The Marines have landed at Nantucket, and the situation is well in hand...
The Marines have landed at Nantucket, and the situation is well in hand...
In July and August of 1901, the residents of Nantucket may have been alarmed to see scores of Marines swarming the sand dunes of the eastern reaches of the island and warships at anchor in the sound. As part of the North Atlantic Squadron’s summer exercises, a detachment of Marines landed and set up a defense of an “advanced base” where the Navy would be able to refuel, rearm, resupply, and treat their wounded.
Mostly overlooked in the narrative of the evolution of the Marine Corps mission, the Nantucket advanced base exercises demonstrated an early and earnest effort by the Marines to contribute to the ability of the Navy to conduct fleet operations against a hostile navy in foreign waters.
The Spanish-American War of 1898 had been a proof-of-concept template for 20th century U.S. Navy doctrine, and the culmination of two decades of evolution. Following war plans developed at the Naval War College, the Navy successfully located, closed with, and destroyed the Spanish Navy at Manila Bay and Santiago de Cuba. These engagements demonstrated that the efforts of the Navy on the 1880s and 1890s, devoted to training, technology, and professionalism, contributed to the defense of national interests.
Following the rapid demobilization following the Civil War, and the embarrassment of the Virginius Affair in 1873,[1] the U.S. Navy embarked on a long and deliberate effort to improve the organization, and training of its officer corps. The Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), United States Naval Institute (USNI), Proceedings Magazine, and the Naval War College (NWC) are concrete examples of the Navy boosting the professionalism and competence of an officer corps in transition.
Also concerned with the decline of the Navy, Congress and presidential administrations from both parties slowly put the Navy on a path to compete with continental fleets and to develop tactics utilizing ships fighting in squadrons.[2] New appropriations allowed the Navy to upgrade from sail and wooden hulls to steam and armored hulls; the coastal, decrepit leftovers from the Civil War were no competition for continental navies.
These movements coincided with new economic and strategic thought exemplified in the writings of Alfred Thayer Mahan and Frederick Jackson Turner; naval leaders recognized the exceptionalism exemplified by the United States, and amplified the requirement for fleets that could influence foreign policy in distant regions “over the seas”.
The “culture of the quarterdeck”, prevalent among the officers of the sail Navy, was replaced by professional “mechanists” (interested in technology and engineering) and “strategists”[3]. The Navy shifted its mission, from solo ships of the line conducting Naval diplomacy to squadrons and fleets able to fight larger engagements in formations. This shift that would be essential should the U.S. wish to compete with modern continental navies. Lagging behind the theoretical and professional developments, but still salient, the Navy embarked in engineering and scientific development of weapons, armor, propulsion, and naval architecture to place its sailors and officers on equal footing with continental navies.
Despite these notable improvements, the war with Spain demonstrated that a capable Navy required a permanent level of leadership between the civilian Secretary of the Navy, and the regional fleet commands and the commissars directing their bureau fiefdoms. Secretary John Long convened a Navy War Board during the emergency to cover for this shortcoming; following the war, based on this board’s success, he convened a “General Board” to “to ensure efficient preparation of the fleet in case of war and for the naval defense of the coast.”[4]
While the Navy capably handled the Armada at every turn, the war with Spain also exposed Navy shortcomings in the realm of naval logistics, and the sustainment of the fleet in foreign waters. In conducting operations on the other side of the planet, the fleet needed safe harbors within which to refuel, resupply, and repair the increasingly technical ships of the line.[5]
Secretary Long’s General Board was led by the hero of Manila Bay, Admiral George Dewey, USN, and was composed of senior Navy officers, all reformers labeled by some as “Mahanists”, and Brigadier General Commandant of the Marine Corps Charles Heywood, USMC. The board’s means of steering the course of the Navy was through the conduct of studies and preparing reports for presentation to the Secretary. In their first years the reports pertained to establishing overseas bases, new coaling stations for the fleet, and use of Marines in an Advanced Base Mission.[6]
Prior to the war, the Marine Corps hadn’t been challenged to look at how they supported Navy strategic doctrine— tradition placed the Marines aboard ship for security, manning secondary weapons, and assisting in gunboat diplomacy by providing muscle to protect “national interests” in foreign lands. No role was posited internally in supporting the advancement of naval strategy. As a result, the Marine Corps remained doctrinally unsophisticated, despite its nearly exclusive relationship with the Navy.
