“The Training of Landsmen for the Navy.” See page 475.
Lieut.-Commander A. F. Fechteler, U. S. Navy.—I so thoroughly endorse Lieutenant-Commander Fullam's article on the "Training of Landsmen" that there is very little left to say. The beauty of his ideas is, that they can be carried out immediately with the means at hand. There is a great deal of time lost in our navy, bewailing what we haven't got. "If we had electricity here instead of steam, we could shoot properly;" "if we only had thus and so we could get along, as it is, we can't do a thing." The shortest way to efficiency is to do the very best with the material furnished and it is refreshing to read an article written in that spirit. While I believe in sailing training ships of the size advocated by Lieutenant Beach in a former article, yet there is no immediate prospect of getting them and so Mr. Fullam's plan of concentrating all the training systems on such masted ships as we have, is eminently common sense. We get the men quickly that way in the regular service and certainly I should like nothing better than to have three hundred men trained in that fashion for a newly commissioned battleship. There are some points in the article that strike me as particularly good. They are applicable to all cruising ships.
Train our petty officers so as to make them correspond in importance to non-commissioned officers of the army and marine corps. It can be done on board ship. The squad system is excellent and has now been introduced on practically all ships, but there is danger of turning the squads over to petty officers not sufficiently instructed.
Make the drills spirited and thorough. Do not tire the men with a monotonous routine only intended to look well on paper.
Have plenty of ship's boats running—pulling boats whenever practicable.
Give the men plenty of liberty and keep the ship from seeming a prison.
This question of the management of men is of supreme importance. We get good recruits and plenty of them, but we lose a lot simply from lack of common sense and tact in handling.
I believe we waste too much time over bright work and scrubbing and painting, especially painting. Of course a ship should be neat and clean, but at the same time a ship's company that is drilled up to top notch can not have the ship looking continually like a yacht . Our inspections are a good deal to blame. They pay more attention to the condition and appearance of our material than to the use made of it. Ships take their cue from this and so among the many duties of the executive, those of Chief Chambermaid have become paramount.
If the men are trained from the start to be active and smart, to be thorough and sharp in all their drills, they will naturally get into the habit of cleaning ship in better fashion, without too much dawdling.
This gives more time for drill, recreation and liberty.
Good, thorough drills, lots of amusement on board in the way of music, minstrels, books, athletics, etc., and then plenty of liberty on shore.
In other words you want a taut ship and a happy ship to make the men contented and efficient and wed them to the service.
J. H. Sypher, U. S. N.—The ideas expressed by Lieut.-Commander Fullam, in his article on the training of landsmen are so excellent, that any expression of opinion must be in the nature of a hearty agreement.
It is evident that the opinions of the service in general are beginning to crystallize upon certain points. These opinions are of increasing value as officers have experience with our training system, either on board training ships, or with the men who have gone out into the regular service from them.
Upon one point there seems to be pretty general agreement. This is, that a better lot of men are turned out from the old style ships, than come from the converted freighters. Our types of ships used for training are so different, and the methods vary so diversely, that it naturally follows, that the results, as shown in the drafts of trained landsmen turned out, are widely different. If ships in regular service were to send in special reports as to the qualifications of the various drafts they receive from the training ships, it would soon indicate which style of training is the best, as judged by results. And it is results, that we are after. The navy needs men and has no difficulty in enlisting any quantity of raw material.
The system that most rapidly converts this raw material into sailor men, is the one best suited for us at present.
No doubt a landsman after a year's service in a training ship is better than one after only three months, but if he can in the latter time be fitted to go into the general service and continue his training there, it would be a mistake to keep him longer in a training ship.
Men can be trained after one month in a receiving ship or barracks, and three months on a training ship, to be excellent landsmen, and the best of them to be ordinary seamen; all much better fitted for men-of-warsmen than the ordinary merchant sailor picked up in our seaports.
To do this it is neither necessary nor desirable that the greater part of the time should be spent at sea, in fact it can be much better done if only a small portion of it is so spent.
It requires a lifetime to acquire the so-called "sea habit." In England the enlistment is for ten years, but they do not consider a man thoroughly habituated to the sea unless he has lived on it from his boyhood. It is a waste of time then for us to take men from the interior, who have never seen salt water, and try to fit a sea habit on them in three months, or even a year.
Their first impressions of the sea are apt to be unpleasant, and if we succeed in overcoming these, and in stimulating the belief that the future holds more pleasure and profit than the past, that part of the landsman's training has been well done. These young men come into the service at an age when they feel their own importance more than they ever do before or since, and when restraint is most irksome to them. They are thus apt to look upon the necessary and desirable restraints aboard ship as unwarranted confinement. If they cruise from port to port and are not given liberty, they say they are "doing time," and desert in shoals at the earliest opportunity. The navy must offer some compensations for its manifold discomforts. If they are given liberty, and especially in foreign ports, their morals, health and purses suffer irreparable damage.
