Since responsibility for the successes and failures of the Naval Academy during its first century has rested on the shoulders of its thirty-two Superintendents, it may be said that the story of the Academy is largely the story of these thirty-two naval officers. Or, to refine this generalization a bit, if one could extract from their thirty-two biographies the Naval Academy chapters, the latter would constitute a very good history of the Naval Academy as a living, growing, and forever changing institution. All that can be attempted in this article will be the enumeration of a few highlights about the work of the Superintendents, with here and there a note about their naval careers which might serve to identify them for the reader.
The story of the Naval Academy, thus sketchily reflected, is a story of continual adaptation and change. As in the case of other naval establishments, the Naval Academy's lean years of meager appropriations have alternated with seasons of prosperity and growth. World Wars I and II both brought sizable expansions of the Academy's physical plant and student body, but even greater developments in laboratory and curriculum have come in peacetime, especially just following war periods when the naval profession has been busily digesting new technological developments and reorienting its ideas. War scares have afforded stimuli for change. An even more potent source of change became apparent after 1881, when for the first time a Naval Academy graduate assumed the reins as Superintendent. However great his love for his alma mater, no graduate has ever judged the Naval Academy to be perfect in every respect. The normal young graduate leaves the institution promising himself, "Now, when I get to be Superintendent, we will do it this way. . . .”
The result: The Naval Academy is a sword that is continually being forged and tempered and whetted, an intellectual weapon, an educational institution in which perennial change is the order of the day.
For over half a century the office of Superintendent has been considered one of the prize positions in the Navy—somewhat on a par with the assignment as commodore of the European Station in sailing ship days. As a shore station of considerable dignity and social standing it has often attracted officers at the peak of their careers. Some who have despised the tide-water climate of Annapolis, have prized the assignment as Superintendent because of the proximity to Washington. Some officers have been detailed to Annapolis to rest after strenuous duty afloat, or simply to mark time in pleasant academic surroundings until the statutory age limit for retirement overtook them.
Thus in a survey of the thirty-two officers who have served the Naval Academy as Superintendent it is quickly evident that their thirty-two administrations were unequal in achievement. The faces of past Superintendents that look down upon readers in the Naval Academy Library, grave or whimsical, humorous or sad, or well camouflaged by varying cuts of beard, are the faces of successful and outstanding naval officers. As administrators of an institution whose essential genius is continual adaptation and reorientation, each in his own time and in his own way has had the best interests of the Naval Academy and the Navy at heart. Each has helped to shape Naval Academy customs and traditions, though necessarily in varying measure.
For the purpose of this article the Superintendents may be divided into three chronological groups each constituting a phase of the Academy's development. Ten Superintendents from 1845 to 1881 may be called the "Sail-Steam" Group; eleven officers from 1881 to 1914 may be designated the "New Navy" Group; and the remaining eleven from 1914 to the present, the "Modern" Group.
The "Sail-Steam" Group
From 1845 to 1881 the Naval Academy was established, its first buildings and grounds were added to, its basic policies were charted, initial problems concerning the successful operation of the institution were encountered and solved, and the Naval Academy became an efficient training school to turn out officers for the sail-steam navy of the Civil War and Reconstruction periods.
Commander Franklin Buchanan (1845-47), the first Superintendent of the "Naval School," stands among America's immortals in peace and war. Since his part in founding the Academy has been discussed in another article of the Naval Academy series, it need not be discussed here. Buchanan later served with Perry in "opening" Japan, and was the only ex-Superintendent to resign from the U. S. Navy to fight for the South. His greatest fame came from his assignment to command the C.S.S. Virginia (Merrimack) and the C.S.S. Tennessee. "Buchanan Road" commemorates his service as "founder" of the "Naval School."
