The Rise and Fall of the Office of Naval Intelligence

The Rise and Fall of the Office of Naval Intelligence, 1882-1892: A Technological Perspective Robert G. Angevine The Journal of Military History, Vol. 62, No. 2. (Apr., 1998), pp. 291-312. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0899-3718%28199804%2962%3A2%3C291%3ATRAFOT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-M The Journal of Military History is currently published by Society for Military History.

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The Rise and Fall of the Office of

Naval Intelligence, 1882-1892:

A Technological Perspective"

Robert G. Angevine

N 1882, the U.S. Navy created the United States's first official peacetime military intelligence organization, the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI). During the first decade of its existence, ON1 attracted some of the Navy's brightest minds, published articles on a diverse range of naval topics, and collected intelligence on foreign naval technology that was used to construct the United States's first steel warships. By 1892, however, ON1 had entered a period of decline. Its most talented officers began to leave for other assignments, its collection efforts abroad diminished, and its influence on policy dwindled. Previous attempts to understand the early history of ON1 have adopted political and bureaucratic perspectives. Jeffrey Donvart has explained the creation of ON1 as an effort by progressive American naval officers to inform and proselytize public opinion in favor of naval modernization and expansion and has blamed ineffective leadership for its stagnation in the early 1890s.' Mark Russell Shulman has also attributed the decline of ON1 to political and bureaucratic causes. Shulman argues that two factors politicized ON1 and limited its effectiveness. He empha-

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* I would like to thank Alex Roland, Richard Kohn, Tami Davis Biddle, David Fautua, and Steve Stebbins for their comments on earlier drafts o f this article and Rick Peuser at the National Archives for his assistance in its preparation. 1. Jeffery M . Donvart, The Of&e of Naval Intelligence: The Birth of America's First Intelligence Agency, 1865-1918 (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1979), 14-15; JeffreyM. Donvart, "Naval Attaches, Intelligence Officers,and the Rise of the 'New American Navy,' 1882-1914," in Changing Interpetations and New Sources i n Naval History: Papersfrom the Third United States Naval History Symposium, ed. Robert W. Love, Jr. (New York: Garland, 1980), 264. The Journal of Military History 62 (April 1998): 291-312

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sizes its transfer from the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Navigation to that of the recently reestablished Assistant Secretary of the Navy and the appointment as Chief Intelligence Officers of several adherents to the vision of sea power embodied in Alfred Thayer Mahan's The Infuence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1 783 (1890). With avid navalists directing its activities, Shulman claims, ON1 was soon "reduced to the role of a propaganda instrument for the Mahanian fleet."2 Although political and bureaucratic analyses such as Domart's and Shulman's are useful guides to the early history of ONI, they fail to present a complete picture. They devote comparatively little attention to the state of American naval technology in the 1880s and its effect on ONI.3 Recent works in general U.S. naval history also devote scant attention to the connections between American naval technology and the fortunes of ONI.4 Yet, as Benjamin Franklin Cooling has noted, "All the intellectual exercises of Mahan and his colleagues were purely academic ~ was part until someone could provide the ships to effect a r e s ~ l t . "ON1 of the effort to provide those ships, and in order to fully understand its creation in 1882, its activities during the next ten years, and its decline in the early 1890s, it is important to include a technological perspective. The Navy's attempt to adjust to changing technology played a key role in ONI's creation. The dramatic advances in naval technology after the Civil War and the relative obsolescence of the U.S. fleet prompted naval reformers to modernize in the early 1880s. Traditional intelli2. Mark Russell Shulman, "The Rise and Fall of American Naval Intelligence, 1882-1917," Intelligence a n d National Security 8 (April 1993): 218-19. 3. In Navalism a n d the Emergence of American Sea Power, 1882-1893 (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1995), 95-138, Shulman devotes more space to the construction of the New Navy. The emphasis, however, is on the political, strategic, and cultural debates surrounding naval expansion rather than technological development. 4. In History ofthe U.S. Navy, 2 201s. (Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole, 1992), 1: 346, Robert W. Love, Jr. notes, "ONI's function was to send naval attaches abroad to collect information about foreign fleets, naval policy, technology, strategy, and tactics." In This People's Navy: The Making of American Sea Power (New York: Free Press, 1991), 186-97, Kenneth J. Hagan briefly discusses the changes in naval technology in the 1880s and the inability of new U.S. ships to match their European counterparts, but does not mention ON1 until 1894, when he notes the growing volume of ON1 reports on foreign orders of battle used at the Naval War College. In an earlier work, Hagan has accurately described ON1 as an effort to establish "a more consistent means of gathering data" on European naval technology than the old observer system and notes that the idea was to study European technology with an eye to imitation. Kenneth J. Hagan, American Gunboat Diplomacy a n d the Old Navy, 1877-1889 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1973), 54. 5. Benjamin Franklin Cooling, "The United States: The Formative Democratic Framework, 1881-1905," in Naval Technology a n d Social Modernization i n the Nineteenth Century (Manhattan, Kans.: Military Affairs, 1976), 18.

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gence-gathering methods, however, were inadequate to support this modernization program. Fortunately for the reformers, American businesses responding to changing technology had already created an alternative system for the collection and analysis of information-the managerial bureaucracy. Using this new organizational model, the Navy created the Office of Naval Intelligence in 1882. A technological perspective also highlights ONI's intelligence objectives and methods of collection. During the ten years following its creation, ONI's efforts focused on the systematic acquisition and compilation of technical information regarding foreign ship construction and navies. Naval attach& stationed in Europe acquired intelligence on foreign naval technology openly and clandestinely. Shipboard intelligence officers and officers working for foreign arms manufacturers while on leave also kept ON1 abreast of the latest advances in foreign technology. Their goal was to redress the technological imbalance between the American and European fleets. Finally, a technological perspective suggests at least three more reasons for the decline of ON1 in the early 1890s in addition to the political and bureaucratic factors cited by Donvart and Shulman. The development of a domestic industrial infrastructure suitable for the construction of modern warships, the growth of secrecy regarding naval technology in Europe, and the emerging consensus regarding the most effective warship technology made ONI's initial mission, the acquisition of foreign technology, at once less important and more difficult. As a result, ON1 faded into obscurity for the next twenty-five years. In the years following the Civil War, the technological changes engendered by the Industrial Revolution drastically altered naval warfare. Steam propulsion, rifled, breech-loading naval guns, armor plate, and iron and steel shipbuilding revolutionized the warship. Despite these changes, the U.S. Navy retained a fleet designed for distant patrolling and coastal defense. American ships were largely built of wood and possessed inferior engines and short-range, smooth-bore cannon. In 1881, Secretary of the Navy William H. Hunt reported that of the 140 vessels on the Navy list, twenty-five "are mere tugs, with a very large number of others entirely u s e l e ~ s . "The ~ magazine Puck was even harsher, describing the Navy as "three mud-scows supplemented by a superannuated canalboat."7 By the early 1880s, supporters of naval reform had amassed enough political support to begin modernizing. In March 1883, Congress appro6. Annual Report of the Secretary of the Navy, 1881, 47th Cong., 1st sess., H. Exec. Doc. 1, pt. 3, 11. 7. Puck (14 Sept. 1881), cited in Thomas Hunt, The Life of William H. Hunt (Brattleboro, Vt.: E. L. Hildreth & Co., 1922), 252. MILITARY HISTORY

