V. The Visitors deem it desirable to concentrate in and around the Naval Academy the largest amount and the highest quality of teaching ability, naval experience, and the apparatus and opportunities of practice of every kind connected with the naval service. But they would also commend to the consideration of the Department the encouragement of Naval Institutes, or temporary courses of instruction, at suitable seasons of the year, in some of the great departments of naval education specified in the foregoing classification—for the benefit of officers on furlough, or connected with the National Dockyards and Depositories, especially those in the neighborhood of large collegiate institutions, on the request of a certain number of such officers. Private naval architects and shipmasters might also be invited to attend these Institutes. Something of this kind should be provided, especially if continued study and examination is required by law and regulation at every stage of promotion in the naval service.
VI. The absence of elementary naval schools and of any regular instruction in navigation, the want of nationality and the low condition of the seaman-class generally, prevents any considerable demonstration or recognition of that nautical taste and aptitude for sea-life in the great mass of the population, which ought to be the basis of all special nautical training. To remedy this state of things, to develope and cultivate, where it exists, a desire for a maritime career, to provide at once a supply of intelligent, hardy, and well-trained seamen, mates, and masters, for the national as well as for the commercial marine, in time of peace as well as in the emergencies of a sudden Or a great war, the Visitors recommend the inauguration, under the auspices of the Naval Department, of a system of navigation schools and naval instruction, in addition to and in connection with our present system of naval apprenticeship, commensurate with the demands of the service, the country, and the age. As the basis of this system, they recommend the immediate offer of pecuniary aid to encourage the establishment of a class of navigation schools in all the large seaports of the country, subject to thorough national inspection in order to secure uniformity and efficiency. They do not deem it necessary to consider here the organization, management, and instruction of this class of schools, farther than to present the outline of a system.
1. The schools which they contemplate, are not to be government schools—although they will be aided and inspected by the Naval Department. Their original establishment, buildings, material, equipment, and immediate management will belong to the local Board of Trade or Commerce representing the shipping and commercial interests of the communities in which they are located. Through such Board, the State or municipal authorities, or individuals, can extend pecuniary aid for the original outfit or annual support.
2. The objects aimed at in the internal constitution of the schools and classes, will be thorough instruction in navigation, seamanship, and kindred branches through:—First—Evening classes for adults, (seamen, mates, or masters,) who can not attend regularly on account of absence from port or engagements by day, in which the instruction will necessarily be elementary and fragmentary; Second—A junior department or division, in which instruction in arithmetic, drawing, commercial geography, and statistics, will be given, as well as in navigation, the use of instruments, calculation of observations, keeping a log-book, journal, &c.; Third—A senior department, in which a thorough course of mathematics, navigation, nautical astronomy, steam and steam navigation, &c., will be given, with facilities for acquiring one or more of the languages of the nations with which we have large commercial dealings.
3. The extension of any government aid should be based on the condition that suitable buildings and material equipment are furnished and kept in repair and working order by the local Board, or committee of the same, charged with the immediate management of the school; and such aid shall be subject to reduction and withdrawal for the succeeding year on the recommendation of the Department inspectors. For the first year the only condition should be the actual payment, from other sources, of an equal amount for the annual expense of the school, subject to the disposal of the local Board. For the second and subsequent years, the sum paid by the government shall be appropriated in portions; First—a specific sum to the principal teacher and assistants according to the grade of certificated qualification each may hold; Second—a specific sum to the managers of each school for the annual expense of the same, according the average daily or evening attendance of the whole number enrolled in each class or division for a specified period of time in each year; Third—a specific sum to the managers of each school according to the number of pupils who shall complete certain specified courses of study to the satisfaction of the inspectors upon examination by them; Fourth—a specified sum in prizes, in the form of chronometers, sextants, text-books in navigation, &c., to be competed for by all the pupils of each division of a school; Fifth—a specified sum in aid of such professional experience as can be secured for the younger members of the school, as is now given to naval apprentices. All payments by the government should be so made as to secure and reward the services of able and faithful teachers, the regular, punctual, and prolonged attendance of pupils to the completion of each course which they enter, and the liberal coöperation of the local municipal authorities and the commercial and shipping portions of the community in which the school is located. Without such coöperation the whole plan will fail. The school need not be free—but let the instruction be good, practical, and cheap, and its possessor be sure of a lucrative employment, and then there will be a demand for it.