One of the gravest problems faced by Buchanan's immediate successors—Commander George Parker Upshur (1847-50), Commander Cornelius K. Stribling (1850-53), and Commander Louis Goldsborough (1853-57)—grew out of the difference in age between midshipmen appointed originally to the Naval Academy and the "oldsters," or midshipmen appointed to the fleet before the Academy was founded and sent to the Academy for a few months of "prepping" before their final examinations. Upshur and Stribling were both members of naval boards which sought to iron out this difficulty, though impatient midshipmen like George Dewey of the class of 1858 energetically resorted to fisticuffs and wrestling beneath the mess tables. Goldsborough, a hearty seaman of the old school who resented having to refer even minor disciplinary problems to Washington, was inclined to let such boys as Dewey settle their differences in their own way.
The Superintendents in the 1850's solved the problem of the "oldsters" by eliminating them altogether. As first established, the periods of study in Annapolis varied from two to four years with sea duty sandwiched between first and last years in Annapolis. This period during the 1850's became fixed at four continuous years in Annapolis with summer practice cruises under Naval Academy auspices. Signs reading "Upshur," "Stribling," and "Goldsborough" on roadways and walkways commemorate these milestones in the Naval Academy's formative years.
Mild-mannered and scholarly Captain George Smith Blake (1857-65), enjoyed a longer tenure than any other Superintendent because the outbreak of the Civil War frustrated the Navy Department in finding him a suitable relief. Secretary Gideon Welles, delighted with Blake's promptness in removing the Academy outside of threatened territory and construing his action as a fine indication of "fidelity to his trust under trying circumstances," kept Blake in this post throughout the Academy's wartime sojourn in Newport. Blake's administration, in its latter half, marks a hiatus in professional education, a holiday even from the primitive laboratory facilities that had been developed up to this time in Annapolis. Cultural subjects, a curriculum but slightly more professional than that of the average "Latin school," prevailed. Active and jocular youths like Winfield Scott Schley found the studies a bore. Charles Sigsbee, later Captain of the Maine at the time of her disaster, attributed the Academy's difficulty at the time to too elementary a schedule of studies. "From 1859 to 1863 I don't think I averaged three-quarters of an hour study per day," wrote Sigsbee; "Brighter students may have found it still easier. . . . I learned all my geometry between dismissal from breakfast and study hours, and that was about twenty minutes; I got through all right, too. The Academy was, in those days, very slipshod."
Their Newport holiday ended, the "naval cadets" were brought back to Annapolis for four years of vigorous keel-hauling under Vice Admiral David Dixon Porter (1865-69). As administrator of the Naval Academy, Admiral Porter employed the vigorous techniques he had so well learned at Vicksburg and Fort Fisher. Army hospitals were cleared off the yard, the three-story brick "New Quarters" was built, new lands were purchased, a new department of Steam Enginery was installed, athletics and social entertainments were organized to keep cadets occupied within the Naval Academy grounds. Harassed by a climate which he said was "killing me by inches," afire with ambition to make Annapolis a steppingstone to Admiral of the Navy, Porter revamped, reformed, and remade the Naval Academy in spite of the post-war financial depression. The Annapolis school now became in every sense a rival of West Point.
Commodore John Lorimer Worden, 1869- 74, of Monitor fame; Rear Admiral Christopher Raymond Perry Rodgers, 1874-78, June—November 1881, known as the "Chesterfield of the Navy"; the learned and literary Commodore Foxhall A. Parker, 1878-79; and Rear Admiral George Beall Balch, 1879-81, continued the general policies of Admiral Porter and brought the Naval Academy up to a high state of efficiency for the sail-steam navy. And this in spite of the wholesale decline of the Navy under the Grant administration. Unfortunately the dwindling of the Navy left too few billets for graduates and the morale of the students suffered a decline. Hazing became a major problem and would continue so until the late 1880's when the program of new naval construction offered hope for positions in the line upon graduation. Two bright features of this last decade under the "sail-steam" group of Superintendents were the establishment of the Naval Institute and the increased attention to Physics and Chemistry. It was in 1879 that a young Ensign, A. A. Michelson, then on duty at the Naval Academy, performed on the Academy's north sea wall his world-famed experiment to determine the velocity of light. Commodore Parker, who died on June 10, 1879, was the only Superintendent who has died in office. Admiral Balch, a fine officer of the old school to whom Mahan pays tribute in From Sail to Steam, completes the list of officers here listed in the "sail-steam" group.
