William Freeland Fullam, USN — Bête noire of the Marine Corps
William Freeland Fullam, USN — Bête noire of the Marine Corps
I would hazard a guess that more Marines recognize the name William Fullam than do sailors, despite his having had a Fletcher Class destroyer commissioned in his name. Nearly every time someone in a position of authority questions the need of the United States for the Marine Corps, some Marine historian invokes his name. This is because of his dogged efforts to have Marine guards removed from duty aboard the capital ships of the Navy between 1890 and 1913. Marines of the day believed such a move would destroy the Corps, resulting in its dissolution, or absorption into either the Army or the Navy. Often missed, is the irony in his views, which called for the Marines adopting a force design that garrisoned Marines ashore, trained, equipped, and at-the-ready to dispatch “for service beyond the seas.”
To understand what he was trying to accomplish vis a vis the United States Marine Corps, we need to understand why Marines were serving aboard ships of the Navy. As the Second Continental Congress realized that it would need an active Navy to fight the British in the rebellion, they recognized a need for Marines.
Although these 1775 marines left no description of their duties, their own activities suggest no break from English custom: Marines were basically soldiers detailed for sea service whose primary duties were to fight aboard but not to sail their ships.[1]
General Washington, reluctant to surrender soldiers to perform the duties of the “two Battalions of marines” to be raised, convinced Congress to form the force from unemployed sailors in Boston and Philiadelphia.[2] During the Revolution Marines served both in land campaigns and aboard ships of the Continental Navy until war’s end, and they and an established national navy were no longer needed. When the Marines were reestablished in 1798, they resumed the duties they performed during the revolution but added duties under the orders of the Colonel Commandant of the service ashore; Marines guarded Navy Yards, and responded to emergencies as directed by the President. When operating with the Army, these Marines worked under the Articles of War — Army regulations — and at sea Naval Regulations as established by ships’ captains. Either way, service as ships’ guards remained their primary duty in times of peace; service as yard security gave the officers and NCOs of the Marine Corps the opportunity to train new recruits in the ways of the Corps.
The Marine Corps Act of 1834 clarified the Marines’ responsibilities within the Department of the Navy. The act codified that Marines could be assigned to an Army command, but only at the express discretion of the President of the United States. When they served as guards at Navy Yards, their barracks’ commanders reported to respective Navy Yard Commandants. The Marine barracks aboard the yards remained the training ground for new enlistees; in a best-case scenario, new Marines would serve one year in the barracks, learning the ways of the Corps, before reporting for shipboard duty. Aboard ship, the Marine detachment commander reported to the ship’s captain or executive officer.
And despite the Navy remaining entirely not-affected by mutinies, the Marines retained their shipboard duty as enforcers, as they also served as the captain’s orderly, in posting ceremonial guard on the quarterdeck, and walking tours on alert for disturbances, fires, or other threats to the ship. As ships became more technologically advanced in the migration from sail-power to steam, the likelihood of Marines fighting from the mast-tops during close-in naval battles, as they did during the Revolution and War of 1812, evaporated. Newer breech-loading naval rifles gave warships greater engagement ranges, negating the need for boarding parties at sea and minimizing the effectiveness of rifle-armed sharpshooters. Marines of the ships’ guard continued to join Bluejackets in landing parties, most times under the command of a Navy officer, a traditional role dating back past the Colonial Navy to the Royal Navy and Royal Marines.
However, many officers of the Navy regarded sailors armed as infantry to be the equal in combat to any Marine, given a proper amount of time dedicated to small-unit drill. Recognizing that to continue in their shipboard duties Marines would need to develop additional areas of relevance, Marine guard commanders lobbied ships’ captains to man the secondary batteries aboard cruisers and gunboats. Some assumed that given their experience with marksmanship, and “military” nature, Marines would make more accurate and competent gun crews. But sailors and officers continued to resent having these enforcers on board for the purpose of policing discipline and enforcing regulations.
