval administration and excellence, while we at times but gather in the geese. Yet if we read the chronicles and histories of the past, whether pertaining to our own or foreign services, do we not find, on the whole, that in naval administration the mistakes and shortcomings of the modern naval world can by no means be all laid at our doors?
We are apt, indeed, to look upon the British Admiralty, its constitution and management, as being superior to the organization of our Navy Department and its systems of administration, but when we carefully consider the different conditions of national environment and political aim that demand our attention, do we not generally conclude that each country best understands the genius of its own people, and in every phase of naval organization and effort adapts itself accordingly?
In a certain sense it is not far-fetched to regard Great Britain as the one power whose commercial supremacy and sea-demand require that the work of her admiralty shall at all times be on lines of substantial naval administration in time of war. In such light, if we but keep our eyes open, we may draw, to our instruction and advantage, lessons of both success and failure. Nor may we forget that the prejudices and political bent of our people look askant at all forecasts of naval administration in the light of war being imminent or actually upon us.
A body of your professional knowledge hardly needs to be reminded that Great Britain maintains two great fleets in European waters—those of the Channel and the Mediterranean—fitted and equipped in all respects, or supposed to be, for instant battle service in whatever waters required. Those fleets, made up of battleships, protected cruisers, torpedo boat destroyers, torpedo boats, gunboats, swift dispatch vessels, and transports, form the basis of England's sea power; and the aim of her admiralty, not always effective, is to hold them at every moment of time up to the standard of readiness and fighting efficiency, without relaxation of effort in anywise.
In addition to these fleets, you will recollect that in January, 1896, a squadron composed of two battleships, four cruisers, and six torpedo boat destroyers, was suddenly commissioned for special service under the command of Rear-Admiral Dale. That squadron was mobilized and made ready for sea—or reported to be ready, if my memory serves me right—in six days. The British people, with pardonable glow, took great pride in such trumpeted, such intended dramatic achievement, while the press of the "tight little island" vaunted with natural exaggeration such significant demonstration of England's readiness for grim work at sea. The date of such incident of naval alertness corresponded with England's flame of exasperation at the tenor of Mr. Cleveland's pregnant message to Congress, a few days before, with regard to the Monroe Doctrine and its application, not only to Venezuela but to all the states in general on this continent.
When telegraphic announcement was made of the hurried commissioning of that squadron, a reporter of a Boston newspaper called at my home and begged to know what I thought the assemblage of the squadron meant, and its destination. I replied that, in view of England's anger at the President's message, such special naval demonstration was possibly intended as a threat against the United States, or as a notice to Kaiser William—the Queen's British-hating grandson—to keep his hands off from the complications in the Transvaal; but if the squadron sailed under sealed orders, I would not be at all surprised if it was next heard from at Bermuda.
Within forty-eight hours after the publication of such expression I received an anonymous letter from Philadelphia, couched in very bitter language, asking how I could know anything about the purposes of that squadron and its destination when Admiral Dale himself did not know.
No reply could be made, of course, to a person who was not man enough to avow his name or address; but Whittaker, good British authority, tells us in his almanac for this year that the chief naval event of 1896 was the "sudden commissioning in January, when difficulties appeared to be imminent with Germany and the United States, of a particular service squadron under the command of Rear-Admiral Dale." Hazell's Annual gives substantially the same reason for England's action.
My purpose in recalling to your recollection such naval movement is to bring before you, with unmistakable emphasis, the fact that the particular service squadron, intended by its dramatic assemblage to impress the United States and Germany—as well as the rest of the world—with England's might of preparation and elastic facility for instant mobilization of her fleets, was really in no condition of trustworthiness and efficiency to proceed abroad for war service; for, as the days went by, it was found that ship after ship needed dockyard resort and extensive dockyard treatment, before they could be regarded as in fit condition of equipment and repair to proceed on any prolonged service whatever. Such showing, slowly revealed, called forth pungent criticisms of some of the service papers of England, and doubtless bred smiles and grimaces in the cabinets of Paris, Berlin, and St. Petersburg. It is needless to add that such spectacular squadron never sailed: England, after a brief space of disgruntlement and threat, calmed down; the ships were dispersed in different directions, when they had been made really effective, and Admiral Dale was ordered to haul down his flag and come on shore.
It is pertinent here to cite the further fact that the annual maneuvers of the British Channel fleet in home waters, skillfully and ably conducted as they have been, under conditions as closely akin to the demands of war as possible, have disclosed faults of design and construction, of communication and supply, of seaworthiness and of handling, which England's great naval expenditure, the untiring efforts of her well-organized admiralty, and the undoubted experience and ability of her sea officers have not, as yet, been able to overcome or eliminate.
The lesson we may gather from such showing is that naval constructors, marine engineers, and sea officers of inventive bent, may conceive hulls, design machinery, and father appliances, which in accordance with the rules of mathematical formulae, promising curves, meta-centric heights, and mechanical dogma, may seem to them perfect and therefore incontrovertibly correct; but that the ocean, with its fickle moods, varying conditions, and ruthless tests of sudden gales and blasting seas, but too often tosses aside, with nature's scorn, the conceptions and deductions of men, which in mold-loft and shipyard, in drafting room and machine-shop, in club and cabin, look so fair and promising.
It is a trite saying in the service that "you never know a man until you sail with him." So, too, despite oft-mistaken theory, mathematical demonstration, and professional observation, you never know what a ship will do at sea until old Neptune has plied his buffeting hand and given the verdict of his finding as to her qualities, and the seal of his approval or disapproval as to her merits or demerits.
I am reminded here of the story of the Pawnee, which vessel did such excellent service in inland waters in rebellion days. She was built during the closing years of Mr. Buchanan's administration. Mr. Griffith, her designer and contractor, had proved to his own satisfaction, by mathematical formulae and shipbuilding experience, that with her double bilges, like the rear of the commandant's house at Boston Navy Yard, great beam and light draft, she would make the steadiest gun platform ever devised for sea use; that her motion would be so slight, so easy and steady, that the veriest landlubber who ever paid tribute to old ocean could never get seasick on board her.
The Department, impressed by his ideas, and possibly with an eye to political effect, allowed Mr. Griffith to build the ship, under the provisions of law and contract. In due course she was ready for her trial trip. With light heart and unabated confidence, Mr. Griffith embarked, to demonstrate his conquest of the vagaries of the sea, as conceived in the dreams of his shipbuilding soul and embodied in the Pawnee's double bilges. Commodore Pendegrast, the commandant of the Navy Yard. Philadelphia, a distinguished officer of his day, accompanied him, as well as the naval constructor at that station, and other personages not altogether ignorant of salt-water surprises. All went merry as a marriage-bell while going down the Delaware, but no sooner had the ship got outside the capes than a gale of wind overtook her, and before the party on board could fully take in the fact, a heavy ground-swell sea was making, which in a twinkling threw the designer and cannot-roll theorist, Mr. Griffith, into the lee scuppers, which he was but too glad to seek, for nameless relief. The naval constructor fared no better, and even the salt-seasoned old commodore and veteran petty officers and seamen had to acknowledge that their legs and stomachs had never encountered such astonishing tests before. The launch, secured on deck amidships, was torn from her lashings and hurled from her cradle by the quick, violent motion and jerky rolling of the ship, and everything movable was tossed and thrashed about in the same exceptional way.
When I entered the service in 1847, the naval elephant in evidence and supreme demonstration of the fallacy of theory alone was the steamer Alleghany. She was an iron paddle-wheel vessel, built on the designs and under the supervision of Commander William T. Hunter of the Navy. Her paddle-wheels were fitted horizontally into recesses of the ship's hull below the water line. Hunter's idea was to protect the wheels from the enemy's shots, but the backwater in the confined recesses and the boring effect of the shafts upon the lower bearings made short work of his theory. Hardly more than five knots could be got out of the vessel under average conditions, and constant repairs of lower shaft bearing were necessary. After continued experiment, at great expense, she was converted into a receiving ship at Baltimore.
Fourteen years later, under the demands of administrative and service need in time of war. Chief Constructor Lenthall, the ablest naval constructor of his day in our service, affirmed that the Monitor class of vessels, designed and submitted by Mr. Ericsson, was an absurdity and would not float. The tests of sea and battle under grimmest conditions made Mr. Lenthall acknowledge that his pronouncement had been wrong. His conversion, indeed, from his original decision against the Monitor type was so frank and complete that the Monadnock, built on plans and lines of his sanction by Constructor Wm. L. Hanscom, proved to be the best vessel of her class constructed during the war or since. In battle her superior merit was clearly shown; in peace, her voyage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, through the Straits of Magellan to San Francisco, attested beyond question her prime seagoing qualities—qualities that cannot be successfully challenged at this day. And let it be noted that no abomination in the form of superstructures blocked sweeping seas and burdened her deck.
