Types of Naval Officers | Page 2

generous recognition at the time from their opponents, even in
the midst of the bitterness proverbially attendant upon family quarrels;
but it is only just to allow that their endurance found its counterpart in
the resolute and persistent valor of the assailants. In these two battles,
with which the War of Independence may be said fairly to have begun,
by land and by water, in the far North and in the far South, the men of
the same stock, whose ancestors there met face to face as foes, have
now in peace a common heritage of glory. If little of bitterness remains
in the recollections which those who are now fellow-citizens retain of
the struggle between the North and the South, within the American
Republic, we of two different nations, who yet share a common tongue
and a common tradition of liberty and law, may well forget the wrongs
of the earlier strife, and look only to the common steadfast courage
with which each side then bore its share in a civil conflict.
The professional lives of these men, therefore, touch history in many
points; not merely history generally, but American history specifically.
Nor is this contact professional only, devoid of personal tinge. Hawke
was closely connected by blood with the Maryland family of Bladen;
that having been his mother's maiden name, and Governor Bladen of
the then colony being his first cousin. Very much of his early life was
spent upon the American Station, largely in Boston. But those were the
days of Walpole's peace policy; and when the maritime war, which the
national outcry at last compelled, attained large dimensions, Hawke's
already demonstrated eminence as a naval leader naturally led to his
employment in European waters, where the more immediate dangers, if
not the greatest interests, of Great Britain were then felt to be. The
universal character, as well as the decisive issues of the opening
struggle were as yet but dimly foreseen. Rodney also had family ties
with America, though somewhat more remote. Cæsar Rodney, a signer

of the Declaration of Independence from Delaware, was of the same
stock; their great-grandfathers were brothers. It was from the marriage
of his ancestor with the daughter of a Sir Thomas Cæsar that the
American Rodney derived his otherwise singular name.
Howe, as far as known, had no relations on this side of the water; but
his elder brother, whom he succeeded in the title, was of all British
officers the one who most won from the colonial troops with whom he
was associated a personal affection, the memory of which has been
transmitted to us; while the admiral's own kindly attitude towards the
colonists, and his intimacy with Franklin, no less than his professional
ability, led to his being selected for the North American command at
the time when the home country had not yet lost all hope of a peaceable
solution of difficulties. To this the Howe tradition was doubtless
expected to contribute. Jervis, a man considerably younger than the
other three, by the accidents of his career came little into touch with
either the colonies or the colonists, whether before or during the
Revolutionary epoch; yet even he, by his intimate friendship with
Wolfe, and intercourse with his last days, is brought into close relation
with an event and a name indelibly associated with one of the great
landmarks--crises--in the history of the American Continent. Although
the issue of the strife depended, doubtless, upon deeper and more
far-reaching considerations, it is not too much to say that in the heights
of Quebec, and in the name of Wolfe, is signalized the downfall of the
French power in America. There was prefigured the ultimate
predominance of the traditions of the English-speaking races
throughout this continent, which in our own momentous period stands
mediator between the two ancient and contrasted civilizations of
Europe and Asia, that so long moved apart, but are now brought into
close, if not threatening, contact.
Interesting, however, as are the historical and social environments in
which their personalities played their part, it is as individual men, and
as conspicuous exemplars--types--of the varied characteristics which go
to the completeness of an adequate naval organization, that they are
here brought forward. Like other professions,--and especially like its
sister service, the Army,--the Navy tends to, and for efficiency requires,

specialization. Specialization, in turn, results most satisfactorily from
the free play of natural aptitudes; for aptitudes, when strongly
developed, find expression in inclination, and readily seek their proper
function in the body organic to which they belong. Each of these
distinguished officers, from this point of view, does not stand for
himself alone, but is an eminent exponent of a class; while the class
itself forms a member of a body which has many organs, no one of
which is