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priated funds for the Navy's first steel ships, the protected cruisers Atlanta, Boston, and Chicago, and the dispatch vessel Dolphin. Naval reformers, however, faced two major obstacles. The first was a domestic industrial infrastructure that could not support the building program they envisioned. The lack of naval construction after the Civil War had weakened the American sense of marine technology and produced what one historian has described as a "backward, neglected industrial infrastructure and an impoverished design base."s Not until 1879 did construction of steam ships in the United States surpass that of sailing ships.9 There was no formal training for naval architects available in the United States, and American naval engineers lamented that they were always "one cylinder behind" their European counterparts in engine design.1° American steel makers had poor reputations for quality and, because of their nearly exclusive focus on producing steel rails for American railroads, possessed only a limited ability to produce the plates and structural shapes required for steel-hulled warships. They were even less well equipped to produce the heavy masses of steel used for heavy guns and stem and stern posts. As of 1883, no American manufacturer had the forging facilities necessary to produce the jacket for an eight-inch steel gun, and only one or two could hammer a tube for that caliber." The second obstacle was a lack of up-to-date, accurate, and accessible information on naval technology. In the early 1880s, the logical place to look for guidance in the construction of modern warships was Europe, especially Great Britain. Ships in European fleets comprised 93 percent 8. Michael E. Vlahos, "The Making o f an American Style," in Naval Engineering and American Seapower, ed. Randolph W . King (Baltimore: Nautical and Aviation Publishing Company o f America, 1989), 18-20. See also John G. B. Hutchins, The American Maritime Industries and Public Policy, 1789-1914: A n Economic History (1941; reprint, New York: Russell and Russell, 1969), 448-52; Stanley Sandler, " A Navy in Decay: Some Strategic Technological Results o f Disarmament, 1865-1869, in the U.S. Navy," Military Afiirs 35 (December 1971): 138-39. 9. Vlahos, "The Making of an American Style," 18-20. 10. Lawrence C. Allin, "The Civil War and the Period o f Decline: 1861-1913," in America's Maritime Legacy: A History of the U.S. Merchant Marine and Shipbuilding Industry Since Colonial Times, ed. Robert A. Kilmarx (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1979), 73; David B. Tyler, The American Clyde: A History of Iron and Steel Shipbuilding on the Delawarefrom 1840 to World War I (Newark: University o f Delaware Press, 1958), 72. 11. Dean C. Allard, Jr., "The Influence o f the United States Navy upon the American Steel Industry, 1880-1900" (M.A. thesis, Georgetown University, 1959), 8-11, 23-27,38-43; Benjamin F. Cooling, Gray Steel and Blue-Water Navy: The Formative Years of America's Military-Industrial Complex, 1881-1917 (Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1979), 24-26, 29,40; Thomas J. Misa,A Nation ofsteel: The Making of Modern America, 1865-1925 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 31; William H. Jaques, "The Establishment o f Steel Gun Factories in the United States," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 10 (1884): 558.

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Rise and Fall of the Ojfice of Naval Intelligence of the total displacement among the armored fleets of the world in 1880.12Moreover, British shipbuilders had built or furnished building materials for every major European power except France. Non-European nations such as Japan, Chile, Peru, and Brazil had also purchased British armored warships.13 The U.S. Navy's system for gathering intelligence from abroad, however, was inadequate. In the past, American naval leaders had viewed intelligence as an activity suited only to wartime. During a war, they established spy networks, tracked enemy ship movements, and monitored enemy ship construction.14When peace returned and the threat to the country's security disappeared, however, they rapidly disbanded any organizations they had created for gathering intelligence and resumed collecting information in a more decentralized, less structured way. Periodic observation tours to Europe were sufficient to keep the American Navy updated on the latest developments. Observers were sent abroad in search of particular information, which was then held in each of the Navy's bureaus as confidential. By the 1880s, the pace and scale of technological change were beginning to overwhelm this observer system. According to one British shipbuilder, the rate of technological progress was so rapid that ships often became obsolete before they were ready for use.15As a result, occasional observers were ineffective. By the time they returned home and filed their reports, the ships they had seen were frequently out-of-date.16 The vigorous debate over proper ship design, sparked by the rise of the Jeune Ecole in France, also placed a premium on staying abreast of recent developments. The Jeune Ecole theorists' arguments in favor of torpedo boats and cruisers, bolstered by recent improvements in torpedo performance, raised serious doubts about the future of the battleship and brought battleship construction in Europe to a virtual halt for nearly five 12. Calculated from J. W. King, The War-Ships and Navies of the World, 1880 (1880; reprint, Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 19-32), 435. King excluded several British wooden converted ironclads and French floating batteries from his totals. 13. Cooling, Gray Steel and Blue-Water Navy, 20. 14. James Robert Green, "The First Sixty Years of the Office of Naval Intelligence" (M.A. thesis, American University, 1963), 7-8. 15. Internal memorandum, William Armstrong & Co., 21 April 1881, Tyne and Wear Archives Service, quoted in Anthony Burton, The Rise and Fall of British Shipbuilding (London: Constable, 1994), 166-67. The pace of technological change was so rapid that of the thirty British naval vessels fit to take a place in a line of battle in 1870, there were three types of steam engine, four screw arrangements, sixteen schemes of armor protection, eighteen hull models, and no fewer than twenty scales of armament. The situation only grew more confused during the next decade. Jon Tetsuro Sumida, In Defense of Naval Supremacy: Finance, Technology, and British Naval Policy, 1889-1914 (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 10. 16. Donvart, Office ofNaval Intelligence, 3; Richard Deacon, The Silent War: A History of Western Naval Intelligence, rev. ed. (London: Grafton, 1988), 41. MILITARY HISTORY

