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Don’t Be Afraid to Adapt: The Seawolves Mindset

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By LCDR Andrew Poulin, USN

“Adaptability is the law which governs survival in war as in life.”–Sir Basil H. Liddell-Hart

“Scramble the Seawolves! Scramble the Seawolves!” The blaring call over the 1MC startles everyone onboard the small landing platform ship awake. Half-naked pilots and aircrewmen jump out of their racks, throw on their gear, and rush up the ladder-well to the flight deck. They strap into their helicopters, adrenaline pumping, sweat pouring down their foreheads. Power is applied, engines roar, rotors begin to turn. Within three minutes the first Huey lifts off the deck into the dark night, the second lifts about one minute later.1 The Seawolf crews have done this dozens of times this deployment, but each mission is different.

It’s only a seven-minute flight to the action – a small tributary in the middle of the Mekong Delta where a riverine patrol boat (PBR) has gotten into an unexpected firefight with Vietcong forces. There are no navaids to speak of, so the pilots navigate using visual checkpoints they memorized over several months of flying in the area. The two helicopters continue to pick their way through clouds as they arrive on station and see two Vietcong sampans firing intensely at the PBR. Both aircraft immediately begin to take anti-aircraft fire. The first aircraft unleashes a full salvo of 2.75-inch rockets at the sampans, sending them both to the bottom of the river. Dash Two follows shortly behind the lead aircraft and zeroes his focus on fire coming from the shoreline. His door gunners open fire and send hundreds of .50-caliber rounds downrange. The gunfire on the shore comes to an abrupt halt and, for now, the battle has ended. Once again, the Seawolves come to the rescue.

Bell UH-1E Hueys of Helicopter Attack (Light) Squadron 3 Seawolves aboard USS Garrett County (AGP-786) [Photo via Seaforces.org]
It is summer 1968 in Vietnam, and these aviators were part of a riverine patrol force that did not exist in the Navy just a few years earlier, flying aircraft that the Navy had never planned on procuring, and executing missions they had never trained to previously. So what exactly were the Seawolves doing in Vietnam in 1968, and what does that mean for the Navy today?

The defined “End State” of A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority 2.0 is, “A dominant naval force that produces outstanding leaders and teams, armed with the best equipment, that learn and adapt faster than our rivals.”2 When we think of great power competition, the country and military that adapts fastest to changing conditions – strategic, tactical, technological, cultural, or otherwise – will gain the advantage. Building on the Design, CNO Gilday’s FRAGO 01/2019 Warfighting End State focuses on “A Navy that is ready to win across the full range of military operations in competition, crisis, and contingency by persistently operating forward with agility and flexibility in an all-domain battlespace.”3  The U.S. Navy demonstrated this same adaptability in the mid-1960s in response to developments in Vietnam when it created Helicopter Attack Squadron (Light) 3 [HA(L)-3], “the Seawolves,” and this mindset is exactly what the Navy must foster today in order to be successful in any future conflict.

The 1960s, Vietnam, and the Seawolves

The 1960s in the United States was a time of great change, unrest, and upheaval. People were listening to The Beatles, watching the debut of Star Trek, and cheering during the first Super Bowl. There was progress and setbacks for civil rights, women’s equality, environmentalism, and national unity. The decade saw the first sit-in protests, landmark legislation like the Civil Rights Act, the publication of Silent Spring and The Feminine Mystique, but also the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy.

Meanwhile, the situation in Vietnam was deteriorating and the United States decided to increase its involvement. By mid-1965, U.S. troops were granted permission to go on the offensive in Vietnam.4 In August, Rear Admiral Norvell G. Ward, Chief of the Naval Advisory Group in Saigon, was given responsibility for Operation Market Time, a coastal surveillance operation designed to prevent the Vietcong from transporting any supplies from North Vietnam to the South.5 Ward immediately launched several studies to determine how to expand Market Time into the Mekong Delta and the treacherous Rung Sat Special Zone (RSSZ), called by some as the “forest of assassins.” His findings pointed to an enemy (the Vietcong) that was deeply embedded in the region and a partner (the Vietnamese Navy) that did not have the leadership, resources, or training to solve the problem. He therefore concluded that there was a clear need for the United States to get further involved in the Delta.6

The Mekong River stretches over 2,700 miles, winds through six countries, and drains over 313,000 square miles of land. It is the longest river in Southeast Asia and more than 60 million people depend on the Mekong region for their livelihoods.7 In the summer of 1965, U.S. Navy planners realized that although they had previously let naval riverine doctrine and tactics wither, conditions in Vietnam indicated it was exactly what they would have to reinvigorate to succeed. Their rudimentary doctrine at the time noted, “Where navigable waterways exist, and roads do not, or when roads are interdicted and hostile forces use navigable waterways to supplement or replace road movement, a doctrine and strategy of interdiction and control of waterways becomes decisive.”8

Mekong River delta, southern Vietnam. M. Gifford/De Wys Inc. (via Britannica.com)

This led to Operation Game Warden and the official formation of the Navy’s River Patrol Force in December 1965, also known as Task Force 116.9 Rear Admiral Ward then set out to find helicopters that could fly close-air support for Game Warden. However, the Navy did not have anything that fit the bill. It did have SH-2 Seasprite and SH-3 Sea King helicopters – both of which were reliable platforms for ASW, SUW, and SAR missions, but were in no way optimized for close-air support or attack tasking. As a result, it was Army UH-1 Hueys that first filled this role for Game Warden. Nevertheless, senior defense officials including Rear Admiral Ward, recognized that ultimately it should be Navy helicopters supporting the Navy’s riverine operations.

