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FROM SAIL TO STEAM
RECOLLECTIONS OF NAVAL LIFE
BY
CAPT. A. T. MAHAN
U.S.N. (RETIRED)
AUTHOR OF
"THE INFLUENCE OF SEA-POWER UPON HISTORY" ETC.
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
MCMVII
Copyright, 1906, 1907, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
Published October, 1907.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
PREFACE v
INTRODUCING MYSELF ix
I. NAVAL CONDITIONS BEFORE THE WAR OF SECESSION--THE
OFFICERS AND SEAMEN 3
II. NAVAL CONDITIONS BEFORE THE WAR OF SECESSION--THE
VESSELS 25
III. THE NAVAL ACADEMY IN ITS RELATION TO THE NAVY AT
LARGE 45
IV. THE NAVAL ACADEMY IN ITS INTERIOR WORKINGS--PRACTICE
CRUISES 70
V. MY FIRST CRUISE AFTER GRADUATION--NAUTICAL CHARACTERS 103
VI. MY FIRST CRUISE AFTER GRADUATION--NAUTICAL SCENES
AND SCENERY--THE APPROACH OF DISUNION 127
VII. INCIDENTS OF WAR AND BLOCKADE SERVICE 156
VIII. INCIDENTS OF WAR AND BLOCKADE SERVICE--CONTINUED 179
IX. A ROUNDABOUT ROAD TO CHINA 196
X. CHINA AND JAPAN 229
XI. THE TURNING OF A LONG LANE--HISTORICAL, NAVAL, AND
PERSONAL 266
XII. EXPERIENCES OF AUTHORSHIP 302
PREFACE
When I was a boy, some years before I obtained my appointment in the
navy, I spent many of those happy hours that only childhood knows
poring over the back numbers of a British service periodical, which
began its career in 1828, with the title _Colburn's United Service
Magazine_; under which name, save and except the Colburn, it still
survives. Besides weightier matters, its early issues abounded in
reminiscences by naval officers, then yet in the prime of life, who
had served through the great Napoleonic wars. More delightful still,
it had numerous nautical stories, based probably on facts, serials
under such entrancing titles as "Leaves from my Log Book," by Flexible
Grommet, Passed Midshipman; a pen-name, the nautical felicity of which
will be best appreciated by one who has had the misfortune to handle a
grommet[1] which was not flexible. Then there was "The Order Book," by
Jonathan Oldjunk; an epithet so suggestive of the waste-heap, even to
a landsman's ears, that one marvels a man ever took it unto himself,
especially in that decline of life when we are more sensitive on the
subject of bodily disabilities than once we were. Old junk, however,
can yet be "worked up," as the sea expression goes, into other uses,
and that perhaps was what Mr. Oldjunk meant; his early adventures as a
young "luff" were, for economical reasons, worked up into their
present literary shape, with the addition of a certain amount of
extraneous matter--love-making, and the like. Indeed, so far from
uselessness, that veteran seaman and rigid economist, the Earl of St.
Vincent, when First Lord of the Admiralty, had given to a specific
form of old junk--viz., "shakings"--the honors of a special order, for
the preservation thereof, the which forms the staple of a comical
anecdote in Basil Hall's _Fragments of Voyages and Travels_; itself a
superior example of the instructive "recollections," of less literary
merit, which but for Colburn's would have perished.
Any one who has attempted to write history knows what queer nuggets of
useful information lie hidden away in such papers; how they often help
to reconstruct an incident, or determine a mooted point. If the
Greeks, after the Peloponnesian war, had had a Colburn's, we should
have a more certain, if not a perfect, clew to the reconstruction of
the trireme; and probably even could deduce with some accuracy the
daily routine, the several duties, and hear the professional jokes and
squabbles, of their officers and crews. The serious people who write
history can never fill the place of the gossips, who pour out an
unpremeditated mixture of intimate knowledge and idle trash.
Trash? Upon the whole is not the trash the truest history? perhaps not
the most valuable, but the most real? If you want contemporary color,
contemporary atmosphere, you must seek it among the impressions which
can be obtained only from those who have lived a life amid particular
surroundings, which they breathe and which colors them--dyes them in
the wool. However skilless, they cannot help reproducing, any more
than water poured from an old ink-bottle can help coming out more or
less black; although, if sufficiently pretentious, they can
monstrously caricature, especially if they begin with the modest
time-worn admission that they are more familiar with the marling-spike
than with the pen. But even the caricature born of pretentiousness
will not prevent the unpremeditated betrayal of conditions, facts, and
incidents, which help reconstruct the _milieu_; how much more, then,
the unaffected simplicity of the born story-teller. I do not know how
Froissart ranks as an authority with historians. I have not read him
for years; and my recollections are chiefly those of childhood, with
all the remoteness and all the vividness which memory preserves from
early impressions. I think I now might find him wearisome; not so in
boyhood. He was to me then, and seems to me now, a glorified Flexible
Grommet or Jonathan Oldjunk; ranking, as to them, as Boswell does
towards the common people of biography. That there are many solid
chunks of useful information to be dug out of him I am sure; that his
stories are all true, I have no desire to question; but what among it
all is so instructive, so entertaining, as the point of view of
himself, his heroes, and his colloquists--the particular contemporary
modification of universal human nature in which he lived, and moved,
and had his being?
