ITS ORGANIZATION ALONG MODERN LINES.
The history of the United States Naval Academy is a gratifying illustration of the triumph of thought as represented in the development of its theoretical course of instruction. This, beginning without guide of any kind, has in a period of sixty-five years been carried to such a degree of perfection that, while it may appear upon superficial examination to be susceptible of improvement, has yet within the very recent period of five years, withstood the rigid scrutiny of a board of eminent naval officers appointed to revise, and adapt it to modern conditions.
The story of the practical course of instruction as represented by the practice cruise is no such story of progressive development. On the contrary, since the year Iwo at least it has been a story of more or less steady retrogression. In the early days of the Naval Academy, the days of the sailing vessel, there was no occasion to devote any particular thought to the practice cruise; the occupation of the moment on shipboard, be it what it might, was bound to be practical. The practice cruises were conducted on the broadest professional lines. It is not too much to say that the ships were as active, if not more active, than the cruising vessels of the fleet. From the report of the practice ship Preble, under date of September, 1855, we quote:
The ship has been got under way and anchored twenty-seven times. The courses have been reefed once, and the topsails twenty-seven times, independently of the regular exercises. The rudder has been shipped and unshipped twice. The foremast, with the exception of the lower rigging, has been unrigged and rigged. There have been fired at the target by the students and crew nine shot and three shell while the ship was under way, and forty-three shot and twelve shell while the ship was at anchor."
From the report of the practice ship Plymouth, under date of 1860, we quote:
The cry of "MAN OVERBOARD" was once given when the ship was going at the rate of eight knots. The life-buoy was let go, the boat lowered, the ship brought to, the buoy picked up, the boat alongside again, and hoisted in her place, ship filled away, and standing on her course under all plain sail, in seven minutes and twenty seconds from the time of first alarm.
At a later date, 1871, the Constellation reports:
The topsails have been single-reefed in fifty-eight seconds from order "LAY OUT" to order "LAY DOWN FROM ALOFT." Sail has been reduced from royals in one minute and five seconds. Single reefs have been shaken out and topsails hoisted in a minute and a half."
We have passed from the sailing ship, and one by one we have let go of the things that belonged to the sailing days, realizing that they were out of touch with modern conditions; but as we have let go, there was an ever increasing need for thought where thought has not been given, and the practice cruise has gradually degenerated to a point where it is an open question whether it is not more of a hindrance than a help. The summer cruise of 1909 was typical of all practice cruises of recent years. When the battleship fleet was assembled at Provincetown, concerned with problems of torpedo and submarine defense, the midshipmen's practice squadron, consisting of two monitors, two obselete cruisers, and a sloop-of-war, was assembled in the vicinity of New London, concerned with no more serious problem than the invasion of the summer hotel; and when during the month of September the fleet was engaged in target practice on the Southern Drill Grounds, the practice ships were out of commission and the midshipmen scattered throughout the country on leave. Never at any time had they been in touch with the navy as it is, or with service conditions as they are. The practice ships were not even painted the fleet color.
While it has become a habit of mind of the service to attribute every shortcoming observed in the Naval Academy product to the course of theoretical instruction there, study of the facts seems to suggest that the deficiency lies in his practical rather than in his theoretical education, and that the remedy lies in the reformation of the practice cruise pure and simple. How to do this, how best to co-ordinate the practical afloat with the theoretical ashore is a very interesting question. It will be considered under three heads:
I. Number and type of ship.
II. Organization of ship.
III. Period and place of cruise.
NUMBER AND TYPE OF SHIP.
It is of first importance that the organization of the student body of the Naval Academy, that of one brigade and two battalions, which has been evolved from the older organization along the lines of a ship-of-war, should be carried afloat, and preserved intact. If the organization does not lend itself to this end, it is a rotten organization, and the sooner we rid ourselves of it the better.
If we are satisfied with the organization, then to carry it afloat we must embark either in one ship big enough to absorb the entire brigade, or in two sister ships, one for each battalion.
It goes without saying that a ship which can absorb three hundred and perhaps even six hundred midshipmen must be a vessel of some displacement.
In addition to the matter of size, vessels which are to be of any real value as practice ships must satisfy the requirements of the professional departments of the Naval Academy in all of the following particulars:
STEAM DEPARTMENT.
(A) Modern Babcock and Wilcox boilers.
(B) Large firerooms, and sufficient in number to permit some boilers to be always idle and open for instructional purposes, while others are closed and in use.
