The navy learned a lesson of priceless value nearly a century ago when the Navy Department undertook the execution of a peace-time project that had only a remote relationship to the Navy’s primary mission of preparation for war on the seas. The results of that lesson, which had some unfortunate and costly consequences both to the Navy and to the nation, afford invaluable warning signals for present and future guidance.
Not unnaturally, the congressional mind in 1847, noting that naval side lines included slave-ship chasing, coastal surveys, “showing the flag,” ferrying diplomatic officers, and serving as funeral ships, pitched on the Navy to supervise the building and operation of a newly conceived ocean mail service in ships powered by steam, then just coming into general marine use. Government loans, under the new law, provided funds to private individuals for building the vessels and federal subsidies were to be paid to the operating companies in return for transporting the mails overseas.
At the time in question, the Navy being composed almost entirely of sailing vessels, the Department was becoming conscious of the need of a fleet of war steamers. And steamers, opined Congress, were what the government must have to carry the mails to Europe and from Atlantic ports to California and Oregon. To provide for these two needs, Congress reasoned, one appropriation could be made to do for both. We would say to the contractors, “Design these vessels to be suitable for mail service and passengers, but at the same time design them so they may be converted into ‘war steamers’ when war impends.”
Thus two birds with one stone, as per congressional calculation—a new Navy of war steamers and an American ocean mail service, independent of gouging foreign shipowners. Not only this, Congress was persuaded that the law would provide unique advantages to the Navy—a naval officer would supervise the building of the mail steamers and naval officers would command them. Passed midshipmen would stand the deck watches. Thus would our naval officers acquire what they then lacked—invaluable experience at sea in steam-driven vessels.
Thus there came into being, through legislation in 1847, a mismated union of the Navy, divers private citizens, and the Post-Office Department. The latter drew up the mail contracts and certified to the Navy Department such service as had been performed. The Secretary paid the bills out of naval appropriations. Anomalously, the ship operators “owned” the govenmentally mortgaged vessels and operated them while giving voice to the fiction that command was vested in officers of the Navy.
The fatal weakness of the “organization,” countenanced by the law, was revealed almost tragically in the fact that the civilian crews of the U. S. mail ships, notably the engineer officers, refused to obey any orders issued by the naval officer in command. The lawmakers had blandly ignored the anomaly of a naval officer giving orders to a ship’s crew who, so far as the law concerned them, thought they could obey or disobey, almost with impunity. Inevitably the time came when this caused a mutiny in one ship.
Meanwhile, nearly everyone was satisfied. Public urgings that mail to California gold rushers and to settlers in Oregon be transported in government ships had been complied with. The Navy, as Congress envisioned the scheme, ought to jump at the chance to possess a potential fleet of war steamers, not chargeable to naval appropriations in time of peace. Obviously, the Navy was to get something for nothing and the Post-Office Department would not have to pay either, except the stipend to the mail clerks who rode in the ships.
The scheme got off to a flying start under the impetus of approving words by President Polk. The Navy’s most experienced officer in steam vessels, Captain Matthew Calbraith Perry, was ordered as “Superintending Agent” for the building and operation of the infant federal ocean mail. Naval officers to command the ships were to be selected by the private operators with the approval of the Secretary of the Navy. Civilian officers were to be exclusively entrusted with the ships’ navigation, engineering, and executive duties.
Significantly, before any mail steamer had put to sea, President Polk (1848), was optimistic. He said:
Contracts for the transportation of ocean mail in steamers, convertable into war steamers, promises to realize all the benefits to our commerce and our Navy which were anticipated. The first steamer thus secured to the Government was launched, December, 1847; in another year not less than 17 will be afloat. While this great national advantage is secured, our social and commercial intercourse is increased and promoted With Germany, Great Britain, and other parts of Europe; countries on the Pacific, especially Oregon and California, and between the southern and northern sections in between. Not only is considerable revenue to be expected from postage, but the connected lines from New York to Chagres and thence across the Isthmus to Oregon cannot fail to exert beneficial influence, not now to be estimated, on the interests, manufactures, commerce, navigation, and currency of the United States. . . . Under authority given the Secretary of the Navy, 3 ocean steamers have been contracted for and sent to the Pacific to enter the mail service between Panama, Oregon, and intermediate ports.
The next year, sharp and logically expressed opposition to a navy union with a federal ocean mail subsidization was voiced by the Secretary of the Navy in the Taylor administration, William Ballard Preston. The "system," as he called it, "should be curtailed and reliance thereafter be placed on American enterprise," which he was confident would not fail the nation.
