Читать книгу A Different Kind of Victory - James Leutze - Страница 10

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TOMMY HART’S SECOND WAR

For the next twenty years Hart was occupied in a variety of activities. He started his professional career, got married, and served in another war. He also set the pattern, at least in part, for the rest of his life. In dealing with this formative period, it is instructive to examine some fundamental questions. What were the influences and experiences that shaped Thomas Hart into a mature naval officer? How did he determine his career goals? Who was his model? How did he change from a rather callow youth of twenty-two into a serious, exemplary, professional of forty-two?

The beginning of the twentieth century found Tommy Hart at sea on a nineteenth-century ship whose name was synonymous with glory in a distant war. The wooden-hulled, steam-powered, but square-rigged sloop Hartford, Admiral David G. Farragut’s flagship in the Battle of New Orleans (1862), was to be his home for the next three years. At this point the Hartford had been relegated to duty as a training ship, so Hart and the other young officers assigned to her worried about being diverted from the mainstream of naval professionalism. What was there to learn, they asked, in a Civil War relic? For Hart the answer was not quite as important as for others—he was having fun. At Annapolis he had acquired a love for distant places, and the Hartford offered the opportunity for travel to the Caribbean, Atlantic islands, and even some European ports, as well as for the practice of another of his enthusiasms, seamanship. Apparently he not only liked shiphandling, he was good at it. Almost all his fitness reports during this tour were in the excellent range.¹

It was also during this period that Tommy was given a brief assignment that allowed him to demonstrate what he had learned about handling men. A group of sailors being mustered out of the navy needed to be returned from Norfolk to San Francisco, where they had enlisted.² The journey was to be made by rail, which meant that the accompanying officer would have to spend about a week supervising two carloads of rough, tough sailors, over whom the U.S. Navy’s authority was about to expire. Naturally, this left plenty of time for trouble, particularly since the train made numerous stops, thus providing ample opportunity for obtaining alcoholic beverages, getting into fights, missing departures, and so on. Tommy Hart, assisted by a crusty old chief, was put in charge of the expedition. By this time Tommy had put on a little weight—he weighed approximately 120 pounds; he still stood, even when ramrod straight, less than six feet, and even though his boyish face was showing signs of the handsomeness that soon came, he still looked very young. What he lacked in age he tried to make up in bearing, and his voice, though seldom raised, had a penetrating quality that commanded attention. Still, he later admitted that the task ahead looked formidable.

When the group fell in on the train platform, Tommy outlined the journey to be made and a few simple rules about behavior, both on and off the train. Once they left the station, it quickly became apparent that many of the men did not have to get off the train if they wanted to drink. What they had not already ingested they were carrying in their seabags. Tommy had nothing against drinking, indeed he enjoyed a drink himself; furthermore, he rather expected seamen to drink, especially on a long trip such as this. What he could not accept was the rowdiness that he knew would erupt if stern action were not taken quickly to control the more boisterous members of the party. So, after they had been on their way for a few hours, he and the chief took a tour through the cars occupied by their charges. In the first car, several men had clearly had too much. Hart spoke to one who promptly calmed down, but another miscreant heard Tommy out and then ostentatiously took a long drag from his bottle. Swift action was called for, as all eyes were now on the slim ensign. Tommy reached past the man, grabbed his bottle, and threw it out the open window. The sailor uttered an oath and started to rise from his seat. At that point the chief’s hairy fist passed over Tommy’s shoulder and landed on the man’s jaw. Dazed, the sailor sat back, and then started to rise again. This time Tommy unloaded on him with all he had. It was enough, not only for that sailor; word quickly passed that this officer was not to be trifled with. Consequently, the rest of the trip went smoothly and Tommy chalked up a successful land voyage.