If such a man has the genius of his business, as had Froissart and
Boswell, he excels in proportion to his unconsciousness of the fact;
his colors run truer. For lesser gobblers, who have not genius, the
best way to lose consciousness is just to let themselves go; if they
endeavor to paint artistically the muddle will be worse. To such the
proverb of the cobbler and his last is of perennial warning. As a
barber once sagely remarked to me, "You can't trim a beard well,
unless you're born to it." It is possible in some degree to imitate
Froissart and Boswell in that marvellous diligence to accumulate
material which was common to them both; but, when gathered, how
impossible it is to work up that old junk into permanent engrossing
interest let those answer who have grappled with ancient chronicles,
or with many biographies. So, with a circumlocution which probably
convicts me in advance of decisive deficiency as a narrator, I let
myself go. I have no model, unless it be the old man sitting in the
sun on a summer's day, bringing forth out of his memories things new
and old--mostly old.
A. T. MAHAN.
INTRODUCING MYSELF
While extracts from the following pages were appearing in _Harper's
Magazine_, I received a letter from a reader hoping that I would say
something about myself before entering the navy. This had been outside
my purpose, which was chiefly to narrate what had passed around me
that I thought interesting; but it seems possibly fit to establish in
a few words my antecedents by heredity and environment.
I was born September 27, 1840, within the boundaries of the State of
New York, but not upon its territory; the place, West Point on the
Hudson River, having been ceded to the General Government for the
purposes of the Military Academy, at which my father, Dennis Hart
Mahan, was then Professor of Engineering, as well Civil as Military.
He himself was of pure Irish blood, his father and mother, already
married, having emigrated together from the old country early in the
last century; but he was also American by birthright, having been born
in April, 1802, very soon after the arrival of his parents in the city
of New York. There also he was baptized into the Roman Catholic
Church, in the parish of St. Peter's, the church building of which now
stands far down town, in Barclay Street. It is not, I believe, the
same that existed in 1802.
Very soon afterwards, before he reached an age to remember, his
parents removed to Norfolk, Virginia, where he grew up and formed his
earliest associations. As is usual, these colored his whole life; he
was always a Virginian in attachment and preference. In the days of
crisis he remained firm to the Union, by conviction and affection; but
he broke no friendships, and to the end there continued in him that
surest positive indication of local fondness, admiration for the women
of what was to him his native land. In beauty, in manner, and in
charm, they surpassed. "Your mother is Northern," he once said to me,
"and very few can approach her; but still, in the general, none
compare for me with the Southern woman." The same causes, early
association, gave him a very pronounced dislike to England; for he
could remember the War of 1812, and had experienced the embittered
feeling which was probably nowhere fiercer than around the shores of
the Chesapeake, the scene of the most wide-spread devastation
inflicted, partly from motives of policy, partly as measures of
retaliation. Spending afterwards three or four years of early manhood
in France, he there imbibed a warm liking for the people, among whom
he contracted several intimacies. He there knew personally Lafayette
and his family; receiving from them the hospitality which the Marquis'
service in the War of Independence, and his then recent ovation during
his tour of the United States in 1825, prompted him to extend to
Americans. This communication with a man who could tell, and did tell
him, intimate stories of intercourse with Washington doubtless
emphasized my father's patriotic prejudices as well as his patriotism.
When he revisited France, in 1856, he found many former friends still
alive, and when I myself went there for the first time, in 1870, he
asked me too to hunt them up; but they had all then disappeared. His
fondness for the French doubtless accentuated his repugnance to the
English, at that time still their traditional enemy. The combination
of Irish and French prepossession could scarcely have resulted
otherwise; and thus was evolved an atmosphere in which I was brought
up, not only passively absorbing, but to a certain degree actively
impressed with love for France and the Southern section of the United
States, while learning to look askance upon England and abolitionists.
The experiences of life, together with subsequent reading and
reflection, modified and in the end entirely overcame these early
prepossessions.
My father was for over forty years professor at West Point, of which
he had been a graduate. In short, the Academy was his life, and he
there earned what I think I am modest in calling a distinguished
reputation. The best proof of this perhaps is that at even so early a
date in our national history as his graduation from the Academy, in
1824, he was thought an officer of such promise as to make it
expedient to send him to France for the higher military education in
which the country of Napoleon and his marshals then stood pre-eminent.
