In 1846, Congress appropriated an amount not exceeding $28,000 for repairs, improvements, and instruction at Fort Severn, Annapolis, Md.; and a like amount in 1847 for the same objects, “including a purchase of land not exceeding 12 acres, for the use of the Naval School.” In the same year (Dec. 1847), Secretary Mason recommended a practice ship.
Down to 1849, the regulations provided for two years’ study at the School, followed by three years’ service at sea, and then two years’ study at the School. This alternation of study and practice—of practice at sea associated with opportunities of study, and of study at school with many advantages of testing principles by experiments and the observations of professors and officers of experience, possessed advantages which still commend it to the minds of many officers over that of longer continuous study at school before practice in earnest is begun. The old system had its shortcomings, but it turned out good seamen and gallant officers, and its best features ought to be again engrafted on the new.
In 1849, a board of officers was directed by the Secretary of the Navy to consider the organization of the school at Annapolis, and report to the department. This was done, and new regulations were matured, and ordered to go into effect on the first of July, 1850. The teachers’ staff was enlarged, and a practice ship, the Preble, a sloop-of-war of the third class, was attached for the purpose of a summer cruise, and the institution was henceforth styled in Acts of Congress and Reports of the Secretary, the Naval Academy. The course of instruction was arranged for four years, with an interval of two or three months in the summer devoted to a practice cruise for two of the classes. The President was authorized to appoint a Board of Visitors, whose functions were “to witness the examinations of the several classes, and examine into the police, discipline, and general management of the Academy.”
The new system began in October, 1850, under Commander C. K. Stribling, as Superintendent, who was relieved in 1853 by Commander L. M. Goldsborough, who was in turn relieved by Captain George S. Blake, in 1857, who continued in the superintendence till 1867, when Admiral Porter was assigned to the position, which he held till 1870, when Commodore J. L. Worden succeeded him.
The first or lowest class in the four years’ course, entered in October, 1851, and graduated in June, 1854, having had two summer cruises of practice, and a long period of continuous study.
The necessities of the War, which as early as April, 1861, had made Annapolis the seat of military operations, caused the removal of the Academy—its professors, students, library and apparatus—in the month of May, to Newport, first to Fort Adams, and afterwards to the Atlantic House in the town, and to the Constitution and other ships, which were not fit for active service, in the inner harbor. All the members of the three highest classes were ordered into active service, and with the fourth class, and 200 newly appointed, the system of instruction went on as in times of peace.
Course of Studies in 1864.
In the organization of the Naval School at Annapolis, in 1845, the ordering of the course of studies was left practically with Prof. William Chauvenet, a graduate of Yale College, who had been commissioned professor of mathematics in 1841, and had acted as such in the instruction of midshipmen in the Naval Asylum at Philadelphia. The following is substantially the arrangement proposed by him for the classes when fully organized—the main deviation in the course as followed in 1864 was in the assignment of text-books.
FIRST CLASS—FOURTH YEAR.