On the other hand, Captain Coles of the British Navy, who had designed and supervised the construction of the ill-fated Captain, in face of admiralty disapproval but by Parliamentary consent, went down in the ship, giving his life in that tragic way to a theory of construction his fellows had condemned.
But you may ask what has all this to do with naval administration in time of war? My answer is that the Navy Department was organized for war; that it can never divest itself of that quality; that whatever it does, the possibilities and contingencies of war are, and must ever be, its prime concern; that the work of peace is but preparation for war in its every phase and incident; that to know this to best advantage is to be informed as to the mistakes of the past, and to act accordingly.
This naval station, which comprises within its limits and control the three institutions of the Training Station for apprentices, the Torpedo School and Station, and the War College, is a significant illustration of war effort. The Government has not only educated the officers in command and in attendance here to the art of war as it must be practiced on the sea, but it has sent you here to enlarge and perfect your education on special and technical lines, which the continued discoveries of science, the genius of invention, the restless activity of the age in every direction of enterprise and endeavor, and the rivalry and determination of the naval powers to grasp and possess the completest and best of the destructive constructions and appliances that the brain of man devises for war's dire work, make necessary for you to know and enable you to meet.
Nor need I remind you that every vessel of war we send abroad to defend our flag and to represent the dignity of the nation on the high seas or in foreign ports carries within her stout hull and the strong hearts of her officers and men the means and ultimatum of war, for exercise and showing whenever occasion may make demand for them. If they do not, then the money the country has expended on them has been expended in vain, and naval administration has been sorely at fault. There can be no better maxim, indeed, as to naval policy than this: administer department affairs as though engaged in war. Not indeed on the scale demanded by actually present hostilities, but in scope and conduct vital to thorough preparation and undoubted efficiency—to the avoidance of the hurly-burly and waste that war bursting unexpectedly upon a country invariably engenders. In brief, to so administer naval affairs in peace that simple expansion of organization and method will alone be necessary to meet the conditions imposed at the first tap of war's dread drum. But we know that with us such policy is almost impossible, for under our form of government and its ramifications of political power many constituencies and special interests bitterly oppose all expenditures for naval and military purposes; and, from the conditions and outlook of a score of years ago, the wonder is that we now stand as well as we do as a naval power. On the other hand, if we look with straight-eyed candor and in the spirit of judicial examination into departmental management during the past one hundred years—which practically covers our naval life as a nation—and the results that have been achieved, we cannot but admire the general administration of affairs that has brought so much prestige to the country and such splendid illumination of the flag, which it is your rare fortune to continue to bear abroad as its custodian on the sea and as the staunchest defenders of its honor. But do not forget that such administrative effort was made possible by the splendid work of the matchless seamen who have gone before us.
When we reflect that our system of education, training, and administration has given to the age a Mahan, who by his histories, begun at this college as a series of lectures, has so profoundly impressed the world, and especially Great Britain, as to the supreme influence of sea power as a determining factor in the relations of the maritime powers toward one another, we may well say that in certain aspects we are content. To-day Mahan's name and the story of England's achievements on the sea, so strikingly set forth by his able pen and brilliant scholarship, are more potent in the British Parliament for naval chieftains to conjure with, in support of measures to increase the dominance of the British Navy, than the voice and arguments of any living Englishman. I do not know, indeed, but that our distinguished fellow-alumnus of Annapolis should be court-martialed for furnishing such aid and comfort to our English cousins in their effort to maintain their supremacy on the sea—a supremacy that we must always regret and which we should always resent.
I wonder what the amiable Cockburn, who in 1814, as a British admiral, took the Speaker's chair at the National Capitol, and after putting the question, "Shall this snug harbor of democracy be destroyed?" gleefully ordered the torch to be applied—would have said could he have foreseen that, before the century closed, the dictum of a Yankee naval captain, as regards the British Navy, would be so eagerly listened to and so closely followed. It is, indeed, a happy fact that democracy has bred on this soil neither an Admiral Cockburn nor a Hudson Lowe, both of infamous memory. England is quite welcome to men of that sort—the products of her naval and military training and administrative methods, which of old were akin to mercilessness.
No graver problems of difficulty and discouragement ever confronted the naval administration of any nation than our Navy Department had to meet in the early days of 1861, when, after a rudderless drifting of some four months toward the rapids of destruction, the country found itself involved in civil war. Up to that period the organization and administration of the Department had been of the simplest character. Its personnel was mostly civilian. Aside from the then five chiefs of bureau, three of them of the line, standing for the military branch, there were hardly more than half a dozen other officers on duty in the various offices. The office of detail was unknown. The Secretary and the chief clerk attended personally to all matters concerning the personnel of the service, the selection of the officers for their varied duties afloat and ashore, and conducted the chief correspondence pertaining thereto. Nor did the incessant demand of the war, and the overwhelming work it imposed seven days in the week, and often throughout the nights, during four long years, seem to make it necessary to increase, to any marked extent, the purely naval branch of the Secretary's staff. True, the office of detail was established, and the office of Assistant Secretary created the moment it was seen that great naval expansion would be imperative, for effective operations against the insurgents, and, possibly, against a foreign foe. In July 1862, the Bureaus of Navigation, of Equipment and Recruiting, and of Steam Engineering, established by Congress, took from the other bureaus created twenty years before, some of their powers and duties, but such additional division and ramification of administration did not much increase the personnel of the Department, especially as regarded the officers of the service, whether of line or staff.
Now, when we consider the task of the Department in 1861, the obstacles it had to overcome, the work it had to do, and the results it achieved, it must be admitted, I think, that on the whole our naval administration during the four eventful and remorseless years that followed could hardly have been bettered. And in such light, such showing, we may well take lessons for future administrative work in time of war.
But let us not forget how fortunate it was for the service and the country that the Secretary of the Navy at that momentous period was, as a former chief of bureau, not unfamiliar with naval affairs and had large acquaintance with navy men; that the Assistant Secretary, who had resigned his naval commission a few years before to take up civil pursuits, was thoroughly cognizant of service thought and nautical possibilities, as well as the standing and temperament, idiosyncrasies and limitations of his old associates, which, together with the equal knowledge possessed by the detail officer—now for the first time recognized as a necessity and clothed with authority—made it easy, and generally without mistake, to select officers for assignment to the duties they were deemed best fitted to perform, whether in command of fleets or ships, or on other service of whatever character.
In the midst of the most stressful period of the war, old officers of the Navy said to Mr. Welles, "Why don't you relieve yourself of some of these killing details of work and organize a board with powers akin to those of the British Admiralty?" "No," said Mr. Welles, "the law and the confidence of the President make me responsible. Members of boards form conflicting opinions and sometimes block action. Such system would not do for us, especially at this juncture. I am open to fact and argument. When all are laid before me, I can on the instant consider carefully and decide intelligently, and be prepared to justify my action." The Secretary was right. Commissions and boards are a snare. In great executive spheres and positions of prime responsibility, particularly in naval or military affairs, the one-man power, under the law, is necessary, if we would have efficient working and desired results. Three captains of a ship would make short and destructive work of discipline and purpose, though in these leveling days, tending toward insubordination, much in that line is suggested and sometimes attempted.
Said General Logan, in reminiscent talk of incidents of his service in the field: "General Grant would call a council of war, listen silently in bent, contemplative mood to all we had to say, and then dismiss the council without having said a word as to what he intended to do. The first intimation we would get of his decision would be embodied in orders for our execution, as likely as not to be in utter variance with the opinions we had expressed. We didn't like it altogether, but we knew we must obey."
So, too, Farragut, when he called his captains together before his first brilliant work on the lower Mississippi, and a captain rose from his chair to depict the difficulties of the proposed operations and to advise against them, the dauntless old Viking broke in with these words, "Gentlemen, I have not invited you here to consult you as to the feasibility of the proposed attack and passage of the forts. My mind is made up on that head and the attack will be made; any suggestions you can make as to the best means of forwarding that movement will be gladly received; I can entertain none other." Ah! that is the sort of men we want Annapolis and Newport to turn out. A man who knows his own mind, has the courage of his convictions, believes in himself, and in the loyalty, devotion, and intrepidity of the officers and men he commands under any circumstances of peace or war. An officer whom to know is to love, whose subordinates, in their great trust and supreme devotion, will follow to the death!