The "New Navy" Group
On November 14, 1881, Captain Francis Munroe Ramsay became the first graduate of the Naval Academy to assume the office of Superintendent, and since his time, 1881-86, only graduates have held the office. Captain Ramsay was more than 6 feet tall, dignified and handsome, with closely clipped hair and neatly trimmed mustache. The Army and Navy Journal, after commenting that he might easily pass for a Manhattan clergyman, noted that he was known in the service as a "duty officer" who elevated "the traditions, precedents and customs of the service to the dignity of a cult," and held himself and others to an "exacting rule of fidelity to professional obligation." Reform and discipline were his watch words.
There was much to reform in the Naval Academy of the 1880's, and the discipline of midshipmen, undermined by the protracted naval depression, was his most trying problem. Appointed midshipman in 1850, after a year of desultory academic study, Ramsay had been sent to the St. Lawrence, frigate, for four years of sea duty in the Pacific before returning to complete the Annapolis course in 1855-56. An "oldster" when Dewey was an underclassman, he graduated two years ahead of Dewey. During the Civil War he had commanded the river ironclad Choctaw on the Mississippi under Admiral Porter, and after the war he had been attracted to ordnance duty at the Washington Navy Yard.
One of Ramsay's first reforms as Superintendent was to substitute naval insignia for the old military devices that had adorned the sleeves of naval cadets since Porter's time. Then partly as a move to break up hazing, he quartered the midshipmen by divisions. His new system provoked open rebellion on the part of midshipmen. Most of the student officers resigned in protest, and were awarded imprisonments on the Santee. A commencement exercise was ruined by the midshipmen's cheering in violation of orders All who cheered were mustered in the front of the Chapel, placed under arrest, and marched out from the commencement exercises, sans diplomas and in deep disgrace in front of proud parents and relatives.
Congress only aggravated Ramsay's disciplinary problem in 1882 when it decreed (1) that henceforth midshipmen after their four years of study in Annapolis should spend two years afloat before taking their final examinations, and (2) that only about 50 per cent of the graduates should then be commissioned, the lower half of each class being honorably discharged with a consolation award of $1,000 each.
To harsh law and strict discipline were added the run-down condition of the Academy's housing facilities. The "New Quarters," a three-story brick building, jerry-built on "made" ground in 1869, was now falling into decay. Its walls had cracked from top to bottom, seams had opened in its flooring. Steam from the laundry and fumes from the kitchen in the basement swirled up through classrooms on the ground floor and on aloft through the two upper dormitory decks. Ramsay and several of his successors made repeated, earnest appeals for new housing facilities.
As an initiator of reforms and a groundbreaker for the building up of a new Naval Academy, Captain Ramsay is equalled only by his successor, Commander William Thomas Sampson, whose regime from 1886 to 1890 came in a period of mounting popular enthusiasm for building the "New Navy," and profited accordingly.
One of the most brilliant scientists who has ever served as Superintendent, Sampson may be said to have centered his career around the Naval Academy. Standing No. 1 in the class of 1861, after a brief service on the blockade he was returned to the Naval Academy at Newport as an instructor in 1862-64. In 1867-71 and again in 1874-78 he served tours of duty at the Academy. For about seven of these years he was Head of the Department of Physics and Chemistry. Interested in the scientific principles which must be practically applied in the "New Navy," he had already introduced studies in electricity and the chemistry of steel into the curriculum of the Academy.
As Superintendent, Sampson brought in prominent scientists like Professor Ira Remsen of Johns Hopkins University to lecture to the midshipmen. Large orders of machine tools, and of equipment for blacksmith shop, boiler shop, and pattern shop were procured. The ordnance proving ground across the river at Fort Severn and the recently established Naval Institute, as well as the Naval Academy, made Annapolis in 1886-90 a center for scientific advancement in the Navy.
