In attempting an article on this subject, I feel the way a certain young officer must have felt when called up by his commanding officer after submitting his navigation notebook. This is indeed "hallowed ground," dedicated to daily battle royals between O.O.D's and division officers; boatswain's mates and division petty officers. The working division offers the outstanding dilemma that confronts the division and the division officers. In an organization that has practically reached its ultimate goal in smoothness of perfection, it stands out like a sore thumb on the otherwise elegant hands of a pianist.
For an embryo to state boldly that the present system in use is all wrong would be wretched ignorance. A time-honored system such as we have is bound to have its merits, and it does. The system works. The question is does it work to the best advantage of the ship as a whole, and does it work with the greatest possible efficiency?
Let us look into a battleship system of answering hand calls. In all ships the method is analogous. The deck divisions only answer hand calls. Usually they are the numbered divisions plus the fire control division. On a 4-turret ship this gives four main battery divisions, one broadside, one anti-aircraft, and the fire control division, making seven divisions in all that are eligible for the working division. As an average, each division then has the "phantom title" of working division once each week. By the ship's organization book, the working division furnishes up to fifteen hands to answer calls, after which the stand-by division is supposed to furnish up to fifteen and so on to the other divisions.
This is not a particularly admirable system even if it were run exactly as it is set forth in the ship’s organization book. With our complement cut down to a minimum, as it is now, there are certain days when the working division is completely stripped of available men and subsequently suffers no end of humiliation. With a division of sixty men there are about twenty available for the cleaning of the division and answering hand calls. Petty officers, mess- men, turret strikers, paint detail, boat crew, messengers, side boys, garbage watch, and side cleaners are excused from answering hand calls for obvious reasons. In order to keep the division up to the high standard of cleanliness and preservation that is maintained in our Navy, all these men must stretch themselves day by day. To throw one day out a week then, and perhaps two, not only plays havoc with that day, but seriously deters the progress of the next few days that follow. In fact, it is a rare thing when the full fifteen men are not required from the working division and many times the stand-by division is likewise pushed to the limit. It follows as the target the tow that work does not mark time on such a day, but actually does a backward march.
Now take the very sad case of a division being the working division on field day. The leading P.O. is the boatswain’s mate with the day’s duty and the next P.O. is his assistant. The division invariably furnishes fifteen hands to answer calls. The division messengers and side boys have the watch, the garbage watch comes from that division. The turret striker, paint detail, messmen, side cleaners, and boat’s crew go about their work, and I believe that you will agree they have a sufficiency to keep them busy. What is left? A petty officer or leading seaman in each of the division cleaning stations and about one man to each station. What if there is an epidemic of “cat fever” or a few men are on light duty? Too bad—do without! Then bedlam reigns. Division officers and officers of the deck all but claw one another. Boatswain’s mates plead for mercy in an inimitable manner, even as if the catastrophic exigency had never arisen before.
There are no divisions which do not take pride in the cleanliness of their parts of the ship. White deck planking, shiny brass work, clean paint work, and sparkling ladders are not flash-in-the-pan results, but the reward of arduous labor assiduously administered day by day. All of us have felt the poignant let-down of standing inspection after such a nightmare. It is not hard to conjure up the abject disappointment of having a 4.0 division sink to the rank and file of 3.2 in a single week.
Having malignantly and with evil intent attacked one of our traditions, it is only fair that I offer a better system, although I haven’t been as vindicative and vitriolic as I have sometimes felt when confronted with the enigma of how to prepare a division for inspection with three men. I do not expect this system to lay anyone in the aisle, and without doubt it has been thought of and perhaps tried out by some long gone predecessor. It is not my intention to try to sell any one system, but through earnest thought to pick out a system that will incorporate the best features of many plans. The present system gives birth to more daily “gripes” than any one thing on board ship. A system that would relieve this would do a great deal to build morale and ship’s spirit to the highest point.
My working division is as follows: Every ship has a few incorrigibles, “ship’s louses,” A.O.L’s, non-regs, skylarkers, gun-deckers, etc. Many of them do not commit offenses serious enough to warrant a summary or deck court-martial. Some of them are habitual small offenders, while others do more serious things, but elude punishment behind the lack of evidence. My system would put all of these people in a separate division known as the working division. They would answer all hand calls, take care of paint details, and stand anchor watches. They would be assigned a boatswain’s mate and coxswain well known for their strict regard for the Navy regulations, men who would command respect and obedience without giving the slightest opening for complaints of mistreatment based on anything other than the extra work required. If work on a particular day is too light to keep the men busy every minute, have them fall in with belts, leggings, rifles, and drill. Extra bag and hammock inspection would insure their absolute cleanliness. School could be held at night during the movies in seamanship, A to N, naval customs, and Navy regulations. This is not designed as a convict camp to torture men who have erred, but a school of hardship to prove whether or not a man is competent and has ability. If he has, the best thing in the world for him is to take in the slack by disciplinary action and help put him on the right course by making him work hard. If he turns out to have negligible seamanlike qualities, he’ll prove it beyond doubt and can be quickly discharged as undesirable.
