The average number of students annually admitted is 74; the average number in attendance, 148. The total number admitted since 1857 is 592, of whom 163 were practiced musicians, 63 band-masters, 271 band-men.
[III. NAVAL AND NAVIGATION SCHOOLS IN ENGLAND.]
Preliminary Remarks.
Before describing a class of schools in England, which is now receiving special attention and aid from the Science and Art Department of the Committee of Council on Education, viz. Navigation Schools, we will glance at the condition of Nautical Education generally in this great maritime and commercial country.
The old system of training officers for the Royal Navy, under which mere children with the smallest possible amount of elementary knowledge, made the ship their school, even after a Naval Academy was established, had its peculiar advantages as well as its drawbacks. The captain, having the nomination of an almost indefinite number of “youngsters,” stood towards them in loco parentis. He was their governor, guardian, and instructor, and did not “spare the rod” when he thought its application necessary. The captain was then looked up to with a feeling bordering on awe. Without assigning a reason he could disrate or discharge a midshipman; and he could also do much towards pushing him on in the service. The youngster felt that he was entirely in the power of his captain, and, unless of a reckless cast, used his best endeavors to gain his favor. The captain, on the other hand, talked of his youngsters with pride. He, (if he belonged to the better class of naval captains,) took care that every facility should be afforded them for learning their duty, often made them his companions on shore, and superintended their education afloat, sometimes taking a leading part in their teaching. He felt responsible for their bringing up, for some were sons of personal friends or relatives whom he had promised to watch over the youthful aspirants, and all were more or less objects of interest to him. But all this was swept away in 1844, and the captain’s patronage limited to one nomination on commissioning a ship, the Admiralty taking the rest of the patronage into their own keeping. And what was the result? No sooner had the Admiralty absorbed the naval patronage—for the captain was frequently shorn of his one nomination before leaving Whitehall with his commission—than old officers and private gentlemen in middling circumstances found themselves unsuccessful applicants, while the influential country gentleman totally unconnected with the service, but able perhaps to turn the scale of an election, was not under the painful necessity of asking twice for a naval cadetship for his son, or the son of his friend. But what cared the captain for these Admiralty nominees? Too many of them were incapable of profiting by their opportunities, and others neglected to avail themselves of the instructions of the professors of mathematics, and became the victims of dissipation.
[I. Naval Officers.]
The first attempt to educate lads for the naval service of England was in 1729, when the Royal Naval Academy was instituted in Portsmouth Dockyard. The course of instruction included the elements of a general education, as well as mathematics, navigation, drawing, fortification, gunnery, and small arm exercises, together with the French language, the principles of ship-building and practical seamanship in all its branches, for which latter a small vessel was set apart. The number was limited to forty cadets, the sons of the nobility and gentry, and attendance was voluntary. Small as the corps was, it was never full, probably because there was an easier way of gaining admission to the service through official favoritism, by appointment direct to some ship, on board of which during a six years’ midshipman’s berth, he acquired a small stock of navigation and a larger knowledge of seamanship and gunnery practice. In these ships where the captains were educated men, and took a special interest in the midshipmen, and competent instructors were provided and sustained in their authority and rank, this system of ship instruction and training worked well, as under the same conditions it did with us. In 1773 a new stimulus was given to the Academy by extending a gratuitous education to fifteen boys out of the forty, who were sons of commissioned officers. In 1806, under the increased demand for well educated officers, the whole number of cadets was increased to seventy, of whom forty were the sons of officers and were educated at the expense of the government. From this date to 1837 the institution was designated the Royal Naval College, but without any essential extension of its studies. In 1816 a Central School of Mathematics and Naval Architecture was added to the establishment, and in 1828 the free list was discontinued, and the sons of military officers were allowed to share the privileges of the school with the sons of naval officers, at a reduced rate in proportion to their rank. To keep up the number of students who would go through the four years course, it became necessary to extend special privileges, such as made promotion certain and rapid over those who entered the navy direct. This produced inconveniences and jealousies, and in 1837 the Naval College was discontinued.