A. T. Mahan

“ I never had the opportunity of viewing the ship from outside under way at sea; but she was delightful to look at in port. Her spars, both masts and yards, lofty and yet square, were as true to proportion, for perfection of appearance, as was her hull; and the twenty-five guns she showed on each broadside, in two tiers, though they had abundance of working-room, were close enough together to suggest two strong rows of solid teeth, ready for instant use. Nothing could be more splendidly martial. ”

“ In peace, cruising ends in itself; it is like a "constitutional;" beneficial, no doubt, but not to most men as healthily beneficial as the walk to the office, with its definite object and the incidental amusement of the streets. A terminus ad quem is essential to the perfection of exercise, bodily or mental. As it was, Montevideo, in the river La Plata, and Rio de Janeiro were the two chief ports between which we oscillated, with rare and brief stays elsewhere or at sea.
The Congress was a magnificent ship of her period. ”

“ The moon was big, and there was a clear sky, save for the narrow band of tiny clouds, massed like a flock of sheep, which ever fringes the horizon of the trades; always on the horizon, as you progress, yet never visible above when the horizon of this hour has become the zenith of the next. After the watch was mustered and the lookouts stationed, there came perfect silence, save for the slight, but not ominous, singing of the wind through the rigging, and the dash of the water against the bows, audible forward though not aft. ”

“ The bitter inner disappointment is veiled under the reserve of his private life and the reticence of his public utterance, which give to his personality a certain remoteness from usual joys and sorrows; but, the veil once pierced by sympathy, the human side of the younger Pitt stands revealed as of one who, without complaint, bore no common burden, did no common work, and to whom fell no common share of the suffering which arises from disappointment and frustration, in ideals and achievement. ”

“ The Iroquois did not succeed in making Rio without a stop. The northeast trades hung well to the eastward after we left Guadeloupe, and blew hard with a big sea; for it was the northern winter. Running across them, as we were, the ship was held close to the wind under fore and aft canvas. For a small vessel nothing is more uncomfortable. Rolling and butting at waves which struck the bow at an angle of forty-five degrees made walking, not impossible, indeed, to practised sea legs, but still a constant succession of gymnastic balancings that took from it all pleasure. ”

“ When heading towards you, they really convey to an imagination of ordinary quickness the semblance of some unknown sea monster, full of life and purpose. Now you see a fellow charging along, having the vicious look of a horse with his ears back. Anon comes another, the quiet gaze of which suggests some meditative fish, lazily gliding, enjoying a siesta, with his belly full of good dinner. Yet a third has a hungry air, as though his meal was yet to seek, and in passing turns on you a voracious side glance, measuring your availability as a morsel, should nothing better offer. ”

“ Augustine's Bay, the Comoros, Aden, and Muscat, our next port, Bombay, seemed like returning to city hubbub and accustomed ways. True, Indian life was strange to most of our officers, if not to all; but there was about Bombay that which made you feel you had got back into the world, albeit in many particulars as different from that you had hitherto known as Rip Van Winkle found after his long slumber. Then, a decade only after the great mutiny, travel to India for travel's sake was much more rare than now. The railway system, that great promoter of journeyings, was not complete. ”

“ If the political independence of the Philippine Islands bid fair to result in the loss, or lessening, of the safeguards of personal freedom to the private Philippine islander, the mission of the United states is at present clear, nor can it be abandoned without national discredit; nay, national crime. Personal liberty is a greater need than political independence, the chief value of which is to insure the freedom of the individual. Similarly, not only for the sake of its own citizens, but for the world at large, each country should diligently watch and weigh current external occurrences ”

“ The evolution, common enough itself, an almost invariable accompaniment of getting under way, was now exciting even to grandeur, for we could see only when the benevolent lightning kindled in the sky a momentary glare of noonday. "Now that's a clever old man," said the boatswain's mate next day to me, approvingly, of the captain; "boxing her off that way, with all that wind and blackness, was handsomely done." After this we settled down to a two days' pampero, with a huge but regular sea.
Whether the Congress's helm on this interesting occasion was shifted for sternboard I never inquired. ”

“ By five o'clock this gradual shifting had passed from east, by north, to west, where the gale died out; having lasted only about eight hours, yet with such vehemence that it had kicked up a huge sea. By 10 P.M. the stars were shining serenely, a gentle breeze barely steadying the ship, under increased canvas, in the huge billows which for a few hours continued to testify that things had been nasty. A spoiled child that has carried a point by squalling could scarcely present a more beaming expression than did the heavens ”