From 1820, when he entered the Academy as a pupil, to his death in
1871, he was detached from it only these three or four years. Yet this
determination of his life's work proceeded from a mere accident,
scarcely more than a boy's fancy. He had begun the study of medicine,
under Dr. Archer, of Richmond; but he had a very strong wish to learn
drawing. In those primitive days the opportunity of instruction was
wanting where he lived; and hearing that it was taught at the Military
Academy he set to work for an appointment, not from inclination to the
calling of a soldier, but as a means to this particular end. It is
rather singular that he should have had no bias towards the profession
of arms; for although he drifted almost from the first into the civil
branch, as a teacher and then professor, I have never known a man of
more strict and lofty military ideas. The spirit of the profession was
strong in him, though he cared little for its pride, pomp, and
circumstance. I believe that in this observation others who knew him
well agreed with me.
The work of a teacher, however important and absorbing in itself, does
not usually offer much of interest to readers. My father, by the
personal contact of teacher and taught, knew almost every one of the
distinguished generals who fought in the War of Secession, on either
the Union or the Confederate side. With scarcely an exception, they
had been his pupils; but his own life was uneventful. He married, in
1839, Mary Helena Okill, of New York City. My mother's father was
English, her mother an American, but with a strong strain of French
blood; her maiden name, Mary Jay, being that of a Huguenot family
which had left France under Louis XIV. By the time of her birth, in
1786, a good deal of American admixture had doubtless qualified the
original French; but I remember her well, and though she lived to be
seventy-three, she had up to the last a vivacity and keen enjoyment of
life, more French than American, reflected from quick black eyes,
which fairly danced with animation through her interest in her
surroundings.
From my derivation, therefore, I am a pretty fair illustration of the
mix-up of bloods which seems destined to bring forth some new and yet
undecipherable combination on the North American continent. One-half
Irish, one-fourth English, and a good deal more than "a trace" of
French, would appear to be the showing of a quantitative analysis.
Yet, as far as I understand my personality, I think to see in the
result the predominance which the English strain has usually asserted
for itself over others. I have none of the gregariousness of either
the French or Irish; and while I have no difficulty in entering into
civil conversation with a stranger who addresses me, I rarely begin,
having, upon the whole, a preference for an introduction. This is not
perverseness, but lack of facility; and I believe Froissart noted
something of the same in the Englishmen of five hundred years ago. I
have, too, an abhorrence of public speaking, and a desire to slip
unobserved into a back seat wherever I am, which amount to a mania;
but I am bound to admit I get both these dispositions from my father,
whose Irishry was undiluted by foreign admixture.
In my boyhood, till I was nearly ten, West Point was a very
sequestered place. It was accessible only by steam-boats; and during
great part of the winter months not by them, the Hudson being frozen
over most of the season as far as ten to twenty miles lower down. The
railroad was not running before 1848, and then it followed the east
bank of the river. One of my early recollections is of begging off
from school one day, long enough to go to a part of the post distant
from our house, whence I caught my first sight of a train of cars on
the opposite shore. Another recollection is of the return of a company
of engineer soldiers from the War with Mexico. The detachment was
drawn up for inspection where we boys could see it. One of the men had
grown a full beard, a sight to me then as novel as the railroad, and I
announced it at home as a most interesting fact. I had as yet seen
only clean-shaven faces. Among my other recollections of childhood
are, as superintendent of the Academy, Colonel Robert E. Lee,
afterwards the great Confederate leader; and McClellan, then a junior
engineer officer.
As my boyhood advanced the abolition movement was gaining strength, to
the great disapprobation and dismay of my father, with his strong
Southern and Union sympathies. I remember that when _Uncle Tom's
Cabin_ came out, in my twelfth year, the master of the school I
attended gave me a copy; being himself, I presume, one of the rising
party adverse to slavery. My father took it out of my hands, and I
came to regard it much as I would a bottle labelled "Poison." In
consequence I never read it in the days of its vogue, and I have to
admit that since then, in mature years, I have not been able to
continue it after beginning. The same motives, in great part, led to
my being sent to a boarding-school in Maryland, near Hagerstown, which
drew its pupils very largely, though not exclusively, from the South.
The environment would be upon the whole Southern. I remained there,
however, only two years, my father becoming dissatisfied with my
progress in mathematics. In 1854, therefore, I matriculated as a
freshman at Columbia College in the city of New York, where I remained
till I went to the Naval Academy.
