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May 1919—If Rear Admiral Robert E. Peary was wrong about his whereabouts on 6 April 1909 when he signed himself in at the North Pole, he was dead right in 1916 when, as one of a four-man committee of the prestigious Aero Club, he foresaw that the torpedo plane patented by Rear Admiral Bradley A. Fiske in July 1912 would revolutionize warfare. In “The Tor- pedoplane,” Henry Woodhouse, who chaired the Aero Club committee, looks beyond the so-so World War I performance of Fiske’s brain-child and predicts a potential greater than that of the submarine.
Another internationally known byline in this issue is that of P. V. H. “Pappy” Weems, whose thoughts on navigation and similar celestial subjects enrich more Proceedings pages than any other author. Each of us who knew him has our own cherished memory of Phillip Van Horn Weems, who died in 1979 at the age of 90. Mine is of pickup games of water polo on Sunday mornings at the Naval Academy Pool where my three teenage sons and I paid our weekly price in pain as this otherwise amiable Ancient Mariner transformed himself into a Whirling Dervish—all elbows, knees, and knuckles—who asked and gave no quarter.
May 1939—Having come so close to winning the Medal of Honor in 1902, Rear Admiral Joseph K. Taussig this year finally gets the Gold Medal he had come so close to winning in Naval Institute Prize Essay contests spanning 40 years. His legion of admirers must have winked knowingly as, in his proposal to reorganize the U. S. fleet, this charter member of the Gun Club could only bring himself to utter the hated words "aircraft carrier” three times.
What a knockout of an issue May is! Its tone is set by Lieutenant (junior grade) L. T. Miles who, in “Sea Dogs and Syntax,” laments the declining emphasis on drama, classical fiction, and history at the Naval Academy. But if Annapolis has launched graduates lacking in culture, you’d never know it from this issue’s bylines. Sea Dog Taussig’s sense of history and drama— yes, and fiction, too—is obvious from the reams he has written.
An Old China Hand, class of 1924 member Lieutenant H. M. Hayter, tells us about Sun Tzu, China’s greatest writer on war who, surprisingly, was a contemporary of China’s most illustrious man of peace, Confucius. Lieutenant Commander Glenn Howell, a class of 1911 Yangtse Patrolman, recalls stumbling upon an ancient painting of a Venetian in a Chinese temple. His suspicion that it was of Marco Polo was confirmed by a priest.
May 1959 —From 1954 to 1959, Canadians—many of whom view their neighbor to the south with the same equanimity that the ant views the ant- eater—put their passions on hold and collaborated with the Yanks to build a 2,800-mile waterway. In “The St. Lawrence Seaway . . . ,” Harry C.
Brokel says not a word about the Ottawa-Washington politics of the thing but instead emphasizes its national defense aspects.
The U. S. Congress had been dragging its feet since June 1941 when Franklin D. Roosevelt began urging the building of the seaway and a “power project” whose 2.2 million horsepower low-cost electricity, combined with the seaway’s shipbuilding and transportation potential, would be invaluable to the continental defense. A portentious part of the presidential message was that the seaway would “cut by more than a thousand miles the stretch of dangerous open water” between North America and the channel ports. In the early 1950s, recalling how the North Atlantic became a shooting gallery for Nazi wolfpacks, and confronted by a Cold War threat of 300-plus Soviet submarines, that thousand-mile shortcut began to look like a good way to go to both Canada and the United States.
And so, for mutually valid reasons, most having to do with defense, the new “Eighth Sea,” the new “American Mediterranean” came into being.
But there must have been at least one hard-nosed Canadian who noticed: “It gave us a third seacoast, but it gave the damn Yanks their fourth.”
Clay Barrow
the unclassified event will include three panels and a Navy-Industry-Congress roundtable discussion. The event will feature both military and civilian experts, as well as more than 40 exhibits from the naval and aerospace industries. Exhibit space is still available. Call Scott Truver at (703) 892-9000 for exhibit-related information.
We expect approximately 1,000 persons to attend the symposium. It is open to U. S. Naval Institute members and non-members alike, and members receive a registration discount. Members who live in California and in the Washington, D. C., area will receive invitations in the mail. All members nationwide are invited to attend. For more information about the symposium, call the U. S. Naval Institute’s Membership Department at (301) 268-6110.
New Naval Institute Press Books
In 1843 a unique collaboration between a world-famous author and a seasoned sailor resulted in Ned Myers: A Life before the Mast by James Fenimore Cooper. Now, thanks to its republication in our “Classics of Naval Literature” series, these mid-19th century nautical reminiscences can be enjoyed by modern readers. A candid and colorful record of Myers’s 36-year career at sea, it is both a remarkable tale of adventure and a valuable social commentary on life in the lower decks. For this attractive new edition, William Dudley, head of the Naval Historical Center’s Early History Branch, has written an informative introductory essay to enable today’s readers to more fully appreciate the book. The Classics series now includes 21 works by some of the world’s foremost writers of naval history, biography, and fiction. Those interested in learning more about the collection should contact the Naval Institute’s Customer Service Department.
Another popular Naval Institute Press series, “Anatomy of the Ship,” gains a new title this month. Armed Transport Bounty by John McKay depicts the famous sailing vessel both as originally built in the late 18th century and as refitted by the Royal Navy. Owing to the bicentennial observance this year of the Bounty's mutiny, it is a particularly timely publication.