“ I remember a dozen years ago watching the French Mediterranean fleet of six or eight battle-ships leaving the harbor of Villefranche, near Nice. There was some manœuvring to get their several stations, during which, here and there, a vessel lying quiet waiting her opportunity would glide forward with a dozen slow turns of the screws, not agitating the water beyond a light ripple at the bows. ”

“ He might be told, as Basil Hall's first captain did his midshipmen, that they might keep watch or not, as they pleased—that is, that the ship had no use for them; or he might be sent in charge of a prize, as was Farragut, when twelve years old, doubtless with an old seaman as nurse, but still in full command. Anywhere from the bottom of the hold to the truck—top of the masts—he could be sent, and was sent; every boat, that went ashore had a midshipman, who must answer for her safety and see that none got away of a dozen men, whose one thought was to jump the boat and have a run on shore. ”

“ One marine private, in the ship to which I belonged, returning from liberty on shore, was heard saying to another with drunken impressiveness, "Remember, our motto is, 'Patriotism and laziness.'" Of course, this went round the ship, greatly delighting on both counts our marine officers, and became embodied in the chaff that passed to and fro between the two corps; of which one saying, "The two most useless things in a ship were the captain of marines and the mizzen-royal," deserves for its drollery to be committed to writing, now that mizzen-royals have ceased to be. ”

“ As I recall those days, when I first awoke to political observation, I should say that the feeling of my Southern associates towards the Union was that which men have towards a friend lately buried. Affection had not wholly disappeared; but life called. Let the dead bury their dead. I remember on my first practice cruise, in 1857, standing in the main-top of the ship with a member of the class immediately before mine, the son of a North Carolina member of Congress. "Yes," he said to me, "Buchanan [inaugurated four months before] will be the last President of the United States." ”

“ 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 ”

“ One learns more widely and more thoroughly by reefing topsails when it has to be done, than by doing it at a routine hour, without the accompaniments of the wind, the wet, and the lurching, which give the operation a tone and a tonic—the real thing, in short. Doubtless we may wait too long, like Micawber, even for a reef-topsail gale to turn up, though the ocean can usually be trusted to be nasty often enough; but, on the other hand, one over sedulously bent on making opportunity is apt to be too preoccupied to see that which makes itself. Truth, doubtless, lies between the extremes. ”

“ There was no marked change up to 1861, when the War of Secession began. The atmosphere and environment which I at first encountered upon my entrance to the Naval Academy, in 1856, had nothing strange, or even unfamiliar, to a boy who had devoured Cooper and Marryat—not as mere tales of adventure, but with some real appreciation and understanding of conditions as by them depicted. I had studied, as well as been absorbed by them. Cooper is much more of an idealist and romancer than is Marryat, who belongs essentially to the realistic school. ”

“ On her forecastle, and to the fore and main masts, each, were stationed sixty men, full half of them prime seamen, not only in skill, but in age and physique—ninety for the starboard watch, and ninety for the port; not to count the mizzen-topmen, after-guard, and marines, more than as many more. I have always remembered the effect produced upon me by this huge mass, when all hands gathered once to wear ship in a heavy gale, the height of one of those furious pamperos which issue from the prairies (pampas) of Buenos Ayres. ”

“ If so great a man was thus troubled, no strange thing was happening to me in a like experience. Such good cheer in intellectual as well as moral effort is one of the best services of biography and history, raising to the rank of ministering spirits the men whose struggles and success they tell. Was not Washington greater at Valley Forge than at Yorktown? and Nelson beating against a head wind than at Trafalgar? ”

“ The navy then, even more than now, symbolized the exterior activities of the country, which are committed by the Constitution to the Union. Hence, the life of the profession naturally nurtured pride in the nation; and while States'-Rights had undermined the principle of loyalty to the Union, it had been less successful in destroying love for it. But to most the prospect was gloomy. That Massachusetts and South Carolina should be put into a pen together, and left to fight it out, was the solution expressed to me by a lieutenant who afterwards fell nobly, in command, on a Union deck in the war ”