Where other leaders gave up, Rear Admiral Ward, now Commander Naval Forces Vietnam, was persistent. He said that “I had been mulling over for a long time how to get navy helicopters to replace what we had. The navy had told me they didn’t have any available and couldn’t do anything to help me.” On his own initiative, Ward contacted Captain Chris Cagle, who was the Director of Aviation Programs for OP-05 (then the Office of the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations – Air Warfare). Ward asked Cagle if the Navy could supply pilots and aircrew from existing squadrons, if Ward provided the helicopters. Fortunately, Captain Cagle said yes.10Ward had his crews, but he still needed to ensure they had a ride to the fight.

Rear Admiral Norvell G. Ward, USN (ret.) [Photo via USNI.org]
In early 1966 in Saigon, Rear Admiral Ward was hosting some high-level dignitaries at his residence, including Commander U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam, General William Westmoreland. Sensing an opportunity, Ward approached Westmoreland and told him the Navy was providing aircrew and asked if there was any way the Army could loan the Navy some of their helicopters to fulfill the critical close-air support mission. Westmoreland knew this was important to the cause. He was also aware that the Army would soon retire their UH-1B helicopters and replace them with new UH-1C aircraft, so he agreed on the spot to loan the well-used UH-1B gunships to the Navy.11

Initially, Helicopter Combat Support Squadron 1 (HC-1) was tasked with providing crews for four detachments to send to Vietnam, and it was these same detachments that were used to establish Helicopter Attack Squadron (Light) 3 on April 1, 1967. However, this stretched HC-1’s personnel to the outer limit, so the Navy decided to recruit top talent from all navy squadrons.12 “For the first time in history, navy helicopter pilots and crews would be flying attack missions in a close-up, and very deadly, combat environment…only volunteers were solicited from both officer and enlisted ranks. To nobody’s surprise, the response was enthusiastic. The volunteer list was filled almost immediately and, to the chagrin of other would-be gunship pilots, was temporarily closed.”13 Retired Navy Captain Brian Buzzell noted that pilots fresh out of flight school were warned that if they joined the Seawolves, “you are going to get shot at and maybe killed.”14 The volunteers that came forward were the true embodiment of the warrior ethos, and they were ready to get to work.

U.S. Navy Huey helicopter (Photo via KPBS.org)

Training Development and Results

Because these navy crews were going to fly different aircraft, in a deadly combat zone, for a mission they had never before conducted, they needed significant training. At first, aircrew pre-deployment training was rudimentary – SERE school, physical training, and a weapon’s familiarization course. They would not fly the UH-1 Huey until they arrived in Vietnam where they were given familiarization flights in Saigon with the U.S. Army, followed by additional specialized training with the Army’s 197th Armed Helicopter Company.15 The Navy pilots brought a strong foundation of superb instrument training. In turn, the Army taught them the inner workings of flight lead formation tactics, close air support, and aerial gunnery. Within a few months, the Navy organized more comprehensive UH-1 gunship training stateside, first at Fort Benning, Georgia followed by Fort Rucker, Alabama. 16 Of course, the crews got plenty of “on-the-job training” as well. Commander Dick Barr, a retired Seawolves pilot, noted that, “In an average week two aircraft would shoot about a thousand rockets and a million rounds of 7.62…The door gunners would try to keep their brass inside the aircraft so it would not go out and hit the tail rotors. You’d come back and there would be six or seven inches of expended brass in the back.”17 It was a high optempo with a steep learning curve, but the extra practice ensured much greater success when it counted most.

Over the next five years the Seawolves flew over 130,000 combat hours in Vietnam, handled 1,530 MEDEVACs, delivered 37,000 passengers and 1,000,000 pounds of cargo, and inflicted several thousand enemy casualties.18 They earned 17,339 awards and decorations, making HA(L)-3 the most highly decorated squadron in U.S. naval history.19 They also built a fearless reputation among the people they served with in the Mekong Delta. In his book, Combat Swimmer: Memoirs of a Navy SEAL, retired Captain Robert Gormley said of the Seawolves, “I don’t know a single SEAL who operated in Vietnam that wasn’t saved by those guys at least once. They were the best helo crews I had ever seen. The Seawolf crews were real heroes.”20 The squadron’s actions had tangible results for Operation Game Warden. A post-war study from the Center for Naval Analyses concluded that:

  • Game Warden interrupted enemy movement on traditional routes across the major Delta rivers.
  • Enemy efforts to close the sea lanes to Saigon – a major Vietcong objective – were denied by U.S. and Vietnamese Navy forces.
  • Game Warden secured many sections of the major Delta and Rung Sat Special Zone rivers for commercial use.
  • Helicopters were essential to riverine operations in fire support, observation, and medical evacuation.21

By all accounts, the Seawolves punched above their weight class.

Don’t Be Afraid to Adapt

The Seawolves were successful for two main reasons: their people and organizational adaptability. For people, the Navy cast a wide net that attracted the best warriors from coast to coast who were motivated to serve their country and test their mettle in combat. Their strong bonds to each other and their commitment to always answer the call enabled them to surpass overwhelming odds again and again. It is an important reminder that as much as technology changes, warfighting is still a human-centered business. With respect to organizational adaptability, fortunately in this instance, there were enough senior navy and military leaders in the right positions who recognized the lack of navy close-air support helicopters in Vietnam was going to be a serious tactical shortfall and then acted swiftly to alter course. But it is also important to recognize there were plenty of navy leaders that were against establishing HA(L)-3. Recall the words of Rear Admiral Ward as he was searching for helicopters: “The navy had told me they didn’t have any available and couldn’t do anything to help me.”22 Like Rear Admiral Ward with the Seawolves, we should never be afraid to adapt to changing circumstances and pursue what we know to be right, even if that means altering the programs, equipment, or processes we hold most dear as an institution. As Basil H. Liddell-Hart noted, “Adaptability is the law which governs survival in war as in life.”23

UH-1 Huey helicopter of Helicopter Attack Squadron (Light) 3 (HA(L)-3) escorting river patrol boats in Vietnam – circa 1968 (Photo via Seaforces.org)

