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Coast Guard Academy

Although the Academy's present plant goes back only to 1929, when the City of New London provided the site of the reservation, the formal instruction of future officers of the Coast Guard has had a long and interesting history. From 1876, eighty-six years after the founding of the Service, the professional instruction of Coast Guard cadets had been carried out in three school ships and two schools on land before the Academy's permanent establishment in its present location.

When Alexander Hamilton recommended the establishment of a Revenue Cutter Service (the name Coast Guard was not adopted until 1915) no thought was given to provision for a continued succession of officer personnel. Hamilton, it is true, advised the commissioning of the Service's first officers to President Washington, noting that "it will not only induce fit men the more readily to engage, but will attach them to their duty by a nicer sense of honor." But the problem of training young men to carry on the work was not at first considered. In the beginning, there was a good reservoir of material to draw from; men from the Merchant Marine, many of whom had served in the Continental Navy during the Revolution, were commissioned officers of the first revenue cutters.

For eighty-five years the practice of obtaining officers for the Service from the Navy and Merchant Marine was continued. To counterbalance the advantage to the Service of having its officers with both military and commercial backgrounds was the disadvantage of having two separate camps, dissimilar in background and sympathies. Not all naval officers detailed to the Service found their duties agreeable; morale was not high. Many times the officers detailed to the revenue cutters were political appointees, increasingly out of place as the duties of the Service became specialized; politics and police work definitely did not mix. An alternative plan, established in 1832, and providing for promotions to third lieutenant (equivalent to cadet) was scarcely more satisfactory. The third lieutenants received their training aboard ship until a vacancy as second lieutenant (ensign) occurred; many times the officers were too old to learn their profession by the time they were appointed to the probationary grade. The system obtained, however, until 1876, when the Secretary of the Treasury secured passage of the law establishing the cadet system. A step in the right direction was the regulation of 1871, which provided that "the original admission of officers to any other than the lowest grades is prohibited." This regulation rid the Service of political appointees; it further provided for both physical and professional examinations.

The cadet system, so long delayed, had, nevertheless, something of a forerunner in the officer training practiced aboard the brig Lawrence in the 1840's. With Captain Fraser in command, the Lawrence made an eleven-month trip around Cape Horn to the West Coast, and, although not a school ship in name, carried on a definite program of instruction for the first time in the Service. The Treasury Department had put a fair-sized library aboard; the young officers were required to study navigation and seamanship, and Fraser reported to Washington on their progress.

What practice aboard the Lawrence had shown to be feasible, a Congressional law of July 31, 1876, made mandatory. "Hereafter," it provided, "upon the occurring of a vacancy in the grade of third lieutenant in the Revenue Marine Service, the Secretary of the Treasury may appoint a cadet, not less than eighteen nor more than twenty-five years of age, with rank next below that of third lieutenant, and who shall not be appointed to a higher grade until he shall have served a satisfactory probationary term of two years and passed the examination required by the regulations of said service; and upon the promotion of such cadet another may be appointed in his stead." With these words both the system of entrance to cadetship solely on the basis of a competitive examination and the cadet corps system were established.

The first ranking candidate of the original examination, Worth G. Ross, became Commandant in 1905, serving in that post until 1911. Although the first class of cadets was appointed in December, 1876, actual training was not commenced until the following May. The old topsail schooner J. C. Dobbin was being put into sailing shape by the "Superintendent," Captain J. A. Henriques. Besides necessary repairs to her copper bottom, the ship received a new set of fittings, including awnings and a new figurehead, properly gilded. Captain Henriques also went about securing a crew for the Dobbin, including the employment of a ship's physician "so long as his services are actually required on board." The Captain's final preparations included a visit to the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis; there he studied the system of instruction for midshipmen.

Armed with a detailed letter from the Secretary of the Treasury setting forth the first regulations, Henriques returned to Baltimore, where the Dobbin now lay ready. The training of the first class of cadets began on May 25, 1877. Nine cadets, three officers, one surgeon, six warrant officers, and seventeen enlisted men comprised the Dobbin's complement as the school ship was towed down the Chesapeake by the cutter Ewing. The first cadet cruise occupied four and a half months of sailing on various tacks between the United States and Bermuda. Between putting out to sea and arriving at the first port, many of the cadets suffered from seasickness. "Some of them were utterly prostrated for a time," Henriques wrote to John Sherman, Secretary of the Treasury.

Academy life began for the cadets on the first day of their practice cruise. Their first "class" began at 9:30 in the morning and continued for two hours. Practical seamanship was the subject, and the first day introduced the future officers (but not the future commandant, who was excused because of sickness) to "reeving, studding, sail halyards and tacks; fitting mast head and jewel blocks, and reeving head and body brails to square-sail." At the very outset one fact impresses: these cadets, as the cadets in the Academy today, were being indoctrinated into the leadership of men by doing themselves what they would later command others to do.

