The Admirals

by Walter R. Borneman

  Then there were the nicknames. It was a well-established tradition at the Naval Academy that every midshipman had to have at least one and in some cases several. These nicknames frequently stuck with an officer throughout his career, although those privileged to use them were usually limited to his classmates. King was “Dolly” for his handsome good looks and cherubic red cheeks—a name he despised and that rarely surfaced post-Annapolis—and “Rey,” Spanish for “king,” which he found much more to his liking.6

  On Graduation Day 1901, sixty-seven cadets of the class of 1901 marched to receive their provisional diplomas. True to his plan, King was fourth in his class. He still had the unused return railroad ticket his father had bought him four years before. His father made the trip from Lorain to see the event and listen to Theodore Roosevelt, now vice president of the United States, give the commencement address.

  Three short months in Cuba and a few hours on San Juan Hill had propelled Roosevelt to the governorship of New York. Two years later, William McKinley, who had initially balked at Roosevelt’s appointment as assistant secretary of the navy, agreed to take him on as vice president and get him out of New York politics. Within three months of King’s graduation, an assassin’s bullet would make Roosevelt president.

  As King departed Annapolis for his first assignment, there was one other thing he may have noticed. Annapolis was changing. The dismal cadet quarters left over from the Civil War were being replaced by modern Bancroft Hall. Streets in town were being paved and trolleys beginning to appear. Each incoming class brought an increased number of cadets. Annapolis was changing because America was changing and had come to realize, on the waters of Manila Bay and off Santiago, that its presence in the world depended on a modern, well-led, and well-equipped navy.

  From Annapolis, King began his required two years of sea duty before being commissioned with assignments aboard the training frigate Constellation and survey ship Eagle. In the spring of 1902, he was ordered to the newly commissioned battleship Illinois, which was bound for Europe as the U.S. flagship in European waters. Among the highlights King experienced was a grand review of naval might representing sixteen nations that assembled off Spithead, England, for the coronation of Edward VII. The Illinois moored alongside the German battleship Kaiser Friedrich III, and King had plenty of opportunities to inspect the competition.

  By the time the Illinois made its way around Europe and to the Caribbean for the winter 1902–1903 fleet maneuvers, King faced the sort of political quandary that he seems to have routinely imposed on himself in an effort to advance his career. He was still six months away from taking final exams to be commissioned an ensign, and no less than the captain of Illinois advised him to remain aboard. Initially, King agreed, but then he became aware of a vacancy on the cruiser Cincinnati. He seized on it because the smaller complement would permit him to command a ship’s division and serve as a watch officer before he was commissioned an ensign. Illinois’s captain was not pleased, but King went on his way.

  King’s forty-man division on Cincinnati gave him his first direct command and put to the test whether or not he could be stern yet just. By the time his ship reached its station with the Asiatic Squadron in the Far East, King had passed both his commissioning exams as an ensign and his unofficial leadership review by his men. When the enlisted sailors of his division gathered for a group portrait in Shanghai, they insisted that King join them—an unusual compliment that he savored. He had indeed managed to be strict but fair.

  Yet King encountered one demon that almost ruined his career. Liquor was then legal aboard ship and unlimited on liberties ashore. Drinking was a fairly common ritual to relieve the boredom, but not everyone could handle it. Returning late from liberty in Shanghai, King staggered aboard the Cincinnati clearly drunk and disorderly. When the captain recorded the offense in King’s record, King took his usual approach of splitting hairs and debated whether he had been “a few” or “several” hours late.

  Two months later, he was late again for a special duty, but by this time the Cincinnati had a new captain. This was Commander Hugo Osterhaus, who well remembered Mr. King from the coming-alongside-in-the-opposing-direction incident off Provincetown some years before. This time he would show no mercy. “Ensign King is a young and promising officer,” Osterhaus wrote in King’s next fitness report, “and it would be unjust to him to overlook an offense of this nature.” Thereafter, King was never late for an assignment, no matter how much carousing he had done the night before.

  While on station in the Far East, Cincinnati made the rounds of port calls from Hong Kong to Shanghai to Yokohama, as well as Chefoo (now Yantai, China), some seventy-five miles south of the Russian base at Port Arthur. Western powers routinely called at Chinese and Japanese ports in those days, and at 37° north latitude Chefoo was a favorite summer rendezvous and training ground where the Asiatic Squadron could escape the heat of the tropics.