And why should not the national government enter upon this or a better devised system of training its own seamen, and advancing its naval and commercial interests? All maritime nations, either directly and exclusively by the central government, or through local boards of trade and commerce, have aimed to protect the lives and property of citizens engaged in commerce and navigation, by providing not only for the erection of light houses, buoys, and other material safeguards, but also by an adequate supply of competent pilots and mariners, duly trained and commissioned. Our own government has recognized its duty in all these respects, and in the recent enormous expansion and peculiar risks of the steam-marine, has established a system of inspection which is intended to reach every engine used for the propulsion of every vessel of any class in all waters subject to national law. Surely the same policy which permits and justifies this interference of the national arm and the application of the national resources to build light-houses, erect buoys, register the names, tonnage, and ownership of vessels; which commissions pilots, inspects steam-boilers, surveys harbors, makes observations of the stars, the currents of the ocean and the prevalent directions of the winds in different seasons and latitudes; constructs and circulates maps and charts, and does all these things for the protection of commerce and for the use of the navy, will, in behalf of the same great interests, when satisfied that they are jeopardized by present neglect, see and be assured that the masters, mates, and seamen, who have all the precious lives and enormous properties embarked in commerce in their keeping, are properly trained in the science and art of navigation.
The liberal educational policy of the national government which has set apart over one hundred millions of acres of the national domain for educational purposes, which if the right of inspection into its application had been asserted and exercised, would have amounted ere this time to a permanent fund of over five hundred millions of dollars—and which has more recently appropriated over six hundred thousand acres of public land for the establishment of agricultural and scientific schools;—the similar policy of the State governments, that holds all property subject to taxation for the support of schools, and that authorizes the most munificent appropriations for free public schools in all of the large cities, which are also the great seaports of the country—all justify the belief that a system of education for this large class of the community, once fairly entered upon by the national government, will be cheerfully and liberally responded to and sustained.
In England the same necessity which exists in this country—the reluctance of young people in good circumstances, to enter the maritime service—the low state of the professional as well as general education of her seaman-class—the enormous amount of property and the large number of lives directly interested in commerce and navigation—the reliance for properly manning the national vessels in the sudden emergency of war, on the commercial marine—the representative character which mariners bear, of the religion, manners, and civilization generally of the country, to all nations which they visit—the desire for the elevation of this large class of the population in intelligence, morality, and physical well-being, for its own sake as well as for the happiness, safety, and glory of the whole country—has prompted the government to organize a system of nautical education, not only for officers, gunners, architects, shipwrights, engineers, seamen, and boys employed directly in the national service, but for the masters, mates, sailors, and boys in her large commercial marine. Prior to 1853, the whole reliance of that country for the professional education of masters and mates was their registration after an examination in the mere mechanical knowledge of navigation and seamanship. To obtain this knowledge, reliance was placed on the economic law of supply and demand, and in this case as in others of an intellectual and moral nature, the least demand was made by those in the greatest want. Only here and there, in the great seaport towns, individuals poorly qualified in most instances, opened schools and classes of navigation, in which instruction of the most elementary and mechanical character was given without system, to a very small number, and without supervision or responsibility. In 1853, after the great International Exhibition had demonstrated the superiority of France and other continental nations, in the scientific as well as artistic training of their industrial classes, the English Government constituted a Department of Art and Science to administer a large appropriation (amounting annually to nearly a half-million of dollars) so as to extend encouragement to local institutions of practical science scattered in all the principal centers of population, and acting in every department of industry, all subject to the visits of government inspectors. To this Department of Science and Art was assigned the extension of pecuniary encouragement to, and the inspection of a class of schools which had been instituted by the Mercantile Marine Department of the (governmental) Board of Trade, in connection with local boards of commerce and trade, for the benefit of the navigation interests of the country. These schools in 1863 had increased to eighteen—each in an important seaport—each under the management of a local committee—each having a fair attendance of boys, seamen, mates, and masters, who all paid small fees. The system is still in its infancy, but continues to enjoy the confidence of the government and of the large commercial houses.
Nor is this system of governmental aid and inspection of marine and navigation schools, confined to England. In all the continental states in which the commerce is large enough to require the aid of government in any form for its protection, as well as for the indirect advantage of the navy, this class of schools exists—and in some the national policy in this respect is most comprehensive and thorough. In France, the government in its gigantic efforts within the last twenty-five years to establish a navy which in the number, design, construction, and armament of its vessels, in the scientific and professional knowledge of the officers, and the practical intelligence of her seaman, should be equal to that of any other nation—has included the whole commercial marine in its operations. Encouragement is given to private shipyards, architects, and founderies; and the system of maritime “inscription” or enrollment is so thorough that there is not a master nor an engineer in the commercial service who has not served at least two years in the national dockyards, founderies, or ships, and enjoyed opportunities of professional study, as well as practice, of the most scientific character.
VII. To give unity, stability, thoroughness, and general efficiency to the inspection and operations of the large system of naval education contemplated in the foregoing suggestions, the Visitors recommend the appointment of a Council or Board of Naval Education, in the constitution of which the great features of such a system should be represented, viz.:—(1.) Experience and success in naval command. (2.) Experience in large commercial and maritime affairs. (3.) Success in naval construction. (4.) Success in the instruction and discipline of educational institutions. (5.) A new infusion every year of the popular element, by the appointment from year to year of one or more public-spirited citizens from different sections of the country to attend the local examinations of applicants for admission, and the annual examinations of the several institutions.