Proper cadet deportment was also thoroughly laid down in the first "regs," much in the spirit of the regulations governing cadet life today. The rules were based on the premise that the behavior of the cadets toward their superior officers and each other would be at all times "dignified, courteous and gentlemanly." The cadets were told in specific terms both what they could and could not do. Each cadet was required to keep his bedding and his personal effects in proper order; he had to see to it that his clothing and books were arranged neatly; he was required to stow away his own bed and bedding. "The ship's boys will not be detailed as servants for the cadets," the Secretary's letter warned.

Gambling, profanity, and "the use of wines or spiritous or malt liquors" were forbidden. The use of tobacco, too, was frowned upon; one cadet received twenty-four demerits for his addiction to the practice. The demerit system provided for a long list of possible offenses: three "spots" were meted out to the cadet who persistently annoyed other cadets; "disorderly conduct at recitation" was also a three-demerit offense. Two demerits was the penalty for "hands in pockets when on duty." Cadet Ross, the future Commandant, was the "spot" system's leading victim; he piled up a total of thirty-one demerits, the largest number received by any cadet, by the time the schooner had docked at Provincetown.

The practice cruise, then as now, was but part of the total instruction. Winter quarters for academic instruction were being considered while the Dobbin was still on cruise. Captain Henriques wrote on July 23, suggesting New Bedford, Massachusetts or New London, Connecticut as the site of the new school. The Captain's preference was for New London because of its "fine harbor, easy of access, and with mail and other connections direct with the Dep't." New Bedford was decided upon, however, and there the Dobbin sailed after the cadets returned from leave.

The schooner arrived at New Bedford on October 15, and classes got under way immediately. A huge box of books had been sent on ahead from Washington. Professor Edwin Emery of Whitinville, Massachusetts, was engaged to teach academic subjects. Lieutenants Hooper and Hall, instructors aboard the Dobbin's first cruise, taught navigation, seamanship, rules of the road, and gunnery. The "school," of course, remained the Dobbin; for some years "winter quarters" merely meant a docked school ship. The year was divided between eight or nine months of academic instruction in port and three or four months of cruising for practical instruction.

The Dobbin, never considered anything more than a stop-gap, had a short career in the Service. In 1878, the Chase, named after Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury, later Chief Justice, Salmon P. Chase, became the cruising and winter home of the cadet corps. the Chase, a 106-foot sailing vessel, bark-rigged, with a 25-foot beam, and mounting a battery of four broadside guns, was built in Philadelphia at a cost of twenty thousand dollars. the Chase's guns were 24-pound howitzers; the ship carried a launch, cutter, gig, and dinghy. The average crew consisted of nearly fifty men: a captain, three lieutenants, a surgeon, thirteen cadets, gunner, carpenter, master-at-arms, two quartermasters, two coxswains, ten able seamen, four apprentice seamen, a ship's cook, three stewards, and five boys. the Chase had the speed of a clipper; in her captain's. opinion she could pass anything afloat. She served, except for the brief period when decommissioned, as the Service's practice ship until 1907, when she was superseded by the Itasca, a former Naval Academy Training Ship, propelled by both sail and steam. As part of the celebration of Virginia's tercentennial, the Chase, her last cruise completed, sailed in review before 140 ships of the navies of the world.

By the summer of 1878, the Chase took over the job of being the home of the School of Instruction. From 1878 to 1890 the Chase was stationed at New Bedford, making practice cruises to Europe each summer and graduating cadets who became third lieutenants. The ship's surgeon on some of the voyages, Dr. Walter Wyman, later Surgeon General of the Public Health Service, has left a record of his impressions of life aboard the Chase. The preparations for making an ocean voyage concerned him greatly; he came prepared far stormy weather with a "sou'wester," rubber overcoat and boots. He also brought along "a pair of shoes two sizes too large, for they say they shrink and become hard to put on, and enough linen to last until we reach Spain, for no washing is allowed on board ." "In fact," the doctor adds, "each man is put upon an allowance of one quart of water a day, part of which must be contributed for the cooking of his mess."

The military spirit of officers and cadets and their efficiency in carrying out an endlessly detailed routine impressed Dr. Wyman even more than the inconveniences of the voyage. The "systematic division of labor," Sunday morning inspection with cadets and officers in dress uniform standing at attention "on the weather side of the vessel" elicited his approval. He was not too sure that the cruise was popular with the cadets, however, considering it "a training which they would gladly have exchanged for a cruise along the coast with visits to Newport, Long Branch, and Cape May."

The Chase suspended operations from 1890 to 1894, during which period there was a surplus of Naval Academy graduates. By 1894 the Navy was absorbing all of its own graduates; the Chase was accordingly recommissioned and a new class appointed. The retirement in 1895 of a number of officers formerly on the active list under "waiting orders" and the consequent promotion of junior officers resulted in the temporary elimination of the grade of third lieutenant. To fill the need for new junior officers, the Chase was lengthened by 40 feet to accommodate more cadets. Twelve double rooms were added to the cadet steerage, with two cadets to a room. Entrance requirements were also changed: the new plan called for second classmen whose academic backgrounds were complete enough to enable the schoolship to concentrate on technical and professional instruction. Seamanship, navigation, marine surveying, compass correction, maritime law, naval architecture, and law. There was no opportunity for instruction in engineering aboard the Chase; nor was it necessary: engineer officers, a separate corps, were obtained from engineering schools. Under the new system, four months sufficed for port instruction as against seven months at sea.