It is well known that Jack ashore is a mark for all kinds of sharpers, and when Jack in addition to being a sailor happens to be a raw country lad, he is the easiest kind of a mark. If he only acquired experience it would not matter, but the chances are greatly in favor of his acquiring diseases, which cut short his career of usefulness in the navy and which may last for life.
If kept in home ports where the attractions of shore are not too enticing, liberty may be freely offered, but after the first few days will not be taken, as the sense of imprisonment is gone, and knowing that he can go ashore the sailor loses the desire to do so.
By following the plan suggested, of having one of the small gunboats or yachts assigned as a tender, the men could be brought to a high state of efficiency in a very short time, and a cruise of one week in every month in addition to the daily cruises of the tender would be all the time it would be advisable to spend at sea.
It is necessary in this connection to make a careful distinction between drill and training.
The trained landsman may go aboard a ship and never see guns, such as those at which he received his only drill. His drill may be useless to him, but his training enables him to quickly pick up the new drill of the guns at which he finds himself. The college graduate may find no use for the athletics which took up so much of his time, but colleges continue nevertheless to encourage "training" in everyway. Training in the navy consists in building up the recruit physically, and in inculcating habits of cleanliness, obedience, celerity, discipline, etc. These are qualities and as Mr. Fullam says we want to start the recruit with qualities and let him acquire knowledge afterwards during the whole of his career in the service.
The method of training advocated by the essayist appears to be the one best adapted for supplying the navy with good men in the least possible time. It is not mere theory, but has in great part been practically tested on the Lancaster, where it has resulted in turning out into the service over a thousand men a year, well fitted to become seamen or even petty officers by the end of their first enlistment.
Half a dozen such ships doing similar work would, I am confident, be of incalculably greater benefit to the service than the widely diverse systems now in vogue.
Lieut. Louis M. Nulton, U. S. Navy.—The salient features of this paper are very properly avoidance of fatigue and a sense of imprisonment; a healthy physical development in initiation; and, the simplification of the course of instruction to those elements which cannot be best developed on board the modern ship—i.e. first lessons in seaman: ship.
There is nothing so absolutely discouraging to a man than to subject him at the start to a system of instruction too elaborate for his untrained mind to properly grasp, and then wear him out by trying to force him to grasp it by infinite repetition and endless nagging.
The keynote to the retention of men in the service, and it does not alone refer to enlisted men, is to make the service attractive, not by a spirit of coddling, not by a relaxation in discipline, but by the relief from a hundred and one small restrictions, which give a sense of useless imprisonment. For one thing, give a man liberty when he can be spared, and as often as he can be spared without detriment to the efficiency of the ship, and do not allow him to feel that he is kept on board simply because it is custom to do so, although he may have no duties whatever.
Liberty and discipline are somewhat antagonistic, but not necessarily so if their relations are well regulated and balance is maintained. Instant punishment of abuse of privileges is an effective governor of the situation.
The very first essential to an entirely healthy system, is fully struck in Mr. Fullam's statement, "remove all sense of imprisonment." Everyone has felt this, everyone knows what it is, everyone knows that its experience does not indicate an intrinsic dislike for the service. It is probably brought about by the same principles which prompt some officers to stay on board ship (when they might go ashore), simply for the sake of taking unto themselves the virtues of ship-keepers.
To my mind there is an imperative demand that there should be some systematization of the training, and an "office of naval training," or its equivalent, could, if properly directed in a broad spirit, produce very beneficial results. The lack of uniformity in methods and systems throughout the service is impressive, each ship being an example of that system of which the commanding officer is an exponent. As human nature is many sided, sincerity may take diametrically opposite views, each view exacting respect, but the whole conveying demoralization to the service from the standpoint of uniformity in methods and practice, hence the necessity for a central supervision and control of principles and methods on general lines. Details must be left to the man on board ship.
I believe that barracks ashore is an efficient means for attaining the first step of breaking men into habits of obedience and cleanliness.
I agree with Mr. Fullam as to the character of the training ship as exemplified by the Lancaster. I would not have a full sailing ship course of instruction, for the excellent reasons advanced by Commander Rittenhouse, but I do feel that in no way can the same physical development be engendered with the same results as the exhilarating work aloft.
The efficiency of few ships with full complements of officers, is undoubtedly greater than many ships under officered.
"The key to prompt and proper instruction of landsmen is to be found in the petty officers." There is more than the key to the instruction of landsmen in this statement. There is the key to one of the greatest and most positive elements of efficiency of the entire naval organization.
Efforts on the part of the writer to have petty officers of his division feel that they were leaders, that they were assistants to the division officer, were in some cases gratifying, in others heart breaking, in others of neutral results.
Before the petty officer can become an efficient and positive element, he must be made to feel, and the men must be made to feel, that he is of an element on a different plan from themselves. They must respect him, and he must be made to deserve their respect and exact their obedience. By reason of pay, privileges, and qualifications he must be an example to them, as the division officer should be to the petty officer and to the division. The requirements should be uniform, and such as to demand the respect of the men for the man appointed, and should not depend upon whim or favoritism. The petty officer school should be developed aboard ship, and there should be, for each division, handbooks for various subjects, that the petty officer may at his leisure study them. These are not provided to the extent they should be. There is a bountiful interest on his part, simply waiting to be properly stimulated and supplied with the necessary food for its efficient development. As a service we are woefully deficient in means, aside from the division officer's personal knowledge, of placing information in the hands of petty officers and men.
