Marc Liebman's Blog, page 37

Liquid Guest Speakers

Most everyone thinks U.S. Navy ships are dry.  In 1914, the Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels took away the booze.  But not all of it.

There are three situations in which the Navy actually serves booze.  One, on long at sea periods, some ships have a ‘steel beach picnic’ and issue two cans of beer to each member of the crew.

Back in the 70s and 80s, if you were an aviator and landing on board the carrier at night when the weather is particularly nasty, then the flight surgeon would come around to the ready rooms and dispense one shot bottles of brandy.  This was assuming of course, one wasn’t going aviating again that night.

On religious and diplomatic occasion, wine, beer and spirits are served.  I’ve attended several seders (the service and dinner on first two nights of Passover) when wine was served because it is part of the liturgy.  And, I’ve been on ships where the flag officer has held a reception and the selections from the bar were impressive.

Then there are the ‘unofficial’ times when adult beverages appear on board a U.S. Navy ship.  Before the turn of the century, I made several long cruises on a variety of aircraft carriers and destroyer/cruisers and every so often ‘guest speakers’ – Johnny Walker, Jim Beam, Jack Daniels and they were often guarded by the Beefeaters – appeared in my stateroom.

The drill was this.  In the evening, several of us would gather in someone’s state room and have an adult beverage or two.  As long as no one got drunk, showed up on watch blitzed, or attempted to fly shortly after having a drink, not a word was said.  We kept the booze in our rooms and kept quiet about it.

Did I drink a lot?  No.  Normally guest speakers appeared on stand-down days when the carrier wasn’t going to fly the next day.  As a helo driver, it didn’t apply to us because we flew pretty much every day so those on the flight schedule or alert, didn’t drink.  Peer pressure made it drink self-policing.

Each officer had a small safe in the corner of his desk.  The combination lock was there so he could store classified material and personal items.  It also was just the right height for a fifth of your favorite scotch, bourbon or wine.

For ice, I’d go down to the officer’s mess and fill up an ice bucket and bring it back to my stateroom.  Mixers, for those who wanted ginger ale, coke, club soda, etc. were readily available.

Again, it was done quietly and discreetly but it was a welcome relief from the tension of combat operations or even the humdrum and boredom of a long at sea period.

Did ship commanding officers know about it?  I believe they did.  More than likely, they had their own stash in their stateroom.  Given the era when drinks were cheap at the officer’s, chief’s and enlisted clubs, they simply turned a blind eye.  It was an early version of “don’t ask or tell.”

Beer, Booze, Wine and Warships

In the late 18th Century, water purification as we know it today, didn’t exist.  People went to wells, pumped the water into a container and took it home.  For a warship or a merchantman, the water was put in wooden casks, hoisted aboard and stored in the hold.

What the crew has is water full off living organisms sealed in a wooden cask.  Within days, algae grew and the water looks, tastes ad smells bad besides being unhealthy.  To use the term of the day, it had putrefied.

So, what did the crew drink?  The enlisted men drank beer, porter and grog – rum with lime juice and diluted with water.  The officers drank beer, wine and on some ships, whiskey.

Porter is an alcoholic beverage that is someplace between a stout and a beer.  First brewed in England, porter is darker, is brewed with more hops than beer and has a ‘maltier’ taste.

The Royal Navy’s Victualling Board – the organization that supplied ships – specified a ration of one gallon of beer per officer and sailor per day.  This was increased to two if the ship was headed to the tropics.

Back in the 18th Century, beer was brewed at home well as in breweries.  Citizens on both sides of the Atlantic found it to be healthier than what one collected at the town pump.  The alcoholic content ranged from one to three percent.

Drinking beer on board ship had another benefit.  It eliminated scurvy on long voyages.  In the 1740s, Sir John Pringle, the doctor considered to be the father of modern military medicine, noted that scurvy doesn’t appear until after the beer runs out.  This revelation came after the Dutch East India Company discovered in the 1600s that fresh citrus fruits kept the dreaded, debilitating disease at bay on long voyages.

Scurvy is caused by not consuming enough Vitamin C.  As the disease progresses, limbs swell, joints ache, teeth fall out, ulcers form on the skin and one’s skin cracks and you start bleeding.