William Fulllam was by all accounts, an extraordinary Navy officer. Born in Rochester, New York in 1855,[3] Fullam entered the United States Naval Academy in September 1873. He graduated number one in his class in June of 1877. Between graduation and being selected to serve on the Greer Board in 1889, he served for four years on USS SWATARA on the Asiatic Station, spent four years as an instructor at the Naval Academy, and then put in four more years of sea duty aboard BOSTON, YORKTOWN, and CHICAGO.[4] No Marine officers were in his graduating class, as Congress hadn’t yet made the USNA a commissioning source for Marines — that wouldn’t happen until 1881. However, Fullam had plenty of opportunity to observe Marines during his service aboard ship. When Lieutenant JG Fullam was appointed a member of the “Board of Organization, Tactics, and Drill”, the “Greer Board” in 1889, he had the opportunity to share his thoughts on the role of the Marine guards.
In 1889, the Navy sought answers on how they could more effectively exploit the capabilities of its new steel hulled vessels, steam power, and quick-firing, breech-loading primary and secondary batteries, and convened the Board of Organization, Tactics, and Drill, under Commodore James Greer. This board also questioned the role of Marine guards in the age of the “new Navy”.[5] Despite intra-service kibbitzing and lobbying, the Greer Board recommended the removal of Marines from shipboard guard duty.[6] The Marine Corps viewed such a move as an existential threat. Despite the opinions and recommendations of the Greer Board, Secretary of the Navy Benjamin F. Tracy elected to keep Marines in place, in their role as shipboard guards.
In October of 1890, Fullam built out on his opinions expressed sitting on the Greer Board, and penned “The System of Naval Training and Discipline Required to Promote Efficiency and Attract Americans” in the United States Naval Institute’s Proceedings magazine.[7] He bemoaned listless officers and petty officers; leaders more interested in cleaning and polishing than in accumulating tactical efficiency. He claimed that the Marines usurped military duties from sailors, leaving them to be drones, polishing and painting the ship, not fighting it.
Nothing could be more harmful to the sailor than the presence of the marine guard afloat, because it prevents the development of a military spirit and deprives the sailor of the duties and responsibilities that cultivate the qualities we most require in these days—exactness, care and trustworthiness.[8]
Fullam takes his time in laying out every negative aspect of having Marines policing discipline aboard ship. He claimed that they had inserted themselves between the captain of the ship, and the officers and crew. He claimed that despite being bestowed with the trust of the captain, the Marines were no better class of men than sailors. He claimed that as ships became more technologically advanced, manpower available to the crew shrunk, and that the ship would be better off with Marines replaced by sailors. He makes the Marine out to be central to the lack of military direction among Navy personnel aboard ship, which in turn attracted a lower class of recruit, foreigners.
Fullam claimed that immigrants turned the Navy into a “mercenary service”. To attract more native-born young men, he urged better quarters and comforts for sailors aboard the ships of the new navy, as well as better pay, and proper promotions. He proposed changes to the traditional labels used in designating responsibilities of divisions aboard ship, creating a greater focus on the technical and military aspects of the warship. He sought greater recognition for gun crews, making them the equal to clerks and yeomen. He believed better military training and changes to the uniform would increase bearing among new sailors, increasing self-respect and the trust of officers.
And then he returned to the Marines. Removing them from ship would allow them to form permanent battalions in garrison ashore, a
“highly trained, homogeneous, and permanently organized body of infantry, ready at all times to embark and cooperate with the navy in service like that at Panama a few years ago (1885).
He claimed no aspersions towards the Marines in their removal, but that the quality of sailor would improve with their absence.
