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REVIEWS.
HINTS ON THE RE-ORGANIZATION OF THE NAVY. New York: Wiley and Putnam.
A SUBJECT of greater importance to the people of the United States, or one about which they appear to care less, than the re-orgaaization of the Navy, could hardly be selected to form the topic of a pamphlet.
“It is admitted very generally by those acquainted with the subject,” says the writer before us, “that the Navy of the United States is defective in its organization; that the laws, rules, and regulations by which it is governed require remodelling, although complaints from the Navy may not have reached the public ear in tones sufficiently loud to attract attention. Grievances, nevertheless, exist.”
And from this promising paragraph we hoped to find something in the remainder of the “hints,” which would expose the gross wrongs of our naval system, and suggest some means for their removal. But, the author, though evidently belonging to the service, seems not to be aware that there are any other wrongs in the Navy but such as the civil department of it suffer, from inadequate pay and the want of a definite rank. This has been the general complaint of all the officers in the service, ever since the last war; the service is going to kingdom come for the want of a higher grade of officers, say those who have reached the highest, while those still in the line of promotion complain of insufficient pay, and the slowness with which they go up.
But it is not of the slightest consequence to the nation, whether an assistant surgeon in the Navy eats his meals in the cock-pit with the midshipmen, or in the ward-room with the lieutenants and purser; nor whether he receive twelve hundred and fifty or fifteen hundred dollars a year; yet, it is to reform such abuses as these that the author has published his “hints;” he had a right to do so, but he will get nothing but his labor for his pains.
One of the complaints of the secretary of the Navy, in his report to Congress is, that “the Oregon had to proceed to sea recently with a citizen surgeon,” which our author thinks a good reason for reform. There are a good many merchant-ships leaving our harbor every day, for distant ports, with no other surgical aid than such as the captain and his mates can render, with the assistance of a few exceedingly brief directions contained on the lid of his medicine chest; yet we believe that our merchant-ships lose as few men by disease as our national vessels.
The only persons of whom our author seems to have any knowledge in the Navy, are those that wear epaulettes. He does not appear to know that there are such beings as sailors on board of our national ships. Not a word is said in their behalf, not a whisper breathed, that they have any wrongs to be redressed.
“Instances can be cited of commanding officers so fat forgetting their own dignity and what is due to others, as to profanely curse in loud tones ou the quarter-deck surgeons and other civil officers of the Navy. Such instances are rare, it is true; but they have occurred, and may occur again.”
This is very curious. It would be hard to cite an instance of a commanding officer who had not so far forgot his own
The Wolim dignity as to curse in loud tones the sailors under his command; and we must confess to that degree of simplicity as not to perceive any very marked difference between a sailor and a surgeon, so far as usefulness on shipboard and the dignity of humanity are concerned.
The following particulars in regard to midshipmen are well worth the consideration of the people, not one in a hundred of whom know, probably, what they have to contribute towards the education and support of the children and nephews of prominent politicians.
“Midshipmen are admitted into the Navy between the ages of fourteen and sixteen. All the qualification required to obtain an appointment, is political influence, or the favor of those in power. By law or regulation no degree of primary education is requisite. It is usual, however, for those appointed to be more or less instructed in the simple elements, or at least the rudiments of a common English education. To remedy this deficiency in some measure, ‘twenty-two’ professors of mathematics are maintained in the Navy, at a salary of $1,200 a year each, or in other words, it costs the government $26,400 annually, to instruct 356 midshipmen in those elementary branches of mathematics deemed sufficient to enable them to read Bowditch's system of navigation: in round numbers, preceptors’ fees amount to upwards of $74 annually for every midshipman in the Navy, a sum sufficient to pay the annual cost of a collegiate course. Besides professors of mathematics, the government provides three teachers of languages. In addition to all this, every midshipman receives in pay from $300 to $473 yearly, and has little or nothing to offer in return, except the promise or prospect of some day being capable of performing the duty of a lieutenant; or in other words, he is paid while receiving his professional education at the cost of the government.”