I must confess my regret that, in his lectures here, Mahan did not draw m.ore upon the incidents of naval valor and achievement from the history of his own country. Strategic movements upon land and the controlling efforts of fleets on the sea are, in my judgment, utterly and entirely indifferent. And, as an American, grateful to France for what she did for us in the Revolution, I wish that Nelson might have met at Trafalgar—not a Villeneuve, with his hesitating Spanish ally, his half-hearted captains and seasick crews, but an officer of Farragut's dash and determination, supported by such able and intrepid captains and officers and battle-seasoned seamen and marines, whose valorous work in gulf, bay and river, led by our great admiral, make such glowing pages in our naval annals. Those gallant souls would have counted it a great joy to meet British seamen under like circumstances and show them the difference between Gallic and Yankee web-foots.
When the Southern politicians engineered their schemes for breaking up the Union they took but small account of the Navy, what it could do in the event of hostilities. Nor did the Southern officers who threw up their commissions show much keener perception. They had not yet learned, after all their association, to know the fibre of their Northern brothers, and what an aroused people, full of the instincts of the sea, could do when confronted by a great emergency. For three months after the tide of secession had set in, our officers and men serving abroad did not know from week to week whether they had any longer a government. The country had but forty-two ships of war in commission of all rates, and all having among the officers—never among the seamen—some who meant to throw up their commissions the moment they could do so. Officers at home—both of the Navy and Army—were sending in their resignations and hurrying South from day to day, while timid souls, weak-kneed politicians, and other frightened folk, losing their heads, begged for a policy that would save the land from bloodshed—even to the acknowledgment of the Confederacy. Meanwhile, British statesmen of the Palmerston and Russell type not only laughed in their sleeves, but openly sneered at the day of Yankee discomfiture and the death-stroke to the Great Republic which had come, as they thought, and they felt happy. The press magnates and magazine seers of England took up the notes of jubilation, and soon, with great satisfaction to themselves, blotted us out as a nation and established from three to five confederacies out of the territory of the United States. But the echoes of Moultrie's guns and the reverberations of Sumter's reply had hardly died away before the entire North sprang up as if possessed with one soul, and said "This thing shall not be!" Across the seas and continents flashed the tidings, stirring the world with sensations it had not known since the outbreak of the French Revolution. Our citizens abroad dropped their business and hurried homeward to do their duty in defense of the flag, and, swelling the tide of patriotic ardor, came hastening from every sea the officers and men from our then incomparable merchant marine, eager for navy training and service afloat against the enemy.
Then came a great triumph for our system of naval administration—its elasticity for preparation in emergency and its effectiveness for war. Mr. Secretary Welles at once called about him some of the ablest and most experienced officers of the day to consider the situation, formulate a policy, indicate plans of operation, and fix upon the best and speediest means for the building of new ships, the purchase of merchant vessels and their conversion into cruisers and blockaders, the recruitment of officers and men and the means for their training, and the many other incidents of service needs and details of supply that naval operations in war would require.
Those matters duly considered and determined upon, the officers consulted were dispersed to different points to carry out, with the aid of eminent persons in civil life, the measures agreed upon. Under such illumination of purpose and with masterful grasp of the difficulties to be overcome, and an energy and versatility of effort and direction never surpassed in the world's greatest epochs, the little navy, despite the temporary demoralization it had suffered through the desertion of many of its ablest officers, was soon expanded into a great service of frigates and ironclads, heavy and light sloops-of-war, gunboats and supply vessels, of more than six hundred pennants, and a personnel of some seventy thousand officers and men. The officers and men who had volunteered from the merchant service, trained to the habits of the sea, soon became, under special instruction and drill at schools established at the navy yards and stations, and through service afloat, staunch men-of-war's men—who were heard from, to their great credit and valiant bearing, in every naval battle of the war, as well as in the burdensome, harassing duties of the blockade, and every other incident of service belonging to seamen.
Four squadrons or fleets were mobilized in briefest time, and the extended blockade from the Chesapeake to the Rio Grande was established, before Earl Russell had grasped the fact that no paper blockade had ever been contemplated on this side of the water, of which alone he thought the United States capable.
Fast supply steamers of great capacity were fitted out to traverse the lines of blockade and distribute fresh provisions and other supplies to the ships, convey officers and men, including the sick and wounded and prisoners, back and forth, and to carry mails and dispatches. Sailing on fixed dates from Philadelphia and New York, their service was performed with the regularity of the transatlantic packet service of this time. And when good lodgment had been made on the insurgent coasts where permanent squadron headquarters could be established, the floating machine shop, the receiving and hospital ship, the collier and ammunition supply vessels speedily followed. And, in short, every essential of supply and equipment was furnished with a marvelous foresight and ready facility never surpassed by any naval power.
Would you know more fully what such accomplishment meant, contrast the pitiful showing made by the fleet England commissioned and sent to the Baltic in 1854 at the beginning of the Crimean war. The state of the British navy and the administration of its admiralty were so low and inefficient at that day that the fleet, consisting of fifteen vessels—battleships, frigates, and paddle steamers—was hurried off, incompletely manned by crews so raw and undisciplined as to be almost nondescript. One ship, the Monarch, when reinforcements were to be dispatched, was detained some time because of the mean character of the crew. It was reported, indeed, that "scarce a man on board knew a rope." In all the ships the lack of trained petty officers and men-of-war's men was distressing to those in command, with the responsibilities before them.
When the commander-in-chief, Admiral Sir Charles Napier, complained of such conditions, he was told to fill up his meagre, untrained complements by picking up Swedes, Danes and Norwegians on his way to the scene of action. The attempt to draw men and second and third mates from English merchantmen, to make petty officers, failed utterly. Volunteering to meet an enemy in time of war was an instinct of patriotism unknown to them. Not one officer from England's merchant marine would consent to serve unless assured of permanent place in the Royal Navy. How different the spirit and actions of the men and officers of our merchant marine in 1861, as already noted. The admiral asking for gunboats and small steamers, for operations in the shoal waters of Cronstadt and other points in the Baltic, was instructed to negotiate with the King of Sweden for the use of his gunboat fleet, and also to be allowed, as a matter of economy, to hire small steamers of Swedish subjects for operations against the enemy; but the King was too wary to put his foot into so clumsy a trap, which would have made him an ally of England and an object of Russia's resentment, to be reckoned with sooner or later. Equally futile was the admiral's effort to make up his shortness of junior officers by the hiring of Swedish officers to serve in his fleet at that juncture. What would have been said of us, indeed, had our naval administration been so inefficient as to have obliged us to attempt to hire foreign officers to officer our ships in rebellion days? What scathing criticisms would have come from John Bull!
Most surprising was it too, when regarding it as absolutely indispensable to exercise his raw crews at target practice, the admiral was cautioned to "be careful in such expenditure of ammunition, because the supply of powder and shot at home was so limited." And this on the occasion of England's last great war with a naval power. Such grave instance of maladministration seems almost incredible, when we know how perfect in every detail and ample in supply was our ammunition under the urgent demands of the war we were called upon to wage so suddenly a generation ago.
It is needless to add that this expedition, so much heralded at the outset, failed most lamentably in its object; but when we read Admiral Napier's biography and letters we must conclude, I think, that the fault lay in the admiralty's surprising lack of apprehension, and its marked inefficiency in grappling with the problem of war and its naval needs for successful prosecution, rather than with the methods of Sir Charles. That distinguished officer, however, on his return to England from his ineffectual campaign—due in part, at least, to admiralty shortcomings—was dismissed from his command, and under such circumstances of discourtesy that another notable flag officer, to whom the fleet's command was offered, promptly refused it on the ground of Napier's treatment, and for the further reason that "he would not command a fleet in which the officers were set to criticize their admiral." And, says Napier's biographer, ''It is a singular, yet incontrovertible fact that every British admiral of eminence, when in command of a fleet, has been subject to the marked enmity and insult of the Board of Admiralty." How close to the truth such averment is, you have but to read the memoirs, letters, and biographies of England's great seamen, among whom may be cited Keppel, Lord St. Vincent, Dundonald, Hawke, Collingwood, Napier, and others, including even their great sea king Lord Nelson.
In our inherited tendency—nay, birthright as seamen—to growl, when we criticize our departmental administration, we have but to look across the water to find doings and shortcomings in naval affairs that have as yet found no place in our annals—whether for corrupt administration or vindictive motive.
