Actually its roots lie with officials, who have piled regulation upon
regulation, and the Vanity of Vanities is to be found so far back
as the days of the great St. Vincent and his recorded orders about
officers shoe-laces. Lesser lights than he, being in authority,
blindly imitated. And so the uniform fetish grew and prospered.
This is not to be taken wholly as a condemnation--for all that a system
which made one of the most important duties of a lieutenant to be the
carrying round of a tape measure with a view to ascertaining whether
every man was “uniform” within a fraction of an inch may seem more
suggestive of comic opera than of naval efficiency. Within reasonable
limits, conformity has many virtues; and a man slovenly in observing
uniform regulations is likely enough to be slovenly in things of
greater moment. Like most bad things in the Navy, the principle was
ideal: only the carrying of it too far was at fault. There is not the
remotest reason to believe that a Navy not in uniform would be as
efficient as one in uniform--all the probabilities are that it would
be less so. The man who invented the saying that “a pigmy in uniform
is more impressive than a giant in plain clothes” was making no idle
statement, but stating a general verity. The trouble is solely in the
difficulty that has ever been experienced in striking a common-sense
mean--a difficulty created by the first mediocrity who tried to stand
in St. Vincent’s shoes, and who lacked the brains to realise that
what St. Vincent had started with a definite Service object in view,
he--the unknown mediocrity--had merely lost in the _means_. An example
once created had to be followed. The hardships of conformity--of which
overmuch is heard nowadays--are actually trivial, on account of the
custom. The mischief lies not in the conforming, but in the waste of
time of those who are made responsible for that conformity.
In essence, modern uniform is simple enough: that the various ranks
should be noted by special insignia is obviously desirable. For
combatant officers, the distinguishing sleeve-marks are:--
[Illustration: Admiral Vice-Admiral Rear-Admiral Commodore Captain
Commander Lieutenant-Commander Lieutenant Sub-Lieutenant]
Engineer officers wear the same insignia with purple between the
stripes. Non-combatant officers are without the curl to the stripes,
and wear colours to distinguish them as follows:--Doctors, red;
Paymasters, white; Naval Instructors, blue.
The system for the supply of the _personnel_ is to-day altogether
different from what it was a hundred years ago. Till comparatively
recently future deck officers were taken very young, passed into the
Service as Naval Cadets, and thence promoted up to Midshipmen, etc.,
while Engineers and officers of the other civilian branches joined
later in life.
More or less contemporaneously with the Dreadnought era this was
altered by the “New Scheme of Entry,” also known as the “Selbourne
Scheme,” after the then first Lord of the Admiralty, but really the
creation of Admiral Fisher, the Sea Lord who was the moving spirit at
the Admiralty at that time.
Few schemes have been more virulently criticised--few, in some cases,
more unfairly. Like nearly all Admiral Fisher’s innovations, the scheme
was better on paper than in fact. Like all his other schemes it was
carried through at far too great a pace for the ultra-conservative
moods of the British Navy, which has ever resented anything but the
most gradual of changes. On the other hand, it is too often forgotten
by critics that a great agitation on the part of naval engineer
officers, backed by very considerable shore-influences, was then in
existence. Something had to be done, and done quickly. Of Admiral
Fisher it may ever be said that he acted where others merely argued.
Under the New Scheme, the deck-officer, the engineer, and the
marine-officer were all to enter as cadets at a very tender age,
undergo a common training, and be specialised for any Branch at option
or at Admiralty discretion later on.
Whatever may be said against the New Scheme, it was magnificent on
paper. Engineer officers had first come into the Navy as mechanics to
work an auxiliary motive-power in which no “seamen” had much faith.
From that humble beginning the status of their Branch grew and grew,
till both motive-power and the existence of nearly everything on
ship-board depended on the engineers. At the same time the official
status of the Branch remained practically in the same stage as it
did when the first few “greasers” were entered. The deck-officer was
(nominally, at any rate) drawn from the aristocracy; the engineer
officer from the democracy in a great measure. In so far as this
obtained, “social war” was added to the real issue. It was obvious that
this state of affairs was detrimental to naval efficiency. Something
had to be done.
Admiral Fisher cut the Gordian knot in his own fashion. In substance
his Scheme provided that future engineer officers were to be drawn from
the same class as deck-officers--to gild the pill, marine officers were
flung into the same melting pot. He might have done better: but far
more conceivably harm might have been perpetrated.
As an argument behind him, he had Drake and Elizabethan conditions,
the history of the days when every man was made to “sail his ship and
fight it too.” The U.S. Navy had already plunged on a somewhat similar
experiment. When the Russo-Japanese War came, the Japanese, in the
middle of a life-and-death fight, suddenly granted executive rank to
their engineer officers--_i.e._, that right to control and punish their
own men which British marine officers have always had.
