I have said that the character of the ships then building constituted a chief part of my environment in entering the navy. The effect was inevitable, and amounted in fact simply to making me a man of my period. My most susceptible years were colored by the still lingering traditions of the sail period, and of the "marling-spike seaman;" not that I, always clumsy with my fingers, had any promise of ever distinguishing myself with the marling-spike. This expressive phrase, derived from its chief tool, characterized the whole professional equipment of the then mechanic of the sea, of the man who, given the necessary rope-yarns, and the spars shaped by a carpenter, could take a bare hull as she lay for the first time quietly at anchor from the impetus of her launch, and equip her for sea without other assistance; "parbuckle" on board her spars lying alongside her in the stream, fit her rigging, bend her sails, stow her hold, and present her all a-taunt-o to the men who were to sail her. The navigation of a ship thus equipped was a field of seamanship apart from that of the marling-spike; but the men who sailed her to all parts of the earth were expected to be able to do all the preliminary work themselves, often did do it, and considered it quite as truly a part of their business as the handling her at sea. Of course, in equipping ships, as in all other business, specialization had come in with progress; there were rope-makers, there were riggers who took the ropes ready-made and fitted them for the ship, and there were stevedores to stow holds, etc.; but the tradition ran that the seaman should be able on a pinch to do all this himself, and the tradition kept alive the practice, which derived from the days not yet wholly passed away when he might, and often did, have to refit his vessel in scenes far distant from any help other than his own, and without any resources save those which his ready wit could adapt from materials meant for quite different uses. How to make a jib-boom do the work of a topsail-yard, or to utilize spare spars in rigging a jury-rudder, were specimens of the problems then presented to the aspiring seaman. It was somewhere in the thirties, not so very long before my time, that a Captain Rous, of the British navy, achieved renown—I would say immortal, were I not afraid that most people have forgotten—by bringing his frigate home from Labrador to England after losing her rudder. It is said that he subsequently ran for Parliament, and when on the hustings some doubter asked about his political record, he answered, "I am Captain Rous who brought the Pique across the Atlantic without a rudder." Of course the reply was lustily cheered, and deservedly; for in such seas, with a ship dependent upon sails only, it was a splendid, if somewhat reckless achievement. Cooper, in his Homeward Bound, places the ship dismasted on the coast of Africa. Close at hand, but on the beach, lies a wrecked vessel with her spar standing; and there is no exaggeration in the words he puts into the mouth of Captain Truck, as he looked upon these resources: "The seaman who, with sticks, and ropes, and blocks enough, cannot rig his ship, might as well stay ashore and publish an hebdomadal."

Such was the marling-spike seaman of the days of Cooper and Marryat, and such was still the able seaman, the "A.B.," of 1855. It was not indeed necessary, nor expected, that most naval officers should do such things with their own hands; but it was justly required that they should know when a job of marling-spike seamanship was well or ill done, and be able to supervise, when necessary. Napoleon is reported to have said that he could judge personally whether the shoes furnished his soldiers were well or ill made; but he needed not to be a shoemaker. Marryat, commenting on one of his characters, says that he had seldom known an officer who prided himself on his "practical" knowledge who was at the same time a good navigator; and that such too often "lower the respect due to them by assuming the Jack Tar." Oddly enough, lunching once with an old and distinguished British admiral, who had been a midshipman while Marryat still lived, he told me that he remembered him well; his reputation, he added, was that of "an excellent seaman, but not much of an officer," an expressive phrase, current in our own service, and which doubtless has its equivalent in all maritime languages.

In my early naval life I came into curious accidental contact with just such a person as Marryat described. I was still at the Academy, within a year of graduation, and had been granted a few days' leave at Christmas. Returning by rail, there seated himself alongside me a gentleman who proved to be a lieutenant from the flag-ship of the Home Squadron, going to Washington with despatches. Becoming known to each other, he began to question me as to what new radicalisms were being fostered in Annapolis. "Are they still wasting the young men's time over French? I would not permit them to learn any other language than their own. And how about seamanship? What do they know about that? As far as I have observed they know nothing about marling-spike seamanship, strapping blocks, fitting rigging, etc. Now I can sit down alongside of any seaman doing a bit of work and show him how it ought to be done; yes, and do it myself." It was Marryat's lieutenant, Phillott, ipsissimis verbis. I listened, over-awed by the weight of authority and experience; and I fear somewhat in sympathy, for such talk was in the air, part of the environment of an old order slowly and reluctantly giving way to a new.

Of course I shared this; how should I not, at eighteen? In giving expression to it once, I drew down on my head a ringing buffet from my father, in which he embodied an anecdote of Decatur I never saw elsewhere, and fancy he owed to his boyhood passed near a navy-yard town—Portsmouth, Virginia—while Decatur was in his prime. I had written home with reference to some study, in which probably I did not shine, "What did Decatur know about such things?" A boy may be pardoned for laying himself open to the retort which so many of his superiors equally invited: "Depend upon it, if Decatur had been a student at the Academy, he would, so far as his abilities permitted, have got as far to the front as he always did in fighting. He always aimed to be first. It is told of him that he commanded one of two ships ordered on a common service, in which the other arrived first at a point on the way. Her captain, instead of pushing forward, waited for Decatur to come up; on hearing which the latter exclaimed in his energetic way, 'The d——d fool!'" Decatur, however, also shared, and shared inevitably, the prepossessions of his day. I was told by Mr. Charles King, when President of Columbia College, that he had been present in company with Decatur at one of the early experiments in steam navigation. Crude as the appliances still were, demonstration was conclusive; and Decatur, whatever his prejudices, was open to conviction. "Yes," he said, gloomily, to King, "it is the end of our business; hereafter any man who can boil a tea-kettle will be as good as the best of us." It is notable that in my day a tradition ran that Decatur himself was not thoroughly a seaman. The captain of the first ship in which I served after graduation, a man of much solid information, who had known the commodore's contemporaries, speaking about some occurrence, said to me, "The trouble with Decatur was, that he was not a seaman." I repeated the remark to one of our lieutenants, and he ejaculated, with emphasis, "Yes, that is true." I cannot tell how far these opinions were the result of prepossession in those from whom they derived. There had been hard and factious division in the navy of Decatur's day, culminating in the duel in which he fell; and the lieutenant, at least, was associated by family ties with Decatur's antagonist.

To deny that the methods of the Naval Academy were open to criticism would be to claim for them infallibility. Upon the whole, however, in my time they erred rather on the side of being over-conservative than unduly progressive. Twenty years later, recalling some of our Academy experiences to one of my contemporaries, himself more a man of action than a student, and who had meanwhile distinguished himself by extraordinary courage in the War of Secession—I mean Edward Terry—he said, "Oh yes, those were the days before the flood." The hold-back element was strong, though not sufficiently so to suit such as my friend of the railroad. Objectors laid great stress on the word "practical;" than which, with all its most respectable derivation and association, I know none more frequently—nor more effectually—used as a bludgeon for slaying ideas. Strictly, of course, it means knowing how to do things, and doing them; but colloquially it usually means doing them before learning how. Leap before you look. The practical part is bruising your shins for lack of previous reflection. Of course, no one denies the educational value of breaking your shins, and everything else your own—a burnt child dreads the fire; but the question remains whether an equally good result may not be reached at less cost, and so be more really practical. I recall the fine scorn with which one of our professors, Chauvenet, a man of great and acknowledged ability, practical and other, used to speak of "practical men." "Now, young gentlemen, in adjusting your theodolites in the field, remember not to bear too hard on the screws. Don't put them down with main force, as though the one object was never to unscrew them. If you do, you indent the plate, and it will soon be quite impossible to level the instrument properly. That," he would continue, "is the way with your practical men. There, for instance, is Mr. ——," naming an assistant in another department, known to the midshipmen as Bull-pup, who I suppose had been a practical surveyor; "that is what he does." I presume the denunciation was due to B. P. having at one time borrowed an instrument from the department, and returned it thus maltreated. But "practical," so misapplied—action without thought—was Chauvenet's red rag.

An amusing reminiscence, illustrative of the same common tendency, was told me by General Howard. I had the pleasure of meeting Howard, then in command of one wing of Sherman's army, at Savannah, just after the conclusion of the march to the sea, in 1864. He spoke pleasantly of his associations with my father, when a cadet at the Military Academy, and added, "I remember how he used to say, 'A little common-sense, Mr. Howard, a little common-sense.'" Howard did not say what particular occasions he then had in mind, but a student reciting, and confronted suddenly with some question, or step in a demonstration, which he has failed to master, or upon which he has not reflected, is apt to feel that the practical thing to do is not to admit ignorance; to trust to luck and answer at random. Such a one, explaining a drawing of a bridge to my father, was asked by him what was represented by certain lines, showing the up-stream part of a pier. Not knowing, he replied, "That is a hole to catch the ice in." "Imagine," said my father, in telling me the story, "catching all the ice from above in holes in the piers." A little common-sense—exercised first, not afterwards—is the prescription against leaping before you look, or jamming your screws too hard.