Gradually the problem of discipline which had so troubled Ramsay was overcome. Sampson went before congressional committees to plead (1) that the onerous 2-year period of sea duty be dropped and that at the end of four years midshipmen be graduated as ensigns; (2) that a new cruiser with modern engines and modern rifled guns be built for use as a practice ship, to replace or supplement the two antique, wooden, sail-steam ships with their out-dated engines and cast-iron muzzle-loading smoothbores; and (3) that new living quarters be built for both midshipmen "and officers. Eventually all three of these needs were met, though after Sampson's time.
During Sampson's Superintendency Naval Academy graduates were for the first time given commissions in the Marine Corps immediately upon graduation. Though this had been authorized by Congress in 1882, the first graduate to avail himself of this privilege was Herbert Lemuel Draper of the class of 1887. The next year John A. Lejeune and several others of the class of 1888 became marine officers. In later years the number of midshipmen choosing the Marine Corps steadily increased, until by 1922 the annual number had become fixed at twenty-five.
Perhaps one of the most important of Sampson's changes was the system of assigning grades for aptitude for the service. This he inaugurated gradually, first by extending the recitation grading system to work done in laboratory and on the drill ground, then by grading the midshipmen for their performance on the practice cruises. Finally in his last year he inaugurated the "aptitude for the service" grade. A system of privileges based on conduct during the preceding month did much to straighten out the disciplinary problem. Henceforth there would be milder forms of hazing, known as "running," but hazing in its worse forms now disappeared into the limbo of tradition and was commemorated in the midshipman's jocular ballad, "Hazing Plebes So Green."
Captain Robert Lees Phythian, 1890-94, and Captain Philip Henry Cooper, 1894-98, found the Naval Academy a smooth-running machine which required no drastic realignments. In his first and unusually brief annual report Phythian complimented his predecessor by observing that he "could find no changes to make." Phythian ironed out the kinks in the "aptitude for the service" grading. Cooper saw the Naval Academy provided with a new, modern cruiser, the U.S.S. Bancroft. The usefulness of the practice cruiser, however,- because of her midget size, was limited to demonstration purposes and short cruises in the bay.
When Rear Admiral Frederick Valette McNair, 1898-1900, assumed the office of Superintendent in July of 1898, most of the midshipmen had been given positions afloat. The absence from the Academy of undergraduates on active duty in the War with Spain was unique in the annals of the Academy and it made possible the quartering of Admiral Cervera and his officers as prisoners of war at the Naval Academy. Admiral McNair played a lenient and affable role as host to the unfortunate Spaniards.
The Superintendents who presided over the Naval Academy during the Theodore Roosevelt era were: Commander Richard Wainwright (1900-1902), Captain Willard H. Brownson (1902-1905), Rear Admiral James H. Sands (1905-1907), and Captain Charles J. Badger (1907-1909). Commander Wainwright was a "Navy Junior" and a widely acclaimed hero of the Spanish-American War. In the Gloucester, on July 3, as Cervera's fleet emerged from Santiago Harbor, Wainwright, without a shred of armor protection, hurled his ship straight at the two Spanish torpedo boats Furor and Pluton and drove them ashore. Captain Brownson, of the class of 1865, was the first Superintendent who had seen service in both the Civil War and the Spanish. In the latter war his ship, the U.S.S. Yankee, had done effective service as a scout and dispatch-bearer. A daughter of Captain Brownson married Ensign Thomas C. Hart, a future Superintendent of the Academy. Captain Brownson's successors, Admiral Sands and Captain Badger, were also veterans of the two wars. In the latter conflict Sands commanded the converted merchantman Columbia, which participated in the Santiago campaign. Badger became the first American officer to command the naval station at Ponce, Puerto Rico.