No sooner does a youngster of sixteen receive an appointment in the service, than his fortune is made; he is booked for the highest rank and the highest pay in the service, wholly irrespective of merit; by the time he reaches the age of forty-five he will receive a better salary than the vice president of the Union, and yet he need never fire a shot, or spend a quarter of his time on ship board. Although it is requisite that the sea-going officers of the service should enter it at an early age, that they may make themselves perfectly familiar with their duties; yet the chief director of the service; the one who holds sole control of the navy, and may do what he likes with the ships and officers in it, is generally a country attorney, who has never seen blue water, and who could not tell a cat-head from a bulk-head to save himself from perdition. That there’ should be errors and abuses in a service so governed is a matter of course.
To gain employment in any of the civil departments of the government, some fitness for the office which you may fill is considered necessary; not so with the Navy. Our author says, very pertinently, —
“Unfortunately for the country, owing to peculiar notions aid usages, the highest qualifications are advanced no more rapidly, than the most marked stolidity; advancement is regulated by the miller's rule. ‘first come, first served,’ as promotions to fill vacancies in the superior grades are made from the first on the list of the next grade below.
“The career of a military seaman is a glorious career. He surely rises, though very slowly, in dignity and consideration, and last, though not least, his pecuniary reward increases from $300 to $4500 annually, as he passes from the foot of the list of midshipmen to the head of the list of captains, which he does in from thirty-five to forty years.”
We have known some peculiar cases of unfitness in the service, where the officers went up side by side with the best fellows in it. We happened once to witness an instance where the commander of one of our national vessels would not allow one of his lieutenants to have charge of a vessel in the night time, because he was afraid to trust the ship in his keepin.g. Yet this incompetent officer will, in a few years, be [page 50:] himself a commander. Such gross favoritism cannot be shown in the British service.
“Before an officer obtains a lieutenant's commission in Her Majesty's Navy, he must have passed five examinations; but in tke Navy of the United States, he is required to pass but one; to prepare for which, six months’ study is usually enough to ensure success.”
“Which method,” our author pointedly asks, “is likely to produce the most efficient lieutenants, the British or the American?” and, “supposing the two systems to be followed out as they now exist in the two nations, is it not probable that the officers of the British Navy, as a body, will be superior, in professional attainments, to those of the Navy of the United States?”
There are two important questions to be asked in regard to the Navy, and no aims at reform in this department of national expenditure can amount to any good, unless they be considered. First, is there any necessity for a Navy at all, when there is neither a war, nor a prospect of one; and secondly, if a Navy is necessary, why should the citizens of the country, who enter the lowest ranks of the service, be debarred from rising in it, by good conduct, bravery, and genius?
There are few people, who never been on board of our national ships, that have any idea of the degraded condition of the seamen that serve in them. For the three years that they enlist, they are as much cut off from the privileges of freemen, as though they had never stepped foot on American soil. Their commander may flog them on their naked backs, as often as he may be in humor to do so, which is sometimes of very frequent recurrence; and if they should look sour under their punishment, they will he in danger of suspension, not from duty, but from the yard-arm. The law limits the cruelty of a commander to twelve lashes with a cat on the bare back of a sailor, for any one offence; but an angry man, with unlimited authority, pays but little regard to law; and we have known an officer to inflict three dozen lashes on the back of one of his men, under the pretence that he had committed three offences. But abuses like these do not appear to have come under the notice of the author of this book, for among all his hints for re-organizing the Navy, he hints nothing about bettering the condition of the right arm of the service, or putting the citizens of the union who serve as seamen on board of our national ships, on a level with those who enter it with a warrant in their pocket.
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Notes:
This review was specifically rejected as being by Poe by W. D. Hull.
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[S:0 - BJ, 1845] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Works - Criticism - Literary (Briggs ?, 1845)