Black Men and Blue Water

Historical Context and the Origins of the Stewards, Cooks and Messboys of the U.S. Navy By Chester A. Wright

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2009 Chester A. Wright
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4343-7060-0

Contents

References and Sources........................................................................................................................................ixAcknowledgements..............................................................................................................................................xiIntroduction..................................................................................................................................................xiiiPART I. BLACK SAILORS IN EARLY AMERICA: FROM THE PRE-REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD TO 1775Chapter 1: An Inherited Naval Tradition.......................................................................................................................3Chapter 2. Negro Participation and Performance in the Revolutionary War.......................................................................................37Chapter 3. The Aftermath of the Revolution and the War of 1812................................................................................................48PART II. FROM THE WAR OF 1812 TO THE CIVIL WAR AND POST RECONSTRUCTIONChapter 4. The Negroes' Rewards for Fighting in the War of 1812...............................................................................................99Chapter 5. The Civil War and the Post-War Reconstruction Period: The First Attempt at Establishment of the Stewards Branch Failed.............................105PART III. THE POST-RECONSTRUCTION ERA NAVYChapter 6. The End of Reconstruction (1877)...................................................................................................................137Chapter 7. The Abolitionist Demise, Betrayal by the Republican Party and White Supremacy: The Emergence of Naval Policy Based Upon Racism.....................142Chapter 8. Methods of Forced Submission and Exploitation: Affect Upon Navy Personnel Policy...................................................................152Chapter 9. The Next Push Toward A Naval Policy Based Upon Race................................................................................................158Chapter 10. The Formation of the Messmen/Stewards Branch (1893)...............................................................................................166PART IV. NEGROES IN THE U.S. NAVY DURING THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR (1898)Chapter 11. The Intensification and the Continued Rise of Racism: It's Affect Upon Naval Personnel Policy.....................................................177Chapter 12. The Proud History of the Steward's Branch.........................................................................................................184Chapter 13. World War I and the Final Push for a "Lily White" Navy............................................................................................192PART V. NEGROES IN THE U.S. NAVY DURING WORLD WAR IIChapter 14. U.S. Mobilization for WWII: The Status of Negroes.................................................................................................209Chapter 15. Messboys at the Naval Academy: The Lost Battalion and Bancroft Hall...............................................................................221Chapter 16. The Messboy's Required Adaptation for Naval Service...............................................................................................240Chapter 17. Negro Performance in WWII: Stolen Honor...........................................................................................................248Chapter 18. Goals of Naval Personnel Policy: The Selection of Messboys 1932-1974..............................................................................259Chapter 19. The Effects of Executive Order #8802 Upon the Messmen's Branch....................................................................................282Chapter 20. The Battle Record of the Navy's Stewards in WWII..................................................................................................306Chapter 21. Changes in U.S. Naval Policy Between WWII and the "Korean Conflict"...............................................................................327Chapter 22. Racism Retards Navy's Vietnam Effort..............................................................................................................352Chapter 23. Failure of Navy Advancement in Human Resources in the Post-Vietnam Era............................................................................361Epilogue......................................................................................................................................................375Endnotes......................................................................................................................................................381

Chapter One

AN INHERITED NAVAL TRADITION

1.) WHY THE HARSHNESS AND MALTREATMENT OF PERSONNEL IN THE BRITISH NAVY WAS MITIGATE IN THE COLONIAL NAVY

To fully understand the evolution of the role of Black Sailors in America, we must first examine the historical context in which they developed. America's Colonist inherited their naval traditions from stern and, brutal taskmasters, the officers of the British Navy. As mentioned previously, the sea was a cruel, harsh, and brutal profession for a man to follow. But Americans had no choice in developing a Navy and Merchant Marine. This became evident before the American Colonies secured their freedom from England. Colonial development depended upon the sea and some of the harshness inherited from the English was mitigated here; a fact often overlooked in most naval histories. As subjects of England, the British Colonies possessed no standing military units or military academies of their own.

