Kitabı oku: «From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life», sayfa 18

The two nights at the lake we slept in a Japanese tea-house, scrupulously clean and quite comfortable, but at that early date and remote region entirety primitive; I should rather say strictly native in all its arrangements. The kitchen was innocent of European suggestion; we ate with chopsticks, and fish from the lake were spitted and cooked around a fire in a sandy hearth, contrived below the middle of the room. Eggs were in abundance, but coffee was sorely missed at our chilly rising. At 9 a.m. we started for the volcano, getting back at 7 p.m. We landed at the foot of the lava stream and ascended by it through a picture of desolation. From shore to summit took us three hours, which confirmed to me a rough estimate of the height as about four thousand feet. The grade was not severe, some thirty or forty degrees; but by this time we had a brisk northwest wind blowing down our throats, and the latter part of the way our feet sank deep in volcanic dust. At the top the air was very cold, keen, and rare, but somewhat oppressive to the lungs. None of us cared to smoke, after eating and drinking, but the view afforded us was perfect; limitless, so far as atmospheric conditions went. In appearance the crater differed little, I presume, from others in a state of quiescence. Smoke and steam poured forth continually, in one spot in large volumes; while from many places issued little jets, such as puff from the out-door pipes of a factory, suggesting subterranean workmen. These were especially numerous from a large mound in the centre, which our guide told us was growing bigger and bigger with his successive visits, portending an outburst near. If his observation was accurate, it goes to show the coincident sympathetic movements which occur in volcanic regions remote from one another; for this year, 1868, followed one of great terrestrial disturbance. In 1867 two of our naval vessels had been carried ashore by a tidal wave in the West Indies; and of two others lying off Arica, Peru, one was dashed to pieces against the cliffs, while the other was carried over low, flat ground for a mile or so inland, where her dismantled hull was still lying when I was there in 1884.

Our starting when we did, as soon as possible, three days after arrival, justified the Nelsonian maxim not to trifle with a fair wind; for we just culled the three days which were the cream, and only cream, of our stay. From our return on the 6th, to sailing on the 12th, there was but one fair twenty-four hours—the rest from blustering to furious; and we went out with the promise of a gale which did not with evening "in the west sink smilingly forsworn." The Iroquois ran through Tsugaru Strait under canvas, with a barometer rather tumbling than falling, and an east wind fast freshening to heavy. We knew it must end at northwest; but it lasted till afternoon of the next day, so we got a good offing. The shift of the wind was in its accompaniments spectacular—and cyclonic. The morning of the 13th was among the wildest I have seen. Daylight came a half-hour late, with a lurid sky; the clouds, the confused, heaving water, the sails, spars, and deck of the ship herself, all as if seen in a Lorraine glass. It having become nearly calm, she lay thrashing aimlessly in the swell, unsteadied by the canvas. The barometer still fell slowly till two in the afternoon, when it stopped, and we began to look out.

 
"First rise, after very low
Indicates a stronger blow."
 

At three it rose one one-hundredth of an inch, and almost simultaneously, looking over the weather rail, was to be seen the oncoming northwester, never long in debt to a southeaster. First a gleaming white line of foam beneath the sombre horizon, gradually spreading to right and left, and visibly widening as it drew near. Soon its deepening surface broke to view into innumerable separate wave-crests, which advanced leaping in tumultuous accord, like the bounding rush of a pack of wolves, whom you may see, and whose howling you can imagine but do not yet hear. As Kingsley has said, "It looks so dangerous, and you are so safe"—all the thrill, yet none of the apprehension. The new gale struck the Iroquois in full force. Within twenty minutes it had reached its height, and so continued for near forty-eight hours, during thirty-six of which the hatches were battened down. For a time the two seas, the old and the new, fought each other to our discomfort; but the old yielded, and, as the new got its even, regular swing, the Iroquois agreed with its enemy of the moment and rode easily.