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years.'' As David Kahn has noted, uncertainty increases the importance of intelligence, and there was a great deal of uncertainty regarding naval construction in the 1880s.ls Naval experts did not doubt that significant changes were occurring, but they rarely agreed about which changes were most important. As William E. Gladstone commented in 1882, "The fashion in building ships of war is as fickle as that of ladies' hats."19 Lastly, the tremendous increase in the volume of published military information threatened to overwhelm anyone who tried to wade through it all. The development of steam-powered printing presses increased printing speed three hundred times between 1827 and 1893.20New journals like the French Revue militaire des arrne'es e'trang&res,the German Deutsche Heereszeitung, and the British Journal of the Royal United Services Institution published facts about European militaries that previously had been very difficult to obtain. Published parliamentary reports also contained large amounts of information about the fleets and naval building programs of foreign countries.21This flood of information represented a potentially valuable resource, but it needed to be analyzed, compiled, and indexed. Advocates of naval reform realized that if they could overcome this second obstacle, an intelligence system illsuited for gathering technical information from abroad, they could begin to address the first problem, an industrial infrastructure inadequate for the construction of modern warships. 17. Theodore Ropp, The Development o f a Modern Navy: French Naval Policy, 1871-1914, ed. Stephen S. Roberts (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1987), 12740, esp. 138-39. 18. David Kahn, "Toward a Theory of Intelligence," MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History 7 (Winter 1995): 93-94, 96. 19. Arthur J. Marder, The Anatomy of British Sea Power (New York: Knopf, 1940), 7. See also Lance C. Buhl, "Maintaining 'An American Navy,' 1865-1889," in In War and Peace: Interpretations of American Naval History, ed. Kenneth J . Hagan (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984), 148; Charles Oscar Paullin, " A Half Century o f Naval Administration in America, 1861-1911," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 39 (September 1913): 1222; Daniel Howard Wicks, "New Navy and New Empire: The Life and Times o f John Grimes Walker" (Ph.D. diss., University o f California-Berkeley, 1979), 17-18; and Cooling, Gray Steel and Blue-Water Navy, 22. 20. James R. Beniger, The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Haward University Press, 1986), 285-86. 21. Dennis E. Showalter, "Intelligence on the Eve of Transformation," in The Intelligence Revolution: A Historical Perspective: Proceedings of the Thirteenth Military History Symposium, U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado, October 12-14, 1988, ed. Walter T. Hitchcock (Washington: Officeo f Air Force History, 1991), 2 6 2 7 ; Thomas G. Fergusson, British Military Intelligence, 1870-1914: The Development of a Modern Intelligence Organization (Frederick, Md.: University Publications of America, 1984), 27; Alfred Vagts, The Military Attache' (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1967), 189.

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Recent developments in business and social organization offered a solution. The same growth of industry that had produced the technological revolution in naval armament had also placed a heavy strain on the technological and economic means society used to control the economy. Trains moved faster than the ability of the railroads to control them, commodity shipments overwhelmed the ability of mercantile firms to monitor them, and production processes required faster and faster speeds to remain profitable. The greater speed with which matter, energy, and information moved through the economy necessitated greater control in the form of communication, information processing, programming, and decision making.22One of the results was the development by American businesses, particularly railroads, of managerial bureaucracies devoted to the collection and analysis of i n f ~ r m a t i o n . ~ ~ Naval reformers greeted the development of these new management technologies with interest. Navy officers in the 1880s called for the "introduction of business methods into our system of naval administration." They argued that railroad managers were able to "watch the future and prepare their systems to draw all possible advantage from events."24 One man trained to "think for the railroad" was the new Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, Commodore John Grimes Walker. Walker worked for the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad during a brief period of leave in 1872 and returned to railroading in 1879 to serve as Secretary of the Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy Railroad. He was in line to become treasurer when he decided in 1881 that he was "as full of R. R. work as a dog of fleas." He resigned less than a month later and was appointed Chief of the Bureau of Navigation in 22. Beniger, Control Revolution, 202, 219-20. 23. Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of the IIarvard University Press, 1977), 81-121. 24. Quoted in Peter Karsten, The Naval Aristocracy: The Golden Age of Annapolis and the Emergence of Modern American Navalism (New York: Free Press, 1972), 299. See also Ronald Spector, Professors of War: The Naval War College and the Development of the Naval Profession (Newport, R.I.: Naval War College Press, 1977), 132-33. Commander French E. Chadwick, ONI's first naval attach6, noted in 1889 that the railroad, "of all industrial affairs ashore, is nearest akin to such a service as ours." Cmdr. F. E. Chadwick to Secretary of the Navy Benjamin F. Tracy, 31 May 1889, Box 2, Benjamin F. Tracy Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 25. Due to President Garfield's assassination, Walker was not able to assume his new office until October 1881. Cmdr. John G. Walker to Mr. Allison, 30 December 1880, letter, Box 1, John Grimes Walker Papers, Naval Historical Foundation Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress; Cmdr. John G. Walker to Cmdr. Albert Kautz, 22 February 1881, letter, Box 1, Walker Papers; Cmdr. John G. Walker to President and Directors, Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Co., letter, 9 March 1881, MILITARY HISTORY

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Upon assuming his new duties as Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, Walker began to draw on his experience with the organizational control of information. He recognized that the old observer system was neither efficient nor effective. In the interest of good administration and economy, he believed that there should be a systematic method of collecting and filing material of naval interest from abroad and that officers should be specially appointed to watch the development of scientific discoveries and inventions in times of peace and to secure information of military value in times of war.26Walker prepared General Order 292, which Secretary Hunt signed on 23 March 1882, creating the Office of Naval Intelligence. In his annual report describing the activities of his bureau for 1882, Walker noted the existence of ON1 and highlighted the need for control of information and the desire for data collection on foreign naval technology as important reasons for its creation. He reported, "An Office of Intelligence, now generally recognized as necessary to the effectiveness of an Army or Navy, and established by a general order, has been organized for the purpose of systematizing the collection and classification of information for the use of the Department, in relation to the strength and resources of foreign navies."27 Hunt further emphasized ONI's task of organizing the collection and compilation of information regarding foreign naval technology by placing it in charge of the Navy Department Library. Hunt's successor, William E. Chandler, circulated a letter to all of the Navy's bureau chiefs soon after the creation of ON1 stating, "The Department desires to call the attention of the various Bureaus to the conditions of the Department Library, and to secure their active cooperation in its increase and improvement. At present, the Library is deficient in all branches of general and service literature. It contains many odd volumes, incomplete sets of periodicals and other works, the compilation of which by purchase would be extended with great expense." Chandler asked the bureaus to turn over to the library all of the works not directly related to their duties in order to consolidate the Department's holdings and avoid the expense of holding duplicate By early 1883, the Navy Box 1, Walker Papers; Cmdr. John G. Walker to Secretary of the Navy William H. Hunt, 8 August 1881, Box 1, Walker Papers; Frances P. Thomas, Career of John Grimes Walker, U.S.N., 1835-1907 (Boston: n.p., 1959), 50-54; Wicks, "New Navy and New Empire," 38-40, 44-45, 48. 26. John G. Walker to Capt. Charles D. Sigsby [sic], 19 June 1902, letter, Box 2, Walker Papers; Thomas, Career of John Grimes Walker, 55. 27. Annual Report of the Secretary of the Navy, 1882, 107-8. 28. Circular Letter to Chiefs of Bureaus, 3 July 1882, Reel 3, Microfilm M-480, Letters Sent by the Secretary of the Navy to Chiefs of Navy Bureaus, 1842-1886, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. (hereafter abbreviated as NA).