My entrance into the navy was greatly against my father's wish. I do
not remember all his arguments, but he told me he thought me much less
fit for a military than for a civil profession, having watched me
carefully. I think myself now that he was right; for, though I have no
cause to complain of unsuccess, I believe I should have done better
elsewhere. While thus more than dissenting from my choice, he held
that a child should not be peremptorily thwarted in his scheme of
life. Consequently, while he would not actively help me in the
doubtful undertaking of obtaining an appointment, which depended then
as now upon the representative from the congressional district, he
gave me the means to go to Washington, and also two or three letters
to personal friends; among them Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of
War, and James Watson Webb, a prominent character in New York
journalism and in politics, both state and national.
Thus equipped, I started for Washington on the first day of 1856,
being then three months over fifteen. As I think now of my age, and
more than usual diffidence, and of my mission, to win the favor of a
politician who had constituents to reward, whereas to all my family
practical politics were as foreign as Sanskrit, I know not whether the
situation were more comical or pathetic. On the way I foregathered
with a Southern lad, some three years my senior, returning home from
England, where he had been at school. He beguiled the time by stories
of his experiences, to me passing strange; and I remember, in crossing
the Susquehanna, which was then by ferry-boat, looking at the fields
of ice fragments, I said it would be unpleasant to fall in. "I would
sooner have a knife stuck into me," he replied. I wonder what became
of him, for I never knew his name. Of course he entered the
Confederate army; but what besides?
I remember my week's stay in Washington much as I suppose a man
overboard remembers the incidents of that experience. Memory is an odd
helpmate; why some circumstances take hold and others not is "one of
those things no fellow can find out." I saw the member of Congress,
who I find by reference to have been Ambrose S. Murray, representative
of the district within which West Point lay. He received me kindly,
but with the reserve characteristic of most interviews where one party
desires a favor for which he has nothing in exchange to offer. I
think, however, that Mr. Webb, with whom and his family I breakfasted
one day, said some good words for me. Jefferson Davis was a graduate
of the Military Academy, of 1827; and although his term there had
overlapped my father's by only one year, his interest in everything
pertaining to the army had maintained between them an acquaintance
approaching intimacy. He therefore was very cordial to the boy before
him, and took me round to the office of the then Secretary of the
Navy, Mr. James C. Dobbin, of North Carolina; just why I do not
understand yet, as the Secretary could not influence my immediate
object. Perhaps he felt the need of a friendly chat; for I remember
that, after presenting me, the two sat down and discussed the
President's Message, of which Davis expressed a warm approval. This
being the time of the protracted contest over the Speakership, which
ended in the election of Banks, I suppose the colleagues were talking
about a document which was then ready, and familiar to them, but which
was not actually sent to Congress until it organized, some weeks after
this interview. Probably their conversation was the aftermath of a
cabinet meeting.
I returned home with fairly sanguine hopes, which on the journey
received a douche of cold water from an old gentleman, a distant
connection of my family, to visit whom I stopped a few hours in
Philadelphia. He asked about my chance of the appointment; and being
told that it seemed good, he rejoined, "Well, I hope you won't get it.
I have known many naval officers, captains and lieutenants, in
different parts of the world"--for his time, he was then nearly
eighty, he had travelled extensively--"I have talked much with them,
and know that it is a profession with little prospect." Then he quoted
Dr. Johnson: "No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to
get himself into jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail with the
chance of being drowned"; and further to overwhelm me, he clinched the
saying by a comment of his own. "In a ship of war you run the risk of
being killed as well as that of being drowned." The interview left me
a perplexed but not a wiser lad.
Late in the ensuing spring Mr. Murray wrote me that he would nominate
me for the appointment. Just what determined him in my favor I do not
certainly know; but, as I remember, Mr. Davis had authorized me to say
to him that, if the place were given me, he would use his own
influence with President Pierce to obtain for a nominee from his
district a presidential appointment to the Military Academy. Mr.
Murray replied that such a proposition was very acceptable to him,
because the tendency among his constituents was much more to the army
than to the navy. At that day, besides one cadet at West Point for
each congressional district, which was in the gift of the
representative, the law permitted the President a certain number of
annual appointments, called "At Large"; the object being to provide
for sons of military and naval officers, whose lack of political
influence made it difficult otherwise to enter the school. This
presidential privilege has since been extended to the Naval Academy,
but had not then. The proposed interchange in my case, therefore,
would be practically to give an officer's son an appointment at large
in the navy. Whether this arrangement was actually carried out, I have
never known nor inquired; but it has pleased me to believe, as I do,
that I owed my entrance to the United States navy to the interposition
of the first and only President of the Southern Confederacy, whose
influence with Mr. Pierce is a matter of history.
I entered the Naval Academy, as an "acting midshipman," September 30,
1856.
