SERVICE BEYOND THE SEAS: ADVANCED BASES, EXPEDITIONS, AND LANDING OPERATIONS - Section I

SERVICE BEYOND THE SEAS

ADVANCED BASES, EXPEDITIONS, AND LANDING OPERATIONS

1899-1923

 

SECTION ONE

A VISION OF THE ADVANCED BASE FORCE

The fleet has sailed from here, in search of decisive battle in enemy waters. The craggy island’s anchorage bustles as small craft move from shore to ship delivering supplies and repair material to the tenders. Further out, two colliers swing at anchor, awaiting the fleet’s return. 

Ashore, the sounds of Marines and sailors working compete with the constant rush of the trade winds blowing across the baking hills. Seabirds at the trash dump keen; the sound of ships’ bells and boats’ whistles travel over the water. The canvas walls of maintenance shops rustle in the constant wind. Inside the shops machinists fabricate repair parts for damaged plants and condensers. Across the company road a Marine work detail expands the latrine trench behind the bivouac tents; others stack supplies near the supply tents at the new wharf. Corpsmen and litter bearers transfer the sick and wounded from the canvas hospital to the hospital ship’s launch. 

These Marines are members of the Advanced Base Brigade. They wear khaki uniforms, with canvas leggings and felt olive field covers. Some are stripped to waist, or their white tee shirts, in the tropical heat. Two regiments are ashore. The first, the “fixed” regiment of the ABF[1] provide overwatch for the fleet’s maintenance and logistics facilities. They man 4.7-inch naval guns mounted in revetments dotting the ridgeline. Others tend to the 3-inch field guns positioned to either side of the entrance to the harbor. The gunners have dug their pieces into the coral slopes and affixed them to thick timber platforms that have also been manhandled up the hillside. Canvas tarps pitched over the guns provide a little shade for the gun crews but do little obscure the Marines from spying eyes. Ammunition carriers dig ready magazines into the hillside, and filling sandbags, improving their trenches and pathways.

Signalmen string comm wire or keep a watch on the ships at anchor; flags and semaphore will keep the landing force CO in touch with the fleet’s radios. Each of the guns, the command post, and searchlight positions are all wired into the main switchboard. In a separate tent communicators work on their wireless telegraph set. They’ve received special training in setting up special antenna to communicate with the mainland, or even the fleet, when atmospheric conditions will allow. The search lights will be manned from dusk till dawn, covering the approaches to the harbor, and the submarine minefield. Gunners in the machine gun positions above the surf-line clear brush to allow for interlocking fields of fire protecting the fixed regiment from the possibility of an enemy counterattack. 

In a position commanding a view of the entire harbor, the submarine mine specialists have established control stations where they can initiate remote detonation of naval mines; communications electricians check and double-check circuits to make sure the mines remain viable—should a circuit need maintenance, or a mine slips its mooring, the Marines have small boats and grapples on the beach to correct the malfunction. The engineers remain constantly busy, improving the defense and its concealment, and preparing secondary positions and trenches. 

Absorbing this tableau from above is a solitary Marine aviator, flying a frail biplane made of hickory, linen, and wire, powered by a 75-horsepower V-8 engine driving a pusher prop. The frail craft is buffeted by the trade winds and updrafts from the warm coral hills. The pilot of the fragile craft searches the horizon for the profile of a warship, keeping an eye on the waters below for any dark shape that could be a submarine. Should he spot anything, he’ll return to the rough airstrip near the beach, where he’ll land, or drop a weighted message for the communications Marines. His plane is unarmed; its sole mission is to provide eyes for the landing force. 

Meanwhile, Marines of the “mobile” regiment patrol the perimeter of the defense, and the hillsides of the island further out. They man lookouts, make sketch maps, practice small unit drills, maintain position camouflage, and fill sandbags to reinforce their existing defenses. At any time, they could be ordered to strike camp and board ships of the fleet. 

All Marines of the ABF, in both the fixed and mobile regiments, report to the landing force commander, a brigade commander and Colonel, who in turn reports to the fleet admiral. The two regiments number about 2,400 Marines and Corpsmen and have been specially selected and trained in the specialties required to support the mission. The fixed regiment is based at League Island, the Philadelphia Navy Yard, and they are the training cadre of the Advanced Base School. In time, the school will be seen as a key to the development of American amphibious doctrine in the first decades of the 20^th century. And though their mission is defined as the construction and defense of a logistics base for the fleet, these Marines are enabling an offensive naval operation. Control of the seas, and the ability to defeat the enemy fleet, requires advanced bases where the fleet can rearm, resupply, refuel, and tend to their wounded. 

 

INTRODUCTION

This is an idealized and imagined portrayal of an Advanced Base Brigade deployment in the years leading up to the Great War.[2] During this time, the U.S. Navy determined that the establishment of advanced bases was essential to the logistics framework supporting fleet operations in foreign waters. In-between the age of sail and the age of oil, a fleet was limited by how much coal its warships could carry. The inability of the Spanish navy to re-coal its warships headed towards the Caribbean in the spring of 1898 resulted in Cervera’s squadron finding itself trapped in harbor at Santiago de Cuba. Spain’s inability to supply its fleet resulted in the fleet’s destruction. The U.S. Navy recognized this requirement before the war began, and first assigned this mission, albeit in a minimally complex form, to the Battalion of Marines that landed at Guantanamo in June of 1898.

Under development since the end of the war with Spain, the advanced base force set the Marine Corps on a path towards modern-day amphibious operations. The watershed moment for the advanced base outfit was the fleet exercise at Culebra in January of 1914. With time, and perseverance, this assignment moved the service into a role vital to fleet operations and logistics and became the foundation of 20^th century American amphibious doctrine.[3]

Exercises in the Atlantic, and Caribbean, as well as practical application of theories and methods in the Philippines, the Caribbean, and in Central America, transformed the theories of naval strategists of the 19^th century into the capabilities demonstrated in the Pacific Campaign of the 1940s. The Advanced Base Force mission wasn’t the only activity that contributed to the development of American amphibious doctrine at the time; “traditional” landings parties of Marines and Bluejackets from the crews of cruisers and battleships evolved to their furthest limit, culminating in the combined landing force that took and occupied Vera Cruz in the spring of 1914. Additionally, as the U.S. maintained its expanded overseas protectorates, the persistent deployments of expeditionary battalions and regiments provided a framework for maintaining organization and readiness of units aboard transports. “Pete” Ellis referred to these operations as “Expeditions in ‘Near’ Wars”.[4] As a schism developed between camps of Marine officers over the direction of the Corps — towards the advanced base mission, or expeditionary work of a constabulary nature —the frequent deployments, landings, and landing exercises between 1898 and 1917 created a common experience amongst Marine Corps leadership. This common experience sowed the earth for the creation of a landing force philosophy, what we refer to today as amphibious doctrine. 

The more senior officers of the service, those commissioned between 1883 and 1898, were exclusively graduates of United States Naval Academy, most of whom recognized that the survival of the Marine Corps depended upon the ability of the service to make itself an essential player in naval operations. Opposing them were a more conservative breed, commissioned before 1881 and after 1898, mostly from civilian life, who held no innate loyalty to the Navy. They believed the Marine Corps could function in the traditional roles of the service — as a guard force aboard ship and in navy yards — or as expeditionary troops, filling a constabulary role in the new American territories, and in countries where American interests were at risk. 

The General Board of the Navy — led by Admiral George Dewey — and perversely, an Army incapable of delivering support to the fleet, determined the course of the Marine Corps. As the Army and the Navy were forever at odds, the friction caused by the Spanish war didn’t burnish the Army’s reputation as a partner in expeditionary operations. So the Navy offered the Marines the advanced base mission, which involved seizing and holding a defensive position from which the fleet could operate. Proponents of this mission, in the Navy and the Marine Corps, recognized it as a niche, but essential role, best suited to the Marine Corps. 

In a traditional survey of the Marine Corps history in the early 20^th century, one’s eye is typically drawn to the fighting in France during the Great War — for good reason — and then to the small wars fought in east Asia and countries surrounding the Caribbean. Studying the development of the Marines’ landing operations, fills the voids surrounding these combat actions and provides a foundation for study of the Pacific War — the lieutenants and captains making the landings in advanced base force exercises became the regimental and division commanders responsible for amphibious operations in the war with Japan.