The writer has always made it a point to make drills interesting, and has by models, cards, and literature, sometimes supplied by the ship, sometimes from other sources, always been able to hold the interest of the men, always found them eager and anxious to learn, and making constant requests for "a book on" this or that subject. This interest on the part of the enlisted personnel is a healthy one. It should be encouraged and greater means in the shape of hand-books on all subjects supplied to ships in large number so that "Jack" may, in his spare moments read and know for himself, and be more able the next morning to intelligently digest the instruction of the division and petty officers.
The remarks of Mr. Fullam on the petty officer are true in every respect. It is one of the burning questions of our service. Some may object to the literature feature of the scheme. To those, I would recall the fact that the American enlisted man differs from those of other services, in the fact that he is an intelligent thinking unit, not machine made, and that by the very existence of the traits of individuality and initiative is our service, our nation, what it is to-day.
I would even have the chief petty officers saluted by the men, as is done in the German service. This may not be entirely desirable, but its military value as establishing, or aiding in the establishment of, the status of the petty officer is positive.
The utilization of converted yachts for training in steering, the use of the lead, etc., is an excellent idea, one of minimum cost and maximum results.
Captain C. M. Chester, U. S. Navy.—The paper of Lieut. Commander Fullam on the "Training of Landsmen for the Navy" is sound in every note. The sooner the landsman can be gotten on board a regular cruiser consistent with elementary instruction in sanitation and the fundamental principles of his work, the better it will be for the service. This elementary instruction confined to a strenuous period of three months will, I believe, answer all the requirements.
In the cruiser the same instruction as given on board the training ship can be imparted and at the same time, the precept derived by association with a large number of men who are his seniors in the service, will better equip the junior for the duties of a man-of-war than the long tiresome, monotonous cruise of the improvised battleship, such as we have to resort to.
To send seven hundred men to sea in a mastless transport with insufficient officers, and a scant number of petty officers, tends to breed bad habits which are carried into the regular cruiser to its detriment.
It is impossible in these barracks on the sea to give the men individual instruction in this the only formative period they have, with the few officers the exigencies of the service allow to these vessels, and the principal problem that will fall upon them is to find something for the men to do as an offset to idleness.
How much better then to put the recruits on board of a ship like the Lancaster with flush decks and clear daylight, where the preliminary work of making a sailor can be carried on under constant supervision of those in authority. It is a well known fact that the foreign cruises with which many men are allured into the service are regarded by them as a cheap means of seeing the world, and they return from these cruises with their object accomplished and are ready to go to their homes. This they do frequently without reference to the sacred contract entered into between them and the government. There is a marked case, I understand, where men so enticed into the service by the advertisement of the recruiting office, claimed that they had an unwritten agreement with the recruiting officer which entitled them to be returned to their homes for an extended leave after they had made the grand tour of Europe, and that the government had no right to send them to the Philippines where their services were in great demand, until at least their verbal contract had been complied with.
It is impossible for men to gain sea habits in the short period of any single cruise and therefore a location for the training ship which will give the greatest opportunity for constant and systematic drill as set forth in Lieut.-Commander Fullam's paper will be the best for the recruits. The weeks sea service in each month give the men a taste of what the sea life is and that is all that can be hoped for in a training school. They have a foundation on which to build and the structure must depend on their cruise under actual service conditions.
The period in port gives an opportunity to develop the handling of boats by the young men entering the navy and a knowledge of this work is one of the prime requisites for our man-of-warsmen of to-day. Too much importance cannot be laid on the suggestion of Lieut.-Commander Fullam, that boats should be available for officers at any time and they be encouraged to use them on all possible occasions. Why should it be difficult for officers to get passage to or from the shore or other ships in their own boats? Let the officers feel that the boats are for their use. and encourage them to use pulling boats rather than steam launches, and you will not have neglected duties because they must catch the scheduled boat for the shore. With this authority accorded them, officers would not reply to a question "are you going ashore or not?" by a hurried scramble to the deck and boat, but they would say, "no, I must finish this work and I will take my own boat later on and meet you where you will."
I would go farther than did the lecturer when he states, "But there must not be too much concentration of authority in an office on shore." I would absolutely have no "office of naval training" on shore but place it on the ship itself. "To systematize the training service and to exercise general control and supervision over the work," I would strongly favor a Commander-in-Chief living afloat and among the men whom he controls. Preferably this should be a Flag Officer who can, if he sees that one ship is managed in better detail, start the others in emulation and assimilate the benefits among the entire squadron. Then when the embryo sailor graduates from the training ship he will be qualified to carry on the same kind of work, as his mates, which under the present system is anything but uniform. An office on shore will add to the clerical work of the different commanding officers to the determent of the object for which he is detailed to his ship.