McBride W.M. Technological change and the United States Navy, 1865-1945

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a man cannot be a military ofﬁcer and a mechanic at the same time,”

claimed Chandler, was ﬁnally routed.

123

Many of Chandler’s colleagues, and older line ofﬁcers, did not agree and

had no desire to become or be identiﬁed as mechanics. Opposition to the

Amalgamation Bill had been strong as it moved through Congress, and few

line ofﬁcers took engineering duty seriously. The expansion of the navy af-

ter 1898 resulted in a shortage of ofﬁcers, especially engineers, but the

Amalgamation Act did not offer any redress by compelling line ofﬁcers to

achieve proﬁciency in engineering. Writing in 1904, the chief of the Bu-

reau of Steam Engineering saw this as a fatal ﬂaw: “So few ofﬁcers of the

line are taking up engineering seriously that the situation is becoming

alarming.”

124

Regret over amalgamation was not limited to line ofﬁcers. In 1906 Rear

Admiral (former Chief Engineer) G. W. Baird condemned amalgamation

for “working a great harm to the naval service.”

125

He despaired of the naval

profession’s seeming repudiation of specialization so valued in Progressive-

era America. Ofﬁcers were becoming jacks of all trades and masters of

none: “The amalgamated ofﬁcer of to-day must ‘qualify’ in so many sci-

ences, arts, professions and trades that he is not likely to be a specialist in

any. While everyone else is specializing, the United States Navy alone is

generalizing.”

126

Baird characterized the absorption of naval engineers

into the line as the culmination of a “struggle between individuals, cliques,

and classes for supremacy.” He feared the decline of the American navy

and nation since “Every nation has been strong, prosperous, rich and great,

just in proportion to its producing classes, i.e., its mechanics, farmers,

artists, etc., and when these begin to wane, the nation begins to decay.”

127

American naval decay had begun with the elimination of the productive

engineering “middle class” by the line aristocracy.

The Navy Department had promised Congress that amalgamation

would lead to the end of the “disagreeable contention” between naval en-

gineers and the line. The service newspapers reported that the Navy De-

partment had threatened to “call to account” any ofﬁcer who opposed the

Amalgamation Bill before Congress in early 1899. According to Baird, the

ramming through of such an “unreasonable and so un-American” bill sur-

prised many naval engineers.

128

Amalgamation was a watershed in the social and institutional history of

the navy. Old sea dogs joined with proud naval engineers to decry the mon-

grelization of their respective ofﬁcer corps. Their complaints were eventu-

Technological Change and the United States Navy

ally drowned out by the rise of the younger ofﬁcers of the “new” line,

trained for employment in both seamanship and engineering. Progressives

may have been dismayed at the rejection of specialization. Nevertheless,

amalgamation ended, at least superﬁcially, the divisive social tensions that

could no longer be tolerated within a service asking Congress to fund

newer, larger, and more technologically complex ships.

The professional homogeneity promised by amalgamation was not

achieved quickly. As late as 1913, the chief of the Bureau of Construction

& Repair complained to the House Naval Affairs Committee about “dis-

satisfaction existing in the Staff of the Navy by reason of delayed promo-

tion in the Staff as compared with ofﬁcers of the Line of the Navy.”

129

Four

members of the Construction Corps resigned in the ten months preceding

February 1913—three with more than twenty years’ service. The chief con-

structor blamed this loss of expertise to the private sector, in part, on the

fact that naval constructors routinely were promoted to the rank of com-

mander ﬁfteen years later than their line counterparts.

130

Amalgamation underscored the acknowledgment of the complex tech-

nical basis of naval power by the political hierarchy and naval ofﬁcer corps

of 1899. Despite nominal equality, engineering specialists were still rele-

gated to secondary status within the profession. Senior line ofﬁcers did

little to encourage engineering training for former seamen ofﬁcers of the

old line. This lack of interest in engineering diminished with the ascension

of the post-1883 generation into the naval hierarchy.

Technology and Naval Society

The widespread intrusion of the steam and iron material culture into

naval warfare between 1861 and 1865 threatened the social status quo of the

American naval ofﬁcer corps. As a result, the line regulated naval engi-

neers. As the purveyors of the technology that threatened the prewar sail-

ing ship ethos, naval engineers were regulated severely in the years follow-

ing the Civil War. Suppression of engineers during the Porter era

contributed to an American navy mainly consisting of obsolescent, but

strategically consonant, sail-dependent warships at a time when major

naval powers such as Britain and France were building complex iron and

steel warships. As a result, American line ofﬁcers grew increasingly em-

barrassed by the artifacts upon which their profession was based. Techno-

The Postbellum Naval Profession

logical innovation was clearly necessary, but how could modern warships

be built without increasing the power and inﬂuence of naval engineers and

the technical bureaus?