When his tour in the Hartford was over, he learned that he was to be assigned duty at his alma mater. In 1902 the Naval Academy was looking for officers to help handle the rapidly expanding battalion of midshipmen, as the student body was designated in July 1902. Since on three occasions Lieutenant, Junior Grade, Hart had taken a drill team from the Hartford to Madison Square Garden for the military tournament, he seemed a natural choice for the post of infantry drill instructor. Captain Willard H. Brownson, the recently selected superintendent, spotted Hart’s name on a list of officers available for duty. Despite his experience with Hart when the latter was a cadet, Brownson wrote the Navy Department that he would like to have Hart on the academy’s faculty.³

Thomas C. Hart, officer of the deck, aboard the Hartford in 1900. Courtesy of Mrs. T. C. Hart

Had Brownson closely observed the detail of sailors Hart took to the inauguration of President William McKinley in March 1901, he might have changed his mind. To keep his men dry outside during the long festivities in the rain, Hart ordered them to don rain gear under their uniforms. To keep them warm inside, he provided a considerable amount of rum. The sailors stayed dry and, by his own account, suspiciously warm.

But others did not notice, so Tommy Hart returned to Annapolis in the fall of 1902 with a fitness report that described him as “eminently fitted” for independent, important, and hazardous duties. Drilling midshipmen was hardly hazardous, but it was important and extremely taxing. With the decision to increase the size of the U.S. Navy, which Congress had made in the 1890s and which Theodore Roosevelt, who became president in 1901, was enthusiastically carrying out, came the need for more officers. To provide them, the academy’s student body was to be doubled, from some four hundred to approximately eight hundred, and the bigger classes were to be admitted immediately, even before adequate quarters were available. This meant that Hart’s duties, which included policing the corridors of the dormitories and the temporary structures where the midshipmen were housed, increased proportionately. The Navy Department underestimated the need for more officers to instruct the new classes, so Hart often found himself overworked. When the class of 1908 arrived in the summer of 1904, for instance, there was only one officer to instruct more than 275 midshipmen on shipboard and one to instruct them on shore. The man on shore was Lieutenant Hart. At the end of two months he had lost twelve pounds as well as his voice.⁴

Yet somehow he also found time to teach a class in ordnance and gunnery. In fact, he became so interested in the subject that he agreed to write a textbook on the subject in company with the department head, Commander William F. Fullam.⁵ This book, unimaginatively titled Ordnance and Gunnery, was published in 1903 and was in use for many years. Hart also managed a full social life. He found he enjoyed dancing and squiring young ladies around the academy grounds. One young girl especially caught his eye. She was dancing at the time and the two long braids that hung down her back indicated that she had not yet reached maturity. But there was something special about Caroline Brownson, the superintendent’s daughter, and Tommy Hart marked her down as someone he wanted to get to know. They talked together from time to time, but a seven-year gap in age was too much to span, at least at this time. Anyhow, there were lots of other girls, as his photo albums attest. The older he got the more handsome he became, and his talent on the dance floor made him eagerly sought after.

All in all it was an instructive time for Hart to be at the academy. Brownson was an exemplary officer, noted for his executive ability and leadership qualities. He was demanding, as will be recalled from Hart’s days when Brownson was commandant of cadets, but he was fair. His appearance was always meticulously proper and his manner, though it might have struck some as overly aloof and aristocratic, was undeniably professional. Tough but fair would be a fitting characterization. If a young officer were looking for the epitome of a successful naval officer, Brownson would certainly do. The building going on at the academy was impressive as well. New buildings, like the chapel, the imposing superintendent’s residence, Bancroft Hall, Mahan Hall, the officers’ club, were springing up like mushrooms after a rain, in accordance with Ernest Flagg’s ambitious plan.⁶ If one wondered about the navy’s dynamism, the academy between 1902 and 1904 was a good place to look for inspiration.

Hart apparently caught the mood of the place as well as the cut of Captain Brownson’s jib; he was inspired by one and impressed by the other. Actually, Tommy was beginning to come of age. He saw plenty of future in this new navy; certainly it would provide him with a living better than those of his father and his relatives in either Michigan or Maine. Perhaps for this reason, or perhaps because it took a second dose of the academy really to sober him, Tommy began to become quite “military”; or maybe this was just his first chance to view the navy and its midshipmen objectively.

Hart began to look for ways to give his charges a more “military appearance.” One improvement, he wrote in a memorandum, would be “to make the collars higher, according to the length of the individual’s neck, coming close up under the chin . . .” The plebes, he continued, “generally get their first collars much too large, giving them an ungainly appearance, as young men of that age are inclined to have long thin necks which appear at their worst in loose low collars.” He also wanted their uniforms to be better tailored, because he believed that pride and performance would be more likely in a midshipman who looked sharp.⁷

Although Brownson liked Hart well enough to object when his reassignment was being considered, he did not give him exceptionally high fitness reports. It is easy to imagine that the superintendent was a hard grader, so perhaps the fact that he gave Hart many “very good,” rather than “excellent,” evaluations should not be taken too seriously. On the other hand, as we shall see, Brownson had some reservations about Hart, at least for some assignments.