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 surmount in reaching the level they had. It involved no detraction from their professional excellence, the excellence of men professionally self-made; but none comprehend the advantages of education better than candid men who have made their way without it. By the time I entered, however, there had been a decided, though not decisive, reaction in professional feeling. Ten years had elapsed since the founding of the school, and already development had gone so far that suspicion and antagonism were aroused. Up to 1850 midshipmen went at once to sea, and, after five years there, spent one at Annapolis; whereupon followed the final examination for a lieutenancy. This effected, the man became a "passed" midshipman. Beginning with 1851, the system was changed. Four years at the Academy were required, after which two at sea, and then examination. This, being a clean break with the past, outraged conservatism; it introduced such abominations as French and extended mathematics; much attention was paid to infantry drill—soldiering; the scheme was not "practical;" and it was doubtless true that the young graduate, despite six months of summer cruising interposed between academic terms, came comparatively green to shipboard. In that particular respect he could not but compare for the moment unfavorably with one who under the old plan would have spent four years on a ship's deck. Whether, that brief period of inexperience passed, he would not be permanently the better for the prior initiation into the rationale of his business, few inquired, and time had not yet had opportunity to show.

Perhaps, too, there was among the graduates something of the "freshness" which is attributed to the same age in leaving a university. I do not think it; the immediate contact with conditions but partly familiar to us, yet perfectly familiar to all about us, excited rather a wholesome feeling of inferiority or inadequacy. We had yet to find ourselves. But there remained undoubtedly some antagonism between the old and the new. Not that this ever showed itself offensively; nothing could have been kinder or more open-hearted than our reception by the lieutenants who had not known the Academy, and who probably depreciated it in their hearts. Whatever they thought, nothing was ever said that could reflect upon us, the outcome of the system. It was not even hinted that we might have been turned out in better shape under different conditions. From my personal experience, I hope we proved more satisfactory than may have been expected. When we returned home in 1861, just after the first battle of Bull Run, our third lieutenant said to me that he expected a command, and would be glad to have me as his first lieutenant; and upon my detachment one of the warrant officers expressed his regret that I was not remaining as one of the lieutenants of the ship. Both being men of mature years and long service, and with no obligation to speak, it is permissible to infer that they thought us fit at least to take the deck. As it was, in the uproar of those days, no questions were asked. The usual examinations were waived, and my class was hurried out of the midshipmen's mess into the first-lieutenant's berth. Without exception, I believe, we all had that duty at once—second to the captain—missing thereby the very valuable experience of the deck officer. In the face of considerable opposition, as I was told by Admiral Dupont, the leading officers of the day frustrated the attempt to introduce volunteer officers from the merchant service over our heads; another proof of confidence in us, as at least good raw material. The longer practice of the others at sea was alleged as a reason for thus preferring them, which was seriously contemplated; but the reply was that acquaintance with the organization of a ship-of-war, with her equipment and armament, the general military tone so quickly assimilated by the young and so hardly by the mature, outweighed completely any mere question of attainment in handling a ship. As drill officers, too, the general excellence of the graduates was admitted.

Within a fortnight of doing duty on the forecastle, as a midshipman, I thus found myself first lieutenant of a very respectable vessel. One of my shipmates, less quickly fortunate, was detailed to instruct a number of volunteer officers with the great guns and muskets. One of them said to him, "Yes, you can teach me this, but I expect I can teach you something in seamanship"; a freedom of speech which by itself showed imperfect military temper. At the same moment, I myself had a somewhat similar encounter, which illustrates why the old officers insisted on the superior value of military habit, and the necessarily unmilitary attitude, at first, of the volunteers. I had been sent momentarily to a paddle-wheel merchant-steamer, now purchased for a ship-of-war, the James Adger, which had plied between Charleston and New York. A day or two after joining, I saw two of the engineer force going ashore without my knowledge. I stopped them; and a few moments afterwards the chief engineer, who had long been in her when she was a packet, came to me with flaming eyes and angry voice to know by what right I interfered with his men. It had to be explained to him that, unlike the merchant-service, the engine-room was but a department of the military whole of the ship, and that other consent than his was necessary to their departure. A trivial incident, with a whole world of atmosphere behind it.



III

THE NAVAL ACADEMY IN ITS RELATION TO THE NAVY AT LARGE

1850-1860

Probably there have been at all periods educational excesses in the outlook of some of the Naval Academy authorities; and I personally have sympathized in the main with those who would subordinate the technological element to the more strictly professional. I remember one superintendent—and he, unless rumor was in error, had been one of the early opposition—saying to me with marked elation, "I believe we carry the calculus farther here than they do at West Point." I myself had then long forgotten all the calculus I ever knew, and I fear that with him, too, it was a case of omne ignotum pro magnifico. A more curious extravagancy was uttered to me by a professor of applied mathematics. I had happened to say that, while it was well each student should have the opportunity to acquire all he could in that department, I did not think it necessary that every officer of the deck should be able to calculate mathematically the relation between a weight he had to hoist on board and the power of the purchase he was about to use; which I think a mild proposition, considering the centuries during which that knowledge had been dispensed with. "Oh, I differ with you," he replied; "I think it of the utmost importance they should all be able to do so." Nothing like sails, said my friend the sailmaker; nothing like leather, says the shoemaker. I mentioned this shortly afterwards to one of my colleagues, himself an officer of unusual mathematical and scientific attainment. "No!" he exclaimed; "did he really say that?"

This was to claim for this mere head knowledge a falsely "practical" value, as distinguished from the educational value of the mental training involved, and from the undoubted imperative need of such acquisitions in those who have to deal with problems of ship construction or other mechanical questions connected with naval material. His position was really as little practical as that of the men who opposed the Academy plan in general as unpractical; as little practical as it would be to maintain that it is essential that every naval officer to-day should be skilled to handle a ship under sail, because the habit of the sailing-ship educated, brought out, faculties and habits of the first value to the military man. Still, there is something not only excusable, but laudable, in a man magnifying his office; and it was well that my friend the professor should have a slightly exaggerated idea of the bearing of the calculus on the daily routine or occasional emergencies of a ship. What is needed is a counterpoise, to correct undue deflection of the like kind, to which an educational institution from its very character and object is always liable. That the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath, is a saying of wide application. The administrator tends to think more of his administrative machine than of the object for which it exists, and the educator to forget that while the foundation is essential, it yet exists only for the building, which is the "practical" end in view. The object of naval education is to make a naval officer. Too much as well as too little of one ingredient will mar the compound; and if exaggeration cannot be wholly avoided, it had better rest upon the professional side. This was the function discharged by the critical attitude of the outside service, such as my friend of the railroad; at times somewhat irrational, but still as a check effective after the manner of other public opinion, of which in fact it was an instance.

In September, 1856, when I entered, professional influence was perhaps in excess. The preceding June had seen the graduation of the last class of "oldsters"—of those who, after five years at sea, had spent the sixth at the Academy, subjected formally to its discipline and methods. I therefore just missed seeing that phase of the Academy's history; but I could not thereby escape the traces of its influence. However transient, this lasted my time. It may be imagined what an influential, yet incongruous, element in a crowd of boys was constituted by introducing among them twenty or thirty young men, too young for ripeness, yet who for five years had been bearing the not slight responsibility of the charge of seamen, often on duty away from their superiors, and permitted substantially all the powers and privileges conceded to their seniors, men of mature years. How could such be brought under the curb of the narrowly ordered life of the school, for the short eight months to which they knew the ordeal was restricted? Could this have been attempted seriously, there would probably have been an explosion; but in truth, as far as my observation went, most of the disciplinary officers, the lieutenants, rather sympathized with irregularities, within pretty wide limits. A midshipman was a being who traditionally had little but the exuberance of his spirits to make up for the discomforts of his lot. The comprehensive saying that what was nobody's business was a midshipman's business epitomized the harrying of his daily life, with its narrow quarters, hard fare, and constant hustling for poor pay. Like the seaman, above whom in earlier days he stood but little, the midshipman had then only his jollity—and his youth—to compensate; and also like the seaman a certain recklessness was conceded to his moments of enjoyment. The very name carried with it the privilege of frolicking.

