That’s the way! -- ay bane vant a yob.” Two husky young Americans were practicing “Scandahovian” as ‘she vos spoke” so that they could get a “yob” on an American ship! It was a quarter of a century ago and we had just graduated from a state training ship and were looking for a job. But there was “nothing doing” as soon as the foreigners who officered American merchant ships found out that we were Americans. Of one well- known line, it was said that “the only thing American about it was the flag and that was made in Liverpool.” Aliens did not like the idea of Americans, mostly from the school ships, creeping in. It was a peculiar thing that much as the British and Germans disliked each other, they would unite always against the native American, so that the small but increasing group of school-ship graduates had a hard time prying their way in.
An oft-told tale is the one concerning the San Francisco immigration inspector who was checking off the crew of an arriving American merchant ship. A heterogeneous conglomeration of representatives of every land but America answered the roll. “Any Americans aboard?” he exclaimed in exasperation. “Yah,” said the mate, “der vos me and anudder Yerman.”
A combination of circumstances had brought about this situation. One thing was the fact that the eye and urge of America was to the westward in the years immediately after the Civil War and our mercantile marine, as well as the Navy, languished. Then when, in the face of obstacles, we were compelled to create an adequate merchant marine we found that there were no officers to man the ships. True, we did have a school ship in New York graduating about thirty- five cadets a year, and later one was established in Philadelphia and another in Boston, but the combined tonnage of these three vessels was less than the tonnage of one of the two training ships employed by one German line, the North German Lloyd, for training its officer personnel. All over Europe, in small and large ports, were ships, barks, brigs, and every kind of small and large sail craft, sailing out on deep-water training voyages, in the fulfillment of their mission of producing officers for the mercantile marines of the various nations. The plethora of merchant marine officer personnel in Europe, compared with the shortage in the United States, naturally resulted in the aliens swarming in and, under our then lax immigration and naturalization laws, filling all the available jobs.
But waiting for naturalization was too slow for some of the impatient, and in 1892 Congress passed a law naturalizing the foreign officers of the New York and Paris when they were placed under the American flag. To our eternal disgrace it was considered necessary to do a similar thing, on a wholesale scale, in 1915, when a law was passed allowing hundreds of foreigners to command and officer American merchant ships, under what was known as “red ink tickets.”
It is now realized that to allow such a vital economic unit and potential naval aid as the mercantile marine to be alien dominated constitutes a grave menace to the welfare of the nation. Earnest efforts have been made during and since the war to Americanize the American merchant marine. The beneficial effect of stringent immigration laws has greatly restricted the flood of foreigners.
This emphasizes the fact that there must be some effective medium for recruiting and training the right kind of native American for officering our expanding marine. Of course, when we refer to officers we mean both deck and engineer officers because the merchant marine still, and probably always will, continue to follow the old naval custom of having the deck officers and engine- room officers divided into different corps. For efficiency this is probably the better system. In this article I will confine my remarks to the training of deck-officer personnel.
Recently there has been much discussion of the varied methods recommended for training merchant marine officers. A questionnaire sent out by the Shipping Board requested opinions on three different systems. Those discussed, were, first, utilization of the Naval Academy, by accepting such additional midshipmen as might be necessary; second, organization of a national merchant marine academy; and third, expansion of the present state training ship facilities by encouraging more states to start schools and by enlarging the present schools so that residents of other states would be allowed to attend the training ships of the states supporting such schools.
Sober thought should eliminate the Naval Academy from consideration in such a proposition. Surely that institution has a sufficiently arduous mission in properly preparing competent naval officers, without branching out into an alien field of educational effort.
I think that those who favor an academy ashore do not fully comprehend just for what kind of a career they are about to prepare the sea-seeking youth who would attend it. I do not favor the idea of any kind of a shore academy for the training of deck-officer personnel because I believe that it is predicated on an entirely false concept of the character of those who go down to the sea in ships as officers of our mercantile marine. This concept is closely akin to the same one that fills the land at present with multitudes of men “deep versed in books but shallow in themselves”—impractical academic theorists, in whom education is a curse rather than a blessing.