When he had been at the academy almost two years an emergency arose which required Hart’s detachment for service in the new battleship Missouri. One of her gun turrets had exploded, killing two officers; Hart was sent as one of the replacements, a duty that, under the circumstances, could hardly be approached optimistically. Yet working with modern gunnery in a practical way allowed him to apply what he had written in his textbook. This was the beginning of his specialization in ordnance, an area in which, in one way or another, he spent much of his career. But hardly had he settled in the Missouri when another emergency, this one mingled with a measure of luck—a factor Hart came to feel was intimately involved in his career—called for his detachment elsewhere. The destroyer Lawrence needed a new skipper, and on very short notice.

So, in December 1905 at age twenty-eight he got his first command. The Lawrence was small and by the standards of the day quite fast. Furthermore, instead of heavy guns, her primary armament was torpedoes. How ideal for a man who enjoyed seamanship and working with any type of complicated ordnance. Steaming hither and yon over the sea and doing it right gave him a sense of independence and of something else to which he always gave considerable emphasis—fun. He later contended that this command did more to mature him than anything since the Spanish-American War.⁸ In 1906 Lieutenant Commander E. A. Anderson, commander of his destroyer flotilla, wrote that Hart had brought the Lawrence’s torpedoes “to a very high state of efficiency” and had achieved a perfect score in autumn torpedo practice; overall, his performance was rated excellent.

Shortly after this report was made, there occurred something that on the surface, at least, appeared far from lucky. On 4 March 1907, the commander in chief of the Atlantic Fleet, Rear Admiral Robley “Fighting Bob” Evans, saw Hart lose his temper when addressing Lieutenant Commander Anderson. Hart did not approve of the way Anderson was handling the destroyers and after what he considered a display of bungled orders, he took it upon himself to tell Anderson what he thought. Admiral Evans investigated the incident and on 24 March 1907 recommended that Hart be removed from command of the Lawrence and a letter of admonition entered in his record. Hart accepted this judgment at the time although he later protested to Admiral Evans that his conduct, though disrespectful, was understandable and even proper under the circumstances. From this distance of time it is not possible to judge fairly Hart’s contention, or even all the details. What we do know is that by 1909 Evans had changed his mind, or at least had come to see the merit in Hart’s contention, and requested that his letter of admonition be removed from Hart’s service record.⁹

In view of Hart’s assignment after leaving the Lawrence, it is obvious that his conduct had not earned him universal condemnation. There was a vacant billet, previously filled by a rear admiral, at the Bureau of Ordnance. Since they wanted a young officer with experience and promise as a replacement, the job went to Lieutenant Hart. This was a real feather in his cap and, as he later admitted, it got his “head up” above his peers.¹⁰ Much experimentation and modernization was going on in the bureau at this time, so Hart’s practical experience was quickly applied. He liked the work and soon convinced his superiors they had made a good choice. Rear Admiral Newton E. Mason, chief of bureau, found him “especially loyal and subordinate”—so Hart was learning—as well as “extremely conscientious and painstaking” in the performance of his duty. Working with explosives, shells as well as torpedoes, was demanding, but Hart, who had always done well in engineering subjects and physics, excelled. It looked as though, with enough luck, good could come even out of adversity.

During this tour in Washington, two worlds were to meet. Rear Admiral Brownson, who had served as commander of the Asiatic Fleet after leaving the Naval Academy, had been selected as chief of the Bureau of Navigation, one of the most prestigious billets in the U.S. Navy. This meant that the Brownson family would be living in Washington, and the admiral rented a large, gracious house at 1736 M Street. To this house came the cream of Washington society. After all, Brownson was a cousin of William Howard Taft, President Theodore Roosevelt’s secretary of war, as well as an intimate of such luminaries as Oliver Wendell Holmes, millionaire John R. McLean, and many of those influential Washington people known as “cave dwellers.” Furthermore, he knew well all the military figures of the day, both in this country and abroad. This wide range of friends guaranteed that his home would be a busy, gay place, a place where his daughter Caroline, now twenty-three, could savor a Washington season in the company of the most prominent members of the legislative, executive, judiciary, and social branches of government, for then, as now, there were really four branches. For her it was a “kaleidoscope of luncheons, teas, receptions, dinners, and balls.”¹¹ There were Sunday luncheons at expansive estates on the outskirts of town, receptions at the embassies, at Rauchers, Demonets, and the new Willard Hotel, theater parties at the National, the Poli, or the Belasco, cruises on the Chesapeake Bay in official yachts, hunts with the Chevy Chase hounds followed by lavish entertainments at country estates.

