Naval station

“ The facts that modern ships cannot now as formerly carry a supernumerary force sufficient for such purposes, and are more dependent on fixed bases of supply and repair than in old days, point to a different method of using and applying the marine force to the sole purpose for which they are now necessary as a distinct branch of the naval service. If employed at the headquarters of a naval station, their efficiency as marines could be preserved by occasional embarcation of the officers and men in rotation. ”

“ These platforms by themselves have no power, means of steering, navigation lights, navigation aids, or living facilities. They are moved about by tugboats, which position the platforms alongside vessels under repair at berths or in drydock at Southwest Marine's shipyard or at the nearby Naval Station. The platforms are used to move equipment, materials, supplies, and vessel components around the shipyard and on to and off of the vessels under repair. Once in place, the platforms support ship repairmen engaged in their work. ”

“ The naval officers engaged upon our coast survey have rendered important service to our navigation. The discovery of a new channel into the harbor of New York, through which our largest ships may pass without danger, must afford important commercial advantages to that harbor and add greatly to its value as a naval station. ”

“ In order to maintain their efficiency and mobility they must have a naval base conveniently situated within the limits of their station to which they may resort from time to time for repair, refit, and supply. The need for supply at the base is less paramount than that for refit and repair, because it is manifest that the control of maritime communications which has enabled the requisite stores to reach the base will also enable them to reach the ships themselves, wherever they may be at the moment. ”

“ Finally, we came across a mobile air-station on which were two aeroplanes with folded wings. It was something which made you think.
"In a South Coast port, however, there was military activity everywhere. On the waters, far out from the harbour, which one imagines as denuded of craft, I saw dozens of ships. There were large and small tramps, mine-sweepers, and trawlers, and you were fascinated by the [98] sight. There was a dread lest one of them might disappear through a mine or a torpedo any instant.
"Thousands of soldiers were at the dock, waiting to embark on ships for France. ”

“ Among the chief buildings are a Gothic town-hall, a 15th-century church, and a Roman Catholic cathedral. The chief industry is chemical manufactures. There is a large coasting and general trade, and important fisheries. Many sea-going steamship companies make it a place of call. The Sound is an important naval station, and historically famous as the sailing port of the fleet that vanquished the Armada. ”

“ The naval routine and discipline fitted the work of a seaplane station admirably, for the work approximated to that of a ship, where drill is of secondary importance, and speed, skill, and accuracy in carrying out a job of work is of the first importance. ”

“ The first life-boat station was established by this society at Cohasset, the scene of many dreadful wrecks, in 1807. This society still exists and does much good, although, of course, superseded at some points by the government establishment. ”

“ They had been previously prepared for this eventuality, and their transport presented no special difficulties. The establishment of minefields and the substitution of buoys to mark the war channels for those of the peace-time channels was also the business of the Naval Stations Headquarters. ”

“ The tour on station was usually 21 days, with from eight to twelve days to get to station and back. We would wait until we sighted the relief ship before departing station. Sometimes we provided a check point for aircraft, including one flight of dirigibles. ”

“ This is the mad-boat of the establishment: the insane are permitted to row, and fish, and sail on their old element, and no harm comes of it.
But the Gun Boat Slip? says the reader. Well, the Gun Boat Slip is perhaps the oddest place in the whole naval establishment. At first the visitor thinks he is in a railway station, as on either side, long rows of sheds are placed, and between them lines of rails—one line running down into the salt water, with others crossing it at right angles, just in front, and parallel with the long row of sheds, which open end-ways upon the open shore. ”

“ There are usually about one hundred boys at the station at one time. They are taught to march, handle muskets, revolvers, broadswords, and cannon; they go aloft so as to get practice with the sails, and are also made familiar with the management of boats and oars and boathooks. Two hours a day are devoted to lessons, consisting of arithmetic, reading, writing, spelling, geography and grammar. Ample time is given for recreation, and innocent social pleasures are encouraged. ”

