Today there are more than 47,000 Navy enlisted men enjoying either Fleet Reserve or full thirty-year retirement benefits, but few of them are aware of the long, bitter, uphill struggle waged years ago by ranking naval officials to see to it that the “boys in blue” get a fair share in the military retirement system.
Soldiers and Marines started picking up their retirement papers shortly after February 14, 1885, when Congress approved a Military Retirement Act which had long been the subject of agitation. Unfortunately, after the bill went to Congress and before it went to the President for signature, somebody scuttled the Navy. Somehow, somewhere along the line, retirement references to the Navy had been deleted. Top naval officials could hardly believe this unfortunate oversight. On-the-spot witnesses stated that Commodore J. G. Walker, Chief of the Bureau of Navigation (later changed to Bureau of Personnel), and W. C. Whitney, Secretary of the Navy, were both dumbfounded when informed that for some unknown reason Navy men had been excluded from the retirement-with-pay provisions.
The two Navy Department officials, however, were not to be defeated, or so they thought. They sent off numerous letters and memorandums to President Cleveland asking him to persuade Congress to include the naval enlisted man in retirement benefits. The President in turn dutifully urged Congress to rectify the error. Nothing happened.
On June 25, 1889, about four months before Commodore Walker was to leave as the head of the Bureau of Navigation, General Order 372 was put into operation. This order officially transferred to the Bureau of Navigation the complete task of recruiting, training, and control of enlisted men. Within a few days after receiving control of personnel, Commodore Walker sent a posthaste recommendation to Secretary Whitney, which read in part: “A continuous service Navy man after thirty years service should be entitled to retirement with half pay of the last rate held by him.” The recommendation was passed along by Whitney. Still nothing happened on Congressional Hill.
When Commodore Walker and Secretary Whitney left office in the fall of 1889, being relieved by F. M. Ramsay and Benjamin F. Tracy, respectively, nothing even resembling a corrective measure had passed Congress. Commodore Ramsay and Secretary Tracy followed closely the recommendations made earlier by their predecessors. Before long the new President, Benjamin Harrison, received urgent letters on the subject.
Upon receiving such missives the President endorsed and dispatched them to the Congress for “action” . . . where they were discussed and apparently tabled. Nothing emerged containing the addition of an amendment to the 1885 Military Retirement Act.
Meanwhile, the bluejackets thus discriminated against continued to serve without any sign of a pension at the end of the road. When no longer capable of turning a hand, old sailors had two alternatives—they could start from scratch in civil life or apply for admission to the Old Sailor’s Home in Philadelphia where a long waiting list existed.
Secretary of the Navy Tracy refused to give up in his attempt to correct the discrepancy. In a well-worded letter he appealed to the President: “The Navy would urgently recommend the importance of some legislation looking to the retirement of enlisted men of the Navy after thirty years service, as in the Army and Marines.
“The Navy believes that the exposure, privations, and hardships of the seaman incident to his life at sea entitle him to the same consideration as the Marines who serve on board ship with him, and it would be a great relief to many worn-out, old veterans if they could be assured of this care from the government they have upheld through storm and fire during at least two wars.”
Upon receiving the appeals, the President put his stamp of approval on them and passed them along, but Congress failed to act.
As the first part of the 1890s rolled around naval officials became more and more alarmed at not seeing any positive action taken toward correcting this one-sided retirement system. They could see no logical reason why hard-working sailors should be left standing at the quarter-deck while Marine Corps shipmates continued to climb down the gangway with their retirement papers in hand. The sailors were naturally bitter because they had a right to expect some kind of a reward for long service. Naval records tell of incidents where shipboard Marines were given non-too-kind retirement farewells by blue-jacketed shipmates.
Hilary A. Herbert in 1893 succeeded Benjamin Tracy as Secretary of the Navy and inherited the thankless task of trying to square away the confused situation. Commodore Ramsay, who continued on as head of the Bureau of Navigation, provided Secretary Herbert with the pertinent information on the subject until he was relieved in 1896 by Commodore A. S. Crowninshield.
It was reported that the lack of a Navy retirement program had a definite bearing on the rather high desertion rate in effect during those particularly depressing years. For example, in the year of 1897 more than 1,300 sailors went over the hill . . . partially the result of the Navy’s failure to provide a retirement plan. This desertion figure may not seem unusually high until we recall that only 5,000 were enlisted that year.
Finally, in the year of 1899, just before the dawn of the 20th century, John D. Long, the Secretary of the Navy who relieved Hilary Herbert, and Commodore A. S. Crowninshield, Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, were at last successful in the Navy’s efforts to aid her long-suffering sailors . . . because that year Congress finally complied with the urgent pleading of President McKinley and approved an amendment to “include Naval personnel” in the Military Retirement Act.
The President, upon receiving the amendment from Congress, had no sooner signed it than thirty-six weather-beaten old salts applied at once to the Bureau of Navigation for retirement with pay. With the successful passage of this law a new era had dawned for naval enlisted men.