A Strong Feature of Naval Education
Commander H. E. Rossell (C.C.), U. S. Navy.—A significant development is taking place in this country in the field of engineering education. It is the extension of the co-operative plan which calls for students to divide their time between the engineering schools and industrial establishments. For best results the academic curriculums and the outside work programs are co-ordinated and the faculties exercise a degree of supervision over the activities of students during their periods away from the engineering schools.
The co-operative plan brings the students into contact with the realities of their professions and, moreover, adds meaning and importance to academic courses which otherwise might seem to the students to consist largely of tiresome abstractions. Not least among the merits of the co-operative plan is the opportunity it offers to gain through observation and experience an understanding of labor’s point of view and an effective technique in the handling of personnel.
The course in marine transportation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology presents an example of the application of the co-operative plan to a branch of engineering in which practical considerations are of paramount importance. At the end of their junior year students of this course leave the Institute for a full year of training at sea on vessels of the Merchant Marine. Normally their travels during this interval take them to the four corners of the earth. One would be a dullard indeed who returned from this experience without an intimate knowledge of the sea, of the ships that ply upon it, and of the men who man those ships and handle their cargoes. Certainly the average student upon completion of the year at sea would return to the Institute equipped to derive the maximum of benefit from his final year of study.
To naval officers the foregoing remarks may be reminiscent of their training as midshipmen, for the co-operative plan has been in operation at the Naval Academy for many years. Indeed this plan has been applied also to the later careers of officers through the media of the Postgraduate School, the Fleet, and the Naval War College. It appears then that the Navy has been a pioneer in an important phase of engineering education, though it has received little or no credit for its contributions.
Football in the Early Days of the Academy
(See page 1784, December, 1938, Proceedings)
Admiral Hugh Rodman, U. S. Navy (Retired).—If my memory serves me right, and I believe it does, I am very much of the opinion that your article at the foot of page 1784, of your December number, entitled “Football in the Early Days of the Academy,” is somewhat in error both as to date and facts. When I was a first classman, 1879-80, the Academy played a team from Johns Hopkins, I think in the autumn of 1879. I was a member of the team and think that Parke and Leiper of my class were also members, as well as Higgins of ’82, and O’Leary of ’83; I cannot recall any others.
But, at any rate, there is a photograph of our team in existence, and I am under the impression that a copy of it was given to Captain Jonas Ingram when he was the head of the Department of Athletics at the Academy, and that he had it framed and hung in that Department, where it no doubt remains to this day.
As I recall the game, it was played on a rectilinear field, without yardage grids or goal posts, located about where Dahlgren Hall stands today. It was used for drills and parades and incidentally to pasture the Admiral’s cow.
Standing conspicuously within the quadrangle, near the center, but a little to one side, was an old mulberry tree, several feet in diameter, which was a well-known landmark, and possibly used as such for local navigational purposes. But of this I am quite certain, that its rough bark took its full toll of skin and hair from some of the players who collided with it, and added its share to the bruises and sprains suffered by others. So far as the rules governing the game are concerned, I can only recall one—there was to be no slugging. Nor were there any signals, strategic maneuvers, or prearranged team play; it was everyone for himself in individual play, and catch as catch can when it came to tackling.
In its most approved form it was customary in tackling to get a fist full of your opponent’s meat round or about his short ribs, hang on like a bulldog, and down him by any means that promised the greatest success. As for protection against this, the midshipmen wore close fitting canvas jackets, snugly laced, so that it was extremely difficult to get a grip on our bodies, while our opponents wore woolen jerseys. After the game when we stripped in the dressing-room, our preparedness gave ample evidence of its worth, for while we showed some scars of battle in these parts, the Hopkins team was liberally decorated with bandages and adhesive plaster round or about their waistlines.
Incidentally, it might be mentioned that the Hopkins team, man for man, was much older, more mature, and would average fully 20 pounds heavier than the midshipmen.
So far as I am aware this was the first time that the Academy ever engaged in football competition with any outsiders. I cannot recall the score, but the Academy won.
There is another reason why I have good cause to remember this game. One of my instructors who was rather taciturn and noted for giving low marks, particularly to those who stood low in their class, a condition in which I seemed to excel, was an ardent promoter of athletics, and a very decided football fan. When by some fluke or otherwise I was credited with winning some decisive play which augmented our score, he, for the once, seemed to forget all of his usual dignified reserve and enthusiastically joined in the applause. But what was far more to the point to me was that thereafter my marks ran higher, and I managed to make the necessary 2.5 and get my diploma.
Under these conditions, it would be difficult for me to forget this game.
Larboard and Starboard
(See page 1775, December, 1958, Proceedings)
Dr. Ing. W. V.. Mendl M.I.N.A.—Quite recently a note was reproduced in the Proceedings from the Mariner’s Mirror, according to which the origin of the word "larboard" is and remains doubtful. This is quite true and the reader may wonder why it is so if he takes into consideration the following.
The designation for both sides—right and left, looking forward—of a vessel is fairly standardized all over the world, if we except those countries the inhabitants of which do not speak either a Germanic or Romanic (Latin) language.
Thus the English "starboard" is visibly derived from "steerboard," as may easily be concluded from the German Steuerbord, the Low German (Plattdeutsch) Stürbord, the Dutch sturrboord and the Scandinavian styrbord.