Consider the end! The officer of a merchant ship must be an individual of a unique sui generis type. To have a permanent body of American merchant marine officers, the men selecting this career must, above everything, be filled with “sea zest”; a rare quality (or defect?) which enables a man to enjoy life afloat in the not altogether ideal conditions existent in a merchant ship. All training and educational effort should be directed toward the accentuation of this essential characteristic. Granted that the theory of a life in the merchant marine might be taught in a shore academy, the actual ability to live and to enjoy that life can only be found in proper sea training afloat. Seamen are made at sea, not in shore academies.
Let the many eminent erudite individuals who have voiced opinions concerning how officers should be trained for the merchant marine give a thought to the conditions of that life and the actual practical necessities of the merchant officers’ education.
. Freighters form the vast majority of any well-balanced merchant fleet. An understanding of the conditions of the life of an officer in a freighter will well illustrate why it is stated that the first quality for sea success is that a man should be dominated by “sea zest.”
The average freighter of 13,000-ton displacement will have a deck complement of three mates, six or eight seamen, a carpenter, and a boatswain. The officers stand watch in three, in addition to their regular duties. In port the second and third mates are generally required to be aboard all day and take alternate nights off. Some lines have night mates who take the night watches for the first few nights in the home port. However, the ship will be away about s<x to eight weeks for every week spent in the home port. The average second or third mate can expect to get about fifteen or twenty nights home a year. There are no vacations with pay and no such thing as shore duty. True, officers do frequently get shore leave when business gets poor, but without pay. Pension systems are rare.
There is absolutely no social life on board a freighter, nor could there be with the all-day and all-night whine of the winches. Rarely are any visitors allowed on board.
Though the merchant officers’ professional requirements are by no means as broad and profound as those of naval officers, his close personal attention thereto is demanded in a much more intense manner than in the navy where there is plenty of assistance in the shape of the large body of petty officers. The merchant officer has to do much of the work that would be done by the enlisted personnel of the navy. It is by no means an unusual thing for the whole crew to be helplessly soused on the ship’s departure from a foreign port and the three officers required to let go and heave in the lines, lower and secure the twenty or more booms, and then steer the ship until the “noble mariners” sober up!
At sea the officer will be, except for the man at the wheel, alone on the bridge, and will have to take and record all of the data concerning sights, bearings, and log book entries.
The chief officer has general charge of the cleanliness and upkeep of all the ship outside of the engine-room. He also directs and is responsible for the stowage of the cargo and for its discharge. Ability to utilize the meager materials provided for rigging gear and to keep the ship in proper condition is the essential characteristic of the successful chief mate of a ship. “Look for the dirtiest man in the ship,” was the old and oft-time accurate characterization of the chief mate of a freighter because he frequently had to pitch in and rig gear or mix paint himself. He must be an individual with patience, inexhaustible energy, intense interest in his work, inspired initiative, an agile mind, and unusually rugged physique. Now, surely, a man with those qualities is not going to sea and stay at sea unless he is filled with an unquenchable love for the life.
“But we should change the conditions of sea life so that our boys can get the comforts, convenience, and the same working conditions as life ashore,” say some. Rot! Who would pay for that? Remember that in the shipping business we have to meet the competition of the world. No, there are enough young men in the United States to whom, if taken young and not spoiled, this existence with all its hardships and discomforts would appeal. There are those devoid of domesticity and filled with Wanderlust, who are at home where they are, and who have the quality of “sea zest,” to whom a life at sea appeals. This type should be caught young, properly trained, and hardened for the life, and all others should be discouraged from undertaking seafaring in the merchant marine.
The training and education should be done aboard a cruising ship, and therefore I think that if any governmental agency is going to do this the state training ships should.
Back in 1917 figures were compiled showing that approximately 2,000 cadets had been graduated from all the state school ships since the inauguration of that system in New York in 1874. Of course, many of these had died or had gone into other professions—the Army, the Navy, scientific, and exploration work had claimed many. But it may be truthfully said that the concept of the school-ship officer dominated the merchant marine and that the leaders of the native American merchant marine officer class were the graduates of the three state schools of New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania.
The state school-ship method is by far the best that has been developed in the United States for training officer personnel for our merchant marine and, with certain modifications, I believe that it is the best possible system. It is true that far too many of the graduates sicken of the sea after a few years and seek the shore for the delights of domesticity. This is due to one of several defects in an otherwise good system. The outstanding defect in the school- ship training is that the system does not develop that earnest undiluted love for the sea life which one should have to follow the sea. Thus some good work goes for naught, though much of it was salvaged in the Spanish-American, and in the last war, when the national situation was largely saved through the fact that there was a great reservoir of trained material on which to draw. That trained material ashore is of little use to the merchant marine for which the system was supposed to be designed to benefit.
