From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life

by A. T. Mahan

In last analysis slavery may have been, probably was, the cause of the war; but, historically, it was not the motive. Lincoln's words—"I will save the Union with slavery, or I will save it without slavery, as the case may demand"—voiced the feeling prevalent in the military services, and also the will of the great body of the Northern people, whom he profoundly understood and in his own mental advance illustrated. I cannot but think that such an aim was more statesmanlike than would have been the attempt to overturn immediately and violently an entire social and economical system, for the establishment of which the current generation was not responsible. In the long run, to allow the tares of bondage to stand with the wheat of freedom was wiser than the wish prematurely to uproot. It had become the definite policy of the enemies of slavery to girdle the tree, by strict encompassing lines, leaving it to consequent sure process of decay. Its friends forced the issue. To the ones and to the others the harvest of generations, in the form it took, came unexpected and suddenly—a day of judgment, a crisis, like a thief in the night. It is a consummate proof of the accuracy of popular instinct, given time to work, that the uprising of 1861 rested upon recognition of the fact that the cause of the nation and of the world depended more upon the preservation of a single authority over all the territory involved, upon the consequent avoidance of future permanent oppositions, than it did upon the destruction of a particular institution, the life of which might be protracted, but under conditions of union must wane and ultimately expire. The gradual progress of decision by the American people was wiser than the abrupt action asked by foreign impatience; and abolition came with less shock and more finality as a military measure than it could as a political. Its advisability was more evident. If statesmanship is shown in bringing popular will to accord with national necessity, Lincoln was in this most sagacious; but not the least element in the tribute due him is that he was the barometer of popular impulse, measuring accurately the invisible force upon which depended the energy of that stormy period.

Before taking final leave of my shore experiences at the Naval Academy, I will recall, as among them, the superb comet of the autumn of 1858, which we at the school witnessed evening after evening in October of that year, during the release from quarters following supper. After the lapse of so nearly a half-century, the survivors of those who saw that magnificent spectacle must be in a minority among their contemporaries, whether of that day or this. Since its disappearance there has been visible one other notable comet, which I remember waking my children after midnight to see; but compared with that of 1858, whether in size or in splendor, it was literally as moonlight unto sunlight, or, in impression, as water unto wine. As the astronomers compute the period of return for the earlier at two thousand years, more or less, we of that generation were truly singular in our opportunity of viewing this, among the very few "most magnificent of modern times." The tail, broadening towards the end, with a curve like that of a scimitar, was in length nearly a fourth of the span of the heavens, and its brightness that of a full moon. My memory retains the image with all the tenacity of eighteen.

Corresponding in some measure to the summer encampment at the Military Academy, the Naval gave the three months from July to September, inclusive, to shipboard and the sea. In both institutions the period was one of study interrupted, in favor of out-door work; but at West Point it was accompanied by a degree of social entertainment impossible to ship conditions. There were two theories as to the conduct of the practice cruises. One was that they should be confined to home waters, where regular hours and systematized instruction in "doing things" would suffer little interference from weather; the other was to make long voyages, preferably to Europe, leaving to the normal variability of the ocean and the watchful improvement of occasions the burden of initiating a youth into practical acquaintance with the exigencies of his intended profession. Personally I have always favored the latter, being somewhat of the opinion of the old practical politician—"Never contrive an opportunity." Naturally an opportunist, the experience of life has justified me in rather awaiting than contriving occasions. One learns more widely and more thoroughly by reefing topsails when it has to be done, than by doing it at a routine hour, without the accompaniments of the wind, the wet, and the lurching, which give the operation a tone and a tonic—the real thing, in short. Doubtless we may wait too long, like Micawber, even for a reef-topsail gale to turn up, though the ocean can usually be trusted to be nasty often enough; but, on the other hand, one over sedulously bent on making opportunity is apt to be too preoccupied to see that which makes itself. Truth, doubtless, lies between the extremes.