  Early in December 1903, three battleships and four cruisers of the squadron, including the Cincinnati, were suddenly ordered to steam for Hawaii at top speed. Seasonal gales in the Central Pacific lashed the ships, but they made the run in record time. Even their commander did not learn the reason for the sprint until some years later. President Theodore Roosevelt wished to see just how quickly the squadron might come east should trouble develop with Latin American countries over his interest in controlling the route of the proposed Panama Canal. Six weeks later, King and the Cincinnati were back in the Philippines when Japanese destroyers struck the Russian fleet at Port Arthur.7

  Following Japan’s surprise attack at Port Arthur, the Russo-Japanese war did not go well for Russia. Its surviving capital ships fought minimal sea engagements in the neighboring waters with only limited success. Japan invaded Korea and laid siege to Port Arthur. As Russia struggled to stay in the conflict, a major problem was supplying its ships and armies by rail across the expanse of Siberia. By January 1905, Port Arthur, along with the remaining ships of Russia’s First Pacific Squadron, fell to the Japanese. A horrific land battle followed at Mukden (now Shenyang), China, with upwards of 35,000 killed and 100,000 wounded on both sides. Another 20,000 Russian troops were captured as the Russian army abandoned the field and made a disorganized retreat northward.

  Meanwhile, in October 1904, Tsar Nicholas II dispatched his prized Baltic Fleet—now renamed the Second Pacific Squadron—halfway around the world to reenforce Port Arthur. Rear Admiral Zinovi Rozhdestvenski was in port on Madagascar when word reached him that the outpost had fallen to the Japanese. Rozhdestvenski faced a crucial decision. Should he turn around, with his only loss being pride, and return to the Baltic, or should he continue on to Vladivostok?

  Rozhdestvenski chose to continue and in doing so elected to take the most direct route. This led through the South China and East China Seas and the narrow Tsushima Strait between Korea and Japan. These were hardly friendly waters. Before dawn on May 27, 1905, a heavy fog parted long enough for the Japanese to detect the Russian fleet nearing the southern entrance to the strait. Crude wireless flashed the news to Admiral Togo aboard his flagship Mikasa. His fleet was waiting at a secret anchorage at Masan Bay, Korea, just to the west.

  Next came the tactics that every American naval officer would subsequently study at either Annapolis or the Naval War College. Choosing to fight one grand battle that he hoped would settle the conflict and establish complete naval superiority, Togo assembled a major force. In line astern of the Mikasa, his twelve capital ships steamed south to meet the approaching Russian fleet.

  Rozhdestvenski had his ships deployed in two parallel lines, with eight lesser battleships and cruisers in the port column and his four principal battleships, including his flagship, Kniaz Suvarov, to their starboard. Togo might well have chosen simply to pass the Russian fleet on its weaker port side while going in the opposite direction and duke it out with broadsides right down the line. This may have caused some damage—quite probably to both sides—but it would have left th
e Japanese headed south and the Russians escaping north to Vladivostok.

  Instead, Togo chose to cross the T, not once but twice. In this maneuver, the Japanese line first turned to starboard and passed across the bows of the advancing Russian columns mostly beyond gun range—the first crossing. Then Togo executed a hard U-turn to port back to the east—not in unison, which would have put his flagship in the rear instead of the van, but one ship at a time. For just a moment, the Russians thought that Fortune was smiling on them. As the Mikasa led the turn, it appeared momentarily stationary, and the Suvarov opened fire. Each of the following Japanese ships would also be sitting ducks as they made the turn.

  But coming out of the turn, Togo increased speed and led his fleet back across the head of the Russian columns to cross the T again, this time at much closer range and with a withering effect on the oncoming Russian ships. In so doing, the Japanese ships could bring all of their guns to bear to starboard on the Russian lines, while the Russian ships, coming on at a right angle, could bring only their forward batteries to bear. Rozhdestvenski attempted to get his four main battleships into a line ahead of his weaker ships to protect them, but by then the damage had been done.