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owned 19,124 books, pamphlets, and periodicals, including over 10,000 in the departmental library.29 Equipped with this new system for gathering intelligence, the Navy was ready to absorb the latest technology in ship design, construction, armor, armament, engines, and interior and exterior communications from Europe. Acquiring intelligence on foreign naval technology was the central focus of ON1 during its first decade. President Grover Cleveland outlined the philosophy in his first annual message in 1885, when he stated that the intent was "to take advantage of the experience of other nations, systematized so that all effort shall unite and lead in one directi~n."~O Secretary of the Navy William C. Whitney reaffirmed the objective a year later in testimony to the Senate Naval Affairs Committee, "I think our true policy is to borrow the ideas of our neighbors so far as they are thought to be in advance of ours."31 The first task of the new office was to develop a scheme for managing the data once it was collected. After devising a card catalog system, members of the office began tearing apart reports of American naval officers who had visited Europe in the 1870s and carding each item with cross-references. As the Navy acquired more foreign-language publications and technical reports, the office kept busy, in the words of one of its first members, "compiling and carding everything relating to a ship."j2 They collected blueprints for a torpedo boat, a boiler, a dry dock, a magazine, a grease and dirt extractor, a breech screwing and planing machine, a gun milling and drilling machine, and a rifling machine; drawings of ships, ship machinery, guns and carriages, armor and turrets, and torpedoes and launchers; and notes on experiments with armor, naval gunnery, submarine mines, and torpedoes.33 By September 1883, ON1 had compiled a list of warships being constructed for nine

29. Condition of the Several Libraries in the Navy Department, 47th Cong., 2nd sess., S. Exec. Doc. 79, 1883. 30. James D. Richardson, ed. A Compilation of the Messages a n d Papers of the Presidents, vol. 10 (New York: Bureau of National Literature, 1897), 4936. 31. Secretary of the Navy William C. Whitney to Chairman J. D. Cameron, Senate Naval Affairs Committee, 27 July 1886, Entry 5 (Letters to Congress), Record Group 45 (Naval Records Collection of the Office of Naval Records and Library), NA. See also Paolo E. Coletta, French Ensor Chadwick: Scholarly Warrior (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1980), 29, 36. 32. A. G. Berry, "The Beginning of the Office of Naval Intelligence," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 63 (January 1937): 102. 33. Entry 92 (Index to Register of the Office of Naval Intelligence, Bureau of Navigation, Navy Department, July 1882-December 31, 1885), Record Group 38 (Records of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations), NA. MILITARY HISTORY

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European and two South American countries describing their type, displacement, horsepower, speed, and armament.34 The primary sources of technological information for ONI, however, were its naval attach& stationed in American embassies abroad. Lieutenant Commander French Ensor Chadwick, who had been sent to Europe in 1881 to report on lifesaving and lighthouse systems, was ordered to London soon after the creation of ONI, and was designated as the organization's first naval attach6 in October 1882.35His early reports to the Bureau of Navigation indicate the technical nature of ON17sobjectives. They included: drawings and photos of gun carriages; photographs of machines used by a commercial firm malung prismatic gunpowder; a model of a new steam steering gear; specifications of patents relating to ordnance and torpedoes; and information on the quality and price of compound armor plate manufactured by the two leading British firms.36 Chadwick7sefforts also soon demonstrated the superiority of a permanent intelligence organization over the previous system of periodic observation for collecting information. In a letter recommending the rejection of a young lieutenant's request to be sent abroad as an observer, Commodore Walker wrote to Secretary Chandler, "We now have Lieutenant Commander Chadwick attached to the English legation who is doing most excellent work, and from his position as an attach6 can procure more information of a valuable character than any men sent specially abroad.7737 The Navy posted a second attach6, Lieutenant Benjamin H. Buckingham, to Paris, St. Petersburg, and Berlin in 1885. Like Chadwick, Buckingham concentrated on acquiring information that would be useful to the Navy and American industry as they began constructing a modern fleet. He forwarded copies of contracts between the Marine Ministry and French manufacturers of armor plate and projectiles, noting that "these will show the forms employed, the tests required, and the prices." Earlier, Buckingham had transmitted data on the cost of a French munitions plant and pointed out that the establishment "is capable of turning out work similar to that which would be required should the U.S. undertake to establish works for guns and armor plates.7738 34. The list was appended to an article by Assistant Naval Constructor F. T. Bowles describing the plans for the United States's first modern warships. F. T.Bowles, "Our New Cruisers," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 9 (1883): 627-31. 35. Coletta, French Ensor Chadwick, 19. 36. Paolo E. Coletta, "French Ensor Chadwick: The First American Naval AttachB, 1882-1889," American Neptune 3 9 (April 1979): 130. 37. Cmdr. John G. Walker to Hon. William Chandler, Secretary of the Navy, 7 August 188?, Walker Papers. 38. Lt. B. H. Buckingham to Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, 22 April 1886, Report 31; Lt. B. H. Buckingham to Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, 27 May 1886,

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In 1889, a third attach6, Lieutenant Nathan Sargent, was assigned to report from Rome and Vienna.39During his first five months of duty, Sargent visited the Armstrong Gun Factory in Naples, where he copied specifications for torpedo boats, and toured the Schwarzkopf Torpedo Factory in Venice. At the beginning of June 1889, Sargent left for a twomonth tour of the arsenals, dockyards, and factories in Fiume, Trieste, Venice, Rome, Livorno, and Spezia. After visiting the Whitehead Torpedo Factory in Fiume on 9 July, he noted in his diary that he "had the fortune to see the interior of a Whitehead torpedo, secret chamber and During his travels, Sargent kept a list of key data to collect in the back of his address book. Among Sargent7s most important objectives were technical data from armor, gun, and steel trials. He was also interested in torpedoes, electric plants, electricity, shipboard communications, compasses, and f~rtifications.~~ The attach6s7 standard method of collecting intelligence was to exchange information of equal importance. ON17spublications, particularly its General Information Series detailing the previous year's naval progress and its War Series describing recent naval operations, were highly respected and used as exchange items by attach& abroad.42Each attach6 received numerous copies of both publications, which he was

Report 46; Lt. B. H. Buckingham to Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, 24 December 1886, Report 102; Lt. B. H. Buckingham to Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, 3 May 1886, Report 36; Lt. B. H. Buckingham to Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, 29 April 1886, Report 33; all are in Entry 90 (Naval Attaches' Letters, 1882-1900), RG 38, NA. 39. A. P. Niblack, The History and Aims of the Ofie of Naval Intelligence (Washington: GPO, 1920), 5. 40. Emphasis in original. Diary, 1889, Box 2, Nathan Sargent Papers, Naval Historical Foundation Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. 41. Sample Entries from List of Nathan Sargent's Intelligence Objectives: Annor Exveriments Gun Trials &ggl Target & manner of attacking Gun Inspection rules Plates, dimensions Projectile Methods of manufacture Plates, descriptions Powder New material Plates, mounting Carriage Piece of metal Plates, might Charge Elastic limit Projectiles Pressure Ultimate strength Charge Recoil Elongation, in inches Density of loading Reduction of area Number & Position of shots Initial velocity Velocity Velocity at impact Striking energy Penetration Target Swelling at back Distance Energy perforation per inch Punishment Source: Address Book, Box 4, Sargent Papers. 42. Green, "The First Sixty Years," 17-18. MILITARY HISTORY