Yet our British kinsmen of the sea have this advantage over us, that an officer on the active list of the Royal Navy can take his seat in the House of Lords, or be elected to the House of Commons, and stand up in his place and criticize the ministry and their administration, and denounce what he regards as admiralty shortcomings, as freely and fearlessly as any other member of Parliament, and there is no authority that can bring him to book for it, except through Parliamentary procedure. An officer like Lord Charles Beresford attacks admiralty methods whenever he feels like it, but he is very popular among the English people, and the members of Her Majesty's Government have profound respect for public opinion, especially as ugly questions put in Parliament must be answered.
In this connection, let me invite your attention to an article in the Fortnightly Review for July, entitled "England and the European Concert," written by Captain James N. Gambler, R.N., an article that describes in most pungent terms the shortcomings of the British ministry, in its dealings with the Cretan and other questions of vital import to the British Empire, as one of the great powers not only of Europe but of Asia.
The Queen's age alone seems to spare her from the writer's scathing criticisms, but Lord Salisbury, his temperament and methods, his indecisions and final commitments, are dealt with in the most searching, blunt-spoken, and contemptuous manner.
Were an officer of our Navy so to express himself with reference to the management of our affairs by our President and his Cabinet, he would be speedily brought before a naval general court-martial for violation of law and regulation; but should an American officer lose his rights and privileges as an American citizen simply because he holds the commission of his Government? The Englishman under no conditions of place or station, circumstance or employment, loses his birthright, which his ancestors sturdily contended for long before the days of King John and Magna Charta—the rights of opinion and of speech—rights the violation of which led Charles I. to the block.
To return from this digression, let us note the fact that in 1856, or just two years after Sir Charles Napier had sailed for the Baltic with his somewhat Pinafore array, the ships of that fleet constituted a part of the grand naval review held at Spithead, preceding the dismemberment of the fleets that had been engaged in the Crimea and the Baltic. Neither fleet had accomplished much in their operations against the enemy, but the combined force of twenty-two battleships, forty-two frigates and corvettes, seven floating batteries, and a large number of dispatch vessels and gunboats, manned, as the Chronicle says, "with 50,000 sailors," made a splendid showing. Yet from what we have noted on British authority as to the quality of the crews Admiral Napier had to deal with at the outset, we may well question the assumption that the "50,000 sailors" of that occasion were seamen in the true sense, though we may not doubt that Sir Charles had "licked his crews somewhat into shape," as the phrase goes, before he left them. The cat was still in lively swing in the British service, and it was a powerful persuader.
Lately historic Spithead has seen the greatest of all its naval pageants. In truth, the smoke of the thunderous salutes, acclaiming the sixty years' reign of the Queen and the pride and power of the British Empire, has hardly yet drifted away, while the press of the civilized world has labored, and still labors, to give adequate voice to the impressions of strength and grandeur which that vast assemblage of ships, that weighty display of sea power, made upon all who had the rare fortune to witness it.
That unequaled display of nearly two hundred pennants, streaming from the mastheads—if masthead is not now a misnomer—of battleships and armored cruisers, torpedo gunboats and torpedo-boat destroyers, and other well-equipped craft for war purposes, showed at a glance and with awesome significance what those sturdy folk of the British Isles have accomplished in the world's great affairs, and the pardonable pride they take in impressing their great deeds and unsurpassed achievements on sea and land upon the knowledge and mind of mankind; but as British royalty and British statesmen looked upon the short line of foreign ships of war that were present to do honor to the Queen's fete and to the British nation, there must have come a sigh—a pang of bitterness—from many a British heart, when the eye fell upon the flag floating from the staff of the Brooklyn, for that flag represented the majesty of a great people who had broken away from the thralldom of colonial life and the tyranny of the British Crown, and made for themselves a weighty place among the nations; a flag that stood for the wresting of a great domain from the British Empire, and in significance of the greatest defeat in the annals of her imperial policies; a flag which, despite her great sea power, Great Britain must respect, even to the curbing of her aims and pretensions on this continent.
The modem battleship, with her pent-up powers of destruction and wondrous mobility, her intricate mechanism and surprising adaptation of the mysterious forces of steam and electricity, constitutes one of the most daring conceptions of the human brain, among the greatest conquests of man over the secrets of nature. But like God's masterpiece—man—its parts are liable to accident, derangement, and destruction.
Wherefore, when, after the dazzling display at Spithead the other day, a naval authority alleged that "in four days one hundred and twenty vessels of that fleet could be at Gibraltar; that in nine days the Channel fleet, twenty-nine strong, could be at Halifax; in twenty-seven days at Delagoa Bay, and in fifty-eight days at Hong Kong," I am inclined, in the light of experience, to discredit such assumption.
Holiday showing is not to be relied upon; such displays make no test of a ship's efficiency for cruising and for war. Long ocean passages, the encounters of gale and sea, and the rollings and strainings incident thereto alone determine seaworthiness, the reliability of machinery, the stability as to platform for efficient use of the guns, character of steerage qualities and ready handling of the ship in the varied emergencies and demands of salt-water work.
Since Spithead's great demonstration, the Channel fleet has held its annual maneuvers, and from the reports gathered from the newspapers we learn that the orders of the admiralty were not understood, and that serious accidents have caused misgivings as to the efficiency of the fleet. Among the accidents noted was the scoring of one or more of the cylinders of the battleship Mars and of the cruiser Terrible, incapacitating those ships for further present use. Such chroniclings of misunderstanding, accident, and disablement do not look like nine-day passages to Halifax. They point rather to inefficient management of machinery and weakness of parts. Nor do they compliment the interpretation of admiralty orders, which we should take for granted were intended to be as concise and explicit as the conditions of war and its surprises ever demand.
England, in her mighty efforts to continue her dominance of the sea, conducts these annual maneuvers on a large scale and at great expense. The mistakes she makes brace up her accomplished officers and gallant men to higher effort and more approved methods. She thus helps herself on professional lines and also instructs the world on naval needs and advancement. To profit by her experience and to note her mistakes with careful heed has even been the wise policy of our naval administration, whether in peace or war. Wherefore, what has been said, I submit, has been pertinent to the subject in hand.
But I know no more instructive illustration of brilliant naval administration than Japan displayed in her recent contest with China. Her success was no accident; it was the result of long preparation and thorough organization, well matured and skillfully perfected.
From the moment Japan had fairly entered into treaty relations with the Powers, as the result of the incomparable diplomacy of Commodore Perry and Townsend Harris, and opened her ports to intercourse and trade, she began to think of a navy. And likening her geographical position in the Pacific to that of the British Isles in the Atlantic, she took for her inspiration the island wisdom of England, and set forth with pronounced energy to become a naval and commercial power. She at once established dockyards and schools of training for seamen and gunners, and every class of mechanic or artisan needed on board ships of war at this day. She also organized a naval academy at Tokyo for the education of cadets, and arranged with foreign governments to have some of her youth received and trained to the naval profession at their respective technical schools; nor need you be told that among the most honored officers of Japan's navy to-day are some of your fellow-alumni of Annapolis.
When, in 1889, I first visited the imperial dockyard at Yokosuka, a few miles below Yokohama, I found, to my surprise, an establishment and plant superior in equipment and completeness to any yard we possessed at that time.
Annually, for several years before Japan threw down the gauntlet of war to her colossal neighbor, the Emperor used to assemble the flower of his army and the major part of his fleet and transports on the shores and in the waters of Owari Bay, on the southern coast of the Empire, for inspection and drill, evolution and maneuvers.
There, attended by his ministers and members of the diplomatic corps, and other distinguished personages, the Emperor would pass a week in camp and on shipboard, inspecting and reviewing, and witnessing the maneuvers and evolutions of the army and fleet, and engaging them in mimic war, pitting the one against the other in carefully prepared plans of attack and defense. The embarking and disembarking of troops, the handling of artillery and horses, pontoons and ladders, ordnance supplies and entrenching tools, provisions and hospital fittings, were among the features of the occasion; and no detail likely to be demanded by the necessities of war was omitted. On the conclusion of such annual maneuvers, all defects disclosed were immediately remedied; and so it came about that, before the news of the declaration of hostilities between the two great Asiatic powers had reached London and Washington by telegraph, the fleet and army of Japan were already on the move for the scene of operations.
One morning, in 1890, and within sight of the spot where Perry signed his treaty in 1854, I saw a special train from the dockyard at Yokosuka pull into the station at Yokohama, bringing the officers and crew for a new cruiser, then approaching completion at a shipyard in France. As the detachment, thoroughly homogeneous in character and dressed in the neat uniform of navy fashioning, left the train and fell into line under the direction of its officers, with an alertness of movement and readiness of execution that no other service men could have surpassed, and marched to the bund to embark upon a French steamer bound to France, I was moved to admiration; and I wondered what Commodore Perry would have thought could he have lived to see such incident as one of the significant results of his masterly diplomacy at that historic spot, where all others before him had failed.