There are countless examples of militaries adapting in war, from Roman legions, to World War II radar and ASW advancements. Just like the U.S. Navy riverine patrol force of Vietnam, the Union had to make similar adaptations during the Civil War. Union military planners focused their naval strategy on three pillars: 1) blockade the Southern coast, 2) launch amphibious assaults to capture ports and strongholds, and 3) split the Confederacy along the Mississippi River and its tributaries.24 The problem however was that the Union Navy did not have any serviceable vessels that could fight on the burgeoning battlespace of America’s rivers. To win the war as fast as possible, the Union Navy would need to adapt and that is exactly what they did, just like the Navy did in Vietnam. The Union military created their own river patrol force by retrofitting old wooden sidewheel river boats and contracting new, low-draft “City Class” gunboats. The gunboats’ low draft came at the expense of a significant loss of armor, which increased their vulnerability, but a good enough solution now was much better than a perfect solution later. They hastily armed the gunboats with whatever guns they had available, including older 42-pounders offered by the Army, and 8-inch and 32-pounder Navy guns.25 It got the job done. The adaptation greatly aided the Union cause with victories at Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, and many other critical locations, turning the tide of the Civil War in the Union’s favor.

We Must Adapt Faster than our Rivals

Today, the challenges are just as complex. Countries like China and Russia are increasingly blurring the line between military, economic, and political domains. General Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of Russia’s Armed Forces, wrote:

The very “rules of war” have changed. The role of nonmilitary means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness. The focus of applied methods of conflict has altered in the direction of the broad use of political, economic, informational, humanitarian, and other nonmilitary measures…26

In this vein, actions like the invasion of Crimea, land reclamation in the South China Sea, election meddling, and attempts to gain strategic access through economic blackmail and debt leveraging, all illustrate how countries can and will use every instrument at their disposal to gain an advantage.

A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority tells us that we must “learn and adapt faster than our rivals,” but our rivals are fast at work, too. For instance, China is predicted to have 360 battle force ships by the start of 2021 (compared to 297 for the U.S.), 400 by 2025, and 425 by 2030.27 Fueling this massive shipbuilding spree is a military budget that has increased by at least 1,000 percent since 1990.28 China now has the second-highest defense expenditure in the world with $266.4 billion, behind only the United States.29 The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) also understands the value that an adaptable force can bring. China’s 2019 Military White Paper directed China’s armed forces to “actively adapt to the new landscape of strategic competition, the new demands of national security, and new developments in modern warfare, so as to effectively fulfill their tasks and missions in the new era.”30 The PLA’s focus is on closing the relative power gap with the United States as fast as possible and enabling a military establishment that is adaptable to changing conditions.

Sun Tzu wrote that, “As water has no constant form, there are in war no constant conditions. And as water shapes its flow in accordance with the ground, so an army manages its victory in accordance with the situation of the enemy.”31 Any future conflict with an adversary will not unfold exactly how we think it will. Numerous variables may alter the battlespace to create something completely unrecognizable to what we previously planned. Plans may have to be altered, tweaked, or scrapped and replaced altogether. Prized programs may have to be changed, halted, or redirected. Our strategy may prove to rest on faulty assumptions that demand quick change. If we devise an out-of-the-box solution, we should seriously consider embracing it, just as the Navy did by creating the HA(L)-3 Seawolves in the 1960s.

We cannot prepare for everything, nor do we have the money and resources to do so. But we can prepare our people and our decision-makers to be flexible and agile enough to respond quickly to changing trends and landscapes. If we find ourselves in a war with a peer competitor, being smart enough to recognize when we need to change the game plan and brave enough to implement it will make all the difference. Just like Rear Admiral Ward and the Seawolves, we must never be afraid to adapt when the mission demands it.

Lieutenant Commander Andrew Poulin is a MH-60R pilot and a Navy political–military scholar. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and Harvard University. Previously, he served as the President of CIMSEC and is currently a member of the CIMSEC Board of Directors. The opinions expressed above are those of the author alone and do not necessarily represent the official policy of the Department of the Navy or the Department of Defense.

Endnotes

1. Richard Knott, Fire From the Sky: Seawolf Gunships in the Mekong Delta, (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press), 31.

2. ADM John Richardson, USN, “A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority, Version 2.0” (December 2018), https://www.navy.mil/navydata/people/cno/Richardson/Resource/Design_2.0.pdf.

3. ADM Michael Gilday, USN, “FRAGO 01/2019: A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority” (December 2019), https://www.navy.mil/cno/docs/CNO%20FRAGO%20012019.pdf.

4. PBS, “The Sixties: Moments in Time,” https://www.pbs.org/opb/thesixties/timeline/timeline_text.html.

5. Judith C. Erdheim, “Market Time – CRC 280,” Center for Naval Analyses (September 1975), https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/m/market-time-u-crc280.html#conclusions.

6. CDR S. A. Swarztrauber, USN, “River Patrol Relearned,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings Vol. 96, No. 5, (May 1970), https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1970/may/river-patrol-relearned.

7. Lewis Owen, Gilbert White, and Jeffrey Jacobs, “Mekong River,” Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/place/Mekong-River.

8. CAPT Frederick Brazee, USN, “The Mobile Riverine Force, Mekong Delta, Republic of Vietnam, 16 February 1967-10 January 1968: Personal Experience of a Company Commander and Assistant Brigade S2,” U.S. Army Infantry School, Fort Benning, GA (23 September 1968), https://www.mrfa.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/BrazeeFrederick0E.CPT_-1.pdf.

9. Edward J. Marolda and R. Blake Dunnavent, “Combat at Close Quarters: Warfare on the Rivers and Canals of Vietnam,” Department of the Navy: Naval History and Heritage Command (2015).

10. Richard Knott, Fire From the Sky: Seawolf Gunships in the Mekong Delta, (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press), 25.