Striking out at Congress, the Secretary expressed the conviction that the ocean mail subsidy legislation had been defectively framed and that it ought to be clarified, the better “to define the rights and powers of the Government.” He further recommended that,
the experiment be kept in check and that Congress go no farther in this proposed union of public and private means in this system of ocean steamships as calculated to promote the interests of the Navy.
Whatever Congress may think with regard to the transportation of mail, passengers, and freight, this proposed mode and manner of increasing the Navy will be found in the end to be subversive of the objects to be promoted. ... I deprecate any further extension of this system as fraught with incalculable mischief and immense expenditure of public funds. . . . We have gone far enough for a test. I recommend leaving this problem to private enterprise, feeling assured that in the struggle, American enterprise and American ingenuity and industry will be successful.
Congressional reasoning was faulty, Preston implied, in its argument that we could increase our Navy by following in England’s footsteps in providing subsidies for ocean mail steamers. He said:
Those foreign governments from whose examples the present system has been adopted have immense independent steam navies in which their officers and men get proper naval education and discipline. On this they rely for their naval strength. Until we have provided a steam power for our Navy, adequate for our protection, I cannot but consider as premature and unwise to regard the proposed system as answering the necessities and wants of the Government for a naval establishment.
Secretary Preston’s convictions had the support of the best technical officers in the Navy Department and of Commodore Matthew C. Perry who had been detailed as “Superintending Agent of the U. S. Ocean Mail Service.” Perry was inconsistent in that he expressed partially contrary views to Preston’s successor, Will A. Graham. In a special report to Preston, the Engineer in Chief of the Navy, Charles H. Haswell, stated:
Commercial vessels, such as these mail steamers, are not strong enough in bow or stern to support naval guns. With respect to durability, naval vessels are a half better. Naval steamers are built stronger; have better materials in their engines and boilers.
Paddle wheels are better for commercial steamers but propellers (such as are installed in naval ships) provide the best combination with sail. Paddle wheels are inferior for war steamers. Large commercial steamers are incapable of efficient and economical war service, without extensive alterations and great loss of time, which would not be repaid by their durability or performance. . . . Their frames are not solid, but are abut bolted. They lack stability. Their cost of upkeep in the first year is equal to their original cost; they are laid up for repairs a third of the time. Their boilers are of iron; naval boilers are copper. The steam frigate Mississippi’s fuel cost is one half that of a mail steamer; her total repairs annually are less than the repairs to the paddle wheels of a mail ship. The first mail steamers are inadequate, due to poor construction, and are incapable of any useful naval service. . . .
When required for war service . . . dependence on them would be as disastrous to the nation, as their construction has proved disastrous to our American reputations as engineers and constructors. The Mississippi, now nine years old, is the most efficient and economical vessel afloat. Her engines drive a larger immersed area of hull at higher speed at less cost for repairs and less fuel than any steamer yet built.
If mail steamer service is to be considered as an integral or even as an incidental part of the Navy, it is to be considered as subversive of utility, economy, and efficiency.
In further support of Preston, Commodore Skinner, Chief of the Bureau of Construction and Repair, stated:
Paddle wheels are best for commercial mail steamers; screw propellers best for naval vessels. Commercial ships require a different model; they cannot be converted for war without great expense and would be inferior to ships designed for war.
In corroboration of Skinner, Naval Constructor John Lenthall said:
It is to be doubted that paddle wheels are best for war steamers. The screw propeller is requisite in combination with sail to the end that war steamers may cruise. Mail steamers are not strong enough forward and aft to carry guns.
Replying to Preston’s interrogatories, Commodore Perry said:
The form and dimensions that are best for war steamers are not suitable for commercial steamers, the latter being designed for speed, passengers, and freight, without regard in their construction for the protection of the engines and boilers from cannon shots. The proportions of war steamers with paddle wheels: 6 times the breadth for length; 2 thirds of breadth for depth. Commercial steamers must be longer and have less draft. Depth in war steamers is necessary to put machinery below water line. Commercial steamers are built of unseasoned woods; they have a durability of 10 years if they escape rot the first year. War steamers have to be stronger to carry guns. The service of mail steamers in war is only contingent and temporary. The cost to convert them will be large and in no respect can they be equal to vessels built for naval service nor should they interfere with increasing the permanent steam Navy. Light draft mail steamers lack strength and many essentials requisite for war purposes.
Perry, however, reported differently to Will Graham. The mail steamer Ohio, he said, could “be easily converted.” She, like the others, had only “to be razeed, in doing which ornamental deck work should not be defaced.” Reporting on the mail steamer Tennessee, Perry said she “could easily be converted to carry 8 Paixhan 8-inch guns.”
