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THE EDUCATION AND TRAINING OF NAVAL OFFICERS.

PROBABLY at no period of our history-certainly not at any time during the present generation-has the Royal Navy occupied so large a share of public consideration as at present, as may be easily perceived from the close attention bestowed by parliament upon all matters relating to it, from the constant discussions upon naval subjects with which the public press teems, and from the widelyspread and still increasing popularity of this noble service throughout the length and breadth of these Islands. Hence no excuse is necessary for bringing forward any point bearing upon the welfare and efficiency of the Navy; and the particular subject of which we propose to treat in this paper, is one that has not received that general consideration which its importance justifies and requires.

We propose, then, to consider the present system of educating and training officers for the Royal Navy, and to see how far this system meets the requirements of the service.

If we remember the very early age at which it is requisite for a lad to embark in a seafaring life in order to make a good sailor-the age when the mind is most impressionable, and in the most pliable state for being moulded into any form, or trained in any direction-if we bear in mind further the very peculiar and special requirements of the naval profession, we cannot fail to perceive how important it is that a boy intended for the Navy should receive that particular sort of education which is best suited to his future career. It might, with great reason, be supposed that, in this the greatest maritime country of the worldboasting a Navy famous in history and equal in size to all other navies combined-every branch of this great service would be vigilantly watched and tended, so

to conduce most effectually to the
efficiency of the whole. And it
would certainly be concluded by
any reasonable
person, that the
careful and judicious training of
the young lads destined to become
the officers of the Fleet would be
one of the first points looked to.
Would it be believed, therefore,
by any one not conversant with
naval affairs, that until these last
very few years this important sub-
ject has been utterly neglected, and
is only now, as it were, beginning
to receive that attention and care
which its consequence demands? It
is not too much to say that in no
other country has the training of
its naval officers been so disregard-
ed as in England, and we are still
far behind every other nation in
this respect. It may well be a
matter of no small pride and grati-
fication to the officers of the Navy,
when they consider the many names
distinguished in science which their
body has furnished; for these have
been in a great measure self-taught,
and owe nearly everything to their
own exertions and industry, having
striven to make up by these means
for the absence of advantages which
should have been supplied them by
the State.

The records of the educational branch of the naval service are scanty indeed. The first attempt at anything like a State interference with the training of lads intended for the Navy took place in 1729, when a Royal Naval Academy was instituted in Portsmouth Dockyard for that purpose. The scheme of instruction which was framed for this establishment was excellent, and well suited for the requirements of the service, had it been made compulsory. It included the elements of a general education, as well as mathematics, navigation, French, drawing, fortification, gunnery, and the small-arm exercises; as together with the principles of ship

building, and practical seamanship in all its branches, for which latter a small vessel was set apart. Had this arrangement extended to all those who entered the Navy, we probably should not now have to lament the backward condition of the service in this respect; but the evil genius of "half measures" seemed to wield his baneful influence even in those days, for the entrance to the Academy was purely voluntary, and the building was only intended to contain forty boys, which was but a small proportion of those annually entered in the service. The voluntary system, moreover, proved a total failure: the nobility and gentry, for whose benefit the Academy was instituted, apparently did not care to send their sons there-preferring, probably, sending them at once to sea under charge of some friend or relative-for the maximum number of forty scholars was never attained. In 1773, therefore, the numbers having fallen very low, the King determined to offer a gratuitous education to a certain number of naval officers' sons; and, accordingly, fifteen boys out of the forty, being sons of commissioned officers, were educated free of all expense. The stimulus thus given to the Academy revived its failing strength, and it continued on this footing until 1806, when the enormous extent of our naval armaments called for a large increase of the number of officers; and the Academy was enlarged for the accommodation of seventy pupils, being thenceforward designated the Royal Naval College. Forty out of the seventy boys were now to receive a free education as the sons of naval officers; and the plan of instruction was the same, with slight modifications, as that which had been before established for the Academy. But even this increased number of pupils came far short of the requirements of the service, and therefore the greater part of the young officers joined the Navy without passing through the College.

This state of matters lasted until the close of the great war; but in 1816, material alterations were made in the arrangements. A school for naval architecture was added to the establishment, and the staff of professors and masters was altered in consequence. In 1828 the free education of naval officers' sons-a boon which had been thankfully enjoyed by them for fifty-five years --was discontinued; they were now required to pay at a reduced rate, in proportion to their rank. Moreover, the number of appointments open to them according to this scale-which had been reduced from forty to thirty in 1816-was now to be shared by the sons of military officers; and thus the advantages which the Navy had so long derived from the Academy were so curtailed as to become little more than nominal.