(C) Modern four-cylinder engines, and engine rooms big enough to absorb fifty or sixty midshipmen without danger to life and limb.
(D) Modern pumps.
(E) Modern arrangement of piping system throughout, by which is meant piping installed within five years.
(F) Modern arrangement of evaporators, distillers, traps, machine shop, ice machine, etc.
ORDNANCE DEPARTMENT.
(A) Modern electric-controlled, balanced turrets equipped with all modern electrical devices.
(B) Modern intermediate battery, mounts, sights, ammunition hoists, and supply.
(D) Modern fire-control masts, fire-control system, and interior communications, range finders, torpedo tubes, torpedoes, mines, air compressors, etc.
ELECTRICAL DEPARTMENT,
(A) Large dynamo rooms, with modern 125-volt dynamos.
(B) Modern wiring system, switchboard, etc.
(C) Modern search-lights, cranes, winches.
(D) Wireless installation.
(E) Interior electrical communications and safety devices generally.
DEPARTMENT OF NAVAL CONSTRUCTION.
(A) Modern subdivision of compartments throughout.
(B) Distribution of armor.
(C) Drainage system.
(D) Ventilating system.
(E) Water-tight doors, electric long-arm system.
(F) Anchor engine, steering engine.
(G) Cranes, winches.
SEAMANSHIP AND NAVIGATION.
(A) Modern bridge equipment, mechanical devices, peloruses, etc.
(B) Modern signal apparatus.
(C) Sounding machines, patent log, binnacles.
(D) Wireless telephone.
(E) Submarine bell.
We have at hand on the Atlantic Coast two ships which meet every requirement both of size and equipment outlined above. They are the North Carolina and Montana.
The older battleships, the Massachusetts, the Indiana, and the Iowa, do not satisfy them. Their turrets and turret control are neither modern nor uniform, their intermediate batteries are neither modern nor uniform, their boilers are not modern or uniform, their engines, piping system, and electric installation are not uniform; in short, they represent throughout an older school of naval architecture. Their interior arrangement and fittings are not those illustrated in the text-books which the midshipmen have used.
ORGANIZATION OF SHIP.
Assuming that the North Carolina and the Montana have been designated as practice ships, transfer to each one battalion of midshipmen, with their appropriate tactical officers. Make the company organization ashore the basis of the divisional organization afloat, and at once we have all the elements not only of a sound, but also of a flexible military organization, an organization which will segregate itself either into sections by classes for instructional purposes, or into graded military units for drill, purely as a matter of habit and without conscious effort on the part of any one.
By assigning to each ship one-third of the total number of officers on duty at the Academy, giving to each vessel a total of about twenty-six line officers, as opposed to previous practice of about six, and by selecting these officers systematically from all academic departments, we at once supplement our already strong military organization with an equally strong educational organization.
The enormous volume of work accomplished in an academic year at the Naval Academy is due largely to the careful preliminary thought bestowed upon it. Before the call to evening study is sounded on the first night of the academic year, the employment of every hour of every day for every class is in print. Nothing is left to chance or the impulse of the moment. These methods must be applied to the practice cruise before we can hope for any really tangible results; that they have not been employed in recent years is well known to every officer who has made a cruise in a practice ship, but the undertaking is not so difficult as at first sight it might appear.
The recognized subdivision of time among the several professional departments is one-third to seamanship and navigation combined; one-third to ordnance and electricity combined; and one-third to steam engineering. This subdivision readily accommodates itself to the Naval Academy organization, as by embarking a single battalion we have six companies symmetrically distributed as to class—or two companies at a time detailed to each of three instructional groups. It accommodates itself also to the period of the cruise, which, omitting Sundays and holidays, and one week for final examinations, continues for nine weeks—or three weeks for each instructional group.
The course of instruction in each group must therefore be arranged in twenty-one lessons, or instruction sheets, which must be in print before the cruise begins.
Such instruction sheets may be planned on either of two systems—one best known to every graduate as the "Sketch and Describe" system; the other, of more recent growth, as the "Ask and Inquire" system.
The "Sketch and Describe" system is beautifully adapted to section-room work, but for practical work afloat is about as use less as a system can be. No human being could sketch or describe any piece of machinery by looking at it as erected; to sketch it properly he must have resort to a blue print or a text-book, which, in general, is the very thing least to be desired. It will be a joyous day when the" Sketch and Describe" system disappears from the cruise. The time lost in struggling with triangles, erasers, pencils and a lot of useless writing is out of all proportion to value received.