Thomas Hart brought to this bubbling world of Washington an entirely different background from that of Caroline Brownson, yet he was as welcome in it as she; he was thirty and a bachelor. Unattached males, especially males in uniform, were in great demand; in fact, he was sometimes called upon to be an aide at White House parties. During the round of festivities in the fall of 1908 he spotted the girl who had caught his attention when he saw her dancing with a midshipman in Annapolis. Now, however, she had put up her hair; without hesitation he went after her. As he later admitted, it was pretty difficult, holding down a responsible position and courting at the same time. Often it meant dancing till dawn and reporting for duty with very little sleep; as he later said, “I don’t see how I lived.”

Not only did he live, he prospered. He was successful in the bureau, and there is no question that Caroline responded to the charms of the trim, handsome, mature officer. The difficulty was with her father. Some of the reasons for Brownson’s hesitance can only be guessed. Caroline, his youngest child, had become something of a playmate for the admiral; he could count on her for rides through Rock Creek Park, fishing expeditions in Canada, and even hunting trips. He may also have questioned the age difference between the two, and it is entirely possible that he did not consider Hart good enough for his daughter.

The admiral would not have had to be a snob to recognize that this young naval officer was not going to be able to maintain his daughter in the style to which she was accustomed. In addition to his naval pay, the Brownson family had a considerable fortune, as the way they lived implied. Hart had nothing, nor was there money or position in his background. There can be little question that the aristocratic Brownson put great stock in social amenities. It also will be recalled that Brownson did not give Hart the highest possible fitness reports when the lieutenant taught at the academy and he might even have remembered when Naval Cadet Hart was a member of the hell-raising “Coxey’s Army.” And navy channels had probably carried to Brownson’s ears word of the recent insubordination by the commanding officer of the Lawrence.

On that issue there was a rather ironic twist. Brownson, the epitome of naval propriety, was himself involved that very fall in a case wherein the president of the United States accused him of disloyal conduct. The story need only be sketched.¹² President Roosevelt had let it be known that he intended to put medical officers in command of naval hospital ships. Brownson protested directly and indirectly that this was illegal, unwise, and prejudicial to the best interests of the service. What did doctors know about ships or, for that matter, about anything to do with the navy other than the insides of sailors? When Roosevelt persisted and made it clear that he was going to put his wishes in the form of an order, Brownson requested relief from the bureau. Roosevelt wrote a long official letter in which he said he considered this conduct childish, something done out of pique, and a “gross impropriety.” Brownson said nothing in public. He considered his position regarding the medical officers the only one he could take with honor. As far as TR’s outburst was concerned, the admiral confided to his diary: “I could not bandy words with the President.” Had he, he would have reminded the president that “he had no right to administer a public reprimand to me except by sentence of a Court Martial.” In Brownson’s mind, and clearly that was the only thing that mattered to him, “My action in resigning . . . was due entirely to a sense of duty to the service to which I had been so devoted for forty-six years.” The case, which got considerable public attention, was a striking example of insubordination based on principle. It made Hart’s incident pale by comparison; that must have been clear to both the admiral and the lieutenant. But what self-sacrifice it must have been by the father of the woman he loved.

After his retirement the Brownsons left Washington in the spring of 1908, but they returned in the fall. Out of the navy, the admiral had time to pursue his other interests, such as hunting, fishing, shooting, and serving on a variety of boards both public and private. Tommy Hart again took up his own chase. The admiral remained dubious about the relationship, but by the spring of 1909 he could see that further protests were useless. In March, as Hart was preparing to go back to sea, Brownson relented and the engagement was announced.