The U.S. Navy derived from the colonial Merchant Marine in early America. Many trading, whaling, shipbuilding ventures, as in other countries, were corporate efforts. America was not yet a highly urbanized country with a large and impersonal population. So, merchantmen crews came from the same area and many knew each other. Captains knew many of their crewmembers families. Also, there were no generally available financial institutions such as we have today. Local families often bought investments in sea ventures. The U.S. Merchant Marine from whom the U.S. Navy emerged was not composed of the dregs (wretched debtors and scrapings of British jails or unfortunate men caught by "press gangs") of society as found on English ships. On our privateers and naval vessels during the Revolution and War of 1812, most men were volunteers. Brutality appeared later on the Merchant and naval vessels.

To ride a Privateer or Merchant ship where fellow community members and, even the Captain, were known to common seamen militated against the type of impersonal brutality found on British ships. So even when colonists, participating as privateers (actual reservist), under the British in England's War with Spain and France, American seamen fared better than those seamen of their masters, the British. This changed only after urbanization and competition on the sea came about. In the war against Spain, France, and Holland, American Seamen served with a different motivation. Where the "press-gang" was the principal recruiting instrument and, the Cat-O-Nine tails, the focal point of discipline for British seamen, all American privateers, were manned by volunteers. This in itself made the birth of American seamen, again, less brutal, harsh and traumatic than that of their British cousins.

Another significant difference was the service time commitment. American Sailors signed on for a voyage or a specific length of time. Sailors pressed into the British navy were required to serve for an indefinite period at the pleasure of the King. This could encompass most of a victim's useful life.

It should be pointed out here also that the Colonies, which later formed the United States, due to sheer need, had become a great maritime economic factor before the Revolution. We will return to this later. But slavery, the Sea and the Negro played paramount roles in the shaping of the western world long before the English Colonist of North America thought about Revolution. A mess boy drove this home to me one evening in 1943. We were stationed at Tulagi Island in the British Solomons. An Australian Colonial Officer told me that this was the former home of the Governor General of the British Solomons. We worked at the junior officers' mess on the top of a hill. From this high perch during the day, we could see Guadalcanal approximately 20 miles away and near its northern end, Savo Island. I had been telling this youngster, Harvey Wilkes, from Elizabeth City, North Carolina, about black sailors going ashore with Commodore Perry in Japan in 1854; I said that one day, we would do so with Admirals William Halsey or perhaps Marc A. Mitscher of Task Force 58. Wilkes, who was quite bright, asked suddenly, "Have us Black folk always been dragged all over the world to fight in White men's wars that we don't know nothing about? I thought we were slaves when Perry went to Japan." I replied, "We were but the sea has been, traditionally, both the instrument of Negro enslavement and a conduit of the Negro escape to freedom". Hired Seamen were asked few questions. This was the only place in America where ones' ability, genetic endowments, fighting capacity and toughness outweighed his color, with the exception of the Officers' Corp level. Inclusion as equals had to wait a century and a half-until 1944, (from 1798 to 1944). Negroes were thought to be unsuitable as Officer material.

This man's comment about Black men being dragged over the World's oceans to fight in White men's wars that they knew nothing about, within a great degree of probability, is true. But, "being dragged" about to fight wars has not been the exclusive realm of Negroes. Many American Whites have found themselves, historically, and to this day, in the same plight, starting with the Treaty of Utrecht or before the Revolution in this country. The English colonies never had a population large enough to provide significant manpower to augment British troops in Europe and her foreign Colonies at the same time. However, they did provide militia when the fighting was in America. Consequently, it was the colonial merchant sailor who was pressed into action on behalf of the crown, often as privateers.

2) COLONIALISM AND THE TECHNICAL INVENTIONS OF NON-WHITE EUROPEAN PEOPLE: THE TERRIBLE PRICE PAID BY NON-WHITES FOR FAILURE TO EXPLOIT THEIR DISCOVERIES

American history began with Colonial White men being dragged over the ocean to fight European and English wars, which they little understood. Spain, England, Holland, Portugal or France from the start, governed American Colonies. The Swedes played a minor roll here. It is a truism that all Kings possessed bottomless coffers, always in need of more gold and loot. These rulers helped themselves to their own people's money, property, persons or that of any neighbors' weak enough to allow them to do so. The last argument of Kings was swords, spears and pikes. Near and during the Colonial period the last arguments became guns. Europeans mastered this latter technology, built around gunpowder. The Chinese invented gunpowder but failed to turn it into a weapon because they had no iron. Both the Chinese and the Mongols tried to use their most available materials to harness and direct gunpowder explosions, but bamboo barrels with crude bronze or unhardened iron rings could not contain nor consequently control or direct the awesome power of gunpowder. Attempts to do so killed more of their own soldiers than those of the enemy did. So the Chinese restricted the use of its terrible power, which could have preserved their sovereignty, to fireworks at various celebrations. This awed, amused, and made their subjects happy but failed to preserve their freedom in confrontations with rapacious, power and profit hungry Europeans and later American expansionist. The end result of this mismatch in technology brought colonialism and slavery to the Western World.