In the enlisted messes, beer was poured from a cask into the sailor’s tankard at mealtimes.  It was the captain’s option if he wanted to authorize and additional ration in hot, humid weather.

The enlisted men were also authorized a tot of rum in the form of grog twice a day, courtesy of the King.  Grog was introduced in the 1740s as means to prevent scurvy.

In the wardroom, officers drank wine, usually red, paid for by separate funds collected from the officers.  Royal Navy ships offered port, paid for by the king.  Some captains allowed ‘spirits’ to be served.  Spirits were whiskeys brewed in Ireland and Scotland and later, the Thirteen Colonies.

The Continental Navy and then the American Navy adopted the rum ration until it was eliminated in 1852.  The Royal Navy continued serving rum until July 31st, 1970, a.k.a. Black Tod Day, when, for the last time on Her Majesty’s ships, the command “up spirits” was heard.

On July 1st, 1914, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels issued Executive Order 99 which prohibited the consumption of alcohol on U.S. Navy ships.  The order still stands although during long at-sea periods, crews are sometimes allowed two cans of beer, preferably served cold.

The Prime Meridian Didn’t Always Run Through Great Britain

Way back in the Third Century B.C.E., the Greek mathematician and geographer Eratosthenes proposed lines running north to south and east to west as a way of precisely locating where one is on the earth.

A hundred years or so later, Hipparchus, another Greek mathematician and astronomer took Eratosthenes work a step further. He was the first to call Eratothenes’ grid, latitude and longitude and created trigonometry as a way to measure the orbits of the sun and the moon. His long list of other mathematical “inventions” and his lunar and solar theories led to his being inducted to the International Space Hall of Fame in 2004.

Latitude are imaginary circles that run horizontally around the world. Zero latitude is the equator. The father north or south from the Equator, the higher one’s latitude.  The letter N or S is used to designate north or south latitudes, i.e. 18 degrees, 15 minutes, 32 seconds North (18o, 15’, 32”N).

The imaginary lines that run north and south are known as longitude. For example, go east toward France from Great Britain and the digits are followed by the letter E for East. Go west into the Atlantic and it is referred to as West longitude. East or West longitude increases to 180 degrees that is the International Date Line.

Today, the Prime Meridian, or zero degrees longitude runs through the Royal Observatory in Greenwich in the U.K. However, it wasn’t always the Prime Meridian.

As the dominant sea power and sea faring nation, the Brits created the Royal Observatory in 1851 and declared the Prime Meridian ran through the observatory’s grounds. Up until this point, there was no standard and many countries claimed that zero longitude ran through their country.

By the late 1880s, two thirds of the worlds ship captains and owners used the British base prime meridian as the standard. In 1884, U.S. President Chester A. Arthur convened the International Meridian Conference that designated the Prime Meridian or Zero Longitude to be the one that ran through the Royal Observatory. It took until 1911 before the French gave up their claim that the Prime Meridian ran through Paris.

Another 19th Century invention, the railroad led to another innovation, Greenwich Mean Time. Trains ran on regular schedules that were measured in hours and minutes, not days, weeks or months. Countries were struggling with timetables, i.e. noon in London wasn’t always the same as noon in Manchester. In the U.S. there were over 100 standards that varied b as much as three hours.

The size of North America led a Canadian by the name of Sir Stanford Fleming to propose time zones. His worldwide system was adopted by most U.S. railroads in 1883 and another output of the International Meridian Conference was the adoption of 24 time zones around the world.

By 1895, most of the U.S. states had adopted the time zone concept. However, it took the Standard Time Zone Act of 1918 to require all states to adopt the time zones we know to day. By 1929, all the countries in the world adopted Fleming’s system.

Time – The Key to Determining Longitude

For centuries, mariners were able to determine their latitude by measuring the height of a celestial body such as a star, the sun or moon above the horizon. Knowing the time of year or the phase of the moon how to do the math, latitude could be calculated.

Recognizing that existing clocks weren’t accurate enough to help a ship’s captain calculate longitude, the British Parliament acted by providing a specification for accuracy and a large prize. The first Act of Longitude passed in 1714 offered a £10,000 prize (worth ~$2.15M today) for anyone who could develop a clock that help a mariner determine longitude within a degree. Later Acts of Longitude increased the prize amount and the requirement for clock accuracy as well as calling for other inventions.