The old times of license among seafaring men were still of recent memory, and, though practice had improved, opinion remained tolerant. The gunner of the first ship in which I served after graduation told me that in 1832, when he was a young seaman before the mast on board a sloop-of-war in the Mediterranean, on Christmas Eve, there being a two-knot breeze—that is, substantially, calm—at sundown the ship was put under two close-reefed topsails for the night—storm canvas—and then the jollity began. How far it was expected to go may be inferred from the precautions; and we gain here some inkling of the phrase "heavy weather" applied to such conditions. But of the same ship he told me that she stood into the harbor of Malta under all sail, royal and studding sails, to make a flying moor; which, I must explain to the unprofessional, is to drop an anchor under sail, the cable running out under the force of the ship's way till the place is reached for letting go the second anchor, the ship finally being brought to lie midway between the two. An accurate eye, a close judgment as to the ship's speed, and absolute promptness of execution are needed; for all the sail that is on when the first anchor goes must be off before the second. In this case nothing was started before the first. Within fifteen minutes all was in, the ship moored, sails furled, and yards squared, awaiting doubtless the final touches of the boatswain. Whether the flag of the port was saluted within the same quarter-hour, I will not undertake to say; it would be quite in keeping to have attempted it. System, preparation, and various tricks of the trade go far to facilitate such rapidity. Now I dare say that some of my brother officers may cavil at this story; but I personally believe it, with perhaps two or three minutes' allowance for error in clocks. Much may be accepted of seamen who not uncommonly reefed topsails "in stays"—that is, while the ship was being tacked. Of the narrator's good faith I am certain. It was not with hint one of the stock stories told about "the last cruise;" nor was he a romancer. It came naturally in course of conversation, as one tells any experience; and he added, when the British admiral returned the commander's visit he complimented the ship on the smartest performance he had ever seen. But it is in the combination of license and smartness that the pith of these related stories lies; between them they embody much of the spirit of a time which in 1855 was remembered and influential. Midway in the War of Secession I met the first lieutenant who held the trumpet in that memorable manoeuvre—a man of 1813; now a quiet, elderly, slow-spoken old gentleman, retired, with little to suggest the smart officer, at the stamp of whose foot the ship's company jumped, to use the gunner's expression.

Such performances exemplify the ideals that still obtained—were in full force—in the navy as first I knew it. In the ship in which the gunner and I were then serving, it was our common performance to "Up topgallant-masts and yards, and loose sail to a bowline," in three minutes and a half from the time the topmen and the masts started aloft together from the deck. For this time I can vouch myself, and we did it fairly, too; though I dare say we would have hesitated to carry the sails in a stiff breeze without a few minutes more. It was a very dramatic and impressive performance. The band, with drum and fife, was part of it. When all was reported ready from the three masts—but not before—it was permitted to be eight o'clock. The drums gave three rolls, the order "Sway across, let fall," was given, the yards swung into their places, the sails dropped and were dragged out by their bowlines to facilitate their drying, the bell struck eight, the flag was hoisted, and close on the drums followed the band playing the "Star-Spangled Banner," while the ship's company went to breakfast. It was the transformation scene of a theatre; within five minutes the metamorphosis was complete. There was doubtless a flavor of the circus about it all, but it was a wholesome flavor and tonicked the professional appetite. Yes, and the natural appetite, too; your breakfast tasted better, especially if some other ship had got into trouble with one of her yards or sails. "Did you see what a mess the —— made of fore-topgallant-yard this morning?" An old boatswain's mate of the ship used to tell me one of his "last-cruise" stories, of when he "was in the Delaware, seventy-four, up the Mediterranean, in 1842." Of course, the Delaware had beaten the Congress's time; the last ship always did. Then he would add: "I was in the foretop in those days, and had the fore-topgallant-yard; and if one of us fellows let his yard show on either side of the mast before the order 'Sway across,' we could count on a dozen when we got down just as sure as we could count on our breakfast." Flogging was not abolished until about 1849. No wonder men were jolly when they could be, without worrying about to-morrow's headache.

Part of the preparation was to let the captain know beforehand that it was eight o'clock, and get his authority that it might be so; subject always to the yet higher authority that the yards and sails were ready. If they were not, so much the worse for eight o'clock. It had to wait quite as imperatively as the sun did for Joshua. Sunset, when the masts and yards came down, was equally under bonds; it awaited the pleasure of the captain or admiral. Indeed, in my time a story ran of a court-martial at a much earlier day, sitting in a capital case. By law, each day's session must end by sundown. On the occasion in question, sundown was reported to the admiral—or, rather, commodore; we had no admirals then. He sent to know how soon the court could finish. The reply was, in about fifteen minutes. "Tell the officer of the deck not to make it sundown until he hears from me;" and, in defiance of the earth's movement, the colors were kept flying in attestation that the sun was up. One other hour of the twenty-four, noon, was brought in like manner to the captain's attention, and required his action, but it was treated with more deference; recognition rather than authority was meted to it, and it was never known to be tampered with. The circumstance of the sun's crossing the ship's meridian was unique in the day; and the observation of the fact, which drew on deck all the navigating group with their instruments, establishing the latitude immediately and precisely, was of itself a principal institution of the ship's economy. Such claims were not open to trifling; and were there not also certain established customs, almost vested interests, such as the seven-bell nip, cocktail or otherwise, connected with the half-hour before, when "the sun was over the fore-yard"? I admit I never knew whence the latter phrase originated, nor just what it meant, but it has associations. Like sign language, it can be understood.

I was myself shipmate, as they say, with most of this sort of thing; for with its good points and its bad it did not disappear until the War of Secession, the exigencies of which drove out alike the sails and the sailor. The abolition of the grog ration in 1862 may be looked upon as a chronological farewell to a picturesque past. We did not so understand it. Contemporaries are apt to be blind to bloodless revolutions. Had we seen the full bearing, perhaps there might have been observed a professional sundown, in recognition of the fact that the topgallant-yards had come down for the last time, ending one professional era. A protest was recorded by one eccentric character, a survival whom Cooper unfortunately never knew, who hoisted a whiskey demijohn at the peak of his gunboat—the ensign's allotted place. To the admiral's immediate demand for an explanation, he replied that that was the flag he served under; but he was one of those to whom all things are forgiven. The seaman remains, and must always remain while there are seas to cross and to rule; but the sailor, in his accomplishments and in his defects, began then to depart, or to be evolutionized into something entirely different. I am bound to admit that in the main the better has survived, but, now that such hairs as I have are gray, I may be permitted to look back somewhat wistfully and affectionately on that which I remember a half-century ago; perhaps to sympathize with the seamen of the period, who saw themselves swamped out of sight and influence among the vast numbers required by the sudden seven or eight fold expansion of the navy for that momentous conflict. Occasionally one of these old salts, mournful amid his new environment, would meet me, and say, "Ah! Mr. Mahan, the navy isn't what it was!" True, in 1823, Lord St. Vincent, then verging on ninety, had made the same remark to George IV.; and I am quite sure, if the aged admiral had searched his memory, he could have recalled it in the mouth of some veteran of 1750. The worst of it is, this is perennially true. From period to period the gain exceeds, but still there has been loss as well; and to sentiment, ranging over the past, the loss stands more conspicuous. "Memory reveals every rose, but secreteth its thorn."

This is the more apparent when the change has been sudden, or on such a scale as to overwhelm, by mere bulk, that subtle influence for which we owe to the French the name of esprit de corps. It is the breath of the body, the breath of life. Before the War of Secession our old friends the marines had a deserved reputation for fidelity, which could not survive the big introduction of alien matter into the "corps." I remember hearing an officer of long service say that he had known but a single instance of a marine deserting; and as to the general fact there was no dissent among the by-standers. The same could scarcely be said now, nor of seamen then. The sentiment of particular faithfulness had been nurtured in the British marines under times and conditions which made them at a critical moment the saviors of discipline, and thereby the saviors of the state. It is needless to philosophize the strength of such a tradition, so established, nor its effect on each member of the body; and from thence, not improbably, it was transmitted to our younger navy. Whencever coming, there it was. 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. May it be long before the like extinction awaits the captains of marines! Our own, however, an eccentric man, who had accomplished the then rare feat of working his way up from the ranks, used to claim that marines were an absurdity. "It is having one army to keep another army in order," he would say. This was once true, and might with equal truth be said of a city police force—one set of citizens to keep the other citizens orderly. In the olden time it had been the application of the sound statesmanship dogma, "Divide et impera." For this, in the navy, happily, the need no longer exists; but I can see no reason to believe the time at hand when we can dispense with a corps of seamen, the specialty of which is infantry—and shore expedition when necessary. Patriotism, as our marine understood it, was sticking by your colors and your corps, and doing your duty through thick and thin; no bad ideal.