The Scheme met its first rock in the Marines. For three hundred years
or thereabouts the “Sea Regiment” has been afloat as a thing apart.
The “leather-necks”--as the sailors call them--have built up their own
traditions. They have ever remained a force apart from both Army and
Navy, belonging to both and yet to neither. The record of the Marines
is such that when, recently, it was proposed that they should have a
regimental colour with their battles emblazoned on it, the idea had to
be abandoned because there was not room on the flag for their services!
Any attempt to interfere with the continuity of such a corps was
fore-doomed to failure from the first. The Marines resisted being
turned into sailors just as they would have resisted being turned
into soldiers. They stood out uncompromisingly for being “the Sea
Regiment.” The expected happened. By 1911 this part of the New Scheme
was practically shelved, and the most unique body of men in the world
was left to carry out its own traditions.
[Illustration:
_Photo_] [_Russell & Sons, Southsea._
ADMIRAL SIR JOHN JELLICOE.]
In the matter of future engineers, snags were struck likewise, but
here a more or less unreasoning conservatism on the part of parents
played its full part. The average parent objected to his son becoming
an engineer specialist over old-time reasons. A further and weightier
objection was, and continues to be, raised by engineering experts,
who argue that engineering is a life profession, not to be picked up
efficiently by casual specialization.
The matter is still under discussion, and its verification or otherwise
rests with the future. As to the first point, a serious effort to
overcome it was made early in 1912 by the promulgation of an order that
New Scheme officers, specialised for engineering, would be eligible for
the command of submarines equally with deck-officers.
The importance of this particular point is great; for by the end
of 1911 it was generally believed that the motor warship would at
some more or less early date in the future replace the steam-driven
one; and so the “sail-his-ship-and-fight-it-too” theory found a new
interpretation.
As regards the rank and file of the Navy, the difference of a hundred
years has been so great and so commented on that to-day we perhaps tend
to make it, seem far greater than it really is. It is to be doubted
whether the “prime seaman” has altered to anything like the extent
imagined. We are all too prone to forget that in the days of the Great
French Wars _all_ the crews were not jail-birds, pressed-men, and
riff-raff. The leaven of the mass were the “prime seamen,” who, in
their own way, were as well trained for the naval service as are the
bluejackets of to-day.
Since then the “prime seamen” have had many vicissitudes. So long ago
as the time of the Crimean War men of ten years’ continuous service
were in existence, but whatever the “paper” value of this force may
have been, the extracts given in Chapter VIII, Vol. I, make it
abundantly clear that the “prime seaman” was in practice very scarce.
It is long since then that the long service system was built up.
Under this every bluejacket was a “prime seaman” either in _posse_
or in _esse_. He was entered for a period of ten years, with option
to re-engage for a further ten years at slightly increased pay and a
pension on retirement. At a later and comparatively recent stage this
total of twenty years got increased to twenty-two years. The prospects
were improved to the extent that the best men of the Lower Deck upon
reaching Warrant Rank were able, towards the close of their careers, to
reach the rank of lieutenant on the Active List. In a word, the idea of
a Navy consisting entirely of “prime seamen” was more or less actually
reached.
This system had, however, one drawback. It was, relatively speaking,
very expensive. When the Fisher revolution took place Economy was very
much the motto of the day. It was pointed out that outside the Royal
Naval Reserve, consisting of merchant seamen, no effective reserve
existed. It was further pointed out that on board a modern battleship
there were many duties which could just as well be performed by
partially trained or even untrained men as by skilled men.
Out of these two points (according to some critics), by using the first
as a cloak for the economy of the second, a certain retrograde movement
was established in the institution of the Short Service System. Under
this the old time “landsman” was revived under another name. Under
the Short Service System a man could enter the Navy for five years,
receiving ordinary pay for ordinary duties, but without prospects of
promotion or pension, except in so far as he might afterwards be
utilised for reserve purposes.
How far this scheme made for efficiency is a moot point, but it
certainly led to economy. As certainly it was bitterly resented by
the men of the Navy. The views of the officers on the subject of
“ticklers”--as Short Service men were termed afloat--were less decided.
Some considered the scheme an abomination; others thought it very
satisfactory.
With so conservative an institution as the British Navy, it is yet too
early to give a definite decision one way or the other on the subject.
But it is worth noting that no one seems to have remarked on the fact
that it was a tentative return, under modern and peace conditions, to
what obtained in the days of the Great French Wars, and then at least
satisfactorily answered requirements.
No one really knew, and no one could do more than surmise, what would
be required for manning the Fleet in the next great war in which the
British Navy was engaged. It was generally assumed that in the present
century the re-institution of the press-gang would be quite impossible
owing to public opinion.