11. Knott, Fire From the Sky, 24-25.

12. Navy Seawolves, “HC-1 Early History,” http://www.seawolf.org/history/hc1.asp.

13. Knott, Fire From the Sky, 26-27.

14. Hill Goodspeed, “I am a Sailor and a Seawolf,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings Vol. 33, No. 3, (June 2019),  https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2019/june/i-am-sailor-and-seawolf.

15. John Darrell Sherwood, War in the Shallows: U.S. Navy Coastal and Riverine Warfare in Vietnam, 1965-1968, (Washington, D.C.: Naval History and Heritage Command), 125.

16. Sherwood, War in the Shallows, 126.

17. Goodspeed, “I am a Sailor and a Seawolf.”

18. Government Publishing Office, “Honoring Veterans of Helicopter Attack Light Squadron Three,” Congressional Record, Vol 156, No. 99, (June 29, 2010), https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-2010-06-29/html/CREC-2010-06-29-pt1-PgH4918.htm.

19. Naval Helicopter Association Historical Society, “Naval Helicopter History Timeline: 400BC till 1940,” http://www.nhahistoricalsociety.org/index.php/naval-helicopter-history-timeline-new/.

20. Knott, Fire From the Sky, 192.

21. Victory Daniels and Judith C. Erdheim, “Game Warden – CRC 284,” Center for Naval Analyses, (January 1976), https://www.cna.org/CNA_files/PDF/CRC-284.pdf.

22.Knott, Fire From the Sky, 25.

23. Rick Baillergeon and John Sutherland, “Tactics 101 – Adaptation in War,” http://armchairgeneral.com/tactics-101-079-adaptation-in-war.htm.

24. Naval History and Heritage Command, “Riverine Warfare: The U.S. Navy’s Operations on Inland Waters,” https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/r/riverine-warfare-us-navys-operations-inland-waters.html#middle.

25. Naval History and Heritage Command, “Riverine Warfare.”

26. General Valery Gerasimov, Russian Federation Armed Forces, “The Value of Science is in the Foresight,” Military-Industrial Kurier (27 February 2013) https://jmc.msu.edu/50th/download/21-conflict.pdf.

27. Congressional Research Service, “China Naval Modernization: Implications for U.S. Navy Capabilities – Background and Issues for Congress,” (May 21, 2020), https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL33153.pdf.

28. Trading Economics, “China Military Expenditure,” https://tradingeconomics.com/china/military-expenditure.

29. Center for Strategic and International Studies, “China Power: What Does China Really Spend on Its Military?” https://chinapower.csis.org/military-spending/.

30. People’s Republic of China, “China’s National Defense in the New Era,” (July 2019), http://www.andrewerickson.com/2019/07/full-text-of-defense-white-paper-chinas-national-defense-in-the-new-era-english-chinese-versions/.

31. Lt Col Brian D. Dickerson, USAF, “Adaptability – A New Principle of War,” U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, PA, (July 2003), https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a415124.pdf.

Featured Image: UH-1 Huey (HAL-3) – Vietnam War – October 1969 (Photo via Seaforces.org)

Commentary

Herman Melville and the American Maritime Experience

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By Bill Bray

I hold the view—perhaps a not very popular one today—that no professional U.S. mariner, civilian or military, can have a complete understanding of and appreciation for the American maritime experience who has not read—carefully read—at least some of Herman Melville’s seagoing work. As I will show, through his work, Melville was up to much more than churning out sea stories. But in producing great literature, no American writer did more to capture the culture and sweeping vistas of the young nation’s commercial and, to a lesser degree, naval ventures on the high seas. Reading Melville in the 1850s, or in the 1950s or today, for that matter, Americans learned for the first time what it meant to be a “Nantucketeer” in 1820.

Not one of my four children was required to read Herman Melville in high school. I had to read Billy Budd, Sailor, which was taught to me again plebe year at the Naval Academy. My father was a Herman Melville scholar, completing his dissertation on Melville’s use of imagery in his third book, Mardi (my father taught plebe English at the Naval Academy from 1968–1970). Published in 1849, Mardi revealed Melville as more than a writer of adventure tales, for which he achieved early success and fame. Mardi begins as another South Pacific adventure story, in similar fashion to his first two books, Typee and Omoo, but evolves into a metaphysical quest—a taste of things to come in Melville’s writing, for sure.

I had the good fortune as a boy, hardly appreciated at the time, to visit Melville’s western Massachusetts home (Arrowhead) with my father, as well as other Melvillian settings, such as New Bedford’s whaling museum. This legacy was my motivation to read Melville extensively in young adulthood. But for others in the Sea Services, the reasons your high school English teacher or college professor implored you to read Herman Melville—his unquestioned place near the top of the American canon, his profound insight into the soul of a troubled nation in mid-nineteenth century, his almost divine mastery of language—are reasons enough to dive into Melville’s world. And for current or aspiring naval leaders, there are additional reasons this great American author should maintain a prominent place on the bookshelf.  

Melville in the Navy

Herman Melville briefly served in the U.S. Navy. He enlisted on 20 August 1843 from the Hawaiian port of Lahaina in Maui, where he had spent the previous three months working odd jobs after an adventurous two years in the South Pacific that included service on board three different whalers (Acushnet from January 1841 to July 1842 before deserting on the island of Nukuheva in the Marquesas; briefly on Lucy Ann in August 1842 where he participated in a mutiny and was subsequently jailed for a short time in British-controlled Tahiti; and on Charles & Henry from November 1842 to April 1843).1 

In the Navy, Melville served as an ordinary seaman on the frigate USS United States from August 1843 until October 1844, where he was discharged in Boston following service in the South Pacific and South Atlantic. Melville’s naval service is the basis of his book White-Jacket (1850) and provided him material for the writing of Billy Budd nearly forty years later. In fact, Melville devoted Billy Budd to Jack Chase, the real-life captain of the maintop on the United States with whom he formed a deep friendship. Chase was an avid reader of the classics, and they had long talks about literature while standing watches in the maintop.2

Melville is not the only accomplished American writer to have served in the Navy, but he is the greatest. He shares company with writers such as Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Mark Twain, who established a distinctly American voice in literature. Melville’s naval service is not the sole reason for American maritime professionals to read his major works, let alone his entire oeuvre, but it should at least spark an interest.