Preston was not alone in his opposition to the system. Postmaster General Johnson stated:
The establishment of an ocean mail line to the Pacific coast requires money from the Treasury. It is a doubtful policy. As to whether the ships furnished under the contracts are built according to contract [for conversion to war craft], I inquired of the Secretary of the Navy. He referred me to Executive Document 91.
He added that there had been no official stipulations as to “model, construction, or machinery.” They needed only “to be convertible.” To convert the ships, he said,
required considerable alterations which could never make them equal to steamers originally designed and built expressly for the Navy, yet they may be available in emergency at no great expense.
In his next annual report, Secretary Preston stated:
My opinion has been confirmed by our experience of last year. Contracts that contemplated an ocean mail union with the Navy and improvement in the efficiency of naval power have not and will not prove beneficial. The vessels are not in naval service; merely in mail service. I see no connexion between mail service and the Navy. Place them in the Postoffice Department.
After Preston, Secretary of the Navy Graham straddled the question thus:
In consequence of the adaptation of mail steamers, principally for speed and transportation, it has been doubted by officers of great intelligence whether they can be converted into war steamers of the first class without much additional expense since they neither have strength to bear heavy firmaments nor to withstand heavy cannonading, but as long as warfare at sea permits seizure of private property of enemy peoples, found afloat on the ocean, they can always be employed to great advantage under light armaments against enemy commerce. With speed to overtake merchantmen and at same time to elude pursuit of cruisers, they must prove formidable means of annoyance to merchantmen. They would be guerrillas of the sea.
The next year John P. Kennedy, Graham’s successor, veered more to the side of Preston thus:
The mail contract law, authorizing government appropriations for vessels built under it available to the Navy, I recommend that one of these be selected and equipped with proper armaments. I make this suggestion from a persuasion that it is a matter of importance to the Government practically to determine by experiment a question on which much doubt is entertained, and which is necessary to solve, whether these steamers are really adequate to the demands of the Navy and may be usefully converted to war steamers. The determination of this question may settle a point of great importance, touching the reliance to be placed on these ships in a sudden emergency, a point much more safely to be settled in peace than in moments of excitement and pressure when no other resources are at hand to meet the consequences of failure.
The pricking of the navy-ocean mail bubble thus begun, it remained for the new Postmaster General to continue the process. His office was in receipt of growing protests based on extravagantly large sums of money paid to private mail ship contractors while interior sections of the country suffered from poor mail service or none at all. Shipping interests, privately financed, and now possessed of many new and fast ships, demanded the privilege of bidding on contracts to transport ocean mails, particularly from New York to Chagres and from Panama to Oregon. The gold rush had created large numbers of new vessels.
The government unwisely having made 10-year contracts with the original contractors was faced with the alternative of cancellation, in which case it was legally bound to take over the subsidized mail steamers, or of continuing with mounting extravagance. This latter was evidenced by the report of the Postmaster General, citing the bid of the Nicaragua Mail Steamship Company to transport the mails from New York to Chagres. If the government should accept this, “there would be an annual savings of between $400,000 and $500,000.” The contract with the Collins Line for carrying the mails to England, he stated, should be canceled and the business opened up to free competition. This company’s contract was good for $33,000 a trip.
Continuing, the Postmaster General reported:
If Congress intends the mail service to be sustained from money from postage, these ocean mail charges should not be placed on it. In providing for building and equipping naval steamers, Congress seems to have meant to encourage the erection by individuals of war steamers, which might on emergency be ready for public use. Such being its design, and the carrying of mail only incidental purpose, the public treasury should bear the cost. The Postoffice Department should not be burdened with the expense of a service not belonging to it. The ocean mail service from the Atlantic to the Pacific has become a monopoly, excluding competition, and injurious to the Atlantic coast and to California and seems to demand from the Government a withdrawal of the fostering care and sustaining aid it has extended to the lines in question.
The ocean mail house of cards, jointly occupied by the Navy, the Post-Office Department, and the private shipping contractors, fell down in 1858 when the 10-year contracts expired and the Navy and the ocean mail were put asunder. The mail steamers were worn out. Mail contracts were in keen demand, notably by “Commodore” Vanderbilt’s ships carrying passengers from New York to California via Lake Nicaragua and by other lines connecting at the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
Under the changed condition of affairs, Congress legislated thus:
It shall not be lawful for the Postmaster General to make any steamship or other new contracts to carry the mails on sea longer than for two years nor at any compensation larger than the sea and inland postage.