In like mingling of good and evil, the oldsters at the Naval Academy, along with some things objectionable, including a liberty that under the conditions too often resembled license, brought with them sound traditions, which throughout my stay there constituted a real esprit de corps. In nothing was this more conspicuous than in the attitude towards hazing. Owing to circumstances I will mention later, I entered at once the class which, as I understand, most usually perpetrated the outrageous practices that became a scandal in the country—the class, that is, which is entering on its second year at the Academy. My home having always been at the Military Academy, I, without much thinking, expected to find rife the same proceedings which had prevailed there from time to me immemorial. Such anticipations made deeper and more lasting the impression produced by the contrary state of things, and yet more by the wholly different tone prevalent at Annapolis. Not only was hazing not practised, but it scarcely obtained even the recognition of mention; it was not so much reprobated as ignored; and, if it came under discussion at all, it was dismissed with a turn of the nose, as something altogether beneath us. That is not the sort of thing we do here. It may be all very well at West Point—much as "what would do for a marine could not be thought of for a seaman"—but we were "officers and gentlemen," and thought no small beans of ourselves as such. There were at times absurd manifestations of this same precocious dignity, of which I may speak later; still, as O'Brien said of Boatswain Chucks, "You may laugh at such assumptions of gentility, but did any one of his shipmates ever know Mr. Chucks to do an unhandsome or a mean action?—and why? Because he aspired to be a gentleman."

While I can vouch for this general state of feeling, I cannot be sure of its derivation; but I have always thought it due to the presence during the previous five years of the "oldsters," nominally under the same discipline as ourselves, but looked up to with the respect and observance which at that age are naturally given to those two or three seasons older. And these men were not merely more advanced in years. They were matured beyond their age by early habits of responsibility and command, and themselves imbued by constant contact with the spirit of the phrase "an officer and a gentleman," which constitutes the norm of military conduct. Their intercourse with their seniors on board ship had been much closer than that which was possible at the school. This atmosphere they brought with them to a position from which they could not but most powerfully influence us. How far the tradition might have been carried on, in smooth seas, I do not know; but along with many other things, good and bad, it was shattered by the War of Secession. The school was precipitately removed to Newport, where it was established in extemporized and temporary surroundings; the older undergraduates were hurried to sea, while the new entries were huddled together on two sailing frigates moored in the harbor, dissociated from the influence of those above them. The whole anatomy and, so to say, nervous system of the organization were dislocated. For better or for worse, perhaps for better and for worse, the change was more like death and resurrection than life and growth. The potent element which the oldster had contributed, and the upper classes absorbed and perpetuated, was eliminated at once and entirely by the detachment of the senior cadets and the segregation of the new-corners. New ideals were evolved by a mass of school-boys, severed from those elder associates with the influence of whom no professors nor officers can vie. How hazing came up I do not know, and am not writing its history. I presume it is one of the inevitable weeds that school-boy nature brings forth of itself, unless checked by unfavorable environment. I merely note its almost total absence in my time; its subsequent existence was unhappily notorious.

A general good-humored tolerance, easy-going, and depending upon a mutual understanding, none the less clear because informal, characterized the relations of the officers and students. Primarily, each were in the appreciation of the other officers and gentlemen. So far there was implicit equality; and while the ones were in duty bound to enforce academic regulations, which the others felt an equal obligation to disregard, it was a kind of game in which they did not much mind being losers, provided we did not trespass on the standards of the gentleman, and of the officer liberally construed. They, I think, had an unacknowledged feeling that while under school-boy, or collegiate, discipline as to times or manners, some relaxation of strict official correctness must be endured. Larking, sometimes uproarious, met with personal sympathy, if official condemnation. Nor did we resent being detected by what we regarded as fair means; to which we perhaps gave a pretty wide interpretation. The exceptional man, who inspected at unaccustomed hours, which we considered our own prescriptive right—though not by rules—who came upon us unawares, was apt to be credited with rather unofficer-like ideas of what was becoming, and suspected of the not very gentlemanly practice of wearing noiseless rubber shoes. That intimation of his approach was conveyed by us from room to room by concerted taps on the gas-pipes was fair war; nor did our opponents seem to mind what they could not but clearly hear. Indeed, I think most of them were rather glad to find evidences of order and propriety prevailing, where possibly but for those kindly signals they might have detected matter for report.

There was one lieutenant, however, the memory of whom was still green as a bay-tree in my day, though it would have been blasted indeed could cursing have blighted it, to whom the game of detective seemed to possess the fascination of the chase; and so successful was he that his baffled opponents could not view the matter dispassionately, nor accept their defeat in sportsman-like spirit. I knew him later; he had a saturnine appearance, not calculated to conciliate a victim, but he liked a joke, especially of the practical kind, and for the sake of one successfully achieved could forgive an offender. Night surprises, inroads on the enemy's country, at the hours when we were mistakenly supposed to be safe in bed, and regulations so required, were favorite stratagems with him. On one occasion, so tradition ran, some half-dozen midshipmen had congregated in a room "after taps," and, with windows carefully darkened, had contrived an extempore kitchen to fry themselves a mess of oysters. The process was slow, owing to the number of oysters the pan could take at once and the largeness of the expectant appetites; but it had progressed nearly to completion, when without premonition the door opened and —— appeared. He asked no questions and offered no comments, but, walking to the platter, seized it and threw out of the window the accumulated results of an hour's weary work. No further notice of the delinquency followed; the discomfiture of the sufferers sufficiently repaid his sense of humor. At another midnight hour a midshipman visiting in a room not his, lured thither, let us hope, by the charms of intellectual conversation, was warned by the gas-pipes that the enemy was on the war-path. Retreat being cut off, he took refuge under a bed, but unwittingly left a hand visible. —— caught sight of it, walked to the bed, flashed his lantern in the eyes of its occupant, who naturally was sleeping as never before, and at the same time trod hard on the exposed fingers. A squeal followed this unexpected attention, and the culprit had to drag himself out; but the lieutenant was satisfied, and let him go at that.

I have said that larking met with more than toleration—with sympathy. The once magic word "midshipman" seemed to cloak any outburst of frolicking; otherwise some exhibitions I witnessed could scarcely have passed unscathed. They were felt to be in character by the older officers; and, while obliged to reprehend, I doubt whether some of them would not have more enjoyed taking a share. They knew, too, that we were just as proud as they of the service, and that under all lay an entire readiness to do or to submit to that which we and they alike recognized as duty. Sometimes rioting went rather too far, but for the most part it was harmless. One rather grave incident, shortly before my entry, derived its humor mainly from the way in which it was treated by the superintendent. One of the out-buildings of the Academy, either because offensive or out of sheer deviltry, was set on fire and destroyed. The perpetrator of this startling practical joke was Alexander F. Crosman, of the '51 Date, whom many of us yet living remember well. Small in stature, with something of the "chip-on-the-shoulder" characteristic, often seen in such, he was conspicuous for a certain chivalrous gallantry of thought and mien, the reflection of a native brilliant courage; a trait which in the end caused his death, about 1870, by drowning, in the effort to save an imperilled boat's crew. The superintendent, a man of ponderous dimensions, and equally ponderous but rapid speech—though it is due to say also unusually accomplished, both professionally and personally—was greatly outraged and excited at this defiance of discipline. The day following he went out to meet the corps, when it had just left some formation, and, calling a halt, delivered a speech on the basis of the Articles of War, a copy of which he brandished before his audience. These ancient ordinances, among many other denunciations of naval crimes and misdemeanors, pronounced the punishment of death, or "such other worse" as a court-martial might adjudge, upon "any person in the Navy who shall maliciously set on fire, or otherwise destroy, any government property not then in the possession of an enemy, pirate, or rebel." The gem of oratory hereupon erected was paraphrased as follows by the culprit himself, aided and abetted in his lyrical flight by his room-mate, John S. Barnes, who, after graduating left the service, returned for the War of Secession, and subsequently resigned finally. To this survivor of the two collaborators I owe the particulars of the affair. How many more "traitors" there were I know not. Those who recall the speaker will recognize that the parody must have followed closely the real words of the address:

"Young gentlemen assembled!— It makes no matter where— I only want to speak to you, So hear me where you are.

"Some vile incendiary Last night was prowling round, Who set fire to our round-house And burned it to the ground.

"I'll read the Naval Law; The man who dares to burn A round-house,—not the Enemy's,— A traitor's fate shall learn.

"And if a man there be, Who does this traitor know, And keeps it to himself, He shall suffer death also!

"'Tis well, then, to tell, then, Who did this grievous ill; And, d—n him, I will hang him, So help me God! I will!"

If anything could have added to the gayety of the fire, such an outburst would.