For the purposes of this study and its focus on landing operations, it may be useful to define three types of operation involving a movement of troops from ship to shore. The first is the traditional “landing party” — an operation conducted by Bluejackets and Marines of a ship’s crew, normally to protect “American interests” ashore. The second is the “advanced base force” operation — the seizure of a harbor and surrounding terrain to establish a temporary naval base from which the fleet can operate. The last type I’ll cover is the “expeditionary landing” which involves placing infantry units from transport vessels ashore, possibly tactically, usually administratively, in support of on-shore operations. Expeditions were formed at the behest of the administration and the Secretary of the Navy to protect “American interests” in a foreign country, or support State Department objectives, or to join the Army in ground combat or an occupation of a foreign country. 

As the Navy and Marines accumulated knowledge and experience in the two decades between the war with Spain and the war in France, expeditionary landings could involve disembarking troops via a gangway at a pier, or making a landing across a beach, defended or not. Expeditionary operations could involve transports that were “combat loaded” — providing the landing force with material and weapons they would need in making a forced entry — or “administratively loaded” — maximizing shipboard space to carry the maximum amount of material and troops — dependent on what kind of landing planners were expecting. Advanced base force landings would best be “combat loaded” — last on, first off — but as the science behind loading men, artillery, ammunition, supplies, and all the equipment needed in building a base was new, and ships weren’t yet designed to deploy armed troops, friction could be expected. Any way you define these operations, and the tactical sophistication involved, the intent of expeditionary operations and landing party operations was often just to ensure the protection of American interests abroad, or “the sustained generation of new wealth through commerce”[5].

The Advance Base Force mission was novel to the U.S. Navy because it enabled the sustainment of fleet operations — establishing naval power in foreign waters. Prior to the birth of the “new Navy”, U.S. warships operated on their own, or in American waters. The ship’s captain was his own squadron commander, and he would be the representative of the United States most seen in foreign ports. By the time the U.S. and Spain went to war, the U.S. fleet regained a nominal capability of operations in foreign waters, if safe ports and coaling stations were made available to them (my words). Definitions aside, any of these operations contributed to Mahan’s overarching concept, “American sea power”.

And while navies had been landing troops on hostile shores for centuries, and at times under fire, the “forced entry” type of operation — one where an assaulting force crosses a contested beach under fire — was generally not a consideration in American planners’ minds at the time. As they gained experience in landing operations, developing a greater degree of sophistication, and allowing their imaginations to expand, offensive landing operations gradually entered their portfolios. In the United States, it was Marine officers assigned to the Naval War College who explored these possibilities at the same time the service gained experience in the Advanced Base Force mission. 

The popular telling of Marine Corps history paints a straight, broad, line from Marines landing to capture supplies at Nassau in 1776, through the landings of the Pacific War, to the Marine Expeditionary Units dispatched about the globe today. This is tradition. The Marines are a sea-going service. But it was the little-remembered advanced base mission that formed the nucleus of landing doctrine which would eventually fall under the definition of amphibious operations. The lessons learned from repeatedly embarking infantry and artillery units aboard transports — including “combat-loading” vessels — paired with expanding force capabilities using equipment and weapons not found in traditional infantry units, allowed the Marine Corps to develop into a unique fighting organization. Operating as an arm of, and in conjunction with, the fleet, making landings “in accordance with sound tactical principles”[6] provided the service a foundation from which modern operations are possible. 

In the period between the war with Spain and the Great War, Marines played an increasingly larger role in Navy exercises, honing and expanding their ability to execute their assigned mission. Providing advanced bases where the Navy could refuel, rearm, and care for their wounded, made the Marines an essential partner in naval operations in the 20^th century. Compared to their previous 125-years’ service, this was a novel use of the service, reflecting the Navy’s interest in developing its logistical ability to support fleet operations in hostile waters. 

 

“Prior to the war with Spain the duties of the Marine Corps were limited to supplying marine detachments to vessels of the fleet, and to furnish guards for the navy yards.”[7]

 

Many service histories treat the development of American amphibious capabilities as organic and presupposed. They link the expeditionary units afloat today as the natural progression from the Marines who manned the fighting tops of Navy square-riggers as sharpshooters. This lore is important to the service’s ethos. But the truth is a bit more nuanced, and complex.

Prior to 1898, and for a bit afterwards, when an overseas emergency arose, the Secretary of the Navy would order the Commandant Colonel of Marines to form an expeditionary unit “for service beyond the seas”. The commandant would in turn order the barracks commanders at navy yards to send all deployable men to a central embarkation point. At that point, often New York, or Philadelphia, or Norfolk, a senior barracks commander would muster an expeditionary unit, with companies of 100 Marines formed into battalions or regiments for the emergency. Composed of Marines and officers unfamiliar with each other, these units relied only on a common drill manual, and service tradition, to guide conduct and tactics. The Marine Corps owned no consolidated recruit depots, no maneuver areas, and conducted no formal basic training en masse. When a young man enlisted in the Marines he would take the oath, then travel to a barracks at a navy yard, where he would receive individual training from the sergeants and corporals serving in the barracks. With enough time under their belts, preferably a year, junior Marines would be assigned to the ship’s guard aboard a cruiser or dreadnought of the fleet. Aboard these ships they would provide security for the ship’s captain, and officers, and enforce ship’s regulations. Aboard ship, Marines were enforcers but could be called upon to man landing parties to take care of matters ashore. Landing parties, composed of the Marines and Bluejackets — enlisted sailors from the gunnery or deck divisions — could be tasked with going ashore to protect “American interests”. Sailors would form naval infantry companies aboard ship; multiple companies from a single ship would form a battalion; multiple ships’ battalions would form the “Naval Brigade” for service ashore. The Navy of the late 19^th century very much viewed their organic naval infantry, the Bluejackets, every bit the soldier as their ships’ Marines. The shipboard Marines would be attached to landing parties led by Navy officers, as separate companies within the battalion.[8]

The Department of the Navy wielded the Marine Corps in the 19^th century in an ad hoc and unsophisticated manner. Aside from annual exercises, and the odd emergency, the Naval Brigade was a two-dimensional organization. The concept of performing tactically complex land operations was beyond the drill manual they worked from. And the Marine Corps wasn’t in much better condition. Staff functions within a unit, beyond basic administrative and quartermaster duties, were alien to the Marines of the barracks and ships’ guards, unless they were officers and had attended an Army school. Administrative functions were well covered, but intelligence, planning, operations, and training functions would be additional duties for officers in an ad hoc battalion or regiment. Logistics relied on Marine Quartermasters, who were limited by what could be collected for expeditions; in the late 1800s, securing tentage for deploying units was a challenge. 

Making the conceptual leap from ships’ guards repelling boarders and navy yard guards forming ad hoc battalions to fully equipped, trained tactical units capable of forcible-entry landings across a contested beach didn’t occur organically. To accomplish this sea-change in organization and training, and a transformational promotion in capabilities, would require decades of practice, conflict, and failures before the Marine Corps realized its place in the 20^th century Navy. 

The changes required to make the U.S. Navy an equal to the great powers were accomplished due to the thoughts and actions of a unique cohort of officers, first in the Navy, and then in the Marines. As Navy officer made ports of call around the world, “showing the flag” and representing “American interests”, they compared their lot with the navies of Europe and South America. Congressional austerity imposed on the Navy following the Civil War caused the fleet to atrophy and founder. 

Nothing revealed the descent of the Navy as much as the VIRGINIUS Affair; VIRGINIUS, a merchant ship and filibuster was seized by the Spanish in Cuba, the crew accused of running guns to Cuban rebels. When the Spanish began executing the crew of the ship, the United States Navy was incapable of mounting an effective response. The crisis ended only after the British intervened and managed to end the executions. Rebounding from this foreign relations disaster, U.S. Navy leadership gathered available ships to form a squadron for maneuvers at Key West. They learned what they could and couldn’t do. Some sought to improve what the officer corps learned, others how to fight the fleet. In ensuing years, increased appropriations allowed these men to experiment with new technologies for the fleet. They created an Office of Naval Intelligence to keep up with information on foreign peers’ technology and training. In fits and starts they opened the Naval War College, to give leaders “some idea of the principles of strategy.”[9]

As the Navy sought to improve its ability to fight and protect the United States and “American interests” overseas, progressive Marine officers sought to reform their own officer corps. Following the Civil War, the largest challenges facing the Marine Corps were a sclerotic officer promotions system, anemic appropriations, and chronic desertions. Officers in line for advancement were waiting for those higher-up on the promotions list to retire or die. Barracks were old and run-down, bordering on unsanitary, and service life offered little enrichment for enlisted Marines.[10] Reform-minded officers sought a restructure of the promotions system, as much out of self-interest as for the betterment of the service. 