By the end of the 1890s, and especially after the victory over Spain,

American battleship construction continued at high speed and a new con-

sensus was emerging in the line regarding the importance of technology to

naval power. Using Theodore Roosevelt’s pronouncement that all naval of-

ﬁcers must be engineers, the line absorbed the separate Engineering Corps

through the Amalgamation Act of 1899.

Factional disputes within the American naval ofﬁcer corps took up a

great deal of attention between 1861 and 1910. The common line-engineer

acceptance of the navalist thought style and of the post-1890 battleship

strategic paradigm did not ameliorate the antiengineer and antitechnical

bureau campaigns of the line ofﬁcers. These grew even more intense as the

relationship between strategy and technology grew more clear-cut after

1898. The struggle to suppress naval engineers, through control of their ed-

ucation process and limitations on their social status, foreshadowed the

continuing struggle to break engineering control over naval technology be-

tween 1900 and 1910. This conﬂict also foreshadowed the technologically

based factional disputes that would rack the navy between the world wars.

Steam engineering ofﬁcers were the lightning rods for general line dis-

pleasure within the changing technological framework of late-nineteenth-

century naval warfare. Yet hostility to engineers varied. Naval constructors

fared better because of the small size of the Construction Corps and their

importance to naval power and the American naval renaissance of the

1880s. As ship designers, they did not typically go to sea or operate the noisy,

leaky, dirty steam machinery that made life in a steam warship a shadow of

what naval life had been in the “Old Navy” of wooden ships and iron

men.

131

Starting in 1879, the top one or two graduates in each academy

class, who so wanted, were sent to Europe for graduate education in naval

architecture and were commissioned as staff ofﬁcers in the Construction

Corps.

However, naval constructors and their Bureau of Construction & Re-

pair, which controlled the entire ship system, were potentially much more

dangerous “engineer-sociologists”—to use Michel Callon’s term—to the

technological status quo than steam engineers.

132

Naval constructors de-

ﬁned the exemplar of the navy’s technological paradigm. The Construc-

tion Corps was limited to forty ofﬁcers by the amalgamation legislation of

Technological Change and the United States Navy

1899. Construction and maintenance of the battleship ﬂeet increased de-

mand for naval constructors, and the corps was expanded by legislation to

forty-six in 1902 and to seventy-ﬁve in 1903.

133

A faction of activist line of-

ﬁcers before World War I believed that the growing Construction Corps

also had to be brought to heel. That effort would continue through 1908.

The Postbellum Naval Profession

Competing for Control

Line Ofﬁcers, Engineers, and the Technological

Exemplar of the Battleship Paradigm

n 1890 Congress authorized the ﬁrst technological exemplars of the new

battleship-based strategic paradigm: the large-gunned, steel battleships,

Indiana, Oregon, and Massachusetts. The battleship strategy was based in

guerre d’escadre, the historic strategy of strong maritime powers such as

Britain, in which line-of-battle ships engaged similar enemy ﬂeets. To the

chagrin of navalists, guerre d’escadre and the expensive ﬂeet of ships of the

line it required had not been the strategy of the U.S. Navy before 1890. Pub-

lication that year of Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan’s The Inﬂuence of Sea

Power on History, 1660–1783 linked Britain’s rise to great power status to its

maritime dominance based in the practice of guerre d’escadre. Mahan’s

widely read book struck a chord in America that now had the wealth, world-

wide commercial network, political cadre, and industrial base to challenge

the world’s premier naval powers. Mahan’s conceptualization of the proper

type of war at sea drew on land warfare theory and focused mainly on a

single, Jominian-style, decisive engagement between battleship ﬂeets.

In many ways the Indiana-class ships were a reaction to Britain’s battle-

ship and modern cruiser building program instituted to serve Britain’s

adoption of a two-power naval standard in 1884.

Line ofﬁcers used the

British program to garner congressional, business, and popular support for

construction of modern warships to escape the postbellum naval stagna-

tion. Designated “coastal battleships,” as were the three pre–Spanish-

American War ships that followed, the three 1890ships had a limited steam-

chapter 2

ing range. This reﬂected Congress’s reluctance to move away from a de-

fensive, continentalist naval strategy and the historical view that ships of

the line were tools of empire.

The naval war against the Spanish in 1898 seemed to justify the coun-

try’s investment in battleships. In actions that would have made the frus-

trated navalists of the Early Republic cheer, Congress, between 1898 and

1905, authorized the construction of fourteen more battleships, enabling

the United States to rise to the status of a world naval power. This naval

buildup was quite expensive, consuming an average of 17 percent of the an-

nual federal budget during Theodore Roosevelt’s and William Howard

Taft’s administrations.

