THE U.S. NAVAL INSTITUTE: A Commitment to Education of Serving Officers-and the Public! By Wm. Ray Heitzmann, Ph.D.
Long recognized by the naval and maritime community as a significant contributor to the intellectual discussion of naval issues, the Naval lnstitute's tradition of service to the Navy and naval officers dates back over one hundred years. Liveliness and openness characterize the Naval lnstitute's programs-as result of which it has been a center of innovation and change in this last century of rapid and sometimes overwhelming change. Looked upon as a successor to the Naval Lyceum (see SH 9) the lnstitute's founding came at a time when the nation's concern with domestic affairs far overshadowed its foreign interests. Rising in this period of naval doldrums (not too different from the present era) were a group of naval officers whose interest in the state of their Navy led them to found the Institute in 1873. These young Turks cou ld document their concern: the Navy of the 1870s consisted of an out-dated undersized collection of very limited ships in various states of disrepair; an excess of officers made promotion painfully slow; training among the enlisted men was infrequent and sometimes non-existent! Commodore Foxhall A. Parker's comments on the 1874 Key West naval maneuvers nicely summarize the dismal situation: "The vessels before us were in no respect of a great nation like our own ... for what cou ld be more painful ... than to see a fleet armed with smooth bore guns , requiring close quarters for their development, movin g at a rate of 4 \/2 knot s? What inferior force could it overtake or what superior force escape from, of any the great powers of the earth? "
A "Mutual Learning Company" Under these circumstances a group of men came together and founded a professional society dedicated to the "advancement of professional, literary, and scientific knowledge in the Navy". A charter member remarked, "We must constitute ourselves a sort of mutual learning company.'' The core of the first meeting (1873) at Annapoli s consisted of the reading of a scholarly paper on the Battle of Lepanto; thus the society began on the intellectual note which has came to characterize its work. From the beginning the Institute had an impact upon the Navy. The second paper (later published in the Proceedings as the magazine's first article) presented by Captain Stephen B. Luce in 1874, "The Manning of Navy and Merchant
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Marine," convinced Congress to act to rectify the problems he addressed. Luce followed up this success with a presentation (and Proceedings article in 1884) entitled "War Schools" delivered at the lnstitute's Newport branch. He argued for a post-graduate school as a "place of original research on all questions relating to war and to statesmanship connected with war." The efforts of Luce and some of his associates resulted in a general order issued in 1884, establishing the Naval War College. The College faced serious difficulties during its early years; Luce successfully defended it in the pages of the Proceedings. The Proceedings The Proceedings has served as the organization's main vehicle to achieve its purpose. Begun as a journal to record the society's activities, it expanded and became a monthly in 1917. The position of the Institute was stated early, following publication of an article critical of the Navy's training procedures: "The Board is of the opinion that a free discussion of the various questions affecting the service can only be beneficial." They further explained "it is the earnest hope of the Board that all officers will express their opinions vigorously and freely in the Proceedings . .. " Admiral Arleigh Burke, one of the most popular of the lnstitute's presidents (by tradition the Chief of Naval Operations serves in this office), qualifies the above: "there shouldn't be any articles in the Naval Institute Proceedings that tear down the Navy. There should be articles that try to improve the Navy." Articles generally fall into the three main categories: professional education, historical and technical. "The School of the Officer" (1902), "The Naval Officer as a Speaker and Instructor" ( 1949) and "Graduate Education-The Continuing Imperative" (1973) typify professional education articles. The Institute's concern with naval history began with Parker's paper at the first meeting; the tradition thus begun has been maintained. Present Proceedings general policy
calls for one historical piece a month and a shorter "Old Navy" article on alternating months. Often a pictorial essay appears in lieu of one of the above. These have fallen into "narrative accounts" and "interpretive and analytic" essays. Some of these historical pieces constitute the finest primary sources available on naval history. Many Civil War participants recorded their observations in the pages of the Proceedings. In his "The 'Monitor' and the 'Merrimac'," Foxhall Parker recalled, "On the Monitor not a word was spoken; but each man registered a vow of vengenance, on the tablets of his heart against the ruthless Merrimac. " In 1927 Rear Admiral John Watson in "Farragut and Mobile Bay-Personal Reminiscences" verified a sometimes disputed fact. "I was standing on the poop deck at the time and heard the Admiral shout, on the instant it seemed: 'Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead, Dayton'." The brillant naval intellectual Alfred Thayer Mahan in "Blockade to Naval Strategy" (1895) and Lieutenant Commander W. L. Rodgers, "A Study of Attacks Upon Fortified Harbors" (1904) provide a technical strategic analysis of Civil War situations. More recent publications on the war are exemplified by "Lieutenant Carvel Hall Blair's interesting "Submarines of the Confederate Navy" ( 1952) and "Sea Power in the Civil War" ( 1961) by the prolific naval historian Rear Admiral John Hayes; additional historical articles have focused on famous ships-a particular interest of maritime and naval enthusiasts . Technical articles cover such matters as navigation, strategy and what might be called educating the Navy Department. The contribution of publications of this nature can be seen from the comment of Rear Admiral R. W. McNitt: "During World War II 1 read a short art icle by a Coast Guard officer explaining the relationship of surface currents on the ocean to wind direction. I clipped the article and a few month s later used it in navigating the USS Barb to a rendezuous with survivors from a torpedoed troopship who had been drifting on rafts for severa l days. Four hours after our arrival typhoon winds made further rescue impossible. I credit the rescue of twenty men to the accuracy of our pred icted position based on what I read in the Proceedings. "
As the "vehicle for professional expression" desired by the founding 33