A British carpenter by the name of John Harrison took on the challenge. His first effort, submitted in 1730 for the prize is known as H1. It has counter-oscillating weighted beams attached to springs. While it worked well enough, Harrison realized that the motion of the ship would affect the working of H1 and was therefore, not suitable.

In 1759, Harrison submitted a design and a working model that used caged roller bearings, bi-metallic strips to turn temperature changes into movement. It was called “The Third Sea Clock” (H3) and its mechanisms are still used by clock and watchmakers today.

Harrison’s H3 had another problem – size – that made it impractical for use on a ship. However, in his H4 design, submitted in 1761 for the Longitude Prize of £20,000 (worth ~$4.45M in 2019) contained innovations that solved the problem of size and improved accuracy. H4 uses fast moving balance wheels made of steel that moved back and forth at a rate controlled by a spiral spring. Each swing of the wheel was turned into movement of the hands on the clock. Bimetallic strips were used to compensate for the effect of heat on the springs. Watchmakers used Harrison’s design until the electronic watch was invented.

H4 was not much bigger than a large pocket watch and could be wound without disrupting its timekeeping ability. The watch as tested on several voyages across the Atlantic and met or exceeded the requirements set by Parliament. Unfortunately, Parliament found excuses not to pay Harrison the full prize. By the time he died in 1776, Harrison had collected a total of £23,065 for his work that made him a rich man.

Unfortunately, the early chronometers like the H4 and its successors were expensive to produce. Another Brit, John Arnold simplified Harrison’s design to maintain its accuracy but reduce its manufacturing costs. It was not until the 1830s did the cost come down so that the Royal and the U.S. Navy could equip each ship with a chronometer.

With an accurate timepiece, mariners could accurately estimate the time between moment they left a known point on earth with the angle to a star, the sun or moon and fix their longitude. Along with a sextant, a timepiece and a chart using a Mercator projection, ship captains could now accurately plot their position on any ocean

Sir Isaac Newton and the Sextant

Up until the voyages of discovery began in the late 15th Century, ship captains rarely sailed out of sight of land. Why? Even though they knew what direction they were heading, mariners were not able to accurately “fix” their position.

Shipboard inertial navigation systems (INS) weren’t invented until the 1950s and GPS came much later. Even with the early INS on board, ship captains and navigators combined dead reckoning which calculates ones position based on course, speed and time with sightings through a sextant to accurately fix the ship’s position.

Columbus, for example, used a magnetic company and headed west. He proved that the earth was not flat. Columbus used a device called a quadrant to measure the angle between the horizon and the North Star. It gave him a rough estimation of his latitude, but not his longitude.

In 1594, John Davis, the English explorer who discovered the Falkland Islands, refined the quadrant to improve its accuracy, particularly when using the sun. Around 1731, the British mathematician Thomas Godfrey and the Pennsylvanian John Davis independently came up with what is known as the reflecting quadrant or octant around 1731. The two men added a small, low power telescope, filters to reduce the brightness of the sun and mirrors or prisms arranged so the user can see two images – point on the horizon and the celestial object.

The octant’s index arm calibrated in degrees is moved to align the two images. The Davis/Godfrey octant had two advantages over the Davis quadrant. One – accuracy and two, its “lightweight” design made it easy to align the two images on the pitching and rolling deck of a sailing ship.

It turns out that Davis and Godfrey weren’t the first to come up with the concept of the octant. While studying optics, Isaac Newton studied the Davis quadrant and in 1599 – 50 years before Davis and Godfrey – theorized how the light could be reflected more accurately through what we know as the “reflecting quadrant.” His ideas and drawings were given to the astronomer Edmund Halley (as in Halley’s Comet) and not published until well after Halley’s death in 1742. By then, the Godfrey/ Davis’s octant was already being used to measure latitude.

The octant is limited to measuring angles of up to 90 degrees and is best used when sighting objects well above the horizon. In 1759, John Bird modified the octant so it could measure angles of up to 120 degrees that enables sailors to sight the moon, sun or stars at any time during the day.

