Washington Naval Conference

“ He was a member of the International Prime Meridian and Time Conference in 1884, and of the Board of Fortifications in 1885–1886; was superintendent of the Naval Academy from 1886 to 1890; and was promoted to captain and served as delegate at the International Maritime Conference at Washington in 1889. ”

“ Notwithstanding the proviso of cessation of building in case a treaty should be made, Washington’s advice to continue the building of the ships was accepted by Congress, and in 1797 there were launched the United States, the Constitution, and Constellation, all to become famous in our country’s history. The last two are still afloat and their old age proudly cared for.
In his annual message of December, 1796, Washington urged a naval force as indispensable, saying: “To secure respect to a neutral flag requires a naval force, organized and ready to vindicate it from insult or aggression. ”

“ In maintaining the justest policy, the most reasonable influence, one of the political elements, long dominant, and still one of the most essential, is military strength—in the broad sense of the word "military," which includes naval as well—not merely potential, which our own is, but organized and developed, which our own as yet is not. We wisely quote Washington's warning against entangling alliances, but too readily forget his teaching about preparation for war. ”

“ The view of the naval department at Washington is that 'the lack of important naval battles in recent years stands in marked contrast to the desperate efforts of European powers to equip extraordinary vessels designed to combine the invulnerable and the irresistible. ”

“ Every French ship that could be reached must be in the Chesapeake, and Washington had had too many French fleets slip away from him at the last moment and bring everything to naught to take any chances in this direction. To bring about his naval supremacy required the utmost tact and good management, and that he succeeded is one of the chief triumphs of the campaign. In fact, at the very outset he was threatened in this quarter with a serious defection. De Barras, with the squadron of the American station, was at Boston, and it was essential that he should be united with De Grasse at Yorktown. ”

“ The young nation was living literally up to Washington's rule of avoiding entanglements abroad, and its people looked with suspicion on the naval branch of the service which had rendered such a good account of itself in the war with Great Britain. They feared to build and man ships lest possession of a navy might prove an incentive to war. And so when war did come—war, not with Europe, but with our nearest neighbor—the United States had little floating force to join in it. ”

“ Not more than one capital ship may be retained for this purpose at one time by any of the Contracting Powers. (d) Of the capital ships which would otherwise be scrapped under the present Treaty in or after the year 1931, France and Italy may each retain two sea-going vessels for training purposes exclusively, that is, as gunnery or torpedo schools. ”

“ America was peculiarly fitted for a navy; she abounded in all kinds of naval resources, and had within herself, those means which other nations were obliged to obtain from abroad. Her situation, and the dispositions of a considerable proportion of her citizens, evinced still more the propriety of a naval establishment. Perhaps the country was not yet mature for such an establishment to any great extent. But the period was not far distant when it would be. The United States had an increasing population, much individual wealth, and considerable national resources. ”

“ Who, having communicated to one another their full powers, found in good and due form, have agreed as follows:
PART I ARTICLE 1 ⁠THE High Contracting Parties agree not to exercise their rights to lay down the keels of capital ship replacement tonnage during the years 1931–1936 inclusive as provided in Chapter II, Part 3 of the Treaty for the Limitation of Naval Armament signed between them at Washington on the 6th February, 1922, and referred to in the present Treaty as the Washington Treaty. ”

“ At Washington we gained equality of sea-power with the greatest naval nation without having to pay heavily for it. No balance of power question or any other subject of international politics in Europe affects our interests518 in the way the balance of power in the Pacific and the amelioration of China’s international position do. At Washington we had the trump argument that if competition in naval armaments was not stopped we should be compelled to become the predominant naval power. ”

“ THE STORY OF THE AMERICAN NAVY. BY BENSON J. LOSSING. Chapter III.
"North African pirates are out on the Mediterranean Sea; our budding commerce there is in danger; we must have a navy to protect it," wrote a distinguished American in Europe to Alexander Hamilton. President Washington called the attention of Congress to the matter, and in the spring of 1794 he was authorized to have six frigates built, each carrying not less than thirty-two cannon. The keel of the Constitution (yet afloat) was soon laid at Boston, and so the creation of the Navy of the United States was begun. ”

“ The plan made in 1777 to send a fleet of frigates to Mauritius and from thence to operate against the English trade in the Indian seas looks singularly like Admiral Dewey’s movement from Hong Kong against Manila.
The hope is to be cherished that America will never again cross swords with her kin [Pg 180] beyond seas, but if moved by some untoward fate she should, it is not too much to say that a Naval Board of Strategy at Washington will devise plans of naval attack and defence quite similar to those of the Marine Committee. ”

“ I heartily congratulate the Congress upon the steady progress in building up the American Navy. We can not afford a let-up in this great work. To stand still means to go back. There should be no cessation in adding to the effective units of the fighting strength of the fleet. Meanwhile the Navy Department and the officers of the Navy are doing well their part by providing constant service at sea under conditions akin to those of actual warfare. ”

“ The haggling and adjustment that is now going on in the committee of five powers on naval limitation and in the committee of nine powers on the Pacific settlement I will not attempt to follow. It is a matter for the experts and diplomatists; the public is concerned not with the methods of the wrangle but with the general purport and practical outcome.
We of the general public are incapable of judging upon the merits of battle cruisers and the possible limits to the size of submarines. Our concern is to see such things grow rarer and rarer until they disappear. ”