When the Chase established winter headquarters in 1900 at Arundel Cove, near Baltimore, an important step in the Academy's history was taken. Here, for the first time, although the cadets continued to be quartered aboard ship, instruction was given in buildings on shore. The shore establishment was called the School of Instruction for the Revenue Cutter Service. In 1914 the name Revenue Cutter Academy was substituted, but in the following year, with the creation of the Coast Guard, the designation United States Coast Guard Academy was adopted.

Today, at Arundel Cove, surrounded by the acres of buildings of a construction yard, stands an old wooden building of the first Academy. The building is now used as a sick-bay and officers' club; a few photographs on its walls, some of them depicting cadets in the old upstanding collar uniforms, are the sole reminders of its former use. The faculty numbered seven at this time; the cadet corps had about forty members. Arundel Cove has other important associations for the Service. Here many of its present senior officers received their academic, or rather post graduate, instruction, for a great number of the cadets in those days were college or university graduates.

For the first time, the obligation of the Academy graduate to remain in the Service was stipulated; upon entering each cadet was required to agree to serve at least three years after graduation. The appointment of two civilian instructors was also authorized at this time.

Historic Fort Trumbull in New London, transferred in 1910 from the War Department, became the site of the Academy until its removal to present quarters in 1932. (In a sense, the Coast Guard has its beginnings in New London in Colonial times, for the New London lighthouse, whose Service was to be consolidated with the Coast Guard in 1939, was built in 1760.) Although the present fort had been constructed in 1849, Fort Trumbull's history, too, goes back to Colonial times; its Block House, still standing, dates from the original fort in 1775. Here, behind casemates covered with artificial mounds, instruction was carried on for over twenty years. During World War I, the reservation was used by the Service as a training station for enlisted men, and by the Navy as a Sound School. Classes at the Academy continued, with cadets assisting in the instruction of recruits for the Navy and Naval Reserve. After the Academy's removal in 1932, Fort Trumbull was used as an educational center for the Coast Guard's enlisted personnel.

In its main outline, the curriculum remained the same from 1903 until, in 1926, the line and engineer branches were amalgamated. Emergencies such as World War I and the so-called "Rum War" caused acceleration in order to provide more officers for the Service, but otherwise the curriculum remained solidified over that period. The entire cadet corps was small. In 1904 the first class numbered five cadets; the second, eight; and the third, five.

A cadet tradition at the Fort was shinnying up all three masts of the Alexander Hamilton, each cadet placing his hat atop each mast in turn. Another incident, fraught with symbolism, was the solemn cadet procession to the docks at the end of the year. The bugler played taps and with one will the cadets tossed their physics books into the river. Cadets banked $40 a month; the rest, after their bills were paid, was spending money. One item of importance was the five dollars an evening for the taxicab for the monthly dance. The Thanksgiving Day foot ball game and the annual play given on the same day were both interclass functions then. One year at Fort Trumbull there were six instructors for five cadets; a ratio which has little chance of ever being repeated.

After the City of New London had provided the site, a new Academy was constructed on the west bank of the Thames and occupied in 1932. As early as 1919, the four-year course was seen as desirable, but it was not until 1926 that Congress authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to make cadets serve four years before being commissioned. The four-year course, so long sought as a solution to a seriously overcrowded curriculum, was finally adopted in 1931, thus fulfilling the Board of Instruction's recommendation in 1917 that the Academy be developed into a technical school "in every way comparable in its completeness of courses, instruction, and educational facilities with either West Point or Annapolis:'

A year later the Academy moved to its new quarters; now there were plant and full facilities for implementing the four-year curriculum. In 1934, at the invitation of the Commandant, the presidents of Columbia, Harvard, and Yale universities and Massachusetts Institute of Technology each nominated a faculty member to an "advisory committee" which would recommend changes in the course of instruction. At the same time the permanence of the advisory committee was itself assured, as well as the formation of a new board of visitors, composed of four Senators and six members of the House of Representatives. The Vice-President appoints one Senator; the others are derived from the Senate Committee on Commerce. The Speaker of the House appoints two members; four others are designated from the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries of the House. The board makes an annual visit to the Academy, conducts an inspection of the reservation, receives the Superintendent's report, and makes its own report on the visit.

The period from 1937 to the outbreak of WWII saw not only the attainment of a balanced four-year curriculum (containing many more semester hours than the average university engineering course as well as nearly three-fourths of the "cultural" subjects required for the A.B. degree in a liberal arts college) but recognition and standing for the curriculum as well. In 1941, for the first time, the Academy conferred upon each candidate the bachelor of science degree as well as awarding the commission of ensign in the United States Coast Guard. Besides giving the cadets the academic standing to which their preparation entitles them, the conferring of the bachelor's degree facilitates graduate work for the new ensigns. Academy graduates went on to other institutions for post graduate work in such subjects as marine engineering, naval architecture, business administration, and law.

Riley Hughes. . The Devin-Adair Company, NY. 1944.

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