In after years I sailed under the command of this speechmaker. At monthly musters he reserved to himself the prerogative of reading the Articles, probably thinking that he did it more effectively than the first lieutenant; in which he was quite right. It so happened that, owing to doubt whether a certain paragraph applied to the Marine Corps, Congress had been pleased to make a special enactment that the word "persons" in such and such a clause "should be construed to include marines." Coming as this did near the end, some humorist was moved to remark that the first Sunday in the month muster was for the purpose of informing us authoritatively that a marine was a person. As the captain read this interesting announcement, his voice assumed a gradual crescendo, concluding with a profound emphasis on the word "marines," which he accompanied with a half turn and a flourish of the book towards that honorable body, drawn up in full uniform, at parade rest, its venerable captain, whose sandy hair was fast streaking with gray, standing at its head, his hands meekly crossed over his sword-hilt, the blade hanging down before him; all doubtless suitably impressed with this definition of their status, which for greater certainty they heard every month. It was very fine, very fine indeed; appealing to more senses than one.

The shore drills—infantry and field artillery—furnished special occasions for organized—or disorganized—upheavals of animal spirits. For these exercises we then had scant respect. They were "soldiering;" and from time immemorial soldier had been an adjective to express uselessness, or that which was so easy as to pass no man's ability. A soldier's wind, for example, was a wind fair both ways—to go and to return; no demands on brains there, much less on seamanship. The curious irrelevancy of such applications never strikes persons; unless, indeed, a perception of incongruity is the soul of wit, a definition which I think I have heard. To depart without the ceremony of saying good-bye takes its name from the most elaborately civil of people—French leave; while the least perturbable of nations has been made to contribute an epithet, Dutch, to the courage derived from the whiskey-bottle. In the latter case, however, I fancy that, besides the tradition of long-ago national rivalries, there may have been the idea that to excite a Dutchman you must, as they say, light a fire under him; or as was forcibly remarked by a midshipman of my time of his phlegmatic room-mate, he had to kick him in the morning to get him started for the day.

To return to the shore drills: these were then committed to one of the civil professors of the Academy, a fact which itself spoke for the familiarity with them of the sea lieutenants. As these always exercised us at ships' guns, the different estimation which the two obtained in the outside service was too obvious to escape quick-witted young fellows, and it was difficult to overcome the resultant disrespect. The professor was not one to effect the impossible. He was a graduate of West Point, a man of ability, not lacking in dignity, and personally worthy of all respect; but he stuttered badly, and this impediment not only received no mercy from youth, but interfered with the accuracy of manoeuvres where the word of command needed to be timely in utterance. Report ran that on one occasion, advancing by column of companies, while the professor was struggling with "H-H-H-Halt!" the leading company, composed martyrs to discipline, marched over the sea-wall into three feet of water. Had the water been deeper, they might have been less literal. Despite his military training, his bearing and carriage had not the strong soldierly stamp which might redeem his infirmity, and even in the class-room a certain whimsical atmosphere seemed borne from the drill-ground. He, I believe, was the central figure of one of the most humorous scenes in Herman Melville's White Jacket, a book which, despite its prejudiced tone, has preserved many amusing and interesting inside recollections of a ship-of-war of the olden time. The naval instructor on board the frigate is using Rodney's battle of 1782 to illustrate on the blackboard the principles of naval tactics to the class of midshipmen. "Now, young gentlemen, you see this disabled French ship in the corner, far to windward of her fleet, between it and the enemy. She has lost all three masts, and the greater part of the ship's company are killed and wounded; what will you do to save her?" To this knotty problem many extemporized "practical" answers are given, of which the most plausible is by Mr. Dash, of Virginia—"I should nail my colors to the mast and let her sink under me." As this could scarcely be called saving her, Mr. Dash is rebuked for irrelevance; but, after the gamut of possible solutions has been well guessed over, the instructor announces impressively, "That ship, young gentlemen, cannot be saved."

I cannot say that he dealt with us thus tantalizingly; but one of my contemporaries used to tell a story of his personal experience which was generically allied to the above. At the conclusion of some faulty manoeuvre, the instructor remarked aloud: "This all went wrong, owing to Mr. P.'s not standing fast in his own person. We will now repeat it, for the particular benefit of Mr. P." The repetition ensued, and in its course the instructor called out, "Be careful, Mr. P., and stand fast where you are." "I am standing fast," replied P., incautiously. "R-R-Report Mr. P. for talking in ranks." At the Academy, naval tactics were not within his purview; and of all our experiences with him in the class-room, one ludicrous incident alone remains with me. One of my class, though in most ways well at head, was a little alarmed about his standing in infantry tactics. He therefore at a critical occasion attempted to carry the text-book with him to the blackboard. This surreptitious deed, being not to get advantage over a fellow, but to save himself, was condoned by public opinion; but, being unused to such deceits, in his agitation he copied his figure upside down and became hopelessly involved in the demonstration. The professor next day took occasion to comment slightingly on our general performance, but "as to Mr. ——," he added, derisively, "he did r-r-r-wretchedly."

I sometimes wonder that we learned anything about "soldiering," but we did in a way. The principles and theory were mastered, if performance was slovenly; and in execution, as company officers, we got our companies "there," although just how we did it might be open to criticism. In our last year the adjutant in my class, who graduated at its head, on the first occasion of forming the battalion, after some moments of visible embarrassment could think of no order more appropriate than "Form your companies fore and aft the pavement." Fore and aft is "lengthwise" of a ship. No humiliation attended such a confession of ignorance—on that subject; but had the same man "missed stays" when in charge of the deck, he would have been sorely mortified. His successor of to-day probably never will have a chance to miss stays. There thus ran through our drills an undercurrent of levity, which on provocation would burst out almost spontaneously into absurdity. On one occasion the battalion was drawn up in line, fronting at some distance the five buildings which then constituted the midshipmen's quarters. The intimation was given that we were to advance and then charge. Once put in motion, I know not whether stuttering lost the opportunity of stopping us, but the pace became quicker and quicker till the whole body broke into a run, rushed cheering tumultuously through the passages between the houses, and reformed, peaceably enough, on the other side. The captains all got a wigging for failing to keep us in hand; but they were powerless. The whole thing was without preconcertment or warning. It could hardly have happened, however, had the instinct of discipline been as strong in these drills as in others.

A more deliberate prank was played with the field artillery. These light pieces, being of the nature of cannon rather than muskets, obtained more deference, being recognized as of the same genus with the great guns which then constituted a ship's broadside. On one occasion they were incautiously left out overnight on the drill-ground. Between tattoo and taps, 9.30 to 10 P.M., was always a half-hour of release from quarters. There was mischief ready-made for idle hands to do. The guns were taken in possession, rushed violently to and fro in mock drill performance, and finally taken to pieces, the parts being scattered promiscuously in all directions. Dawn revealed an appearance of havoc resembling a popular impressionist representation of a battle-field. Here a caisson with its boxes, severed from their belongings, stretched its long pole appealingly towards heaven; the wheels had been dispersed to distant quarters of the ground and lay on their sides; elsewhere were the guns, sometimes reversed and solitary, at others not wholly dismounted, canted at an angle, with one wheel in place. As there were six of them, complete in equipments, the scene was extensive and of most admired confusion; ingenuity had exhausted itself in variety, to enhance picturesqueness of effect. How the lieutenant in charge accounted for all this happening without his interference, I do not know. Certainly there was noise enough, but then that half-hour always was noisy. The superintendent of that time had, when walking, a trick of grasping the lapel of his coat with his right hand, and twitching it when preoccupied. The following day, as he surveyed conditions, it seemed as if the lapel might come away; but he made us no speech, nor, as far as I know, was any notice taken of the affair. No real damage had been done, and the man would indeed have been hard-heartedly conscientious who would grudge the action which showed him so comical a sight.

I once heard an excellent first lieutenant—Farragut's own through the principal actions of the War of Secession—say that where there was obvious inattention to uniform there would always be found slackness in discipline. It may be, therefore, that our habits as to uniform were symptomatic of the same easy tolerance which bore with such extravagances as I have mentioned; the like of which, in overt act, was not known to me in my later association with the Academy as an officer. We had a prescribed uniform, certainly; but regulations, like legislative acts, admit of much variety of interpretation and latitude in practice, unless there is behind them a strong public sentiment. In my earlier days there was no public sentiment of the somewhat martinet kind; such as would compel all alike to wear an overcoat because the captain felt cold. In practice, there was great laxity in details. I remember, in later days and later manners, when we were all compelled to be well buttoned up to the throat, a young officer remarked to me disparagingly of another, "He's the sort of man, you know, who would wear a frock-coat unbuttoned." There's nothing like classification. My friend had achieved a feat in natural history; in ten words he had defined a species. On another occasion the same man remorselessly wiped out of existence another species, consecrated by generations of blue-books and Naval Regulations. "I know nothing of superior officers," he said; "senior officers, if you choose; but superior, no!" Whether the Naval Regulations have yet recognized this obvious distinction, whether it is no longer "superior officers," but only senior officers, who are not to be "treated with contempt," etc., I have not inquired. Apart from such amusing criticism of the times past, it is undoubtedly true that attention to minutiae is symptomatic of a much more important underlying spirit, one of exactness and precision running through all the management of a ship and affecting her efficiency. I concede that a thing so trifling as the buttoning of a frock-coat may indicate a development and survival of the fittest; but in 1855-60 frock-coats had not been disciplined, and in accordance with the tone of the general service we midshipmen were tacitly indulged in a similar freedom. This tolerance may have been in part a reaction from the vexatious and absurd interference of a decade before with such natural rights as the cut of the beard—not as matter of neatness, but of pattern. Even for some time after I graduated, unless I misunderstood my informants, officers in the British navy were not permitted to wear a full beard, nor a mustache; and we had out-breaks of similar regulative annoyance in our own service, one of which furnished Melville with a striking chapter. Discussing the matter in my presence once, the captain of a frigate said, "There is one reply to objectors; if they do not wish to conform, they can leave the service." Clearly, however, a middle-aged man cannot throw up his profession thus easily.

