menu_book Chapter 4

chapter two part two of from sail to steam by alfred thayer mahan this librivox recording is in the public domain chapter two naval conditions before the war of secession the vessels part two i have said that the character of the ship's then building constituted the chief part of my environment in entering the navy the effect was inevitable and amounted in fact simply to making me a man of my period my most susceptible years were colored by the still lingering traditions of the sail period and of the marling spike seamen not that i always clumsy with my fingers had any promise of ever distinguishing myself with the marling spike this expressive phrase derived from its chief tool characterized the whole professional equipment of the then mechanic of the sea of the man who given the necessary rope-yarns and the spars shaped by a carpenter could take a bare hull as she lay for the first time quietly at anchor from the impetus of her launch and equip her for sea without other assistance

parbuckle on board her spars lying alongside her in the stream fit her rigging bend her sails stow her hold and present all her atonto to the men who were to sail her the navigation of a ship thus equipped was a field of seamanship apart from that of the marlingspike but the men who sailed her to all parts of the earth were expected to be able to do all the preliminary work themselves often did do it and considered it quite as truly a part of their business as the handling her at sea of course in equipping ships as in all other business specialization had come in with progress there were rope-acres there were riggers who took the ropes ready-made and fitted them for the ship and there were stevedores to stow holes etc but the tradition ran that the seaman should be able on a pinch to do all this himself and the tradition kept alive the practice which derived from the days not yet wholly passed away when he might and often did

after refit his vessel in scenes far distant from any help other than his own and without any resources save those which his ready wit could adapt from materials meant for quite different uses how to make a jib-boom do the work of a topsail yard or to utilize spare spars in rigging a jury rudder were specimens of the problems then presented to the aspiring seamen it was something in the thirties not so very long before my time that a captain rouse of the british navy achieved renown i would say immortal were i not afraid that most people have forgotten by bringing his frigate home from labrador to england after losing her rudder it is said that he subsequently ran for parliament and when on the hustings some doubter asked about his political record he answered i am captain rouse who brought the peak across the atlantic without a rudder of course the reply was lustily cheered and deservedly for in such seas where the ship depended upon sails only it was a splendid if somewhat reckless achievement

cooper in his homeward bound places the ship dismasted on the coast of africa close at hand but on the beach lies a wrecked vessel with her spar standing and there is no exaggeration in the words he puts into the mouth of captain truck as he looked upon these resources the seaman who with sticks and ropes and blocks enough cannot rig his ship might as well stay ashore and publish in a hebdomadal such was the marlingspike seaman of the days of cooper and marriott and such was still the able seaman the a b of eighteen fifty five it was not indeed necessary nor expected that most naval officers should do such things with their own hands but it was justly required that they should know when a job of marlingspike seamanship was well or ill done and be able to supervise when necessary napoleon is reported to have said that he could judge personally whether the shoes furnished his soldiers were well or ill made but he needed not to be a shoemaker marriott commenting on one of his characters says that he had seldom known an officer who prided himself on his practical knowledge who was at the same time a good navigator and that such too often lowered the respect due to him by assuming the jack-tar

oddly enough lunching once with an old and distinguished british admiral who had been a midshipman while marriott still lived he told me that he remembered him well his reputation he added was that of an excellent seaman but not much of an officer an expressive phrase current in our own language which doubtless has its equivalent in all maritime languages in my early naval life i came into curious accidental contact with just such a person as marriott described i was still at the academy within a year of graduation and had been granted a few days leave at christmas returning by rail there seated himself alongside me a gentleman who proved to be a lieutenant from the flagship of the home squadron going to washington with dispatches becoming known to each other he began to question me as to what new radicalisms were being fostered in annapolis are they still wasting the young men's time over french i would not permit them to learn any other language than their own and how about seamanship what do they know about that as far as i have observed they know nothing about marlingspike seamanshipstrapping blocksfitting rigging etc