Part of the strength of thoughts submitted for publication in professional journals is found in the discussion generated, accounting for a broad spectrum of opinion amongst peers. The responses of several Navy officers to Fullam’s modest proposal endorsed and expanded on his thoughts. One Marine officer, Paul St. C. Murphy, accused Fullam of being pessimistic about the lot of the sailor, and recalled the contributions of the Marine Corps afloat. Another Marine, Louis C. Fagan, predicted ruin should Fullam’s proposal be enacted. Some Navy officers were put off by Fullam’s pessimism, urging rebuke for his portrayal of a listless navy. Others derided his recommendation on a partial return to sail to increase sailor’s proficiency and reduce costs. Another Marine claimed replacing Marines on board with sailors would be more costly, which would become a recurring defense fielded by officers of the Corps. Fullam’s essay of 1890 was yet another shot over the bow of the Marine Corps, who’d faced the repeated threat of dissolution since their inception; Marines regarded their role aboard ship as sacrosanct. The furor over Fullam’s recommendations reached much further into the ranks of the Navy; in January 1891, sailors from nine ships of the Atlantic Fleet submitted petitions to Secretary Tracy asking for the removal of Marines from shipboard duty.
Fullam’s attack on the Marine Corps came at a most inopportune moment. At the age of 62 years old, a progressively infirm Colonel Commandant Charles McCawley had become too ill to continue in the post; Colonel Clement Hebb temporarily served in his stead, until McCawley’s retirement date, when Colonel Charles Heywood assumed the helm of the Marine Corps. Upon attaining incumbency, Heywood had to deal with the findings of Greer Board and Fullam’s popular letter, and had to draft a response to the sailors’ petition requesting the removal of the Marines. Fullam’s letter forced Heywood to demonstrate how the Marine Corps was essential to the Navy. Heywood redoubled the service’s lobbying to make the Marines aboard ship responsible for the secondary batteries.[9] In 1892, Heywood ran into further friction when ships captains began removing Marines from assignment to secondary batteries, and when the incoming CO of USS MONTEREY told the Department of the Navy that he wasn’t going to need any Marines aboard his newly commissioned warship. A change in presidential administrations, and a new Secretary of the Navy, Hilary A. Herbert, relieved some of the pressure Heywood was experiencing.
For the sake of context, it’s worth noting that the year that Fullam fired his broadside, in 1890, Alfred Thayer Mahan published his Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783. The effect that Mahan’s work had on naval leaders around the world was significant, but it was just one incident occurring during a renaissance that the U.S. Navy was experiencing. The Navy was in the clutches of a progressive movement, which
“framed their concept of progress in terms of scientific and artistic advance, technological innovation, civilizing process (to include the expansion of free-market capitalism, constitutional democracy, and a Christian system of belief and practice), and an elevation of human character.”[10]
Some of this accounts for Fullam’s desire to improve the character of sailors and petty officers — through the removal of Marine enforcers on board ships of the fleet. Concurrently, naval strategists were considering that if the Navy was going to engage an enemy fleet in foreign waters, the United States would need to secure advanced bases from where,
“the ships of our battle fleet must return to the advanced base and recoal, refit, revictual, transfer the wounded, and make ready to take advantage of the first victory and carry the war to the enemy’s territory.”[11]
Planners at the naval War College grasped this concept twenty years before Dion Williams wrote this, and it figured in Mahan’s seminal work. In 1894, following the precedent set by the Greer Board and William Fullam’s diatribe, a sailors’ petition asking for the Marines to be removed from shipboard duties was read into the public record in the Senate; a month later Senate Bill 2324 proposed merging the Marine Corps into the Army’s Artillery Branch. Commandant Heywood drafted a report to Secretary Herbert on how the Marines contributed to the Navy, and he testified before Congress on the matter, turning to the argument that Marines were more cost-effective to employ on board ship than sailors. Secretary Herbert reprimanded Navy officers responsible for creating the sailor’s petitions.[12]
In 1896, Fullam returned to the pages of Proceedings, blasting the conduct and findings of another commission formed to review the organization of the Navy, including the role of the Marine Corps.[13] He offered his own proposals on officer promotions; sea-duty assignments; officer training — including the importance of a healthy Naval War College. He opined on the institution of Warrant Officers, rewards for sailors, and the role of Petty Officers. When it came to the role of Bluejackets — sailors employed on landing parties — he reintroduced his grievances of having Marine guards posted aboard ship. He made the claim that posting petty officers to sentry duty would have no negative effect on shipboard security and would increase the trustworthiness of the Bluejacket. Once that trust was established, he’d replace Marine sentries with Bluejackets. He posited that the Marines could best contribute to the good conduct of sailors by making themselves absent. And regarding Marine officers, he proposed substituting Navy line officers; Fullam felt putting line officers in charge of all activities the Marines engaged in would result in better trained officers. He viewed the hurdle to reaching this state was low,
“It is a fact that infantry drill and the guard duties in the Navy require less ability and less study than a hundred other duties that fall to a naval officer. As simple drill-book and a simple guard manual are needed — that is all. Unnecessary complexity in these matters has been a great bugbear.”