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instructed "to place where you think they will do the most good."43The head of ON1 in 1892, Commander Charles H. Davis, called the General Information Series, "our stock in trade in dealing with foreigners and outsider^."^^ Despite claims by members of ON1 that "any attempt to procure information secretly and on forbidden ground would be unjustifiable," attach& occasionally resorted to more clandestine methods of gathering intelligen~e.~~ In 1885, Chadwick sent to ON1 drawings of new disappearing gun mounts for Russian ironclads, warning that they should be regarded as confidential and not made public in any way other than to government officials.46When Assistant Naval Constructor Philip Hichborn, in a report on his inspection tour of European naval works issued later that year, noted that the United States was openly but also surreptitiously trying to obtain foreign shipbuilding plans, Chadwick complained that such a report jeopardized his efforts. He warned that "every sentiment of self interest" demands that the Navy refrain from publishDespite Hichborn's indiscreing documents obtained surreptiti~usly.~~ tion, the attach& continued to procure information secretly. In 1887, Buckingham forwarded drawings, blueprints, and copies of papers made by two assistant naval constructors for whom Chadwick had secured places at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. Be noted, "As it would be highly embarrassing should our possession of some of the information contained in these papers be known to the French authorities, I would respectfully suggest that every precaution be taken to keep them strictly c~nfidential."~~ Two years later, a member of ON1 warned Sargent, "You had better be careful with your detective camera. This office would have a hard time furnishing bail for you."49 43. Frederic Singer to Nathan Sargent, 14 August 1889, Binder 1, Entry 300 (Correspondence of Lt. Nathan Sargent, U.S. Naval Attach6 at Rome, Vienna, and Berlin), RG 45, NA. 44. Charles H. Davis to Nathan Sargent, 12 May 1892, Binder 6, E-300, RG 45,

NA.

45. Charles C. Rogers, "Naval Intelligence," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 9 (1883): 691. See Niblack, History a n d Aims, 6, for a later expression of the same idea. 46. Lt. Cmdr. French E. Chadwick to Cmdr J. G. Walker, 16 May 1885, Report 8, E-68, RG 38, NA. 47. Lt. Cmdr. French E. Chadwick to Secretary of the Navy William C. Whitney, 28 September 1885, vol. 37, William C. Whitney Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. 48. Lt. B. H. Buckingham to Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, 11 November 1887, Report 113, E-90, RG 38, NA. For Chadwick's role in securing entry for the Naval Constructors, see Coletta, French Ensor Chadwick, 28. 49. Frederic Singer to Nathan Sargent, 3 November 1889, Binder 2, E-300, RG 45, NA.

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Rise and Fall of the Of&ce of Naval Intelligence AttachCs also bought plans from foreign shipbuilders to increase American technical knowledge. Some of the purchased blueprints were used as the basis for the construction of American ships. After construction of the Charleston, the first American cruiser to dispense with sails completely, was authorized in early 1885, Chadwick received orders to search British shipyards for plans that would meet Charleston's specifications. He paid $2,500 to Sir William Armstrong's firm at Newcastle-onTyne for what he thought were blueprints of the Japanese cruiser Naniwa-Kan. Instead, Chadwick ended up with a mixture of designs used in four Armstrong vessels: the Naniwa-Kan, the Italian cruisers Etna and Giovanni Bausan, and the Chilean cruiser Esmeralda. As a result, the Charleston's builder, the Union Iron Works in San Francisco, had to make numerous changes in the ship's machinery before its commissioning in 1889. Chadwick also purchased the plans for the protected cruiser Baltimore from Armstrong. The Baltimore's plans had originally comprised part of an unsuccessful bid to build a cruiser for the Spanish government; the ship's builder, William Cramp & Sons of Philadelphia, made several alterations before its launching in 1890. In 1886, Chadwick delivered a check for the plans of America's first modern battleship, the Texas, to the Naval Construction and Armaments Company of Barrowin-Furness, England. The Barrow firm had won a competition sponsored by the Navy D e ~ a r t r n e n tThe . ~ ~ protected cruisers Philadelphia and San Francisco, authorized in 1887 and commissioned in 1890, were also based on plans purchased abroad, although they were altered substan-

ti all^.^' Other designs were purchased in order to build goodwill with more technologically advanced European firms, who were reluctant to provide information to foreign governments unless there was a prospect of receiving an order.52Once a business relationship was established, however, such firms could be a valuable source of data and might even provide "an admirable place of instruction for our students."53 As Buckingham wrote to the former Secretary of the Navy William C.

50. Frank M. Bennett, The Steam Navy of the United States (1896; reprint, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1972), 789-94; Annual Report of the Secretary of the Navy, 1886, 7; Cooling, Gray Steel and Blue-Water Navy, 63; Elting E. Morison, Admiral Sims and the Modern American Navy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,1942), 38; Coletta, French Ensor Chadwick, 35. 51. Annual Report of the Secretary of the Navy, 1887, viii. 52. Lt. Cmdr. F. E. Chadwick to Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, 7 January 1887, Report 1, E-68, RG 38, NA; F. E. Chadwick to W. C. Whitney, 16 September 1885, vol. 24, Whitney Papers. 53. Lt. Cmdr. F. E. Chadwick to W. C. Whitney, 17 December 1887, vol. 50, Whitney Papers. MILITARY HISTORY

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Whitney in 1889, "Even if we do not adopt the plans, they are worth more than we pay for Another important source of information for ON1 was the shipboard intelligence officer. After the creation of ONI, the Bureau of Navigation ordered the commanding officer of every ship to appoint an intelligence officer to report to the agency on harbors, fortifications, and foreign vess e l ~Not . ~ every ~ ship's intelligence officer took his new duty seriously; one who did, however, was Ensign Washington I. Chambers. As the intelligence officer for the Marion, an old wooden steamer assigned to the South Atlantic Station, he sent in a report and drawings of an Argentinean torpedo boat, the Alerta, which he had gathered during a short inspection visit while the boat lay in Montevideo harbor.56Another shipboard intelligence officer, Lieutenant Charles E. Vreeland, sent in photographs and text copied from a manual describing Armstrong guns, carriages, and ammunition that he had briefly obtained, apparently surreptitiously. Three midshipmen, working regular details all night for five consecutive nights, copied the text before it was returned.57 American naval officers working for foreign arms manufacturers provided a third source of intelligence for ONI. Lieutenant William H. Jaques, an ordnance officer and Secretary of the Gun Foundry Board, was participating in the Board's tour of European ordnance establishments in 1883 when he negotiated to become the American representative for the British maker of heavy forgings, Joseph W h i t w ~ r t hDuring .~~ that same inspection tour, Jaques relayed intelligence the Board acquired back to ON1 in W a s h i n g t ~ n After . ~ ~ touring British dockyards and shipbuilders with Chadwick in 1885, he suggested that the Navy purchase a protected cruiser from Armstrong to provide "a working model and working drawings of both ship and engines." He explained, "The Government will aid its manufacturers by the purchase of the latest and most improved types of model and engines for them to duplicate and improve upon," and stressed the importance of attach& in England, France, Russia, Germany, and Italy.6o Upon returning to the United 54. B. H. Buckingham to W. C. Whitney, 23 September 1889, vol. 60, Whitney Papers. 55. Nathan Miller, Spyingfor America: The Hidden History of U.S. Intelligence

(New York: Paragon, 1989), 160.

56. Capt. J. G. Walker to W. I. Chambers, 16 October 1882, Box 1, Washington I. Chambers Papers, Naval Historical Foundation Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. 57. Lt. Charles E. Vreeland to Lt. R. P. Rodgers, 3 April 1886, File 634, E-68, RG 38, NA. 58. Misa, A Nation of Steel, 98. 59. Lt. W. H. Jaques to Capt. J. G. Walker, 4 August 1883, E-68, RG 38, NA. 60. Lt. W. H. Jaques, Report: Protected Steam Cruisers and their Armament, 21 September 1885, vol. 24, Whitney Papers, 2-3, 15.