With our arrival at Shanghai we had left behind whatever in the cruise of the Iroquois could be considered exceptional as to incident; that is, while I remained with her. From December, 1868, we entered in China upon the usual routine of station movement; interesting enough at the time, but from which my memory retains nothing noteworthy. Subsequently we visited Formosa and Manila and Hong Kong; whence we were sent south for ten days to the Gulf of Hainan to search for a French corvette which had disappeared. We did not find her, nor was she again seen by mortal eyes. Returning to Hong Kong, we learned of the first election of General Grant to the presidency, and that a letter from him had reached the admiral asking that the captain of the flag-ship, who as a school comrade had once saved Grant's life, should be ordered home; the intention being to give him charge of an important bureau in the Navy Department. Under usual circumstances a relief would have been sent out; but as the request was from the expectant administration, not from the one still in power and antagonistic, a private letter was the chosen medium of action.

His departure made a vacancy, to which succeeded the captain of the Iroquois, a great favorite with the commander-in-chief. I was left in charge of the ship until we went back to Japan in May. There I fell ill at Nagasaki, and after recovery found myself at Yokohama, in command of a gunboat ordered to be sold. This consummation was reached in September, and I then started for home, having the admiral's permission to proceed by Suez to Europe, instead of by the usual route to San Francisco. My object was only to visit Europe; but on the way to Hong Kong a Parsee merchant, a fellow-passenger, suggested turning aside to India, which I had not contemplated. I shall not go into my brief India travel from Calcutta to Bombay, beyond mentioning the singular good-fortune, as it appeared to me, that I visited the ruined residence at Lucknow, and the remains of the memorable siege of twelve years before, in the company of an officer who had himself been a participant. His wife, still a very young and handsome woman, whom I had the pleasure of meeting, had been one of the children within the works, sharing the perils, if not the anxieties, of their mothers during that period of awful suspense.

Nor do I think my six months in Europe, leave for which met me on my arrival there, worthy of particular note, save in one incident which has always seemed to me curious. Landing at Marseilles, I found that intimate friends were then at Nice. I accordingly went there, instead of to Paris, as I had intended; and, like thoughtless young men everywhere, abandoned myself to pleasant society instead of to self-improvement by travel. My purpose, however, continually was to go directly to Paris when I did leave Nice, for my time was limited; but a middle-aged friend strongly dissuaded me. "You should by no means fail to visit Rome now," he said, "for, independently of the immortal interest of the place, of the treasures of association and of art which are its imperishable birthright, there is the more transient spectacle of the Papacy, in the pride, pomp, and circumstance of the temporal power. This may at any moment pass away, and you therefore may never have another opportunity to witness it in its glory. There is a vague traditional prophecy that, as St. Peter held the bishopric of Rome twenty-five years, any pope whose tenure exceeds his will see the downfall of the papal sovereignty over Rome. Such prophecies often insure their own fulfilment, and Pius IX. is now closely approaching his twenty-fifth year. Go while you can." So I went, in February, 1870; and before the next winter's snow the temporal power was a thing of the past.

XI
THE TURNING OF A LONG LANE—HISTORICAL, NAVAL, AND PERSONAL

1870

In narrating the cruise of the Iroquois I have, as it were, laid the reins on the neck of my memory, letting it freely run away; partly because our track lay over stretches of sea even now somewhat unbeaten by travel, partly because the story of routine naval life and incidental experiences, in a time already far past, might have for the non-professional reader more novelty than could be premised by me, a daily participant therein. Moreover, there were in our cruise some exceptional occurrences which might be counted upon to relieve monotony. I purpose to observe greater restraint in what follows.

