The absence of everything like a comprehensive organization for imparting to them the knowledge necessary in these days is truly deplorable, and is made the more so by the very fact that our officers are themselves well aware of the extreme defectiveness of their training in many branches of knowledge which would be most valuable to them, and exhibit the strongest desire to supplement that training by every available means. I have had many occasions of observing this during the last few years; not the least striking of them being the publication of my book on Shipbuilding in Iron and Steel, which, although a purely technical and professional book, was eagerly procured and studied by a very large number of naval officers, who, as you justly state, are now left absolutely without any official instruction in naval architecture. When in Russia this year I found elaborate means and appliances for instructing young officers in all the great features of practical shipbuilding, as well as in the general principles of naval design, and I had the opportunity of examining a large model of an iron-clad ship which was being constructed by these young naval officers; while the shipbuilding and engineering officers of the Russian service have one entire side of the vast building which accommodates the Admiralty branches, wholly devoted to their instruction. I have not yet seen the naval training schools of Germany, but I have had several opportunities of conferring on shipbuilding questions with the naval officers of that country, and I can state with perfect confidence that they possess a most intimate acquaintance with even the latest methods of naval design and construction, and obviously have had a careful training in the principles of naval architecture and the details of shipbuilding. How much this training contributes to the efficiency of naval commanders and other officers I need not say.
Mr. Reed dwells on the total absence of even an attempt to instruct naval officers of all ranks in the department of construction.
Even our warrant officers, the “carpenters” of the Navy, whose duty it is to keep our Navy in repair at sea, and to take instant measures for saving our ships from the effects of injuries sustained by collisions, groundings, or during action—even these officers are subjected to no special and organized training whatever, and are often put on board ship, in responsible charge of the repairing staff, without any knowledge whatever of the construction of their vessel.
I knew so well that the whole class of naval “carpenters” have for years been anxious to obtain a better training for their very responsible duty, that I made a vigorous effort to be allowed to organize a system by which every carpenter of the service should be carefully instructed in iron shipbuilding, and as carefully selected for particular ships on account of his fitness for the duty; but some tradition about warrant officers being “executive officers,” and therefore not under the Chief Constructor of the Navy, and also, I fear, some jealousy of the patronage of such appointments passing into new hands, effectually barred my progress, and imposed conditions under which it was not possible to give effect to my wishes.
I do not think I shall go beyond the truth if I say that other warrant officers are as deficient of suitable training as carpenters. I have certainly known of more than one instance in which the machinery by which our great modern guns are worked at sea has been so imperfectly understood that the “breaks” which are intended to control them have been “greased;” and no doubt a war would develope sad consequences of the enforced ignorance of our gunners.
But let it not be supposed that I advocate the instruction of warrant officers alone in the principles and practice of shipbuilding; it is in my judgment pressingly desirable that the whole class of executive officers should be afforded a certain amount of training in these subjects, and a far ampler training than they now receive in many other subjects also. The Navy suffers very much, even in peace times, from the want of a more liberal training on the part of its officers, as they themselves well know; and I am thoroughly persuaded that in a time of war we shall have to make great sacrifices on account of our neglect in this respect. Many unwise things are done, and many unwise reports are written, because of the want of fuller scientific and technical information on the part of naval officers; and I do not hesitate to say that during my tenure of the Chief Constructorship serious evils arose in my own department from the outside pressure of the uninformed.
Mr. Reed would locate the Naval University at Greenwich.
Such a University must almost of a necessity be metropolitan. All the provincial Government Schools of Naval Architecture in this country have failed, and always must fail, because the metropolis alone can supply the necessary professors for class education chiefly of a scientific character; and the same is even more true of the present case. All the civil members of the late Admiralty Committee on the higher education of naval officers concurred in this view, none more strongly, I believe, than the present Director of Admiralty Education, Dr. Joseph Woolley, who is undoubtedly at once the most experienced and most enlightened authority alive as regards all questions of naval training. And there is this very strong further reason for making this University metropolitan—viz., that one of the most fruitful and valuable results to be anticipated from a more liberal and enlarged education of our naval officers is the release of the service from those thousand and one Old World prejudices which cramp the action and spirit of the service in these modern days, when other nations are bringing their most free and cultivated minds to bear upon naval warfare; and to found a University in a port where the present traditions and habits of thought of the service have the greatest force, would be to place a fatal stumbling block at the very threshold of the work; and if the metropolis is to be the home of the University there can not be a doubt about the superior eligibility of Greenwich. There the magnificent college already stands, with its empty halls, inviting the Government to devote them to some great national and naval object. It is within easy reach of London, professors and teachers; it is in the neighborhood of great shipbuilding and marine engine-making establishments, and also of Chatham Dockyard. It is on the banks of our noblest river, and on the verge of the open country, so that every form of healthful recreation would be available for the students. It also affords ample internal space for all those laboratories, model rooms, lecture rooms, and other apartments, which could only be secured on a sufficient scale at a seaport by a large outlay of money. And, above all, it affords the readiest, as well as the best, means of entering upon a much too long-neglected undertaking.
In the same issue (Sept. 20), the Times had a leader on the subject, from which we take a few paragraphs.