Another circumstance that may have contributed to indifference to details of dress was the carefulness with which the old-time sea officers had constantly to look after the set and trim of the canvas. Every variation of the wind, every change of course, every considerable manoeuvre, involved corresponding changes in the disposition of the sails, which must be effected not only correctly, but with a minute exactness extending to half a hundred seemingly trivial details, upon precision in which depended—and justly—an officer's general reputation for officer-like character. Not only so, but the mere weight of rigging and sails, and the stretching resultant on such strain, caused recurring derangements, which, permitted, became slovenliness. Yards accurately braced, sheets home alike, weather leaches and braces taut, with all the other and sundry indications which a well-trained eye instinctively sought and noted, were less the dandyism than the self-respecting neatness of a well-dressed ship, and were no bad substitute, as tests, for buttoned frock-coats. The man without fault in the one might well be pardoned, by others as well as himself, for neglects which had never occurred to him to be such. His attention was centred elsewhere, as a man may think more of his wife's dress than his own. After all, one cannot be always stretched with four pins, as the French say; there must be some give somewhere.

The frock was then the working coat of the navy. There was fuller dress for exceptional occasions, in which, at one festive muster early in the cruise, we all had to appear, to show that we had it; but otherwise it was generally done up in camphor. The jacket, which was prescribed to the midshipmen of the Academy, had informal recognition in the service, and we took our surviving garments of that order with us to sea, to wear them out. But, while here and there some officer would sport one, they could scarcely be called popular. One of our lieutenants, indeed, took a somewhat sentimental view of the jacket. "There was Mr. S.," he said to me, speaking of a brother midshipman, "on deck yesterday with a jacket. It looked so tidy and becoming. If there had been anything aloft out of the way, I could say to him, 'Mr. S., just jump up there, will you, and see what is the matter?'" War, which soon afterwards followed with its stern preoccupations and incidental deprivations, induced inevitably deterioration in matters of dress. With it the sack-coat, or pilot-jacket, burrowed its way in, the cut and insignia of these showing many variations. The undergraduates at the Academy in my day had for all uses a double-breasted jacket; but it was worn buttoned, or not, at choice. On the rolling collar a gold foul anchor—an anchor with a rope cable twined round it—was prescribed; but, while a standard embroidered pattern was supplied at the Academy store, those who wished procured for themselves metal anchors, and these not only were of many shapes and sizes, but for symmetrical pinning in place demanded an accuracy of eye and hand which not every one had. The result was variegated and fanciful to a degree; but I doubt if any of the officers thought aught amiss. So the regulation vest buttoned up to the chin, but very many had theirs made with rolling collar, to show the shirt. I had a handsome, very dandy, creole classmate, whom an admiring family kept always well supplied with fancy shirts; and I am sure, if precisians of the present day could have seen him starting out on a Saturday afternoon to pay his visits, with everything just so—except in a regulation sense—and not a back hair out of place, they must have accepted the results as a testimony to the value of the personal factor in uniform. Respect for individual tastes was rather a mark of that time in the navy. Seamen handy with their needle were permitted, if not encouraged, to embroider elaborate patterns, in divers colors, on the fronts of their shirts, and turned many honest pennies by doing the like for less skillful shipmates. Pride in personal appearance, dandyism, is quite consonant with military feeling, as history has abundantly shown; and it may be that something has been lost as well as gained in the suppression of individual action, now when an inspecting officer may almost be said to carry with him a yard-stick and micrometer to detect deviations.

A very curious manifestation of this disposition to bedeck the body was the prevalence of tattooing. If not universal, it was very nearly so among seamen of that day. Elaborate designs covering the chest, or back, or arms, were seen everywhere, when the men were stripped on deck for washing. There was no possible inducement to this except a crude love of ornament, or a mere imitation of a prevailing fashion, which is another manifestation of the same propensity. The inconvenience of being branded for life should have been felt by men prone to desertion; but the descriptive lists which accompany every crew were crowded with such remarks as, "Goddess of Liberty, r. f. a."—right forearm—the which, if a man ran away, helped the police of the port to identify him. My memory does not retain the various emblems thus perpetuated in men's skins; they were largely patriotic and extremely conventional, each practised tattooer having doubtless his own particular style. Many midshipmen of my time acquired these embellishments. I wonder if they have not since been sorry.



IV

THE NAVAL ACADEMY IN ITS INTERIOR WORKINGS

PRACTICE CRUISES

1855-60

In the preceding pages my effort has been to reconstitute for the reader the navy, in body and in spirit, as it was when I entered in 1856 and had been during the period immediately preceding. 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. Some of the Englishman's presentations may be exaggerated, though not beyond probability—elaborated would perhaps be a juster word—and in one passage he expressly abjures all willingness to present a caricature of the seaman he had known. Cooper, on the other hand, while his sea scenes are well worked up, has given us personalities which, tested by Marryat's, are made out of the whole cloth; creations, if you will, but not resemblances. Marryat entered the navy earlier than his rival, and followed the sea longer; his experience was in every way wider. Even in my time could be seen justifications of his portrayal; but who ever saw the like of Tom Coffin, Trysail, or Boltrope?

The interested curiosity concerning all things naval which possessed me, and held me enthralled by the mere sight of an occasional square-rigged vessel, such as at rare intervals passed our home on the Hudson, fifty miles from the sea, led me also to pore over a copy of the Academy Regulations which the then superintendent, Captain Louis Goldsborough, (afterwards Admiral), had sent my father. The two had been acquaintances in Paris, in the twenties of the century and of their own ages. I have always had a morbid fondness for registers and time-tables, and over them have wasted precious hours; but on this occasion the practice saved me a year. I discovered that, contrary to the established rule at the Military Academy, an appointee to the Naval might enter any class for which he could pass the examinations. Further inquiry confirmed this, and I set about fitting myself. At that date, even more than at present, the standard of admission to the two academies had to take into account the very differing facilities for education in different parts of the country, as well as the strictly democratic method of appointment. This being in the gift of the representative of the congressional district, the candidates came from every section; and, being selected by the various considerations which influence such patronage, the mass of lads who presented themselves necessarily differed greatly in acquirements. Hence, to enter either Annapolis or West Point only very rudimentary knowledge was demanded. Having grown up myself so far amid abundant opportunity, and been carefully looked after, I found that I was quite prepared to enter the class above the lowest, except in one or two minor matters, easily picked up. Thus forewarned, I came forearmed. There were probably in every class a dozen who could have done the same, but they accepted the prevailing custom without question. I believe I was the only one fortunate enough to make this gain. In some instances before, and in many after, the academic work was for certain classes compressed within three years, but I was singular in entering a class already of a twelvemonth's standing.

About my own examination I remember nothing except that it was successful; but one incident occurred in my hearing which has stuck by me for a half-century. One other youth underwent the same tests. He had already once entered, two or three years before, and afterwards had failed to pass one of the semi-annual tests. Such cases frequently were dropped into the next lower class, but the rule then was that a second similar lapse was final. This had befallen my present associate; but he had "influence," which obtained for him another appointment, conditional upon passing the requirements for the third class, fourth being the lowest. Examinations then were oral, not written; and, preoccupied though I was with my own difficulties, I could not but catch at times sounds of his. He was being questioned in grammar and in parsing, which I have heard—I do not know whether truly—are now looked upon as archaic methods of teaching; and the sentence propounded to him was, "Mahomet was driven from Mecca, but he returned in triumph." His rendering of the first words I did not hear, my attention not being arrested until "but," which proved to him a truly disjunctive conjunction. "But!" he ejaculated—"but!" and paused. Then came the "practical" leap into the unknown. "'But' is an adverb, qualifying 'he,' showing what he is doing." Poor fellow, it was no joke to him, nor probably his fault, but that of circumstances. When released from the ordeal, we stood round together, awaiting sentence. He was in despair, nor could I honestly encourage him. "Look at you," he said, "as quiet as if nothing had happened"—I was by no means confident that I had cause for elation. "If I were as sure that I had passed as that you have, I should be skipping all over the place." I never heard of him again; but suppose from his name, which I remember, and his State, of which I am less sure, that he took, and in any event would have taken, the Confederate side in the coming troubles. His loss by this failure was therefore probably less than it then seemed.