Again, Fullam called for permanently assigned battalions of Marines in garrison; four stationed on the east coast, and two stationed on the west coast. Again, many Navy officers endorsed Fullam’s recommendations, piling on with negative appraisals of Marines aboard ship. (One used Kipling’s paean to the Royal Marines to describe the role of U.S. Navy Bluejackets aboard USS MONADNOCK, advocating for the Marines’ removal.) Taking the counterpoint, Marine Lieutenant Charles Doyen made a case for the Marines being essential for landing parties and as gunners manning the secondary batteries. Present throughout Marine’s arguments to remain aboard ships was the position that Marines were more cost-efficient to employ than sailors or Bluejackets.
Rear Admiral Stephen Luce, founder of the Naval War College, made an argument on behalf of the Marines,
“To take the marine guard from the ship is to deprive it in a great measure of its military aspect.”
And closed with,
“Had I ten thousand votes they would all be cast in favor of preserving their present status and increasing their numbers.”
Lieutenant Charles Lauchheimer, USMC, took offense at Fullam’s suggestions about Marines aboard ship, rebutting all of Fullam’s work, point by point.
Commandant Heywood did not respond directly to Fullam’s article, but did forward it to Secretary of the Navy Herbert, asking him to suppress the article by telling the Naval Institute to not publish it. Herbert turned down Heywood’s request. All was not lost; Herbert continued to refuse to remove Marines from shipboard duty, and Heywood redoubled his efforts to keep Marine on the secondary batteries.
In 1899, to prove his belief in the Bluejacket as more than up to standards in successfully executing landing parties, without Marines, Fullam penned the “Handbook for Infantry and Artillery, United States Navy” for the Naval Institute, and in 1902 authored “The Recruit’s Handy Book” and “The Petty Officer’s Drill Book”.
In April of 1902, the United State was new to the concept of administering and defending colonies overseas. Captain Dion Williams, USMC, wrote a piece for Proceedings outlining the use of Marines in the defense of Navy bases.[14] William Fullam, then serving in his third tour at the Naval Academy, reiterated his thoughts on the Marine Corps and its mission. Fullam concurred with most of Williams thoughts but proposed having established Marine battalions stationed on transport ships at-the-ready, instead of having them dispersed among the battleships and cruisers as ships’ guards. Fullam proposed keeping three battalions afloat in the western Pacific, two in the central Pacific, and two on the Atlantic coast. He claimed to be advocating for the concept of the “floating fort”, which, in an emergency could be dispatched to a troubled area where the shipborne battalion, accompanied by the deck guns of their transport, could be landed.
