UNDER THIS IMPUDENT title I do not mean to suggest a shortage of men who can maneuver every type of propeller-driven craft. Nor do I overlook the fact that at Annapolis the future officers of the Navy have opportunity to acquire proficiency in handling small racing (or almost racing) sloops. No doubt every naval man who knows the difference between right rudder and left rudder can be depended upon with equal facility to port or starboard his helm. My question arises from the fact that in the last ten years of hard, intelligent, and enthusiastic ocean yacht racing we civilians have yet to meet competition from a navy crew. Are there no sailors in the Navy?
During the war a submarine chaser manned by reserves was mistaken by a merchant vessel for a German submarine. In an attack of nerves the merchant vessel ran down the subchaser before recognition signals could be exchanged. Several lives were lost. The survivors of the chaser, brought before a court of inquiry, were exonerated of negligence for their part in the disaster. Why? Because they were so new to the sea that they were presumed by the court to have been incapable of looking out for themselves. How was their ineptitude determined? By asking each man, from the commanding officer down, a simple question: “What was the direction of the wind when you came on (or went off) watch at midnight?” Not a man had noted it. The wind meant nothing to these motor sailors.
Merely to draw a contrast to this blanket example of ignorance I recall an evening in the city not long since when the wind changed from northwest to northeast. Up to the time I reached the apartment house in which I live there had been no apparent change in the weather. The sky was still clear and the air still dry. But as I stepped into the elevator the night operator, a newcomer, said, “Wind’s shifted.”
“When did you go to sea?” I asked, rather proud of my own perceptive powers.
“I’ve always been in sailing ships. This is my first job ashore,” said the elevator man. He was still a sailor.
Well, quartermasters in steam or motor ships will enter the force and direction of the wind (often intuitively without looking up from their deck logs) but I venture to say that to the balance of the personnel of any naval vessel the elements are of less moment than they are to structural steel workers. Perhaps this is as it should be. If you don’t have sails and if you are in no danger of being blown away your interest in the wind tends to become academic. But there are still mossbacks who contend that the best steamboat sailors are those who have been trained in sailing ships.
Although the last American full-rigged ship has gone out of commission and although “Old Ironsides” is towed from port to port, it is still possible for young men to be trained in sail. Each summer since 1923 has had its ocean yacht race, and each race has taken out into blue water its fleet of small, able cruising vessels. In 1928 three schooners, the largest having a water-line length of 50 feet, raced from New York to Spain. In 1930 a fleet of more than forty little ships sailed to Bermuda. Last year nine raced from Newport to Plymouth, England, while in the Pacific a smaller fleet races every other year to Hawaii. In June of this year the first dozen finishers arrived in Bermuda well inside the previous record for the course.The wind blew, and for a week two of the stragglers were posted missing.
In England there is a salt-encrusted military outfit known as the Royal Engineers Yacht Club, whose entry, the 20-ton yawl Ilex, has taken part in every important ocean race since 1925. Last year the engineers shipped her to America and raced her back. When she reached home she was taken over by a different crew from the same club and entered in the knock-down, drag-out Fastnet race. The legend is that when racing the royal engineers subsist entirely on so unnautical a food as beer. I wish I knew the brand, for they sail hard and win races. Incidentally they acquire a love of the sea and a store of seamanship that must stand them in great stead in their land-going, royal engineering duties.
Why, I wonder, isn’t there a similar organization at Annapolis, owning a worthy little vessel which may be entered in keen competition with civilians in our own ocean races? Is it because boats cost money? They don’t cost much nowadays, and perhaps some public benefactor might be persuaded to donate to the Academy a boat instead of a sculptured monument to a sailing hero. Or is it because the midshipmen’s time is unalterably occupied with summer cruising in steamships? Surely eight or ten could be spared for each long-distance race to partake of the thrill of sailing a little ship’s rail under and of hearing the hum of the wind in her rigging—as a respite from the whine of the turbines.
Ocean racing is more than yachting, as many a novice will attest who had thought of it as a pastime for fair winds and smiling skies. It is a rugged introduction to seamanship, to palm and needle, to instant resourcefulness, and to celestial navigation of the most athletic description. A midshipman, half submerged in the Gulf Stream for a day and a half while racing to Bermuda would, on graduating from the Academy, turn to submarines with the sang-froid of a veteran. A navigator who has picked up the almost invisible islands from a fix taken from a deck that is never still an instant, without benefit of submarine bell or radio compass, may be trusted with the destinies of a battle fleet.
Without doubt ocean racing is developing a group of civilians who will one day be of high value as naval reserves—who, if caught in an emergency will know not only the direction of the wind but everything else happening or about to happen around them. My lament is that the Navy, by not partaking in ocean racing, is letting slip an opportunity to give its own people a love and intimate knowledge of the sea which can be gained in no other way.
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Perhaps, the simplest way of explaining the meaning of morale is to say that what “condition” is to the athlete’s body, morale is to the mind. Morale is condition; good morale is good condition of the inner man; it is the state of will in which you can get most from the machinery, deliver blows with the greatest effect, take blows with the least depression, and hold out for the longest time. It is both fighting power and staying power and strength to resist the mental infections which fear, discouragement, and fatigue bring with them, such as eagerness for any kind of peace if only it gives momentary relief, or the irritability that sees large defects in one’s own side until they seem more important than the need of defeating the enemy. And it is the perpetual ability to come back.—Hocking.