It is proper, at this point, to give some account of the United States
Marine Corps, of which many persons not familiar with naval affairs
have a very vague idea.
They are sea-soldiers, or soldiers enlisted for service either on shore
or on board ships-of-war, and who are known as _Marines_, although all
sea-going persons are really marines.
Most powers which possess navies have also marines, France being an
exception. They constitute a separate military body from the seamen and
other enlisted men of a war-ship, and are trained to fight either as
infantry or as artillerists, and especially for participation in naval
engagements. They are organized, clothed and equipped very much like
soldiers of the army, and their preliminary instruction is the same. In
fact, some of their very best service has been on shore; while their
being accustomed to the sea makes them doubly valuable for expeditions
by water. Their headquarters, barracks and depots are on shore, and
from them details are made when required for service on shipboard.
These detachments vary in size with the ship, from a dozen men under a
sergeant to a hundred under one or more commissioned officers.
The history of sea-soldiers is very ancient, dating back to at least
five centuries before the Christian Era, when there was a class of
soldiers which constituted the fighting men of a war-ship, while an
entirely different class navigated, managing the oars and sails. Some
of the most gallant acts which have distinguished our own navy have
been performed by the marines, who have served without blemish in
every quarter of the world, and in all the wars in which we have been
engaged. The marines have generally manned some of the broadside guns
whenever hard fighting was going on, and have always been relied upon
under the most desperate circumstances; nor have they failed to justify
that reliance.
[Illustration: U. S. S. TEXAS.
Battleship. Twin screw. Main battery, two 12-inch and six 6-inch breech
loading rifles. Secondary battery, twelve 6-pounder and six 1-pounder
rapid fire guns, one Hotchkiss revolving cannon and two Gatlings.
Thickness of armor 12 inches. 30 officers, 362 men.]
Our own Congress has nineteen times, by joint resolution, tendered
thanks to the marines for their gallant behavior, and some of
the greatest generals have added their tributes to those of naval
commanders. Napoleon Bonaparte, when viewing the marines of the English
ship Bellerophon, where he took refuge after his downfall, exclaimed:
“What might not be done with a hundred thousand such men?” General
Winfield Scott, when commanding in the Mexican War, said of our marines
that he “put them where the heaviest work was to be accomplished,
and had never found his confidence misplaced.” General Grant, on the
quarter-deck of the _Vandalia_, which man-of-war was taking him to
Egypt, on his voyage round the world, remarked of the marines at their
exercise, that they were “as fine soldiers as he had ever seen.”
In our own service the marine corps is as ancient as the navy. In
Revolutionary days they wore green coats with white facings, but their
uniform has from time to time become more and more assimilated with
that of the infantry of the army.