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States, Jaques continued to forward material to ON1 before resigning his commission in 1887 to assist the Bethlehem Iron Company in building its new ordnance plant.61 Lieutenant Francis M. Barber, one of the Navy's leading torpedo experts and a member of the Naval Advisory Board, took a leave of absence in 1885 to serve as the U.S. representative for Henri Schneider & Compagnie, the French armor and gun manufacturer in Le C r e ~ s o t . ~ ~ Before leaving Schneider in 1889, Barber informed ON1 that he was "getting hold of all the practical information I can regarding the making and getting out of models for armor plates" and suggested that the office copy a picture he had sent of a curved armor plate.63Lieutenant Edward W. Very, working for Hotchkiss Ordnance Company in Paris, kept ON1 informed of French naval progress and cooperated closely with Buckingham. He forwarded copies of pages from the manual for the Hotchkiss Quick Firing Gun, reports on the French Navy's demand for artillery projectiles, and maps of British dockyards copied while attending gun tests.64When the firm established a Washington office, Very informed the Chief Intelligence Officer, "The company will be happy to place its services at the disposal of the Office of Naval Intelligence at all times."65 ON1 communicated its information to the bureaus within the Navy responsible for overseeing warship construction and to private firms employed by the Navy. The Chief Intelligence Officer in 1888, Lieutenant Raymond P. Rodgers, told his attaches, "In order that the system of collecting information through attaches shall be beneficial to the Department and consequently commend itself to it, it is necessary that the reports shall contain definite technical information so that Ordnance, Construction, and Steam may find in this office that information of technical character concerning the latest improvements abroad, and which is so valuable in undertaking new He reminded them six months later, "The Navy Department will be most actively employed 61. Lt. W. H. Jaques to Lt. R. P. Rodgers, 2 February 1886, file 501, E-68, RG 38, NA; Misa, A Nation of Steel, 104. 62. Misa, A Nation of Steel, 98. 63. Lt. F. M. Barber to Cmdr. J. G. Walker, 10 April 1889, file 2226, E-68, RG 38, NA. Barber later served as the first naval attach6 to Tokyo and Peking and came out of retirement to serve as attach6 to Berlin, Rome, and Vienna during the SpanishAmerican War. Niblack, History a n d Aims, 8-9. 64. Lt. E. W. Very to Lt. R. P. Rodgers, 26 December 1885, file 462, and Lt. E. W. Very to Lt. R. P. Rodgers, 21 April 1886, file 606 in E-68, RG 38, NA. 65. Lt. E. W. Very to Lt. R. P. Rodgers, 28 July 1887, file 1234, E-68, RG 38, NA. Cooling discusses the work of Jaques, Barber, and Very for foreign arms manufacturers, but does not mention the ON1 connection. Cooling, Gray Steel a n d Blue-Water Navy, 43, 55, 69, 70, 75. 66. R. P. Rodgers to Nathan Sargent, 30 November 1888,Binder 1,E-300, RG 45, NA. MILITARY HISTORY

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during the next year in preparing for construction work of all kinds, and the work done by the attaches during the next six months will be very important to the Department, and, if exact and complete, will be highly to their credit and that of the intelligence system."67ON1 also responded to specific requests from the Bureaus of Ordnance, Construction and Repair, and Equipment and Recruiting for the latest information on waroccasional disputes over the ship and armament c o n ~ t r u c t i o nDespite .~~ level of detail in the attaches' reports, the technical Bureaus were grateful for the information that ON1 provided. The Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance, William M. Folger, informed Sargent in 1891, "Your reports have always been very valuable to us."69 ON1 also provided plans, blueprints, and product catalogs it acquired abroad and copies of its publications to American shipbuilding firms.70 According to the head of the Union Iron Works in San Francisco, these plans represented the "condensed results obtained by the best shipbuilders of this age, from which they [American shipbuilders] can adopt or avoid such parts as experience approves or c o n d e r n n ~ . "When ~~ Jaques left the Navy and went to work for Bethlehem Iron Company, the Chief Intelligence Officer even sent him a copy of the index to ON17s files.72 At least one attache, William H. Emory, went even further in his attempts to assist American manufacturers. When Secretary sf the Navy

67. R. P. Rodgers to Nathan Sargent, 10 April 1889, Binder 1,E-300, RG 45, NA. 68. See, for example, W. M. Folger to Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 14 December 1892, file 1892-275; T. D. Wilson to Chief of Bureau of Navigation, 7 April 1890, file 1890-187; and George Dewey to Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 11June 1891, file 1891-117 in E-68, RG 38, NA. 69. W. M. Folger to Nathan Sargent, 21 July 1891, Binder 5, E-300, RG 45, NA. For an account of Chief Constructor Theodore Wilson's appreciation of ONI's work, see F. Singer to Sargent, 31 July 1890, Binder 3, E-300, RG 45, NA. For an example of a dispute over detail in attach6 reports, see F. Singer to Sargent, 18 October 1889, Binder 2, E-300, RG 45, NA. Despite such disputes, the strong working relationship between ON1 and the technical bureaus and the frequent expressions of gratitude to ON1 by the Bureau chiefs make it doubtful that ONI's efforts were part of an effort by line officers to obtain technologically-sophisticated ships without increasing the power and influence of engineers in the Navy. See \Villiam M. McBride, "The Rise and Fall of a Strategic Technology: The American Battleship from Santiago Bay to Pearl Harbor, 1898-1941" (Ph.D. diss., Johns I-Iopkins University, 1990) for a later example of just such an effort. 70. R. W. Steel to Lt. R. P. Rodgers, 6 February 1886, file 512, and Edward Faron to Lt. R. P. Rodgers, 12 July 1886, file 707, in E-68, RG 38, NA; Lt. B. H. Buckingham to Chief of Bureau of Navigation, 31 March 1887, report 143, E-90, RG 38, NA. 71. Irving M. Scott to Secretary of the Navy William C. Whitney, 2 July 1886,vol. 35, Whitney Papers. 72. W. H. Jaques to Lt. R. P. Rodgers, 6 August 1888, file 1813, E-68, RG 38, NA.