“ Swept from college, counting-room, professional office, and factory, often from homes of luxury and elegance, to the naval stations, where, in many cases arrangements to house them were far from complete, the young men of the navy found themselves surrounded by conditions to which they pluckily and patiently reconciled themselves, but which could not do otherwise than provoke restlessness and discomfort. ”

“ The United States has navy yards at Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Boston, Massachusetts; Brooklyn, New York; League Island, Pennsylvania; Norfolk, Virginia; Washington, District of Columbia; and Mare Island, California. At these navy yards ships are overhauled and repaired, machinery is adjusted and renewed, and stores of all kinds are provided. Here, too, on the [Pg 250] receiving ships, the recruits are received and instructed.
There are naval stations at Newport, Rhode Island; New London, Connecticut; Port Royal, South Carolina; Key West and Pensacola, Florida; and Puget Sound, Washington. ”

“ Bligh, on the North Sea station; – to the superintendence of a signal station on the coast of Suffolk; – to the command of the Constant gun-brig; – to the sea-fencible service, at Looe, in Cornwall; – to the command of the Chance cutter, on the Portsmouth station; – to that of the Suffolk prison-ship, moored in Portchester Lake; – to be acting-agent of transports in the expedition against Guadaloupe; – to serve as supernumerary lieutenant of several ships on the Leeward Islands’ station, where he continued until advanced to his present rank, Aug. ”

“ Having decided late in 1775 to make a naval defence, Congress early in 1776 took into consideration the establishing of one or more bases for naval operations. [198] There were needed one or more strongly fortified ports where the Continental fleet and its prizes would be comparatively secure from attack, and where the armed vessels could equip, man, and refit. The ports best adapted for naval stations were Boston, New York, Philadelphia, some point on or near the James river in Virginia, and Charleston, South Carolina. Lesser towns had their advocates and their hopes. ”

“ If you would imagine our base as it was in the great days, better forget the port entirely and try to think of a great British and American naval base crammed with shipping flying the national ensigns, of waters thrashed by the propellers of oil tankers, destroyers, cruisers, armed sloops, mine layers, and submarines even. A busy dockyard clangs away from morning till night; a ferry boat with a whistle like the frightened scream of a giant's child runs back and forth from the docks to the Admiralty pier, little parti-coloured motor dories run swiftly from one destroyer to another. ”

“ They are trained, clothed, and equipped very much as are soldiers of the land forces. In their preliminary instruction on shore, at navy-yards and naval-stations, they are instructed and drilled in the duties of infantry soldiers, field-artillery men, and as machine-gun companies. In preparation for their duties as landing-parties from ships of the navy, for expeditionary duty, and as defenders of naval advance bases, they are further trained in the use of portable search-lights, the wireless telegraph, the heliograph, and the various other methods of signalling. They study range-finding ”

“ In the front of this view, and towards the right, a man-of-war cutter is seen running out of the harbour; and, from her heel to leeward, and the agitated state of the water, we may perceive that it is blowing a stiff breeze. Vessels of her class are chiefly employed in the coast-guard service and as admirals' tenders, or as packets on short voyages, or in communicating between one naval depôt and another. In the distance, to leeward of her, the Dock-yard semaphore is perceived; and more to the right, but nearer to the eye of the spectator, is seen the Round Tower ”

“ Before we entered the war the Navy’s ship-building capacity amounted to ways for two battleships, two destroyers, two auxiliaries and one gun-boat. At once was begun a work of expansion which within a little more than a year added five ways and, when completed, would provide facilities for the simultaneous construction of sixteen war vessels, of which seven could be battleships. Three large naval docks, which can handle the largest ships in the world, were built. Camps were constructed for the training of 200,000 men. ”

“ And for a good quarter of a mile, from the dockyard gate to the farthest corner, where the old housed-in hulk, the President (drill-ship, then, of the Naval Reserve) , used to lie with her frigate side rubbing against the stone of the quay, above all these hulls, ready and unready, a hundred and fifty lofty masts, more or less, held out the web of their rigging like an immense net, in whose close mesh, black against the sky, the heavy yards seemed to be entangled and suspended.
It was a sight. The humblest craft that floats makes its appeal to a seaman by the faithfulness of her life ”

