Estimate of the amount required to pay retired officers of the United States Navy for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1890.

Number of secretaries and clerks, and their, pay allowed to commandants of yards and stations, to paymasters of yards, to inspections, and on receiving-ships and cruising vessels.

Number of secretaries and clerks, and their pay, etc.-Continued.

Total pay for 1,528 officers on active list

Total pay for 287 naval cadets under instruction, $500 each per annum

Total pay for 365 officers on retired list

Total pay for 2 secretaries and 91 clerks.

Grand total....

$3,513,000

143, 500

866, 279 120,000

4, 642, 779

Schedule of bids and statement of contracts awarded and entered into to wash towels and supply ice for the Navy Department during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1889.

No. 2.-REPORT OF THE ADMIRAL OF THE NAVY.

OFFICE OF THE ADMIRAL,

Washington, D. C., July 18, 1888.

An

SIR: In common with most experienced officers I think that the best school for practice afloat is in sailing vessels, and that although a couple of steamers might well be employed as gunnery ships, the Portsmouth, Jamestown, and Saratoga should be retained in the Navy for the purpose of giving the apprentice boys an extended voyage to sea. act of Congress should be passed exempting all practice ships from the operation of the 20 per cent. law of March 3, 1883, so as to allow these vessels to be repaired to any extent that may be required to make them safe and efficient.

In regard to the term of enlistment, I recommend that the regulations be changed and that apprentices be shipped for ten years, with the understanding that they are eligible to the highest grades of petty officers, if found competent to fill the position.

The apprentice system, although on a limited scale, is one of the best institutions in the Navy. It is a school where boys are trained to become petty officers, seaman-gunners, and seamen.

Like everything else in the Navy, this appendage to the service has had a continued struggle for existence, and one would suppose that, instead of the training system being considered a necessity, the officer in charge, whose whole soul is enlisted in the matter, was receiving some private benefit from the appropriations necessary to keep afloat so desirable an institution.

The training system is not only beneficial to the boys by giving them a practical education, but it is a most admirable school for officers. Nowhere else in the Navy can young officers acquire so readily those habits of thought which are indispensable and which can only be acquired in sailing vessels. A different state of things exists on board a sailing vessel to what prevails on board a steamer. For the preservation of the former is required the quick eye, ready command, and prompt obedience, and habits of prompt obedience on the part of the embryo seaman can not so well be obtained except in the sailing ship. The importance of an apprentice system is shown by the time and money devoted to it by the British Government, in order to keep up the supply of well-trained petty officers and seamen for their great navy. Our apprentice system is on a very small scale compared with that of Great Britain, for where we have hundreds, she has thousands of boys, and no pains are spared to attach them permanently to the service.

8

In some respects our apprentice system is better than that of Great Britain, particularly in our custom of using vessels propelled by sail alone, which keeps the attention of officers and men fixed upon seamanship, that most essential part of the naval profession. Without a complete knowledge of this branch neither officer nor sailor will ever be entirely efficient. The officer may be useful in ordinary times on board a steam-ship, and the sailor, having passed a considerable portion of his apprenticeship in hoisting ashes, may answer to fill a gap on a topsail yard, but neither will be equal to the emergency when left to his

own resources.

None but a thorough seaman is fit to command a ship of war. In time of danger all his faculties will be called in play, and to enable him to manage his ship with dexterity it is necessary that he should have the aid of intelligent seamen-the product of the apprentice system. Views favorable to the apprentice system are constantly gaining ground in Great Britain, and, even although the five or six thousand boys who are intended for the royal navy will ultimately serve on board steamships, every effort is made to send none afloat who have not been trained exclusively as seamen, for in the new class of vessels the engineer element is so abundant that it is absolutely necessary to leaven it with a modicum of old-time seamanship, not learned from books, but by actual contact with the elements.

We have experienced much difficulty in filling vacancies in our Navy from the apprentices, owing to the fact that we aimed too high in the first place, requiring too much from the apprentice boy on his entering the service. He must be of good ancestral stock, and boys were selected who were least fitted for the Navy, to whose parents hopes were held out that their son's enlistment was the stepping-stone to high positions in the service. When the fallacy of such hopes became evident, the parents never rested until their boys were discharged from their uncongenial employment.

