A Different Kind of Victory. James Leutze
had nothing against drinking, indeed he enjoyed a drink himself; furthermore, he rather expected seamen to drink, especially on a long trip such as this. What he could not accept was the rowdiness that he knew would erupt if stern action were not taken quickly to control the more boisterous members of the party. So, after they had been on their way for a few hours, he and the chief took a tour through the cars occupied by their charges. In the first car, several men had clearly had too much. Hart spoke to one who promptly calmed down, but another miscreant heard Tommy out and then ostentatiously took a long drag from his bottle. Swift action was called for, as all eyes were now on the slim ensign. Tommy reached past the man, grabbed his bottle, and threw it out the open window. The sailor uttered an oath and started to rise from his seat. At that point the chief’s hairy fist passed over Tommy’s shoulder and landed on the man’s jaw. Dazed, the sailor sat back, and then started to rise again. This time Tommy unloaded on him with all he had. It was enough, not only for that sailor; word quickly passed that this officer was not to be trifled with. Consequently, the rest of the trip went smoothly and Tommy chalked up a successful land voyage.
When his tour in the Hartford was over, he learned that he was to be assigned duty at his alma mater. In 1902 the Naval Academy was looking for officers to help handle the rapidly expanding battalion of midshipmen, as the student body was designated in July 1902. Since on three occasions Lieutenant, Junior Grade, Hart had taken a drill team from the Hartford to Madison Square Garden for the military tournament, he seemed a natural choice for the post of infantry drill instructor. Captain Willard H. Brownson, the recently selected superintendent, spotted Hart’s name on a list of officers available for duty. Despite his experience with Hart when the latter was a cadet, Brownson wrote the Navy Department that he would like to have Hart on the academy’s faculty.3
Thomas C. Hart, officer of the deck, aboard the Hartford in 1900. Courtesy of Mrs. T. C. Hart
Had Brownson closely observed the detail of sailors Hart took to the inauguration of President William McKinley in March 1901, he might have changed his mind. To keep his men dry outside during the long festivities in the rain, Hart ordered them to don rain gear under their uniforms. To keep them warm inside, he provided a considerable amount of rum. The sailors stayed dry and, by his own account, suspiciously warm.
But others did not notice, so Tommy Hart returned to Annapolis in the fall of 1902 with a fitness report that described him as “eminently fitted” for independent, important, and hazardous duties. Drilling midshipmen was hardly hazardous, but it was important and extremely taxing. With the decision to increase the size of the U.S. Navy, which Congress had made in the 1890s and which Theodore Roosevelt, who became president in 1901, was enthusiastically carrying out, came the need for more officers. To provide them, the academy’s student body was to be doubled, from some four hundred to approximately eight hundred, and the bigger classes were to be admitted immediately, even before adequate quarters were available. This meant that Hart’s duties, which included policing the corridors of the dormitories and the temporary structures where the midshipmen were housed, increased proportionately. The Navy Department underestimated the need for more officers to instruct the new classes, so Hart often found himself overworked. When the class of 1908 arrived in the summer of 1904, for instance, there was only one officer to instruct more than 275 midshipmen on shipboard and one to instruct them on shore. The man on shore was Lieutenant Hart. At the end of two months he had lost twelve pounds as well as his voice.4
Yet somehow he also found time to teach a class in ordnance and gunnery. In fact, he became so interested in the subject that he agreed to write a textbook on the subject in company with the department head, Commander William F. Fullam.5 This book, unimaginatively titled Ordnance and Gunnery, was published in 1903 and was in use for many years. Hart also managed a full social life. He found he enjoyed dancing and squiring young ladies around the academy grounds. One young girl especially caught his eye. She was dancing at the time and the two long braids that hung down her back indicated that she had not yet reached maturity. But there was something special about Caroline Brownson, the superintendent’s daughter, and Tommy Hart marked her down as someone he wanted to get to know. They talked together from time to time, but a seven-year gap in age was too much to span, at least at this time. Anyhow, there were lots of other girls, as his photo albums attest. The older he got the more handsome he became, and his talent on the dance floor made him eagerly sought after.
All in all it was an instructive time for Hart to be at the academy. Brownson was an exemplary officer, noted for his executive ability and leadership qualities. He was demanding, as will be recalled from Hart’s days when Brownson was commandant of cadets, but he was fair. His appearance was always meticulously proper and his manner, though it might have struck some as overly aloof and aristocratic, was undeniably professional. Tough but fair would be a fitting characterization. If a young officer were looking for the epitome of a successful naval officer, Brownson would certainly do. The building going on at the academy was impressive as well. New buildings, like the chapel, the imposing superintendent’s residence, Bancroft Hall, Mahan Hall, the officers’ club, were springing up like mushrooms after a rain, in accordance with Ernest Flagg’s ambitious plan.6 If one wondered about the navy’s dynamism, the academy between 1902 and 1904 was a good place to look for inspiration.
Hart apparently caught the mood of the place as well as the cut of Captain Brownson’s jib; he was inspired by one and impressed by the other. Actually, Tommy was beginning to come of age. He saw plenty of future in this new navy; certainly it would provide him with a living better than those of his father and his relatives in either Michigan or Maine. Perhaps for this reason, or perhaps because it took a second dose of the academy really to sober him, Tommy began to become quite “military”; or maybe this was just his first chance to view the navy and its midshipmen objectively.
Hart began to look for ways to give his charges a more “military appearance.” One improvement, he wrote in a memorandum, would be “to make the collars higher, according to the length of the individual’s neck, coming close up under the chin . . .” The plebes, he continued, “generally get their first collars much too large, giving them an ungainly appearance, as young men of that age are inclined to have long thin necks which appear at their worst in loose low collars.” He also wanted their uniforms to be better tailored, because he believed that pride and performance would be more likely in a midshipman who looked sharp.7
Although Brownson liked Hart well enough to object when his reassignment was being considered, he did not give him exceptionally high fitness reports. It is easy to imagine that the superintendent was a hard grader, so perhaps the fact that he gave Hart many “very good,” rather than “excellent,” evaluations should not be taken too seriously. On the other hand, as we shall see, Brownson had some reservations about Hart, at least for some assignments.
When he had been at the academy almost two years an emergency arose which required Hart’s detachment for service in the new battleship Missouri. One of her gun turrets had exploded, killing two officers; Hart was sent as one of the replacements, a duty that, under the circumstances, could hardly be approached optimistically. Yet working with modern gunnery in a practical way allowed him to apply what he had written in his textbook. This was the beginning of his specialization in ordnance, an area in which, in one way or another, he spent much of his career. But hardly had he settled in the Missouri when another emergency, this one mingled with a measure of luck—a factor Hart came to feel was intimately involved in his career—called for his detachment elsewhere. The destroyer Lawrence needed a new skipper, and on very short notice.
So, in December 1905 at age twenty-eight he got his first command. The Lawrence was small and by the standards of the day quite fast. Furthermore, instead of heavy guns, her primary armament was torpedoes. How ideal for a man who enjoyed seamanship and working with any type of complicated ordnance. Steaming hither and yon over the sea and doing it right gave him a sense of independence and of something else to which he always gave considerable emphasis—fun. He later contended that this command did more to mature him than anything since the Spanish-American War.8 In 1906 Lieutenant Commander E. A. Anderson, commander