1898 forced the Navy to hold the Marine Corps to account in supporting naval operations beyond providing security aboard ships and navy yards. To conduct operations in hostile waters, the Navy would have to establish the ability to build bases where the fleet could refuel, repair, and replenish in peace. In securing and protecting these harbors, the Marine Corps found itself a key to naval operations in enemy waters.
Following the end of hostilities, and the tours of approbation for the Naval heroes, the Department of the Navy settled in to building the infrastructure for a truly global fleet. At the top of the agenda was securing coaling points at various strategic locations, and colliers to transfer coal. Of particular interest is the aim to turn recent foreign acquisitions, in Hawaii, Samoa, Guam, Porto Rico, and the Philippines, as well as in the Caribbean at the desert archipelago of Dry Tortugas. These are spots where the Navy would be able to establish permanent defenses, in most cases manned by new Marine battalions and companies, but the question of what type of formation would be available for expeditionary efforts?[7]
The Marines had roughly established a model at Guantanamo. With the start of war with Spain, the Secretary of the Navy, John D. Long, ordered Colonel Commandant Charles Heywood, USMC, to assemble two battalions of Marines for service over the seas. Stripping the Marine barracks of the Navy Yards on the east coast yielded Heywood only one battalion, composed of five companies of infantry, and one of artillery.
In June of 1898, LtCol Robert Huntington, USMC, and his 1st Battalion of Marines landed at and secured the windward point above the harbor at Guantanamo Bay. This action allowed the ships of Sampson’s and Schley’s squadrons to refuel within a day’s cruise of Santiago de Cuba, instead of having to sail two days for Key West, in turn hemming the Spanish fleet in.
Without the secure harbor, the Navy would have had to continue with the tenuous act of stationary coaling of cruisers with the risk of a surprise attack from either land or sea or leave gaps where the Spanish fleet might escape to open water. The Marines came only equipped with small arms and standard hand tools for trenching, relying on standard flag signaling to communicate with ships offshore, but made the most they could out of having organic artillery and machine gun support. Naval gunfire provided much needed support to the Marines on Guantanamo’s arid slopes but showed a need for better coordination. To support the Navy more ably in this new “Advanced Base” mission, the Marines would need additional resources.
Since the 1880s, the Marine Corps had been sending officers to the Army’s Artillery School, and the Navy’s Torpedo School, to expand their knowledge beyond basic drill, marksmanship, and the military courtesies common to performing security functions aboard ship and in Navy Yards. Attendance at these schools was largely up to whether the yards could spare one or two lieutenants or captains for several months; the Commandant of the Marine Corps pleaded perennially that he was short of officers and men required to efficiently staff all posts of the Corps. The Marine Corps also conducted an annual School of Application at the DC barracks, training junior officers and NCOs in the technical aspects of position and rank. To provide an effective defense of the fleet in remote foreign harbors, the Marine Corps would require technical abilities outside of the standard infantry drill.[8]
In the May of 1901, the Navy and Marine Corps convened a special training course at the Torpedo School at the Newport. Marines took a course of instruction in matters not covered in their normal duties aboard ship or in barracks. This instruction would be required to take part in engaging enemy navy forces, using mines, obstacles, surveillance, and direct fire weapons. While these weapons were all emplaced defensively, projecting the Marines forward with them could be both strategic and operationally offensive in nature. Once training was completed, the Marines would be form a cadre of a larger unit taking part in the North Atlantic Squadron’s summer exercises, as designed by the Naval War College.
Major Charles A. Doyen, USMC commanded the detachment, taking over from Major H.C. Haines, USMC, when Haines’ duties on the staff of the Naval War College at Newport prevented him from dedicating all his time to training Marines in the science and employment of mines, torpedoes, telegraphy, spotlights, and defenses. Reporting to Doyen were four officers, twenty sergeants, and twenty privates. As was standard for the Marine Corps of the era, the unit was ad hoc, with Marines being assigned from Portsmouth, Newport, New York, DC, and Annapolis.
Training included the employment of shore based, defensive torpedoes, and mines, explosive devices tethered underwater, to created barriers for opposing fleets attempting to enter a protected harbor. These mines could be contact triggered, or remotely by electrical circuits, maintained by Marines ashore. To identify enemy ships, the Marines fielded large naval search lights, now used for decades aboard ship. To coordinate with higher command, the Marines would employ land phones, connected to a network through wires laid above ground, and signal lights to communicate with the fleet. Marines were required to deploy trenches for further communications and protection from raiding enemy warships. Most importantly to the defense of the fleet, Marines would position naval guns ashore; flat-trajectory naval rifles, identical to those affixed to the deck of Navy warships. These would be manhandled ashore by Marines, and emplaced atop large timber platforms to pick off enemy ships channelized by searchlights and naval mines.