In order to keep up the number. of students at the College, it had been found necessary, from time to time, to extend special privileges to those young officers who had joined the Navy through that establishment; and this produced a discordance between the two classes of officers that was found to be productive of great inconvenience to the service. Accordingly, these advantages were gradually withdrawn during the later years of its existence; and the College again languished, and finally terminated its checkered career in the year 1837. From that date until 1857 no steps whatever were taken to re-establish any sort of training for naval officers, the system under which they joined the service during these twenty years being the same as that applying previously to all those who did not pass through the College. The age of admission into the Navy was from twelve to fourteen; and the only qualification necessary to become an officer was, to be able to write English from dictation, to know the first four rules of arithmetic, Reduction, and the Rule of Three. The writer can never forget his

more and more valuable to the firstlieutenant, a captain who had at heart the future prosperity of the young officers under his command, would take care that their study hours were interfered with as little as possible.

astonishment, when, as a boy of his services were daily becoming twelve and a half, he went up tremblingly for his examinationin much doubt and anxiety as to whether his stock of Latin, French, and Euclid would be deemed sufficient to gain him admission into the Navy-he found sums in simple addition and subtraction placed before him! However, it is a significant comment upon the mode of educating boys in this country, that the majority of lads who fail in the examination upon joining the Navy, even to this day, break down in writing from dictation, being in some instances quite unable to spell even the easiest words!

For the further instruction of the youngsters, after joining the service, naval instructors in all the larger ships were supposed to teach the young gentlemen the mysteries of navigation; the gunnery officer instructed him in the great-gun and small-arm drills, and his duties on board in the course of time taught him seamanship. And so, after six years in a midshipman's berth, he faced his examiners with a beating and anxious heart, only too thankful if he passed through the dreaded ordeal, and received the precious document setting forth that he was duly qualified to take upon himself the charge and command of a lieutenant in her Majesty's fleet. The amount of instruction which the young gentlemen received varied exceedingly. In those ships whose captains took an especial interest in the welfare of their midshipmen, and were themselves men of cultivated minds, able to appreciate rightly the inestimable advantage of a good education, the naval instructors were supported and encouraged in their duties. And for the first two years of their service, or until they became midshipmen, the youngsters were excused from all other duty during school hours, the claims of the naval instructor upon their time being considered paramount to all others. Even during the later part of the midshipman's career, when

But this was the bright side of the picture. It not unfrequently happened that, from peculiar circumstances, the school hours were unavoidably broken into; the captain's cabin-the usual place of study-might be otherwise occupied; and it was not always easy, or even practicable, to set apart any other place where the studies could be carried on with any degree of satisfaction. And it must be confessed that while many-and those our best officers-took the greatest pains in the improvement of their youngsters, instances to the contrary were unhappily not rare; and the want of interest evinced by the captain produced its effect in the indifference of the instructor, and the consequent backwardness of the pupils. For the effectual carrying out of a system of schoolroom instruction on board a sea-going man-ofwar must, under any circumstances, be a difficult task, and can only produce satisfactory results when encouraged to the utmost by the officer in command. In many cases the studies were suffered to be considered as subordinate to the ordinary work of the ship; and when the naval instructor had, after some difficulty perhaps, obtained a place for his duties, and came to assemble his pupils, he would find that Mr. A. had been sent away on boat duty, Mr. B. was particularly required on deck, and Mr. C. had been given leave to go on shore. And in cases where the naval instructor was left wholly unsupported, as sometimes happened, some of his pupils, preferring a caulk on the lockers of the midshipmen's berth or the charms of a new novel, would give themselves leave of absence from school, in confident security from any unpleasant consequences.

Although then, the naval instructors were, as a body, able and zealous, and always anxious to impart to the young officers under their instruction such knowledge as lay in their power, yet in cases such as these it was not in human nature that they could avoid falling into despondency at the difficulties which beset them in the first place, and into utter indifference thereafter.

Moreover, it was only in the larger ships that naval instructors were borne. In the very numerous classes of vessels commanded by commanders and lieutenants there is no accommodation for a naval instructor, and it was left entirely to the option of the master or second-master to undertake the teaching of the young officers in the intervals of his regular duties; the only encouragement afforded him for so doing being the magnificent sum of five pounds per annum for each pupil! And the complement of officers in these vessels being small, the services of the midshipmen for the duties of the ship could not be often dispensed with; therefore in many instances the knowledge acquired by them in any branch of their profession, beyond that of seamanship, was of the small

est amount.