“ As the whole storm body has an onward movement, this centre, calm or gusty as to wind, but confused and tumultuous as to wave, progresses with it; and a vessel which is so unhappy as to be overtaken finds herself, after a period of helpless tossing by conflicting seas, again subjected to the full fury of the wind, but from the quarter opposite to that which has already tried her. ”

“ The Macedonian, for a sailing-vessel, had a quite rapid run across from Newport to Plymouth, eighteen days from anchor to anchor, though I believe one of our frigates, after the war, made it in twelve. This was the only occasion, during my fairly numerous crossings, that. I have ever seen icebergs under a brilliant sky. Usually the scoundrels come skulking along masked by a fog, as though ashamed of themselves, as they ought to be. They are among the most obnoxious of people who do not know their place. ”

“ The boat life of China, indeed, is a study by itself. In very many cases in the ports and rivers, the family is born, bred, fed, and lives in the boat. In moving her, the man and his wife and two of the elder children will handle the oars; while a little one, sometimes hardly more than an infant, will take the helm, to which his tiny strength and cunning skill are sufficient. Going off late one night from Hong Kong to the ship, and having to lean over in the stern to get hold of the tiller-lines, I came near putting my whole weight on the baby, lying unperceived in the bottom. ”

“ A coachman has a "cinch," to use our present-day slang; for he has only his own behavior to look to, while the aide has to see that the dozen bargemen also behave, don't skip up the wharf for a drink, and then forget the way back to the boat. If one or two do, no matter how good his dinner may have been, the remarks of the flag-officer are apt to be unpleasant; not to speak of subsequent interviews with the first-lieutenant. I trace to those days a horror which has never left me of keeping servants waiting. Flag-officers apparently never heard that punctuality is the politeness of kings. ”

“ The scene tempted me more than most to description, for the brilliant stillness of a clear November day, and the gaunt, bare trees, were strange to our long experience of verdure in southern Japan, and smacked strongly of home—Hakodate being in the latitude of New York; but, as always, the majority have their own vision, their own memory, of just such conditions and surroundings, more vivid for them than another's portrayal. ”

“ The ensigns of all the war-vessels in port, American and other, were at half-mast, as was the admiral's square blue flag at the mizzen, which is never lowered while he remains on duty on board. As the movement began, a first gun was fired from the Hartford, which continued at minute intervals until she had completed thirteen, a rear-admiral's salute. When she had finished, the Shenandoah took up the tale, followed in turn by the Oneida and Iroquois, the mournful cadence thus covering almost the whole period up to the customary volleys over the graves. ”

“ Pitch darkness settled down upon the ship. Except in the frequent flashes of lightning, literally blue, I could not see the forecastle boatswain's mate of the watch, who stood close by my elbow, ready pipe in hand. The rain came down in buckets, and in the midst of all the wind suddenly shifted, taking the sails flat aback. The shrillness of the boatswain's pipes is then their great merit. They pierce through the roar of the tempest, by sheer difference of pitch, an effect one sometimes hears in an opera ”

“ Along with these, dovetailed in as opportunity offered, in a sailing-ship under way there went on the work of readjusting the yards and sails; a pull here and a pull there, like a woman getting herself into shape after sitting too long in one position. Yards trimmed to a nicety; the two sheets of each sail close home alike; all the canvas taut up, from the weather-tacks of the courses to the weather-earings of the royals; no slack weather-braces, or weather-leaches, letting a bight of loose canvas sag like an incipient double chin. ”

“ I may explain for the unlearned in navigation that declination of a heavenly body corresponds in the celestial sphere to the latitude of an object on the terrestrial. The sun, being a leisurely celestial globe-trotter, continually varies his latitude—declination—within a zone bounded by the two tropics; and the rule runs that when his declination is of the same name (north or south) as his direction from the ship at noon, the declination is added or subtracted, I now forget which, in the computation that ascertains the vessel's precise position. ”

“ I always mistrusted The Kedge Anchor after my researches into a mysterious sentence—"A celebrated master, now a commander, in the navy never served the bowsprit rigging all over." In the old-time frigates, of the days of Nelson and Hull, the master was at the head of the marling-spike division of the ship's economy, being, in fact, the descendant of the master (captain) of more than a century earlier, who managed the ship while soldiers commanded and fought her. But the masters were not in the line of promotion; in the British navy they rarely rose, in our own much more rarely. ”