“ Thus thousands of young men who had enlisted for coast-patrol duty, were sent aboard transports, submarine-chasers, and war-ships generally, for service in the European war zones.
And with this constant outflow of trained men from the various naval training-stations of the country, the influx of newly enlisted reserves into these schools gives assurance that the Navy Department will never be embarrassed for lack of material wherewith to man its boats. ”

“ Home Bases.—A home base is, as its name implies, a base situated in the home country. The most usual type of the home naval base is the navy-yard, though few navy-yards can meet all the requirements of a naval base. The New York navy-yard, for instance, which is our most important yard, lacks three of the most vital attributes of a naval base, in that it has no means for receiving and protecting a large fleet, it cannot be approached by large ships except at high tide, and it could not receive a seriously injured battleship at any time, because the channel leading to it is too shallow. ”

“ Amid all our doubts and uncertainties, we look for the one assured sea-mark on the unfamiliar bars—the red-and-white emblem of a pilot vessel on her boarding station. Undeterred by the risk of mine or torpedo while marking time on their cruising ground, the pilots are constantly on the alert to board the incoming vessels as they approach from seaward. No state of the weather drives the cutter from her station to seek shelter in safer waters. If the seas are too high for boatwork, she steams ahead and offers a lead to a quieter section of the fairway where boarding may be attempted. ”

“ The same principles that govern the selection of positions and the establishment of bases in the Atlantic apply in the Pacific; the same requirements that a base shall be near where the fleet will conduct its operations—no matter whether those operations be offensive or defensive, no matter whether they concern direct attack or a threat against communications.
In view of the great value of naval bases, one may be pardoned perhaps for a feeling of surprise that the United States has no real naval base, home or distant. Our large navy-yards are our nearest approximation to real bases. ”

“ Once a night throughout the year, in every Dockyard Port in the kingdom, a launch slid away from the Depot jetty, slipped in and out among the anchored ships, and returned to her moorings when the patrol was completed. Why? Some grim significance surely lay in the duty, in the abrupt hails that stabbed the stillness, greeting the throb of her engines: in the figure of the armed man in the bows with the megaphone, ready to fling back the reassuring answer.... ”

“ As whatever exists ought to be known, this will be a necessary operation; but from what I have seen, and from what I can collect, I cannot promise their Lordships that any naval object of importance is likely to reward the examination.
“The port, or rather bay of Bomba, proved to be the first place where a ship can possibly anchor, in winter months, to the eastward of Isa; and the two are the only safe anchorages for a squadron between Tunis and Egypt. ”

“ The methods of work in the life-saving service have long been familiar, partly because at each of the recurring expositions of late years, the service has been represented by a model station and a crew which went daily through all the operations of shooting a line over a stranded ship, bringing a sailor ashore in the breeches-buoy or the life-car, and drilling in the non-sinkable, self-righting surf-boat. Along the Atlantic coast the stations are so thickly distributed that practically the whole coast from Sandy Hook to Hatteras is continually under patrol by watchful sentries. ”

“ The Navy furnished during the war to the United States Shipping Board 200,000 trained enlisted men, as well as 20,000 trained officers, to man its new ships, and the training for these men, in addition to that for fireman’s and seaman’s duty given at the regular naval training stations, was provided in nearly fifty different schools, from those for carpenters, cooks, yeomen, signalmen and divers, to those for mine sweeping, searchlight control and aviation aerography. ”

“ As the day advances the light grows stronger; gleams of sunshine send the purple shadows of masts and rigging dancing fitfully over the wide deck, which is practically deserted. There is the marine sentry over the life-buoy aft, look-outs aloft and at various corners of the superstructures, and the figures of the officer of the watch, signalmen and others are seen in movement up in the triangular platform dignified by the name of the "fore-bridge". ”