now i can sit down alongside of any seaman doing a bit of work and show him how it ought to be done yes and do it myself it was marriott's lieutenant phillot ipsissimus verbus i listened overawed by the weight of authority and experience and i fear somewhat in sympathy for such talk was in the air part of the environment of an old order slowly and reluctantly giving way to a new of course i shared this how should i not at eighteen in giving expression to it once i drew down upon my head a ringing buffet from my father in which he embodied an anecdote of decatur i never saw elsewhere and fancy he owed to his boyhood past near a navy-yard town portsmouth virginia while decatur was in his prime i had written home with reference to some study in which probably i did not shine what did decatur know about such things a boy may be pardoned for laying himself open to the retort which so many of his superiors equally invited

depend upon it if decatur had been a student at the academy he would so far as his abilities permitted have got as far to the front as he always did in fighting he always aimed to be first it was told of him that he commanded one of two ships ordered on a common service in which the other arrived first at the point on the way her captain instead of pushing forward waited for decatur to come up on hearing which the latter exclaimed in his energetic way the damned fool decatur however also shared and shared inevitably the prepositions of his day i was told by mr charles king then president of columbia college that he had been present in company with decatur at one of the early experiments in steam navigation crude as the appliances still were demonstration was conclusive and decatur whatever his prejudices was open to conviction yes he said gloomily to king it is the end of our business hereafter any man who can boil a tea-kettle will be as good as the best of us

it is notable that in my day a tradition ran that decatur himself was not thoroughly a seaman the captain of the first ship in which i served after graduation a man of much solid information who had known the commodore's contemporaries speaking about some occurrence said to me the trouble with decatur was that he was not a seaman i repeated the remark to one of our lieutenants and he ejaculated with emphasis yes that is true i cannot tell how far these opinions were the result of prepossession in those from whom they derived there had been hard and factious division in the navy of decatur's day culminating in the duel in which he fell and the lieutenant at least was associated by family ties with decatur's antagonist to deny that the methods of the naval academy were open to criticism would be to claim for them infallibility upon the whole however in my time they erred rather on the side of being over conservative than unduly progressive twenty years later recalling some of our academy experiences to one of my contemporaries himself more a man of action than a student and who had meanwhile distinguished himself by extraordinary courage in the war of secession i mean edward terry

he said oh yes those were the days before the flood the holdback element was strong though not sufficiently so to suit such as my friend of the railroad objectors laid great stress on the word practical than which with all its most respectable derivation and association i know none more frequently nor more effectually used as a bludgeon for slaying ideas strictly of course it means knowing how to do things and doing them but colloquially it usually means doing them before learning how leap before you look the practical part is bruising your shins for lack of previous reflection of course no one denies the educational value of breaking your shins and everything else you own a burnt child dreads the fire but the question remains whether an equally good result may not be reached at less cost and so be more really practical i recall the fine scorn with which one of our professors chauvenet a man of great and acknowledged ability practical and other used to speak of practical men

now young gentlemen in adjusting your theodolites in the field remember not to bear too hard on the screws don't put them down with main force as though the one object was never to unscrew them if you do you indent the plate and it will soon be quite impossible to level the instrument properly that he would continue is the way with your practical men there for instance is mr blank naming an assistant in another department known to the midshipman as bullpup who i suppose had been a practical surveyor that is what he does i presume the denunciation was due to b p having at one time borrowed an instrument from the department and returned it thus maltreated but practical so misapplied action without thought was chauvenet's red rag an amusing reminiscence illustrative of the same common tendency was told me by general howard i had the pleasure of meeting howard then in command of one wing of sherman's army at savannah just after the conclusion of the march to the sea in eighteen sixty four

he spoke pleasantly of his associations with my father when a cadet at the military academy and added i remember how he used to say a little common sense mr howard a little common sense howard did not say what particular occasions he had in mind but a student reciting and confronted suddenly with some question or step in a demonstration which he has failed to master or upon which he has not reflected is apt to feel that the practical thing to do is not to admit ignorance to trust to luck and answer at random such a one explaining a drawing of a bridge to my father was asked by him what was represented by certain lines showing the up-stream part of a pier not knowing he replied that is a hole to catch the ice in imagine said my father in telling me the story catching all the ice from above in holes in the piers a little common sense exercised first not afterwards is the prescription against leaping before you look or jamming your screws too hard