  Of the twelve capital ships in the Russian battle line, eight were sunk and four captured. While several Japanese ships sustained major damage, Togo’s only losses were three torpedo boats and 110 sailors killed. The Russians lost nearly 12,000 men, 4,830 killed and almost 7,000 taken prisoner. The end result of the Battle of Tsushima Strait was that Tsar Nicholas II had little choice but to accept Theodore Roosevelt’s offer to broker a peace. The Japanese rejoiced in their newfound naval might, and Admiral Togo became a godlike hero.8

  King was impressed with Japan’s naval performance, but he also noted the empire’s proficiency in putting out a steady stream of propaganda claiming victory at every turn. Despite the bitter end for the Russians, the Japanese had also suffered some setbacks over the course of the eighteen-month conflict, including the loss of two battleships to mines. It was a lesson in tactics and politics that King would remember.

  Once more back in the Philippines, King had been away from the United States for three years, two and a half aboard Cincinnati. He was anxious to return stateside, particularly when he found officers a year his junior being rotated home. His request was granted, and in June 1905 he headed home. He had certainly crisscrossed that part of the globe, but despite his later involvement with events there, Ernest J. King would never again have permanent duty in the Far East.9

  CHAPTER THREE

  Halsey

  “Pudge”

  —Annapolis, Class of 1904

  Hampton Roads, Virginia, had rarely seen such a display of naval power. After fourteen months at sea, sixteen U.S. Navy battleships were returning from a round-the-world cruise meant to demonstrate America’s military might and global reach. The architect of this endeavor, President Theodore Roosevelt, was as giddy as a schoolboy as he stood on the deck of the presidential yacht, Mayflower, and watched his Great White Fleet pass in review to the booming of twenty-one-gun salutes.

  It was February 22, 1909, and the date was no coincidence—Washington’s Birthday. But more important, in less than two weeks Roosevelt would be leaving office, and he was not about to miss this exclamation point on his foreign policy. The goals for the navy that he had laid out as assistant secretary even before the dash of the Oregon were now triumphant before him.

  Connecticut led the line, just as the battleship had when departing Hampton Roads in December 1907. There followed the other ships of the first division, Kansas, Minnesota, and Vermont. And then, like a grand roll call of states, the rest of the battle fleet: Georgia, Nebraska, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Louisiana, Virginia, Missouri, Ohio, Wisconsin, Illinois, Kentucky, and the lone nonstate name, Kearsarge. All were post–Spanish-American War battleships that displaced at least twice the tonnage of the sunken Maine—proof positive of Roosevelt’s rush to naval power.

  The only slight frustration about this thundering parade was that the weather was not cooperating with the moment. A wintry gray sky shed incessant drizzle as Roosevelt in top hat and dark overcoat clambered aboard the Connecticut to extend personal congratulations to the flagship’s officers and crew. They assembled on the foredeck below the forward 12-inch gun turret, but as the president started to climb onto the base of the turret to address them, he slipped on the rain-slick surface. Sailors caught him and boosted him up to the makeshift platform as cowboys might push a dude up on a horse. Unfazed as usual, Roosevelt launched into a rousing round of congratulations and assured the assembled sailors, “Those who perform the feat again can but follow in your footsteps.”1

  Out of hearing range on the nearby Kansas, Ensign William F. Halsey, Jr., stood at attention. He was delighted to be home. The world cruise had been an eye-opener, but Bill, as his friends called him, had a girl waiting. He had “bombarded her with souvenirs and ardent letters from every port,” but since there was plenty of stateside competition for her hand, he was anxious to affirm where he stood.

  Still, Halsey had not spent the cruise pining away. He and his shipmates had been the toast of every port of call from Rio de Janeiro to Yokohama, and they had taken full advantage of it. Always one to embrace the social scene, Halsey later confessed, “We needed the stretches at sea to rest from the hospitality ashore.”2

  Standing at attention on neighboring battleships were some of Halsey’s Annapolis contemporaries. Lieutenant Harold R. Stark, class of 1903, and Passed Midshipman Raymond A. Spruance, class of 1907, stood on the Minnesota. Ensign Husband E. Kimmel, Halsey’s close friend and a classmate from 1904, watched from the Georgia. By the time another such gathering of naval power occurred, Halsey would command the fleet, and two of those officers would be disgraced. The third would be his rival.

