The Sabbatical Year
(See page 487, this issue)
Commander R. 0. Davis, U. S. Navy. —Commander Henry presents an interesting suggestion. He treats his subject, on the whole, from the angle of a medical officer who has observed and desires to improve the physical condition of his associates as a group, in addition to performing his routine duties in treating their individual ailments. However, he also touches the matter of improving services rendered by achieving a higher general degree of professional ability and output through the broadening and educational effect of his plan.
A line officer is loath to admit at any time that he “can’t take it” physically. We all begin our careers with excellent machinery and, unless we drop by the wayside with some definite physical deficiency, we nurse the idea that our bodies are good to the last gasp. I submit that such a delusion is not without virtue in a fighting man’s make-up, but common sense brands the idea as a bit fanatical nevertheless, and we must agree that modes of living and working should be tempered to meet physical conditions resulting from increasing age and service life. With that in view one can appreciate Commander Henry’s argument that “breathing spells” in our continuous years of duty might well be utilized to improve endurance and efficiency of minds and bodies for the good of the service. With a few notable exceptions, which deserve tremendous credit, men below par physically have contributed little in naval history.
The professional aspect of the suggestion and the complications of operating such a scheme present various difficulties and considerable room for discussion. Most of us feel that there is now far from enough time to cover the professional reading, study, and investigation that should parallel an officer’s normal duties. Also, and especially in the higher grades, it takes careful planning to get the proper sequence and character of duty necessary to attain that important factor in promotion, a well-rounded career. In the lower grades a growing list of professional subjects and postgraduate courses crowd the years of shore duty to the utmost, and a lost year of sea duty would be a loss indeed for a young officer in training.
However, assuming that the time for “breathing” can be found, let us consider Commander Henry’s plan in regard to benefits other than those resulting from improved bodies and refreshed minds. He mentions a year of self-improvement through the acquisition of new viewpoints, study of foreign languages, travel, experience in civil life and the development of new ideas. In my opinion all are excellent courses to pursue and I would add that much professional information and data of value to both the individual and the service could be gained, sifted, and recorded. We cannot avoid admitting that our crowded professional lives are prone to result in limited horizons and grooved trails. Broader viewpoints and experiences are greatly to be desired in the progress of any profession, and certainly ours is no exception. Can we afford to neglect them because we are buried in our own immediate problems?
Again assuming that time can be spared for a sabbatical year, what would be the attitude toward such “duty” in the review of an officer’s service record? It seems to me that two factors are involved: (1) the general acceptance and practice of the plan; (2) the manner in which each individual would employ his time and the amount he would contribute to the service for having had it. I do not believe that the activities of such a year should be restricted as to nature or locality, but various pursuits could be suggested and encouraged and certainly all officers ordered to such “duty” should be required to make periodic reports and assure the department that they are making the best of their time.
Anyone can well appreciate the additional burden the plan would contribute to an already overloaded detail office. However, under peace-time conditions it would not be impossible to assign a sabbatical year of every other shore cruise to officers having over ten years service. I do not agree with Commander Henry that new legislation would be unnecessary. Very few officers could afford to take a year on half pay. New legislation required would be a real obstacle, but not an un- surmountable one if properly presented and the necessity proved.
Summarizing, I submit that the plan is interesting and worthy of consideration, that it should contribute to the physical and professional welfare of all officers and to their value to the service, that it would be impracticable for officers of less than ten years service, and that Commander Henry is quite correct in stressing the importance of good health, fresh minds, and broad knowledge and experience as affecting the “spirit of the Navy.”
Lo! The Poor Janitor Thinks
(See page 31, January, 1936, Proceedings)
Chief Gunner F. E. Church, U. S. Navy.—This is a very timely article and excellent food for thought. Damage control is important and will be increasingly so. A great many officers agree with Ensign Fahy that a rating of “damage controlman” should be established.
Salvage and damage control are sisters. Since the salvage of the S-4, the Navy has established a school at Washington, D.C. for the training of deep sea divers, and here they acquire a good knowledge of salvage work. These men are taken from various ratings and as a rule go to salvage vessels where they are mainly divers, and often find little work in their specialty ratings. It is true that they receive extra compensation ranging from ten to twenty dollars, but they are often handicapped in advancement in rating. The writer was connected with diving and salvage work for five years and has known of cases where the designation of diver was a detriment to the man and the service. The man may be an excellent diver and salvage man but a poor gunner’s mate or boatswain’s mate. Yet he holds the rate and keeps someone else waiting on the list and always has the chance of being disqualified and returning to general service.
Why not a rating of damage controlman? Utilize the Deep Sea Diving School for the training as very little change in the curriculum would be necessary. The damage controlmen would become our divers and salvage men. The diving pay would remain as at present. The creation of such a rating would insure to the service a permanent corps of deep sea divers and experienced salvage men. The damage controlmen would replace the quotas of divers now authorized for the various types of vessels.
The Navy’s Part in the Fur Seal Industry
(Seepage 236, February, 1936, Proceedings)
Lieutenant E. M. Eller, U. S. Navy. —This article covering a relatively unknown feature, even to us in the service, of the Navy’s activities is not only interesting but also shows the value of and need for international negotiations. Today the hunting and killing of seals is lost in the multitude of the United States’ far greater interests, yet little more than a generation ago the dispute over the seal fisheries was agitating the United States and Canada almost to the point of war.