This major defect in the state training- ship system is caused by the ships spending far too much time in home waters. The only cruises made are short summer yachting excursions to tourist rendezvous. This destroys the good effect of the excellent technical instruction imparted. It is often said, and said truly, that, while the young American school-ship graduate compares favorably in many respects with the German and other foreign school-ship graduates, he has a rather lackadaisical and yachting attitude toward his job compared with the serious interest of the foreigner. The reason is undoubtedly because the foreign school-ships spend nearly all their time cruising at sea, and the amateurish attitude is entirely eliminated.
The ideal ship, which should be specially constructed for the purpose, is one that would carry not over 100 cadets, so that there would be adequate opportunity for all to acquire experience in steering, O.O.D. duties, and other things which are fixed in number on a ship, whether large or small. The best motive power would be sail with a Diesel engine, so that extended training cruises could be taken at minimum expense. All facilities for carrying on the instruction should be installed in the ship so that no shore establishment would be required.
Sail, I say, because there is, as Admiral Plunkett maintained, no experience that a boy can have which equals the man-building effect of a few years in a sailing ship where the fundamental virtues of courage, intelligent initiative, hardihood, physical and mental alacrity are, under proper conditions, developed as no other experience can develop them. No sea-seeking youth should be denied this experience in the first years of his career. A four-masted bark of about 1,500- tons displacement would, in my opinion, be the best rig.
“Catch them young” is certainly essential to a thorough indoctrination of sea zest and the settled sea habit. Entrants to the school ships should be under seventeen. Between fifteen and seventeen is the best age. They should have educational qualifications equivalent to the first two years of high school. More than the first two years is not of much value, as the last two years are generally devoted to the special purpose of preparation for college.
Proper utilization of time and careful planning of the cruises to attain the maximum benefit is of paramount importance. I believe from actual experience that much more can be learned, in the same time, at sea than ashore, if the cruises are properly planned. I stress this point because an objection often made to the idea of training afloat is that it does not provide the same educational opportunities as a shore establishment would.
Expatiation on the subject of the course of instruction is unnecessary, as the professional requirements of the merchant marine officer are well known. The main thing to be emphasized is that it should be arranged so that all professional subjects are treated in a thoroughly practical manner. “To be able to do, rather than to explain” is the great desideratum. One phase of instruction which, with the exception of the German, some of the Scandinavian, and one of the United States school ships, has b6en grossly neglected is the practical application of the science of ship stability to ship loading and handling. Only lately a large British passenger steamer filled with American passengers and cargo, was capsized at sea with heavy loss of life, due to the captain’s apparent ignorance of this vital factor.
It must be realized that the mere inculcation of professional knowledge and technical ability is a very minor matter compared with the far higher objective of graduating men of high character, well developed qualities of leadership, and a thorough love of and devotion to the profession. Actually living the life afloat, close to one of nature’s grandest manifestations, should be a much greater incentive to this than existence in a shore academy.
There should be a system of training these cadets so that they will be able to cooperate with the Navy in the next war. At present we have a large paper merchant marine naval reserve, but there is absolutely no training of any of the personnel of this reserve, either officer or man, in gunnery, signals, and other naval subjects.
Of course no man can be said to have reached the true standard of cultured citizenship who has not prepared himself adequately to participate in the defense of the nation. Especially is it of paramount importance in a profession so closely allied to this vital matter.
Provision should be made to enroll the cadets in the state school ships as midshipmen in the Naval Reserve; the same as is done with college students in the Naval Reserve Officer Training cruises. A careful survey should be made concerning the manner in which the merchant officer could be of maximum assistance to the Navy in war time and the training arranged accordingly. It would be a good thing to have the cadets take short training cruises each year with the fleet. This could be done in the intervals between the cruises on the school ship.
Two properly planned five-month cruises a year to ports where methods of cargo stowage and ship handling could be studied would be an excellent cruise routine. Four of such cruises, in the two-year course, would, with a properly balanced curriculum, graduate unsurpassable material for merchant officers. A year’s experience as a cadet, junior officer, or in some other subordinate rating, would produce the finest type of third officer and prospective captain for the merchant marine.