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Benjamin F. Tracy learned in June 1890 that Bethlehem would be unable to provide enough nickel-steel armor to meet the Navy's needs, he contacted Andrew C a r r ~ e g i eTracy . ~ ~ sent Carnegie copies of dispatches from Emory, the attach6 in London, reporting the successful trial of nickelsteel armor and inquired whether he was able to manufacture it.74 Carnegie, who was in Europe at the time, asked Emory for information on recent trials of nickel-steel armor and the status of the patent rights. Without any official authorization, Emory provided Carnegie with the requested i n f ~ r m a t i o nHe . ~ ~explained, "I have done all I could, knowing Mr. Carnegie7shigh standing at home, and feeling that I was assisting establishing plants at home which would be of great use to the service.7776 Earlier in the year, Emory had tried to arrange a meeting between Captain Alfred Nobel, the inventor of cordite, and a representative of the DuPont Company in order "to commence an acquaintance that might in the future be valuable to the Government should it be deemed desirable to arrange for making cordite at D ~ P o n t ' s . " ~ ~ In the early 1890s, ONI's focus began to shift away from the acquisition of foreign technology and toward policy planning and problem solvSimultaneously, the Office began to lose many of its most talented i1-18.~~ officers and to reduce spending on overseas intelligence work.79Historian Mark Shulman has claimed that, by 1893, ON1 was "reduced to the dual roles of librarian and propagandist for 'Blue Water7 n a v a l i s t ~ . " ~ ~

73. Allard, "The Influence of the United States Navy," 94-95. 74. William L. Abbot to Andrew Carnegie, 23 June 1890, vol. 11, Andrew Carnegie Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. 75. William H. Emory to Andrew Carnegie, 26 June 1890,27 June 1890,30 June 1890, 2 July 1890, 3 July 1890, in vol. 11, Carnegie Papers. 76. Lt. Cmdr. William H. Emory to Chief of Bureau of Navigation, 27 June 1890, William I-I. Emory Papers, Naval Historical Foundation Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. 77. Quoted in Albert Gleaves, ed. The Life of a n American Sailor: Rear Admiral William Hemsley Emory, United States Navy, From His Letters and Memoirs (New York: George H. Doran Co., 1923), 122. 78. General instructions regarding intelligence duty issued by the Assistant Secretary of the Navy gave ON1 responsibility for preparing detailed plans of campaign for naval operations and placed new emphasis on facilities in foreign countries for defense, troop transport, coaling ships, and landing men and supplies. See James R. Soley, "Confidential Instructions in Regard to Intelligence Duty, 1892," 28 October 1892, file U-1-g, register #10876-C, Entry 98 (Intelligence Division, Naval Attach6 Reports, 1886-1939), RG 38, NA; and F. Singer to Sargent, 6 November 1892, Binder 7, E-300, RG 45, NA. 79. F. Singer to N. Sargent, 3 1 August 1892; F. Singer to N. Sargent, 27 September 1892; and F. E. Chadwick to N. Sargent, 7 October 1892, all in Binder 7, E-300, RG 45, NA. See also Donvart, Office ofNaval Intelligence, 43-62. 80. Shulman, "The Rise and Fall of American Naval Intelligence," 215. MILITARY HISTORY

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Shulman has blamed political and bureaucratic factors for what he calls "the fall" of ONI. He argues that the resuscitation of the office of Assistant Secretary of the Navy gave navalists a position of power within the Navy Department and the placement of ON1 under that office's jurisdiction subjected ON1 to the influence of navalism. The appointment of a series of staunch Mahanites as Chief Intelligence Officers ensured the organization's demise. A technological perspective, however, highlights at least three additional explanations for the change in ON17sfocus. First, and most importantly, ON1 was a victim of its own success. During the 1 8 8 0 the ~ ~ United States, thanks in part to the contribution of ONI, gradually developed the industrial infrastructure necessary for the naval expansion of the 1890s. As of 1885, no domestic steel maker was capable of producing the steel crankshafts the Navy wanted for its ships, and Chadwick was busy buying plans for American warships from English firms.81By 1887, Chadwick believed that "we are firmly on our feet in design of hull at least," although the United States could not produce a single ton of heavy armor and remained dependent on European firms for engine and machinery designs." By the early 1890s, the country was no longer dependent on foreign steel and the main technical problems of construction had been solved.R3Requests for technical information sent to ON1 by the Bureaus of Ordnance and Construction and Repair peaked between 1890 and 1892-the early stages of construction of the United States's original first-class battleships, the Indiana, Massachusetts, and Oregon-and dropped dramatically thereafter as the

81. Cmdr. F. E. Chadwick to Secretary of the Navy William C. Whitney, 20 September 1885, vol. 24, Whitney Papers. 82. Cmdr. F. E. Chadwick to Secretary of the Navy William C. Whitney, 3 September 1887, vol. 47, Whitney Papers; Allard, "The Influence of the United States Navy," 106-7. 83. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology began a naval architectural program as a course option in mechanical engineering in 1889 and created a separate department of naval architecture in 1893. The program, however, followed a mathematically intensive, theoretical approach disliked by the Navy. William M. McBride, "The 'Greatest Patron of Science'?: The Navy-Academia Alliance and U.S. Naval Research, 1896-1923," Journal of Military History 56 (January 1992): 16. The Webb Institute began to admit students for formal training in naval architecture in 1894. Nlin, "The Civil War and the Period of Decline," 73. For other positive assessments of the state of American naval technology in the early 1890s, see Coletta, French Ensor Chadwick, 35; Robert Seager 11, "Ten Years Before Mahan: The Unofficial Case for the New Navy, 1880-1890," Mississippi Valley Historical Review 40 (December 1953): 511; William Hovgaard, Modern History of Warships (1920; reprint, Annapolis, Md.: United States Naval Institute, 1971), 99.

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Rise and Fall of the Ofice of Naval Intelligence

Bureaus gained experience and c ~ n f i d e n c eBy . ~ ~1893, three American steel makers-Bethlehem, Carnegie, and Midvale-were producing ordnance for the Navy, nine American shipbuilding firms were constructing ships, and the former Chief Constructor of the Navy, Theodore D. Wilson, was claiming, "We are capable of producing to-day in the United States the materials of construction for guns, armor, machinery and hull in any quantity that is desired, and of a quality of excellence that is unsurpassed in the world."RS Second, the activities of ON17sattach& and those of other countries provoked a reaction on the part of European governments and manufacturers, who began to guard their naval technology much more jealously. During ON17sfirst years of existence, its attach& enjoyed easy access to European naval facilities. A British intelligence officer admitted that "representatives of foreign powers were allowed practically free access to all our dockyards and naval establi~hments."~6 A series of minor espionage scandals, combined with an increasingly aggressive nationalism among the major European powers and a growing awareness of the importance of military technology, soon modified such casual attitudes.87 From Great Britain in 1885, Chadwick warned of "the intense feeling which exists in this country on the subject of the supposed supply by the 84. Correspondence between ON1 and the Navy's Technical Bureaus, 1886-1898 (Requests for Technical Information/Other Correspondence): Year -B Bureau of Construction & Repair 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898

011 012 015 V3 314 412 511 012 611 613 010 212 VO Sources: Entry 65 (Letter Index, 1885-1889) and Entry 67 (Index to Letters Received, 1890-1899), RG 38, NA. 85. Theodore D. Wilson, "The Steel Ships of the United States Navy," Transactions of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers 1 (1893): 116-17. See also Cooling, Gray Steel and Blue-Water Navy, 109; Allard, "The Influence of the United States Navy," 106-7. 86. George Aston, Secret Serwice (New York: Cosmopolitan, 1930), 21. 87. Donvart, Office of Naval Intelligence, 48; I. F. Clarke, Voices Prophesying War: Future Wars, 1763-3749, 2d ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 63-64, 105-6. MILITARY HISTORY