How many hundreds of poor boys in the large cities would have been delighted to obtain the positions at which their more aristocratic brethren turned up their noses, and how much more aptitude they would have shown for the service? True policy would indicate that the farmer's son should be left to till the soil and follow in the footsteps of his illustrious predecessors, but a contrary theory has prevailed, and the waifs in the streets of our cities have received no encouragement to enlist in the Navy and fight for their country. Some persons seem to think that every apprentice should be of the highest moral character before he is permitted to go on board a ship of war, perhaps for fear he might contaminate the firemen and coal-heavers; but who knows what noble sailors these waifs we have mentioned would some day have made after having passed through the reform school of the Navy?

In a great country like the United States it is the duty of the Government to stretch out a hand and rescue a portion of the boys from perdition, by placing them on board the receiving-ship New Hampshire, at Coaster's Harbor Island, Newport, where, with good example and under kind treatment, they would improve morally, mentally, and phys. ically. To vary the couplet of Pope a little, we might say:

'Tis education forms the common mind,

Just as the twig is used so is the boy inclined.

As a general rule, there is a desire on the part of the officers controlling the apprentice squadron to introduce a higher education than is called for among the apprentices. To read, write, and cipher, would be a boon

that the ordinary boy would highly appreciate. This he could learn in the few months he was attached to the receiving-ship, while the study of science had better be left to the Naval Academy, where, perhaps, seamanship-the life of the Navy-may not be considered of equal importance.

I by no means object to the introduction of the farmer's sons into the naval apprentice ship, with their sturdy limbs and moral attributes, but, to use a homely phrase, that has been run into the ground. Less than 17 per cent. of that class of boys have, up to this time, remained in the Navy, not enough in fact to make the necessary number of petty officers required for the service. Leaving out the want of aptitude for the service which generally induces the boys to leave when their ap prenticeship is at an end, there are too few apprentices allowed by law, and not enough to supply the cruising ships with a sufficient number to fill up their quota, for the more of these boys a commanding officer can obtain to leaven the crowd of foreign seamen now on board our ships of war, the better he feels, for the crews of our ships are generally made up of sailors from every part of the world, but mostly of the Scandinavian race, good reliable men in time of peace, who care little under what flag they sail. They are the descendants of the barbarians who once debouched upon the plains of Italy and France and helped themselves to what did not belong to them. They come and enlist in our Navy, softened in character, it is true, but they are the same free-lances as of old. They ship for money. They have no sentiment for our flag or nationality, and, possibly, if it came to an action with a ship of their own or a neighboring nation, they would haul down the Amerian colors and hoist their own.

This is a contingency against which we should provide, and we have the means of doing so through the vast number of American boys who are roaming the streets at will and who would consider government employment a boon. But a few years ago one of our sloops of war with a cosmopolitan crew was anchored in the harbor of Ville Franche. The crew represented nineteen different nationalities, and so indifferent and inefficient was the organization that some wag painted on a board and hung in the gangway: "Ici on parle anglais!" like the signs displayed in Paris shops.

When the Trenton, our best ship, lately went into commission, as fine a body of Germans, Huns, Norsemen, Gauls, Chinese, and other outside barbarians as one could wish to see, softened down by time and civilization, were on board. Out of the whole crew not more than eighty could speak the English language. Is this not a fine commentary upon the American Navy? Is not this a defect to be corrected? What is required is a larger number of native-born apprentice boys and an enlargement of the conveniences for their introduction into the service. The English have five line-of-battle ships with one brig tender to each. There is also a hulk attached to every ship-of-the-line for newly entered boys, and for various other matters. We have but one regular receiving ship at Coaster's Harbor Island, and if our Navy is to be increased we should have larger accommodations for apprentice boys. We have three sloops of war in which the apprentices are trained previous to being transferred to a regular ship. This is the best feature in our training system, for the boys receive thorough instruction in seamanship, there being no steam to interfere with the exercising.

With a steam capstan and steam winch a very few men can get a vessel under way. An officer on deck, a man at the wheel, and one at