FROM SAIL TO STEAM
RECOLLECTIONS OF NAVAL LIFE
I
NAVAL CONDITIONS BEFORE THE WAR OF SECESSION
THE OFFICERS AND SEAMEN
Naval officers who began their career in the fifties of the past
century, as I did, and who survive till now, as very many do, have
been observant, if inconspicuous, witnesses of one of the most rapid
and revolutionary changes that naval science and warfare have ever
undergone. It has been aptly said that a naval captain who fought the
Invincible Armada would have been more at home in the typical war-ship
of 1840, than the average captain of 1840 would have been in the
advanced types of the American Civil War.[2] The twenty years here
chosen for comparison cover the middle period of the century which has
but recently expired. Since that time progress has gone on in
accelerating ratio; and if the consequent changes have been less
radical in kind, they have been more extensive in scope. It is
interesting to observe that within the same two decades, in 1854,
occurred the formal visit of Commodore Perry to Japan, and the
negotiations of the treaty bringing her fairly within the movement of
Western civilization; starting her upon the path which has resulted in
the most striking illustration yet given of the powers of modern naval
instruments, ships and weapons, diligently developed and elaborated
during the period that has since elapsed.
When I received my appointment to the Naval School at Annapolis, in
the early part of the year 1856, the United States navy was under the
influence of one of those spasmodic awakenings which, so far as action
is concerned, have been the chief characteristic of American
statesmanship in the matter of naval policy up to twenty years ago.
Since then there has been a more continuous practical recognition of
the necessity for a sustained and consistent development of naval
power. This wholesome change has been coincident with, and doubtless
largely due to, a change in appreciation of the importance of naval
power in the realm of international relations, which, within the same
period, has passed over the world at large. The United States of
America began its career under the Constitution of 1789 with no navy;
but in 1794 the intolerable outrages of the Barbary pirates, and the
humiliation of having to depend upon the armed ships of Portugal for
the protection of American trade, aroused Congress to vote the
building of a half-dozen frigates, with the provision, however, that
the building should stop if an arrangement with Algiers were reached.
Not till 1798 was the navy separated from the War Department. The
President at that date, John Adams, was, through his New England
origin, in profound sympathy with all naval questions; and, while
minister to Great Britain, in 1785, had had continual opportunity to
observe the beneficial effect of maritime activity and naval power
upon that kingdom. He had also bitter experience of the insolence of
its government towards our interests, based upon its conscious control
of the sea. He thus came into office strongly biassed towards naval
development. To the impulse given by him contributed also the
outrageous course towards our commerce initiated by the French
Directory, after Bonaparte's astounding campaigns in Italy had struck
down all opposition to France save that of the mistress of the seas.
The nation, as represented in Congress, woke up, rubbed, its eyes,
and built a small number of vessels which did exemplary service in the
subsequent quasi war with France. Provision was made for a further
increase; and it is not too much to say that this beginning, if
maintained, might have averted the War of 1812. But within four years
revulsion came. Adams gave place to Jefferson and Madison, the leaders
of a party which frankly and avowedly rejected a navy as an element of
national strength, and saw in it only a menace to liberty. Save for
the irrepressible marauding of the Barbary corsairs, and the
impressment of our seamen by British ships-of-war, the remnant of
Adams' ships would not improbably have been swept out of existence.
This result was feared by naval officers of the day; and with what
good reason is shown by the fact that, within six months of the
declaration of the War in 1812, and when the party in control was
determined that war there should be, a proposition to increase the
navy received but lukewarm support from the administration, and was
voted down in Congress. The government, awed by the overwhelming
numbers of the British fleet, proposed to save its vessels by keeping
them at home; just as a few years before it had undertaken to save its
commerce by forbidding its merchant-ships to go to sea.
Such policy with regard to a military service means to it not sleep,
but death. The urgent remonstrances of three or four naval captains
obtained a change of plan; and at the end of the year the President
admitted that, for the very reasons advanced by them, the activity of
a small squadron, skilfully directed, had insured the safe return of
much the most part of our exposed merchant-shipping. It is not,
however, such broad general results of sagacious management that bring
conviction to nations and arouse them to action. Professionally, the
cruise of Rodgers's squadron, unsuccessful in outward seeming, was a
much more significant event, and much more productive, than the
capture of the _Guerriere_ by the _Constitution_; but it was this
which woke up the people. The other probably would not have turned a
vote in either House. As a military exploit the frigate victory was
exaggerated, and not unnaturally; but no words can exaggerate its
influence upon the future of the American navy. Here was something
that men could see and understand, even though they might not
correctly appreciate. Coinciding as the tidings did with the
mortification of Hull's surrender at Detroit, they came at a moment
which was truly psychological. Bowed down with shame at reverse where
only triumph had been anticipated, the exultation over victory where
disaster had been more naturally awaited produced a wild reaction. The
effect was decisive. Inefficient and dilatory as was much of the
subsequent administration of the navy, there was never any further
question of its continuance. And yet, from the ship which thus played
the most determining part in the history of her service, it has been
proposed to take her name, and give it to another, of newer
construction; as though with the name could go also the association.