The consequence of all this was, that many fine young men-whose ill-fortune had placed them during the greater part of their midshipman's time in small vessels, or whose studies had, from the causes we have pointed out, been neglected-found themselves, when the period arrived for their examination, atterly unfit for the trial; and preferred leaving the service of their own accord to the discredit of being rejected again and again.

The subjects in which the candidates were examined to qualify for the rank of lieutenant were threeseamanship, gunnery, and navigation. The examination in the first of these was of a very unsatisfactory nature. It could take place

either at home or abroad, wherever three captains or commanders could be assembled together; but the very nature of the subject prevented any set form of questions being put, or any scale of numbers attained, and necessitated the viva-voce form. Therefore the degree of strictness of the examination depended entirely upon the disposition of the examining officers, and varied through every stage between excessive harshness and extreme laxity. Thus it often happened that officers notoriously incompetent, were returned as qualified, while others-young men of good ability and much promise were turned back for months. The gunnery examination on board the Excellent was a very strict one; it was conducted by regular examiners, and lasted three days; it required a complete knowledge of the subject to receive a certificate of qualification, and on this head there was nothing to be desired. The examination for navigation at the College was carried out, as far as it went, with the greatest strictness and impartiality; but it consisted of only the mere practice of navigation, required no mathematical knowledge whatever,* and obtaining even the highest honours implied no more than a superficial knowledge of the subject. Yet it was quite suitable to the amount of instruction which the midshipmen had, as a general rule, been able to receive.

Passed through this ordeal, and arrived at the position of a commissioned officer of the fleet, a young man found himself, except in rare instances, entirely devoid of any save professional knowledge, and that even of a very limited nature. Foreign languages, history, mathematics, the natural sciences, and even the fundamental laws by means of which he carried out the practice of navigating his ship-all were known to him by name only; and every year of service, every step

* We are now speaking of previously to 1857.

he gained, brought his deficiencies more forcibly home to him. Thus at the age when education is usually completed, and young men are settled down to the duties of their professions, those naval officers whose minds recoiled from the thought of passing their lives in such a state of general ignorance, were compelled to begin at the very rudiments of learning, and in many cases to sit down to decimal fractions, the elements of algebra, and the first book of Euclid. That this is not only not an overdrawn picture, but a case of constant occurrence, every naval man will readily allow.

To their credit be it said, a large number of officers, dissatisfied with their very limited knowledge, applied themselves with diligence in their intervals of employment to this-in many instances distasteful-task; and numerous are the names famous in the service by scientific attainments, whose information was only acquired by indomitable resolution and unremitting perseverance at a comparatively late period of their lives. Fully sensible of the deficiencies of the midshipman's education, though taking no steps to improve it, the Admiralty did certainly offer some slight encouragement to these officers, as will be seen hereafter.

Those officers who had joined the service through the College were of course not to such an extent deficient in educational acquirements; but as they went to sea at the age of fifteen at latest, their proficiency at an after period depended to a great extent upon how they kept up the knowledge they had gained while at the College. Still, if any proof were required of the valuable results to be derived from a course of training, such as that in practice at the Naval College, it may be found in the fact, that many of our most distinguished officers passed through that establishment at the outset of their career.

This most unsatisfactory state of matters continued until 1857, when -acting upon the report of a com

mittee appointed in the previous year-the Admiralty adopted the plan of a training-ship for naval cadets, through which all those joining the service for the future were to pass. The age of entry into the training-ship was to be from thirteen to fifteen, and a candidate was required to pass an examination in the following subjects: Latin or French, geography, Scripture history; arithmetic, including proportion and fractions; algebra as far as fractions, and Euclid as far as the thirty-second proposition of the first book. Candidates over fourteen years of age were also required to have a knowledge of the use of the globes, with definitions, algebra to simple equations, the whole of the first book of Euclid, and the elements of plane trigonometry. Six months was the minimum and twelve months the maximum time allowed in the training-ship, according to age, those joining under fourteen being allowed the whole year's instruction. At the termination of the regulated period, the cadet had to undergo a second examination, including all the subjects of the previous one, except Latin; and in addition to these, involution and evolution, simple equations, the elements of geometry, and of plane and spherical trigonometry, the simple rules of navigation, the use of nautical instruments, French, and a slight knowledge of surveying and constructing charts. If the cadet passed this examination satisfactorily, he was forthwith appointed to a sea-going ship, and at the expiration of fifteen months' service he was eligible for the rating of midshipman upon passing a further examination. If he failed in the examination on leaving the trainingship, he was to be rejected from the service entirely.

The plan of instruction in the training-ship likewise comprised an elaborate course of seamanship, as follows:

"First Instruction.-A general knowledge of the different parts of the hull of

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