Before narrating the mutiny on board the U. S. mail steamer Georgia, commanded by Lieutenant David D. Porter, U. S. Navy, a brief description of the ships will be of interest. The hulls were of unseasoned woods, and the tonnage varied from 600 to 2,000, costing approximately $65 a ton. The machinery plant consisted of one engine of the side lever type and two iron boilers. Perry thought there should be two engines and “three or four boilers.” Horsepower for the larger ships was 1,000.
The horsepower was computed by this rule: Diameter of cylinders in inches times cube root of stroke in feet divided by 47. The air pumps must condense ¾ the capacity of the cylinders; the steam passages in the slide valves to have 310 cubic inches capacity. The paddle wheels had 56 buckets; each boiler had 315 tubes; and the steam “room” in the boilers was 7 times the capacity of the cylinders. There were 2 smoke pipes, each 6.5 feet in diameter, rising 42 feet above the deck. Ships having 4 boilers placed 2 forward of the engine and 2 aft.
The coal capacity of Porter’s command was 700 tons; she burned anthracite or bituminous. The paddle wheels were of wrought iron and the steam pressure averaged 15 pounds per square inch. The “coal bins” had a capacity for 20 days steaming. Engine cylinder diameter varied between 70 and 100 inches; the stroke was approximately 12 feet. The speed was about 13.5. Porter, however, did much better. With a 16-foot draft, he “made 15 knots on 15 pounds of steam pressure;” 16 revolutions of the paddle wheels per minute sent her along at 14 knots. He drove her from Havana to New York in the fastest time hitherto made—3 days and 20 hours. Once he carried 700 passengers and a crew of 500. The Georgia’s sister-ship, the Ohio commanded by Lieutenant James Findlay Schenck, was described by her commander as “scudding beautifully.”
In spite of official recommendations that the civilian officers and crew of the mail steamers be made subject to the Navy Regulations, nothing was done to make the naval officers commanders in fact. The inevitable happened at sea on board the Georgia when Captain Porter came to grips with mutinous officers in the engineer department. He reported:
I was obliged to put the chief engineer off duty for disrespect and incapacity. Acting by his influence, four assistant engineers refused to acknowledge anyone’s authority on board. I put them in double irons and confined them to their rooms, treating them as mutineers. I kept the chief in his room with a watch at the door to prevent him from communication with the others, notwithstanding which he endeavored to tamper with the firemen and get up a mutiny in the ship The example made of the officers had a salutary effect on the crew. It is an anomaly in the Navy or mercantile marine for the commander to be in a manner subject to dictation by a set of engineers no matter what their ability. If the law does not regulate the matter, serious results will follow. One or two bad precedents will bring on results to be regretted. The wholesome restraint of discipline can be had by regulations enlisting all in the Navy. ... I am facing five law suits for putting men in durance for mutinous conduct and though it is not likely I shall be cast by any honest jury, yet I could ill afford to pay lawyers for my defense.
When I reported the circumstances to the operating company, they neither approved nor disapproved my action. It was the only one I could take for the best interests of the company. New laws are necessary to regulate the powers and responsibilities of naval officers in these mail ships. As matters now stand, a commander is subject to law suits by every dirty coal heaver who feels aggrieved. Naval commanders in the ships have no guarantee that the company will assume responsibility for the maintenance of subordination. One law suit will impoverish a naval officer. The Department will see the importance of placing the commander in a position free from vexatious law suits. My duty as a pioneer in the mail service has been to put it on a footing beneficial to all parties. The owners will consult their own best interests by giving support to my recommendations. The service can become a credit to the Navy and infinitely advantageous to our younger officers.
Before the unhappy business was finally disposed of, the Navy got a very black eye from an unexpected source. One of the mail steamers being fitted out at New York was purchased by the newly formed German Confederation for the nucleus of a navy. At the time this took place, the German States were at war with Denmark. At the request of the German government, Commodore Perry accepted the responsibility of arming the ship and providing her with officers and crew. His authority came from Secretary of the Navy John Y. Mason, who directed the commandant of the New York Navy Yard to install the gun carriages and authorized navy owned guns to be installed on board.
This unfortunate naval episode never could have come to pass if it had not been for the alliance, forced on the Navy, with the U. S. mail ship service.
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IT IS, I think, a distinct gain for a man to realize that the military principle of concentration applies to the designing of a ship, to the composition of a fleet, or to the peace distribution of a navy, as effectually as it does to the planning of a campaign or to an order of battle.—Mahan, Strategy.