“ Nothing could be more dramatic than the way the victory was announced at Washington. Midshipman Hamilton, who was in the engagement with Decatur, and served with signal bravery, was sent with the captured flag of the Macedonian to present it to his father, Paul Hamilton, then Secretary of the Navy. He arrived in Washington on the evening of the 8th of December. A ball was in progress, and the Secretary of the Navy was present. The room was filled with beautiful women, with men in all the color and glory of gold lace, epaulets, and side-arms, when Hamilton entered. ”

“ The naval officers at Washington have great and well deserved influence, and they must be persuaded either to consent to the transfer of the Observatory to another department or else to conduct the institution under the Navy in the way that will be most creditable to it and to the country. ”

“ The people at Washington knew all about this ship and were very much alarmed. No one could tell what dreadful damage it might do if it got out to sea, and came up Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River to the national capital. It might be much worse than when the British burnt Washington in 1814, for Washington was now a larger and finer city.
Something had to be done, and right away, too. It would not do to wait for a monster like the Merrimac. So Captain John Ericsson, a famous engineer of New York, was ordered to build an iron ship-of-war as fast as he could. ”

“ At last the starving people of the Confederacy saw the way clear for the sweeping away of the remorseless blockade.
(p. 818) In the North, the excitement was that of fear. The people of seaboard cities imagined every moment the irresistible iron ship steaming into their harbors, and mowing down their buildings with her terrible shells. The Secretary of War said, at a hastily called cabinet meeting in Washington: "The 'Merrimac' will change the whole character of the war: she will destroy every naval vessel; she will lay all the seaboard cities under contribution. ”

“ Many of the seamen had been enlisted for the cruise only, and they now received their discharge, so that the crews of the already undermanned ships were so depleted from these causes that it would be impossible for them to put to sea. Washington, who was hard pressed for men, and had troubles of his own, demanded the immediate return to New York of the soldiers he had lent to the fleet. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It seems to me very clear that it will be to the advantage of the country for the Congress to adopt a comprehensive plan for putting the navy upon a final footing of strength and efficiency and to press that plan to completion within the next five years. We have always looked to the navy of the country as our first and chief line of defense; we have always seen it to be our manifest course of prudence to be strong on the seas. Year by year we have been creating a navy which now ranks very high indeed among the navies of the maritime nations. ”

“ The United States will better fulfill their mission and more exalt their position in the family of nations by indoctrinating their navy officers in the teachings of Washington's farewell address than by flaunting in the face of the world the destructive power of rams and artillery.
Nothing could be more foolish than the notion we hear frequently expressed that so big a country should have a big navy. Instead of taking pride in the possession of a big navy, the American people ought to be proud of not needing one. ”

“ It is not the loss of a product of ships that is to be deplored, but the loss of a product of men.
The Old Method of Handling a Ship’s Bowsprit.
From an old engraving.
The building of the new navy actually began, one may say, when Secretary of the Navy William H. Hunt appointed a board of naval officers, with Rear-admiral John Rodgers at its head, “to determine the requirements of a new navy.” These officers considered the matter jointly for a proper time, and then reported that the United States should have twenty-one battle-ships—ships fit to meet the best floating forts of the world ”

“ He began to write to Cornwallis that troops should be returned to New York, and he gave up absolutely the idea of sending more men to Virginia. Having thus convinced Clinton that New York was menaced, Washington then set to work to familiarize skillfully the minds of his allies and of Congress with the idea of a southern campaign. With this end in view, he wrote on August 2 that, if more troops arrived from Virginia, New York would be impracticable, and that the next point was the south. The only contingency, as he set forth, was the all-important one of obtaining naval superiority. ”

“ Secretary Daniels, in other passages of the foregoing report, declares that the record made abroad by the United States Navy, in co-operation with the navies of Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan, is without precedent in allied warfare. He pays a high tribute to the efficiency [Pg 321] of Admiral Sims, Commander-in-Chief of American naval forces in European waters; of Rear-Admiral Rodman, in command of the American battleships with the British fleet; of Vice-Admiral Wilson, in France; Rear-Admiral Niblack, in the Mediterranean ”

“ What we are proposing now is not the sudden creation of a Navy, for we have a splendid Navy, but the definite working out of a program by which within five years we shall bring the Navy to a fighting strength which otherwise might have taken eight or ten years; along exactly the same lines of development that have been followed and followed diligently and intelligently for at least a decade past. There is no sudden panic, there is no sudden change of plan ”

“ The control of the sea had been the great advantage of the British from the beginning, and had enabled them to achieve all that they ever gained. With these odds against him, with no possibility of obtaining a fleet of his own, Washington saw that his only chance of bringing the war to a quick and successful issue was by means of the French. It is difficult to manage allied troops. It is still more difficult to manage allied troops and an allied fleet. ”

“ I always think to myself and hope that the co-operation of our fleets, of our navies, is the harbinger of what is to come in the future when the war is over, of that which will still continue then. Magnificent is their work, and I glory always in the thought that an American admiral has taken charge of the British Fleet and the British policy, and that when the plans are formed for an attack that American admiral is given the place of honor in our fleet, because we feel that it is his due at this moment. ”