Firmly established now as an ordnance specialist, Hart was assigned as a gunnery officer in the battleship Virginia. The commanding officer of the ship was his old mentor from Spanish-American War days, Alex Sharp, and the two took up their association where it had left off. As gunnery officer, Hart was charged with preparing the gun crews for the competitions, which were extremely heated, between the various battleships. His primary competitor was his classmate Luther M. Overstreet. For the year 1909 Overstreet’s ship came in first and Hart’s second, but Sharp described Hart as a “fine” even “splendid” officer. In recognition of these qualities Hart was promoted to lieutenant commander in August and a few months later he and Overstreet were reassigned from their old ships and ordered to two of the first U.S. dreadnoughts, the North Dakota for Hart and the Delaware for Overstreet. Hart continued to come in second, but his new commanding officer shared Sharp’s high opinion of him, remarking specifically about his “great zeal” in working up the new ship’s guns.

In March 1910 Hart returned to Washington for a day that he ever after considered the luckiest in his life. On the 30th of March, at the Brownsons’ sizable new home, Caroline Robinson Brownson was married to Thomas Charles Hart by Chaplain H.D. Clark, who was Naval Academy chaplain during Brownson’s and Hart’s duty at Annapolis. The best man was Lieutenant Commander Leigh C. Palmer (class of 1896), and the groomsmen were Lieutenant Hugo W. Osterhaus (class of 1900), Lieutenant Commander Robert “Jock” Crank (class of 1892), and Lieutenant Commander Luther Overstreet (class of 1897) of battleship gunnery competition. It was a simple, but elegant, noon affair with some one hundred guests present. Navy predominated, but enough government officials and “cave dwellers” were sprinkled in to make it quite “social.”¹³

The bride, who wore a gown of white satin trimmed with old lace, deserves our careful attention. Caroline Hart was five feet six and one-half inches tall, very slender, and portraits reveal dark brown eyes and an abundance of brown hair. She was not beautiful but was quite striking in the strength and character she exuded. Although not vivacious, neither was she shy, perhaps “reserved” would be a better word. In some ways she was the typical, upper-class, well-mannered, protected lady of the day. Her father did not believe in formal higher education for women but she had the gentlewoman’s knowledge of music, foreign languages, literature and, departing from the norm, history. She was a good dancer, a good horsewoman, a fair ice skater, and for that era, played a good game of tennis; the tennis champion, Bill Larned, was one of her best friends. Her familiarity with sports such as salmon-fishing was the result of her father’s interest in the vigorous life. To say that she was better-rounded than the typical lady would be no exaggeration, nor would it be stretching the point to suggest that she was a person of exceptional strength, intelligence, and determination. She was a distinct asset as a naval wife. Caroline Hart knew the territory, so to speak, and was just the person to polish off any rough edges that might remain on her husband’s exterior. There would seem to be little question that she and Tommy were beginning a marriage, love affair, and partnership in which they were willing to invest everything they had.

Lieutenant Commander Thomas C. Hart, photographed, at the request of his future mother-in-law, before his marriage to Caroline Brownson in 1910. Courtesy of Mrs. T. C. Hart

In Tommy’s case there was not much other than his career and himself that he could contribute to the bargain, but of himself he was willing to invest without measure. The career, insofar as possible, would stay at the office and take care of itself. What Tommy was looking for, and found in Caroline, was a wife who would devote herself fully to him, who would provide stability and guidance to their children when they came, who would maintain a gracious home and haven to which he could return, who could hold her own with him in outdoor activities and at dinner parties, who had grace and style. In Caroline he had found someone who came closer to that ideal than he could really know in 1910. He was, as he later said so often, truly lucky in his choice of a mate.