But neither "larboard" nor "port" has its equivalent in any other language. The German says backbord, the Dutch bakboord, the Swede babord, and the Dane and the Norwegian bagbord.
These designations of both sides of the ship are obvious and there seems no need to dwell upon the vessels from the times of the Vikings and the early Middle Ages, having their rudder—better said their steering oar—on the starboard side so that the steersman turned his back to port. This, being the left side of the vessel, was brought to the quay wall, as we are told by the Mariner’s Mirror.
However, there is an objection to this pretended custom: if the steersman turned his back to port, that is to say if he was in the most natural position for steering with the starboard rudder, he could not see the quay alongside which he had to bring his ship by steering and that just in the most important moment.
In Romanic languages the equivalent for “starboard” is tribord, in French, estribor in Spanish, tribord in Rumanian, and used to be at some time tribordo in Italian. Whereas “port” is called bâbord in French, babor in Spanish, babord in Rumanian, and was formerly babordo in Italian.
In this latter language both designations, tribordo and babordo, have been replaced by destra (starboard) and sinistra (port), that is to say by “right” and “left,” as being of more Italian origin.
There is an evident connection between the backbord of the Germanic languages and the bâbord of the Romanic (Latin) ones. On the other side tribord has been derived from destribord, meaning right board (note also the Spanish estribor).
There can be no acceptance of the version one hears sometimes in French quarters, that over the entrance to the battery of the old men-of-war was inscribed “Battrie. The dividing of the word into two syllables, one of which was inscribed on the bulkhead on each side of the center line of the vessel, is said to have accounted for the words bâbord (in French the letter t would not have been pronounced) and tri(e)bord. This is simply a quibble, moreover, as the regular French word is not “battrie” but “batterie.”
In other languages the designations for both sides of a vessel are not so much standardized, thus as in Russian and in Greek. They simply say the right respectively the left side of the ship.
It may easily be that one language has taken over the words from another one. But be it as it may, the uniformity is impressing and the word “larboard”—or let it be “port”—the only exception to the rule, is significant.
To conclude with it may well be worth while to remind that “larboard” has been changed into “port” just because of its similarity with “starboard” and of the possibility of mistaking one for the other. Had “starboard” simply been changed into the older form “steerboard,” “larboard” being retained, that curious word “port” would have been obviated and the designations for both sides would have been ended in “ . . . board.”
★ ★ ★
The Loss of the Ticonderoga
(See page 185, February, 1939, Proceedings)
Commander Roy Pfapf, U. S. Navy.—The Ticonderoga of Lieutenant Rucker’s article in the February issue of the Naval Institute Proceedings had, under her original name, Camilla Rickmers, about two months’ naval service under a peculiar status very early in the World War.
The Camilla Rickmers was a German freighter that interned at Manila early in the World War and was taken over by the United States in February, 1917, along with all other German vessels interned in United States and Philippine ports.
The Asiatic Destroyer Division, consisting of the Bainbridge, Barry, Chauncey, Dale, and Decatur, all 420-tonners, was ordered to the war zone about the time the Camilla Rickmers was ready for sea, so the Rickmers was drafted into service as a temporary tender; some machine tools and stores were put aboard her at Cavite and she was given orders to rendezvous with the destroyers at Singapore in August, 1917.
The Rickmers had a civilian crew consisting of a few Americans, a deck force mainly Filipinos, and an engineers’ force mainly Chinese.
At Singapore, the Force Commander, Lieutenant Commander Harold R. Stark, U. S. Navy (now Rear Admiral Stark), with a staff of four officers and a small detachment of enlisted men, moved aboard, and Lieutenant Commander Stark hoisted his pennant. The Rickmers, not commissioned in the Navy and with a merchant crew except as noted above, now became the flagship and tender of the Asiatic Destroyers until about the middle of October, 1917, when the expedition arrived at Gibraltar, where the destroyers were to base.
At Gibraltar, the Camilla Rickmers was released from naval control and proceeded to the United States.
Irish Pennants
Lieutenant R. T. Sutherland, JR. (C.C.), U. S. Navy.—The introduction of steam vessels on the Pacific coast was delayed after the owner of the Telica, the first steamer on that coast, fired his pistol into a barrel of gunpowder while suffering a fit of melancholy and despair at his lack of success, and destroyed himself, his ship, and all but one of his crew . . . Whales are obliged to rise to the surface and spout at intervals varying from 10 to 15 minutes . . . The third steamer to cross the Atlantic, the Royal William, was fired upon by one of His Majesty’s frigates and forced to lie to until the officers were convinced that there was nothing diabolical in her construction. ... It was long the custom to locate the sick bay on the lowest inhabited deck at the forward end of the ship. This was the traditional arrangement, derived from the galley period. These quarters were given to the sick with the intention of isolating them and thus preserving the rest of the ship’s company from contagion. . . . Barnum, the great showman, honored the Monarch Line by permitting them to carry the celebrated elephant “Jumbo” as a passenger on the Assyrian Monarch in 1882. Boy crews of training ships manned the yards and rendered royal honors as he passed by, Lady Burdett Coults and party traveled from London to bid the brute farewell, and a baroness left money on deposit to purchase sweets for “Jumbo’s” passage. Periodically during the trip, the ship dropped elastic bags containing bulletins into the sea to report on his health and comfort.