In his rebuttal/response to Williams’ article, Fullam claimed that he wished not to “arouse suspicion or anger”. He made the argument that if Dewey at Manila, or Sampson at Santiago, had Marine battalions travelling with the fleet, the outcomes of the Spanish war would have been less protracted. Fullam’s recommendations anticipate the formation of floating battalions, or even Marine Expeditionary Units, years before Marine leaders advocated the practice.[15] Despite Fullam’s advocacy of floating battalions, it was clear that Marines serving aboard ships of the Navy remained a hot button topic. The Marine response to Williams’ article agreed with Williams’ views but reiterated that Marines aboard ship serving as ships’ guards was essential to both naval services. Even Navy officers’ response largely advocated for the continued presence of Marines aboard ship. Fullam proposed a prima facie argument on the employment of Marines, but his name, and stance, generated the skepticism of the moderate for the firebrand.
By the spring of 1908, Captain William Fullam commanded the Naval Training Station at Newport, Rhode Island. Despite his best efforts, and those of others, Marines remained aboard ship, serving as ships’ guards, and manning the secondary batteries. The discourse over removing the Marines from ship was nearly two decades old. An attempt in 1906 to remove the Marines, initiated by the Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, Rear Admiral George Converse, had been denied by the Secretary of the Navy, Victor Metcalf, after Commandant George Elliot lobbied the secretary on the matter directly. Informed of this, Fullam turned to another one of the Naval reformers, William Sims, who was serving as an aide to President Theodore Roosevelt, asking Sims to lobby the president on behalf of the reform movement.[16] Much to the delight of the reformers, Roosevelt took exception to the commandant’s constant lobbying of the secretary on the Marines behalf, any time anything untoward was directed their way. Roosevelt agreed to remove the Marines in the fall of 1908.
To soften the blow on the Corps, Roosevelt asked Commandant Elliot to draft a proposal of how the Marines would best serve the Navy and the nation once they were stationed on shore. Elliot turned to his staff, who were all advocates of the advanced base mission — which would require garrisoned regiments of Marines — and they drafted this:
In accordance with the power vested in me by section 1619, Revised Statutes of the United States, the following duties are assigned to the United States Marine Corps:
(1) To garrison the different navy yards and naval stations, both within and beyond the continental limits of the United States.
(2) To furnish the first line of the mobile defense of naval bases and naval stations beyond the continental limits of the United States.
(3) To man such naval defenses, and to aid in manning, if necessary, such other defenses, as may be erected for the defense of naval bases and naval stations beyond the continental limits of the United States.
(4) To garrison the Isthmian Canal Zone, Panama.
(5) To furnish such garrisons and expeditionary forces for duties beyond the seas as may be necessary in time of peace.
Theodore Roosevelt
THE WHITE HOUSE, November 12, 1908,
Executive Order 969 showed that Commandant Elliot understood that the future mission of the Marine Corps rested in further establishing the Advanced Base Force and having units available for expeditionary duties. The Marines’ draft of EO 969 showed that leadership was willing to surrender ships’ guard duty for what could prove to be a guarantee that the Marine Corps would continue to be affiliated with the Navy, executing a strategic naval mission. It was a painful acceptance, given the Marines’ long fight to sustain themselves through shipboard duty, but Elliot recognized the writing on the wall.
Fullam had won. What he didn’t know in this latest effort to remove the Marines was that General Leonard Wood had been lobbying his old friend and mentee, Theodore Roosevelt, on the wisdom of the Army absorbing the Marine Corps to augment the Army’s Coast Defense organization. When Roosevelt announced this intention to the press, a Congress tired of his mercurial nature acted. The subcommittee for naval affairs held hearings in early 1909, as Roosevelt was leaving office. Reading the transcripts of the hearings, it’s clear that Commandant Elliot exploited close ties between the Marines and certain congressmen, to find for the Marines.
Fortunately for the Marine Corps, Congress intervened. The next naval appropriations bill required that Marines serve aboard battleships and armored cruisers, making up at least 8% of a ship’s crew. Not taking a loss gracefully, Roosevelt issued another order, giving ships’ captains the discretion on whether to employ Marine in manning secondary batteries. The new President, William Howard Taft, quickly rescinded that order. After an apparent victory, Fullam’s 1908 attack failed. Marines returned to shipboard duty.