When Congress authorized commissioning Naval Academy graduates as Marine Corps 2^nd Lieutenants beginning in 1883, they provided the service with a pipeline of the dominant leaders for the first part of the 20^th century. Given the frequent existential threats the service faced from Navy reformers, it served the Marine Corps well to have junior officers who had been exposed to and understood the Navy as they advanced through their careers. Navy reformers repeatedly attempted to remove Marines from their shipboard duties. Officers of the “new navy” regarded the ships’ guards as an anachronistic impediment to stronger officers and petty officers. As quality of life improved for sailors aboard ship, and they became better educated and immersed in technical knowledge, the threat of mutiny receded. Navy reformers regarded the Marines more useful as an expeditionary force, garrisoned as regiments on shore, ready for deployment with the Navy. 

In addition to the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) and the Naval War College (NWC), civilian leaders of Department of the Navy periodically turned to boards of experts within the service. During the war with Spain, the Navy War Board offered guidance for acquisitions and strategy. Following the war, the General Board of the Navy, and the Combined Army-Navy Board sometimes, offered opinions and guidance on how the Navy could best compete with near-peer navies. Germany and Japan emerged at the greatest threat to U.S. holdings and interests. The General Board directed fleet exercises off the coast of New England, in the Caribbean at Culebra, and in the Philippines to involve the Marine Corps in the role of supporting naval operations. These exercises helped establish the necessity of the Advanced Base Force and would play a part in its ongoing survival of the Marine Corps in the face of political and interservice attacks. As much as the performance of the Marine Corps in expeditionary missions and supporting Army missions contributed to the reputation of the Corps, the continued development of landing doctrine and capabilities in support of Navy operations would prove key to the survival of the service. The General Board of the Navy played a dominant role the in developing the new capabilities and competencies of the Marine Corps. 

The expeditionary interventions the Marine Corps made in this era, and some of the landing operations, are often referred to in the frame of “small wars” or the “banana wars”. For various reasons they receive more attention than the development of the Advanced Base Force (ABF) and landing operation doctrine. The development of today’s American amphibious doctrine is largely regarded as an organic development, or fulfillment of destiny. The struggles of the ABF are not comprehensively covered or presented; misunderstandings of the development abound with the general perception of the ABF being a “defensive” mission at the top of the list. Few properly place it in the conduct of offensive navaloperations. To meet the enemy fleet, and engage in decisive battle, the Navy would need to project its logistics capabilities forward. The Marines of the ABF would be responsible for the placement of the fleet in foreign waters. So, between the well-chronicled expeditionary interventions of the era, and landing operations executed by Bluejackets and Marines of the fleet, it’s worth our time to consider the complexity and repetition of ABF Marines preparing for landing operations. During the twenty years between the end of the war with Spain, and the Great War, the Department of the Navy mobilized Marine expeditionary units numerous times. This repetition built a familiarity between the Navy and Marines (not always a positive thing) and furnished the Corps with experience in loading ships and unloading them with a degree of efficiency only limited by the archaic architecture of the ships being used. Many of the junior officers participating in landing exercises in the Philippines and Caribbean during this period would be the generals who led Marines in the fight across the Pacific. As these men also participated in training the Army in amphibious operations after 1940 the experience gained by repetition was priceless. The Army didn’t have this experience, and didn’t interest itself much in landing doctrine, except for policies and procedures required to be passengers on seagoing transport.[11]

And while various authors have indicated that the competition with Japan prior to the war influenced force design, it’s useful to examine the intra-service factors that contributed to doctrine development. Competition between the Army and the Navy, and the decision which organization would be responsible for the advanced base mission would not only effect the Marine Corps’ mission, but its continued independence from the Army. 

The development of the Marine Corps Advanced Base Force, which eventually laid the groundwork of amphibious doctrine, was also a reaction to the greater geo-political challenges of the United States being a sea-going power. Like the recent transformation the Marine Corps has experienced in doctrine — Force Design 2030 — the transformation the service experienced during the first part of the 20^th century resulted from what we refer to today as international competition. Examining the experience of landing operations supporting the ABF mission, those  of an expeditionary nature, and landings made by ships’ companies will show the deliberate efforts of the General Board, and within the Marine Corps, to consciously develop new capabilities in the field of landing operations. 

 

BEFORE THE SPANISH WAR

“In the present day friendly, though foreign, ports are to be found all over the world; and their shelter is enough while peace prevails. It was not always so, nor does peace always endure, though the United States have been favored by so long a continuance of it.” – Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783

 

The development of the Advanced Base Force as an element of American amphibious doctrine finds its origins in the “New Navy” of the 1880s and 1890s. (rank) Stephen Bleeker Luce and (rank)Alfred Thayer Mahan and other plank-owners at the Naval War College (NWC) established that if the United States were to become a great nation, she would need to control the oceans’ highways in support of American commercial interests overseas. Luce wanted to train officers in strategic thought, in the style of von Clausewitz; Mahan, Luce’s preferred instructor, gravitated to the study of maritime history, the economies of nations, and “sea power”. When Henry Clay Taylor took the helm at the Naval War College, he introduced students to the practical applications of war-planning and war-gaming, using up-to-date intel gathered by the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI). The Naval War College became the de facto naval operations planning arm of the Navy. In their lessons, students learned that to support a wide-ranging fleet, the Navy would need forward-located bases where resupply and repair could occur unmolested. As competition for fuel and safe harbors would be great, a ground-combat unit would be required to establish and hold these bases.

In the Pacific, Germany and Japan had emerged as competitors to U.S. interests. In the Caribbean Germany, Britain, and Spain were identified as the most likely challengers to U.S. interests and the Monroe Doctrine. As students at the Naval War college became the Navy’s planners, using intelligence provided by the ONI, they focused on plans to protect American interests in the Pacific and Caribbean. Their motivations were very much in line with what would become John Hay’s ‘Open Door’ policy in China in 1899, and Roosevelt’s corollary in the western hemisphere. The Navy remained a continuation of the government’s foreign policy, by other means.

Marines had attended the Naval War College since its second class in 1886.[12] On staff at the NWC at the time, Captain Richard B. Wallach, USMC, presented lectures on infantry tactics, combined operations, and coastal defense. After the Japanese defeated China at Port Arthur in 1895 he was asked to present papers on Japanese infantry operations in coastal areas, and the landing of the 30,000-strong Japanese Second Army near Port Arthur.[13] Marines stationed in Seoul, and the U.S. legation at Pekin fed information on the Japanese use of forces in landing operations. Of interest to the logistically curious, the Japanese use of advanced naval bases in the littoral approach to Port Arthur was readily available. 

When Theodore Roosevelt, an author of a history on the naval war of 1812, and past lecturer at the NWC, became Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1897, he solicited plans from the war planning group on how to protect the Hawaiian Islands from Japanese encroachment, and to counter Spain in Cuba. Both potential fights would be beyond sustained operational range of U.S. warships. Advanced bases would be required. 