The tremendous cost of a battleship navy was not without political and

The Mahanian battleship-based strategy was rooted in the large gun and steel armor.

Both are evident in the forward 13-inch gun turret mounted in Oregon, one of the ﬁrst

three battleships authorized in 1890. (Courtesy of Allan J. Drugan, from the album

of Lewis H. Rockey. Naval Historical Center, NH 42969)

Image not available.

popular opposition. In 1905 Michigan businessman Fred Hobbs castigated

Admiral of the Navy George Dewey over the battleship program while pre-

senting a classic criticism of capital ships: “many of us do object to your ex-

travagant proposals for the building of battleships. . . . For once put your-

self in our place and study the question of expense from the standpoint of

the producer and then see if it is wise to spend millions on a single ship

that could be torpedoed and reduced to scrap in the twinkling of an eye.”

To counter opposition to battleship construction, Lieutenant Com-

mander John Gibbons published a naval manifesto in 1903. Gibbons res-

urrected the idea of a naval general staff to provide line ofﬁcers control over

the technological basis of the profession and the “technical bureaus and

industrial interests” in order to provide a “continuous building program.”

Gibbons called for a “campaign of education among the people, through

the medium of naval leagues and press agitation, which have proved so suc-

cessful in England and Germany.” Gibbons thought such proselytizing

would result in the allocation of a “proper share” of federal tax revenues to

naval expansion over a period of four to eight years.

Besides countering public opposition to battleship programs, some line

ofﬁcers also waged an intranavy struggle to wrest control of the technical

basis of their profession from the engineering specialists within the tech-

nical bureaus, who, many line ofﬁcers believed, failed to have an adequate

understanding of strategy. Both line ofﬁcers and naval engineers supported

the battleship-based strategy of guerre d’escadre but differed over details of

battleship technology. Each group believed it was best suited to control the

“normal” reﬁnement of the battleship technological paradigm.

The line-engineer battle over who would control the technological ba-

sis of the battleship navy was joined over design details on the Connecticut-

class battleships authorized in 1902. The furor over the Connecticut designs

informed the engineers, and many members of the older line hierarchy,

that the generation of more technologically savvy line ofﬁcers raised in the

post-1883 steel navy would no longer tolerate the engineers’ and technical

bureaus’ monopoly over naval technology.

Mahanian Navalists and the Rise of the Battleship

Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan is perceived widely as a spokesman for

American imperialism and as the paradigmatic American navalist. Mahan

Technological Change and the United States Navy

was characterized by the naval historian Margaret Sprout as an “evangelist

of sea power” who “precipitated and guided a long-pending revolution in

American naval policy.” A more recent, balanced account has been offered

by Philip Crowl. A more muted appraisal of Mahan’s inﬂuence is offered

by Peter Karsten, who argued that commerce raiding was already a passé

American strategic policy as early as 1865. Mark Shulman has offered the

most recent and detailed analysis of the 1880s and the pursuit of an offen-

sive-defensive navy.

Karsten linked line pressure for an enlarged, modern navy to “career

anxiety” over agonizingly slow promotions during the 1870–80s.

This anx-

iety led the “Young Turks” of the line to embark on an aggressive public

relations campaign for an enlarged navy as an integral tool to achieve

expanded markets overseas.

Alex Roland described the strong identiﬁcation that exists between a

naval ofﬁcer and his ship.

This was an important factor that drove

younger, more energetic line ofﬁcers to push for modern ships in the post-

Porter era. As one young ofﬁcer put it in 1886, a naval renaissance would

provide “a few vessels that we will not be afraid or ashamed to show to for-

eign powers, and that will keep up the dignity of the great American Re-

public.”

Dignity was tied to professional self-image and that was linked

intricately to technology. Commodore Foxhall Parker elucidated a more

concrete need for new ships during the 1870s: in case the navy encountered

“a hostile force at sea.” Parker longed for a time when the United States

would “awaken from her lethargy . . . and once more put forth her strength

upon the deep.”

Thanks to lobbying by naval ofﬁcers, it became increasingly clear to

Congress, and to some extent the American public, that expanding Amer-

ican markets could not be protected by antiquated Civil War ironclads

suited only for coastal defense. The answer, according to navalists, was to

build ships that would embody the most modern technologies and thus up-

hold the dignity of the nation and of the American naval profession. When

America’s rival for world trade, Great Britain, announced her plans to con-

struct ten large-gunned, steel battleships and sixty cruisers between 1889

and 1894, Rear Admiral Stephen B. Luce, founder of the Naval War Col-

lege, quickly called for the construction of an American “battleship” ﬂeet

to counter the Royal Navy.

The American battleship navy originated during the administration of

Secretary of the Navy Benjamin Franklin Tracy (1889–93).