I have said that Japan likens herself to England. To be the England of the Pacific is her dearest aim. She is pushing and ambitious, and wishes to become a colonial as well as a naval and commercial power to be well reckoned with. She has already possessed herself of Formosa—an island magnificent in its possibilities. That she has an eye to the acquisition of the Philippine and Caroline islands, the secrets of her foreign office would probably disclose. That her probable wishes in those directions are natural no candid observer may gainsay; and what she aims to do she will not give up, except under circumstances of great stress. Her statesmen are able and accomplished. Bred to arms and of martial mien and spirit, they are discreet but fearless, energetic, farsighted, and tenacious; and so self-contained withal, that no Talleyrand or Richelieu ever surpassed them in the art of hiding in words their real intentions.
In the line of current events, you doubtless have noted what Sir William White, the eminent British naval constructor, was alleged to have said to one of the Brooklyn's officers, when dining recently in his company. "You Americans need to keep an eye on Japan; the Japanese are likely to give you trouble," was the pregnant remark of Sir William. Then allusion was made to the advanced state of the heavy battleships Fuji and Yashima, building in England for Japan's navy, and how readily they could proceed to the Pacific, if occasion demanded their immediate departure. Doubtless such hint as to their readiness for service is true, in view of the habit of the Imperial Government of dispatching officers and men in time to receive and man the ships contracted for on their completion in foreign countries; and, in my judgment, knowing Japan and her aims as well as I do, our Government will make a grave mistake if it does not give pronounced heed to what is in the air—Japan's wish to plant her flag at Hawaii.
There should be no occasion for the United States and Japan to clash in any direction, but our interests can never permit Japan or any other power to seize and hold that group of islands in the North Pacific, destined to become the most important commercial center in that great ocean. It will be, indeed, the most stupendous blunder of modern times if we allow any other flag than our own to float in sovereignty over that gem-like possession, and the sooner our flag is planted there the better. It ought to be there now; that would settle the matter, and give the diplomatic world something else to think of. Japan's strong and earnest protest bids us beware of delay; immediate action is urgent. Were I the commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, having before me the free and unreserved offer of the islands, and with a signed treaty in my hands, I would order the fastest steamer we have in Pacific waters to proceed to Honolulu with all dispatch, carrying orders to the minister and admiral to hoist the flag over the islands instantly. That would be a Jeffersonian or Jacksonian method, which, at heart, the American people like. It would also be a refreshing incident of administration akin to naval administration in time of war, and, quite likely, would save a vast deal of complication in future.
To turn back to the matter of our civil war, let me remark that if such tragic episode in our national life had, under the purposes of God, to come sooner or later for the settlement of the grave questions hanging upon its results, then it was well that it came at the time it did; a time when the present power and range of ordnance, the limits of armor, and the development of the automobile torpedo and swift torpedo boats were still in the womb of the future. The naval part of the long siege at Charleston could not have been maintained had the Confederates been possessed of the heavy long-range guns, the rapid firers, and the swift torpedo craft of this day.
During the progress of that siege, the ironclads, when not in action at the front, used to lie quietly well down the channel inside the bar. And further down towards Stono inlet were anchored, in positions regarded as safe from attack, the ordnance, the store vessels, and colliers. Such immunity from attack would be impossible now, in face of the newly-acquired power of the torpedo, for from personal experience, I think it safe to say that, on an average of one night in three, the waters of our southern coasts are so overborne with mists that torpedo craft of the advanced speed of to-day—25 to 30 knots—well handled, could have got in their work upon us, in rebellion days, inside Charleston bar, with fatal facility.
The demands upon the Navy in that four years' war were unique. Save the Sumter and Alabama, the Florida and Shenandoah, and a few lesser craft, the Navy had no enemy to look for on the ocean. The chief work was in fighting forts and earthworks; attacking the few ships that the insurgents had in bay, river, and harbor; establishing by capture bases of occupation along the coasts and on the Mississippi, for both the land and sea forces; co-operating with, and sometimes protecting, the army in its coast, river-side and Mississippi Valley operations; seizing and holding the great Father of Waters and its tributaries open to our movements and control, closing such strategic water communication to the use of the enemy; and the maintenance of that blockade which, for closeness, effectiveness, and pregnant results never had its equal in the world's history.
The work so outlined seems simple in statement, but it covers a vigor of administration, doggedness of purpose, splendor of valor, and brilliance of achievement never surpassed by other men of the sea, of whatever nation, in any age or period.
The conception and building of our fleets and flotillas on the Mississippi and its tributary streams is worthy of special remark; it never had its parallel in any other land, nor is it believed that any other people could have shown the aptitude, versatility, and ingenuity displayed by our people in the emergencies that called for their efforts in such unique way. It was a luminous illustration of our naval administration in time of war.
When the demand came, if my memory serves me right, the Department first sent John Rodgers, of glorious memory, to the West, to organize a naval establishment and begin the construction of suitable vessels for river service. He was given carte blanche to appoint officers and enlist men. When he had got construction and transportation well in hand, he was succeeded by the iron-hearted, indomitable Foote. He continued the work until compelled to retire because of a serious wound received in battle. Then followed Davis, cool, accomplished, and able. He fought and won the fleet fight at Memphis, and then yielded the command to David D. Porter, than whom as seaman, organizer, and fighter the chronicles of the ocean never knew his superior. To know what he did in those stirring days you must gather the story from the lips of his devoted officers and men, and read the memoirs of Grant and Sherman. He was our Sheridan of the sea—masterful, dashing, inspiring.
The things accomplished by the several commanders-in-chief in the lines of construction, transportation, and operation were wonderful. Steam vessels of the most nondescript character were converted, some into heavy ironclads, others to a lesser type of protected vessel known as the tinclad, while a multiplicity of smaller craft, of draft so light that they could almost float on morning dew, were fitted and equipped to penetrate the shallow creeks and inlets and show the flag in effective way to the rebel folk too retiring to be found in any other way. The salt-water sailor hitched his trousers alongside his fresh-water fellows, the pilot and steamboat man; and the comradeship of a common cause, instinct with fervid patriotism, unified their methods and traditions, and bound them together in a disciplined whole that made superb river crews and fighting material of the best sort. That was a creative and administrative feat in war from which lessons may be taken in future.
I submit the opinion that England, with all her glory of accomplishment, vast empire, and system of naval administration, could not have done so well on inland waters under like conditions; and we should bear well in mind what we did, and hand its record down to posterity, for the day may come when the flag may have to float over similar things and doings on the Amazon and the Orinoco.
In a war with a foreign power possessing a navy, entirely different conditions from those of our civil war will confront us, for which our naval administration should be prepared. It should not only be prepared, but, toward the end of thorough preparation, welcome suggestion from any intelligent quarter.
Bases of ordnance and coal supply, equipment material and fittings, engineer's stores, provisions, clothing, and appliances of every sort that the varied emergencies of war may call for, should be located and determined upon, at points the most remote and best sheltered from possible torpedo attack. I take it for granted that England's latest torpedo craft, of great speed, have sufficient seaworthiness to enable them to reach our coast from Bermuda with comparative ease. If such be the fact, they would prove to be ugly vessels to deal with, in the event of war with England. Our supply vessels, even under strong convoy, would have to be careful in their movements, to avoid being torpedoed.
The development and speed and the destructive powers of the torpedo-boat would seem to indicate a new departure, if not another revolution, in naval warfare, which will have to be vigorously met. The huge battleship or the heavy cruiser, attacked by torpedo craft of 30 knots speed, in groups of five or more, would be apt to suffer like an animal attacked by a swarm of bees, especially under misty conditions of weather or at night. How readily the most watchful vessels can be approached by the low swift torpedo vessel at night, or during the drowsy hours just before dawn, only those who have had such experience can tell. The approach of the David that torpedoed the Ironsides off Morris Island and sank the Housatonic outside the bar, was discovered in good season, but not in time to prevent her getting in her nasty work, although her speed could not have been more than five knots.
Problem: You are lying in Gardiner's Bay, or in this harbor of Newport. It is 3 o'clock in the morning, a light mist hangs over the waters, but the search lights you display indicate your position to an alert enemy. All of a sudden the officer of the deck and the lookouts descry a torpedo-boat of 30 knots approaching at full speed. The alarm is at once sounded, but the men of the watch, already at the guns, though ostensibly awake, are in that drowsy state that makes one rub the eyes before thought can be sufficiently wakened to do quick, clear-headed work. Meanwhile the torpedo-boat is upon you. You may get in one shot, but the next moment the torpedo has done its work! This picture is not overdrawn; with the exception of speed, it is sketched from personal experience. But if several torpedo-boats attack you simultaneously under like conditions, your destruction is certain.