 

THE SPLENDID LITTLE WAR

“On June 7 the MARBLEHEAD and YANKEE took possession of the lower bay of Guantanamo as a harbor of refuge for the fleet, and on June 10 the first battalion of marines was landed there and went into camp. For three days and nights these men, supported by the MARBLEHEAD and DOLPHIN, fought almost constantly. The position which they defended was a most important one for the fleet, as it was necessary to have near at hand a harbor in which ships could be coaled and repaired in safety.”[14]

 

In the spring of 1898, war with Spain became fait accompli. Captain William Sampson, the commander of the fleet preparing to blockade Cuba, requested from Navy Secretary John Long two battalions of Marines to accompany his force. Despite a recent increase in the size of his enlisted force, Colonel Commandant Charles Heywood could only muster one battalion; five companies of infantry, and one of artillery and Colt Machine Guns, assembled at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. To assemble this force, Heywood stripped Marine barracks from Maine to Norfolk of able-bodied men, robbing the Navy yards of their security in time of war. Once in Brooklyn, the battalion drilled per the manual, and officers introduced themselves to their men. When the Marines embarked a few days later, their mission remained a mystery, but their commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Huntington guessed the commandant was “to send me to Key West to guard a coal pile”.[15]

 

On the other side of the world, Admiral George Dewey’s Asiatic Squadron sailed into Manila Bay, mostly unmolested by Spanish shore defenses, and sank the Armada at anchor on May 1. On the 2^nd, he landed the Marine guards from his ships to accept the Spanish surrender of Corregidor. On the 3^rd, he landed Lt. Dion Williams and the Marines from USS BALTIMORE to destroy remaining Spanish artillery at the Cavite naval base. The day after that, Dewey landed Captain William Biddle with the USS OLYMPIA’s Marine guard, to occupy the Spanish arsenal at Cavite. Dewey had but a tenuous hold on Manila Bay,

“We had the city under our guns, as Farragut had New Orleans under his. But naval power can reach no farther ashore. For tenure of the land, you must have the man with a rifle.” – Admiral George Dewey, Manila Bay, 13MAY98[16]

 

Dewey reported that if he’d had the troops with him, he would have been able to take the city of Manila. [17] Instead, Cavite and Manila remained in a geopolitical vacuum until U.S. Army occupiers arrived in June. The Army relieved the small Marine detachment guarding the arsenal, and the Marines returned to BALTIMORE and OLYMPIA.[18]

Following the cessation of hostilities, a bankrupted Spain sold Germany its Pacific islands and sold the United States the Philippines and Guam. President McKinley, interested in keeping the Philippines out of European hands, elected to purchase the Philippine archipelago in whole, not just Manila, or Luzon. 

Today, the name Guantanamo evokes different thoughts from those popular in 1898. Neither framing of the bay on the southeastern end of Cuba accurately captures its significance in terms of the development of American landing doctrine. During the war with Spain, the story of Huntington’s Battalion was covered in all the papers for a public eager for American victories. The papers framed it as the first fight to liberate the Cuban people from the oppressive Dons. Very few placed it in the context of the naval campaign against the Spanish. Unlike the Army, the Marines were never going to march on Havana. The objective of the landing and fight for Guantanamo wasn’t to liberate Cubans, or seize territory, but to provide the Navy with a safe base to operate. So it was unlike any previous Marine Corps landing operation. The Marines weren’t landing to protect American interests or defend a threatened legation. They weren’t conducting a raid to secure arms or ammunition. They weren’t seizing a fort that controlled a waterway. Because of the landing and fight, the ships of Sampson’s North Atlantic Squadron could take on coal in the sheltered harbor of Guantanamo, unmolested by Spanish artillery or rifle fire. 

As the Navy transitioned from sail to steam, fuel became the limiting factor for where the Navy could sail. In the American coastal waters, and sailing from ports in friendly nations, coal wasn’t an issue. As America looked outward, seeing competition with the navies of Europe and South America as inevitable, forward located bases would be essential. To secure forward located, or advanced, bases, a sea-going formation of infantry would be required to secure the fleet to rearm and repair. In 1890, Secretary of the Navy Benjamin Tracy convened a board of Navy leaders to assemble various contingency plans for war with foreign navies, including the Royal Navy.[19] In concert with the officers of the Naval War College, Alfred Thayer Mahan stated he believed the Marines capable of being the “backbone to any force landing on the enemy’s coast.”[20] Tracy convened a Board of Organization, Tactics and Drill, better known as the Greer Board, which looked at the Navy organization overall, and the roles of shipboard Marines. In a preemptive move, Commandant Colonel Charles G. McCawley recommended the creation of a “School of Application” which would provide a cadre of 200 Marines and officers at any time for deployment at the Secretary of the Navy’s behest. While the Greer Board recommended expanding the size of the Corps, it also recommended removing them from their traditional role of shipboard security and putting them in garrisons at shore stations as a force in readiness. 

Compared to previous significant landings, such as Mexico in 1845, Korea in 1871, or Panama in 1885, the landing at Guantanamo was integral to the Navy’s strategy to defeat the enemy on the high seas. Guantanamo was novel; the Marines did not land to protect American commercial interests or support an Army land campaign. Guantanamo was a departure from the norm, and the Marines were embarking on an altogether more sophisticated and important mission involving landing operations.[21]

 

ADVANCED BASES AND EXPEDITONARY LANDINGS

As in nearly all operation in which our naval forces are called upon to take part it is necessary to land men and guns, and as efficiency and success in such cases must always largely depend upon previous organization and drill, these matters are of the first importance and require special study and attention. 

-       “The Naval Brigade and Operations – A Handbook for Field Service, prepared from Official and Standard Authorities by H.K. Gilman, First Lieut., U.S.M.C. 1886

 

In June of 1898, an expeditionary battalion of Marines finally arrived to reinforce Dewey’s squadron at the Cavite navy base and arsenal. They arrived on an Army transport with elements of the Eighth Army Corps, which was there to fight the Spanish for control of the city of Manila and Luzon. After a sham battle, the Army began their occupation of the Philippines. The outbreak of fighting with Filipino rebels in February 1899 meant Army troops were no longer able to support the security of Cavite; the Navy requested additional expeditionary battalions of Marines for security. In June of 1899, Marines from the garrison at Cavite joined Bluejackets landing from USS PETREL and attacked rebel defenses at Noveleta. By the end of 1899 three expeditionary Marine battalions were deployed to the Cavite naval station, arriving via Navy and Army troop transports. The Marines and Navy did provide each other with mutual support in fighting Filipino rebels, alongside the Army. As the Navy blockaded rebel villages and harbors, they landed small units of Bluejackets and Marines to search for and destroy the enemy at numerous points spread across the enormous archipelago. (do I want to mention Samar here?) 

In February of 1899 Spain and the United States completed the Treaty of Paris, ending the war, and the U.S. purchased the Philippines from Spain for $20,000,000. The U.S. Navy mobilized its resources to improve its stance against competitors. A new personnel act authorized a further expansion of the Marine Corps; Commandant Heywood was allowed to enlist a total of 5,520 Marines and have 187 commissioned officers on the rolls. Secretary of the Navy, John D. Long, quickly put these Marines to work, in company and battalion sized units, to provide security in newly acquired shore stations; Cavite arsenal and naval station on Manila Bay; the new territories of Hawai’i, Guam and Porto Rico; occupied Cuba; and Dry Tortugas in the Gulf of Mexico. Learning from Spain’s inability to secure coal for her Armada in Atlantic and Caribbean ports, the Navy recognized the need for forward located bases and explored the purchase of additional colliers and new coaling depots in the continental United States. As Congress authorized further expansion to the Navy to tend to the new territories, the Navy and Marines continued in their traditional pre-war missions, but on a broader scale; missions to Pekin and Nicaragua in 1898 and 1899, and in Samoa in 1899, showed how Marines from forward-deployed shore stations and ships of the line could respond quickly to emergencies in more distant locations. When the insurrection broke out in the Philippines in February 1899, the Marines were on hand to assist the Army, and Navy. Garrisoning navy bases overseas, and fighting an insurrection showed the increased operational tempo the Marine Corps would experience in the 20^th century.[22]

 

LANDING PARTIES AND EXPEDITIONS

With the victory at Guantanamo Bay, one might assume that the Marine Corps was the choice to defend advanced bases. Following the Spanish war, this wasn’t such a certain thing. The Army, which had traditionally controlled the defense of coast and the approaches to major American harbors using its forts and artillery regiments, was in the process of post-war reorganization and creating the Coast Artillery Corps. Allowing the Marines to insert themselves into the defense of Navy bases was perceived as a political threat to the Army. 

And the Navy was heavily invested in the conduct of landing parties from its warships using its own Bluejackets as naval infantry. Ships’ divisions surrendered sailors for landing companies and battalions, which on paper formed the xxxxx which were required to drill regularly. The Navy invested in the accoutrements necessary to outfit these companies, and provided mobile artillery, in the form of wheeled landing-guns. The Navy periodically issued an updated landing manual, which was a combined drill manual and procedures manual for officers handling landing units. Drill was a standard requirement for cadets at the Naval Academy, and officers in the fleet. It was typical, when the Navy needed to intervene in foreign countries, the landing parties of the fleet were composed of Bluejackets and Marines, with the sailors outnumbering the Marines often. Both Marines and sailors were required to become proficient handling ships’ whaleboats and the launches that towed them to shore. 