An intruder, in breach of well-settled precedent, might have expected to be looked on askance by the class which I thus unusually entered. Not the faintest indication of discontent was ever shown, nor I believe felt, even by those over whom I subsequently passed by such standing as I established, although the fact meant promotion over them. The spirit of the officer and the gentleman, which disdained hazing, disdained discourtesy equally, and thrust aside with the generosity of youth the jealousy that mature years more readily cherishes towards competitors. The habit in those days was to distinguish classes, not by the year of graduation, but by that of entry—colloquially, the so-and-so "Date"—a manner derived from an earlier period, when there was no other chronological point of departure for the career; and in those "days before the flood" nothing would have tempted us to depart from a time-honored custom. "Dates" frequently established among their contemporaries reputations analogous to those of individuals. At that time the "'41 Date," then in the prime of life, was obnoxious to those below it; not for its own fault, but because of its numbers, which, with promotion strictly by seniority, constituted a superincumbent mass that could not but be regarded bitterly by those who followed. At present there would be the consolation that retirement, though distant, would ultimately sweep them all away nearly simultaneously; but there was then no retired list. Whatever the motive, the Secretary of the Navy had been moved to introduce, in 1841, over two hundred midshipmen,[4] which put an almost total stop to appointments for several subsequent years, and gave the "Date" the invidious distinction it enjoyed. The well-known character in the service whose hoisting a demijohn for a flag I have before mentioned, and who found this great overplus above him, was credited with saying that those of them who did not drink themselves to death would strut themselves to death—a comment which testified rather to the warmth of his feelings than to the merits of the case. Of course, the greater the total, the more numerous the unworthy; and the unfortunate natural bias of mankind notices these more readily than it does the capable.

The class to which I now found myself admitted was the "'55 Date," and whatever their reputation in the service, then or thereafter, they thought themselves uncommonly fine fellows, distinctly above the average—not perhaps in attainments, which was a subsidiary matter, but in tone and fellowship. One among them, a turn-back from the previous Date, and for two years my room-mate, used to declare enthusiastically that he was glad of his misfortune, finding himself in so much better a crowd. I doubt if I could have gone as far as this, but in the general estimate I agreed fully. We numbered then twenty-eight, having started with forty-nine a twelvemonth before. Three years later we were graduated, twenty. The dwindling numbers testifies rather to the imperfection of educational processes throughout the country than to the severity of the tests, which were very far below those of to-day. I have often heard it said, and believe it true, that the difficulty was less with the knowledge—that is, the nominal acquirements—of the appointees than with the then prevalent methods of study and instruction, which had debauched the powers of application. My father, after a long experience, used to think that upon the whole there was better promise in a youth who came with nothing more than the three R's, which then constituted substantially the demands of the Military Academy, than in one with a more pretentious showing. The first had not to unlearn bad habits. An illustration that the courses were not too severe, for an average man beginning with the very smallest equipment, is afforded by a true story of the time. A lad from one of the Southern States,—Tennessee, I think,—having obtained an appointment, and being too poor to travel otherwise, walked his way to West Point, and then failed of admission. The affecting circumstances becoming known, a number of officers dubbed together and supported him for a year at a neighboring excellent school. He then entered, passed his course successfully, and proved a very respectable officer. There was, I believe, nothing brilliant in his record, except the earnestness and resolution shown; the absence of these, under demands which, though not excessive, were rigid, was the principal cause of failures.

The requirements were certainly moderate, and our healths needed not to suffer from over-application. The marking system of that time gave the numeral 4 as a maximum, with which standard 2.5 was a "passing average." He who reached that figure, as the combined result of his course of recitations and stated examinations, passed the test, and went on, or was graduated. The recitation marks being posted weekly, we had constant knowledge of our chances; and of the necessity of greater effort, if in danger, whether of failure or of being outstripped by a competitor. The latter motive was rarely evidenced, although I have seen the anxious and worried looks of one struggling for pre-eminence over a rival who amused himself by merely prodding where he might have surpassed. It is only fair to add, as I also witnessed, that no congratulations were more warmly received by the victor than those of the man who had so constantly trod on his heels. It is needless to say, to those who know the world in any sphere of life, that a certain proportion were satisfied with merely scraping through. The authorities leaned to mercy's side, where there was reasonable promise of a man's making a good sea officer. In the later period of written examinations an instructor of much experience said to me, "If a man's paper comes near 2.5, I always read it over again with a leaning towards a more favorable judgment on points;" and he accompanied the words with a gesture which dramatically suggested a leaning so pronounced that, it would certainly topple over the right way. Not strictly judicial, I fear, but perhaps practical. There were rare instances who played with 2.5, enticed perhaps by the mysterious charms of danger. Such a case I heard of, a man of unquestioned ability, who it was rumored boasted that he would get just above 2.5, and as near as he could. He was read dispassionately, and in the event came out 2.47. As an effort at approximation, this may be considered a success; but for passing it was inadequate, and his general character did not bias the final appeal in his favor. He was not dropped, indeed, but had to undergo a second examination three weeks later: a circumstance calculated to cloud his summer. A more amusing instance came directly under my observation. He was a candidate for entrance, and I then head of one of the departments of the Academy. Although I had nothing to do with admissions, his father came in to see me immediately after the results were known. He had a marked brogue, and was slightly "elevated," by success and by liquor. Placing his hand confidentially on my arm, he whispered: "He's got in; he's got in." I expressed my sympathy. He drew himself up with a smile of exultation, and said: "He only got a 2.7. I said to him, '——, why didn't you do better than that?—sure you could.' 'Whisht, father,' he replied, 'why should I do better, when all I need's a 2.5?' Just fancy his thinking of that!" cried the proud parent. "The 'cuteness of him?" I forget this lad's further career, if I ever knew it.

One of the distinguishing features of the two academies then, and I believe now, was the division of the classes into small sections, under several instructors. This gave the advantage of very frequent recitations for each student. None was safe in counting upon being overlooked on any day, and the teacher was kept familiar with the progress and promise of every one under his charge. It admitted also of a more extensive course for those who could stick in the higher sections—a kind of elective, in which the election depended on the teacher, not the taught. Thoroughness of acquisition was favored by this steady pressure, the virtue of which lay less in its weight than in its constancy; but it is practicable only where large resources permit many tutors to be employed. The Naval Academy has had frequent difficulty, not chiefly of a money kind, but because the needed naval officers cannot always be spared from general service. A sound policy has continuously favored the employment of sea officers, where possible; not because they can often be equal in acquirement to chosen men from the special fields in question, but because through them the spirit and authority of the profession pervades the class-room as well as the drill-ground, and so forwards the highly specialized product in view. Besides, as I have heard observed with admiration by a very able civilian, head of one of the departments, who had several officers under him, the habit of turning the hand to many different occupations, and of doing in each just what was ordered, following directions explicitly, gives naval officers as a class an adaptability and a facility which become professional characteristics. It may be interesting to note that the same was commonly remarked of the old-time seaman. His specialty was everything—versatility; and he was handy under the least expected circumstances, on shore as well as afloat. Burgoyne used chaffingly to attribute his misfortunes at Saratoga to the aptitude with which a British midshipman and seamen threw a bridge over the upper Hudson. "If it had not been for you," he said to the culprit, "we should never have got as far as this."

In my day the proportion of officers was less than afterwards, when the graduates themselves took up the task of instruction. There were two who taught us mathematics, one of whom remains in my memory as the very best teacher, to the extent of his knowledge, that I ever knew. The professional branches, seamanship and gunnery, fell naturally to the sea officers who conducted the drills. These studies, as pursued, reflected the transition condition of the period which I have before depicted; the grasp on the old still was more tenacious than that on the new. The preparation of text-books for young seamen far antedated the establishment of naval schools. There was one, The Sheet Anchor, by Darcy Lever, a British seaman, published before 1820, which had great vogue among us. Among other virtues, it was illustrated with very taking pictures of ships performing manoeuvres in the midst of highly conventional waves. As far as memory serves me, I think we were justified in regarding it as more instructive than the American work assigned to us by the course, The Kedge Anchor, by a master in our navy named Brady. A kedge, the unprofessional must know, is a light anchor, dropped for a momentary stop, or to haul a ship ahead, the title being in so far very consonant to the object of instruction; whereas the sheet-anchor is the great and last stand-by of a vessel, let go as a final resource after the two big "bowers," which constitute the usual reliance. The rareness with which the sheet anchor touched ground (the bottom) gave rise to the proverb, "To go ashore with the sheet anchor," as the ultimate expression of attention to duty; and the story ran of a British captain, a devoted ship-keeper, who, to a lieutenant remonstrating on the little privilege of leave enjoyed by the junior officers, replied: "Sir, when I and the sheet anchor go ashore, you may go with us." By the prescription of our seniors we had to tie to The Kedge Anchor, let us hope in the cause of progress, to haul us ahead; but in a tight place The Sheet Anchor was our recourse, and by it think I may say we—swore. 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. Who, then, was this celebrated master, now a commander? Eventually I found the sentence in a British book, and my faith in the pure product of American home industry was suddenly shaken. It is only fair to say that books on seamanship, being essentially an accumulation of facts, must be more or less compilations. Methods were too well established to allow much originality, even of treatment.