During the Theodore Roosevelt era many antiquated buildings were uprooted from the Naval Academy grounds and replaced by buildings of granite and brick. The uniform comprehensive architectural plan drawn up by Architect Flagg and accepted by the Navy Department in 1898 was converted into physical reality. After Captain Badger's time there would be new buildings added within the general plan, but the Naval Academy plant was substantially as it is today.
For the "New Navy" of Spanish War days, which continued to grow under the enthusiastic leadership of Theodore Roosevelt as the nation shouldered the responsibibilities of overseas empire, the new Naval Academy was now adequately provided with buildings. Captain John Marshall Bowyer (1909-11) and Captain John Henry Gibbons (1911-14) presided over the fortunes of the now thoroughly established national institution until the commencement of the last great period in the Naval Academy's history.
The Modern Group
The two officers who served as Superintendent during World War I were Rear Admiral William F. Fullam (1914-15), and Rear Admiral Edward Walter Eberle (1915-19). Admiral Fullam was the first and only officer who, while holding the office of Superintendent, went to sea as commander of the Practice Squadron. In the Missouri, the Idaho, and the Illinois, he took the midshipmen to Europe the summer the European war broke out, and the following summer, while restricted to American waters, he took the Practice Squadron to San Francisco. The battleships on this practice cruise in 1915 were the first battleships ever to go through the newly opened Panama Canal.
Admiral Fullam's exploit points up a significant fact about Naval Academy Superintendents. In many ways their job parallels that of dozens of presidents or superintendents of civilian technical colleges. But unlike the latter they feel a much more keen and justifiably selfish interest in the success of their graduates. The president of no other college goes out into the practical world along with his ex-students to risk life and limb with them in a dangerous calling. "The Naval Academy," as Admiral Nulton has pointed out, "if its graduate fails in the Fleet, is .held responsible for the results." The Superintendent watches over the training of these youngsters with double care. They may some day be junior officers under him in battle.
Admiral Eberle, whose tenure included the years of America's participation in World War I, was a naval scientist who as a junior officer had commanded the forward turret of the Oregon, "bulldog of the fleet," off Santiago. Later, in 1911-13 as organizer and first commander of the new Atlantic Torpedo Fleet, he first saw the tactical value of the smoke screen and worked out a system of tactics for destroyers operating with a battlefleet. As Superintendent of the Naval Academy he sacrificed his personal opportunity for service afloat in order to guide the Naval Academy through a most difficult period when classes were being greatly increased, and reserve officers had to be trained. For his service in Annapolis he was awarded at the close of the war the Distinguished Service Medal.
Rear Admiral Archibald Henderson Scales (1919-21) guided the Naval Academy through its transition from a war to a peacetime footing. At fifty Admiral Scales was the youngest officer of flag rank ever to be assigned duty as Superintendent. On the U.S.S. Topeka he had seen action off Nipe Bay, Cuba, in the Spanish-American War. In World War I as skipper of the battleship Delaware he had been the youngest of five American battleship commanders at Scapa Flow (Captains C. F. Hughes, H. A. Wiley, Victor Blue, Thomas Washington, and A. H. Scales). In 1919 the regiment numbered 2,250, three times as many as in 1912. To promote the personal welfare of this enlarged student body Admiral Scales took special pains to keep in touch with parents of midshipmen, and invited their co-operation in molding the characters of the young officers. To arouse the interest of midshipmen in the traditions of the naval service, Admiral Scales established the Naval Academy Museum. Relics of World War I were accumulating at the Naval Academy at this time, and scattered over the Academy grounds were many relics of earlier days for which a suitable repository was needed. Associate Professor Sidney Gunn of the Department of English was detailed for part-time duty as Curator. The pace of the Naval Academy in 1919 was restored to the peacetime norm, with the full four-year course. During the years immediately following the war the Naval Academy's salute guns greeted many famous foreign visitors, among whom was Edward, Prince of Wales. In Smoke Hall after he had addressed a few pleasant words to the regiment, the Prince of Wales was applauded with a rousing "4 N."