During the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, when a situation overseas became an emergency, the Secretary of the Navy would direct the Commandant of Marines to form companies or battalions from Marines in the barracks for service beyond the seas. The Commandant would transfer them from their home stations to a convenient navy yard for embarkation en masse. Before 1899, the Corps had no garrisoned units on standby for deployment; departing Marines would be taken off the guard duty roster, leaving the navy yards largely unguarded. The largest examples of this type of expeditionary mobilization occurred in 1885, for an emergency in Panama, and 1898, for the war with Spain. 

Shipboard Marines, the ships’ guards, were viewed by many in the Navy as interloping enforcers. The Marines enforced discipline aboard ship, which made them unpopular. In the eyes of Navy reformers, their presence isolated officers and senior petty officers from dealing with discipline within the ship’s crew. Fallout from the Marines’ relationship with the Navy manifested itself in the writing and actions of critics amongst the Navy’s officer corps, such as William Fullam and Bowman McCalla, who persistently demanded Marines be removed to stations ashore, in locations adjacent to naval stations, allowing for quick embarkation and emergency response. Naval reformers argued this move would grant the Marines abundant time for small unit training. Joint summer exercises with the fleet would strengthen leadership skills amongst the officer and petty officer corps. Marine leaders, conservatives and reformers alike, saw this move as an existential threat to the service.  

“The corps would be invaluable as a highly trained, homogeneous, and permanently organized body of infantry, ready at all times to embark and co-operate with the navy in service like that at Panama a few years ago.”[23]

Navy tradition led its officers to regard Bluejackets the equal or better of Marines. The Corps was not the only force that could effectively conduct landing operations and fight ashore.[24] Fleet exercises of the late 1800s deployed brigades of Bluejackets as naval infantry; nascent doctrine reviewed in essays submitted to the USNI expressed the belief that the naval landing party remained a serious tactical tool for ships’ captains, including ones that did not have Marine guards embarked. As the Navy was experimenting with the ships of its all-steel navy, the “Squadron of Evolution” embarked a battalion of the Massachusetts Naval Militia for summer exercises in 1890. They practiced gunnery, and made harbor attacks using spar mines launched by whaleboats. The culmination of the exercises was a landing operation against Deer Island in Boston Harbor, where the Militia joined a battalion of regular Bluejackets in making a landing on the island which was defended by ships’ Marines.[25]

The Navy would continue to regard the concept of the Naval Landing Party as effective and viable force well into the 20^th century, and would continue to issue an updated landing party manual from 1887 through the 1960s.[26]Interestingly, as the manuals were intended to instruct small unit leaders of naval infantry formations, they rarely mention Marines as part of the landing party, and nearly all of the illustrations depict Bluejackets outfitted with web gear and rifles. 

An additional competition to Marines defending advanced bases was the Army. Fresh off a series of awkward landings in Cuba and Porto Rico in the summer of 1898, and unable to support the Navy facilities at Cavite, the Army’s reputation in landing operations was tarnished within the opinions of Navy leadership. During the Spanish war the Army put itself in competition with the Navy in the purchase and leasing of troopships to move Major General William Rufus Shafter’s V Army Corps from Tampa to Cuba, and Major General Wesley Merritt’s VIII Army Corps to the Philippines. While they were purchasing the same vessels the Navy was seeking to purchase, the Army continued to demand Navy convoy escort. Based upon this, and some Civil War experiences, it appeared the Army regarded the Navy as a taxi service, not a fighting partner, or as the resident expert on moving troops overseas. 

 

THE GENERAL BOARD AND LANDING DOCTRINE

“A general board has been made, of which the Admiral is president, and the function of which is to consider questions relating to the efficient preparation of the fleet in case of war and for the naval defense of the coast.”[27]

 

The General Board of the Navy was the most important organization in the development of American landing doctrine in the first decade of the 20^th century. Secretary of the Navy John Long convened the Board, composed of nine officers, and led by the popular Admiral of the Navy, George Dewey. On 13 March 1900. Secretary Long issued General Order 544,

“The purpose of the Department in establishing this Board is to insure efficient preparation of the fleet in case of war and for the naval defense of the coast.”

While the General Board was not in the chain of command, it provided the civilian Secretary of the Navy with counsel on the growth and deployment of the service. The General Board acted upon studies and operational plans developed by the staff and students at the Naval War College, both Navy and Marine. Conversant with war gaming, and working with current intelligence, the NWC produced actionable recommendations, while showing students what course the Navy was set on. 

For a period, the General Board was the conscience of the burgeoning Navy; in the forefront, it advocated for modern capital ships with which to implement naval power. It also advocated for development in areas that supported fleet operations. The board did not overlook colliers, transports, torpedo boats, submarines and destroyers. All aspects of naval power came under the consideration of Admiral Dewey’s group. Pertaining to the Marines, the General Board recommended on where the Marines should reinforce garrisons, and whether it should devote resources in creating a “sea-going fire brigade” and where it should deploy an Advanced Base Force. 

With the very nature of the structure of the navy department and the evolution of the powers of the General Board, it became apparent that the Marine Corps could do very little on its own without the approval of the General Board. Considering the times, there may not have been anything inherently wrong with the situation.[28]

 

In doing so, the board may have ensured the survival of the United States Marines. In its influence on all matters, the Board would promote and assign the Marine Corps vital missions; the Board directed the muster of permanent Marine formations garrisoned at various shore stations, including the creation of an Advanced Base Force. After all, it was Dewey, who after defeating the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay in May of 1898, waited for weeks for a battalion of Marines to better secure a base from which he could operate, and he waited months for an Army expedition to take the city. The General Board, through its studies, made recommendations to the civilian leadership, that greatly influenced how the Marines would be deployed, what ships would be built, how the fleet would be designed, and how the U.S. would fight future naval wars. 

Joining Admiral Dewey on the board were; the chief of the Bureau of Navigation — the most influential of the bureaus as it controlled naval operations and assignments; the head of Naval Intelligence; the president of the Naval War College; and Colonel George C. Reid[29], Adjutant & Inspector, USMC. The Adjutant & Inspector of the Marines was the most influential officer on the commandant’s staff, having been appointed to the post in 1894 after thirty-years of service.[30] Reid’s appointment granted the Marines the chance to offer opinions on the Board’s deliberations. In its first year, the board requested Reid provide plans to position Marines and artillery at Culebra, off Porto Rico, at Samana on Santo Domingo, and at Guantanamo Bay. They asked him to provide details on the size and composition of the unit of Marines needed to defend such a base. The burgeoning competition in the Pacific identified itself in the Board’s request for Marines to garrison Cavite in support of Navy operations in the Philippines, and for naval planners at ONI and NWC to develop “campaign plans for different war situations in the Philippines and their vicinity” to counter competitors’ cruisers and their embarked naval brigades.[31]

Huntington’s Battalion “showed how important and useful it is to have a body of troops which can be quickly mobilized and sent on board transports, fully equipped for service ashore and afloat, to be used at the discretion of the commanding admiral” – Colonel Commandant Charles Heywood [32]

 

In 1900 the Navy continued to develop a coal station network spanning from the Philippines to Alaska to San Francisco, and from the Caribbean to Maine. In an acknowledgment of the need for Marines to be in readiness for the Advanced Base Mission, Brigadier General Commandant Heywood garrisoned a small battalion of three-hundred Marines at Annapolis, a cadre for a regiment that could be sent to Asia to allow the Navy to fight the great powers over access to China and protect the Philippines. In doing so, he de facto accepted the advanced base mission for the Marine Corps.[33]

The number of Marine expeditionary units in the Philippines grew from three battalions to six. Captain John T. “Handsome Jack” Myers, USMC, led a detail of Marines from Cavite to Subic Bay, where on 10 December 1899, they went ashore to “take charge of the Naval Station at Olongapo.”[34] The undeveloped Spanish facilities on Subic Bay offered a better deep-water port than either Manila or Cavite. Marines at Cavite joined the Army in conducting counter insurgency operations. The utility of having Marines forward based to protect “American interests” was fully displayed when an expeditionary battalion of Marines led by Major Littleton Waller joined the Army in a multi-national expedition to rescue the Pekin Legation from the Boxers. As more Marines arrived from ships of the Asiatic Squadron and the Philippines, Major William Biddle, USMC, assumed command and formed a regiment.[35]

The expeditionary missions conducted by Marines at Cavite and Olongopo set the die for Marine operations around the world. Marines from the expeditionary battalions provided security for the Navy, supported Army operations, and conducted their own counter-insurgency operations on the island of Samar. They honed patrolling and small unit skills, developed field craft abilities, and practiced company tactics; all useful competencies when they found themselves re-deploying to other forward hotspots. Their record of their actions in action against Filipino rebels and the Boxers in China, became fodder for barracks historians, passed down through the generations. 