Public opinion, however, is a variable quantity, and with a Navy in
desperate plight for men there is no saying definitely what might or
might not happen, either publicly or _sub rosa_. It was generally
agreed on all hands that, large as the trained _personnel_ of the
British Navy is, it might prove totally inadequate in a big naval
war. In such case extra men would have to be found--sentiment or no
sentiment. The Short Service System, despite all its drawbacks, has so
far proved a loophole to avoid the horrors of the press-gang of the
old days; and much which on the face of it was at the time obviously
unsatisfactory may in the future prove to have been foresight of an
unexpectedly high order.
It only remains to add that nothing of this sort has ever been advanced
in extenuation by advocates of Short Service, who have confined
themselves entirely to the obvious point of economy and the more or
less debatable point of an efficient reserve.
To-day, of course, the crews do not find their ships a prison; but it
is a moot question whether they are relatively much better off than
in Nelson’s day. A great deal of leaven is given--far more, indeed,
than is represented by philanthropic agitators--but it is mainly of
the nature of “short leave.” This--in these days of travel--means very
little relatively, since it rarely allows of a trip home. For good or
ill, the bluejacket of to-day is a “home-bird”; consequently, what
a hundred years ago would have represented “ample liberty,” to-day
appears much on all fours with the old time confinement to the ship.
Modern facilities for travel have swallowed up most of the difference!
This is among the matters not understood by the Powers That Be. The
perspective has changed; and Service Conditions have not yet been fully
accommodated to the alteration.
Food remains a source of naval grievance to-day almost as much as in
the days of the Great Mutiny. That it does so is mostly an inherited
tradition of the past; for both quality and quantity are now excellent.
An impression prevails, however, that were messing provided by the
Admiralty on non-profit lines instead of by contract, “extras” would
either be cheaper, or that what are now “canteen profits” on them would
be more available than they are at present. There is little reason
to believe that this is so. Like the purser of a hundred years ago,
the modern contractor probably does not make a tenth of the profit
that he is legendarily supposed to make, nor is there any clear proof
that things could be materially bettered, except in details which have
little or nothing to do with the main point.
When all is said and done, the bluejacket of the Twentieth Century
has always been fed as well or better than his brother in civilian
life, and his growls upon the subject of messing do not demand any
very serious attention. Just as the Great Mutiny of 1797 brought about
an attention to details of uniform, regulations and things of that
sort which have ever since endured, so it perpetuated a corresponding
impression that an official eye must ever be directed to keeping
messing more or less up to the mark. And that eye has never slumbered.
In Chapter VIII, Vol. I, a page is devoted to surgery in the Great War
Era. Here, as in some other matters, progress may be more real than
imaginary. Now, as then, the Navy offers little in the way of lucrative
inducements to a good surgeon. In one sense it offers less than it did;
for, though exceptions can be found, the general naval conception of
the doctor is still the old-fashioned notion of someone to cure the
sick man rather than the more modern idea of preventing the man from
becoming sick.
The problem, it must, however, be admitted, is a difficult one in many
ways. In peace conditions the medical staff is rather too large than
too small; for all that, for modern war conditions it is probably
hopelessly inadequate.
It is more or less accepted that in modern battle the wounded must lie
where they fall. Theoretically, at any rate, this is mitigated by
certain instructions in First Aid, and the furnishing of hypodermic
syringes to one member of each gun’s crew for use on the badly wounded.
The days when lint was forbidden as a useless extravagance, and
sponges were restricted for the sake of economy, have indeed gone,
just as surely as has the old-time surgeon who, unable to afford his
own instruments, had to borrow from the carpenter an ordinary saw to
amputate a limb! But--relatively to shore-practice of equal date--the
naval medical service is not much less hampered than it was a hundred
odd years ago; and a really big naval action is likely enough to see as
much superfluous agony (relatively speaking) as in the old days!
The true position of the surgeon in a warship is not recognised; the
official duties of a doctor are officially purely “curative,” very
rarely “preventive.” Some or most of this is due to the prevalence
of old-fashioned obsolete ideas in high quarters; but some also
is to be laid at the door of the “Churches,” and their fancy for
differentiating between diseases. The matter is not one that admits of
further discussion here; but the enforcement upon naval surgeons (who
have to deal with large bodies of men crowded into spaces necessarily
favourable for contagion) of conditions which, rightly or wrongly, are
deemed to be for the public’s ultimate welfare on shore, are a terrible
menace to naval efficiency. Things are indeed bettering in this
respect, but still somewhat slowly.
After the Great Mutiny of 1797 the pay of the men was approximately
trebled. Although “extras” have since been added, the normal pay
has remained to all intents and purposes stationary, while if
qualifications be taken into account it has actually decreased, since
the “ordinary” of to-day is called on to do just about what the “able
seamen” of a hundred odd years had to do.
The respective rates[45] are:--
================+============+=============
| 1797 | 1914
| per week. | per week
| | (minimum).