The "Ask and Inquire" system, which consists in developing all the information which a student should know about any given subject by a series of questions, has, in practice, given very gratifying results. It tends to keep the student at all times away from text-books; it takes every advantage of the natural inquisitiveness of youth instead of stifling that inquisitiveness; and it cultivates habits of exact observation that are bound to be of great value in after life.
The difference between the two systems. may be further illustrated as follows: Subject, Steam Engineering—Main Feed Pump. By the "Sketch and Describe" system it is thus dismissed, "Sketch and describe a main feed pump as installed on this vessel," and a mental picture of the product is stamped for all time in the brain of every line officer. By the "Ask and Inquire" system the same subject would be handled thus:
MAIN FEED PUMPS.
Read Barton, page 338.
Main feed pumps have fresh water connections only. They draw from the feed tanks and reserve feed tanks, and discharge to the main feed line, through the heater, or by the heater as desired; and to the reserve feed tanks, the delivery pipe to the reserve feed tanks being a branch of the main feed pipe with a valve in it.
Find out:
(A) The number, location, and make of the main feed pumps of this vessel.
(B) Locate the maker's name-plate on pump, and read it carefully. This data is sufficient to identify pump, and secure new parts.
(C) Locate steam and exhaust pipes of steam end, and cylinder drains.
(D) Locate pressure gage for steam end.
WATER END.
(A) Is it single or double acting pump?
(B) Locate suction from feed tanks and suction from reserve feed tanks.
(C) Are there any valves or suctions other than those at the pump?
(D) Locate discharge to the main feed line direct, and discharge through heater.
(E) Locate discharge to the reserve feed tanks.
(F) Locate spring relief valves. Where do they discharge to?
(G) How many air chambers are there, and where are they placed?
(H) Are the air chambers fitted with cocks at the top, and if so, what are they used for?
(K) Locate pressure gage for discharge end of pump.
(L) What is the pet cock on the top of water chamber for?
(M) How are the head valves of the water chamber drained?
(N) Is there a blank flange connection, and if so, why?
(O) Why are pump gages graduated to record pressures considerably in excess of the designed working pressure of the boiler?
(P) When a pump is not in operation, the cylinder drains should be kept closed; why?
Read Barton, page bog, Art. Government Navy, 1608, par. 7.
The amount of ground that can be covered by this method is very great. Twenty-one• instruction sheets, each numbering twenty questions, gives a total of four hundred for four classes, a grand total of sixteen hundred. The difficulty of producing offhand sixteen hundred questions in any professional subject is apparent on the face, but until this colossal task has been accomplished we have no scientific organization. In a way it is the last analysis of the whole subject.
By limiting the crew of the practice ship strictly to chief petty officers and servants, we strengthen the organization still further by making it possible to concentrate the entire brigade in a single ship, and giving fifty-two officers available for duty instead of the previous twenty-six.
The idea of eliminating the ratings in the crew and filling them by the student body—seamen, ordinary seamen, and coal-passers from the fourth class men, and petty officers from the higher classes—is not new. It first found expression in a report of Captain Breese, Commandant of Midshipmen, in 1874, from which we quote the following:
The practice ship has an ordinary, picked-up crew allotted to her; it may be good, indifferent or bad. On this cruise it has been exceptionally good, and with an exceptionally good crew of petty officers. The crews are put aboard, at most, a few weeks before the officers can take them regularly in hand and are well or indifferently shaken down by the time the midshipmen come on board.
The third class man now receives his first impressions of his profession; and a first class man, with professional intelligence enough, as he thinks, to comprehend, takes this ship as his standard—a newly commissioned American ship-of-war, with a crew as above alluded to, too much crowded for comfort, and more or less harrassed by the extra duties imposed upon them by the character of the ship. Both classes form a part of the ship's company in all respects, save cleaning the ship. Their duties, with this exception, are identical with those of the crew. What more natural than for a third class man to adopt the seaman as his standard, to derive his professional notions from him, and a first class man to struggle against the habits acquired on his last cruise, and endeavor to fit himself as an officer? And how hard for him to do so, when, for the exception of the time on his particular detail as midshipman of the watch, or officer-of-thedeck, he is still a foremast hand!
