United States Naval Academy

“ The Naval Academy is rendering signal service in preparing midshipmen for the highly responsible duties which in after life they will be required to perform. In order that the country should not be deprived of the proper quota of educated officers, for which legal provision has been made at the naval school, the vacancies caused by the neglect or omission to make nominations from the States in insurrection have been filled by the Secretary of the Navy. The school is now more full and complete than at any former period, and in every respect entitled to the favorable consideration of Congress. ”

“ Nothing effective can be done for the Navy once war has begun, and the result of the war, if the combatants are otherwise equally matched, will depend upon which power has prepared best in time of peace. The United States Navy is the best guaranty the Nation has that its honor and interest will not be neglected; and in addition it offers by far the best insurance for peace that can by human ingenuity be devised.
I call attention to the report of the official Board of Visitors to the Naval Academy at Annapolis which has been forwarded to the Congress. ”

“ In this way 1,622 officers were added to the service as temporary ensigns. The post-graduate school for officers, established in 1912 in the former marine barracks near the Academy, was suspended during the World War, but reopened in 1919 with about 50 student-officers. These spend a half-year or year at the post-graduate school before continuing their studies in civilian technical institutions. ”

“ The course of instruction is for four years—“final graduation” comes only after six years, the additional years being spent at sea—and is in eleven departments: discipline, seamanship, ordnance and gunnery, navigation, marine engineering and naval construction, mathematics and mechanics, physics and chemistry, electrical engineering, English, modern languages, naval hygiene and physiology. ”

“ Vessels for practice work of midshipmen in the first, second, and third year classes are attached to the academy during the academic year, and from early in une to September of each year the midshipmen are engaged in practice cruises. ”

“ By scraps of laws, regulations, and departmental instructions, a Naval Academy has grown up, and a naval policy become established for the United States, without the legislative wisdom of the country having passed upon that policy, and contrary to its previous policy, and against its interest and welfare. A Naval Academy, with 250 pupils, and annually coming off in scores, makes perpetual demand for ships and commissions ”

“ In 1919 the civilian corps of instructors was reorganized with increased pay and systematic promotion. The staff of the Academy increased from 146 officers and civilian instructors in 1910 to nearly 300 in 1921. ”

“ The centre of social gayety, therefore, is to be found in the Naval Academy.
The social feature of the life of the cadet must not be underestimated. The youngsters who present themselves as candidates for admission, [233] appointed politically, come from all parts of the country, and represent every shade of opinion and training in the United States. ”

“ Thus the total number of authorized appointments reached 3,126; and the number of midshipmen increased from 758 in 1910 to 1,230 in 1916, and in 1920 to about 2,200. Since 1920, physically qualified candidates have been allowed to enter either by examination or by certificate from a recognized school. ”

“ For this end 898 the department would cheerfully detach three or four of the lieutenants and passed midshipmen, who, while they would give instruction, would be ready to aid you in affairs of discipline and government. Thus the means for a good naval school are abundant, though they have not yet been collected together and applied.
One great difficulty remains to be considered. At our colleges and at West Point, young men are trained in a series of consecutive years; the laws of the United States do not sanction a preliminary school for the navy ”

“ The War College has developed into an institution which it is believed will be of great value to the Navy in teaching the science of war, as well as in stimulating professional zeal in the Navy, and it will be especially useful in the devising of plans for the utilization in case of necessity of all the naval resources of the United States. ”

“ The new Naval Academy is the most complete and perfect institution of its class, perhaps of any class in the educational world, which has ever been seen or conceived; we are sending there for technical and general training as fine a body of young men as can anywhere be found, and the future history of our steam navy is likely to do no discredit to its past, either in the days of Paul Jones or in those of Farragut. ”

“ But it is only since the close of the late war that by the numbers and force of the ships of which it was composed it could deserve the name of a navy. Yet it retains nearly the same organization as when it consisted only of five frigates. The rules and regulations by which it is governed earnestly call for revision, and the want of a naval school of instruction, corresponding with the Military Academy at West Point, for the formation of scientific and accomplished officers, is felt with daily increasing aggravation. ”

“ The other corps are drawn from civil life. Promotion is strictly by seniority in all grades. All officers except those in the Constructors’ and Professors’ Corps are obliged to pass a rigid examination in being promoted from one grade to another. The course of study at the Naval Academy is four years for both executive and engineer officers; the cadet then passes into the fleet for a period of two years for active service, at the end of which time he is eligible for promotion to the next grade. ”

“ A serious defect in the apprentice system, however, and one which makes it impossible to man the vessels altogether with well-trained American citizens, is the fact that the majority of the apprentices do not re-enlist after receiving their honorable discharge at the age of twenty-one, for the reason that the special training they have received enables them to secure better-paid places in civil life than are possible to them in the navy. ”

“ A boy who chooses the navy as his profession must leave school at the age of fourteen years, and go for nine months' training on a warship as a voluntary apprentice. At the end of this time he knows whether he likes the profession well enough to join it—if so, two years' coaching is given to enable him to pass the necessary examinations for entering the Naval Academy. ”