USS MISSISSIPPI
In 1909, Fullam took command of USS MISSISSIPPI, commissioned only a year earlier. After that, he then took command of the Naval Training Station Great Lakes, before being assigned the Secretary of the Navy’s Aide for Inspections. In 1913, he inspected the Philadelphia Navy Yard at League Island, home of the Marine Corps’ Advanced Base School and cadre that formed the Advanced Base Brigade. His inspection report on the Advanced Base School and Brigade was a thinly veiled return to his previous attacks on the Marine Corps. In his appraisal, he charged the Marines with shirking their responsibility in being able to deliver a brigade of advanced base forces to seize and defend a safe harbor for the fleet. The Marines had opened the Advanced Base School in 1910 to train Marines in the required skills, and to provide a cadre to form the brigade when needed. Unfortunately, Marines assigned to the school were repeatedly dispatched on expeditions to the Caribbean in defense of “American interests.” Brigadier General Commandant of the Marine Corps William Biddle reported in 1913,
“The course at the Advance Base School, Philadelphia, Pa., has been materially interfered with by the expeditions to Nicaragua, Santo Domingo, and Cuba, though actual service in the field has been of great value to the 3-inch landing gun battery and the signal company.”[17]
Fullam’s other critique points, that the ABF had incomplete and obsolete equipment and had failed to develop doctrine, were accurate, but somewhat misplaced. The Marine Corps’ landlord, the U.S. Navy, had been reluctant to turn ABF equipment and ordnance over to the Marines, or to provide warehouse space to work from, and continued to issue older, worn-out weapons to the ABF; again, this wasn’t all the Marines’ fault. On the matter of putting doctrine to paper, Fullam’s critique was more accurate. The doctrine used by the ABF was developed as needed; as the Marines hadn’t installed a true staff for the force, beyond the Advanced Base Force School staff, doctrine was developed on the fly. During the inquiry generated by Fullam’s report, Dion Williams returned to the files at Headquarters Marine Corps to see what doctrinal documents about the Advanced Base Force were available; all he found were the notes from a lecture he had delivered on the matter at the Naval War College years earlier.
But nothing about Fullam’s critique was more incongruous that his proposed remedy. Fullam recommended that the Advanced Base Brigade be placed under his direct command. His proposal in effect would remove the emerging raison d’être for the Marine Corps from Marine Corps control. In his memoir, then Colonel John A. Lejeune recalled that such an act would be “an uncalled for humiliation of its officers and men”.[18] The Marine Corps took Fullam’s critique to heart and exceeded expectations in the execution of the advanced base exercises in conjunction with fleet exercises at Culebra in January of 1914, and at the landings at Vera Cruz in April. In the wake of the inspection kerfuffle, Fullam was appointed Superintendent of the Naval Academy.
Within a year, Fullam’s estimation that commanding troops on shore using a simple drill manual would be proven tragically wrong. At Veracruz, in April of 1914, the Landing Brigade of the Atlantic Fleet, composed of Bluejackets, formed into ships’ battalions, and landed aside the Marines of the Advanced Base Brigade, occupying the port city in a preemptive strike against President General Victoriano Huerta’s Federalist forces during the Mexican Revolution. The battle was illuminating as the Bluejackets of the fleet marched in formation into Mexican fire, per drill manual expectations, but the Marines of the Advanced Base Brigade, fresh off a successful work-up and exercises at Culebra, moved tactically, taking fewer casualties than the Navy, and seizing objectives quickly and efficiently. The most recent landing manual the Navy had adopted had been compiled by William Fullam in 1912. His prediction that navy officers just needed a simple drill manual to handle small units ashore didn’t work out the way he would have preferred.