Perhaps one of the most interesting anti-ship weapons employed by the Marines was the shore launched torpedo—a bank of tubes would be set up on a platform on shore, with a trench dug out to deeper water on the beach. Compressed air would launch an anti-ship torpedo from the tube, it would splash in the water-filled trench, and burn its way out to the target ship offshore.[9]
The concept of the defense of advanced bases was not limited to the use of mines, torpedoes, naval rifles, and obstacles; these were a large part of the “fixed unit”. The defenses of the advanced base would also require a “mobile unit”, an ocean-going fire-brigade capable of landing either in defense of the base, or at a point to defeat or cut off enemy forces facing the fleet.[10]
On July 5, 1901, USS KEARSARGE, USS ALABAMA, and USS MASSACHUSETTS set sail from Newport, RI for the North Atlantic Squadron’s summer exercises. On July 8, the ships anchored off the north coast of Nantucket, to land Marines who would establish a naval base where the fleet could rearm, refuel, and repair itself.[11]
The force landed at Nantucket was not on the scale of that at Guantanamo. Heavy on firepower, the unit was two thirds smaller than Huntington’s Battalion. KEARSARGE contributed a 5”/40 caliber deck gun, and ALABAMA contributed a 6”/40 caliber Mark 4-gun, and six naval mines. MASSACHUSETTS contributed two torpedo tubes, two 3-lb guns and two 6-lb guns, and four naval mines. The forty-five Marines that took place in the Torpedo School training were augmented by 150 Marines from the ships’ detachments of the North Atlantic Squadron. Despite an unsurpassed growth of the Marine Corps, fielding no less than six battalions of Marines at Olongapo in the Philippines, the Marine Corps remained reluctant to garrison Marines in ready companies or battalions for immediate deployment stateside.
Within sight of the residents of Nantucket, the fleet commenced “firing” on the beach below Great Point.[12] With the beaches prepped by Naval Gun Fire, the order to land the landing force was given, and khaki clad Marines were shuttled ashore. As no dedicated landing craft had been developed by the Navy yet, whaleboats carrying Marines were towed by steam launches to the beach. Aboard ship, deck guns were dismantled and loaded in additional whaleboats. The guns were tugged ashore, where they were lifted from the boats with the use of blocks, tackle, and shears emplaced on the shoreline. Marines already ashore dug emplacements for the two larger guns, while the three-pounders and two-pounders were brought ashore. Once the emplacements were dug, with connected bunkers and magazines, the arduous process of moving the tubes and mounts commenced.
Two methods of moving the guns across the soft sand were attempted; the Marines from KEARSARGE attempted using a gun carriage running over planking and got enmired. The Marines from ALABAMA used a sledge with rollers with greater success. In the meantime, conical khaki wall tents were pitched in neat rows in the dunes, and the Marines assumed a standard camp routine—pickets at either end of the camp, a watch on the guns, with meals and formations announced by bugle.
With new obligations in the Philippines, Guam, Porto Rico, Las Tortugas and other warm weather climes, the Corps developed better equipment, weapons, and uniforms for use in the field, aboard ship, and in garrison.[13] Their uniforms reflected the experience of recent large scale deployments in Asia; in the fighting Boxers and Filipino rebels, cotton khaki was found to be cooler, dry quicker, and blended in with foliage better than wool, or the white linen fatigue uniforms occasionally issued. The Quartermaster issued a felt campaign cover, a predecessor of today’s DI cover, and webbing was issued in tans and browns. Marines followed the lead of the Army in adopting the Krag-Jorgenson in .30-40 Corps-wide, as fighting in the Philippines intensified.[14]
Several days after establishing camp, the Marines engaged in a practical application of deploying a live naval mine in the waters of Nantucket Sound. After assembly and arming the naval contact mine on the beach, it was towed into deeper water by Marines manning a whaleboat. Unfortunately for the Marines, the wind picked up, and they lost control of the mine, and it sank. The Marines rowed out to USS ALABAMA to borrow a grappling rig, with which they attempted find the mine in 40 feet of water. A day later, the Marines did finally capture said mine, reducing the hazard to boaters and merchant shipping in the area.