Could any other _Victory_ be Nelson's _Victory_ to Great Britain? Can
calling a man George Washington help to perpetuate the services of the
one Washington? The last much-vaunted addition to the British fleet,
the _Dreadnaught_, bears a family name extending back over two
centuries, or more. She is one of a series reasonably perpetuated,
ship after ship, as son after sire; a line of succession honored in
the traditions of the nation. So there were _Victorys_, before the one
whose revered hulk still maintains a hallowed association; but her
individual connection with one event has set her apart. The name might
be transferred, but with it the association cannot be transmitted. But
not even the _Victory_, with all her clinging memories, did for the
British navy what the _Constitution_ did for the American.
There was thenceforward no longer any question about votes for the
navy. Ships of the line, frigates, and sloops, were ordered to be
built, and the impulse thus received never wholly died out. Still, as
with all motives which in origin are emotional rather than reasoned,
there was lack of staying power. As the enthusiasm of the moment
languished, there came languor of growth; or, more properly, of
development. Continuance became routine in character, tending to
reproduce contentedly the old types consecrated by the War of 1812.
There was little conscious recognition of national exigencies,
stimulating a demand that the navy, in types and numbers, should be
kept abreast of the times. In most pursuits of life American
intelligence has been persistently apt and quick in search of
improvement; but, while such characteristics have not been absent from
the naval service, they have been confined chiefly, and naturally, to
the men engaged in the profession, and have lacked the outside support
which immediate felt needs impart to movements in business or
politics. Few men in civil life could have given an immediate reply to
the question, Why do we need a navy? Besides, although the American
people are aggressive, combative, even warlike, they are the reverse
of military; out of sympathy with military tone and feeling.
Consequently, the appearance of professional pride, the insistence
upon the absolute necessity for professional training, which in the
physician, lawyer, engineer, or other civil occupation is accepted as
not only becoming, but conducive to uplifting the profession as a
whole, is felt in the military man to be the obtrusion of an alien
temperament, easily stigmatized as the arrogance of professional
conceit and exclusiveness. The wise traditional jealousy of any
invasion of the civil power by the military has no doubt played some
part in this; but a healthy vigilance is one thing, and morbid
distrust another. Morbid distrust and unreasoned prepossession were
responsible for the feebleness of the navy in 1812, and these feelings
long survived. An adverse atmosphere was created, with results
unfortunate to the nation, so far as the navy was important to
national welfare or national progress.
Indeed, between the day of my entrance into the service, fifty years
ago, and the present, nowhere is change more notable than in the
matter of atmosphere; of the national attitude towards the navy and
comprehension of its office. Then it was accepted without much
question as part of the necessary lumber that every adequately
organized maritime state carried, along with the rest of a national
establishment. Of what use it was, or might be, few cared much to
inquire. There was not sufficient interest even to dispute the
necessity of its existence; although, it is true, as late as 1875 an
old-time Jeffersonian Democrat repeated to me with conviction the
master's dictum, that the navy was a useless appendage; a statement
which its work in the War of Secession, as well on the Confederate as
on the Union side, might seem to have refuted sufficiently and with
abundant illustration. To such doubters, before the war, there was
always ready the routine reply that a navy protected commerce; and
American shipping, then the second in the world, literally whitened
every sea with its snowy cotton sails, a distinctive mark at that time
of American merchant shipping. In my first long voyage, in 1859, from
Philadelphia to Brazil, it was no rare occurrence to be becalmed in
the doldrums in company with two or three of these beautiful
semi-clipper vessels, their low black hulls contrasting vividly with
the tall pyramids of dazzling canvas which rose above them. They
needed no protection then, and none foresaw that within a decade, by
the operations of a few small steam-cruisers, they would be swept from
the seas, never to return. Everything was taken for granted, and not
least that war was a barbarism of the past. From 1815 to 1850, the
lifetime of a generation, international peace had prevailed
substantially unbroken, despite numerous revolutionary movements
internal to the states concerned; and it had been lightly assumed that
these conditions would thenceforth continue, crowned as they had been
by the great sacrament of peace, when the nations for the first time
gathered under a common roof the fruits of their several industries in
the World's Exposition of 1851. The shadows of disunion were indeed
gathering over our own land, but for the most of us they carried with
them no fear of war. American fight American? Never! Separation there
might be, and with a common sorrow officers of both sections thought
of it; but, brother shed the blood of brother? No! By 1859 the Crimean
War had indeed intervened to shake these fond convictions; but, after
all, rules have exceptions, and in the succeeding peace the British
government, consistent with the prepossessions derived from the
propaganda of Cobden, yielded perfectly gratuitously the principle
that an enemy's commerce might be freely transported under a neutral
flag, thereby wrenching away prematurely one of the prongs of
Neptune's trident. Surely we were on the road to universal peace.