Now navigators could measure the moon in all its phases. By the end of the 18th Century, the relationship of the sun to the moon was relatively well documented and at sea, a way to tell the time of day. Bird’s sextant gave mariners a rough, not precise way to estimate their longitude. Now, sailors could, with reasonable certainty, plot their position on a Mercator chart. Accurate estimation of longitude would come later when inventors created the first accurate chronographs.

18th Century Navigation – Evolution of the Nautical Chart

When captains went to sea in the 18th Century, computers, accurate chronographs, satellite imagery of weather, inertial navigation systems and GPS didn’t exist. Instead, the captain had a timepiece, compass, a Davis quadrant or a sextant, a chart and his knowledge of winds, weather and currents.

Navigation was both an art and a skill. To ensure that he was following his desired route from port A to port B, the captain needed to plot his position every day. To do that, one needed an accurate chart.

Portuguese explorers took detailed notes as they sailed down the coast of Africa in the 1500s. The data was kept as a state secret and unfortunately, most of their charts were destroyed in a tsunami caused fire that hit Lisbon in 1755.

In 1569, Geradus Mercator created what we now know as the Mercator Projection chart. First, Mercator figured out how to “flatten” the earth so one could draw a strait line (in navigation terms a rhumb line) on the chart. Second, he built on the work two Greek mathematicians – Erastothenes and Hipparchus – to draw lines of latitude and longitude on his new type of chart. Erastothenes invented what we know as latitude and longitude in the Third Century BC. Hipparchus followed in the Second Century BC by plotting latitude and longitude on a map of the known world.

The next step was to make Mercator’s charts widely available. Another Dutchman Lucas Waghenaer compiled and printed the first books of charts in 1584. His Spieghel der Zeevaerdt became the defacto standard and was translated into English in 1588 and became known as “waggoners” or “sea atlases.”

Accuracy was a problem because the data used to hand draw the charts came primarily from ship captains, not trained cartographers. How well they actually reflected the coastline was often lost in drawing the chart.

The next major step in moving cartography from an art to a science occurred when the French established the first national mapping agency – the Dépôt des Cartes et Plans de la Marine in 1720. It set standards for chart accuracy and nomenclature.

By the mid-18th Century, governments printed charts on linen backed paper so that they could be rolled and unrolled. Private publishers used a less expensive blue backing paper similar to what is used in Manila folders today to allow them to be rolled for storage. These charts were known as “bluebacks.”

American merchant seaman who went into French ports could purchase these charts and during the American Revolution, the Continental Navy had access to accurate (for the time) French charts of North America, the Caribbean and Europe.

The Brits waited until 1795 to create its Hydrographic Office and the U.S. established the Coastal Survey office in 1807. These government agencies had a significant advantage over  over private mapmakers because they were given money and ships to send on surveying missions. These voyages by trained surveyors and cartographers led to the accurate charts we have today.

Ben Franklin and the Gulph Stream

In 1513, Ponce de Leon was the first to note a current that was faster than his ships, but did neither explored it nor documented its location. What de Leon discovered is the Gulf Stream.

The Gulf Stream is a warm current flowing from the Gulf of Mexico, around Florida and up along the Atlantic Coast of North America. Off Newfoundland, Canada’s most eastern province, it bends east. North of the Azores, it splits into the North American Drift and the Canary Current. The North American Drift flows north toward Ireland while the Canary Current goes south toward the northwest coast of Africa.

On average the current moves at 5 knots. What de Leon discovered was, by the 17th and 18th Centuries, well known by American merchant ship captains. Time is money in the shipping business and the extra five knots meant one could deliver cargos to Europe faster. By avoiding the Gulf Stream, ships could sail from Europe to the Colonies in less time.

According to searoutes.com, it is 3,342 nautical miles from New York to London. Assume a sailing ship could sail at 10 knots in a straight line without having to tack back and forth across the wind line. By taking advantage of the Gulf Stream’s current, the crossing could be made in 334.2 hours or 14.25 days. At 15 knots, the trip is only 9.3 days long.

In 1768, while working in London for the Royal Mail as its Deputy Postmaster for the American Colonies, Ben Franklin noticed that American owned eastbound ships carrying mail crossed faster than those with British owners. Merchant ship captain Tim Folger told his cousin – Ben Franklin about the current. Folger took the information he collected from American fishermen, cargo and whaling ship captains and made Franklin a sketch.