On this head I was somewhat amused at the report that came from Charleston one day last winter, when the simulated blockade had been established there by Admiral Bunce. The report said that after several days of exhausting blockade labors the admiral had suspended operations to give his people a little rest.
As my friend Bunce and I had served together on such duty at the same place, in time of war, year in and year out, without any relaxation whatever, it occurred to me that he must have smiled in reminiscent thought when he dictated the order in question.
But to return to the consideration of the torpedo boat, wise administration would point to the building of one hundred or more of such craft, staunch and swift, and of model and tonnage to make them reliably seaworthy under the general conditions of our Atlantic-coast weather. Unlike Mr. Jefferson's gunboats, such vessels under their chosen conditions, which their great speed would allow, would match an enemy of much greater bulk, and equal him in other directions. One or more cable-laying and cable-destroying vessels should also be provided, for, in the event of a war with England, one of the most important things to do would be the destruction of the cable system that connects Bermuda and Jamaica with Downing Street. A British officer has said that "Bermuda holds a pistol at the head of New York and Boston." It behooves us then to be ready at the first stroke of war with England, to prevent the too ready use of that ready weapon.
The New York Herald does not take such view of submarine cables in any respect. It thinks the United States would do a sensible thing "if it took the initiative in proposing a congress for the consideration of the question looking to putting submarine cables under the protection of international law." The United States has done some foolish things. Admiral Porter used to say, indeed, that the Almighty took special care of drunken sailors and the United States of America; but if we consent to submarine cable immunity—an immunity that may at any time in war work towards our disaster, especially in a war with England, whose forts, dockyards, and arsenals, from Halifax all along our Atlantic and Gulf coasts, to the dominating naval stronghold at Esquimault on Vancouver island, at the entrance of the straits of San Juan de Fuca in the Pacific, constitute an ever-present menace to us—our foolishness will have reached its apex!
Yet can it have reached the apex when we consider that under the stress of our present relations with Spain, Japan, and England, Congress has adjourned, knowing that its enacted law as regards the price of armor, urgently needed for the battleships under construction, cannot be accepted by the firms engaged in such fabrication, except at a loss? What man, in truth, of ordinary intelligence, divorced from partisan considerations, can contemplate with simple candor and clear-eyed examination the present condition of our international relations, without coming to the conclusion that war's stern encounter may be thrust upon us by one or more of the three powers named, within the next twelve months. Nor need it be said that the recent discoveries of gold in the Klondike region of Alaska have not lessened the strain of our relations with England, as regards Canadian affairs.
In rebellion days, the major part of the telegraph lines being held by the insurgents, communication with the Department by our fleets was mainly maintained by water. In the event of war with a maritime enemy, our natural and ever-ready means of communication would be by land, provided the land and sea forces were able to keep open and protect such points of access; wherefore dispatch vessels for long-distance sea communication would not be imperative, as was the case during those memorable years of our civil war.
I do not know what provision this college has for the study of questions of strategic importance relating to harbors and anchorages and their relations toward operations in war, defensive and offensive, but certain it is, no officer can know the conditions of intelligent decision and successful movement from charts and books alone. Topographic features of coasts and harbors are as necessary to know as the hydrographic conditions of their waters, and it seems to me that for the best study of naval operations, a ship should be placed at the use of the president of this institution, to enable him to give the students, through practical examination, a thorough knowledge of the various points adapted for both defense and offense that an enemy would be likely to assail. A War College should have the means of forecasting war purposes and to formulate measures to meet and defeat such purposes of an enemy.
Where to draw the line between naval administration for war and for peace is a question, but it may be safely affirmed that such administration in war is the more concise, sensible, and effective; for, once the dogs of war are loosed, much discretion and independence of action must be conferred upon officers afloat in face of the enemy, or things will go awry and invite defeat. In the heat of war's fierce glow, red tape blanches white, then withers to ashes of disuse.
This recalls the story of the frigate Columbia at the Norfolk yard, away back in the forties. The ship had arrived from a foreign station to go out of commission. As she was hauling in to her designated berth, the first lieutenant of the yard and the first lieutenant of the ship were at odds as to the manner of doing it. Said he of the yard, "Commodore Sloat wishes you to haul in on your stern line, sir"; but, broke in the "first luff" of the ship, "Commodore Blank wants a pull of the bow line, sir!" And so, until the ship got alongside the sea wall, the bandying went back and forth, much to the delight of the chuckling midshipmen, radiant over the fact that there were folks who dared "talk back" to the dogmatic, assertive "first luff" of those salty days.
One of the gravest problems confronting us to-day is the problem of manning our fleet in the event of war. We know that our deep-water merchant marine is gone, and under conditions that seem to make its rehabilitation almost beyond hope. We will be obliged, therefore, to- turn to our coasting, river and lake craft for men to man our battleships and cruisers. Any plan or scheme to raise a force for service afloat, outside and beyond the control of the Navy in its character and scope, as one of the great arms of the national defense, under the direction of one head, will be, in my judgment, a grave mistake. At the outbreak of the rebellion, several bodies were raised for semi-naval operations. It soon became apparent, however, that such organizations should be merged in the Navy, if effective work was to be expected from the excellent personnel composing them.
In these days we know that bodies of naval militia have been organized by several of the seaboard and lake-board States. Such movement has the active cooperation of the Navy Department, acting under the authority of Congress, and we may not doubt that in the event of war such organizations will do excellent service; but I submit the opinion that for harmonious and effective working, they should come into the Navy in the same manner as did the officers and men of our merchant marine in 1861. Wise administration would seem to dictate such policy, especially in the light of former experience.
During the war of 1812, the militia of some of the New England States refused to go outside of their respective state lines. It is to be hoped that like action will not be the outcome of the present movement to a quasi-naval reserve. Let us suppose that, in the pinch of war, an admiral's chief-of-staff were to say to the commanding officer of a Massachusetts force of naval militia, "The Admiral wishes you to proceed, sir, to Portsmouth, N.H., and there await further orders," and were to receive this reply from the officer addressed, "But, sir, the Governor of Massachusetts wishes us to remain here!" It would be rather an awkward situation; but, unless my historic reading is at fault, something akin to such response and situation happened in one or more of the New England States in the war of 1812.
We already have two great organizations for national defense—the Army and the Navy. The two arms, in the nature of things, never worked so harmoniously together as to suggest still another, to add to clashing and complication.
An old petty officer of the service, in his occasional visits to me, speaks of the Massachusetts naval militia as "the swallow-tailed sailors from the Back Bay"; but that organization is made up of splendid material, and like the Eton boys at Waterloo, or our own lads who ran away from school and joined the ranks at Gettysburg, those web-footed militia will fight if but given the opportunity; but to get most efficiency—the best results in war time—their fighting efforts should be held under naval direction, utterly independent of State authority. At present the naval militia of Massachusetts is under the supervision of a soldier, the adjutant-general of the State. I cannot imagine anything more absurd. Wise administration in war will eliminate such an anomaly.
In January, 1896, Captain Eardley Wilmot, R.N., published a most original and interesting brochure under the heading of "The Next Naval War," illustrative of England's real unpreparedness for war, and the defects of the dual war office and admiralty control in the matter of coast defense. Let me quote a passage from it:
It may be imagined what excitement prevailed throughout the country when it was known that war was actually declared. It was simply chaos. Has it not been stated of Moltke that on a similar occasion he was found reading a novel, and surprise being expressed at his being so engaged, he said: "The great work of preparation now ceases; we have to see the results of our labors." There was no such spirit at Pall Mall or at Whitehall. Many things that had been suggested as necessary, but put off, had to be taken up. One department besieged another with inquiries, demands, and requisitions. In addition, telegrams from the coast came pouring in. The military, having been entrusted with the safety of the harbors, had provided an elaborate system of defense by submarine mines, which necessitated the greatest precaution in going in or out. It had been wittily remarked there would be more risk in time of war to our vessels entering their own harbors than approaching those of the enemy. This was now realized, for on an intimation from the War Office that the ports were to be placed in a state of defense, mines were laid in all the channels, and a dockyard tug coming into Portsmouth harbor, from a short cruise to warn friendly vessels of the condition of affairs, had first been diverted from- her course by the persistent glare of a search light, and then ran against a loaded mine, which resulted in her being blown up, with all hands. This led to an angry discussion between the admiral and general. The latter said that, being responsible for the safety of the port, he must exercise his own discretion as to when and where mines were placed. Vessels should wait outside until they could be conducted in by a corps of pilots he was organizing. It was suggested that such delay might be of value to an enterprising enemy, and the admiral stated with emphasis that the dispatch of reinforcements to the fleet with promptitude depended upon his having full control of the immediate waters of the ports.