San Francisco before and after its recent earthquake--at this moment
of writing ten days ago--scarcely presented a greater contrast of
experience than that my day has known; and the political condition and
balance of the world now is as different from that of the period of
which I have been writing as the new city will be from the old one it
will replace at the Golden Gate. Of this universal change and
displacement the most significant factor--at least in our Western
civilization--has been the establishment of the German Empire, with
its ensuing commercial, maritime, and naval development. To it
certainly we owe the military impulse which has been transmitted
everywhere to the forces of sea and land--an impulse for which, in my
judgment, too great gratitude cannot be felt. It has braced and
organized Western civilization for an ordeal as yet dimly perceived.
But between 1850 and 1860 long desuetude of war, and confident
reliance upon the commercial progress which freedom of trade had
brought in its train, especially to Great Britain, had induced the
prevalent feeling that to-morrow would be as to-day, and much more
abundant. This was too consonant to national temperament not to
pervade America also; and it was promoted by a distance from Europe
and her complications much greater than now exists, and by the
consistent determination not to be implicated in her concerns. All
these factors went to constitute the atmosphere of indifference to
military affairs in general; and particularly to those external
interests of which a navy is the outward and visible sign and
champion.
I do not think there is error or exaggeration in this picture of the
"environment" of the navy in popular appreciation at the time I
entered. Under such conditions, which had obtained substantially since
soon after the War of 1812, and which long disastrously affected even
Great Britain, with all her proud naval traditions and maritime and
colonial interests, a military service cannot thrive. Indifference and
neglect tell on most individuals, and on all professions. The saving
clauses were the high sense of duty and of professional integrity,
which from first to last I have never known wanting in the service;
while the beauty of the ships themselves, quick as a docile and
intelligent animal to respond to the master's call, inspired affection
and intensified professional enthusiasm. The exercises of sails and
spars, under the varying exigencies of service, bewildering as they
may have seemed to the uninitiated, to the appreciative possessed
fascination, and were their own sufficient reward for the care
lavished upon them. In their mute yet exact response was some
compensation for external neglect; they were, so to say, the testimony
of a good conscience; the assurance of professional merit, and of work
well done, if scantily recognized. Poor and beloved sails and
spars--_la joie de la manoeuvre_, to use the sympathetic phrase of a
French officer of that day--gone ye are with that past of which I have
been speaking, and of which ye were a goodly symbol; but like other
symptoms of the times, had we listened aright, we should have heard
the stern rebuke: Up and depart hence; this is not the place of your
rest.
The result of all this had been a body of officers, and of men-of-war
seamen, strong in professional sentiment, and admirably qualified in
the main for the duties of a calling which in many of its leading
characteristics was rapidly becoming obsolete. There was the spirit of
youth, but the body of age. As a class, officers and men were well up
in the use of such instruments as the country gave them; but the
profession did not wield the corporate influence necessary to extort
better instruments, and impotence to remedy produced acquiescence in,
perhaps, more properly, submission to, an arrest of progress, the
evils of which were clearly seen. Yet the salt was still there, nor
had it lost its savor. The military professions are discouraged, even
enjoined, against that combined independent action for the remedy of
grievances which is the safeguard of civil liberty, but tends to sap
the unquestioning obedience essential to unity of action under a
single will--at once the virtue and the menace of a standing army.
Naval officers had neither the privilege nor the habits which would
promote united effort for betterment; but when individuals among them
are found, like Farragut, Dupont, Porter, Dahlgren--to mention only a
few names that became conspicuous in the War of Secession--there will
be found also in civil and political life men who will become the
channels through which the needs of the service will receive
expression and ultimately obtain relief. The process is overslow for
perfect adequacy, but it exists. It may be asked, Was not the Navy
Department constituted for this special purpose? Possibly; but
experience has shown that sometimes it is effective, and sometimes it
is not. There is in it no provision for a continuous policy. No
administrative period of our naval history since 1812 has been more
disastrously stagnant and inefficient than that which followed closely
the War of Secession, with its extraordinary, and in the main
well-directed, administrative energy. The deeds of Farragut, his
compeers, and their followers, after exciting a moment's enthusiasm,
were powerless to sustain popular interest. Reaction ruled, as after
the War of 1812.
