After reading the discussion of my essay on this subject, I find but one point on which I wish to touch, and that is in regard to a phrase current in the arguments of the anti-amalgamationists. This phrase is that "specialization is the order of the day," which wise saw is generally backed up by some such statement as "When I have trouble with my eyes I go to an oculist, and not to a general practitioner" (regardless of the fact that when at sea they do no such thing, but do go to the general practitioner detailed as medical officer of the ship). The argument along this line generally ends at this point, and no method of organization is suggested which would supply these specialists.
I am a thorough believer in specialization for the higher branches of any kind of scientific work wherever it is practicable, but I do not see how it is possible aboard ship. If the argument as given applied logically to ship life, instead of having a medical corps of general practitioners we would have medical officers, oculists; medical officers, aurists; medical officers, throat specialists; medical officers, physicians; medical officers, surgeons (with separate ones for each particular operation, as we have ashore); and "many others, too numerous to mention." We should have pay officers for pay, pay officers for clothing, pay officers for food, etc. We should have chaplains, Episcopalian; chaplains, Methodist; chaplains, Baptist; chaplains, Roman Catholic; chaplains, Presbyterian; etc., one of each "special branch" aboard each ship. We should have marine officers for infantry, marine officers for great guns, marine officers for field artillery, etc.
Let us see to what this would lead in the duties performed by the present line, and in so doing we must bear in mind that we must have aboard ship enough officers to do the duties in each branch and to allow for sickness, for accidents, and for casualties in action. Specialization carried to its logical limit, according to the customs prevailing ashore, would call for something like the following number of officers and corps aboard each battleship:
Corps. No. of Officers Needed.
Command corps 4
Executive and deck corps 10
Navigation corps 4
Compass corps 4
Ordnance corps 4
Torpedo corps 4
Electrical corps 4
Wireless telegraph corps 4
Signal corps 4
Gun division and turret corps 20
Fire control corps 10
Boiler corps 10
Steam engine corps 10
Total-13 corps 92 officers.
Guess at the total number of officers and corps and continue to split up your specialties for yourself (as the much quoted medical fraternity does ashore), and continue the process "ad nauseam." And remember that a specialist in any one branch cannot, according to the argument, possibly be fit to do any of the duties of any other branch, and therefore cannot be promoted to any other. How many hours a day would each have to spend in his "specializing," and what would he be doing the rest of the time? Where would they all live?
Why not, as suggested above, specialize for command duty from the beginning as well as for any other branch? The other officers have to waste a lot of time on details that it is not at all necessary for the commanding officer to know, such as how to run or repair a dynamo. Why should he waste time on such things; why not begin his study of command duties as a specialty in his early days as is advocated in the one branch of steam engineering?
Boilers and engines are two very different specialties, as shown by the protest that went up when the department ordered that water tenders should be promoted from firemen through the grade of oiler only. Loud and long were the protests against this, and they prevailed.
And what kind of harmony would prevail aboard a ship loaded down to the guards with the necessary great number of one-sided, specialized freaks? The pandemonium that would result would make the old line-engineer bickerings seem like the billing and cooing of turtle doves in comparison. And in case the compass officers should give out, imagine the attitude of a navigating lieutenant asked in the emergency to descend from the heights of his studies in the heavens to the vulgar details of keeping the compasses in order. The hauteur of the Japanese butler requested to perform some of the duties of the second boy would be as nothing in comparison.
And, by the way, to descend from the "jest spoken in sober earnest," why do the ardent advocates of specialization apply their arguments to steam engineering only? Compared to electrical and ordnance appliances in all their branches, steam engineering, even with the near advent of the turbine, is a finished science, while the others are in their infancy. The progress made in steam machinery in the past few years, great as it is, is as nothing compared to the advance in the other branches and is in practical details mainly and not in theory. Why is there no howl for specialization in them? Because those high sciences came into being under an amalgamated system, and grew under that system by leaps and bounds that have made the advances in steam engineering seem slight in comparison. Amalgamation is not a failure in these, for the pudding that furnishes the proof has been eaten and digested with satisfactory results. The steam engineering pudding has also been swallowed, and, while it is just at present disagreeing with some of the weaker stomachs (this will soon be over, on the kill or cure" principle) the stronger constitutions are thriving on it, and we will soon hear no more on the subject.
The English navy, a number of years ago, worked on the extreme specialization principle, and has been getting over it just as fast as it possibly could. The English started a long way behind us, however, with their "navigating lefftenants," etc., and who is there that has not heard the numerous service yarns Spun daily within as short a time as ten years ago as to the workings of that system. The one that sticks in my mind at this moment is of the English ship at Montevideo, under rush orders to sea, whose navigator died, and, as a result the ship could not go to sea until another had been brought down from the fleet at Rio. These stories are familiar to all our older officers and to many of the younger, and, although the details may be exaggerated, they represent well the conditions that existed under such a system of specialization; a system, by the way, which would be as the densest amalgamation, compared to that to which our present day "specializationists" would lead us if they dared be logical.
As the modern battleship herself is a compromise, owing to there being a limit of possible weight, so also must her officers be compromises, owing to there being a limit of room. The very people who use the argument of the medical officer forget that aboard ship that officer is not a specialist, but (as we can only carry a few doctors) must know how to care for and keep efficient all parts of the human mechanism. So also must the line officers know how to care for, keep efficient, and handle all the mechanical parts.
