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

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By regulations issued in October 1939, the cadet training course was set a four .ea s: ’he first, second, and as o be spem on shipboard, the third in shores de schooling. This timetable a - lowed headquarters two ears to de- elop dr v- and classroom facilities But it was ’me o shift focus to the tie d. There was a need to establish the three Port District receiving stations. The Pa- ciific Coast was ’he first to get its rece • - irs station n operation. The first four cace s appointed by the Maritime Co—r iss on ur der the new system re- ported to the California State October 2, 1939. it was compelled to close janu- ary 1940, when the California State sailed on her annual training cruise. The Atlantic Coast receiving s’ation and cadet school was somewhat less harried by tenancy problems than its Pacific counterpart. Phillip C. Mahady, the Mew York Port Instructor knocked at the gate of the Xe»r York Merchant Marine Academy. That school s Cap- tain James Harvey Torr b, always sympa- thetic the the budding Cadet corps .agreed that he Mar vime Commission might pay room and board for quar- ters and share in the use of the recently opened training facilities at Fort Schyler. The first two federal cadets as- signed o that base arrived October 16, 1939. If the New York District had the smoothest sailing, the New' Orleans District had, by all odds, the roughest. To begin w ?h, there .as no state mari- time academy on the Gulf Coast to which the federal program might look to for shelter. t er the armed services seemed to have no storefront space ■ % ill Clockwise from below: Learning how to use a stadi- meter. Entrance to San Mateo, the offspring of the Academy's Pacific Coast District School. Cadet se- curing deck lashing prior to sailing. Entering New York circa 1943 Opening 11

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On Tuesday March 15, 1938, a General Order was issued in Washington D.C., by what that year's average American probably thought of as merely the latest in the long parade of New Deal agencies, the United States Maritime Commission. There was nothing melodramatic about General Order 23. In deadpan govenmental language, it stated that the Maritime Commission was as- suming jurisdiction and direction of the fed- eral maritime cadet training system. The sys- tem was already fourty seven years old. This is why the ninety-nine cadets then serving on subsidized vessels, who awak- ened on the morning of March 15, 1938, as supernumerary employees of the steamship companies, turned in that night, on the same ships as members of an organization soon to become known as the United States Mer- chant Marine Cadet Corps and for what be- came its permanent home and fourth federal service college, the United States Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, Long Island, New York. Any child or institution born in 1938 into a darkly troubled yet peversely hopeful world, a world simultaneously recovering from one disease and falling prey to a worse one. America and Europe were finally pulling out of the Great Depression; yet what most civi- lizations regarded as the foundations of civ- lized life at the same time were under attack from almost every point of the compass. Germany was already fully committed to a violent totalitariansim. Federal policy, as enunciated in the Mer- chant Marine Act, called for a merchant fleet adequate to meet national defense needs, and to carry a substantial share of our foreign commerce plus our entire waterborne do- mestic commerce. Inducements to build and operate such a fleet were provided in the form of what Franklin Roosevelt had called honest subsidies. Based for the first time on the differential between American and foriegn costs. All vessels receiving operat- ing differential subsidies were required by law to include in their manning scales a spec- ified number of cadets in training. General Order 23 had been targeted on the three most conspicuous shortcomings of the former shipboard training system: indis- criminate selection, lax supervision, and ab- sence of a uniform curriculum. To correct for the first it directed that subsidized com- panies henceforth choose their cadets from an eligible list complied by the Commis- sion. This new dispensation was widely pub- licized by a Commission release inviting in- terested eligibles to apply for cadetships. This offer proved to be unexpectedly attrac- tive and, in retrospect, ill advised. By No- vember the Special Advisory Board was swamped with 3,725 applications, of which 1,971 qualified their senders for an eligible list. Yet in that month there were only 119 cadets serving, and the total available berths anticipated for the future numbered 300. 10 Opening

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not in full use. It was not until spring of 1940 that Captain John Hope Clark, the District Cadet Training In- structor could announce the estab- lishment of a receiving station at the Coast Guard Air Station in Biloxi, Mississippi. By June 30 three cadets reported there. On October 5, 1940, soon after the outbreak of war in Europe, ca- dets began to be enrolled as ''Ca- dets, Merchant Marine Reserve, with a grade of Midshipman when called to active duty. This develop- ment, the upshot of a lenghtly dis- cussions between the Maritime Commission and the Navy Depart- ment reaffirmed the interdepen- dence of the naval and merchant services. This reserve plan laid the foundation for the title Midship- man and the Naval Reserve wings which Kings Pointers-with one eight year lapse-have worn ever since. By the fall of 1941, overcrowding at the Cadet schools had reached crisis proportions. Telfair Knight, Di- rector of the Division for training, urgently reiterated his request that the Maritime Commission acquire its own training facilities. A young offi- cer at Washington Headquarters, Lauren S. McCready explored the Atlantic Coast unsuccessfully from Baltimore to Newport News in No- vember. Suddenly, the search was over. Early in December, it was learned that the twelve acre estate of the late Walter P. Chrysler at Kings Point was for sale by his heirs. Legis- lation authorizing the transaction was approved by the President March 4, 1942. By that date every building, from the mansion the greenhouses and garages had been put to some training use. 12 Opening