The year 1870, in which I returned home, was one of marked and decisive influence upon history, and in a way a turning-point in my own obscure career. As in February I witnessed the splendors of the papal city under its old régime, so in April and May I saw imperial Paris brilliant under the emperor. In the one case as in the other I was unconscious of the approaching débâcle; a blindness I presume shared by most contemporaries. Whatever the wiser and more far-seeing might have prophesied as to the general ultimate issues, few or none could then have foretold the particular occasion which so soon afterwards opened the floodgates. As the old passed, with the downfall of the French Empire and of the temporal kingdom, there arose a new; not merely the German Empire and the unity of Italy, crowned by the possession of its historic capital, but, unrecognized for the moment, then came in that reign of organized and disciplined force, the full effect and function of which in the future men still only dimly discern. The successive rapid overthrows of the Austrian and French empires by military efficiency and skill; the beating in detail two separate foes who, united, might have been too strong for the victor; the consequent crumbling of the papal monarchy when French support was withdrawn, following closely on the Vatican Decree of Infallibility; these things produced an impression which was transmitted rapidly throughout the world of European civilization, till in the Farther East it reached Japan. Into the current thus established the petty stream of my own fortunes was drawn, little anticipated by myself. To it was due my special call; for by it was created the predisposition to recognize the momentous bearing of maritime force upon the course of history, which insured me a hearing when the fulness of my time was come.

Until 1870 my life since graduation had been passed afloat almost without interruption. Soon afterwards I obtained command rank; and this promotion, combined with the dead apathy which after the War of Secession settled upon our people with regard to the navy, left me with relatively little active employment for several years. In America, the naval stagnation of that period was something now almost incredible. The echoes of the guns which from Königgrätz and a dozen battle-fields in France had resounded round the globe, awakening the statesmen of all countries, had apparently ricochetted over the United States, as fog sound-signals are noticed to rebound overhead, unheard through long stretches of the sea-level, until they again touch the water beyond. The nation slumbered peacefully in its "petit coin," to use the expressive phrase of a French admiral to me. Had even nothing been done, this inertness might have been less significant; but somewhere in the early seventies, despite all the progress elsewhere noticeable, there were built deliberately some half-dozen corvettes, smaller than the Iroquois class, mostly of wood. That a period of lethargy in action should steal over a government just released from strenuous exertion is one thing, and bad enough; but it is different, and much worse, that there should be a paralysis of idea, of mental development corresponding to the movement of the world.

I myself have always considered that the "right about" of policy came with the administration of President Arthur, when Mr. Chandler was Secretary of the Navy. It began with a work of destruction, an exposure of the uselessness of the existing naval material, due purely to stand-still; to being left hopelessly in the rear by the march of improvement elsewhere. Upon this followed under the same administration an attempt at restoration, gingerly enough in its conceptions. The vessels laid down were cruisers, the primary quality of which should be speed; but fourteen knots was the highest demanded, and that of one only, the Chicago. Unhappily, wherever the fault lay, the navy then had the habit of living from day to day on expedients, on makeshifts. Although deficiencies were manifest and generally felt, the prevailing sentiment had been that we should wait until the experiments of other peoples, in the cost of which we would not share, should have reached workable finalities. This is another instance of what is commonly called "practical;" as though mental processes must not necessarily antecede efficient action, and as though there was not then at hand abundant data for brains to work on, without any expenditure of money. Finality, indeed, had not been reached, and never will be in anything save death; but at that time it had been shown beyond peradventure that radically new conditions had entered naval warfare, and clearly the first most practical step was a mature official digestion of these conditions—a decision as to what types of vessels were needed, and what their respective qualities should be. In short, the first and perfectly possible thing was to evolve a systematic policy; a careful look, and then a big leap.