  Bill Halsey came from a line sprinkled with sailors and at least one pirate. He described these forebears as “big, violent men, impatient of the law, and prone to strong drink and strong language.” One of them, John Halsey, was granted a privateer’s commission by the colonial governor of Massachusetts during Queen Anne’s War (1702–1713). Among his escapades was a ferocious attack on four ships at once, capturing two in the process. Captain John indiscriminately continued such activity long after his privateer’s commission expired, thus becoming a pirate.

  A century later, another Halsey, Eliphalet, captained the first Long Island whaler to round Cape Horn and make for the South Pacific whaling grounds. Other Halseys followed Eliphalet to sea, but Charles Henry Halsey chose to remain securely on land as first a lawyer and then an Episcopal clergyman. He married well—Eliza Gracie King was the granddaughter of the Federalist politician Rufus King—but Charles died young when he fell out of a window while inspecting the construction of a rectory. Eliza was left with a brood of six or seven children (the record is not clear), including two-year-old William Frederick Halsey.

  Eliza settled in Elizabeth, New Jersey, to raise her fatherless children, but it was a tough lot. Friends repeatedly tried to help, and when Charles’s former law partner, George M. Robeson, was appointed secretary of the navy in 1869, William, by now about fifteen, announced that he would like to go to the U.S. Naval Academy. Robeson made the necessary arrangements, giving William a vacant slot from Louisiana, and he proceeded to graduate from Annapolis in the class of 1873.

  After William Halsey advanced to lieutenant in 1880, he married Anne Masters Brewster, a childhood friend who traced her roots back to the Brewsters of Plymouth Colony. Shortly after the wedding, the bridegroom reported for a lengthy sea tour, but not before Anne was pregnant. On October 30, 1882, in her father’s house in Elizabeth, Anne gave birth to William Frederick Halsey, Jr. By the time the child’s father returned from sea, the boy was two and his head was ringed with long golden curls. Much to Anne’s chagrin, Lieutenant Halsey promptly marched his namesake to the barbershop.

  The usual naval assignments, with resulting moves about the country,
followed, but the Halseys’ happiest times may have been when William Sr. was stationed at the Naval Academy as an instructor in physics and chemistry. Certainly, it was during those years of living in close proximity to Annapolis and savoring its daily rituals that young William—still called “Willie”—expressed his desire to attend on his own. Characteristically, he took matters into his own hands when he was fourteen and wrote a rather rambling letter directly to president-elect William McKinley requesting a presidential appointment. Addressing McKinley by his Civil War rank of “Major,” young Halsey confessed, “I… have always wanted to enter the Navy.”

  Both a strict disciplinarian and a keen academic, William Frederick Halsey, Sr., set a high standard for his son. He had enrolled Willie in a boarding school, Swarthmore Grammar outside Philadelphia, in hopes of readying him for the academy. When the letter to McKinley showed no promise, William Sr. nonetheless ratcheted up the preparation and sent his son to a special prep school in the Annapolis area. Grandly known as Buck Wilmer University, it was run by a retired naval officer—Buck Wilmer himself—for the express purpose of preparing prospective appointees for the rigorous entrance exams.

  But there were two problems. First, there was no word from President McKinley despite more letters, and the Annapolis slot from the Halseys’ Elizabeth, New Jersey, congressional district was filled. Willie even wrote to the congressman who represented the district in Louisiana from which his father had been appointed, but those had been special circumstances. Second, despite all his studies, it was becoming quite clear that young Halsey wasn’t one to excel academically.

  By the fall of 1899, with no hope of Annapolis in sight, the Halseys chose another tack for their son. They enrolled Willie in the University of Virginia’s medical school at Charlottesville on the theory that he might still enter the navy as a medical officer. The academic result was predictable. Anatomy classes, formaldehyde odors, and cadavers just weren’t his thing. Instead, Willie took on the more mature name of “Bill” and plunged headlong into the university’s social life, including the Delta Psi fraternity. Then, too, there was his growing interest in football. “I didn’t learn much,” Bill Halsey later confessed of his year at Virginia, “but I… had a wonderful time.”