The Naval Academy, the "cradle of the line officer," has for the past century been sensitive to the broad general policies that affect the United States Navy as a whole. During the 1920's Annapolis lay under the shadow of the Washington Naval Disarmament treaties. Curtailment of the chief naval establishments of the world was to be reflected in the life of the Naval Academy. The three Superintendents who saw the Naval Academy through this era of naval disarmament were Rear Admiral Henry Braid Wilson (1921-25), Rear Admiral Louis McCoy Nulton (1925-28) and Rear Admiral Samuel Shelburne Robison (1928-31). The Naval Academy as an educational institution was at this time the product of eighty years of adjustment and development. Its mission was clearly defined. Its mechanism in most particulars had been perfected. Its efficiency was high. In general the duty of the Superintendent was now chiefly to keep the machine running smoothly, and to make only relatively minor adjustments.
Admirals Wilson, Nulton, and Robison met the challenge of naval disarmament with a determined effort to develop "the most efficient personnel to offset any ad vantage a possible adversary may have." Their program involved: (1) improved publicity to make the country Naval Academy conscious, (2) improved standards for candidates, and (3) improved courses of instruction.
In 1922 Admiral Wilson placed the Naval Academy's case not only before the public but before the Navy itself. For the first time in history the Superintendent's annual report was printed as a separate government document. Admiral Wilson's prestige as a recent Commander of Patrol Force, Atlantic Fleet, and as Commander of U. S. Naval Forces in France after January 17, 1918, enabled him to "sell" to the Navy the idea that the Naval Academy "rated" the best officer instructors that it was possible to obtain, "upstanding, manly men, furnishing tangible examples for emulation." There was a reduction in numbers of the civil faculty—which had greatly increased during the war—to allow the assignment of a greater number of naval officers as instructors. Professor Herman F. Krafft of the Department of English was appointed Curator of the recently established Museum, and a book was issued giving historical sketches of Naval Academy memorials and Monuments. The famed yacht America was obtained for the Academy. Every effort was made to generate in the Navy "a vital, living interest in this Academy, their naval cradle," and to invoke from the public a similar feeling of good will toward the institution.
Succeeding generations of midshipmen can thank Admiral Wilson for abolishing the semiannual and annual comprehensive examinations. Many a good man in the past had dreaded these shoals, and all hands agreed that eliminating them, along with the hasty review and cramming, was an excellent and sensible idea.
Following a study of the Naval Academy curriculum lasting several years, the entrance requirements were made more rigid. Instead of entrance examinations in spelling, grammar, and arithmetic, there were now required examinations in advanced history, English literature, and mathematics. The raising of entrance standards in Admiral Wilson's administration bore fruit in Admiral Nulton's time.
Admiral Nulton, a member of the Special Naval Board to investigate the feasibility of undergraduate study of aeronautics, was the Superintendent who first installed a course in Aeronautics at the Naval Academy. "The point to be emphasized," wrote Admiral Nulton in 1925, "is that whether a man be on the bridge of a ship or in a plane in the air, each for efficient team-work must be familiar with the requirements of the other, and must be a coordinated part of the whole. Without this, efficiency will disappear in divided control and the lack of understanding." Aeronautics and Aviation took its place in the curriculum along with Seamanship, Gunnery, Engineering, Tactics, Radio, and Communications.
Admiral Wilson had first permitted midshipmen to subscribe to daily newspapers. Admiral Nulton began making academic courses less elementary. Admiral Robison pushed further this process of more advanced study. Less stress was placed in the classroom on rote memory. Instructors were encouraged to obtain the inevitable daily grade in ten or fifteen minutes of the hour and to spend most of the time on general discussion. Wrote Admiral Robison in 1929, "It is believed that the idea sometimes expressed in the past that 'the instructor was simply a referee between the midshipman and the book' is not now true."