However, things rarely come about in that way. It involves getting rid of old ideas, which is quite as bad as pulling teeth, and much harder; and the subsequent adoption of new ones, that are as uneasy as tight shoes. We had then certain accepted maxims, dating mainly from 1812, which were as thoroughly current in the country—and I fear in the navy, too—as the "dollar of the daddies" was not long after. One was that commerce destroying was the great efficient weapon of naval warfare. Everybody—the navy as well—believed we had beaten Great Britain in 1812, brought her to her knees, by the destruction of her commerce through the system observed by us of single cruisers; naval or privateers. From that erroneous premise was deduced the conclusion of a navy of cruisers, and small cruisers at that; no battle-ship nor fleets.¹⁵ Then we wanted a navy for coast defence only, no aggressive action in our pious souls; an amusing instance being that our first battle-ships were styled "coast defence" battle-ships, a nomenclature which probably facilitated the appropriations. They were that; but they were capable of better things, as the event has proved. But the very fact that such talk passed unchallenged as that about commerce-destroying by scattered cruisers, and war by mere defence—known to all military students as utterly futile and ruinous—shows the need then existent of a comprehensive survey of the contemporary condition of the world, and of the stage which naval material had reached. One such was made, which a subsequent secretary, Mr. Tracy, characterized to me as excellent; but the deficiencies and requirements exposed by it in our naval status frightened Congress, much as the confronting of his affairs terrify a bankrupt.

During the latter part of Secretary Chandler's term I was abroad in command of the Wachusett, on the Pacific coast. Besides her, the squadron consisted of the Hartford, Farragut's old flag-ship, the Lackawanna, and my former ship, the Iroquois. They all dated, guns as well, from the War of Secession, or earlier. Had they been exceptional instances, on a station of no great importance, it might not have mattered greatly; but in fact they still remained representative components of the United States navy. The squadron organization, too, was that which had prevailed ever since I entered the service, and so continued until a very few years ago. The rule was that the vessels were scattered, one to this port, another to that. They rarely met, except for interchange of duties; and when in company almost the only exercises in common were those of yards and sails, in which the ships worked competitively, to beat one another's time,—a healthy enough emulation. But this rivalry was no substitute for the much more necessary practice of working together, in mutual support; for the acquired habit of handling vessels in rapid movement and close proximity with fearless judgment, based upon experience of what your own could do, and what might be confidently expected from your consorts, especially your next ahead and astern. A new captain for the Lackawanna accompanied me to the station, where we found our ships in Callao, assembled with the other two. Within a week later we all went out together, performed three or four simple evolutions, and then scattered. This was the only fleet drill we had in the two years, 1883–1885.

In fact, from time immemorial the navy had thought in single ships, as the army had in company posts. To the several officers their own ship was everything, the squadron little or nothing. The War of Secession had broadened the ideas of the army by enlarging its operations in the field, although peace brought a relapse; but the navy having to fight only shore batteries, not fleets, was not forced out of the old tactical and strategic apathy. The huge accumulations of vessels under a single admiral entailed enlarged administrative duties; but the tactical methods, as shown in the greater battles, presented simply the adaptation of means to a particular occasion, and, however sagacious in the several instances—and they usually were sagacious—possessed no continuity of system in either theory or practice. Organic unity did not exist except for administration. There was an assemblage of vessels, but not a fleet. All this was the result, or at least the complement, of the theory of commerce destroying, which prescribed cruisers that act singly; and of war by defence only, which proscribed battle-ships, that act in unison and so compel unity.

A further incident of Mr. Chandler's tenure of office was the establishment of the Naval War College at Newport. This had its origin in the recognition of a defect in the constitution of the Navy Department, which was glaringly visible during the War of Secession. Immense and admirable as was the administrative work done by the Department during that contest, there did not exist in it then, nor did there for many years to come, any formal provision for the proper consideration and expert decision of strictly military questions, from the point of view of military experience and professional understanding. The head of the Department, invariably a civilian under our form of government, and therefore usually unfamiliar with naval matters, had not assured to him, at instant call, organized professional assistance, individual or corporate, prepared to advise him, when asked, as to the military aspect of proposed operations, what the arguments for or against feasibility, or what the best method of procedure. In other services, notably in the German army, this function is discharged by the general staff, nothing correspondent to which was to be found in our Navy Department. It is evident that the constitution of a general staff, or of any similar body called into being for such purpose, will be more broadly based, and sounder, as knowledge of the subjects in question is more widely distributed among the officers of the service; and that such knowledge will be imparted most certainly by the creation of an institution for the systematic study of military operations, by land or sea, applying the experiences of history to contemporary conditions, and to the particular theatres of possible war in which the nation may be interested.