Overlooked are the deployment preparations and logistics infrastructure developed to support those Marines in the field. The Marine Quartermaster, headquartered out of Philadelphia, learned how to provide units bound for the four corners of the globe with equipment, uniforms, and rations that would stand up to the elements, and up to enemy action. Prior to the war with Spain, finding sufficient tentage for Marine deployments was a periodic challenge to the Quartermaster’s office; after a period of supplying Marines in the Philippines, and other foreign shore stations, the Quartermaster Department matured and grew, and became a considerable organization within the Marine Corps. The Commandant and Quartermaster sought the appropriations to purchase or lease additional warehouse buildings in downtown Philadelphia. They developed the infrastructure for the service to manufacture its own uniforms and equipment, in keeping with the image of the service being more fiscally efficient than other services. Entering the 20^thcentury the Marine Corps lost many of it’s small-service limitations. 

In Chicago, on September 3, 1900, seventeen-year-old Earl Hancock Ellis, of Pratt, Kansas, enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. 

 

FIRST EXERCISES

Upon the recommendation of the General Board, and direction of the Secretary of the Navy, Major Charles A. Doyen, USMC, led a group of 44 Marines through a course in the employment of naval mines and torpedoes at Newport torpedo school in the spring of 1901. These Marines formed a cadre of the first advanced base unit slated for the exercise with the North Atlantic squadron in the summer of 1901. After an encampment in Rhode Island, the Marines sailed aboard the USS KEARSARGE, ALABAMA, and MASSACHUSETS for the east end of Nantucket, where they landed and set up a temporary advanced base. One hundred and fifty Marines from the ships’ guards joined the advance base trainees. The battalion dug revetments and emplaced platforms for deck guns removed from the ships; they set up torpedo tubes on the shore, providing an additional layer of cover for a naval minefield set in the approaches to the sheltered harbor. Marines erected obstacles and dug defensive positions in the dunes. They moved the guns from ship to shore by whaleboat in sub-assemblies, then manhandled the pieces across the beach into the dunes with only sledges, ropes, blocks and tackles, and the sweat equity of the Marines. They set up a hospital under canvas and organized a tent encampment for the Marine companies.

The technical aspects of wiring-in the defensive positions for communications, deploying the land-based torpedoes, and the installing control circuits for the minefield were skills greatly removed from those required of Marines just two years earlier.[36] Walking posts aboard ship or in a navy yard, guarding prisoners, and rifle drill would remain in the Marines’ skillset, but would be joined by 20^th century technical abilities. These Marines, and others from the fleet, under the command of Major Doyen, executed this mission twice that summer, defending the harbor and shores of Nantucket from the “enemy” fleet and landing parties composed of Bluejackets of the fleet. At the end of the exercise, the Marines reported back to the barracks from whence they came, and their equipment was put in storage at Brooklyn Navy Yard.[37]

The battalion of Marines at Annapolis the year prior remained under canvas as their barracks were under construction. 1^st Lt Logan Feland, USMC, oversaw the construction of said barracks. Prior to the war, and his service with the Kentucky Volunteers, Feland had been an associate in a New York City architecture firm. Feland had a Math degree in Mechanics and Astronomy, and an Engineering degree, so the Marine Corps would turn to him often to work out technical challenges in the employment of complex systems. 

In the Philippines, Major L.W.T. Waller took 300 Marines to the island of Samar, to exact retribution upon Filipino rebels responsible for the slaughter of a company of Army troops at Balangiga. Waller reported to the Army in the form of Brigadier General J.H. Smith, USA, and coordinated with the Navy to denying the population any access to fishing areas, or movement on coastal waters. Serving under Army command to suppress the rebellion did not work to advance landing doctrine much, but did show how expeditionary Marine Corps units could support Army operations in different areas. The experience gained in fighting Filipino rebels on Samar served as a model in how Marine expeditionary forces would conduct themselves in Caribbean and Central America locations. 

Theodore Roosevelt assumed the presidency following the assassination of William McKinley in September of 1901. Concerned about the security of rail line that crossed from Caribbean to the Pacific in the Colombian province of Panama, he ordered USS MARIETTA, IOWA, CONCORD, and RANGER to land their Marine guards in response to civil unrest in November 1901. Owned by Americans, the railway had been essential to American commerce since the 1850s. Successive administrations had engaged in exploration and diplomacy on the isthmus, intent on establishing a water route through Central America. Congress ratified the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty with Great Britain in November 1901, giving the United States sole control of any future Panama canal, quietly reasserting the maintenance of the Monroe Doctrine.

Significant transformation in the Marine Corps’ organization is not just a recent development, but when the General Board challenged Commandant Heywood to garrison three hundred Marines on shore as a force in readiness, it was interrupting one hundred and twenty-five years of tradition. Only a few years prior did the leadership of the Navy protest the Corps training a ship’s guard, on shore, prior to the commissioning of that warship. On the surface, it seems to be a sensible proposal — train a group of men together prior to their assignment,  as a unit, aboard USS BROOKLYN. Navy leaders balked at the Marines acting on their own in transferring individuals between duty stations, and seemed to resent that the Bureau of Navigation, and Newport Naval Station, were providing the time and space to train BROOKLYN’s ship guard without their approval.[38]

When the Secretary of the Navy directed Commandant Heywood to permanently form garrisoned units and units afloat, as a force in readiness for deployment, and requested of Congress an increase in the manning of the Corps, he was both solving and creating a series of challenges for the service. Increased manning was in response to expanded commitments guarding a myriad of new naval stations spread across the Philippines, the Pacific and the Caribbean. When these Marines arrived on station, the Secretary of the Navy showed no hesitation in committing them to additional emergencies. Operational tempo increased as manning levels increased; a self-fulfilling cycle of crisis and response.

Colonel George C. Reid continued providing Marine Corps representation on the General Board, while still serving as Adjutant & Inspector. 

“One of the last studies of 1901 addressed ‘Preparedness of the Marine Corps for War.’ These studies foreshadowed the later development of the Marine Advance Base Force as a shipborne ‘fire brigade’ for use to counter the Germans or in any other crisis where troops might be needed to secure sites ashore for a naval campaign.”[39]

Major H.C. Haines continued in his position as an instructor at the NWC.

 

THE USNA AND THE MARINES

At the turn of the century three cohorts of Marine officers populated the service. First, there remained the old timers — literally the grey-beards — who had been commissioned during or just after the Civil War. They were rapidly nearing retirement age. In their younger days, they had been accustomed to decades of alternating ship and shore assignments. Then, they had commanded ships’ guards or Marines at barracks aboard Navy yards. The second cohort were graduates of the Naval Academy at Annapolis. From 1883 until 1898, USNA provided the service fifty 2^ndlieutenants. These officers had taken all the same courses, and received all the same instruction as their Navy counterparts, and were most likely better equipped to understand the evolution of naval thought through the last two decades of the 19^th century. The last group were the new lieutenants who took their commissions during and after the war with Spain. Many of these new officers had earned colleges and university degrees, with a handful of NCOs who’d received meritorious commissions. Junior officers during the first decade of the century, they would learn the ins and outs of landing operations firsthand, and would become the company grade leaders in the Great War. Afterwards, they would study landing operations and become the amphibious warfare innovators in the 1930s. Some would become the colonels and generals who led the island-hopping campaign across the Pacific in the 40s. 

In June of 1883 the Marine Corps began commissioning its new second lieutenants from the United States Naval Academy. Proscribed by naval appropriations legislation, commissioning midshipmen returning from their two-year cruise after completing coursework at Annapolis as second lieutenants provided places for the Navy to put graduates in a Navy still hamstrung by austerity and the Marine Corps new officers with a solid education. So, by the turn of the century, when the Marine Corps was looking towards a new landing operation capability, providing the Navy with strategic flexibility, these officers were captains and majors, occupying company level command, and staff, billets. 