Against the

Competing for Control

British naval modernization program, the U.S. Navy could only offer the

armored ABCD ships,

the ﬁrst ships of the modern steel navy, still full-

rigged with masts and sails, and the four modern heavy cruisers, Texas,

Maine, New York, and Olympia, all of which were woefully inadequate

against the battleships the British were constructing.

Tracy took up Admiral Luce’s banner. In his ﬁrst annual report as sec-

retary of the navy (1889), Tracy called for the creation of a ﬁghting force

based upon “sea-going battleships.” According to Tracy’s biographer:

The secretary rather bluntly proclaimed that the United States Navy had fallen

behind not only Great Britain, France, Russia, and Germany, but even Turkey,

China, and Sweden. The proﬁtless program of building unarmored cruisers . . .

could not provide defense for an unprotected American coastline of 13,000

miles with its twenty centers of population, wealth, and commercial activity.

Tracy believed that a more powerful deterrent force was distinctly necessary.

Tracy dismissed guerre de course as ineffective in deterring a naval at-

tack: “The capture or destruction of two or three dozen or two or three

score of merchant vessels is not going to prevent a ﬂeet of ironclads from

shelling our cities or exacting as the price of exemption a contribution that

would pay for their lost merchantmen ten times over.” Tracy’s answer was

“a ﬂeet of battle-ships that will beat off the enemy’s ﬂeet on its approach.”

The United States needed “a navy that will exempt it from war, but the only

navy that will accomplish this is a navy that can wage war.” That, to Tracy,

was a navy of armored battleships.

The March 1889 crisis over a Paciﬁc coaling station on Samoa involv-

ing the United States, Germany, and Britain aided Tracy’s advocacy of

battleships. A showdown was averted by a typhoon. When the storm had

subsided, only Britain’s HMS Calliope had been powerful enough to steam

to the open sea and avoid disaster. The underpowered, obsolescent Amer-

ican ships were driven ashore and American naval power in the Paciﬁc all

but ceased to exist.

Tracy made sure that the lesson of Samoa was not lost on Congress and

the White House. President Benjamin Harrison had called for the con-

struction of a “sufﬁcient number” of modern powerful warships in his

inaugural address. After reading Tracy’s annual report, Harrison urged

Congress to appropriate funds for the immediate construction of eight

“battleships.”

Technological Change and the United States Navy

Harrison’s Republican Party controlled both the House of Representa-

tives and the Senate, and naval enthusiasts in Congress offered bipartisan

support for the eight battleships. Senator Eugene Hale of Maine submit-

ted legislation for the Tracy–Harrison program in December 1889. His bill

had an excellent chance of being enacted until a navy Policy Board report,

published in January 1890, greedily called for the construction of ten long-

range and twenty-ﬁve short-range battleships, twenty-four cruisers, and one

hundred torpedo boats at an estimated construction cost of $281 million. If

this program were completed, the U.S. Navy would rank second only to

Britain’s Royal Navy in tonnage.

Popular outrage against such large-scale

naval expansion translated into stiff congressional opposition to Hale’s

bill.

Senator William E. Chandler, Tracy’s predecessor as secretary of the

navy, spoke out forcefully against the battleship concept. When Chandler

denounced any worldwide mission for the American navy, he ignored al-

most nine decades of distant naval operations in support of commerce, be-

ginning with the operations against the Barbary Corsairs during the Early

Republic. Chandler argued that the nation’s legitimate defense needs

could be served by heavily gunned and armored monitors that could

protect the coast from hostile battleships economically.

Chandler’s an-

tibattleship stance elicited strong support from Midwestern isolationists

and paciﬁst organizations.

Compromise legislation was introduced in the House of Representatives

to build three “seagoing, coastline battleships” to the speciﬁcations of

Tracy’s original medium-range battleships. After a bitter ﬁght against the

Populist opposition, the legislation passed the House and a roughly similar

bill passed in the Senate. In its ﬁnal form, the Naval Bill of 1890 authorized

$18 million for three battleships, each with four 13-inch guns, eight 8-inch

guns, four torpedo tubes, and driven by reciprocating steam engines to a

top speed of 16 knots.

The navy’s next battleship, authorized in 1892, marked an escalation in

American pursuit of naval power. This ship, Iowa, came about in partial re-

sponse to President Harrison’s call for a modern ﬂeet, not to protect the

coast, but to protect American lives and property throughout the world.

Tracy asked for appropriations for two Iowa-class battleships. Antinavy op-

position resulted in the authorization of only one ship. Although a “coast-

line” battleship, Iowa was a giant step forward in American naval power

since it was the ﬁrst battleship not limited in range or size (tonnage) by

Competing for Control