----------------+------------+-------------
Ordinary seamen | 6/6 | 8/9
Able seamen | 8/4 | 11/8
================+============+=============
Since the cost of living has certainly gone up at least twenty per
cent. in the interim, and since the normal increase is undoubtedly
under that, a _prima facie_ case is certainly made out for those who
contend that the British sailor is, if anything, worse paid than he was
a hundred years ago.
The board and lodging which he obtains of course adds to the actual
total; but the fact remains that the board and lodging labourer of
to-day, who takes no risks of his life, is now as much ahead of the
sailor as he was behind him in 1797. And “uniform” means a heavy extra
expense for clothing.
In 1912 the men of the Navy definitely asked for a twenty per cent.
increase of pay. It amounted to nothing but an adjustment of 1797
conditions to modern ones. They did not obtain it--unasked for
off-chances of “Democracy on the Quarter Deck” were given instead.
Later on a 3d. a day concession was made to able seamen after the
completion of six years’ more service.
There at the moment the question remains. It has to a certain extent
been obscured by question of naval punishments; about which a good deal
of nonsense has been written by people who in some cases should know
better.
Naval punishments are severe; but discipline necessitates punishments,
and these have been regularly toned down to the spirit of the age.
The real and genuine grievances of to-day are almost identical with
the genuine grievances of which the “prime seamen” complained in
1797:--pay, leave, and the treatment of men who happen to come into the
hands of the ship’s medical staff through no fault of their own.
In 1912 a Commission was enquiring into punishments, and further
reductions in them to suit modern ideas resulted; but it is by no means
certain that any advantage in efficiency will be acquired therefrom.
Naval Discipline--no matter how harsh--is a tricky thing to tamper
with. The highest possible ideal of Discipline was reached by the
Japanese, who, previous to the war with Russia, ran their Navy on “the
honour of the flag” lines; and presumably had some similar system in
the Army. In what is certainly the most patriotic land of our era
this succeeded in peace time. Yet in the attacks on Port Arthur, when
a great assault was made, when the time came to cease bombarding the
hostile position, the guns were turned on the possible line of retreat,
ensuring that for a man to retire was more dangerous to him than to
go forward. In the case of the Japanese it was perhaps an unnecessary
precaution, but it was borrowed from old-time precautionary usage in
Europe.
Every system of discipline is based on the fact that either sooner or
later there will be some man who will be frightened enough to turn
tail, and lead others to follow his example, unless there is something
still worse to stop him. On this foundation stone the most seemingly
trivial items of discipline are based.
No normal man, _when it comes to the point_, cares to risk his life
or limbs. Here and there an individual of the “don’t care” order is
to be found; but generally speaking he is an anomaly. In the ordinary
way the safest assumption is that he will think more of his skin
than anything else--and on this theory all systems of discipline are
founded. All rely on the ultimate fact that “it is worse to go back
than to go forward.” The curse of the present age is the semi-educated
humanitarian who criticises the _means_ (often crude enough) without
taking the _end_ into proper account. At the other extreme are those
who, though familiar with the story of the Russian sentry regularly
placed to protect a favourite flower which had died two hundred years
before, understand that there is a _reason_ for everything, but fail to
realise fully that conditions change.
Many works have been written on the tactical and strategical
superiority of those who have led British Fleets to victory; but in
the great majority of cases there is little to show that the majority
of our admirals were really more clever than many of their opponents.
He would be a bold man who set out to prove in black and white that
Collingwood had more brain than Villeneuve, or would have done better
than that unlucky admiral had they changed places with each other. Nor
would he have much more luck in attempting to prove that at any era in
history British sailors were really braver than French ones.
In one critical period of English history Drake appeared--and the most
lasting sign of “how he did it” was “spit and polish”! In another
dark time came St. Vincent--and his sign manual was “tailoring” and
“routine.” In yet another critical hour came Nelson who supplied
enthusiasm by his care for the health of his men. But it was Nelson who
went out of his way to congratulate St. Vincent on hanging mutineers
out of hand on a Sunday instead of keeping them till the Monday! These
three great men knew what they relied upon.
The real secret of British naval success has surely lain in the
possession of naval architects able to create the kind of ship best
calculated to stand hammering, and hard-hearted folk in authority who
created a discipline which, however unreasonable some of it may now
seem, has ever ensured victory.
Superior British courage then, as now, was a pleasing topic for the
music hall or its equivalent; but the real driving power of the British
battle fleet in the past was “discipline.” Those who to-day would amend
or alter even the most seemingly ridiculous anomalies of discipline
will do well to ponder and walk warily, lest they upset greater things
than they wot of--lest they damage the keystone embodied in the crude
words of that unknown stoker who said: “It’s just this--do your blanky
job.”
WARSHIP NICKNAMES
PAST AND PRESENT.