There was no alternative but to refer the matter to headquarters, and the attempt was made to define the responsibility of such service. This, on going into the matter thoroughly, was found to be hopeless. The First Lord plainly declared that unless the admiral was supported he must ask to be relieved of his office, and the Prime Minister seeing the urgency of the case, directed that the supreme control should be vested in the naval authority. This was nowhere received with greater satisfaction than at the ports, for in the meantime the generals in command had arrived at a sense of the anomalous position in which they had been placed. Soldiers had been allotted to complete the manning of the ports, but they had not the slightest idea of what constituted friends or foes. They could with difficulty be restrained from firing at everything that approached.
At the request of the officers in command, a naval party was sent to each port, who could pronounce upon the character of every craft that came near. It was found that forts, lights, and submarine mines could be worked efficiently as a single organization, but under dual control it must result in chaos and probably disaster. Barely two years before, the French Minister of War had pointed out in the chamber, and every other nation had adopted the policy we now found essential. But such a change can not be perfected in a few hours, and the enemy was not blind to the experience of the past, which has always found us unready in the early stages of a conflict. He knew that give us time and all these defects would disappear. Everything depended upon striking immediate blows. These were about to fall.
How graphically this description of lack of system, divided control, and perennial unreadiness depicts our own conditions and methods, as well as our ever woeful lack of preparation to meet the ruthless demands of sudden hostilities! How admirably the gifted writer dissects and limns the follies and disastrous plights of dual control of harbor waters in time of war, a control which with us would be the more difficult and complicated because of the closer touch of army men with the political forces of the country than navy men have, and the precedence given to that arm of the national defense; although in 1836, General Cass, as Secretary of War, said, in his annual report to the President, "That for defense of the coast, the chief reliance should be on the Navy; and that the system of 1816—that of the Board of Engineers—comprises works which are unnecessarily large for the purposes which they have to fulfill," to which opinion, the President, General Jackson, than whom this country has produced no abler soldier, gave his emphatic approval. But admitting as inevitable dual action and control of the Army and Navy, in harbor and coast-line defense in war time, under our conception of prerogative and systems of administration—civil, naval, and military—the advent of the naval militia as a third body of defense, under State control, would make "confusion worse confounded." I repeat, then, the opinion, that upon the outbreak of war, the officers and enlisted men of the naval militia should be temporarily absorbed by the Navy and made a part of the national force, as in rebellion days. Furthermore, I venture to say that sudden war would make the demand for men to man all our ships so urgent as to require the instant absorption of not only the naval militia into the regular service, but all the young men trained to seamanship on board the several State training-ships, and our yachting craft as well as our lake-board vessels. The stress of war cannot await the delays of theory; action pronounced, instant, and energetic can alone meet the emergencies of hostilities and the urgencies of administration incident thereto.
Fleet holiday showing as to efficiency for cruising and war is not to be relied upon, as I have said before. Let me further quote from Captain Eardley Wilmot's able paper on this head:
The French had sent an ultimatum to England, which made the instant mobilization of England's fleet necessary. Seeing [says the gallant writer] what had been accomplished every summer for some years past, in mobilizing a large fleet for the annual maneuvers, and observing that with few exceptions and breakdowns we were able practically to double our squadron in home waters within forty-eight hours, it was hoped on this occasion there would be no difficulty in producing a like result. But it was soon seen that this was no criterion of our preparedness, for on those occasions, with the date well known, this evolution had been the special care of the dockyards for months previously. The maneuvers over, vessels that had participated in them were put aside, reports of officers in command as to urgent requirements were unheard, while all the energies were directed in pushing on new constructions, so as to show how rapidly a modern battleship could be produced.
Though by dint of considerable pressure on the War Office, the ammunition for all vessels in the reserve had been provided, it was not kept in a convenient locality and had to be transported in lighters. A sufficient number of these, with due warning, could be hired, and it had been a novel sight in previous years to see a dozen ships simultaneously taking in this powder alongside the dockyard. But to send such an order without notice and at another time of the year was to find those responsible for this important part of naval equipment quite unprepared. Indeed, when the port admirals, on receipt of the order to mobilize, sent urgent demands for powder and projectiles, the ordnance store officers declared themselves unable to move until proper requisitions from headquarters had been received and arrangements could be made for transport. Then the anomalous condition, which places the most important and essential portion of a ship's fighting capacity under military control, was apparent. True, both services use powder and in theory a common store is economical, but why should not the navy supply boats, on the same reasoning, to soldiers and sailors? Anyhow, here was the first cause of delay, and the red-tape barrier was only overcome by the energetic action of our admiral, who at once sent an officer of his staff to assume command of the depot, while another was dispatched to hire all the lighters in the port. He remembered the procedure of Sir Edmund Lyons, when he had to make arrangements for landing in the Crimea, and the shock caused in the official mind by his prompt dealings at Constantinople with owners of necessary stores. But a little irregularity on these occasions wonderfully facilitates the movement of an army or fleet. It was found so now, for in a few hours twenty lighters had been found, loaded, and dispatched to the vessels fitting out.
Then a new difficulty arose. Orders had been received to fill up the crews of the coast-guard ships and commission every vessel in the reserve. There was now found a considerable dearth of men. The coast guard, a most efficient force, of about four thousand men, could only be drawn upon to a small extent, because to them was entrusted the important duty of working the signal stations which we had established all around the coast of the United Kingdom. This was an invaluable piece of organization, because it enabled the appearance of any vessel to be flashed to all parts. The efficiency of it, however, depended upon the men at those places being able not only to distinguish between a merchant ship and a man-of-war, and to detect the latter if disguised, but to know by appearance the nationality of an approaching cruiser. The experience of the coast-guard men made them adepts at recognizing their own vessels, and being furnished with photographs of foreign war vessels they could identify any hostile cruiser. Clearly their places could not be taken by landsmen, as had been proposed, or even seafaring people without experience. Hence the coast guard could not be sent afloat in any numbers.
The naval reserve was called out, but no one knew where the men were coming from, or in what numbers. As they mostly belonged to the principal steamers, the owners regarded with dismay their vessels depleted of men. The slow steamers and sailing ships, which were likely to lay up in war, carried few, if any, reserve men. It was seen that we had been trusting to a broken reed in our system for manning a large fleet at prompt notice. A week had elapsed before even five thousand of these men had reached the ports, and few having served in a man-of-war, they had not only to be instructed in the most elementary routine duties, but it was a week before they could find their way about the ships to which they were sent.
These pictures of maladministration, so ably drawn by our distinguished kinsman of the sea, are in no whit overdone. In the blunderings he depicts, with so searching an eye, so fearless a pen, we feel that more than ever we are "chips of the old block." It is, we may not doubt, a peculiarity of the Anglo-Saxon race, that up to a certain point of preparation for war he is unequaled. In marine affairs, affairs that concern him most of all, he recognizes the necessity of having ships and guns—powder and projectiles of latest type—power and efficiency for both defensive and offensive purposes, but when it comes to the most vital part of the whole organization as to personnel, which will provide equally in war or peace crews for the otherwise ready ships and fleets, he is sadly at fault.
The drawbacks of the British system, so plainly disclosed, we cannot think are overdrawn; the remedy for the shortcomings outlined is difficult to apply, owing to the temperament of the British race and its abhorrence of coercion in any form. The days of the pressgang with its brutal methods are no more. The men of the British merchant marine—of whom to-day not less than thirty per cent are foreigners—will not enter the Royal Navy. The memories of the old-time discipline of that service, rigid and unrelenting, oft times unfeeling in its incidents and cruel in its punishments—linger in the British mind and deter men from entering that arm of the Queen's service. The marine conscription that the continental powers enforce with such vigor no British ministry would venture to try in the British Isles. Yet there has been a wonderful amelioration in the condition and treatment of the British man-of-war's man during the past forty years. Privileges that in Nelson's time would have been looked upon as preposterous and dangerous to authority are now freely granted. The question of manning her fleet has ever been the more serious to England, because of the vital necessity of the readiness and efficiency of that fleet to her very existence as a power. Wherefore, in these later years of naval demand the British Admiralty has adopted the plan of long enlistments, an extended and effective system of training ships and schools for boys, a carefully-devised scheme of pensions for long-service men, and a well-considered grant of privileges to their seamen, astonishingly democratic in character. The British man-of-war's man feels to-day that he is the most important factor in the Empire, and what he once ventured to ask for with fear and trembling, he now boldly demands.