When “Seward’s Folly,” as Alaska was termed at the time of its purchase, was acquired in 1867, the right of seal fishing on the coasts thereof passed with it. Such rights were of no considerable importance at the time as far as other nations were concerned; but were quite profitable to the United States, for in the next twenty years she received sufficient revenue from them to more than cover the original purchase price of this “worthless waste of ice and snow.”
In recognition of the value of the seals, Russia had protected the herd on the Pribilof Islands from the thoughtless slaughter that was exterminating the fur seal elsewhere. By Congressional acts in 1869 and later, the United States continued this protective policy. Certain factors, however, soon destroyed her power to prevent the killing of the animals, and converted the inoffensive seal into an international bombshell. Developing rapidly as an ocean-going vessel, especially after the Civil War, the steamship made it easier to hunt out seals; despite protection of them on shore, firearms introduced such efficiency in methods of killing that they had little chance even at sea; and of primary importance was the rise in value of their hides. As the animal was killed off in other parts of the world, the average price each fur brought rose from $2.50 in 1870 to $30 in 1890. Consequently men of many nationalities set out seeking seals in the Bering Sea. As Commander Cunningham shows, each vessel carried a number of sealing boats. When they arrived where the herd was feeding, two factors made them indiscriminate in their wholesale killings: (1) most of the feeders were females; (2) it was the pelt and not the gender of the owner that determined the sale price of $30.
By the 1880’s, pelagic sealing became so bad that the United States officially attempted (what Jefferson had long ago suggested of the Gulf Stream) to made a mare clausum of the Bering Sea. The Treasury Department ruled that the waters of this sea were part of the Territory of Alaska, and in the summer of 1886 its revenue cutter Corwin captured 3 British Columbia vessels engaged there in sealing 50 to a 100 miles from shore. Despite strong British protests, other vessels were seized in following years. Coincident with this difficulty, the perennial Newfoundland fisheries dispute between the United States and Great Britain-Canada reached one of its crises. As a result, feeling ran strong on both sides of the border.
It so happened that in claiming dominion of the Bering Sea the United States was finding the shoe on the other foot and was executing a right about face. In 1821 when the Great Bear of Moscow was a menace from the north to American expansion to the Pacific, it was Russia by imperial ukase who proclaimed control not only of the northwest coast of America but of the Bering Sea as well. This ukase became one of the primary causes of the proclamation that we know today as the Monroe Doctrine. At the same time it led the United States and England to deny the tenability of Russian claims to the Bering Sea. Yet half a century later our nation was basing her rights upon the previous ones Russia had held in this sea, and had passed on with Alaska.
Soon after her first seizures of Canadian sealers, the United States commenced to seek international protection for the fast disappearing seal. The attempts failed, however, because of the opposition of Canada. Neither the United States nor England (acting for her Dominion) would retreat from her demands for certain privileges. The United States seemed morally justified, for no one condoned the callous slaughter of the helpless animals. On the other hand, she was also the one who would profit by any protection of them, for if they could be killed only on land Canada would not only receive nothing, but the United States’ revenue would multiply as the protected seals multiplied. So, though she built her case on moral rights, she was the one whose purse was hurt when the moral laws were violated; and she, in turn, was the nation who heard the comfortable clink of gold in her coffers when others abided by these righteous moralities.
That there was a moral problem involved is unquestionable; and all the countries affected by the sealing issue were moved by it. But that they were moved less than by the chance for income is evidenced by the agreement finally reached in 1911. It had begun to appear that the fur seal would soon join the great auk as a sea voyager exterminated by man. The threatened loss of all revenue probably had considerable to do with America’s willingness to share the profits, and with other nations’ acceptance of a lesser slice than they might otherwise have demanded. Anything was more than the nothing that was approaching for everyone. As Commander Cunningham shows in part, the final agreement divided the revenue from the seal fisheries between the United States, Japan, Russia, and England (Canada). Deep sea sealing above 13° North Latitude in the Pacific was prohibited; 30 per cent of the pelts taken on land by each of the signatories were to be divided among the others, that is, Great Britain and Japan each received 15 per cent of the skins taken by the United States and Russia; and the last two nations, with Great Britain, 10 per cent each of those taken in Japan.
The effectiveness of this agreement that tempered moral necessities with division of the financial spoils demonstrates, as we have mentioned, the need for wise international arbitration. Likewise, the problem it removed from the list of those disturbing world peace is only one of the many that evidence the widespread contacts that any nation fronting on the sea must inevitably have, that declare the ceaseless need for a navy, and that show the futility of the United States’ attempting to stay out of world affairs when her interests are unescapably woven by the sea into those of all the world.
History frequently has a joker hidden somewhere. The irony of this once bitter problem of the seals is that although Canada was the villain doing the protesting and committing herself to the unpopular defense of inhumane pelagic sealing, it was probably Americans as much as anyone else who were engaged in this form of piracy, under Canadian registry, perhaps from British Columbia, but Americans just the same. In The Rhyme of the Three Sealers, a ballad of three American ships operating out of Japan, Kipling sings of similar unlawful depredations in Russian rookeries:
Now this is the Law of the Muscovite, that he
proves with shot and steel,
When ye come by his isles in the Smoky Sea ye
must not take the seal,
But since our women must walk gay and money
buys their gear,
The sealing-boats they filch that way at hazard
year by year.
English they be and Japanese that hang on the
Brown Bear's dank,
And some be Scot, but the worst, God wot, and
the boldest thieves, be Yank I