Who and what is a petty officer? This question may well be asked with reference to any number of the so-called rated men aboard any ship in the navy. So far as regulations are concerned, petty officers may be said to be any rated persons in the service, who, according to Art. 1015, U. S. N. Regs., 1913, “shall have, under their superiors, all necessary authority for the due performance of their duties, and . . . shall be obeyed accordingly,” but, in the strictest sense of the word, is every such person a petty officer? We find from an analysis of the term that “petty” means “ inferior, or subordinate,” and that “officer” means “one who holds an office, a person lawfully invested with an office, whether civil, military, or ecclesiastical,” or that a petty officer is a “person lawfully invested with a subordinate office,” yet how many so-called “ petty officers,” aboard the average ship, are invested with a subordinate office ?
Would it not be far better to have the term “ petty officer ” actually mean “ a person lawfully invested with a subordinate office,’ where “ subordinate office ” designated the responsibility of carrying on a certain work for which the petty officer had under him a certain number of men over whom he had more or less absolute control ? The more men required the higher the rating of the petty officer should be; in other words, his rating in his branch would be, in a measure, commensurate with the number of men employed under his command. We would then have only such petty officers as would be necessary to a proper supervision of the work required to be performed, and not petty officers simply because they had a trade, though lacking in experience in handling men, in supervising work, and in responsibility to enforce or in aptitude to submit to the rigid discipline required in the navy.
This subject has repeatedly presented itself to me in a more or less serious light, both from the point of view of justice to the man and the point of view of discipline in the service. As an example, how often you see the petty officers in the list of absentees as “ absent over liberty,” or on the report book for some petty offense, or perhaps a more serious offense! Any breach of discipline on the part of a petty officer is certainly more serious than it would be on the part of an unrated man; yet the latter may have been in the service many times longer than the petty officer, who, by reason of inexperience, may be entirely ignorant of the gravity of the offense committed, yet, nevertheless, more fully responsible to discipline because of the difference in their ratings. If you investigate farther, you will probably find that these offenses have been committed by men who enlisted as petty officers, or were appointed soon after enlistment to one of the positions of a petty officer in the artificer or special branches, or even in the seaman branch, yet such fact does not relieve them from the graver responsibility imposed upon a petty officer. I speak now particularly of machinist’s mates, oilers, electricians, yeomen, ship’s cooks, carpenter’s mates, shipfitters, printers, painters, etc. How often you hear a captain at mast say, Do you not realize the responsibilities imposed upon you when you accepted the appointment as a petty officer? ” Yet the man addressed may have nobody especially subject to his orders and consequently is not a petty officer in reality. He may have been in the service less than three months, yet he is required to be an example to men who have been in for perhaps two or more enlistments.
By all this, I mean that it is unjust, both to the man and to the service, to make him a petty officer when such rating is not necessary to the efficient performance of his duties; in other words the requirements of a petty officer should be those of a foreman in civil industrial plants.
Many people would say, “ We cannot get good men in the artificer and special branches unless we give them the higher pay of a petty officer.” Very true, but would it not be far better to give them the pay that they now receive in the various ratings and take away their authority and consequent responsibility, except in the higher positions ? I am sure no man can reasonably expect to be put in a position of trust and responsibility when he first enlists, no matter what his trade may be, but he may well expect, and deserve, pay according to his services rendered. I do not mean to infer that people so enlisted are not capable men, that some are not capable of assuming all the responsibility imposed upon them by reason of an appointment as a petty officer, but we cannot know, when men first enter the service, whether they will be leaders of men and “ will show in themselves a good example of subordination, courage, zeal, sobriety, neatness, and attention to duty ’ ; this will be known only by long and continuous observation of the men, their habits and their attitude toward the service.
In all except the ratings of the chief petty officers, masters-at- arms, boatswain s mates, turret captains, gun captains, quartermasters and coxswains, would it not be better to have the ratings as they are in the hospital force? Why should an oiler by a petty officer ? He has no one over whom he must exercise authority in the proper performance of his duty, or at most a very few men. The same will apply to gunner’s mates, machinist’s mates, electricians, carpenter’s mates, printers, shipfitters, painters, yeomen, ship’s cooks, and even some of the first class petty officers, such as boilermakers, coppersmiths, blacksmiths, and sailmaker’s mates. Suppose we establish the following table of ratings:
C. P. O.’S.
Seaman Branch.
C. M. AA. C. B. M.
C. G. M.
C. T. C.
C. G. C.
C. Q. M.
Artificer Branch.
C. M. M.
C. E.
C. C. M.
C. W. T.
Special Branch.
C. Yeo.
H. S.
Bandmaster. C. C. Std.
M. A. A. 1c.
B. M. 1c.
T. C. 1c.
G. C. 1c.
Q. M. 1c.
P. O.’S. First Class.
Marines.
Serg. Maj.
Q. M. Serg.
First Serg.
Gun Serg.
Drum Maj.
Ldr. of Band.
2d Ldr. of Band.
M. A. A. 2c. B. M. 2c.
O. M. 2c.
P. O.’S. Second Class.
Sergeant.
P. O.’S. Third Class.
M. A. A. 3c. | M. M. 1c. First Mus. | Corporal. |
Cox. | Elec. 1c. Yeo. 1c. |
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G. M. 1c. | C. M. 1c. Com. Std. |
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G. C. 2c. | W. T. H. A. 1c. |
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Q. M. 3c. | S. F. 1c. S. C. 1c. Seamen. First Class. |
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G. M. 2c. | Boilermaker. Baker 1c. | Privates. |
G. M. 3c. | Coppersmith. Yeo. 2c. |
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Sea. Gun. | Blacksmith. S. C. 2c. |
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Seaman. | Plumber & fttr. Mus. 1c. Sailmkr’s Mate. Painter 1c. M. M. 2c. Mus. 2c. |
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| Elect. 2c. C. M. 2c. Printers. Oilers. S. F. 2c. Firemen 1c. Seamen. Second Class. |
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O. S. | Elect. 3c. Yeo. 3c. C. M. 3c. S. C. 3c. F. 2c. Bkrs. 2c. Mus. 2C. Bugler. Seamen. Third Class. |
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A. S. | Shipwrights. H. App. Coal Passers. S. C. 4c. Landsmen. Landsmen. |
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We would then have the men possessed of the amount of authority commensurate with the number of men supervised, or with their ability or opportunity as leaders of men. they would still have the same title and pay according to the services rendered. We would then have the same ratings in the C. P. O.’s but the ratings in 1st class P. O.’s would be reduced from twenty-two to five; the ratings in 2d class P. O.’s, from fifteen to four; and in 3d class P. O.’s increased from ten to sixteen; in other words we would have only twenty-five kinds of “ foremen ” as compared with forty-seven as at present. In this way only men capable of assuming authority and responsibility would have it vested in them.
If this schedule of petty officers could be put into operation we would have someone besides petty officers on watch in the engine room, where at present they are all rated, one C. M. M., one M. M. 1c., and two oilers, with the C. P. messenger, as the only person subject to the orders of all. The same would also be true in the various office forces, especially the paymaster’s and executive's, in the galley, in the dynamo room and in the gunner’s gang. The efficiency would be the same, the men would still be as reliable as they were before, their mechanical ability would remain unchanged and we would not be thrusting a responsibility upon a new and untried man who is incapable of assuming it by reason of inexperience and lack of knowledge of the service and service customs; nor would we have one petty officer for every two unrated men in the engineer force, ten petty officers to one unrated man in the carpenter’s force, all petty officers in the electrical force, at least two petty officers to one unrated man in the gunner’s force. By this means we could pick our “ foremen ” from men whom we know, by reason of their service, to be leaders of men and, in fact as well as in name, petty officers. We would no more think of enlisting a new man as a boatswain’s mate or a corporal because the man had been at sea before the mast or had been a corporal in a semi-military organization, yet we continually enlist electricians, and machinist’s mates, simply because they have done similar work “ on the outside,” without proof of their mechanical ability or their ability as leaders of men. As an example of the injustice to the man himself, a chief electrician held an acting appointment as such for six years because he was an expert mechanic ; yet he could never get a permanent appointment because he could not handle men, and if he wanted a job done he had to do it himself. Now would you say that he was a chief petty officer “ in fact ” as well as in name?