When Franklin brought what he called the “Gulph Stream” to the attention of his employer, he was told, “Royal Mail captains were too wise to be counseled by American fishermen.” Not only did the Royal Mail ignore its effect, so did the Royal Navy.

Once the American Revolution began, Franklin provided the data he’d gathered along with copies of Foley’s original sketch to American merchant and Continental Navy ship captains. In Paris, he shared his notes with the French Navy who used it reduce their Atlantic crossing times, often surprising the British.

After the war, Franklin printed the first chart of the Gulph Stream in 1785. While it is not accurate by today’s hydrographic standards, Franklin and Foley got most of it right including the Gulf Stream’s location, direction and circular motion.

International Communication Cycle Times in the 18th Century

The pace of life was so much slower in the 18th Century than it is today. There’s no better example than in the time it took to go from Philadelphia to Paris, France. Assuming there was a direct flight, an airliner could cover the 4,000 nautical miles between Philadelphia and Paris in ten hours going eastbound. With strong headwinds the westbound trip could take an hour longer.

In the late 18th Century, a fast ship carrying just mail could sustain 10 – 12 knots with a clean bottom and favorable winds. Assuming they could sail straight without tacking, Philadelphia to Brest is about 3,500 miles because the ship has to sail down the Delaware River and out Delaware Bay to get to the Atlantic. At 10 knots, Brest is 15 days of sailing to the east. At 12 knots, the voyage takes 12 days to reach to Brest. There, the documents would be given to a courier who would cover the 360 miles to Paris in four days on a horse.

Seasons and weather played a major role in travel times. During the winter, no sane captain ventured out into the stormy North Atlantic. Instead, he would sail south of Bermuda and work his way across the Atlantic to the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of Africa before heading north.

Because square rig ships cannot sail directly into the wind, they must tack back and forth roughly 60 degrees off the wind line. This zig-zagging, called “beating into the wind,” adds time and distance. Without beating, the southern route is close to 5,000 miles or 21 days at 10 knots. Beating into the wind increases the distance traveled to approximately 7,000 miles or 29 days at 10 knots. Sailing at 12 knots cuts about five days off the trip. Once the ship reached Brest, a courier would take the documents to Paris.

None of these times take into account the need to shorten sail in “heavy weather,” i.e. storms. When this happens, average speed drops because the ship slows.

Communication between Benjamin Franklin’s mission in France and the Continental Congress could take months for a letter to be sent from Philadelphia to Paris and an answer received. A two-month cycle time between Congress posting a letter and getting an answer from Franklin was considered “fast.”

Imagine sending a letter to a friend or loved one and not receiving a response for a month or two! Or ordering something from Amazon and it not arriving on your doorstep for two months! For many reading this blog, a world without email and texts is difficult to comprehend.

Back in the 1970s, while I was in Vietnam, letters took a week (if one was lucky) from the U.S. to the ship in the Gulf of Tonkin. We numbered letters and cassette tapes so the recipient could keep them in sequence. It was a taste of what our Forefathers went through during the American Revolution. At the time, we thought a one-week transit time was fast. We, just like our Forefathers, didn’t know any better.

John Barry – The Godfather of the Modern U.S. Navy

In 1784, right after the Treaty of Paris was signed that ended the American Revolution the Continental Congress disestablished both the Army and the Navy. The few remaining ships of the Continental Navy were sold and the Army turned over its weapons to the state militias. The decision was primarily a budgetary move justified by the fact that the country didn’t believe it had any enemies.

Independence meant that American merchant ships no longer had the protection of the Royal Navy. The French, now that we were independent, refused to provide protection.

Our ships were being harassed on the high seas. In the Mediterranean, pirates operating from the North Coast of Africa attacked our ships. Royal Navy frigates stopped American merchant vessels on the high seas and impressed, a nautical word for seized sailors who they believed were British citizens or “deserters” from the Royal Navy.

When French Revolution began in 1789, the Congress decided to stop making payments on loans the French government made during our war against England. Its rationale was that the French government changed and we owed Louis XVI’s government money, not the revolutionaries who were running France after Louis was dethroned. The French reacted by seizing our merchant ships as partial payment of the debt.