In 1929 a new Executive Department organization was adopted. "In general it conforms to the organization on board a naval vessel. It has undoubtedly resulted in smoother and more effective administration." Altogether 1929, of evil memory for Wall Street, was a boom year for the Academy. The new boathouse, Hubbard Hall, was constructed. A copper roof replaced the crumbling terra cotta on the dome of the Chapel. Midshipmen from the U. S. Naval Academy won six of the twelve Rhodes Scholarships available in 1929. German and Italian were added to the Academy's curriculum. Many gifts flowed into the Museum, and the Class of 1891 presented the Regiment a fine bronze replica of Tecumseh, the midshipmen's "God of 2.5." Whether sobered by the Stock Market collapse or encouraged by Admiral Robison's permitting them to play golf, the midshipmen in 1929 put on their very best behavior and turned in a thumping 331 per cent reduction of Class A offenses!
In the troubled 1930's, the years of the great economic depression and the gathering warclouds in Europe and the Far East, the Naval Academy had the following Superintendents at the helm: Rear Admiral Thomas C. Hart (1931-34), Rear Admiral David Foote Sellers, (1934-38), and Rear Admiral Wilson Brown (1938-41).
Admiral Hart, now of course world famous for his masterful delaying actions in the Far East, when with diminutive forces he held up the Japanese juggernaut in 1941-42, was hailed in 1929 as "one of the Navy's foremost authorities on mine-laying and torpedo work." It fell to his lot as Superintendent to "tighten the belt" financially to weather the great depression. Ten years earlier Admiral Wilson had begun to tackle the problem of midshipmen's graduation debts. Admiral Hart's strict budget plan enabled midshipmen to graduate in 1931 with an average graduation savings of $1,015, and in the next year this average was raised to $1,050;One of the most trying problems of the new ensign was solved. With less spending money midshipmen now made greater use of the Naval Academy Library than ever before. To improve the attitude toward drills, Admiral Hart removed drills from the list of punishments. A new curriculum was devised, the objectives of which were: "(a) to stress fundamentals in the sciences, (b) to spend more time on cultural subjects, keeping in mind only the best educational interests of the entire service, (c) to save some classroom time in the factual portions of professional subjects, and (d) to ensure that the demands upon the midshipmen's time and energy should not be increased." In 1933-34, when the new curriculum was put fully in force, there was a new department, the Department of Economics and Government, and a number of changes had been made in established departments. In the Department of English and History, for example, an entirely new course, "Comparative Literature," (Cervantes, Goethe, Ibsen, Balzac, and Tolstoy) was given to the Second Class, and First Classmen were offered a choice of "History of American Diplomacy" or "History of the French Revolution." Some of these "cultural" changes have been short-lived. The Department of Economics and Government was dropped in 1937, though the subject of "American Government" continued to be taught by the Department of English and History, the name of which was now changed to "English, History, and Government." "Comparative Literature," shortly renamed "Modern Thought," was finally dropped in 1939.
Too often, Admiral Hart felt, the Academy had met its faculty requirements "by officers sent with little time for preparation or even none at all, and retained for two years only or even less." As a partial remedy for this situation Admiral Hart advocated three-year tours of office for naval officer instructors. Also, while he did not initiate the practice, he sent a number of prospective language teachers abroad for refresher work in languages.
A most attractive improvement to the grounds during Admiral Hart's tenure was the new Maryland Avenue gate, given by the Class of 1907. His recent appointment as U. S. Senator from Connecticut gives Admiral Hart a unique position among ex-Superintendents of the Naval Academy.
Admiral Sellers, a graduate of the Class of 1894, saw service in the Spanish War on the U.S.S. Alliance and the U.S.S. Philadelphia, and in the Philippine Campaign on board the U.S.S. New York. Arriving in Annapolis in 1934, fresh from his command of the U. S. Fleet, he set out immediately to put in force his idea that a love of the sea can be cultivated. Admiral Sellers greatly expanded the "water-front facilities" of the Academy. Yawls, ketches, starboats, whaleboats, as well as the ubiquitous cutters, crowded the Academy basins, and considerable interest was generated among the midshipmen in boat clubs.