In my day long cruises had unquestioned preference; and, whatever their demerits otherwise, they were certainly eye-openers, even to those who, like myself, had obtained some intelligent impression of ships at sea. As instruction in seamanship was then never attempted, neither by work nor book, until after the second year, we went on board not knowing one mast from another, so far as teaching went. How far initial ignorance could go may be illustrated by an incident, to be appreciated, unluckily, only by seamen, which happened in my hearing. We had then been nearly two months on board, when one who had improved his opportunities was displaying his acquirements by the pleasing method of catechising another. He asked: "Do you know what the topsail-tie is?" The rejoinder, perfectly serious, was: "Do you mean the cross-tie?" The topsail-tie being one of the principal "ropes" in a ship, the ignorance was really symptomatic of character; and had not the hero of it been long dead, I would not have preserved it, even incog. I fear it may be cited against my view of practice cruises, as proving that systematic training is better than picking-up; to which my reply would be that the picking-up showed aptitude—or the reverse—if only some means could be devised of making it tell in selection, as it assuredly did in character. But at the beginning, despite any little previous inklings, we were all quite green. I still recall the innocent astonishment when we anchored in Hampton Roads, after the run down the Chesapeake, and the boatswain, as by custom, pulled round the ship to see the yards square and rigging taut. Semaphore signalling was not then used, as later; and his stentorian lungs conveyed to us distinct sounds, bearing meanings we felt could never be compassed by us. "Haul taut the main-top bowlines!" "Haul taut the starboard fore-topgallant-sheet." "Maintop, there! Send a hand up and square the bunt gaskets of the topgallant-sail!" "By Jove!" said one of the admiring listeners, "there's seamanship for you!" We all silently agreed, and I dare say many thought we might as well give it up and go home. Such excellence was not for us.

The subsequent process of picking-up was attended sometimes by comical, as well as painful, incidents. Peter Simple's experiences, as told by Marryat, were not yet quite obsolete in practice. A story ran of one, not long before my "date," who, having been sent on two or three bootless errands by unauthorized jesters, finally received from a person in due authority the absurd-sounding, but legitimate, message to have the jackasses put in the hawse-holes.[7] "Oh no," he replied, resentfully, "I have been fooled often enough! That I will not do." I can better vouch for another, which happened on my first practice cruise. In a sailing-ship properly planned, the balance of the sails is such that to steer her on her course the rudder need not be kept more to one side than the other; the helm is then amidships. But error of design, or circumstances, such as a faulty trim of the sails or the ship inclining in a strong side-wind, will sometimes so alter the influencing forces that the helm has to be carried steadily on one side, to correct the ship's disposition to turn to that side. She is then said to carry weather helm or lee helm, as the case may be; and the knowing ones used to assert noticeable differences of sailing in certain conditions. In many ships to carry a little weather helm was thought advantageous, and it was told of a certain deck-officer—he who repeated the story to me made the late Admiral Porter the hero—that the ship being found to sail faster in his watch than in any other, the commander sent for him and asked the reason. "Well, sir," replied the lieutenant, "I will tell you my secret. As soon as the officer I relieve is gone below and out of sight, while the watch is mustering, I walk forward, look round at things generally, and say casually to the captain of the forecastle: 'Just slack off a little of this jib-sheet.' Then about ten minutes before eight bells, after the last log of the watch has been hove, while the men are rousing to go below, I go forward again and say, 'Come here, half a dozen of us, and get a pull of the jib-sheet;' and I turn the deck over to my relief with the jib well flattened in." In result, the frigate during his watch, and his only, carried a weather helm. My own experience of sailing ships was neither prolonged enough nor responsible enough to estimate just what weight to attach to these impressions, but they existed; and in any case, as the helm varying far from amidships showed something wrong, the question was frequent to the helmsman, "How does she carry her helm?" varied sometimes to, "What sort of helm does she carry?" Now we had among our green midshipmen one from the West, tall, angular, swarthy, with a coal-black eye which had a trick of cocking up and out, giving a queer, perplexed, yet defiant cast to his countenance; moreover, he stuttered a little, not from imperfection of organs, but from nervous excitability. We had also a lieutenant from far down East, red-haired, sanguine of complexion, bony of structure, who had a gesture of tossing his hair and head back, and looking tremendously leonine and master of the situation—monarch of all he surveyed. The two were naturally antagonistic, as was amusingly shown more than once; but on this occasion the midshipman was at the "lee wheel," not himself steering, but helping the steersman in the manual labor. To him the lieutenant, pausing in his stride and tilting his chin in the air, says: "Mr. ——, what sort of helm does she carry?" ——, who had never heard of weather or lee helms, and probably was not yet recovered from the effects of the boatswain's seamanship, twisted his eye and his head, looking more than ever confounded and saucy, and stammered: "I—I—I'm not sure, sir, but I think it's a wooden one." Tableau!—as the French say.