Melville Was Quite Progressive for His Day

Melville challenged conventional 19th century views on race, class, and what it meant to be ‘civilized’ (gender is the one subject that does not feature in his work). Typee (1846) is a fictional account of his desertion in the Marquesas during which he spent weeks living among the natives of the Typee Valley. It was a significant commercial success, as readers were fascinated with this story of two young, innocent American sailors discovering a lush carnal paradise that is as dangerous as it is alluring. 

Typee should not be read solely as adventure story, however. It is a subtle commentary too on the sins of antebellum America. Though scholarly research has shown that Melville’s account of the Typee Valley was heavily embellished to present a more romantic ideal of the untainted, “precivilized” world, Typee nevertheless reveals a young writer’s enlightened sensitivity to society’s capacity to corrupt as well as refine. By 1850, Melville would be a “reformed, if not repentant, romantic, who saw the fragility as well as the deformity of culture.”3

The year 1850 was a momentous one for Melville. His discovery of Shakespeare in the late 1840s and newfound friendship with his western Massachusetts neighbor Nathaniel Hawthorne were seminal events that accelerated his evolution from popular to more serious writer. By the summer, he had finished a draft of a whaling novel (a manuscript that did not include the character Ahab), but his admiration for Hawthorne’s daring exploration of dark, controversial themes inspired a feverish rewrite of Moby-Dick in the winter and spring of 1850–1851.4

 Early in Moby-Dick, in the chapter titled “The Spouter Inn,” Melville’s narrator Ishmael learns he must share a boarding room in New Bedford with a harpooner. He is initially terrified to learn the harpooner is a “savage” with the strangest customs. Yet in a few short paragraphs after Ishmael and Queequeg meet, Melville has Ishmael shed his prejudice to see Queequeg’s humanity. And this is not a journey, Melville makes clear, that Ishmael would have made from listening only to Christian homilies of that day. He needed direct interaction with the strange foreigner. “I stood looking at him a moment,” says Ishmael after realizing Queequeg is at once kind and harmless. “What’s all this fuss I have been making about, thought I to myself—the man’s a human being just as I am: he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.”5

Moby-Dick is much more than social criticism, however. It is a remarkable existential exploration. In Melville’s lifetime, Moby-Dick was a failed experiment in writing, too modern for the readers of his day. By the time of his death in 1891, only 3,715 copies had sold, compared with 16,320 copies of Typee.6 It would not be recognized more widely as a great novel for nearly seventy years. 

An American naval officer, or any American embarking on a professional sea-going life, should read it and reread it. It is Melville at the height of his powers, and among its many wonders are some of the richest descriptions of sea-going life during an age when a young maritime nation, the United States, was just feeling out its newfound place in the world. Those that never take up the challenge of reading it are resigned to a certain impoverishment in connecting to their own maritime past and profession.

Nathaniel Philbrick, author of In the Heart of the Sea and other maritime histories, claims to have read Moby-Dick at least twelve times. In 2011, Philbrick published Why Read Moby-Dick?, a short but persuasive case for reading the classic, a case made far better than I ever could. Philbrick writes that Moby-Dick is “a novel about a whaling voyage in the Pacific that is also about America racing hell-bent toward the Civil War and so much more. Contained in the pages of Moby-Dick is nothing less than the genetic code of America: all the promises, problems, conflicts, and ideals that contributed to the outbreak of a revolution in 1775 and a civil war in 1861.”7

Stung by the failure of his epic, Melville turned to serial publication in the mid-1850s and produced some of the greatest short fiction in American literature. Four years after Moby-Dick, Melville in 1855 published the novella Benito Cereno in three installments in Putnam’s Monthly, which would later be included in the The Piazza Tales (1856).  

In his copy of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1841 essay Prudence, next to the famous line “trust men, and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great,” Melville had written in the margin, “God help the poor fellow who squares his life according to this.”8 Melville’s narrator in Benito Cereno, the optimistic and naïve American merchant captain Amasa Delano, is that poor fellow. Melville, in a mere 85 pages, uses the nightmare of the American slavery experience to not only continue his metaphysical inquiry into man’s nature, but to also quite presciently predict the coming reckoning. Set in 1799 and based closely on the real-life Amasa Delano’s journal description of a similar experience in 1805, the story is a masterful study in hubristic self-deception, where a man (or a society) so convinced of his own righteousness and benevolence, is incapable of seeing the world as it actually is, indeed the very horror at the heart of what is considered “civilization.”

While anchored near Santa Maria island off Chile, Delano wakes one morning to discover the Spanish merchant San Dominick limping into the natural harbor. Eager to help a fellow mariner, he embarks San Dominick to offer assistance to its captain, Benito Cereno. San Dominick is an African slaver and in terrible condition. Cereno explains he has already lost many crew and passengers to fierce weather and illness. What Delano eventually discovers, however, is that the story about storm and sickness is a cover. San Dominick is experiencing a slave mutiny, and its captain is a prisoner. What Delano could not initially see is the same thing much of America of 1855 could not see: it was a prisoner to the institutional evil of slavery, and that bondage was hurling it towards a most violent cataclysm that could doom the great democratic experiment.  

Reading Benito Cereno, particularly for the second or third time, one cannot help wondering why Delano did not more rapidly discern the clues before him. Delano is not  unobservant, and throughout the story he senses something is seriously amiss aboard San Dominick. At several points Delano fears Cereno is really a pirate luring him into a well-laid trap to rob his ship (the Bachelor’s Delight). But Delano, ever the optimist, repeatedly dismisses his own suspicions.  “…[E]xerting his good nature to the utmost, insensibly he came to a compromise. ‘Yes, this is a strange craft; a strange history, too and strange folks onboard. But – nothing more.’”9 Like his native America, Delano could not see the very horror before him. 