While admitting the significant role that luck or fate played in the union, it is intriguing to speculate on what attracted Tommy to Caroline. Leaving aside all the important, but in the final analysis, superficial things like physical beauty, one comes down to several speculative, but rather safe factors that probably explain why he was drawn to her. For one thing, winning her must have seemed quite a challenge. As already mentioned, Caroline’s world was far different from Tommy’s and, at least in her father’s view, which he made rather generally known, Hart was marrying out of his class. That naturally posed another challenge, that of proving her father wrong, at least regarding his promise within his chosen profession. Another factor influencing his attraction to Caroline must have been his respect for her good sense and stability. A man capable of violent outbursts of temper, or at least of invective, he generally held himself in rigid self-control. He wanted a woman with self-control and strength because he knew he would not be able to continue to love someone he could walk over. But in fact he had no interest in walking over her—he wanted an ideal love in which competition did not play a role. And, while everyone to a greater or lesser degree wants ideal love, Tommy was absolutely determined to be successful in his quest. It was the one big thing missing in his life and, when he thought back, he realized that it had always been missing. In Caroline he saw a chance to have the things he had never really had: a home, a family, and the warm, emotional glow that comes from knowing that you have created something permanent in the midst of a changing world. Caroline looked to Tommy like his kind of fellow architect.

After a short honeymoon at The Homestead in Hot Springs, Virginia, it was back to sea for the bridegroom. It may not have been luck but it was surely welcome when the chance arose to cut short his cruise. The navy was establishing a torpedo factory at what had been a small experimental plant in Newport, Rhode Island. Harry Yarnell, whom Hart highly esteemed, had done the initial work at Newport and had been asked to pick his successor. Apparently the regard was mutual, for Yarnell picked Hart to replace him as head of the Division of Maintenance and Repair. This meant returning to shore a year early, picking up where Yarnell left off; in short, completing and running an industrial plant charged with turning out and maintaining an extremely complex product. Despite the potential problems, Hart jumped at the chance.

Not only was it an opportunity to be with Caroline, it also was a challenge. Yarnell had done much toward developing the actual plant; production was going to be up to Hart. If dealing with new, challenging situations was what the navy was about, then it surely was good experience which Hart later said added a significant dimension to his professional development. For one thing, there was the torpedo itself—probably the most complicated weapon of the day. To produce it required precision of a high order even though the U.S. Navy was building the British-designed Whitehead torpedo. Hence Hart’s engineers started with British specifications and drawings and added modifications to suit American requirements.

Early in 1911 orders were received for ninety-five torpedoes, twenty Mark V, Model 3s, and seventy-five Mark V, Model 5s.¹⁴ It took until September to complete the first part of the order because the article being manufactured was novel. When they had finished, however, they had produced a weapon equal to or better and cheaper than any that could be bought elsewhere. Success only brought more orders; it was estimated that the workload increased almost 60 per cent over that of 1910.

Within one year after Hart arrived, most of the problems of propulsion and steering had been worked out; he next turned his attention to other matters. Warhead design, for instance. That required even more specialized skills with plenty of room for experimentation; this meant improvisation and it was here that Hart excelled. There were fuses to compare, different metals to test, and even new designs to consider, while at the same time completing other necessary items like the 105,000 primers manufactured in 1912. One thing he worked on was designing a cutting device to be attached to warheads so that they could slice through submarine nets. And, of course, there was always the matter of explosives.

And, as if dealing with a very persnickety weapon were not enough, there were more mundane, but equally sensitive, aspects to the job. The factory was quite a large operation; in 1913 the total value of its manufactures was $973,491. To produce torpedoes and other items successfully, the station had to build up a civilian labor force. Relations between the navy and various groups of skilled workers, most particularly the Machinists’ Union, were strained in the early decades of the century. At Newport, as at other naval manufacturing plants, profit was not involved, but great care was expended to ensure that costs were kept in line with comparable civilian operations. Hart was also supposed to reduce expenditures where possible, and he did. His plant reduced by 20 per cent the labor costs related to primer production. The obvious ways to accomplish such savings were to cut the labor force, keep wages down, or adopt the controversial Taylor system of scientific management. That system, which relied heavily on the time and motion concept complete with involved record-keeping, particularly aroused the ire of the labor unions, which saw it as “an acutely dangerous form of exploitation, on the grounds that it meant far more work at a lower unit rate of pay.”¹⁵ Not surprisingly, men like Hart found those very features appealing. The desire to keep costs down while pushing efficiency up naturally led to conflict between the Machinists’ Union, which was interested in higher wages and more benefits, and the station’s management, most notably Hart, who favored a Taylor-type approach. By December 1913 the conflict had reached crisis proportions, so Hart was ordered to temporary duty in Washington to deal with employee grievances at Newport.