In position on board we were midshipmen indeed, in a sense probably somewhat different from that which first gave birth to the title. We were not seamen; and it could scarcely be claimed that we were in any full sense officers, much as we stuck to that designation. We stood midway. There was a tradition in the British service that a midshipman, though in training for promotion, did not, while in the grade, rank with the boatswain or gunner, who had no future prospects, and who, with the carpenter, stood in a class by themselves. Marryat, who doubtless drew his characters from life, tells us that the gunner who sailed with Mr. Midshipman Easy was strong on the necessity for the gunner mastering navigation, and had many instances in point where all the officers had been killed down to the gunner, who in such case would have been sadly handicapped by ignorance of navigation. I fancy the doubt seldom needed to be settled in service; the duties of midshipman and boatswain could rarely come into collision, if each minded his own business. By luck, just after writing these words, I for the first time in my life have found a plausible derivation for midshipman.[8] It would appear that in the days immediately after the flood the vessels were very high at the two ends, between which there was a deep "waist," giving no ready means of passing from one to the other. To meet this difficulty there were employed a class of men, usually young and alert, who from their station were called midshipmen, to carry messages which were not subject for the trumpet shout. If this holds water, it, like forecastle, and after-guard, and knightheads, gives another instance of survival from conditions which have long ceased.

Whatever the origin of his title, it well expressed the anomalous and undefined position of the midshipman. He belonged, so to say, to both ends of the ship, as well as to the middle, and his duties and privileges alike fell within the broad saying, already quoted, that what was nobody's business was a midshipman's. When appointed as such, in later days, he came in "with the hay-seed in his hair," and went out fit for a lieutenant's charge; but from first to last, whatever his personal progress, he remained, as a midshipman, a handy-billy. He might be told, as Basil Hall's first captain did his midshipmen, that they might keep watch or not, as they pleased—that is, that the ship had no use for them; or he might be sent in charge of a prize, as was Farragut, when twelve years old, doubtless with an old seaman as nurse, but still in full command. Anywhere from the bottom of the hold to the truck—top of the masts—he could be sent, and was sent; every boat, that went ashore had a midshipman, who must answer for her safety and see that none got away of a dozen men, whose one thought was to jump the boat and have a run on shore. Between times he passed hours at the mast-head in expiation of faults which he had committed—or ought to have committed, to afford a just scapegoat for his senior's wrath. As Marryat said, it made little difference: if he did not think of something he had not been told, he was asked what his head was for; if he did something off his own bat, the question arose what business he had to think. In either case he went to the mast-head. Of course, at a certain age one "turns to mirth all things of earth, as only boyhood can;" and the contemporary records of the steerage brim over with unforced jollity, like that notable hero of Marryat's "who was never quite happy except when he was d——d miserable."