The problem of race still haunts American society. While one need not completely embrace Melville’s pessimism, anyone in today’s Navy would be well to continually question whether they really see things as they are, or only as they think them to be—or wish them to be. Melville says of Amasa Delano’s optimism about human nature: “Whether, in view of what humanity is capable, such a trait implies, along with a benevolent heart, more than ordinary quickness and accuracy of intellectual perception, may be left to the wise to determine.”10 The wise would actually not determine it so, according to Melville. And that skepticism may be just enough to save us from the insanity of believing Emerson’s claim.

The Relationship Between Captain and Crew

The scholar Maxwell Geismar astutely observed that Herman Melville was a “pre-Freudian depth psychologist of fantastic proportions.” This is supported in Melville’s writings in many places and many ways, including in his portrayals of the relationship between captain and crew on a ship at sea. Melville has a keen, penetrating eye for the complex psychological forces at work in this relationship. For one aspiring to command a ship or serve in any high leadership post, a close reading of these depictions provides a useful complement to any formal training on the subject of command.

Ahab is, of course, the most famous American fictional ship captain. Long before Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny, American literature had its mad commanding officer, a monomaniac sick with an irrational thirst for revenge against an animal. His crew is merely a vehicle to help him achieve it, its safety be damned. But Ahab cannot be understood so simplistically. Melville carefully constructs a more complex character, one that demands some measure of sympathy as well. Ahab is both a victim of a cruel unfeeling world, and its malevolent agent, and we are ceaselessly challenged to sort out one aspect of him from the other. The first mate, Starbuck, suspects Ahab’s obsession foretells danger, but is just as conflicted. After protesting early in the voyage (“but I came here to hunt whales, not my commander’s vengeance”) he cannot press his case any further and openly oppose his captain.11

Ahab’s psychological hold on the crew is nearly hypnotic. He does not appear in Moby-Dick until the 28th chapter, but we have sensed his presence long before that. He is the crew’s “supreme lord and dictator.”12 He understands what motivates them better than they understand themselves. Chapter 36, “The Quarter-Deck,” has Ahab reveal to the crew the true purpose of the voyage—to kill the white whale and gain for Ahab some measure of justice. The commercial bottom line of a whaling voyage is a distant secondary objective. At this moment in the story, Ahab recognizes that only Starbuck can thwart his design. He takes his case straight to the crew in Starbuck’s presence, understanding better than his first mate that his men are driven by far more than the prospect of financial gain. They are romantic adventurers who yearn for glory and prestige and greatness, easy prey to enlist in his unholy cause.

For aspiring merchant ship masters, commanding officers, and command master chiefs, at the very least chapter 36 should be required reading. It is a brilliant fictional depiction of how a captain’s almost irresistible, if brooding, charisma can bewitch a crew into a dangerously blind obedience. Crew morale is always critically important, but it can also be manipulated to serve corrupt ends.  

Toward the end of the novel before the final, catastrophic chase, in chapter 123 entitled “The Musket,” the Pequod has just ridden out a typhoon south of Japan. Starbuck goes below to Ahab’s cabin to report a fair wind. Ahab is fast asleep, and as Starbuck approaches he eyes Ahab’s loaded muskets in a rack. “Starbuck was an honest, upright man; but out of Starbuck’s heart, at that instant when he saw the muskets, there strangely evolved an evil thought . . .”13 In the ensuing Shakespearean soliloquy—and again, one cannot overstate Shakespeare’s influence on Melville—Starbuck struggles with the thought of assassinating Ahab to save the crew and himself (“Starbuck seemed wrestling with an angel”).14 Having picked up one of the muskets to see if it was loaded, at the close of this magnificent scene he puts it back in the rack. He cannot take up against his captain. Even when convinced Ahab is leading the crew to catastrophe, Starbuck cannot bring himself to betray a sacred respect for a captain’s authority.

The other most recognizable depiction of the captain-crew relationship is the heart of the novella Billy Budd, Sailor, a story Melville wrote in the late 1880s near the end of his life and based, in part, on the 1842 USS Somers incident (Melville’s last work of prose was not discovered until the 1920s, more than 30 years after his death). British warship Captain Edward Fairfax Vere is an entirely different creation than Ahab, but no less instructive for today’s maritime professional. If Ahab is charismatic and irrational, Vere prides himself as a calm man of reason. We learn that while at sea Vere spends a great deal of time reading, mostly authors who “like Montaigne, honestly and in the spirit of common sense philosophize upon realities.”15 In Vere, Melville is satirizing the propensity for many leading 19th century thinkers to believe (or hope, as the case may be) that the rational, scientific approach can fully explain and temper human nature. Like Dostoevsky (perhaps the ultimate 19th century rebel against the pretensions of ‘the rational man’), Melville had seen too much of man’s depravity and cruelty to not find such unquestioning faith in science utterly ridiculous. 

John Claggart, Master-at-Arms of HMS Indomitable, is the obvious villain of Billy Budd, intent on destroying the innocent, Christ-like sailor impressed from merchant service.16 But it is Vere who should really be feared. With Claggart, we get evil as clear as day. With Vere, we get something even more dangerous and consequential. Vere knows Budd is innocent and Claggart is lying, yet he allows Budd to hang. Vere is not a bad man. He is torn between a fatherly love of Billy and what he views as his duty. But ironically the calm man of reason ultimately rejects putting Budd’s case to a more thorough, rational legal investigation ashore. Instead, he quickly succumbs to his panicky fears of mutiny. As it turns out, it is a short journey for Vere to rationalize the execution of an innocent man—it is legal, therefore justifiable. Geismar notes that “Melville hated most those rationalists, noble or criminal, who had repressed their own moving emotions and hence were unaware of them. Those are the true madmen, who give every appearance of decency, respectability, sobriety, ‘calm judgment’, and, in Vere’s case, of the class, property, and position to which Claggart aspired.”17 

Under pressure, leaders can rationalize doing the wrong thing. Leadership positions, particularly something as daunting as command at sea, inevitably place their inhabitants in the crucible. Therefore, when reading Billy Budd, the maritime leader should be wary to not quickly dismiss Vere as weak or corrupt. Be careful, Melville seems to warn, there are Veres everywhere, and one of them could be you. Literature will never give a discrete answer as to how leaders should act in every situation, but it can help them think about their own vulnerabilities.  