On the surface, it may be apparent how the USNA influenced attitudes within the service towards a changing mission. It seemed clear to all that the new missions, expeditionary deployments and advanced base landing operations, would supersede the ships’ guards assignment, but the question remained which one would be the Marines’ primary focus. Despite the earnest application of effort in the fleet exercises, not all Marine leaders were invested advocates for the new advanced base mission. The Marine Corps officer corps had long been divided over reform and innovation in the service, with some intent on expanding the Marines’ portfolio, and others focusing on maintenance of the status quo. When the stationing of Marines aboard Navy ships was challenged over the decades, the default response of the Marines was that serving as security, and manning secondary batteries aboard ships, was what the Corps was best suited to, and that they could perform those tasks cheaper than a bunch of sailors. The introduction and maturation of the USNA cohort became an emerging threat to this more conservative nature of the officer corps. 

The Marine Commandants who led the service during the General Board’s attempts to develop the Advanced Base Force, were fairly responsible for how well the service reacted. Colonel Charles Heywood (Commandant, 1891-1903) was the son of a Navy lieutenant who served off California during the Mexican War and was commissioned in 1858. George F. Elliot, (1903-1911), missed service in the Civil War, and received his commission as a Lieutenant of Marines after washing out of West Point in 1870. William P. Biddle (1911-1914), graduated from University of Pennsylvania and was commissioned in 1875. George Barnett (1914-1920) was one of the first USNA graduates to take officers to take a Marine commission after graduating from the Naval Academy in 1881. During each of their tenures as commandant, they each assigned officers to take instruction at the Naval War College, and endorsed Marine officers becoming instructors at Newport. 

So, were Marine officers who were graduates of the Naval Academy predisposed to new navalism? Marine officers attended the Naval War College in the years before the year with Spain, as Alfred Thayer Mahan and others proselytized the religion of world history, international economics, and sea power.[40] Marine officers posted to the barracks at navy yards socialized with officers on station and from the fleet. Marine officers on sea-duty shared wardrooms with Navy officers, many of whom attended the same Naval War College classes. And perhaps most importantly, Marine officers who’d graduated from the USNA had shared their formative years absorbing the same lectures and lessons as had their Navy peers had. Even William Fullam, a Navy officer often cast as a villain for his efforts to remove Marines from shipboard duty, said of Marine graduates of USNA:

The education of marine officers at Annapolis fits them perfectly for service in connection with the navy. Both the marine and the sailor will be rendered more efficient by such a course.[41]

 

By the time the new ABF mission was being rolled out, the non-academy, non-college educated cohort of Marine officers, many of whom were Civil War vets, was just beginning to retire: by the time the concept of the Advanced Base Force was fully developed, Marine USNA grads were being promoted to field grade and general officer rank.

 

ESTABLISHING AN ADVANCED BASE

In 1902 Marines built upon the lessons learned at Nantucket the summer before. On the recommendation of the General Board, and in conjunction with the fleet exercises of the Atlantic and Caribbean squadrons, the Marines built an advanced base on Culebra, building on concepts tested at Nantucket the previous summer.[42] USS ALABAMA and MASSACHUSETTS were manned to full complement and their Marines fitted out for field service, arriving with:

“a large quantity of lumber and tools, rapid-fire guns, spare parts, and accessories; a sailing launch, with all its equipment and spare parts, a whale boat, similarly complete, a dingey, and an ample supply of tackle, blocks, bolts, nails, wire, rope, etc.”[43]

 

Maj. H.C. Haines took his leave from the Naval War College, and led an expedition to Culebra, Porto Rico. His force included 2 junior officers, 11 NCOs, a drummer, a trumpeter, and 100 privates who provided a cadre for an advanced base. On 1 January 1902 the company landed from USS ALABAMA and USS MASSACHUSETTS. The collier USS LEONIDAS transported the majority of quartermaster and engineer stores, which had been kept in storage at the Brooklyn Navy Yard since the Nantucket exercise. Haines’ detachment established a semi-permanent camp on the north shore of Culebra’s Great Harbor, and before the fleet departed on February 2nd, the guns and mounts were landed by the detachment and put into storage. The Marines did what they could to improve the infrastructure of the defense of the island, as it wasn’t just an exercise location. Culebra had been selected by the General Board as a key point for fleet operations in the Caribbean along with Guantanamo Bay. 

Haines’ detachment departed on April 23^rd, due to lack of shelter for Marines during the rainy season — their tents kept blowing over. Major Haines returned to the Naval War College, but 1^st Lt. Leof M. Harding stayed on the island, with his wife and five-year old son, and conducted surveys to locate wharves and coal sheds, and planned out further work to be accomplished at the base in the fall.[44] With him were a Navy doctor, some corpsmen, and a squad of enlisted Marines. He would stay on the island for the next two years.

In the Philippines, on Samar, Littleton Waller’s expedition with the Army ended shortly after his disasterous march across the island. He survived the court martial — found not guilty — for the execution of eleven Filipino porters, but wasn’t formally punished for abandonment and deaths of 10 of his Marines. The Marines withdrew to Cavite and Olongopo. To accommodate the hardship of the expeditionary mission Headquarters Marine Corps established a rotation schedule, limiting individual Marines to only two or two-and-a-half years duty in the islands. By April 1902, the 1st Brigade was primarily regarded as a force-in-readiness for employment anywhere in the Asiatic area.[45] One of the Marines reporting to the Philippines in May was 2^nd Lt Earl H. “Pete” Ellis. (photo)

 

DION WILLIAMS AND WILLIAM FULLAM

“It seems to be well established that the debatable ground of the future is to be found on the shores of the Caribbean Sea and in the Far East, where governments are still unsettled and unsatisfactory, and the avarice of the land hungering nations may at any moment lead to a war that would involve us on the one hand to uphold the Monroe Doctrine, and on the other to prevent the partition of China and the consequent loss to our commerce.”[46]

 

Captain Dion Williams, USMC, who’d led BALTIMORE’s guard ashore at Cavite after Dewey’s victory at Manila Bay, wrote “The Defense of our Naval Stations” which appeared in the April 1902 issue of the Naval Institute’s Proceedings magazine. Captain Williams graduated from the Naval Academy in 1891 and was commissioned as a 2^ndLieutenant in 1893. He received training at the School of Application in Philadelphia and served at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and Mare Island before assignment to USS BALTIMORE. The article he submitted to Proceedings reflected the naval community’s vision of the advanced base force, and expeditionary missions, through their effect on naval operations. While these missions had been talked about for a decade, the essay showcased Williams as an early, voluble, proponent of landing doctrine. Among other things, Williams called for specialized training for Marines:

“Such a course would embrace theoretical and practical ordnance and gunnery, fortification works, mines and countermining, and torpedoes, with a theoretical and practical course in electricity incident to the work in planting and controlling mines, using searchlights and establishing telegraph and telephone lines.”

 

As interesting as Williams’ thoughts were, the rebuttal by William Fullam offers even greater insight on how the Navy wanted to employ Marines in support of fleet operations. Building on thoughts he’d written about a decade earlier in the Naval Institute’s Proceedings, Fullam stated:

“The marine corps, as an adjunct of the navy, would thus have a distinct and important field peculiarly its own—to look out for the shore-end of the situation in all naval offensive and defensive operations abroad and in our colonial possessions, leaving the army and the navy free to perform their strictly legitimate work on land and sea.”[47]

 

Fullam also advocated for a Marine battalion afloat, a sea-going force in readiness for whenever the fleet commander needed a trained infantry force equipped with crew served weapons and field artillery. In addition, he continued to advocate for the removal of Marine security guards from aboard the Navy’s capital ships; despite the Navy’s increased interest in dedicating landing doctrine as a function for the Corps, Marine leadership continued to view removal of Marines from the cruising fleet as a death-knell for the service. 

Fullam, USNA 1877, had been a leading voice in the Navy for reform of the Marine Corp. A few years older than any Marine Corps graduates of the Academy, he held strong views on the role shipboard Marines played; he viewed members of the Marine guards as unwanted enforcers and policemen. He held that their presence diminished the disciplinarian stature of petty officers and junior officers, preventing them from realizing their full potential as leaders. In his view, the Marines isolated the men from the ships’ officers, which in the increasingly technical steel navy was not desirable. 

He was not alone in holding these opinions. Other Navy officers, ship’s captains, had worked to keep Marines from joining the crews of newly commissioned ships, or lobbied for their removal.

