The midshipmen receive such articles as they desire upon requisition approved by the Commandant, and no other articles are permitted to be sold to them than those which the Storekeeper is authorized to have. Each midshipman has a pass-book in which his purchases are entered, and regular report is made by the Storekeeper to the Paymaster, who charges against each the aggregate amount of his purchases. On the 30th April, 1864, the amount of balances still due to the midshipmen was $44,579.93, the aggregate of indebtedness by them being only $111.90. The amounts to the credit of the members of the graduating class vary from $180 to $400.
The accounts of the Commissary are examined quarterly by a committee of three officers appointed by the Superintendent, to whom they make report. The Visitors deemed at their duty to go behind the reports of this committee, and deputed one of their number to examine personally the original accounts of the Commissary and Storekeeper. As the result of this examination, which was conducted with the most rigid scrutiny, it is but justice to state that they found the accounts correct in all their details, and the prices of all articles as low as they can be purchased at wholesale in the city of New York, and the Visitors consider the financial affairs of the Academy as conducted with commendable skill and fidelity.
While the Visitors bear willing testimony to the fidelity with which the financial affairs of the Academy, as well as the departments of subsistence, discipline, and instruction, are and have been administered, they can not but express their disappointment at the very small number of officers of the lowest rank which the institution has contributed to the naval service. With an aggregate annual expenditure of several hundred thousand dollars, the aggregate number of graduates, since the opening of the four years’ course, in 1851, including the three classes of 1858, ’59 and ’60, which were ordered into active service in 1862 and ’63, before completing their studies, is but 269, or at the rate of less than 22 each year, at an expense to the country of over $12,000 for each graduate. If the 93 who entered the service with only two or three years’ residence had completed their course, the aggregate expense for each graduate would have exceeded $15,000. This, as it appears to the Visitors, small result, is due mainly to the want of care in selecting candidates, and the very low standard of general scholarship required for entering the Academy. The experience of this institution is the same as that of others of the same character; any mode of selection which does not test in advance the natural aptitude and preparation for the special studies of the course, and exclude rigorously all who are found deficient, will burden the institution with a number of students which will have to be thrown off after months and sometimes years of struggling to incorporate them into the regular classes and to the manifest injury, in the meantime, of the scholarship and character of the institution. While a nomination by patronage, and a pass examination have a direct tendency to reduce the average ability of the selected candidates to the minimum required, a competitive examination raises the general average to the maximum ability of all who apply.
Graduating Class of 1864.
The present graduating class (consisting after the final examination of 31) at the close of its third year has completed the whole course prescribed, excepting that the Calculus has been omitted and that Surveying has been limited to instruction in Harbor and Coast Surveying, from Bowditch. Steam and the Steam-engine have received fuller attention from this than any preceding class, embracing six weeks of theory and practice on board of the steamer Marblehead—altogether too little attention for a department so important. Two summer cruises have been made by this class—both coast cruises—the first on board the John Adams, from June 6th to Sept. 30th, 1862; the second from 16th June to 25th Sept., 1864, in which the following vessels were united, viz.: Flagship Macedonian, sloop of war Marion, screw steamer Marblehead, and the yacht America. Upon these cruises the midshipmen were practiced in all the regular duties attaching to the posts of lieutenant and master, taking by turns upon themselves the working of the ship, in the different vessels; making and calculating observations for determining the ship’s position, going through all possible manoeuvres and performing the duties incident to the management of ships in action, in heavy weather, or in the many emergencies which arise requiring superior skill in seamanship. They were engaged in instructing the crews in gunnery, in infantry and sword-drill, and in drill of the battery. They were also detailed for actual boat service, and for the transferring of howitzers and marines from ship to shore. During the last cruise Meyer’s code of signals was used by the graduating class as signal officers, in communicating from vessel to vessel in the fleet, and instruction was also given in the Naval Code of signals, and in Navigation throughout the cruise to all cadets on board. In addition to these cruises the yacht America, in charge of cadets of this class, as commanding officers, has been engaged in the performance of despatch-boat duty, and also special “coast picket duty” in search for the Tallahassee.
The experience of this class—made up of three advanced sections of what is now the second class (the graduating class of 1865,) would seem to indicate, that under a system of appointment that should admit from the start only those who had maturity of mind and requisite scholarship, the professional studies of the Academy might be completed in three years. This is one year longer than the course of the French Naval School at Brest, the entrance examination of which would exclude most of the graduates of our Academy.
[III. RECOMMENDATIONS.]
The Visitors close their report with the following suggestions, as the results of their examinations and conferences, in reference to the further development of the Naval Academy and the extension of nautical education generally, for the consideration of the Department.
I. Until the pupils of the Naval Academy have gone through the theoretical and practical course of instruction provided in this institution expressly to qualify them to act as Midshipmen, the Visitors recommend that they be designated as Naval Cadets—simply candidates for the lowest official rank in the Navy—and that no cadet be rated as midshipman, no matter how well up he may be in his studies, until he has had at least eighteen months of professional practice afloat, towards which time the actual time at sea of each experimental cruise shall be credited.
II. As the most direct blow to the hindrances which practically exclude a large portion of the youth of the country, no matter how strong may be their predilection or great their acquired fitness for the naval service, from even a chance of being admitted to this national school;—as the most effectual preventive of the disappointments now experienced by individuals and families in the failure of many appointees to pass the entrance examination, or to meet even the low requirements of the first year’s course;—as the only effectual way of ridding the institution of the low average ability and attainments which characterize the lower sections of every class, and of bringing up the talent and scholarship and conduct of the whole corps to the average of the first two sections;—as a sure guaranty against the early resignation of officers educated at the public expense for a life service in the Navy, and of a progressive and honorable career as long as life and health last;—as a powerful attraction to draw to this department of the public service a fair share of the best talent and loftiest ambition of the youth of the country, and as a stimulus to their best efforts for self and school improvement for this purpose—the Visitors recommend the immediate abandonment of the custom of selecting candidates for admission by individual patronage, in consideration of neighborhood, relationship, or party connection, or the better motives of the poverty or the public service of parents, and that all appointments be hereafter made in consideration of the personal merit of the applicant, ascertained by a public competitive examination, conducted before an impartial tribunal, constituted as shall be prescribed by law. Admission, sought and obtained in this way, will be honorable to the successful candidates, a source of pride to the neighborhood and State from which they come, a reward to the teachers who have prepared them, and a stimulus to the industry and good conduct of their comrades at home. The classes of the Academy, replenished every year by new recruits, all of whom have sought the service from personal choice and won their place by personal merit founded on natural aptitude and vigor of mind and acquired knowledge, and who regard the diligent improvement of these opportunities of professional study and practice as the true road to honorable promotion hereafter, to be gained by farther industry and devotion—will at once have an average ability and scholarship equal to that now attained by only five or six out of every one hundred, and a large proportion of the cases of discipline, the “dead weights,” the reëxaminations, and the failures from inability, distaste, or want of preparatory knowledge, will forever disappear from the records of the Academy.