In addition to the discussion published in the Naval Institute there appeared, at about the same time as my paper, two articles on the same subject, and in these two are found more arguments against my view than in the discussion. I therefore desire to give here some few remarks in regard to each of these papers.
The first is an article published in the North American Review for March, 1906, entitled "Our Navy," which claims to have been written by "An American Citizen." As this citizen conceals his identity by what would seem from the nature of the article to be a somewhat unnecessary anonymity, it is impossible to judge what his opportunities for observation may have been, or whether he is by education or training competent to pass upon the matters under discussion, and (as in the case of all anonymous papers), a doubt is cast upon the information and knowledge upon which the arguments are based, and consequently upon the value of the conclusions reached.
The paper is, however, apparently a strong one, in that it praises those who hold the opposite view, is mild in tone, and appears to have been written in a judicial vein. The fallacies in the argument are apparent to the student of the subject only, and not to the casual reader.
There are but three criticisms of this paper that I wish to make, and in the first two I try to repeat the same words in which another officer expressed them to me. They are:
1. The paper argues that naval officers are so efficient, so honest, so zealous, so intelligent, and so capable, and so wrapped up in their profession that they should not be allowed to administer the higher offices of the navy without being diluted by a very considerable proportion of civilian inefficiency and lack of interest in and familiarity with the subject.
2. The first half of the paper argues that special knowledge is not necessary, and is indeed an inadvisable quality to be possessed by the higher officers who are to administer the navy, 'while the second half argues that for younger officers, and for those who are to run ships and fleets, only specialists should be employed. This author, like all the rest, fails to say how far he would carry this specialization.
3. The article reads between the lines as an argument in favor of civilian control of the administrative details of the navy and of the establishment of a corps of non-sea-going civilian steam engineers.
The second paper, and it is a very important one owing to the high standing and character of its author, is by Rear-Admiral Stephen B. Luce, U. S. Navy. The high esteem in which Admiral Luce is held by all makes us give great weight to his views, but, nevertheless, it is possible that in this case his judgment may not be sound. He retired in March, 1889, never having served aboard a modern war vessel.
In estimating the value of his judgment on this point, we must consider the degree to which he has shown himself progressive on similar subjects in the past, and to do this we can do no better than to consider his course in regard to the replacing of sail by steam in the days when that controversy was raging hot. If he was progressive and correct in his views then, we can give great weight to his views now, but if he was ultra-conservative and wrong at that time its casts grave doubt upon his arguments of to-day.
In the second edition of his "Seamanship," published in 1863, he prints on the blank pages preceding his preface, the following extract, which is thus made the text from which the book is written:
" . . . . The battle over, the fleet must or should pass from steaming to sailing, in order to economize fuel, which may be wholly or nearly exhausted during the action, the like expenditure of fuel may have taken place in the enemy's fleet, and this, togetherwith the dismantling effects produced upon the rigging of his ships, will impede or prevent his escape. Both sailing and steaming power, in the same ship, must therefore be always kept in a state of efficiency. In the early days of steam propulsion, it was imagined by Paixhans and others, that a few small steamers, with little or no sailing power, might destroy or capture any ship if properly attacked on her weak points, and this is true in calms, and of operations in inland seas and waters, in which fleets of latge ships of war can neither maneuver, nor follow vessels of small draught of water into shallow creeks or channels. But for steam warfare on the ocean, ships must be rigged and equipped with full sailing power, and, consequently, fully manned with able seamen as before; and thus, nautical skill and good practical seamanship will be as necessary as ever to steam fleets, and will continue to tell, as heretofore, in favor of that party which is most proficient in nautical skill and expert seamanship. It must not, therefore, be assumed, in preparing for steam warfare, that the sail will be entirely supplanted by steam, or that steam fleets may dispense with crews of able seamen (Sir Howard Douglas'Naval Warfare with Steam')."
Again, in the third edition of the "Seamanship," published in 1866, Admiral Luce himself, while apparently not quite so sure that sails were still the main thing, says:
"It is true that steam may place his force more at the disposal of the naval commander-in-chief than formerly, yet bearings may get hot, shells may drop into the best masked engine-room, and machinery of the most perfect description may fail at the hour of need; and without meaning to maintain the infallability of sailoring, it is not very certain that coal whips will altogether outlive tacks and sheets."
The above perhaps voice only the dislike of the seaman for the "tea kettles," and probably represent no more than the average conservatism of the day, but the same cannot be said of a paper on "Naval Training," published by Admiral Luce in the Naval Institute, in March. 1890. It is impossible to select appropriate short extracts from this, for no one paragraph is more emphatic than another in its claim for the retention of sail power. The whole paper is a cry from the heart of a born seaman fighting against the inevitable abolition of his loved masts and spars. At that late date it was necessary to grudgingly admit that there could not be enough sail put aboard a battleship to do her any good, but the plea that "full sail power should be retained aboard all cruisers" is pathetic in its intensity. The author proves conclusively that, because of her sail power, the old Brooklyn was a better ship than the Chicago or Newark.
To the school of thought so ably represented by Admiral Luce, and perhaps in no small degree to the admiral's own personal efforts, we owed the installation of the useless and since discarded masts and spars in the Chicago and other vessels.
Therefore, it is recommended to all who base their views on the recent-paper on amalgamation by Admiral Luce, and especially to the "American Citizen" of the North American Review, that they consider from the records whether the admiral's attitude toward the replacing of sail by steam was such as to justify faith in his views on the next step in the same course of development, which is "amalgamation."