United States Merchant Marine Academy - Midships Yearbook (Kings Point, NY)

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CADET CORPS FILLS TRADITION OF COMPANY CADETS The result is an awareness of the uni- que nature of the school and where that uniqueness emanates from. In keeping with and furthering this thought, MID- SHIPS 1977 devotes a few pages to a brief photographic and scriptorial look at the origins of the United States Mer- chant Marine Academy. The quote from President Roosevelt came from his prepared remarks on Dedication Day of the Academy, and followed by less than seven years the leg- islative genesis of the Academy. The Merchant Marine Act of 1936 aimed to revitalize the entire maritime industry, and established the U.S. Maritime Com- mission to achieve this end, which included the training of cadets for the seagoing profession. Admiral Henry A. Wiley, USN, Commodore Telfair Knight, USMS, and Mr. S. D. Schell undertook the development of an organized training plan intended to replace the loosely struc- tured “company cadet” system existing at the time. The backbone of their training plan, and the source of the birthday of the U.S. Merchant Marine Cadet Corps, was General Order Number 23 of the Mari- time Commission. This ordered all appointments of cadets to government subsidized vessels to be made in the future from eligible lists prepared after scrutiny of applications by an advisory board of the Commission. This same rule prescribed sea training under actual conditions and established rates of pay. This order became effective on 15 March, 1938.

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“XT INo finer traditions have been recorded in history than those of our seafaring men. This academy is a fitting monument to those past genera- tions who have handed down so noble a heritage, and will spur on present and future generations of our men of the sea to even greater achievements. From this institution, thousands of America’s finest young men will be graduated, equipped to be skilled navigators and engineers, worthy of the great vessels they will sail and of respect in every port throughout the world.” President Franklin D. Roosevelt 8 September, 1943 After four years of close association with an academic institution and grad- uating from it, one is certain to take recollections of those four years with him. and Kings Point is no exception. This may be true at Kings Point even more so than elsewhere because of the unique nature of the lifestyle in that timespan. Further, a four year term at a school that has a history so interesting and so steeped in tradition as Kings Point generates a bond, an association, a fraternalism, that transcends the brief period of residence and incorporates every major event in the Academy’s past and every insignificant but time- less quirk of Academy life that endures even today. A cartoon in a 1947 issue of Polaris Magazine verifies that the expression “ponies” has existed at Kings Point for over thirty years! PRECEDING PAGE: Oval Graduation. June 1949. ABOVE: Taking Azimuths Atop Samuels Hall. RIGHT: Pulling Turbine in Fulton Hall. OPPOSITE: Cadets Report for Sea Year Train- ing. 4

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A few months of operation of the new plan revealed a defect in the selection process. Despite an enthusias- tic response to announcements of the new system, it was found that approved candidates still had to make direct con- tact with ship operators before they could get appointments and assignments to ships. Because the Maritime Commis- sion was thus left out of the final selec- tion process, the same old pressure tac- tics were being used by interested parties to secure appointments to vessels for specific young men once they made the eligible list. This condition was remedied by General Order No. 28 of the Mari- time Commission, which provided that the eligible list be based on national examinations, and reserved to the Super- visor of the U.S. Merchant Marine Cadet Corps the right to appoint and assign Cadets to ships. Commodore Richard R. McNulty, USNR, was named the first Supervisor of the Cadet Corps in December of 1938, and took charge of the new, competitive entrance, national cadet training program. In seeking to establish a strong, highly structured federal system of officer training, McNulty first compiled a report for Congress that sprang from his investigations of the training systems of Japan, Holland, Germany, Great Brit- ain. Italy, Norway, Sweden, Brazil, Den- mark and France. The impact of the report on Congress was to considerably hasten its realization that the U.S. lagged far behind foreign maritime powers both in recognition of the problem and in means to solve it. The study further revealed that eighty to ninety per cent of all officers in the United States Mer- chant Marine had no formal training. The situation detailed in McNulty’s Mari- time Commission was not news to him, for as far back as 1930 he had been trying to convince the country of the severity of the problem. In his drive for better training, the Supervisor held from the beginning that popular recognition of professional status in merchant officers by the people with whom they came in business and social contact was to be had only if their educa- tion were scaled on a truly pofessional level. A second motive for professionaliz- ing merchant officer education was the creation of an admission policy and pro- cedure needed to screen out candidates intellectually and temperamentally unfit for this kind of education. Thirdly, the curriculum was to incorporate the profes- sional maritime courses with classes that approximated recognized courses pre- scribed for degree-level work at engineer- ing schools across the country. Through a long series of essays and arti- cles in the 1930's on the training and per- sonnel problems of the merchant marine, he constantly hammered home the point that the U.S. needed an energetic, aggres- sive officer training program. With the report to Congress, an awareness of the problem and a response to the situation resulted. 6