The issue was handled at the Navy Department where Hart had his first contact with Franklin D. Roosevelt, serving at this time as assistant secretary of the navy. Roosevelt, appointed by President Woodrow Wilson, took a decidedly different view of unions from that of Hart. As one of his biographers has noted, dealing with the civilian workers in the navy’s shore establishments “taught him relatively early in his political career the knack of getting along with the leaders of labor, and making himself popular with the rank and file.”¹⁶ Before very long Roosevelt had “learned to speak the language of the labor leaders, and mastered the sometimes intricate task of manipulating the labor vote.” Tommy knew how to speak the language of labor, he had grown up around manual laborers, but his impression at this time was that the unions wanted their members to do less for more, an attitude with which he had little sympathy. He believed in an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay—for himself or for anybody else; government workers were already being paid wages equal to or better than their counterparts who worked for civilian plants and, anyhow, he cared little what the union members thought of the navy or how they voted. His view seems a reasonable one, although it must be admitted that he was not inclined to be pro-union no matter what the circumstances, nor was he likely to be sensitive to the politician’s approach since he had no interest in “manipulating the labor vote.” Whatever the merits of the case, Hart apparently was ordered to be more conciliatory and, of course, he complied. But his manner must have indicated something short of total agreement or perhaps a hint of his real feelings about “political” administrators; in his service record was a note from Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels: “Do not assign Lt. Commander Hart at the Newport Torpedo Works or to service at Newport.”¹⁷ The secretary must have been referring to future assignments, for no move was made to replace him at that time.

In all probability that was because it could so easily be seen that Hart, despite his problems with some of his labor force, was making a significant contribution to the navy. Moreover, his immediate supervisors may have been aware that his experience at the torpedo station was making a significant contribution to Tommy’s maturation. An important factor in any officer’s success pattern is his ability as a manager, not only of such inanimate objects as ships, but also of men. It did not take great acuity to recognize that Tommy had the talent for that role; indeed the choice of him for the billet at Newport indicates that someone had sensed it quite early. Success in high command, or control over any large organization, is two parts management and one part charismatic leadership. Tommy was getting the management experience early and any charisma he lacked he would make up for in drive.

With the new year, Hart decided to undertake an important new enterprise: keeping a daily diary. In his second sentence he admits that he does not exactly understand why he is embarking on this course. He goes on to say, however, that he is sorry he had not done so earlier, which seemed as good a reason as any for starting when he did. After this speculation, he summarizes his life between the ages of sixteen and thirty-six. He says that the great turning point in his life was “blundering” into and through the academy. That started him on a better career than he would otherwise have had, but most importantly it brought him into contact with Caroline Brownson. Those two things, his career and his marriage, plus the birth of his two children, Isabella and Roswell, he sees as the only really important events of the previous twenty years. He doubts that anything correspondingly important will ever happen again. Still, “granting a continuance of health, I’m sure my present happy life will last and with the same hard work and luck, I expect a continuance of success in my profession—which thus far, I think has been at least average.” Little did he know that he was starting a writing project that ultimately filled twenty-one volumes.

From 1 January 1914 on, his diary becomes a valuable part of what we know about his life and work. Most of the entries are not more than five or ten sentences; however, they give a distinct feeling for the man, because he records his reactions to many people and events. For instance, in his entry for 14 January 1914 he says that his sentiments are with the working man, but that he gets tired of the “constant search for benefits.” On 15 February he refers to the administration in Washington as “Government by Demagogues,” and on 28 March comments that he is “totally out of sympathy with the administration’s business methods” and opines that it grows more “socialistic every day.” On 22 June 1914, in discussing the ban on drinking that had just been forced on the navy by Josephus Daniels, he refers to the secretary as a “pot house politician from North Carolina.” Interesting, too, are the insights into Hart’s own personality. He frequently talks about his work, as on 3 April of the same year when he writes that he has spent the entire day on the range “watching five new torpedoes show how many different . . . ways there are of making bad runs.” Other comments reveal him as a devoted family man who spends hours playing with his children, worrying about their illnesses, and agonizing over their behavior. One of the most frequently recurring strains in the diary is his idealization of Caroline. He constantly and lovingly praises her strengths, her numerous talents, and her capacity for dealing with domestic traumas. Never, in his view, does Caroline do anything wrong and seldom does she fall short of perfection. