Of all the departments into which the organization of a battleship falls, the Construction and Repair Department is unique. It might be taken as a matter of course that it is a workable organization on a par with the other departments, and is as standardized as the others. In practice as found on different ships, such is far from the case, and it is interesting to investigate this condition and see how it operates.
The Evolution of the Department
The Construction and Repair Department dates from only about eighteen years ago and is therefore the newest of all except Communications, which in fact is so new that its legs will hardly bear its weight. In the memory of practically every head of department afloat, the job of keeping the ship clean and free from corrosion was attended to by the second in command of the ship, who was called the first lieutenant. As ships grew larger, requiring bigger complements, and as paper work began to evidence the enormous proportions it would eventually reach, it was recognized that the second in command was loaded down with more than he could efficiently handle. The solution to this problem was to create the title of executive officer for the second in command, and to fill the job of first lieutenant with a lieutenant commander next in rank on the ship to the executive, who could relieve that officer of the inspection of double bottoms, the issuing of paint, the chipping of chain, and such details, while the executive could find more leisure to handle personnel in all its ramifications and act as coordinator for the various departments. That he was thought to have more time under this arrangement is shown by the fact that he was made chief fire-control officer, and many of us can remember him sitting on top of the conning tower (there was no fire-control tower then) wearing a JA phone, and hoping the battle would take place in calm weather not too hot.
About this time (1912) the general storekeeping (GSK) system was put into effect. Naval stores and equipage were put down in minute detail in Paymaster Hicks’ book (Standard Stock Catalog); bureau cognizance became of vast importance afloat; custody receipts infected us to such an extent that turret officers must needs sign for the 12-inch guns for which they were responsible; accountability for materials reached an awful pitch. Tools were Title B, and a shipfitter who hit his finger and let both hammer and chisel go overboard no sooner had the injured digit bound up than he was made the subject of a grilling hardly less searching than the Spanish Inquisition at its best, or worst. Torpedoes then were Bliss Leavitts. The starting mechanism was put in motion by a knife cutting off the top of a little copper nipple about the size and shape of a capsule for quinine. That little capsule was Title B and every time a torpedo was fired, at least one survey had to be held to account for one little capsule. The loss of the entire torpedo (about $6,000 then) called for no more paper work than the cutting of one starting nipple. In those days the Construction and Repair Department took on the complexion it now wears, and with the head of it senior to all other heads of departments, it was far more of a department than it has ever been since. It was a power in itself by virtue of the rank of its head and by reason of the fact that gunnery was in its infancy and engineering had nothing outside the B and C subdivisions of the ship.
When the 1913 Navy Regulations appeared, the organization of the Construction and Repair Department and the duties of the first lieutenant were given a few pages, much as they are today except for the rank of the first lieutenant. A comparison of these paragraphs with those laying down the duties of the executive will show a striking similarity. Nine-tenths of the duties of the first lieutenant are also prescribed for the executive. The accountability of Construction and Repair material is the only personal and inalienable right of the first lieutenant. It alone is not shared with the executive. This means that no matter how clearly the regulations may define the Construction and Repair Department, its head must never forget that he is in fact the assistant to the executive for material. This was indeed the original conception of the job, and nothing that has been written or imagined about it since has changed it in its basic operation.
What the Bureau of Construction and Repair Would Like
The Bureau of Construction and Repair occasionally has other ideas for its own pet department. It has a large manual full of paint formulas, chain dimensions, boat outfits, and technical data by the thousands. It prescribes tests, routines, records, and dozens of things; and it would like to feel that its mandates are more honored in the observance than in the breach. But in many cases it elicits only the comment, “What of it?” If the immediate superior in command does not like vermillion paint, the insides of the motor-boat ventilators simply will not be painted vermillion, so the Construction and Repair Manual might just as well not prescribe it. If the senior surgeon believes pea green more soothing to the eyes of his patients, and the captain backs him up, the sick bay will be painted that color, let the manual say what it will. And the same is true in many cases. The Bureau of Construction and Repair reserves to itself the right to design a great many things for use aboard ship, but it has no personnel aboard ship to follow things up. If a thing it desires does not meet with favor, or causes inconvenience, or is not wanted, much trouble will be met in securing its adoption. The duly authorized representative of that bureau is the first lieutenant, who is a line officer with a department large in money but small in men. He can carry out the bureau’s wishes only to the extent that he can secure the cooperation of the other departments in a large majority of cases. The pneumercators were designed to show at a glance the amount of fuel oil in the ship. Construction and Repair was eager to have this information, and having secured the cognizance of these instruments, spent thousands of dollars installing them. They pierced dozens of important bulkheads to run the little lines of tubing. And once they were bought and paid for, who was there to insist on their use? The oil king gets his data with a steel tape, and so far as the pneumercators are concerned, he is not interested enough to wipe the dust off them. Another case in point is the expensive humidity control installed on our heating system. How many ships use them? When the captain asks “Who looks after this?” the first lieutenant and the engineer look at each other with accusing glances, but neither dares speak. There are many such stepchildren aboard a battleship. Construction and Repair would seriously like to have its part of the ship administered along its own lines, but until it places some of its own designers afloat as members of the ships’ complements it will have trouble achieving its wishes.
The First Lieutenant
We have seen how the Construction and Repair Department was born amid the thunder and lightning of the GSK system, and how its head, the first lieutenant, like Caesar, was all powerful. He was, as they say, the “big noise.” Before many years, about two in fact, his importance had waned. From the senior head of department he was dropped to the junior. The navigator’s billet was soon found to be far more desirable with its gentlemanly leisure in port and its pleasantly interesting work at sea. The Bureau of Ordnance about that time had expanded its personnel to the extent that it was able to place a fairly senior officer in the gunnery billet. The engineer officer was always fairly high up. The big noise became a little squeak, and there were times to come when he was hardly a whisper. Nowadays the authority of the first lieutenant borders on the mythical. He may speak with the tongues of men and of angels but verily it is as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal unless behind his words is the charity of the captain’s nod.
The First Lieutenant and the Captain
The biggest single factor in the life of the first lieutenant is the personality of the captain. Only the navigator shares his grief in this respect. No battleship captains now at sea have ever been engineer officers of electric-drive installations, and only a few have first-hand knowledge of burning oil. None of our present captains has been through the mill in the gunnery game as it is played today. All of them, however, have had the first lieutenant’s job and he is their meat. Whenever these two departments make it too hot for the “old man,” he can always send for the first lieutenant and tell him to cover up that red lead. No need for the answer to be, “But, Captain, that red lead was put on only this morning, and the Construction and Repair Manual says it should stand at least twenty-four hours.” You may quote from every book including the Bible, but if the “old man” has made up his mind to have it covered up, you will end by covering it up. The first lieutenant’s first thought should be, not how to get his work done as he thinks it should be done, but how to saddle the captain’s hobbies so he can ride them to his heart’s content. You may take it as an axiom that every captain has several hobbies along the lines of taking care of a ship, and once those are provided for, you will have so much more time to spend on your own pet schemes. If you have stolen a half hour to go down to A-128 and help the boatswain decide how to stow those 18-inch blocks he stole from the yard last year, and the captain’s orderly finds you after five minutes as he surely does, being no less than a bloodhound where you are concerned, you may take it for granted that you would not have to go up five decks and aft four hundred feet if you hadn’t neglected one of the “old man’s” hobbies. Practically every captain will let the chief engineer deliver the turns and never think of telling him where to put his back pressure. He will also let the gunnery officer open fire without telling him he ought to put on a larger hot-gun correction. But very few captains are content to tell the first lieutenant to keep the ship clean and let it go at that. Most of them will hark back to the halcyon days when they had the job and will suggest methods they used with success. And you know what a suggestion from the captain amounts to. If these come at you too hot and heavy, don’t let it worry you. It’s his ship, and you’re only working in it.
If the captain does annoy the first lieutenant at times, nevertheless he is the best assistant the first lieutenant has. No ship is so easy to keep clean as one in which the captain makes frequent inspections. In the height of training for short-range battle practice, you may rub a division officer’s nose in a dirty comer in his part of the ship, and although he has looked in that direction, he hasn’t seen it nor has he heard a word you said. Where you saw dirt he saw an “E.” But if that dirty corner is mentioned in despatches after Saturday morning’s battle, hits or no hits it gets cleaned up. Division officers can frequently present alibis which are half convincing to the first lieutenant, but which earn no clemency when the captain comes around. When the captain announces that he would like to look at certain compartments your worries in that direction will soon be over, for if they aren’t ready then, they will be shortly after he has seen them. So, while every one on the ship is supposed to help the first lieutenant do his job, no one is such a help as the captain.
The First Lieutenant and the Executive
Between the captain and the rest of the ship stands the executive officer. Or rather sits, for that individual is so buried in paper work these days that a large part of his time is spent at a desk. The turnover in personnel in a battleship is astounding. Receipts of drafts, expirations of enlistments, transfers to Naval Reserve, changes of ratings, and such events occur frequently and the papers involved in such cases require from four to thirty signatures. Maybe the captain signs or maybe he can “pass the buck” to the executive, but the latter has to initial in one case and sign in the other, and there’s little difference. To this volume of papers we must add the special requests and hundreds of other things that come up daily in a crew of over a thousand. When a certain admiral hoisted his flag as commander in chief, Battle Fleet, after a tour as commander, Battleship Divisions, he called a conference of captains and heads of departments. Among other things he said he was going to chase the executives out of their swivel chairs and send them up on deck to take a hand in overseeing the ship. That was two years ago and they are still at their desks for the greater part of the day, and some of the night, if the navigator misses the hole and the ship has to shift anchorage. This busy man is the first lieutenant’s first aid in time of trouble. He is the one to go to when you don’t see how in the world a thing is to be done. What with stores coming on board Thursday, and the turrets having to be painted, and those blankety-blank aviators wanting to catapult, and a barge of Diesel oil coming alongside on Friday morning and gasoline Friday afternoon and an official smoker Friday night, how are you going to get ready for admiral’s inspection by Saturday morning, when it’s already Wednesday night? These executives nowadays answer a question like that without stopping the pen or taking their noses out of the papers. And the answer is always what you need to clear the atmosphere, so that Saturday morning finds the chief of staff quite affable, and the admiral ready to call it a day before he’s reached the second deck. When certain orders come through from the cabin and you are rebelling inwardly at the unreasonableness of things and you are saying to yourself that you will never make another cruise on one of these pig-iron battle wagons, where a man can’t call his soul his own, the executive will generally find a way of showing you the necessity for those orders and you gradually realize that had you been running the show you would have done the same thing only more so. I don’t mean he feels that way himself. He may have exactly your point of view, and sympathize with you deeply. But his job is to carry out the captain’s doctrine and being a good executive he has learned to do that very thing and make you like it. He’s a big help to you in lots of ways. When your handful of artificers has been depleted to the point where the plumbing is getting ahead of you, he will generally make the gunnery officer jar loose from a couple of strikers for you. Lean on him. Keep him informed of what’s going on under the cognizance of the Bureau of Construction and Repair. The regulations hang most of your job on him, but since he’s too busy to get around to it personally he can back you up best when you keep him up to the minute with the news.
The First Lieutenant and the Gunnery Officer
Now we’re about to touch on the real mission of the ship—the business of dropping salvoes on a target at the earliest moment. The gunnery officer is the gentleman charged with the preparation of the battery for battle and is therefore the boss of all the drills pertaining thereto. There is only one deck force. The same men shoot the guns and clean the ship. Since shooting is the prime requisite the gunnery officer gets first call on the time available for working these men. Indeed, on days when they have flight quarters at sun-up, battle stations all day, and Condition Two at night, you wonder if he hasn’t first and last call. Your relations with him must be most friendly, for the best results are accomplished by the closest cooperation between your department and his. You will soon see that this state is achieved when you let him have all he asks for and content yourself with what is left. In other words you put yourself psychologically in resonance with the situation. You know he will get it anyway, and it’s diplomacy to yield gracefully. In return he will occasionally dismiss his lower handling- room crews early while the pointers are check-sighting so they can come on the topside instead of lying around the third deck dirtying up the paintwork. There won’t be any petty officers or division officers with them because they’re still in the turret. So you’ll have to put them to work yourself, but something will be accomplished; whereas had your relations been less cordial the whole division might have been kept in confinement until eleven-thirty. And sometimes at quarters, when he has the division officers lined up, he will let you harangue them before they return to their parades. What you have to say is vitally important. It concerns hatch coamings and angle irons that have to be scrubbed before Saturday. Before he has given you a whack at them he has filled them so full of what he wants covered at drill that morning, that your speech spills over and is lost before they get half-way back to their divisions; and the boots who do the scrubbing don’t get the news until afternoon rolls around and you tell them yourself. But even so, he’s got you in mind and later on in the year when most of the practices have been fired you’ll find him ready to turn over the men to you for whole days at a time. Short-range battle is the worst period of all. Not only is he working all the deck force, but you’ll notice that most of the job orders you’ve issued for your three little gangs are for gadgets for use in the Gunnery Department. He has sent a scout over to the Maine to investigate the improved 5- inch loading tray they have developed over there. The report is to the effect that the tray has chopped off a half second from the loading time for a string of four. Result: shipfitters drop everything and make twelve loading trays as per sketch, required by Wednesday night. Your carpenter’s gang is making funny little plotting boards to be used at this practice and thrown overboard soon thereafter. Your painters are mixing up the queer shades of pink, orange, and brown the broadside battery hopes to find traces of on the screens when the shooting is over. In the meantime the holes in bulkheads throughout the ship increase in numbers ; the daily losses in boat beading get out of reach; and the quarter-deck cork rings no longer spell the name of the ship in their accustomed neatness. All because of short- range battle. Once this is over all hands breathe more easily. The tension is gone out of the ship. The score was not as high as the gunnery officer hoped for (it never is). But a few “E’s” appear here and there, and best of all, the guns’ crews take on a different attitude. Short-range battle is to the gunnery year what football is to the college athletic year. It comes first and is the most exciting. The whole ship’s company is keyed up much as a student body is over football. When any turret or group is firing everybody not on watch is on deck with hearts pounding against ribs, with the same feeling you have in the stands when your “varsity” plays its traditional rival. Once Thanksgiving is past you can watch the rest of the sports on the calendar and rarely get worked up even mildly. After short-range battle the crew steadies down and you find you can get them involved in a bit of ship’s work with very little trouble.
The First Lieutenant and the Engineer Officer
Nine-tenths of the trouble the first lieutenant has comes from the Engineer’s Department. I mean real, soul-searing trouble, the kind that makes you bow your head in speechless grief. Have you ever seen a fuel-oil hose carry away outboard and spray its load over a freshly painted side? Are there words in any language capable of meeting such a situation? Have you seen a quarter-deck sprinkled with the products of combustion by the action of blowing tubes with the wind ahead? Have you seen a ship’s decks after they've been scrubbed down with the deck hoses running a mixture of oil and water, caused by the auxiliary watch “accidentally” cracking the bilge suction on the manifold? Have you ever tried to make a neat stowage of twenty drums of lubricating oil (excess quantity, ordered by mistake), anywhere on any deck with each one leaking at both bungs in the heat of the tropics? When the tongues of men were confounded at the Tower of Babel, it is said to have been an awful sound. But these old Scripture writers had never heard a deck force division when its part of the ship had just been treated to one of these engineering accidents.
Such occurrences are rare, fortunately, but they do not tell the whole story. If the engineer officer happens to be that type who is making engineering his career and has always had shore duty under that bureau and sea duty in that department, and consequently can’t see the ship through the cloud of steam, the first lieutenant’s troubles are ever present. Harmony is made more difficult by an anomaly in the fundamental organization of the Navy Department. The Bureau of Construction and Repair in Noah’s time designed the anchor windlass, the pumps, and the steering gear for the U.S.S. Ark. Notwithstanding the subsequent invention of machinery and the creation of the Bureau of Engineering, the Bureau of Construction and Repair continues to design such appurtenances and a great many more in use on board ship, all of which are engines in every sense of the word, and require the same talent and care as do the main propulsion units. Now Construction and Repair, while jealously preserving its traditions and retaining its cognizance over certain pieces of machinery, realized that it had no personnel afloat to take care of that machinery. Its representative aboard ship, the first lieutenant, has a corporal’s guard of artificers, who do very well with plumbing, sheet metal, a little plate and angle work, small screw-thread work, and such, but who know nothing about lining up shafting, scraping in bearings, adjusting clearances, and other machinist qualifications. So it wisely omitted any reference to machinery when it wrote up the duties of the first lieutenant for the Navy Regulations. In order that its machines should not go wholly uncared for it caused to be inserted under the duties of the engineer officer the following pertinent sentence: “He shall also be charged with the maintenance and care of all steering engines, capstan engines, winches, and other power- driven auxiliaries, under the cognizance of the Bureau of Construction and Repair.” The Navy Regulations are analogous to the Constitution in that they require some sort of enforcing statutes to carry out their provisions. Aboard ship these statutes take the form of the Ship’s Organization Book by means of which the captain has put the breath of life into the regulations as they apply to his command. In the preparation of this book that narrow-minded engineering officer has taken a hand, as have also you; but being senior to you and a more convincing talker he has succeeded in having his interpretation of the regulations accepted. He has taken the attitude that the words “maintenance and care” in the pertinent sentence above mean “You run ’em until they break down, and I’ll fix ’em.” He won’t lift a finger to prevent their breaking down, by having his machinists look ’em over now and then to see if they are properly lined up, adjusted, and lubricated. He carries his argument that they are Construction and Repair and therefore yours, and they go in the book under you. Some of them he won’t even touch when they are out of order. Take boat cranes, for instance. They are electrically driven, and in order to prevent too much juice being used in their operation, which would affect his score, he has insisted on having a rated electrician at the controller. When this electrician forgets himself and two-blocks the hook, thereby cracking some of the rollers in the sheave bearings, it’s your little gang that works all night getting the crane in commission again. Take the submersible pumps, for another instance. They are electric and by regulations he is charged with their upkeep, although Construction and Repair cognizance. You ask for one to pump out D-324, flooded by the wardroom showers. He has one electrician accompany your four men who lug the pump aft and lower it in place. His man turns on the switch and the pump burns out its windings. The explanation is that his end of the pump was O.K., but your end let the water reach the motor through a loose gasket. Look at the battles that take place on the subject of fresh water. This commodity is manufactured by the engineer officers, but is dispensed from Construction and Repair tanks by Construction and Repair pumps through Construction and Repair pipes and measured by Construction and Repair meters. He is vitally interested in it because it affects his score indirectly. The operation of the freshwater hold has been bandied back and forth between you and him for years, and on any ship taken at random it’s a toss up as to which department has it. A long while ago some one set an arbitrary figure of ten gallons per capita as a reasonable water consumption on a battleship. The average is well over thirteen, but no matter; he still has hopes of pulling it down to ten and he makes your life miserable with his implications that you aren’t standing by the spigot to see that no man gets more than half a bucket at any one time.
He’s a mighty opponent, this engineer officer. His performance is reflected in the ship’s standing in battle efficiency and Form H is a formidable weapon, which he can and does use frequently. You need not be surprised at any crimes committed in the name of economy as laid down in the engineering “computation.” The old practice of putting 25-watt lamps in all fixtures and turning out most of these so that the ship is in a state of gloom is not looked on with favor nowadays, but he has other tricks in his bag. He sometimes goes so far as to convince the “old man” that frequent use of boat cranes is losing the white “E”, and to succeed in getting an order issued that all boats will remain in the water until 1630. And you may believe it or not, on one occasion when the ship was to be illuminated at 1900 and a boat happened to be on the crane at that time, the engineer duty officer induced the officer of the deck to refrain from striking six bells until the boat could be landed in the skids to avoid having to start another generator. He was a lineal descendant of Joshua.
Maybe you are lucky and are shipmates with an engineer officer of another type— one who has had other kinds of duty, one who is a naval officer first and engineer after that. “What a grand and glorious feeling.” You don’t write any formal chits such as “The captain noted a leaky steam flange at frame 40 main deck starboard side.” Instead, you stick your head in the log room, and say, “Hey, Chief, how’s to fix that steam leak in the dentist’s office. There’s a hot drop hitting him in the back of the neck.” Life for you is a grand sweet song so far as the black gang is concerned. When his electricians leave holes in your bulkheads, he makes them plug ’em up. When a hundred tons of NSA stores come alongside he doesn’t wait for you to hoist them all on board and deliver them to the Supply Department. He sees the boiler brick and tubes he’s been waiting for and has the B Division yank them through the second deck air ports. When you ask for juice on the anchor windlass you get it without submitting a request for so many kilowatt hours. In short you and the chief are buddies.
The First Lieutenant and the Other Heads of Departments
By this time you are wondering if there are any more troubles that can be heaped on your throbbing head. There are. We have only begun to fight. The supply officer is really your friend, for he keeps you in funds and helps you get an additional allotment. But he can be most exasperating in the matter of surveyed material when you want to get it out of your storeroom, and he refuses to let it clutter up his. You take a lot on the chin on account of cockroaches and those little fellows that “have no wings at all but get there just the same.” This riles you sorely, because you feel that it’s a matter of sanitation which the book says is the “pidgin” of the senior medico. He, however, though a contemporary of the chief of the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, is still a commander, and is only waiting for age in grade to put an end to his misery. No help from him. The communication officer has a lot of men, but they’re all on paper as far as you’re concerned. You can’t expect key pounders and flag wavers to scrub paint work. And so it goes in every department in the ship. Every man has a cleaning station, but he also has some other reason for being on board, and generally speaking that reason takes precedence over your work. Truly the first lieutenant works his passage.
Questions
This is going too far. No human would ever finish a cruise as first lieutenant if things were as bad as that. He would find a berth in the Red House before the first year was over. Of course it’s all wrong to paint such a picture, for your job brings its thrills and rewards, just as all other jobs in the service do. There is this difference, though, between you and your fellow heads of departments, the gunnery and the engineer officers. Their labors may be crowned with material things such as pennants and “E’s” and prize money with appropriate letters of commendation, while your compensation must take the more spiritual form of inward satisfaction derived from the knowledge that your work is well done. There is no score in your work; it has no weight in the battle-efficiency competition. But it’s important just the same. Some one has to do it. As the end of your cruise draws near you are inclined to look back and reflect. Some of those many unpleasant things recur to you and you say to yourself, “Yes, it’s work that has to be done by some means or other.” And vague questions come to your mind, “Is the system really a workable one?” “Was I really doing something, or were we muddling through?” You find food for thought in those questions.
“If I Were King”
Those old words sneak up on you. You would like to take a crack at organizing things as your cruise has showed you they should be organized. You would begin way up near the top in the Navy Department by taking all machinery away from Construction and Repair and giving it to Engineering. You see in the present scheme a huge duplication of effort. Pumps are designed to throw a volume of liquid at a certain rate against a certain head. Why should both bureaus be designing pumps. All engines are designed to perform certain work under given conditions. Why should the machine that moves the rudder be designed by one bureau and the one that moves the propeller be designed by another. You would tell Construction and Repair to stick to its job of determining the shapes of the hull, of cutting out the plates and angles, shapes and forgings, of putting the hull together, and keeping it in the necessary state of repair and preservation during its life. You would pass along to Engineering specifications for the machinery that goes into that hull for whatever purpose, and you’d tell them to keep it running. This you will learn has been suggested many times before and lots of people will tell you it won’t work. Nevertheless you want to try it, because it affects the next big shift you intend to make, which is to abolish the job you have just devoted three years of your life to.
You begin by deleting the words “first lieutenant” from the ship’s organization book, wherever found. In its place you write “executive officer”, “gunnery officer” or “inspection officer” as may be appropriate. For your place on the ship has been taken by a two- or two-and-a-half-stripe naval constructor, who is assistant for material to the executive, and has the title of inspection officer. Your job has been split three ways. The executive officer has also been given an assistant for personnel, who is a line officer of sufficient experience to be of real help in paper work, and the executive can get away from his desk without taking a penalty. The deck force which in your time had three bosses now has but two.
The operation of the ship goes on about like this: the executive divides the time available under the employment schedule to suit the conditions. The gunnery officer gets as much of it as he needs and the preparation of the battery for battle goes on as before. The time required for cleaning and painting is specifically set down and is given as much weight as is the gunnery training. These two things are given the major consideration as they are daily routine. Such things as emergency drills, instruction periods, locker and bedding inspections, are sandwiched in wherever desired. That part of the routine which directs the cleaning and painting is handled by the executive officer. Having been relieved of much of his paper work by his personnel assistant he has found leisure to acquire some firsthand information as to the needs of the ship in this respect and the balance is reported to him by his material aide, the construction officer, who helps him lay out the work in advance by days, weeks, and months. This inspection officer has a different status from yours when you were first lieutenant. His time is devoted exclusively to the inspection of the hull and fittings and making recommendations to the executive for their proper upkeep and repair. He inspects daily the living compartments, galleys, heads, washrooms, and spaces on the second deck and above. He sees each accessible compartment below the second deck at least once a week. His notes and records are kept in minute detail so that in laying out the work in advance, the executive is able to direct the division officers in better than general terms. The inspection officer will issue no orders but will advise the division officers as he thinks necessary. He will be able to accomplish these inspections on schedule because he will be relieved of the following duties which in your time were given to the first lieutenant: summary courts, which now are divided between the engineer officer and navigator, with the gunnery officer taking his share in slack times; landing force, which occurs in port when the navigator has plenty of leisure for it; catapulting and picking up planes, which you spent hours standing by to do, and which is now directed by the gunnery officer, who can easily do it because it always happens well before and well after the battle; the care and upkeep of machinery which used to worry you but which is now 100 per cent engineering; ship’s service, which used to sneak up on you at irregular times and keep you busy for hours and days; the handling of provisions which is no strain on the gunnery officer because his men do it and he can’t work them at the guns while it is going on. The deck artificers do not exist any more as such. They have been amalgamated with the machine-shop gang under the ship’s repair officer much as it is handled on the repair ships. All job orders are handled through the one channel.
You look over this organization as it moves along and you find it much smoother than the one you worked under; furthermore as new ships are built you see improvements you often wished for but could never get approved. For these later ships have been carefully gone over by people who have had to live in a ship for three years and many incongruities have been eliminated from the preliminary plans. You knew all the time that if the people who designed ships had to live in them, the wardroom pantry would never be located in the midst of and equidistant from all the choicest rooms in the ship so that the heads of departments are bombarded with the rattle and banging of crockery and silverware three times a day, to say nothing of the prattle and skylarking of mess attendants at turn-to in the morning watch. You didn’t call yourself a genius when you saw that the wardroom was a two-ended affair, and the food could be introduced into it through the forward or crew’s end of it as efficiently and expeditiously as from the after or officer’s end of it. More so in fact because the galley is forward and the distribution point would be nearer the original source of heat. You know the captain’s office would not be placed on equal but opposite footing with the executive’s cabin, because the captain never goes in it, and the time required for his yeoman to travel a few additional frame spaces is no vital factor in war or peace; and its present space would make two first-class staterooms. You know that if the people who locate bunks in staterooms had to sleep in them they would place them fore and aft instead of athwartships; and their heads would not be in a corner where circulation of air is at its lowest ebb, both from the airport and the blower. You know that if the designers of aeroplane booms had to operate them they would give them sufficient strength so that the boom would not carry away before the slings on the plane; and that the guys would be given adequate power to steady a two-and-a-half-ton plane as it is being lowered into place on a rolling ship; and that the booms would have ample facilities for securing so that they do not take charge and swing forward on the run until they take up on the tripod and break off at the goose neck. You know offhand that all the galley wants from the air compressor is air, which can be delivered in a small pipe from any distance. And that the compressor would best be located in one of the machinery spaces, where it can be looked after, instead of in the third division living compartment where it is sworn at when it starts its infernal racket at all hours. You know that the post-office, canteen, and barber shop would be located amidships, instead of on each side at the entrance to the main deck where men waiting for service form an impassable barrier. Dozens of other things which annoyed you are now located and arranged in a more comfortable, efficient and logical manner.