Such studies are the object of the Naval War College, which was established upon the report of a board of officers, at the head of which was the present Rear-Admiral Stephen B. Luce, to whose persistent initiative must be attributed much of the movement which thus resulted. The other members of the board were the late Admiral Sampson, and Commander—now Rear-Admiral—Caspar F. Goodrich. Luce became the first president of the institution, for which the Department assigned a building, once an almshouse, situated on Coaster's Harbor Island, in Narragansett Bay, then recently ceded to the United States government. It remained still to get together a staff of instructors, and he wrote me to ask if I would undertake the subjects of naval history and naval tactics. The proposition was to me very acceptable; for I had found the Pacific station disagreeable, and, although without proper preparation, I believed on reflection that I could do the work. During my last tour of shore duty I had read carefully Napier's Peninsular War, and had found myself in a new world of thought, keenly interested and appreciative, less of the brilliant narrative—though that few can fail to enjoy—than of the military sequences of cause and effect. The influence of Sir John Moore's famous march to Sahagun—less famous than it deserves to be—upon Napoleon's campaign in Spain, revealed to me by Napier like the sun breaking through a cloud, aroused an emotion as joyful as the luminary himself to a navigator doubtful of his position.

 
"Then felt I as some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific."
 

Following this I had written by request a volume on the Navy in the War of Secession, entitled The Gulf and Inland Waters; my first appearance as an author. Herein also I had recognized that the same class of military ideas took possession of my mind. I felt, therefore, that I should bring interest and understanding to my task, and hoped that the defects of knowledge, which I clearly realized, would be overcome. I recalled also that at the Military Academy my father, though professor only of engineering, military and civil, had of his own motion introduced a course of strategy and grand tactics, which had commended itself to observers. I trusted, therefore, that heredity, too, might come to my aid.

As acceptance placed me on the road which led directly to all the success I have had in life, I feel impelled to acknowledge my indebtedness to Admiral Luce. With little constitutional initiative, and having grown up in the atmosphere of the single cruiser, of commerce-destroying, defensive warfare, and indifference to battle-ships; an anti-imperialist, who for that reason looked upon Mr. Blaine as a dangerous man; at forty-five I was drifting on the lines of simple respectability as aimlessly as one very well could. My environment had been too much for me; my present call changed it. Meantime, however, there was delay. A relief would not be sent, because the ship was to go home; and the ship did not go home because there was, first, a revolution in Panama, and then a war between the Central American states, both which required the Wachusett's presence. Mr. Cleveland was elected at this time; there was a change of administration, and with a new Secretary a lapse of Departmental interest. The ship did not go to San Francisco till September, 1885, nearly a year after the admiral's proposition reached me.

The year had not been unfruitful, however. Naturally predisposed, as I have said, my mind ran continually on my subject. I imagined various formations for developing to the best effect the powers of steamships, and sudden changes to be instituted as the moment of collision approached, calculated to disconcert the opponent, or to surprise an advantage before he could parry. Spinning cobwebs out of one's unassisted brain, without any previous absorption from external sources, was doubtless a somewhat crude process; yet it had advantages. One of my manœuvres was to pass a column of ships by an unexpected flank movement across the head of an enemy's column. This I have since heard called "capping;" if, at least, I correctly understand that word. Putting it afterwards before a body of officers attending the College course, all men of years and experience, one said to me, derisively, "Do you suppose an enemy would let you do that?" "It is a question of how quick he is," I replied. "In these days of twelve or fifteen knots he will have no time to ponder, and scarcely time to act." The query illustrates a habit of mind frequently met. It is like discussing the merits of a thrust en carte. If the other man is quick enough, he will parry; if not, he will be run through: sooner or later the more skilful usually will get in.