Such undefined standing and employments taught men their business, but provided no remedy for the miscellaneous social origin of midshipmen. In the beginning of things they were probably selected from the smart young men of the crew; often also from the more middle-aged—in any event, from before the mast. Even in much later days men passed backward and forward from midshipman to lower ratings; Nelson is an instance in point. When a man became a lieutenant, he was something fixed and recognized, professionally and socially. He might fall below his station, but he had had his chance. In the British navy many most distinguished officers came from anywhere—through the hawse-holes, as the expression ran; and a proud boast it should have been at a time when every Frenchman in his position had to be of noble blood. What was all very well for captains and lieutenants, once those ranks were reached, was not so easy for midshipmen. We know in every walk of life the woes of those whose position is doubtful or challenged; and what was said to his crew by Sir Peter Parker, an active frigate captain who was killed in Chesapeake Bay in 1814, "I'll have you touch your hat to a midshipman's jacket hung up to dry" (curiously reminiscent of William Tell and Gessler's cap), not improbably testifies to equivocalness even at that late date. The social instinct of seamen is singularly observant and tenacious of their officers' manners and bearing. I have known one, reproved for a disrespect, say, sullenly: "I have always been accustomed to sail with gentlemen." In the instance the comment was just, though not permissible. Deference might be conceded to the midshipman's jacket, but it could not cover defects of a certain order.

The midshipman's berth, as attested by contemporary sketches, was peopled by all sorts in age, fitness, and manners. In one of the many tales I devoured in youth, a middle-aged shellback of a master's mate, come in from before the mast, says with an oath to an aristocratic midshipman: "Isn't my blood as red as yours?" Still, even in the British navy, with its fine democratic record, the social rank was more regarded than the military. His Majesty's ship So-and-So was commanded by John Smith, Esquire; and I have heard this point of view stated by competent authority as accounting for the address—George Washington, Esquire—placed by Howe on the letter which Washington refused to accept because not carrying the rank conferred on him by Congress. This does not, however, explain away the "etc., etc.," which followed on the cover. John Byng, Esquire, Admiral of the Blue, would thus be of higher consideration as Esquire than as Admiral. Even in our own service I remember an old log, the pages of which were headed, "Cruise of the U. S. Ship Preble, commanded by J. B. M——, Esquire."

In the practice cruises the social question did not arise. Independent of the democratic tendency of all boys' schools, where each individual finds his level by natural gravitation, the Naval Academy, for reasons before alluded to, has been remarkably successful in assimilating its heterogeneous raw material and turning out a finished product of a good average social quality. Beyond this, social success or failure depends everywhere upon personal aptitudes which no training can bestow. But as officers we were nondescript. There were too many of us; and for the most the object was to acquire a sufficient seaman's knowledge, not an officer's. Yet, curiously enough, so at least it seemed to me, there was a disposition on the part of some to be jealous of any supposed infringement of our prerogative to be treated as "a bit of an officer." Ashore or afloat, we made our own beds or lashed our own hammocks, swept our rooms, tended our clothes, and blacked our boots; our drills were those of the men before the mast, at sails and guns; all parts of a seaman's work, except cleaning the ship, was required and willingly done; but there was a comical rebellion on one occasion when ordered to pull—row—a boat ashore for some purpose, and almost a mutiny when one lieutenant directed us to go barefooted while decks were being scrubbed, a practice which, besides saving your shoe-leather, is both healthy, cleanly, and, in warm weather, exceedingly comforting. Some asserted that the lieutenant in question, who afterwards commanded one of the Confederate commerce-destroyers, and from his initials (Jas. I.) was known to us as Jasseye, had done this because he had very pretty feet which he liked to show bare, and we must do the same; much as Germans are said to train their mustaches with the emperor's. At all events, there was great wrath, which I supposed I should have shared had I not preferred bare feet—not for as sound reasons as the lieutenant's. It stands to reason, however, that that imputation was slanderous, for there were no appreciative observers, unless himself. Why waste such sweetness on the desert air of a lot of heedless midshipmen? With so many details regulated—if not enforced—from the length of our hair to the cut of our trousers, it did seem hypercritical to object to going shoeless for an hour. But who is consistent? The uncertainty of our position kept the chip on the shoulder.