On 17 July, the Marine dismounted the guns, hauled them back to shore, broke camp, and reembarked on the ships of the fleet. Afterwards, they returned to Plymouth Grove, for ten days in camp to recoup from their week on Nantucket. Plymouth Grove had just recently been purchased by the Navy to serve as a coaling station for Navy ships sailing in and out of Newport.[15]
Rejoined by Major Doyen, they re-embarked on the warships for a second evolution on Nantucket. As chronicled in an article in the Nantucket Historical Society’s magazine they set up camp ashore again, with new exercises to prove the concept of using Marines to protect a harbor set up for naval operations.[16] Nantucket local author Edouard Stackpole located reporting from The Inquirer and Mirror on the Marines second occupation of the beach at Nantucket. On August 11, the Marines returned to Nantucket, landed in the afternoon, and set up their weapons in the dark. Once in place they awaited an assault on the camp defending the anchorage.
The second landing repeated the display of Marines deploying anti-ship weapons—guns, mines and torpedoes—but these actions would turn out to be only half of the eventual Advanced Base Force doctrine. The second half would be in providing amphibious infantry capable of repelling enemy infantry. During their second sojourn on the sands of Nantucket, Doyen’s Marines exercised the “mobile defense”—landing Marines from battleships in the middle of the night to provide support for the fixed defense where it was needed most.
When the Marines ashore came under fire from “enemy” ships, a mobile landing force, composed of the Marines from the shipboard detachments of KEARSARGE, MASSACHUSETTS, and ALABAMA landed in the night, reinforcing the unit ashore to amass a total of 500 Marines under arms. The assembled units created a defense in depth, using obstacles and units in remote locations tied in by telephone lines and observation. The fleet then departed the vicinity, leaving the Marines with orders to hold the harbor at any cost.
After a day of preparation, the Marines were guessing where any attack on the northeast corner of Nantucket might originate from. When “enemy” sailors in whaleboats began their landing in the dark, star shells illuminated the scene, and the defending Marines opened fire. After an intense mock fire-fight, the pace of fire dropped off, and the Marines awaited further action. By the time the sun rose, and fog lifted, it was clear the Marines had held the base.
On August 19, Doyen’s Marines packed up for the second time, returning to the ships of the fleet. A week later they disembarked in Brooklyn, putting the equipment and materials used in the extended training period in storage, and returned to the barracks from whence they came.
In this stand-down is the kernel of the conflict that the formation of the Advanced Base Force would cause. Over the next decade Navy reformers such as William F. Fullam would complain that the Marine Corps was shirking its duty to support the fleet with an Advanced Base Force. While the Navy and Marines would schedule annual ABF exercises, emergencies, such as the accession of the Panama Canal Zone, and fighting in the jungles of the Philippines and Caribbean states took precedence—training plans all too often lose out to operational tempo.
In 1902, the Navy took control of Culebra, Puerto Rico, for the first of many ABF/Fleet exercises. Marines in the Caribbean took part in operations in Panama, supporting President Roosevelt’s strategic naval aims of controlling what would eventually be the Panama Canal. Marines at Olongopo took part in an arduous exercise moving 6” guns ashore at Grande Island, providing a defense of Subic Bay.
Yet the Marine Corps failed to mobilize a force in garrison to provide for an ABF year-round. Periodically, Marines were gathered, an exercise took place, then the equipment was put back in storage, and the unit stood down, with Marines returning to home units. Despite the largest growth the Marine Corps had ever experienced—from 2,676 in 1896 to 7,013 in 1902—the Marine Corps found it difficult to support every activity the Navy subscribed to. Operations we’d classifyx as expeditionary dominated time and effort in command and at the unit level.
In light of complaints, the Marine Corps opened the Advanced Base School in New London, CT, in 1910, which provided a cadre of Marines capable of leading exercises at Culebra in 1914 and other places finally demonstrating the Marines’ commitment to the ABF. However, events in Europe, and Mexico, in 1914 overcame the commitment to the strategic naval mission. By 1917, when the Marines entered the war as a co-equal of the Army in ground combat, John Lejeune made note of continued dedication to the mission.
“There was no available naval mission, therefore, for an advanced base or expeditionary force. At that time, our officers and men were clamoring for service. Their adventurous spirit would brook no delay. Their thoughts were constantly turned toward France.”[17]
The exercises at Nantucket in the summer of 1901 built upon the experience at Guantanamo in 1898, and fully cast the Marines’ lot in support of offensive maneuvers of the fleet. Without advanced bases, the fleet would not be able to fight continental navies, or Asiatic navies, in far-flung theaters. On March 3, 1921, Commandant of the Marine Corps John Lejeune would finally declare the establishment of the Advanced Base Force, allowing ensuing generations of Marines to continue innovating, and establishing the Fleet Marine Force, and Defense Battalions responsible for defeating the Japanese across the width of the Pacific Ocean and prosecuting much of the Cold War.