Naval history gave me more anxiety, and I afterwards found it was that which Luce particularly desired of me. I shared the prepossession, common at that time, that the naval history of the past was wholly past; of no use at all to the present. I well recall, during my first term at the College, a visit from a reporter of one of the principal New York journals. He was a man of rotund presence, florid face, thrown-back head, and flowing hair, with all that magisterial condescension which the environment of the Fourth Estate nourishes in its fortunate members; the Roman citizen was "not in it" for birthright. To my bad luck a plan of Trafalgar hung in evidence, as he stalked from room to room. "Ah," he said, with superb up-to-date pity, "you are still talking about Trafalgar;" and I could see that Trafalgar and I were thenceforth on the top shelf of fossils in the collections of his memory. This point of view was held by very many. "You won't find much to say about history," was the direct discouraging comment of an older officer. On the other hand, Sir Geoffrey Hornby, less well known in this country than in Great Britain, where twenty years ago he was recognized as the head of the profession, distinctly commended to me the present value of naval history. I myself, as I have just confessed, had had the contrary impression—a tradition passively accepted. Thus my mind was troubled how to establish relations between yesterday and to-day; so wholly ignorant was I of the undying reproduction of conditions in their essential bearings—a commonplace of military art.

He who seeks, finds, if he does not lose heart; and to me, continuously seeking, came from within the suggestion that control of the sea was an historic factor which had never been systematically appreciated and expounded. Once formulated consciously, this thought became the nucleus of all my writing for twenty years then to come; and here I may state at once what I conceive to have been my part in popularizing, perhaps in making effective, an argument for which I could by no means claim the rights of discovery. Not to mention other predecessors, with the full roll of whose names I am even now unacquainted, Bacon and Raleigh, three centuries before, had epitomized in a few words the theme on which I was to write volumes. That they had done so was, indeed, then unknown to me. For me, as for them, the light dawned first on my inner consciousness; I owed it to no other man. It has since been said by more than one that no claim for originality could be allowed me; and that I wholly concede. What did fall to me was, that no one since those two great Englishmen had undertaken to demonstrate their thesis by an analysis of history, attempting to show from current events, through a long series of years, precisely what influence the command of the sea had had upon definite issues; in brief, a concrete illustration. In the preface to my first work on the subject, for the success of which I was quite unprepared, I stated this as my aim: "An estimate of the effect of Sea Power upon the course of history and the prosperity of nations; … resting upon a collection of special instances, in which the precise effect has been made clear by an analysis of the conditions at the given moments." This field had been left vacant, yielding me my opportunity; and concurrently therewith, untouched from the point of view proposed by me, there lay the whole magnificent series of events constituting maritime history since the days of Raleigh and Bacon, after the voyages of Columbus and De Gama gave the impetus to over-sea activities, colonies, and commerce, which distinguishes the past three hundred years. Even of this limited period I have occupied but a part, though I fear I have skimmed the cream of that which it offers; but back behind it lie virgin fields, in the careers of the Italian republics, and others yet more remote in time, which can never be for me to narrate, although I have examined them attentively.

I cannot now reconstitute from memory the sequence of my mental processes; but while my problem was still wrestling with my brain there dawned upon me one of those concrete perceptions which turn inward darkness into light—give substance to shadow. The Wachusett was lying at Callao, the seaport of Lima, as dull a coast town as one could dread to see. Lima being but an hour distant, we frequently spent a day there; the English Club extending to us its hospitality. In its library was Mommsen's History of Rome, which I gave myself to reading, especially the Hannibalic episode. It suddenly struck me, whether by some chance phrase of the author I do not know, how different things might have been could Hannibal have invaded Italy by sea, as the Romans often had Africa, instead of by the long land route; or could he, after arrival, have been in free communication with Carthage by water. This clew, once laid hold of, I followed up in the particular instance. It and the general theory already conceived threw on each other reciprocal illustration; and between the two my plan was formed by the time I reached home, in September, 1885. I would investigate coincidently the general history and naval history of the past two centuries, with a view to demonstrating the influence of the events of the one upon the other. Original research was not within my scope, nor was it necessary to the scheme thus outlined.