Black Africans below the Sahara Desert, whom some Archeologists believe, were the first people to smelt iron, possessed the material needed to harness a direct Gunpowder but "had no powder". So Asia, Africa and the Western World fell to better armed European Armies and Navies, who had mastered the art of controlled and directed gunpowder explosions, by the use of hardened iron bore gun barrels. This deficiency aided and abetted slavery, and colonialism, which became a key factor in the economic world after the "Treaty of Utrecht signed April 11, 1713."

Due to the demand for Seamen, American Colonists "were dragged" all over the Oceans to fight European wars. So as this writer explained to this bright mess attendant, Americans have a history of fighting in wars not of their making. Not just Black men but White men too. For example, Samuel W. Bryant says, "In 1689, the mortal enmity of Protestant England and Catholic France found expression in open Warfare, and in the American Colonies this contest of giants for trade and power brought about King Williams War."

This was 70 years after the official accepted date of 1619 that Black Commercial Slavery began in North America. Bryant goes on to point out the affect of these two European Monarchs' squabble upon hapless American Colonist. French Canada instigated and, officered a series of raids by their Indian Allies on the Frontier hamlets of New England, while Canadian privateers busily raided the fishing fleets on the New Foundland banks. French Ships ranged American waters from Maine to the West Indies, seizing trading vessels and killing or imprisoning their crews in a frenzy of fanaticism."

The British retaliated with a raid on Port Royal, Nova Scotia. This was known in the Colonies as King Williams' War. According to Bryant, "... in March 1702, Anne became ruler of England. In May, England and Holland declared War on France and Spain and the War of the Spanish Secession began. The Colonist know the War as "Queen Anne's War. Bryant says that this War became a War of privateers, and in the years between 1702 and 1707 England lost 846 Merchant ships but France lost a total of 1,346 ships and decimated their Merchant fleet."

The British failed to take Quebec due, probably, to the incompetence of a haughty British Vice Admiral by the name of Sir Horeden Walker. This poltroon allowed light transports and two supply ships to run onto the rocks and lost 900 men. He sailed back to England after an aborted Quebec expedition, where his Flagship, the 70 gun HMS Edgar, blew up and killed another 400 men. He was so fortunate as to have all of his records burned in the blast. This prevented his just court-martial. But one must be careful about what one teaches daring subordinates. American Colonist were compelled to learn how to use guns not just to fight the English King's wars but to protect themselves against the rapacious demands made by that King and his greedy, arrogant cohorts. The King raised revenue by raising taxes on colonial commerce at will. This was done without any semblance of representation.

Reuben Elmore Stivers, in describing the emergent American character as "Rugged Individualism", says that "On the frontier in the New World there was at all times something or someone for the individual to contend with. This included cold, hunger, flood, fire, Indians, Spaniards, Frenchmen, Englishmen, and predatory American renegades."

Stivers said, "As a matter of course, a man voluntarily defended what was his own or voluntarily joined others to defend that which had common value. There usually was little alternative, for neither his society or his government was able consistently to defend anything for him. In America, most men had escaped European feudalism, so the individual always had to remind himself to mind his own interest. If that meant marching off, gun in hand, to help capture Louisberg in 1745, he did so, and the King's red-clad recruiters had little need to drag him from under his bed." Stivers brilliantly pinpoints the basic forces that shaped the character of the oppressed (American Colonialists) and the oppressor (British Royalty and Common people) which were bound to clash in what we know as the American Revolution. This was a clash of ideas that was to change the World.