[1] The Spanish took into custody the crew of the VIRGINIUS, a U.S. merchant ship, accusing them of being filibusters supplying rebel forces in Cuba. The crew was sentenced to death, and a number of them were executed before British diplomatic efforts brought the emergency to an end. The U.S. Navy was unable to send a squadron to Cuba to protect the American sailors.
[2] Mobley, Scott. Progressives in Navy Blue: Maritime Strategy, American Empire, and the Transformation of U.S. Naval Identity 1873-1898, Naval Institute Press, 2018.
[3] Mobley, Scott. Progressives.
[4] “The General Board”, Rear Admiral Richard Wainwright, U. S. Navy, February 1922, Proceedings Vol. 48/2/22
[5] Best evidence of this was found in how a lack of coaling stations in friendly Caribbean states forced Cevera’s fleet into port at Santiago de Cuba. His ships therefore lacked the range to do much more than cruise Cuban waters, but the U.S. managed to keep them bottled up until the Armada made one suicidal dash for open water.
[6] Studies of the General Board from 1901 that explicitly addressed Marines and or the ABF, “Guns for the Defense of Asiatic Advanced Bases-18FEB01”, “Use of torpedoes for defense of advanced bases-18FEB01”, “Maneuvers of the North Atlantic Fleet-11MAR01”, “Furnishing steam to run air compressors for torpedo batteries ashore-24APR01”, “Organization of 4 Marine Companies for expeditionary field service-1NOV01”, and “Preparedness of Marine Corps for war-1NOV01”.
[7] The Marines role in the landing plans of the Navy was not 100% assured at all times. The Navy’s Bluejackets oftentimes outnumbered Marines in landing parties, and if a ship had no Marine detachment the officers and sailors of the ship were trained in rudimentary rifle drill, and small unit tactics. The Navy would maintain this doctrine through the 1960s, despite decades of the Fleet Marine Force’s existence.
[8] And this is a pertinent point today. With the advent of “Force Design 2030” in recent years, the Marine Corps has made a leap from fielding amphibious capable maneuver warfare units to those capable of “Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations”; these new units have shed much of their bulk, losing organic tank units, and Military Police companies, as well as some size in fighter and rotary wing squadrons, and in infantry units. The new units will be capable of performing missions more akin to the concept presented immediately following the end of the war with Spain.
[9] The employment of these weapons systems was as novel to Marines at the turn of the 19th century as is the employment of modern weapons to present day EABO mission Marines. The Marines protecting the South China Sea today from the threat of the People’s Republic of China will employ modern weapons to conduct sea denial, support sea control, or enable fleet sustainment. Satellite communications step in for land lines and phones, modern radars and radio emissions sensors replace searchlights, and anti-shipping missiles replace shore-emplaced naval rifles—what is old is new again.
[10] Keuhn,John T.“America’s First General Staff – A Short History of the Rise and Fall of thee General board of the Navy, 1900-1950”
[11] “Engaged in Mimic War” Boston Sunday Globe, July 14, 1901.
[12] Propellant charges, no projectiles. Lots of bang and smoke, no damage to the island.
[13] At Guantanamo, the uniform had been blue wool service uniforms with short-billed dark blue barracks caps. The Marine Quartermaster had contracted for tan linen tropical uniforms at the beginning of the war, but they weren’t delivered until after the battle for Guantanamo was over. Additionally, the Marines had adopted a broad brimmed olive felt field cover, but it was delivered at the same time as the linen uniforms.
[14] In 1897 the Marines had adopted a modern, 6mm rifle, the Lee Navy, firing a bullet in a flatter trajectory than the long-serving Trapdoor Springfield. The Lee was quirky, with a straight pull bolt, and non-captured parts that easily escaped during take-down in field conditions.
[15] Plymouth Grove later became the Motor Torpedo Boat Training Center, where John F. Kennedy learned to skipper PT Boats.
[16] “When the U.S. Navy ‘Captured” Great Point in 1901” – Historic Nantucket Volume 29 July 1981 No.1, by Edouard A. Stackpole I.
[17] Lejeune, John. “The Reminiscences of a Marine”. Dorrance and Company, 1930.
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