There were many other works of like character, the enumeration of which would be tedious. The Young Officer's Assistant was less a specific title than a generic description. Several of them were contemporary; and one, by a Captain Boyd of the British navy, summed up the convictions of us all, teachers as well as pupils, in the sententious aphorism: "It is by no means certain that coal whips will outlive tacks and sheets." It is scarcely kind to resurrect a prophecy, even when so guarded in expression and safely distant in prediction as was this; but I fear that for navies tacks and sheets are dead, and coal whips very much alive. The wish in those days fathered the thought. Who to dumb forgetfulness a prey could voluntarily relinquish all that had been so identified with life and thought, nor cast a longing, lingering look behind? So we plodded on, acquiring laboriously, yet lovingly, knowledge that would have fitted us to pass the examinations of Basil Hall and Peter Simple. To mention the details of cutting and fitting rigging, getting over whole and half tops, and other operations yet more recondite, would be to involve the unprofessional reader in a maze of incomprehensible terms, and the professional—of that period—in familiar recollections. Let me, however, linger lovingly for ten lines on the knotting—"knotting and splicing," as the never-divorced terms ran in the days when rigging a topgallant-yard was a constituent part of our curriculum. The man who has never viewed the realm of a seaman's knots from the outside, and tried to get in, must not flatter himself that he fully appreciates the phrase "knotty problem." I never got in; a few elementary "bends," a square knot, and a bowline, were very near the extent of my manual acquirements. The last I still retain, and use whenever I make up a bundle for the express; but before such mysteries—to me—as a Turk's-head and a double-wall, I merely bowed in reverence. When handsomely turned out, I could recognize the fact; but do them myself, no. I remember with humiliation that in 1862, being then a young lieutenant, I was called without warning to hear a section, one hour, in seamanship. As bad luck would have it, the subject happened to be knotting, and there was one of the midshipmen who had made a cruise in a merchant-ship. The knots I had to ask about—to which that diabolical youngster invariably replied, "I can't describe it, sir, but I will make it for you"—the convolutions through which the strands went in his ready fingers, and my eyes vainly strove to follow, are a poignant subject. There was no room for the time-honored refuge of a puzzled instructor—"We will take up that subject next recitation;" the confounded boy was ready right along, and I had only to be thankful that there were "no questions asked."

There was one professional subject, "Naval Fleet Tactics" under sail, which at the end of my time shone forth with a kind of sunset splendor, the dying dolphin effect curiously characteristic of the passing period in which we were. This had always had a recognition—d'estime, as the French say; but in my final year it fell into the hands of a new instructor, who proceeded to glorify it by amplification. He was a very accomplished man in his profession, a student of it in all its branches, though there was among us a certain understanding that he was not an eminently practical seaman; and he eventually lost his life in what appeared to me a very unpractical manner, being where it did not seem his business to be, and doing work which a junior would probably have done better. We remember William III. at the battle of the Boyne. "Your majesty, the Bishop of Derry has been killed at the ford." "What business had he to be at the ford?" was the unsympathetic answer. The text-book used by our new instructor was by a French lieutenant, written in the thirties of the century, and characterized by something of the peculiar French naval genius. The simpler changes of formation were so simple that complication could not be got into them; but, that happy stage past, we went on to evolutions of huge masses of ships in three columns, in which the changes of dispositions, from one order to another, became subjects of trigonometrical demonstration, quite as troublesome as Euclid. Sines, cosines, and tangents, of fractional angles figured profusely in the processes; and in the result courses to be steered would be laid down to an eighth of a point, when to keep a single vessel, let alone a column, steady within half a point[5] was considered good helmsmanship. There being no translation of the book, our text was provided by copying, individually, from a manuscript prepared by our teacher, which increased our labor; but, curiously enough, the effect of the whole procedure was so to magnify the subject as materially to increase the impression upon our minds.

This is really an interesting matter for speculation, as to what in effect is practical. The mastery of conclusions, to which practical effect never could have been given, served to drive home principles which would have come usefully into play, had the sail era continued and the United States maintained fleets of sailing battle-ships to handle. For myself personally, when I came to write naval history, long years after, I derived invaluable aid from the principles and the simpler evolutions, thus assimilated and remembered. But for them I should often have found it difficult to understand what with them was obvious. A singular circumstance thus brought out was the want of exactness and precision in English terminology in this field. The most notable instance that occurs to me was in Nelson's journal on Trafalgar morning, "The enemy wearing in succession," when, in fact, as a matter of manoeuvre, the hostile fleet "wore together," though the several vessels wore "in succession;" a paradox only to be understood at a glance by those familiar with fleet tactics under sail. The usual version of the attack at Trafalgar has of late been elaborately disputed by capable critics. I myself have no doubt that they are quite mistaken; but it would be curious to investigate how far their argument derives from inexact phraseology—as, for example, the definition of "column" and "line" applied to ships.

These mathematical demonstrations of naval evolutions might be considered a lapse from practicalness characteristic of the particular officer. They took up a good deal of valuable time, and on any drill-ground manoeuvres are less a matter of geometric precision than of professional aptitude and eye judgment. The same mistake could scarcely be addressed at that time to the other parts of the Academy curriculum. Either as foundation, or as a super-structure in which it was sought to develop professional intelligence, to inform and improve professional action, there was little to find fault with in detail, and less still in general principle. The previous reasonable professional prejudice had been in favor of the practical man, the man who can do things—who knows how to do them; the new effort was to give the "why" of the "how," and to save time in the process by giving it systematically. In this sense—that all we learned ministered to professional intelligence—the scholastic part was thoroughly professional in tone; and I think I have shown that the outside professional sentiment was also strongly felt among us. There is always, of course, a disposition latent in educators to deny that practical work may be sufficiently accomplished by cruder processes—by what we call the rule of thumb—and a corresponding inclination to represent that to be absolutely necessary which is only an advantage; to exaggerate the necessity of mastering the "why" in order to put the "how" into execution. An instance in point, already quoted, is that of the professor who maintained that every officer should be able to calculate mathematically the relation between weights and purchases. But between 1855 and 1860, if such a tendency existed in germ, it had no effect in practice. As I look back, the relation between what we were taught and what we were to do was neither remote nor indirect. In its own sphere, in both its merits and its faults, the Academy was in aspiration as professional as the outside service.

This means that the Academy constituted for us an atmosphere perfectly accordant with the life for which we were intended; and an educational institution has no educative function to discharge higher than this. This influence was enhanced by the social customs, in favor of which disciplinary exactions were relaxed to the utmost possible; herein departing from the practice at the Military Academy, as then known to me. Not only on Saturdays and holidays, but every day, and at all hours not positively allotted to study or drills, the midshipmen might visit the houses of officers or professors to which they had the entrance. As a rule, very properly, no one was allowed to be absent from mess; but permission could always be obtained to accept an invitation to the evening meal with any of the families. This freedom of intercourse contributed its share to the formation of professional tone, for the heads of the families were selected professional men, who were thus met on terms of intimacy, precluded elsewhere by the official relations of the parties. More training is imparted by such association than by teaching—the familiar contrast of example and precept. An even greater gain, however—and a strictly professional gain, too—was the social facility thus acquired. In all callings probably, certainly in the navy, social aptitude is professionally valuable. Nelson's dictum that naval officers should know how to dance was only one way of saying that they should be men of affairs, at home in all conditions where men—or women—gather for business or amusement. The phrase "all sorts and conditions of men" never had wider or juster application than to the assembly of green lads, from every variety of parentage and previous surroundings, pitchforked into Annapolis once every year; and, of all the humanizing and harmonizing influences under which they came, none exceeded that of the quiet gentlefolk, of modest means, with whom they mingled thus freely. Indeed, one of the most astute of our superintendents took into account the family of an officer before asking that he be ordered.