3) THE CLASH OF THE BRITISH AND THE DEVELOPING AMERICAN COLONIAL CHARACTER: THE FORCES THAT SHAPED THEM

Before trying to describe the Black experience as colonial life marched towards that fateful clash at Bunker Hill or, actually Breed's Hill, lets look at what shaped the British oppressor. According to Stivers, "This situation stood in stark contrast to the brutal conscription or impressment practiced in European Countries, and especially in Great Britain. There the Soldiers and Seamen were hired or commandeered as insensible machines of war, and duty frequently had to be learned by dancing to the melancholy tune of a Cat-O-Nine tails (a leather whip with 9 thongs with lead tips). As much blood might be spilt on the altar of discipline as in the engagement for which discipline was required. Here the term Volunteer, as perceived by Europeans and American Colonist stand in stark contrast to our use of the term today. Stivers says of European Volunteers if, indeed, they may be defined as such, "Theoretically, those who served in enlisted status in the British Army or Navy were Volunteers, but their enlistment was always for `the duration', and the duration lasted most of a man's useful life. For every truly patriotic volunteer, 99 others might be oafs or adventurers garnered from jails, farms, gin mills, and poor houses or in exchange for the king's Schilling. As dismal servitude in the cheerless barracks of the Army or within the wooden hull of a man-of-war might be for the latter group."

Stivers then points out that a new breed of man roamed free in the hills and valleys of the coastal colonies and its frontier ... "He knew little of hindrance or restraint. He became accustomed to breathing an atmosphere of political liberty. When necessary, he willingly struggled with all comers, including if need be, the King's own men. By the end of the French and Indian War, great numbers of Americans had become proud men, a fact that caused some dichotomy, in that most were as proud of being Americans as they were of being Englishmen." Having fought for England and himself in King Phillips's War, King William's War, King George's and Queen Anne's Wars, why not fight for his own commerce, person and liberty? This had to logically emerge as the central question in colonial existence.

While these events were shaping the character of early American White men, what was happening to the character of Black men? Consider the fact that King William's War occurred 70 years after 1619, the accepted commencement of commercial slavery in North America. And it was years afterward that, Americans participated in the raid of Louisberg, Canada in 1745. We must ask, "Did Blacks participate in these events as a people or were they like benign bacteria who did not make cheese or wine nor made anyone sick?" This was and is highly improbable and to understand this, today's thoughtful students of history must accept a premise and shed a myth. The premise is "men do not live contiguous to other men and fail to absorb certain parts of their cultural attributes. Since Black men, like White men possess rationality, memory storage, intellect, and intelligence in varying degrees, within the realm of probability, they participated in and learned that component of colonial culture that produced that era of U.S. History." In short, from the day of their arrival in North America their acculturation began. In addition to this, man created phenomena for all slaves, called a "breaking in", was introduced. Some writers refer to this method as the "seasoning" of slaves. Kenneth M. Stamp, who wrote the "Peculiar Institution", said of this "breaking in" process, "America gave these involuntary immigrants a vivid impression of the White man and his culture which they did not soon forget."

4) CONDITIONS IN THE COLONIES THAT MADE AFRICANS IDEAL PROPERTY AS SLAVES

For the Negro, this seasoning or breaking in was a harsh, brutal "accelerated earning" period, which had two goals. The first was to rapidly teach the slave enough about American culture to exploit his/ her labor; and, the second was to make this, as Stamp has labeled the slave, "troublesome property", stand in such fear that it could be controlled, directed and kept in abject subjugation, to the Master. To accomplish either of these goals required a degree of acculturation. Only the African's intelligence determined how rapidly he expanded this learning to include greater knowledge.

He often arrived with knowledge of agriculture, metalworking, cloth weaving, and other craftsmen skills. Hence, to think that Blacks stood around and ignorantly sucked their thumbs while White men made history as some racist-bigots would have us believe is both ignorant and improbable, as well as stupid.

First, the most needed resources in North America were laborers and fighting men. It was rapidly learned by White men that Black men were capable of both functions. From the first introduction into American society Blacks, though restricted to a circumscribed sphere, did play roles beyond that of picking cotton or singing "Swanee River" as Hollywood and many historians would have us believe. The necessities and needs of Southern society made Southern slave masters unable to totally limit the Negro participation, at all times. Crisis in form of Indian raids, wars, floods, drought and fever epidemics simply made such limitations impractical. House servants heard White men debate John Locke and Rousseau's ideas of governance long before 1776.

(Continues...)

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