This working division would be composed of about 30 men divided into 4 sections. One section liberty would be granted, leaving plenty of men on board to rig and unrig the movie screen, answer hand calls, and stand the anchor watch. A man could be assigned to the working division at captain’s mast or the executive officer’s mast by having the division officer bring him in and state,
This man is habitually dirty and loafs as much as he can get away with. I’d like to put him in the working division for a month to see if he’ll improve or whether he’ll merit a court-martial as being undesirable.
Anything said at mast would impress the man with the fact that a man is on the ragged edge and that it behooves him to show lots of spark in a hurry lest he find himself on the outside looking in.
Any man with admirable qualities would show his worth, and those who are totally lacking in seamanlike attributes would be quickly relegated to a position where they could be judged quickly for incompetence and undesirability. This would be a fine thing. When it is indubitably proved that a man is unsuitable for the service he can he given an undesirable discharge without waste of time and the officers concerned Will have a clear conscience in that they have expeditiously given the man a fair trial and through his own fault he has made an opening for a deserving man behind him in length of service or for one of the thousands of men in civilian life who are eagerly awaiting an opportunity to Join the Navy.
Much time is wasted in getting rid of seamen whose adaptability for the service is absolutely negative, because fairness is one of the rocks that the service is built upon. None of us would like to be a party to getting rid of a man who doesn’t deserve *t. It takes lots of time to be absolutely fair to a man in all respects when he is going about his divisional work all over the ship. It is impractical, as well as almost impossible, to keep him under observation continuously. Placed “on the spot” in the working division, however, he would make or break himself in short order. In like manner, men who were rated in lower grades a few years ago before examinations were required, and whose progress has been in swift retrograde ever since, considering the higher type of men who have more recently flocked to the service, could be sent through the mill of the working division and there weeded out to make room for more deserving men.
Attendance at mast would drop very definitely with this system in force. The slowing down of daily routine for both officers and men would be greatly relieved. The same would apply to summary court- martials and deck courts.
Division officers would depend upon a certain number of men to do the divisional work. This insurance is of great value, because fewer men working steadily could accomplish a great deal more and with responsibility directly placed, than could more men, as at present with many of them circulating back and forth to answer hand calls.
Division officers would have a whip in their hands that is much needed. Long hair and dirty clothes would disappear in favor of neatly cut hair and immaculate bags and hammocks.
At the Naval Academy we go through a process of elimination that is hardly equalled in the world. We have awkward squads, extra duty squads, and subsquads besides the pitfalls of the academic departments. The last two graduating classes are now undergoing an additional process of elimination under their probationary commissions. All along the line to admiral we undergo survival of the fittest test, and those who can’t “stand the gaff” are eliminated from the race.
The only way we can improve our personnel with the present minimum allowed by Congress is to have a like removal of deadwood in the enlisted ranks. Out of the tens of thousands who applied for enlistment last quarter, only a few hundred were taken in, practically all of them high- school graduates and college men eager for a chance to join the Navy. The working division would concentrate the dregs of the ship, the men of doubtful capabilities, into one organization where their merits and demerits would quickly show up.
Put the working division under the first lieutenant s assistants, where parties could be apportioned with regularity and with due regard to the amount of work required to be done. Do away with hand calls from all divisions working under a petty officer from another division. Avoid that loss of time which now occurs in the process of gathering a working party together and running down the stragglers who persist in straying away.
Out of this system a morale would develop that would eclipse our fondest dreams. A man would do his day’s work with enhanced zest knowing that when he finished it would be over without thought of answering hand calls, rigging movies screens, and standing anchor watches. He would take greater pride in his own cleaning station. He would have more time that he could depend on to study and read. He would know that if a man ahead of him lay down on the job or was incompetent, he would quickly be relieved, thereby giving him an opportunity to take his place.
Year by year, the excellence of personnel would increase. A good man doesn’t like to live with a ship’s “louse” in the division any more than a division officer wants him in the division. It would be a source of pride to the thousands of fine men that we have in the Navy today to be more certain that they would be protected against having to live with a “louse” or do the work for a “slacker.” Their lives would be happier. A greater spirit of competition is the thing that we need for our enlisted men in the face of the present stagnation in promotion.
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We should not overlook the tendency of war to abridge the means of transporting products to their proper markets. I recommend it to the serious reflection of Congress how far it may be expedient . . . to render our commerce and agriculture less dependent upon foreign bottoms.—George Washington.
The value of shipping as a branch of industry is enhanced by the dependence of so many other branches upon it. In times of peace it multiplies competitors for employment in transportation, and in time of war . . . it is a resource of defense.—Thomas Jefferson.