With these duties, it seems to me, there must go the notions and feelings of the seaman, and which, I think, would be a most admirable system as establishing the true sympathy that should exist between officer and man, arising from the true knowledge of a seaman's duty and condition, did we but retain our men in the service. But our crews have no established character, no homogeneity, and no feelings in common with each other; they come together accidentally, have no preference for the service, make use of it for the time being, ready to desert at a moment's temptation, and hence create an altogether false impression on the young midshipman. The midshipmen find themselves pulling beside and sandwiched in between the servants. How distasteful this is every graduate of the Academy can speak. How much less distasteful when working beside the seamen only, if among themselves, taken as part of the instruction, cheerfully and willingly. Where unity of duty on the part of the crew and the midshipmen exists, there must be conformity of sentiment. The utterances of the disreputable are forced upon the ears of the midshipmen, and I feel satisfied that, though every endeavor is made to separate the midshipmen from the men, the morals of the latter affect the former, and to no small extent.
In the long run we are bound to eliminate the crew. It were better to eliminate it in the first instance. The Naval Academy is the only technical school in the world where the students are allowed to believe that manual labor is undignified. Some of its contradictions and nice distinctions are quite ludicrous. For example, in the steam department tradition has it that it is proper to run a file and a lathe and a forge, in short to learn to work with the hands, but in the seamanship department it is undignified to run a holystone. In the days of the deep-sea cruise, it was becoming and proper for the midshipmen to scrub a hat, a lanyard, or a handkerchief—but a jumper—never. What rot all this is! How can anything that pertains to the well-being of a ship be undignified?
The issue was clearly seen at the close of the first cruise of record at the Naval Academy, the following humourous extracts being taken from a report of Commander Greene under date of 1855:
A misconception of their true position, in considering themselves officers, and consequently entitled to the deference due officers, has, I apprehend, caused them to confound their probationary state with that for which they are preparing. Appreciating and acknowledging their general good conduct, attention to duty, and efficient services 'during the cruise, I deem it important and necessary for a full development of the usefulness of a practice ship, that they should have any erroneous ideas they may entertain in regard to their station and duty removed, and that they should be impressed in some official manner with the propriety and obligation of their performing, when embarked, all of the duties appertaining to a seaman as well as those of an officer.
The character of a seaman's duties may have changed, but the necessity of performing them has not changed and will never change if we are to send out graduates strengthened by the selfconfidence begot of experience instead of the conceit begot of Naval Academy hops.
TIME AND CRUISING GROUND.
The cruising ground of the practice squadron should be that of the battleship fleet. The fleet is the navy, and mere contact with the fleet, and the atmosphere of the fleet, is that which the midshipmen as a body need most of all. More essential is it that the midshipmen be present at the fall target practice of the fleet. There can be nothing better calculated to impress the youthful mind with the responsibilities and the seriOus side of the naval profession than the night battle practice of one of the heavy ships. By giving the midshipmen leave in June at the close of the academic year, and beginning the cruise in July, it is quite feasible to extend the cruise over into September. As cruises are now conducted from June through August, one of the three months is consumed in resting from the routine of the academic year, and a second is consumed largely in thinking about leave. By beginning in July, the academic year would not end in the unmilitary whirl of confusion that it now does—officers could settle their families in peace and quiet for the summer, and the preliminary preparations of the practice ship would be carried out as a duty in itself, rather than as an incident in connection with annual examinations, June week exercises, and other work purely academic in nature.
SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS.
1. Use the North Carolina and Montana as practice ships, one battalion to each ship.
2. Make the company organization ashore the divisional organization afloat.
3. Watch officers of practice vessel to be the discipline officers; and officers of academic departments to continue in same departments afloat. The combined wardroom, steerage, and warrant officers' quarters of the ships in view would afford accommodation for a considerable number of officers.
4. Organize the ship's company from the midshipmen—making them perform all the duties of all the enlisted men—master-atarms, boatswain's mates, gunner's mates, quartermasters, artificers, seamen, coal passers, etc., to which arrangement the company organization lends itself most admirably.
5. As soon as the midshipmen are educated up to a point permitting it, eliminate the crew entirely, with the exception of a very few chief petty officers of proven ability, and the servants. The latter class could be extended sufficiently to do all necessary menial work.
6. Predetermine the amount of time to be alloted to the professional departments and have the specific character of the instruction for every day and class outlined in print before the cruise begins. To accomplish this the first year, detach one officer of experience in each academic department and let him devote two or three months of undivided time toward producing instruction sheets.
7. Begin the cruise in July instead of June and extend it through September, giving officers and midshipmen the benefit of the fall target practice.
8. Keep the practice ships in constant touch with the battleship fleet, so that the students can keep in touch with the atmosphere of the fleet.