An Abiding Prophet

In his lifetime, Herman Melville published prose fiction in a short, 11-year period, from 1846–1857. By the 1860s he was already passing into obscurity. One can only imagine what the ensuing decades were like for him, working at the U.S. Customs House in New York City trying to make ends meet. It would be three decades after his death in 1891 before his writing would begin to be recognized for what it is—a great literature that remains important for all readers today, but especially for those who aspire to careers in a maritime service. While exploring the deepest mysteries of human nature, Melville forged a lasting bond between America’s maritime tradition and our enduring quest for answers to the hardest challenges of Sea Service leadership.

Bill Bray is a retired U.S. Navy captain and the deputy editor-in-chief of the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings magazine. An earlier version of his essay was published in Proceedings in February 2017.

Endnotes

1 Andrew Delbanco, Melville: His World and Work (New York: Random House, 2005), 41–50.

2 Delbanco, 60.

3 Delbanco, 312.

4 Nathaniel Philbrick, Why Read Moby-Dick? (New York: Penguin, 2011), 43.

5 Herman Melville, Moby Dick (New York: Penguin, 2006), 26.

6 Philbrick, 6.

7 Philbrick, 6.

8 Robert Hendrickson, American Literary Anecdotes (New York: Penguin, 1990), 155.

9 Herman Melville, Benito Cereno (Norwalk, CT: Easton Press, 2004), 129.

10 Melville, Benito Cereno, 91–92.

11 Melville, Moby-Dick, 176.

12 Melville, Moby-Dick, 133.

13 Melville, Moby-Dick, 558.

14 Melville, Moby-Dick, 560.

15 Herman Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor (Norwalk, CT: Easton Press, 2004), 23.

16 HMS Indomitable was the name Melville originally gave the British ship in Billy Budd.  In later drafts he changed it to HMS Bellipotent. The Easton edition is based on Elizabeth Treeman’s re-re-edited version. The discovery of the Billy Budd manuscript and its subsequent editing history is a fascinating story in itself. 

17 Maxwell Geismar, Introduction to Billy Budd (Norwalk, CT: Easton Press, 2004), xiii.

FEATURED IMAGE: An illustration from the 1902 Charles Scribner’s Sons edition of Moby-Dick depicting the final chase of the whale. Reproduced from Wikimedia Commons.

Strategy

A New Arctic Strategy for an Emerging Maritime Domain

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By Joshua Tallis

Coming on the heels of the new tri-service maritime strategy (“Advantage at Sea”), the Department of the Navy has now released an updated framework for the Arctic region— “A Blue Arctic: A Strategic Blueprint for the Arctic.” The document is a marked improvement on the brisk 2019 Navy version. It is particularly innovative (as strategies go) in including the Marine Corps in a “Blue/Green” approach to the region and in its navigation of cooperative themes in a moment dominated by great power competition. Yet it also has room for growth, in particular on how to connect loftier concepts with operational realities.

As the title implies, the strategy leans into framing the Arctic as “blue” (as opposed to “white”). The “Blue Arctic” conceit is likely to be among the document’s most enduring legacies. Coming on the tail end of a Trump presidency, the strategy may not be officially in force for long. As a result, its rhetorical contributions could outlast any specific policy proposals. On that score, the Blue Arctic push might be a success. Given the realities of climate change, the real novelty that the Navy, Marine Corps, and US policymakers must wrestle with in the Arctic’s future is how rapidly its maritime character is changing. It makes sense to grapple with that reality directly, and to give it a moniker that the bureaucracy can grab hold of.

That maritime focus does not displace the long-term role of aerospace defense in the Arctic, as attested by the enduring US-Canada partnership through the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). Yet going back to documents from the Obama administration, like the 2016 implementation framework for the 2013 national strategy, it was clear (via tasking to the Coast Guard and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) that the maritime angle was rising in importance. Similarly, the Blue Arctic framing well highlights emerging challenges—climate change is the central factor reshaping Arctic geopolitics. Coming with an opening seascape is the greater likelihood for accidents at sea and the prospect of miscalculation that accompanies rival navies operating near one another. So, as a framework for thinking about what is strategically salient in the Arctic today, the Blue Arctic is a helpful construct.

Similarly innovative is the strategy’s authorship. Although the document is not fully tri-service like its recent partner, it is notable as the first modern joint Navy/Marine Corps Arctic strategy. This is not just a bureaucratic feat. The Marine Corps has long-standing operational requirements in the Arctic—as evinced by High North amphibious exercises off Alaska and Norway. 

Integrating Navy and Marine Corps operations is part of a bigger trend, as seen in the commandant’s planning guidance and the release of new operational concepts like Expeditionary Advanced Basing Operations and Littoral Operations in Contested Environments (LOCE). Some of these, particularly LOCE, also feature in the Arctic strategy. Yet considering those operational concepts were developed for a potential crisis in the Pacific theater, their reapplication to the Arctic warrants some further scrutiny.

Where the document is at its best, however, is in the focus on the US’s objectives in the Arctic. The document should be lauded—in a moment dominated by great power competition—for foregrounding stability, governance, and peace as the main political objectives guiding US engagement in the Arctic. The invocation of peace through strength is vague and opens the potential for a more confrontational approach to the Arctic, but it does not require that interpretation.