To whomsoever due, in the decade immediately preceding the War of
Secession there were two notable attempts at regeneration which had a
profound influence upon the fortunes of that contest. Of these, one
affected the personnel of the navy, the other the material. It had for
some time been recognized within the service that, owing partly to
easy-going toleration of offenders, partly to the absence of
authorized methods for dealing with the disabled, or the merely
incompetent, partly also, doubtless, to the effect of general
professional stagnation upon those naturally inclined to
worthlessness, there had accumulated a very considerable percentage of
officers who were useless; or, worse, unreliable. In measure, this was
also due to habits of drinking, much more common in all classes of men
then than now. Even within the ten years with which I am dealing, an
officer not much my senior remarked to me on the great improvement in
this respect in his own experience; and my contemporaries will bear me
out in saying that since then the advance has been so sustained that
the evil now is practically non-existent. But then the compassionate
expression, "A first-rate officer when he is not drinking," was
ominously frequent; and in the generation before too little attention
had been paid to the equally significant remark, that with a fool you
know what to count on, but with one who drank you never knew.
But drink was far from the only cause. There were regular
examinations, after six years of service, for promotion from the
warrant of midshipman to a lieutenant's commission; but, that
successfully passed, there was no further review of an officer's
qualifications, unless misconduct brought him before a court-martial.
Nor was there any provision for removing the physically incompetent.
Before I entered the navy I knew one such, who had been bed-ridden for
nearly ten years. He had been a midshipman with Farragut under Porter
in the old _Essex_, when captured by the _Phoebe_ and _Cherub_. A
gallant boy, specially named in the despatch, he had such aptitude
that at sixteen, as he told me himself, he wore an epaulette on the
left shoulder--the uniform of a lieutenant at that time; and a
contemporary assured me that in handling a ship he was the smartest
officer of the deck he had ever known. But in early middle life
disease overtook him, and, though flat on his back, he had been borne
on the active list because there was nothing else to do with him. In
that plight he was even promoted. There was another who, as a
midshipman, had lost a foot in the War of 1812, but had been carried
on from grade to grade for forty years, until at the time I speak of
he was a captain, then the highest rank in the navy. Possibly,
probably, he never saw water bluer than that of the lakes, where he
was wounded. The undeserving were not treated with quite the same
indulgence. Those familiar with the _Navy Register_ of those days will
recall some half-dozen old die-hards, who figured from year to year at
the head of the lieutenant's list; continuously "overslaughed," never
promoted, but never dismissed. To deal in the same manner with such
men as the two veterans first mentioned would have been insulting; the
distinction of promotion had to be conceded.
But there were those also who, despite habits or inefficiency, slipped
through even formal examination; commanders whose ships were run by
their subordinates, lieutenants whose watch on deck kept their
captains from sleeping, midshipmen whose unfitness made their
retention unpardonable; for at their age to re-begin life was no
hardship, much less injustice. Of one such the story ran that his
captain, giving him the letter required by regulation, wrote, "Mr. So
and So is a very excellent young gentleman, of perfectly correct
habits, but nothing will make an officer of him." He answered his
questions, however; and the board considered that they could not go
beyond that fact. They passed him in the face of the opinion of a
superior of tried efficiency who had had his professional conduct
under prolonged observation. I never knew this particular man
professionally, but the general estimate of the service confirmed his
captain's opinion. Twenty or thirty years later, I was myself one of a
board called to deal with a precisely similar case. The letter of the
captain was explicitly condemnatory and strong; but the president of
the board, a man of exemplary rectitude, was vehement even in refusing
to act upon it, and his opinion prevailed. Some years afterwards the
individual came under my command, and proved to be of so eccentric
worthlessness that I thought him on the border-line of insanity. He
afterwards disappeared, I do not know how.
Talking of examinations, a comical incident came under my notice
immediately after the War of Secession, when there were still employed
a large number of those volunteer officers who had honorably and
usefully filled up the depleted ranks of the regular service--an
accession of strength imperatively needed. There were among them,
naturally, inefficients as well as efficients. One had applied for
promotion, and a board of three, among them myself, was assembled to
examine. Several commonplace questions in seamanship were put to him,
of which I now remember only that he had no conception of the
difference between a ship moored, and one lying at single anchor--a
subject as pertinent to-day as a hundred years ago. After failing to
explain this, he expressed his wish not to go further; whereupon one
of the board asked why, if ignorant of these simple matters, he had
applied for examination. His answer was, "I did not apply for
examination, I applied for promotion." Even in this case, when the
applicant had left the room, the president of the board, then a
somewhat notorious survival of the unfittest, long since departed this
life, asked whether we refused to pass him. The third member, himself
a volunteer officer, and myself, said we did. "Well," he rejoined,
"you know this man may get a chance at _you_ some day." This prudent
consideration, however, did not save him.