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If the burghers of Raleigh, North Carolina, heard a whirring sound on 12 April 1980, it could have been former Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels revolving in his grave. On that date, Daniels’s successor many times removed, Edward Hidalgo, allowed sailors on board the aircraft carrier Nimitz (CVN-68) to “splice the main brace” in recognition of 100 consecutive days at sea. The 5,000 crewmen were each allotted two cans of beer, paid for by welfare funds and kept on board for use in shore areas.
Daniels’s 1914 decree abolishing wardroom wine messes shook the fleet, then largely concentrated off Vera Cruz, Mexico.[1] On the final night, boatloads of singing, shouting officers went from ship to ship in a desperate last attempt to liquidate the stores of potables before the corks went in forever. Concurrently, Daniels, a profoundly dedicated moralist as well as a prohibitionist, proposed that sailors sleep in pajamas instead of underwear and that an officer sit at each mess table to discourage unseemly language, but these programs failed.
Liquor in the U. S. Navy had undergone many vicissitudes before Daniels’s final blow. In 1806, efforts were made to shift from rum, then considered as much a part of daily food as bread and meat, to whiskey, which was cheaper. In 1842, the grog ration, spirits mixed with the generally putrid water to improve its drinkability, dropped from a half pint daily to a gill—or a half pint of wine. Hot tea and coffee were coming to be favored by both commanding and medical officers as more healthful and leSS conducive to disciplinary problems.
By act of Congress, 1 September 1862 saw the en of real booze on board for the crew in any fori11’ From then on it was some foul concoction brewed 01 distilled in a remote compartment from whatever i° genious sailors could find that would ferment, P^uS an occasional whiff of “torp juice.”
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Proceedings / June
1981
The 1914 wardroom prohibition spread try wide with the Volstead Act shortly after War I. On the two coasts, drinking soon became “in” thing, and liquor once more found its aboard. There were wet ships and dry ships, depen ing on individual skippers. A broken match on silver tray brought by a Filipino steward meant as old—that cocktails were being served in such a11 such a room or cabin. The liquor was, of course, the rotgut available ashore; the Navy had revert largely to the booze of its birth: rum. “Uncle Sam Yachting Squadron,” as the British called our Atla11 tic Fleet, spent January through March in the saU brious environs of Guantanamo. Officers cornin£ back from Caimanera and afternoon cocktails oftefl carried boxes of “shoes,” gallons of rum in wicker sheathed jugs. In Guantanamo Bay’s still waters-^ bumboats came alongside the forecastle portholes 0 the old battleships—Utah (BB-31), Wyoming (BB-32)> Florida (BB-30), Texas (BB-35), and Arkansas (BB-33)» in the dark of the moon on the midwatch. It was °ot an unusual sight to see a line of officers, from ensi£n to lieutenant commander, passing jugs of gallon rum through junior officer country to war room country, six, eight, ten gallons to a room, f°r ‘
liable summer and autumn up north.
Uejackets, not allowed outside the base at Guan- a^so took advantage of the bumboat routine. ere shore leave was granted, as in Panama, they Co U^r t^e'r billowy bell-bottoms would provide C0;er ^or ^ar pints taped to legs. Many suffered dis- Th ^ r^S na*ve deception on returning aboard, calf at^es*ve taPe was painfully pulled off the hairy bot koatswa‘n’s mate daintily carried the
off e aCross ’•be quarterdeck and dropped it over the j S,de- It was deftly caught by an accomplice lean- ha °Ut a &unPort with a crab net; it was then re- to its owner for a small fee. enibUrmS my 1947 Mediterranean deployment, an moo^58'11817 ^arSe number of men slipped off “"g buoys while shackling up. The mystery was WasC when I discovered the young medical officer Sad and'n£ out mini-bottles of brandy to dunked jlari fS‘ Now, even that fine remedy for chill and the c *" I3odut*on *s n0 longer with us; in June 1980, k. . UrSeon General decreed that those little bottles be dieted.
aPpears Daniels’s decree is here to stay. When pra °lstead Act was repealed in 1933, President Sell ln ^e^ano Roosevelt invited Admiral David rben Commander in Chief U. S. Fleet, to the House. “I’ll be happy to restore the wine all f’ -Sa*d R°°sevelt. Sellers, a very social type, was tyjt^ U’ but discreetly added, “Let me check it out f[ t^le fleet.” It was unanimously opposed by every officer and major ship commander afloat. nearCrn‘ral James L. Holloway, Jr., a staff officer r die seats of the mighty when Roosevelt made
Secretary of the Navy Josephus—no relation to Jack—Daniels, and his assistant, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, seen together in 1918, seem to have had differing opinions about the hard stuff. In 1914, Daniels banished booze from messes. In 1933, President Roosevelt offered to restore the u ine mess but was rebuffed by every senior officer in the Navy.
his offer, related the foregoing vignette, adding his own views:
“They [the seniors] winked (almost all) at our bringing booze aboard surreptitiously in ‘Gitmo’ and the crew approved. But it was used discreetly. And in their wisdom, our seniors knew that the bluejackets would resent it in the officers’ mess and would resent orders from even slightly tipsy officers. There was the great and subtle distinction.”
To which I believe the vast majority of us would append a hearty, “Amen!”
eedingg / June 1981
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