to substitute acquired common sense knowledge and reflection for the cruder and tardier processes of learning by hard personal experience and mistakes is of course the object of all education and it was this which caused the foundation of the naval academy behind which at its beginning lay the initiative of some of the most reputed and accomplished senior officers of the navy conscious of the needless difficulties they themselves had had to surmount in reaching the level they had it involved no detraction from their professional excellence the excellence of men professionally self-made but none comprehend the advantages of education better than candid men who have made their way without it by the time i entered however there had been a decided though not decisive reaction in professional feeling ten years had elapsed since the founding of the school and already development had gone so far that suspicion and antagonism were aroused up to eighteen fifty midshipmen went at once to sea and after five years there spent one at annapolis whereupon followed the final examination for a lieutenancy

this effected the man became a past midshipman beginning with eighteen fifty one the system was changed four years at the academy were required after which two at sea and then examination this being a clean break from the past outraged conservatism it introduced such abominations as french and extended mathematics much attention was paid to infantry drill soldiering the scheme was not practical and it was doubtless true that the young graduate despite six months of summer cruising interposed between academic terms came comparatively green to shipboard in that particular respect he could not but compare for the moment unfavorably with one who under the old plan would have spent four years on a ship's deck whether that brief period of inexperience passed he would not be permanently the better for the prior initiation into the rationale of his business few inquired and time had not yet had opportunity to show Perhaps, too, there was among the graduates something of the freshness which is attributed to the same age in leaving a university. I do not think it. The immediate contact with conditions but partly familiar to us, yet perfectly familiar to all about us, excited rather a wholesome feeling of inferiority or inadequacy.

we had yet to find ourselves but there remained undoubtedly some antagonism between the old and the new not that this ever showed itself offensively

nothing could have been kinder or more open-hearted than our reception by the lieutenants who had not known the academy and who probably deprecated it in their hearts

whatever they thought nothing was ever said that could reflect upon us the outcome of the system it was not even hinted that we might have been turned out in better shape under different conditions from my personal experience i hope we proved more satisfactory than may have been expected when we returned home in eighteen sixty one just after the first battle of bull run our third lieutenant said to me that he expected a command and would be glad to have me as his first lieutenant and upon my detachment one of the warrant officers expressed his regret that i was not remaining as one of the lieutenants of that ship

both being men of mature years and long service and with no obligation to speak it is permissible to infer that they thought us fit at least to take the deck as it was in the uproar of those days no questions were asked the usual examinations were waived and my class was hurried out of the midshipman's mess into the first lieutenant's berth without exception i believe we all had that duty at once second to the captain missing thereby the very valuable experience of the deck officer in the face of considerable opposition as i was told by admiral du pont the leading officers of the day frustrated the attempt to introduce volunteer officers from the merchant service over our heads another proof of confidence in us as at least good raw material the longer practice of the others at sea was alleged as a reason for thus preferring them which was seriously contemplated but the reply was that acquaintance with the organization of a ship of war

with her equipment and armament the general military tone so quickly assimilated by the young and so hardly by the mature outweighed completely any mere question of attainment in handling a ship as drill officers too the general excellence of the graduates was admitted within a fortnight of doing duty on the forecastle as a midshipman i thus found myself as first lieutenant of a very respectable vessel one of my shipmates less quickly fortunate was detailed to instruct a number of volunteer officers with the great guns and muskets one of them said to him yes you can teach me this but i expect i can teach you something in seamanship a freedom of speech which by itself showed imperfect military temper at the same moment i myself had a somewhat similar encounter which illustrates why the old officers insisted on the superior value of military habit and the necessarily unmilitary attitude at first of the volunteers i had been sent momentarily to a paddle-wheel merchant steamer now purchased for a ship of war the james adger which had plied between charleston and new york

a day or two after joining i saw two of the engineer force going ashore without my knowledge i stopped them and a few moments afterwards the chief engineer who had long been in her when she was a packet came to me with flaming eyes and angry voice to know by what right i interfered with his men it had to be explained to him that unlike the merchant service the engine room was but a department of the military whole of the ship and that other consent than his was necessary to their departure a trivial incident with a whole world of atmosphere behind it chapter two