“ It is absurd not to graduate the midshipmen as ensigns; to keep them for two years in such an anomalous position as at present the law requires is detrimental to them and to the service. In the academy itself, every first classman should be required in turn to serve as petty officer and officer; his ability to discharge his duties as such should be a prerequisite to his going into the line, and his success in commanding should largely determine his standing at graduation. ”

“ All that has been said about the army applies with equal force to the navy. When the apprentice system was formulated there was hope expressed by hundreds of officers who had served in one branch or other of the service during the late civil war, that it might afford a stepping-stone to ambitious young men who wished to adopt a seafaring career, but were unable to obtain admission to the naval academy, or in any other way to gain a sufficient education in seamanship and gunnery, which are the two principal requirements of the American naval officer. ”

“ In the following years the want of intelligent seamen of American birth in the navy was greatly felt, and in 1875 Secretary of the Navy Robeson deemed it advisable to resume the enlistment of boys under the naval apprentice law, which was still in existence. As an experiment two hundred and fifty boys were enlisted and placed on the frigates "Minnesota" and "Constitution" and the sloops of war "Portsmouth" and "Saratoga," which were commissioned as training-ships. Since 1875 the training-station and vessels have been very important features of the naval establishment. ”

“ Naval apprenticeships have nothing whatever to do with the Annapolis Academy. They are enlistments for young men above fifteen and not above eighteen years of age, who may remain in the navy till they are twenty-one. These boys must have the full consent of parents or guardians, be of good character—for apprenticeships are not to reform bad characters—be sound of body, and be able to read and write English. Having been sworn in, they are sent on board naval vessels, where they are given the elements of a common-school education and taught naval seamanship. ”

“ The establishment of a naval academy, furnishing the means of theoretic instruction to the youths who devote their lives to the service of their country upon the ocean, still solicits the sanction of the Legislature. Practical seamanship and the art of navigation may be acquired on the cruises of the squadrons which from time to time are dispatched to distant seas, but a competent knowledge even of the art of shipbuilding, the higher mathematics, and astronomy ”

“ 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 surPage 42mount in reaching the level they had. ”

“ They must be able to read and write, although in special cases, when a boy shows general intelligence and is otherwise qualified, he may be enlisted notwithstanding the fact that his reading and writing are imperfect. Each boy presenting himself for enlistment must be accompanied by his father, mother, or, in case neither is living, by his legally appointed guardian, and must voluntarily sign an agreement to serve in the navy till twenty-one years of age. ”

“ Independent of the democratic tendency of all boys' schools, where each individual finds his level by natural gravitation, the Naval Academy, for reasons before alluded to, has been remarkably successful in assimilating its heterogeneous raw material and turning out a finished product of a good average social quality. Beyond this, social success or failure depends everywhere upon personal aptitudes which no training can bestow. But as officers we were nondescript. ”

“ On the other hand, many of the older officers believe that there is too much book-learning at the Academy and too little practical instruction; but most of them are willing to admit that the naval officer of to-day must be a scientific man to properly meet requirements of modern ships, and that he cannot acquit himself properly unless he has a complete theoretical training. ”

“ On shore, the landward youth fared better. The spirit of the times provided a free and growing opportunity for the study of technics and advance of scientific craftsmanship. The Navy took full advantage of this tide. The Board of Admiralty saw the futility of the old system of sea-training, having regard to the complete alteration of the methods in seamanship and navigation. Naval education could no longer be compensated by a schedule of bugle-calls and the exactitude of a hammock-lashing. Concurrent with a sound sea-training, general education was insisted upon. ”

“ How do you propose going about it, Dick? As I have told you, there is no chance of going to the Naval Academy this year, and I understand that all marine officers are appointed to the Corps from among Annapolis graduates. For that reason I do not believe you have----"
"Excuse me, Dad, but that's just where you are mistaken. All the marine officers don't go through the Naval Academy. Some of them enlist and go up from the ranks. They win their shoulder straps on their own merit. ”

“ The recitations, drills, practice cruises, physical training, medical care, athletics, recreations, and the career that the Navy affords one after graduation are related in a manner that will make the midshipman's life easily understood by his parents and friends, and also show the boy intending to enter the Academy just what he may expect there. ”

“ That system of training officers is, however, everywhere abandoned, and the present aim of every naval power in the world is to seek out young men having a fondness for sea-life, with a generous ambition for naval distinction, with an aptitude for the sciences which qualify and adorn the naval officer, with vigor of body to bear the inevitable exposures of the service, and with a large amount of general knowledge, and then subject them to a special course of professional study and practice in a naval school. ”

“ It came home to me that the modern Navy, with its incredibly rapid development in machinery, must have in its executive officers those precious qualities of adaptability and quick perception, that readiness to be always learning and testing, seeking and finding the best new ways of solving old problems, which can only be found in youth. Youth is of the essence of the Navy, it always has been so and it probably always will be. Youth learns quickly, and the Naval officer is always learning. ”

“ The professor of the naval academy is also the instructor of the shipwright apprentices, but his instructions extend only to that class who are to serve on board his Majesty's ships of war. No apprentice can be admitted to the academy under sixteen years of age ”