In the wise spirit of conciliation and justice with which he has been met, he is made to feel that his interests lie in the service, that he is a man to be considered, and he concludes to remain in a service that accords so much to him, as an indispensable factor of the national life.
Have our seamen met with such judicious treatment? Let us give a case in point. In the height of our civil war the time-honored grog ration was suddenly abolished in our Navy. Not a single seaman was consulted as to his wishes in the matter nor as to its expediency. Old salts who had served in the war of 1812 and the Mexican war were abruptly told one day that there was no more grog for them, and it hit them hard; so hard, indeed, that many of them left the service for good after the war. The British Parliament would never have ventured upon such an invasion of centuries-old sea ration and custom, without taking the sense of those most closely affected.
But despite England's administrative efforts toward the maintenance of an efficient and unfailing personnel for her navy, it is undoubtedly a work of great difficulty, for disablement, desertion, and death, and the requirements of foreign stations strain her seafaring resources continually and to the utmost. And when it is claimed that the ships comprising the recent jubilee display at Spithead were in all respects ready for war service, I repeat that we may well doubt it. Probably not half the vessels of that holiday occasion were really ready for battle or cruising purposes. The conditions of the mythic fleet so vividly portrayed by Captain Wilmot would doubtless have found some counterpart at that great marshaling of England's fleet—echoes of whose real unpreparedness will doubtless from time to time break upon the world's ear, as the memory of that spectacular demonstration fades into the past.
A word more and I have done with Captain Wilmot's remarkable paper, although its entire presentation of the situations and happenings it deals with in imagined naval chronicles ought to be carefully read and heedingly considered. That word is to suggest the fact that whatever have been the shortcomings of our own naval administration, whether in peace or war, we have not been at all dependent upon the army establishment for our ordnance or any detail of supply or equipment pertaining to it, since the war of 1812 and perhaps prior to that period. Our advantage over the British Navy in that respect is marked and distinctive. No Woolwich gun factory or arsenal under army control has stood in our way or balked naval endeavor. Our naval ordnance was superior to that of the British naval service in 1812 and has continued so ever since—barring the interregnum after the civil war when we rested on our oars and looked on while other nations did the experimenting, until the problem of safe and effective rifled cannon of high power had been satisfactorily solved. Then we know that our Bureau of Ordnance, which had kept itself thoroughly informed on every incident of progress and factor of success abroad, set about in earnest under the able lead of Captain (now Rear-Admiral) Sicard—the chief of bureau—and his assistants to build guns for our Navy. This was the more readily accomplished because of the progressiveness and thorough business methods of Secretary Whitney, in his brilliant administration of the Navy Department during Mr. Cleveland's first term. The naval gun factory established at the Washington yard stands as a lasting monument to his enlightened grasp of naval needs and of his administrative genius on new lines of effort.
The guns built at that establishment, whether of small or large caliber, have not been surpassed in strength or safety, power, and endurance, so far as I have been able to learn, by any guns made by the most celebrated gun makers of Europe. In truth, if my memory serves me correctly, guns have burst in use on various occasions on board the ships of England, France, Germany, and Russia, but no accident of such gravity has yet happened to our ordnance, planned in every detail by our officers and built under their direction.
In the early forties the frigate Cumberland bore the broad pennant of Commodore Joseph Smith as commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean. Captain Samuel L. Breese was her commanding officer, and Lieutenants Andrew H. Foote and John A. Dahlgren were first lieutenant and flag lieutenant, respectively. They were all regarded as officers of great merit—a reputation more than confirmed by their subsequent services, both in peace and war. They were also warm personal friends and ever hung together. It was during that cruise in the Cumberland that Dahlgren told Foote he had become so much interested in ordnance that he was going to make it his service specialty. The result was, as you all know—after much obstruction on the part of his seniors, but persistent effort and stout battling on his own part—the Dahlgren system of ordnance, which, up to the advent of the safe high-powered rifled gun—which took many years and enormous expenditure of money to accomplish—was undoubtedly the best gun in the world, especially for naval purposes.
The last time I saw the admiral was in March, 1865, when, Charleston having fallen, I was detached from his command and ordered to join Admiral Godon's special squadron to Havana, in quest of the rebel ironclad Stonewall. When I called to bid him good-bye, he seemed to be much disturbed at a letter he had received from the Bureau of Ordnance, asking his consent to have his 9-inch and 11 -inch guns cast in future on the Rodman principle. He talked more than an hour in the most fascinating way upon the subject of naval ordnance. Among other things, he said, "Several thousand of my guns have been in constant use during the war, and not one of them has burst or shown the least sign of weakness. Nor have I ever received a cent of royalty from the Government." "Now," he bitterly continued, "they want to change the character of their construction, but they shall not do it with my consent." He was certainly justified in his anger.
He was unquestionably the ablest and most accomplished officer in ordnance of his time, whether in our own service or in any other. To his genius and labors, let me repeat, the country was indebted for the best and most effective smooth-bore guns the world ever saw. The perfected rifled gun of this day has alone rendered them obsolete. It is said that his last days, like those of Dupont, were embittered by belittling procedures at Washington, which left their sting of injustice and brand of discourtesy to rankle in his breast and hasten his end.
Some time after Admiral Dahlgren's death, his widow asked Congress to vote her a sum of money, as a recompense for her deceased husband's eminent work in ordnance, especially for the heavy guns he had devised. While the bill was under discussion in the Senate, General Logan, who, with his army experience, ought to have known better, arose in his place and said, "There must be some mistake in this matter, for navy men do not know how to make guns. Our heavy guns are all made by army men, on the Rodman plan." This dictum is mentioned to illustrate general ignorance as to what the Navy does and has done. The only Rodman guns ever used in the Navy were the 15-inch guns of the monitors. Dahlgren opposed their being cast on the Rodman plan, but was overruled by Secretary Welles and the Bureau.
Inasmuch as no gun cast on the Dahlgren system ever burst in action, while one of the 15-inch guns of the Mahopac blew off its muzzle after a few rounds at Fort Fisher, and several of them cracked inside at the bottom of the bore, in the region of the vent, Rodman and his friends are quite welcome to the glories of the 15-inch gun cast on the General's process.
In a little service talk I had with General Abbot of the Ordnance Corps—now retired—at Atlanta some two years ago, he was loath to acknowledge that the Navy was the first to make the built-up rifled guns in this country. I insisted that the Navy not only established the first plant for the building of such ordnance, but had turned out several guns before the Army moved in the matter at all. If my statement was too positive, I will be glad to be corrected.
It was perhaps a happy circumstance that our captains during the civil war were unhampered by constant touch with Washington, otherwise the victories won at Hatteras Inlet, Hilton Head, Forts Jackson and St. Philip, and Mobile Bay, might have known no place in our annals. But let us give due acclaim to our naval administration in war which gave so much discretion to our flag officers, allowed them to promote volunteer officers for gallant services on the spot, supplied them most lavishly with means for effective work against the enemy, and kept the service a regular organization from first to last. With us of the Navy there were no State organizations. There was no Fifth New Hampshire, Sixth Massachusetts, Tenth New York Regiment and the like to deal with, as was the case with the Army, as to its domination, but it was ever, as before and always, the Navy of the United States.
When officers were appointed from the merchant marine, they were received with honor and given due position, but never highest commands. Moreover, when it was suggested in some quarters that Assistant Secretary Fox, Captain R.B. Forbes, of Boston, and one or two other distinguished men of sea training should be made rear-admirals, the old-time battle-seasoned officers of the service had the courage and influence to stop it.
In conclusion, I pray you study the naval history of your own country, its naval administration, and the lustrous achievements of your brothers-in-arms who have gone before; achievements, not so varied in character, nor so extended in scope, indeed, as the stirring deeds of the great British seamen which Mahan has so vividly portrayed, but every whit as brilliant in conception, daring in execution, and momentous in results.
The English have been wont to say that Napoleon never encountered a first-rate general until he met Wellington, but in all his fighting Lord Nelson never had to contend with a first-rate man of the sea. His victories were all won over second-rate, half-hearted captains, as at the Nile and Trafalgar, or men taken by surprise, as at Copenhagen—that most notable naval instance of national assassination of modern times.
What a difference he would have found, we may think, in battle tests with a Farragut or Porter, a Foote or a Rowan! Had it been his fortune, in truth to meet in battle seamen of such intrepid sort and unfailing resource, I venture to say that his epitaph would have been differently worded!