March 4th, 1789 is the first date this country operated under our current Constitution. Article 1, Section 8 specifically gives the Congress the power to levy and collect taxes and via Sections 12 and 13 of Article 1, it has the power “to “raise and support Armies” and “to provide and maintain a Navy.”

However, it was not until March 27th, 1794 that the Congress decided to create a Navy when it passed the Navy Act of 1794. The bill authorized the building of six frigates as well as to pay for the sailors and Marines to man them. The question was, who was going to lead the Navy.

John Barry, who distinguished himself as a captain of the Raleigh, Lexington and the Alliance was selected as its leader. During the American Revolution, John Barry was offered £100,000 and command of any ship if he would join the Royal Navy. The Irish born Barry hated the British with a passion and said there was not enough money in the British treasury to cause him to desert.”

He received Naval Officer Commission #1 from George Washington and set about to recruit and train the men to man the six frigates. John Rodgers, William Bainbridge, Stephen Decatur, Isaac Hull, David Porter, Oliver Hazard Perry and many more all came into the U.S. Navy under Commodore Barry and who distinguished themselves during the War against the Barbary Pirates and the War of 1812. These men, under Barry’s leadership, created the foundation of the modern U.S. Navy. Four ships have been named for Barry, the latest is the U.S.S. Barry (DDG-52), an Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyer commissioned in 2014.

The Navy phrase for accomplishing a task with excellence is “Well Done.” It is very appropriate to describe John Barry’s career.

The Unusual History of the First U.S.S. America

Some may remember the Kitty Hawk class aircraft carrier named U.S.S. America (CV-66). Others may have heard of the current U.S.S. America (LHA-6), a 45,000 ton amphibious assault ship. But how many know about the first U.S.S. America, a 74-gun ship of the line?

During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress and the Continental Navy wanted a ship that could go toe-to-toe with Royal Navy ships. In 1776, the Congress authorized John Langdon’s shipyard in Kittery, Maine (just across the Piscataqua River from Portsmouth, NH) to build three 74 gun, ships-of-the-line. The ships were to be based on a design by James Hackett.

The Congress didn’t have money to pay for the ship so construction a “hurry up and wait” affair. Hurry when we have the money to make a payment, wait when we don’t. The process forced Hackett to use “green” wood instead of properly dried and seasoned timber.

John Barry, appointed to be its first commanding officer was sent to Kittery to help “speed” America’s construction, had to fight off Congressional efforts to reduce its size and armament from 74 guns to 54. Robert Morris from the Marine Committee of the Continental Congress replaced Barry in the effort to hasten America’s construction.

Morris picked John Paul Jones as its captain who pushed the yard to complete the ship. On September 2, 1782, with the ship almost ready to be fitted out, the Continental Congress decided to give the ship to France as a gift to replace Magnifique, a ship-of-the-line that ran aground in Boston Harbor.

Disappointed, Jones continued to supervise the fitting out of the ship and in November 1782, it sailed for France with a French crew. America’s main armament of 12 and 18-pounders was lighter than typical French ships-of-the-line which carried 18 and 24-pounders. Nonetheless, the French Navy used it until 1785 when she was brought in for a refit. Because so much green wood was used in its construction, wood rot had set in and the ship was scrapped.

The story of didn’t end here. The French named a Téméraire-class ship-of-the-line America. Completed in 1788, it had the “standard” French armament of twenty-eight 36-pounders on the gun deck, thirty 18-pounders on the main deck along with sixteen 8-pounders and four 36-pound carronades on the quarterdeck and raised forecastle.

America was captured by the Royal Navy in June 1794 and renamed H.M.S. Impétueux because there was a British ship named already an H.M.S. America. H.M.S. Impétueux served until she was broken up in 1813, but not before she became the prototype for a new America class of two 74-gun ships-of-the-line. H.M.S. Northumberland served until 1850 and H.M.S. Renown was broken up in 1835.

Despite the U.S. Navy using the name only three times, America is a popular name for a ship. The first winner of the America’s Cup was a yacht named America and at least ten merchant ships or ocean liners and one spacecraft named were America. The command module for the Apollo 17 whose crew made the last of the moon landings was named America.