012 010 V2 011 1216 1013 1714 811 310 012 110 210 2/24

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Government openly, or by Government employees surreptitiously, of important plans."R8 Similar sentiments existed on the continent. Chadwick complained that, in France, "one cannot carry a sketch-book without risk of inconvenience with anything sketched in it less innocent than a Lieutenant S. A. Stanton, who had recently completed a tour of naval installations and manufacturing facilities in Italy, reported in 1886 that "the latest-and therefore the most desirable-developments in naval progress are guarded with considerable reserve; and, in fact, a principle seems often to be made of secrecy, even in relation to things which are pretty well known to all the world."90 The movement toward greater secrecy culminated in the late 1880s and early 1890s. In 1889, Great Britain enacted its first Official Secrets Act, which made passing official information to a third party a criminal offense. The actions of the American military attach6 to France in 1892, Captain Henry D. Borup, who was caught buying plans of the French coastal fortifications at Toulon, seemed to confirm the need for European nations to impose tighter security and limit attach6s7access to informatiom91Consequently, ON17sattach& in the 1890s faced more obstacles in their attempts to gather intelligence. Following the Borup incident, the new attach6 to Paris and former Chief Intelligence Officer R. P. Rodgers noted that his predecessor "thinks it will be impossible to get any drawings at this time-and that much time must elapse before any facilities for getting such will reappear. In England, Emory told me the Admiralty gave absolutely nothing, that the law prevented their doing so whatever might be their good use."92The following year, he complained, "The Government guards the secret of its smokeless powders with great care and jeal0usy."9~His successor, Lieutenant William S. Sims, noted in a letter to his parents, "The information was collected in the face of considerable opposition, and I had to untangle countless lies to get at the truth. 7794 88. Et. Cmdr. French E. Chadwick to Secretary of the Navy William C. Whitney,

28 September 1885, vol. 37, Whitney Papers.

89. Lt. Cmdr French E. Chadwick to Secretary of the Navy William C. Whitney,

1 December 1886, vol. 38, Whitney Papers.

90. Lt. S. A. Stanton to Rear Adm. S. R. Franklin, 24 April 1886, file 657, E-68, RG 38, NA. 91. T. Jefferson Coolidge, The Autobiography of T. Jefferson Coolidge, 1831-1920 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1923), 159-63; Vagts, Military Attachd, 222-23; Dorwart, Ofice of Naval Intelligence, 48. 92. R. P. Rodgers to F. E. Chadwick, 12 October 1892, vol. 12, Entry 189 (Letters Sent by Naval Attach&, 1885-1905), RG 38, NA. See also Gleaves, Life of a n American Sailor, 123, 127, 133. 93. Lt. R. P. Rodgers, 22 March 1893, Report 95, Vol. 2, E-189, RG 38, NA. 94. Morison, Admiral Sims, 50-51. Concerns about technology transfer also prompted the British Admiralty Board to exclude foreign students from the naval

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Third, navalists at the end of the 1880s began to put together, from the "confused jigsaw puzzle" that constituted naval technology for most of the decade, the key pieces they needed to realize their dreams of a steel battleship fleet.95Until that time, supporters of the battleship could not identify the most suitable form of protection for warships, since none of the several armor types-all-steel, compound iron-steel, chilled cast iron, and nickel-steel--could be proven superior to the others, nor could they agree on the most cost-effective design, since technological limitations made it impossible to combine seaworthiness, armament, speed, range, and protection without making significant sacrifices in at least one area.96Moreover, the torpedo and the ram represented viable alternatives to the heavily gunned capital ship that navalists could not afford to ignore. The uncertainty thus engendered placed a premium on keeping abreast of foreign technological development and lent importance to ONI's mission. By the early 1890s, however, missing technological pieces and uncertainty no longer prevented the navalists from achieving their plan. Most navies reached a consensus on many of the best elements of gun design by the late 1880s and all the navies of the great powers began to adopt decrementally hardened or "Harveyized armor plate in the early 1 8 9 0 ~Torpedo . ~ ~ nets, searchlight systems, and quick-firing guns offered capital ships some protection against torpedo attacks, while a series of accidental collisions proved the ram to be more dangerous to friend than foe and ended its consideration as a serious weapon.98Most importantly, as Jon Sumida has argued, "technical improvements in steam power, amour, and armament had made it possible to build an effective ocean-going battleship at a reasonable cost."99The Secretary of the Navy's report in 1892 argued that the United States's true naval polshipbuilding course at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, in 1896. See ~ c ~ r i d e , "The 'Greatest Patron of Science'?," 14-15. 95. For the "confused jigsaw puzzle," see Buhl, "Maintaining 'An American Navy,'" 148. 96. Misa, A Nation of Steel, 107-8; Sumida, I n Defense of Naval Supremacy, 12. 97. Cooling, Gray Steel and Blue-Water Navy, 91-96; Richard Dwight Glasow, "Prelude to a Naval Renaissance: Ordnance Innovation in the United States Navy During the 1870s" (Ph. D. diss., University of Delaware, 1978), 51; Misa,A Nation of Steel, 117-22. 98. On torpedo nets, see W. M. Folger to C. H. Davis, 27 May 1890, file #147, E90, RG 38, NA; on searchlights, see R. B. Bradford to N. Sargent, 20 June 1889, Binder 1, E-300, RG 45, NA; on quick-firing guns, see Sumida, In Defense of Naval Supremacy, 12, and William 11. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society sinceA.D. 1000 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 279. Ram bows continued to appear on warships until 1905, but their ineffectiveness in battle and the danger they posed to friendly ships reduced their popularity. See Stanley L. Sandler, "The Day of the Ram," Military M a i r s 40 (December 1976): 175-78. 99. Sumida, In Defense of Naval Supremacy, 12. MILITARY HISTORY

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icy for the future was to build primarily, if not entirely, first-class cruisers and battleships. The Iowa, authorized that same year, possessed higher freeboard, greater speed, and longer range than its predecessors, the Indiana-class of seagoing coast-line battleships, and was the largest American battleship to date.loOAlthough engineers and line officers continued to debate important design issues well into the twentieth century, the general direction of American naval technological development was clear.lOlAs questions about the course of naval technology began to disappear, so did the rationale for an organization designed to collect intelligence on that very subject. Thus, just as ONI's birth in 1882 was linked to technological change, so too was its decline in the 1890s. Navy leaders created ON1 to replace an intelligence gathering system that was incapable of overcoming the technological barriers to the creation of the New Navy. For the first ten years of its existence, ON1 concentrated on obtaining foreign naval technology, both openly and clandestinely, in order to build a modern fleet as quickly and inexpensively as possible. By 1892, ONI's initial objective had been, in large measure, achieved. The United States had successfully domesticated steel production and had acquired the technology necessary to build modern warships. This shift in the technological foundation that underpinned ONI's rise, combined with growing secrecy in Europe in response to its activities and changes in the nature of naval technology, contributed to its fall.

100. Hovgaard, Modern History of Warships, 102. 101. See McBride, "The Rise and Fall of a Strategic Technology," and William M. McBride, "Strategic Determinism in Technology Selection: The Electric Battleship and U.S. Naval-Industrial Relations," Technology and Culture 33 (April 1992): 248-77, for post-1898 debates over the design of U.S. battleships.

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