At the same time, the Navy Department instructed Brigadier General Commandant Heywood to assemble and maintain a five-company battalion for upcoming winter exercises.[48] This directive moved the Marines towards finally having a garrisoned battalion at the ready to respond to events overseas. U.S. interest in a pan-isthmian canal grew and Britain largely ceded its influence in the Caribbean in return for increased autonomy in the “southern cone” of Latin America. U.S. interest in Panama shifted from control of the rail line to securing the rights to a a canal.[49]

The North Atlantic Squadron continued working with the Marine Corps, integrating landing operations with the summer exercises. The Navy put ships’ guards and embarked Marines from USS KEARSARGE, ALABAMA, and MASSACHUSETTS ashore at Menemsha Bight, Marthas Vineyard, and Block Island. The landing force practiced riot control drills when they landed in Brooklyn, as well as wall scaling exercises. While these evolutions hearkened back to fighting in the relief of Pekin during the Boxer Rebellion they were intended to ready Marines and Bluejackets for potential landings in the Caribbean.[50]

During the first week of September, the Navy brought its state Naval Militias to an exercise with the Army. Three-hundred Bluejackets of the Connecticut Naval Militia landed on Block Island, securing a base of operations for the ships of the fleet, which spent several days and nights making runs on Army coastal fortifications in New England. Despite commitments made to the Marines, they weren’t the only service available for the Advanced Base mission. [51]

 

---

[1] Per Marines Magazine, April 1917, p.54. Marine Corps Order No.10 (Series 1917) March 1915. “Advanced Base” (not Advance Base) is approved official form. Article 6354(4) Naval Instructions. 

[2] “For the fleet having a force of about 10,000 men afloat and at its base, there should be associated with the latter a station flagship, colliers, supply vessels, a floating workshop, a tank vessel to carry water, a hospital ship, an ordnance ship, tugs, and lighters. The characteristics and numbers of these various vessels have been the subject of much care thought, and the results have already been placed before the Department for its consideration.” Appendix “P” Report of the Secretary of the Navy 1903. p. 646.

[3] The term “advanced base” and “landing operation”, and “expeditionary landing” are used here instead of the familiar “amphibious” because for the era covered here, “amphibious” wasn’t the recognized terminology. “Amphibious” at the time may have been used to describe an organism, or even an individual Marine, but it hadn’t been linked to formal Marine Corps or Navy doctrine. 

[4] FMFRP 12-45 “Naval Bases: Location, Resources, Denial, and Security”. U.S. Marine Corps, 1992.

[5] Nicholas A. Lambert. The Neptune Factor, Alfred Thayer Mahan and the Concept of $Sea Power. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis. 2023. Kindle Edition. 

[6] Landing Operations Doctrine, United States Navy, 1938, FTP-167, Office of Naval Operations Division of Fleet Training. Government Printing Office, Washington. 1938. 

[7] Report of the Major General Commandant of the United States Marine Corps. October 5, 1916.

[8] C.T. Hutchins. “The Naval Brigade: Its Organization, Equipment, and Tactics”. Proceedings Magazine, July 1887, Vol. 13/3/42.

[9] Scott Mobley. Progressives in Navy Blue – Maritime Strategy, American Empire, and the Transformation of U.S. Naval Identity 1873-1898. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis. 2018. Kindle edition.

[10] John R. Yates, Jr. and Thomas Yates. The Boston Marine Barracks: A History, 1799-1974. McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Jefferson. 2015. Kindle edition. 

[11] United States Army Transport Service Regulations, 1908. Published by Authority of The Secretary of War. War Department Document No. 308. Office of the Chief of Staff. 

[12] Edward F. Welch. Naval War College Review. Vol. 33, No. 3 (May-June 1980), pp. 1-3 

[13] Jack Shulimson. The Marine Corps search for a Mission, 1880-1898. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence. 1993. p. 140

[14] Annual Report of the Secretary of the Navy for The Year 1898, Washington, Government Printing Office.

[15] “My Dear Bobby”: Letters from a Marine Corps Colonel to his son during the Spanish-American War. E.R. Hagemann, Marine Corps Gazette, Quantico Vol. 63, Iss. 11 (Nov 1979): 78-81.

[16] Autobiography of George Dewey, Admiral of the Navy. Scribners & Sons, New York. 1913. p.240.

[17] Report of the Secretary of the Navy, 1898.

[18] Carlos Gilman Calkins. “Historical and Professional Notes on the Naval Campaign of Manila Bay in 1898”. April 1899 Proceedings, Vol. 25/2/90

[19] Shulimson. Mission. p.89

[20] Shulimson. Mission. p. 90

[21] The term “amphibious” wouldn’t enter the naval operations lexicon until after the Great War.

[22] Annual Report of the Secretary of the Navy for The Year 1899, Washington, Government Printing Office.

[23] William F. Fullam. “The System of Naval Training and Discipline Required to Promote Efficiency and Attract Americans”. October 1890, Proceedings, Vol. 16/4/55

[24] C.T. Hutchins. “The Naval Brigade: Its Organization, Equipment, and Tactics”. Proceedings Magazine, July 1887, Vol. 13/3/42.

[25] James C. Rentrfow. Home Squadron – The U.S. Navy on the North Atlantic Station. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis. 2014. Kindle Edition. 

[26] Patrick Roth. “Sailors as Naval Infantry”. 2005. 

[27] Annual Report of the Secretary of the Navy for the Year 1900, Washington, Government Printing Office. 

[28] Kenneth J. Clifford. Progress and Purpose: A Developmental History of the United States Marine Corps 1900-1970. History and Museums Division, Headquarters, United States Marine Corps. Washington, DC. 1973. p.7. 

[29] There were two George C. Reids serving in the Marines at the same time at the beginning of the 20^th century, an uncle and nephew. George the senior was born in 1840, commissioned in 1860, and died in 1917. George the younger was born in 1876, and commissioned in May 1898. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for actions at Vera Cruz in June 1914, and served with 8^th Marines in Texas during the Great War. He retired in 1930 and died in 1961. 

[30] Shulimson. Mission. p.126.

[31] Clifford. Progress. p.7

[32] Allan R. Millett and Jack Shulimson Commandant of the Marine Corps. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis. 2004. p. 132.

[33] Dick Anthony Ballendorf and Merrill L. Bartlett. Pete Ellis – An Amphibious Warfare Prophet, 1880-1923. Annapolis, Naval Institute Press. 1997. p.26

[34] https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/organization-and-administration/historic-bases/philippine-bases.html

 

[36] Shulimson. Mission. p.82. Of note, Captain Daniel P. Mannix recommended training in electricity, torpedoes, and gunnery for Marines as far back as 1889

[37] John S. Naylor. “The Marines have landed at Nantucket, and the situation is well in hand.” Marine Corps Gazette, May 2025. 

[38] Shulimson. Mission. p.152. 

[39] John T. Keuhn. America’s First General Staff – A Short History of the Rise and Fall of the General Board of the Navy, 1900-1950. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis. 2018. Kindle edition.

 

[40] Shulimson. Mission. p.72.

[41] William F. Fullam. “The System of Naval Training and Discipline Required to Promote Efficiency and Attract Americans”. October 1890, Proceedings, Vol. 16/4/55

[42] Keuhn. First General Staff. Unknown to many, the General Board was flexing its crisis response muscles with these fleet exercises, as Germany and Great Britain were engaged in blockading Venezuela at the time. 

[43] SecNav 1902. p.976. 

[44] Jermy P. Amick. “Veteran’s military career spans US Army, state regiment, Marine Corps” Fulton Sun November 11, 2017. 

[45] Captain Robert J. Kane. A Brief History of the 2d Marines. Historical Division Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps Washington, DC. 1970

[46] https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1902/april/defense-our-naval-stations

[47] Discussion: The Defense of our New Naval Stations, July 1902 Proceedings Vol. 28/3/103

[48]  “Under date of July 16, 1902, the Department directed the organization of five companies of marines (one artillery and four infantry), each consisting of 1 gunnery sergeant, 5 sergeants, 6 corporals, 1 drummer, 1 trumpeter, and 90 privates, to be kept intact for service with the North Atlantic Fleet during maneuvers this winter. …instructions being given that the companies should be maintained at their full strength at all times and that they should be fully fitted out for field service.” SecNav 1902.

[49] John Fass Morton. Sea Power and the American Interest – From the Civil War to the Great War. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis. 2024. p. 58. 

[50] Of note, the landing party managed to get the entire battalion over the wall of the Navy Yard in three minutes. SecNav 1902.

[51] J.P. Wisser. “The Maneuvers Between the Navy and the Coast Artillery.” Proceedings. October 1902, Vol. 28/4/104.