In 1935 the Ninetieth Anniversary of the founding of the Naval Academy was celebrated. Two gala and spectacular June Week pageants, one depicting Stephen Decatur's burning of the Philadelphia and another Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry's "Opening of Japan," were held during Admiral Sellers' tenure.
Admiral Wilson Brown, thanks to the Works Projects Administration and to re turning prosperity, was able near the close of the 1930's to make many necessary repairs to roads, underground steam distribution system, and sewer system, and to begin a program of new construction. In 1939 the new Museum building materialized, the pride of Captain H. A. Baldridge, U. S. Navy (Retired), who has served as Curator since December 11, 1937. Part of the funds for the construction of the architecturally beautiful Museum were contributed by the Naval Academy Athletic Association and by the U. S. Naval Institute. After many years of earnest advocacy by Superintendents, apartment buildings to house eighty-four officers and their families were constructed. A much needed and architecturally fine addition was built on the Naval Academy Chapel, to accommodate the increasingly large classes. A new Dispensary building now brought the medical officers out from the "catacombs" of Mahan Hall into modern, well-equipped quarters. A very great addition to the creature comforts of midshipmen. was the complete renovation and soundproofing of their Mess Hall and the addition of two new wings to Bancroft Hall. Admiral Brown's administration will be long remembered for the numerous additions to the Academy's physical plant.
From February to December, 1941, while the nation moved rapidly toward full participation in World War II, the Naval Academy was administered by Rear Admiral Russell Willson. The Academy at this time was put into high gear. The Class of 1941, numbering 399, was graduated on February 7. A class of V-7 Reserve Midshipmen convened a week later, and of this group of 696 men, 583 were graduated, two-thirds to be deck officers, one-third engineers. The Naval Academy Class of 1942 was graduated on December 19, 1941. The number of appointments was increased from four to five per Congressman, and the Naval Academy course was shortened from four to three years. In the absence of foreign practice cruises considerable use was made of three fine yachts: the Freedom, presented by Mr. Sterling Morton of Chicago; the Highland Light, presented by the estate of the late Dudley F. Wolf of Portland, Maine; and the Spindrift, presented by Mr. W. W. Lanahan of Baltimore, Md.
The present Superintendent, Rear Admiral John R. Beardall, entered upon his duties in January, 1942. His task, like that of Admiral Eberle in World War I, is to turn out as great a number as possible of adequately trained young officers for the Fleet in the shortest possible time. At the opening of the Fall Term, 1941-42, there were 3,117 regular midshipmen. Eleven classes of reserve midshipmen have now been graduated. The Naval Academy's facilities are being utilized economically and efficiently as never before.
Under Admiral Beardall the Naval Academy is making a special effort to adapt its instruction to current needs in the Fleet. New equipment, for example, for the Department of Ordnance and Gunnery includes the latest developments in gunnery, lire control, and radar. To meet wartime needs athletic drills have been redesigned. There is 100 per cent participation in these scheduled athletic drills. To afford outdoor room to the expanded student body a new 22-acre athletic field has been reclaimed off Cemetery Point and another has been opened in the newly acquired Holland Street area. New courses in Russian and Japanese have been added to the Department of Languages.
There can be no more fitting summary of the work of the thirty-two naval officers who have served the Naval Academy during its first hundred years than the statement of the mission of the Naval Academy to which many Superintendents have subscribed:
To mold the material received into educated gentlemen, thoroughly indoctrinated with honor, uprightness, and truth, with practical rather than academic minds, with thorough loyalty to country, with a ground-work of educational fundamentals upon which experience afloat may build the finished naval officer, capable of upholding, whenever and wherever may be necessary, the honor of the United States; and withal giving due consideration that healthy minds in healthy bodies are necessities for the fulfillment of the individual missions of the graduates; and that fullest efficiency under this mission can only be attained if, through just and humane yet firm discipline, the graduates carry into the Service respect and admiration for this Academy.