In February of 1914, Captain Fullam was appointed Superintendent of the Naval Academy by Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels. Daniels made this assignment because he wanted a disciplinarian to clean up an academy plagued by cheating and hazing incidents. In January of 1915, Fullam was promoted to Rear Admiral. In June of 1915, Secretary of the Navy Daniels held a review of the results of Fullam’s investigation into exam cheating at USNA. Fullam’s investigation found seven midshipmen guilty of cheating and expelled them. At the heart of the scandal were “gouging” and “dope” — midshipmen providing others with prior knowledge of questions that would be on exams. At the end of the investigation, Rear Admiral Fullam was accused of attempting to coerce midshipmen’s testimony.[19] During Daniels’ further review, Superintendent Fullam complained that midshipmen at the academy were spying on him and giving the defense inside information on his correspondence. Daniel’s review board, in an apparently political move, reduced the expulsions to just two midshipmen. After only a year-and-a-half commanding the Academy, Daniels reassigned Fullam to command the reserve fleet on the Pacific coast.[20] Allegedly some of the families of the retained midshipmen had political ties with the Democratic Party, and Woodrow Wilson’s administration, and others were athletes who often received “assistance” in their studies.
In his role on the west coast, Fullam advocated publicly for U.S. preparation for war, and chided Californians for lacking interest in the defense of their state. In 1917 Fullam was given command of the Pacific Fleet, where he coordinated operations with the Japanese and with the Royal Navy. He countered German intelligence operations in the waters off the Mexican Coast and California. He headed up the investigation into the loss of submarine H-3, and the USS MILWAUKEE, both grounded on the northern California coast. In 1919, Fullam retired from the Navy.
In retirement, Willliam Fullam did not merely fade away. Instead, he took to the pages of the New York Tribune, writing about naval matters, and criticizing Navy leadership and the Secretary of the Navy on how it was handling the fleet following the war. Writing under the pseudonym “Quarterdeck” he advocated for the advancement of naval aviation, claiming that the battleship fleet no longer ruled the waves. He advocated for aircraft armed with torpedoes to be the first line of defense for American shores. He supported the Washington Treaty, limiting the battleship fleet, and claimed that Japan sought peace in the Pacific. He urged naval minds to consider the “Three Plane Navy” capable of dominating the enemy in the air, on the surface of the world’s oceans, and undersea; he advocated for multi-domain operations decades before the term was coined. In the December 11, 1921 edition of the Tribune he made his views on amphibious operations known,
“There will never again be in naval history on of the simon-pure naval expeditions carried across the sea to an enemy’s port, the defeat of an enemy’s fleet, the establishment of an advance base on his coast and the pouring in of soldiers and supplies. This has been forever rendered impossible against any country that has adequate air and submarine forces.”
In his post-war Tribune “Quartermaster” articles, Fullam restricted his broadsides aimed at the Marine Corps; his focus was to defeat the battleship mafia, cheerlead a submarine fleet, and proselytize for naval aviation.Clearly William Fullam’s legacy means different things to different people. He came of age as an officer as the U.S. Navy was enjoying a renaissance, where battleships ruled the waves. In retirement he regarded battleships as obsolescent pawns, to be checked by swarms of aircraft armed with torpedoes. As the United States grew into a great naval power, adopting new technologies in propulsion and armament, Fullam advocated for the leadership and professional development of sailors and officers. Building a better Navy required making sailors more “military” than they had been in the age of sail.
It seems he wasn’t afraid of taking on politicians who came in contact with the Navy during his career — such as Secretary of the Navy Daniels during the Annapolis cheating chaos — but turned to them to advance his pet projects, such as removing Marines from shipboard duty. Fullam was a battleship sailor who turned to naval aviation as the future yet isn’t remembered for this because he wasn’t an aviator himself. He was smart, and driven, and wasn’t afraid of making political enemies. If his post-retirement writings are any evidence, he was never satisfied that the reforms he had pushed for for over four decades were ever realized. William Fullam died in Washington, DC, in September, 1926.
