History and the Navy

Fore the officers, it's not much better. A year-long course at the Academy, none, I think, at ROTC schools, except for sections in the Naval Science curriculum. History as example for warfighting, leadership, etc. doesn't come until later in the career: CPO for enlisted (and then only at initiation time), and staff or war college for the officers. So why is there so little pride in our heritage? Because we don't know where we came from. And if we don't know where we came from, how can we know where we're going? George Santayana's statement about being doomed to repeat history approaches the level of cliché anymore; but clichés become so because they're generally true. Now, we're not going to fall apart as a fighting force because someone doesn't know who said, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead." But if more attention was paid to finding role models from history, telling our new sailors what their predecessors in the service did right instead of wrong, and holding up the great names of the past as men (and occasionally women) to emulate instead of scoff at and deride as if they had no relevance to our lives as modern sailors, then I think we'd be much better off as a service. And by the way, it was Admiral David Glasgow Farragut who courageously disregarded the mines ("torpedoes" as they were called during the Civil War) and won the Battle of Mobile Bay.

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