This pivot to stability can also be seen, if subtly, in the document’s treatment of Russia and China. The Department of Defense’s 2019 Arctic strategy, by comparison, references Russia and China in near equal measure. The new Department of the Navy strategy leans slightly more to Russia, which makes sense for an Arctic document. Qualitatively, the document probably also does better differentiating between the two countries compared to the DOD document. That is most evident in its treatment of the theme of cooperation with Russia, where feasible. The strategy is shy about saying so out loud sometimes, but such is evidently the subtext behind the “new partners” section on page 16, for example.

The recent Air Force and the Space Force Arctic strategy offers another useful comparison. That document is forward leaning on the theme of cooperation—but mostly in the context of allies and partners (it names Greenland and Thule frequently to reinforce the Arctic equities of the two services). The Navy/Marine Corps strategy names names too, but with a savvy eye towards domestic readers. Alaska is an obvious hallmark of US Arctic strategies and the Alaska delegation is the key constituency on the Hill for Arctic products. But the Navy document also elevates Maine to new heights, likely given the state’s burgeoning economic emphasis on ties to Greenland and Senator King’s co-chairing of the Arctic caucus.

The move to focus on stability and engagement is not a full pivot from competition. In fact, as in the new tri-service maritime strategy, day-to-day competition is a notable undercurrent throughout the Arctic document. As I’ve written previously, the question of what it means to compete day-to-day for maritime services can be split along two axes: positional and political competition. 

Positional competition means posturing forces to deter a conflict or, failing that, creating the conditions for success in the event of a fight. That boils down to a persistent need for basing, access, and allies. 

Political competition is about continued US security and economic leadership of an international order that reflects its interests and values. That invites a competition over global agenda setting, defending maritime norms, and not strictly a perspective on winning the big fight. 

The new Arctic framework hints strongly at political competition when it talks about the need to compete in “a way that protects vital national interests and preserves regional security without undermining trust and triggering conflict.” That is, I believe, the right approach, and those responsible for implementing the strategy should look to the new tri-service document for its extended treatment of the idea of day-to-day competition.

Presence typically rhymes with competition for the Navy, and it is no surprise that the strategy emphasizes that issue at length. As others have noted, the strategy takes a big picture view of the Arctic as one space for policy-making (a circumpolar perspective). That is understandable for a document that lives at the high altitude of strategy, but it challenges building connective tissue between the idea of presence and specific operational recommendations on where presence is most useful to pursue stability, peace, or rule of law. Strategy is ultimately about helping shape hard choices on the application of finite resources, and when it comes to where presence is most needed, an implementation framework is particularly critical to help translate the broad (and standardly Navy) idea into practice.

Then there is the question of presence with what? In the Arctic, that question has implications for whether the Navy buys different kinds of assets (ice hardened vessels?) or how it plans to compete day-to-day in an austere domain. Submarines commonly operate in the Arctic, but they are high demand, low density assets and are famously bad at overt signaling (by design). Aircraft carriers have gone north (see exercises Northern Edge or Trident Juncture) but are even scarcer and can be quite provocative. Destroyers are versatile platforms but constrained in operational range by the presence of ice in some regions at some times of year. Because service strategies can most directly influence service activities—staffing, training, and equipping the fleet—the issue of platforms is also one that an implementation plan should tackle directly.

There is a lot more to the new blueprint. It laudably addresses the need to plug data gaps for issues of weather modeling, for example, and it emphasizes the role of the professional military education complex in better preparing future military leaders for the Arctic’s political and strategic character. Yet its greatest innovations may be the ones that require the least digging. The subtle but evident broadening of cooperation, to occasionally include Russia, is a key feature of addressing stability in the Arctic and managing China’s rise. Most evidently, the framework clearly stakes a claim to the Arctic as fundamentally maritime and littoral. Following on that geography, it invites the Navy and Marine Corps to collaborate strategically where so far they have mostly done so operationally. That marriage necessitates more critical analysis about how Blue/Green operational ideas translate to the Arctic, but the underlying shift the framework represents is a notable achievement in its own right.

Dr. Joshua Tallis is a research scientist at the Center for Naval Analyses and an adjunct professor at the George Washington University specializing in maritime security, polar affairs, and naval strategy. He is the author of the 2019 book, The War for Muddy Waters: Pirates, Terrorists, Traffickers, and Maritime Insecurity. The opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect those of CNA or the U.S. Navy.

Featured Image: Scientist carrying equipment on ice in front of RV Polarstern during the MOSAiC expedition in September 2019. (Wikimedia Commons)

Podcast

Bilge Pumps Episodes 31 & 32: New Year’s Resolutions for Navies and the Forward Presence Mission

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By Alex Clarke

What can be said, Jamie is away. It is the Christmas/Summer holidays in Australia so he has family stuff to do. But don’t worry, Alex and Drach have done their best to still provide a couple of episodes for your delectation! One is on New Year’s Resolutions – for navies, on how they could improve over the next year. The other, it’s on Chinese drones, the new LCS operating, groups, and the presence mission.

#Bilgepumps is still a newish series and new avenue, which may no longer boast the new car smell, in fact decidedly more of pineapple/irn bru smell with a hint of jaffa cake and the faintest whiff of cork. But we’re getting the impression it’s liked, so we’d very much like any comments, topic suggestions or ideas for artwork to be tweeted to us, the #Bilgepump crew (with #Bilgepumps), at Alex (@AC_NavalHistory), Drach (@Drachinifel), and Jamie (@Armouredcarrier). Or you can comment on our Youtube channels (listed down below).

Download Bilge Pumps Episode 31: New Year’s Resolutions 2021

Download Bilge Pumps Episode 32: Geeks Alone Discussing Presence

Links

1. Dr. Alex Clarke’s Youtube Channel
2. Drachinifel’s Youtube Channel
3. Jamie Seidel’s Youtube Channel

Alex Clarke is the producer of The Bilge Pumps podcast.

Contact the CIMSEC podcast team at [email protected].