And he will forever be remembered by the Marines. His multiple attempts to discredit the Corps earned him the enmity of leaders such as John Lejeune. In regards to Fullam’s efforts, Lejeune wrote,
“Gradually it has become recognized that while Marines are not necessary as a police force on board ship, yet their service afloat is necessary in order to provide the Navy with an efficient expeditionary for habituated to ship life, accustomed to being governed by Navy laws and regulations, and officered by personnel whose members have been closely associated with the officers of the Navy officially and unofficially throughout their entire naval careers. Duty on board the combat ships of the fleet is not only the best, but it is practically the only means by which these eminently desirable results can be attained.”
On multiple occasions Fullam sought to erase this education, yet he proposed the formation of permanently garrisoned battalions and regiments ashore; he proposed that the Marine Corps be composed of units organized; trained; equipped; and armed for expeditions at the drop of a hat. What Fullam didn’t make apparent in his motion to remove Marines from shipboard duty, and caused great angst amongst Marine leaders, was who would protect the Marines in the transition, and how they could avoid absorption by the Army, as was threatened by Theodore Roosevelt and Leonard Woods in 1908.
William Fullam will never be toasted at a Marine Corps mess night, or the Marine Corps Birthday Celebration, but he had significant influence on the transition made by the Marine Corps at the start of the 20th Century. Knowing his story, and his arguments, is useful information whenever outside forces question whether the nation still needs a Marine Corps.
Semper Fi.
JSN
29 September, 2026
[1] Allan R. Millett. Semper Fidelis: The History of the United States Marine Corps. Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. New York.1980. p.6
[2] Millett. p.7
[3] Wikipedia. Born October 20, 1855, died September 23, 1926.
[4] William F. Fullam Papers. Library of Congress. Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C. 2010.
[5] Jack Shulimson. The Marine Corps Search for a Mission; 1880-1898.University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, KS. 1993. p.84
[6] “Services of the Marines: A CORPS THAT HAS MADE AN ENVIABLE RECORD. OPPOSITION AMONG OFFICERS TO THE RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE GREER NAVAL BOARD.” New York Times, Thursday December 19, 1889.
[7] The USNI was founded in 1873 as a professional organization for Navy officers. They established Proceedings in 1874 to foster professional development, education, and discourse on naval matters.
[8] William F. Fullam. “The System of Naval Training and Discipline Required to Promote Efficiency and Attract Americans”. Proceedings, United States Naval Institute, October 1890, Vol. 16/4/55.
[9] Jack Shulimson. “Charles Heywood 1891-1903”, Commandants of the Marine Corps, Allan R. Millett and Jack Shulimson, ed. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis. 2004. p. 116
[10] 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.
[11] Dion Williams. “The Advanced Base”. Lecture, Naval War College. 1912.
[12] Robert D. Heinl Jr. “The Cat With More Than Nine Lives”, Proceedings, USNI. June 1954, Vol. 80/6;616.
[13] William Fullam. “Honorably Mentioned: The Organization, Training, and Discipline of the Navy Personnel as Viewed from the Ship”, Proceedings, January 1896.
[14] John G. Miller. “William Freeland Fullam’s War with the Corps”, Proceedings, USNI. November 1975, Vol. 101/11/873.
[15] The Navy and Marines did experiment with the concept of the “floating battalion” in 1903, in its maintenance of a naval presence in the Caribbean, which allowed for support of the Panamanian revolution, and the creation of the State of Panama, and the American Canal Zone.
[16] Robert J. Cressman. “George Frank Elliot 1903-1910”, Commandants, Millet and Shulimson. p. 155
[17] Commandant’s Report to the Secretary of the Navy, 1913.
[18] John A. Lejeune. The Reminiscences of a Marine. Dorrance and Company, Inc. 1930. Kindle edition.
[19] “Fullam Battles With Annapolis Accusers”, New York Tribune, June 16, 1915.
[20] “Admiral Fullam for Sea Service”. New York Herald, September 3, 1915.
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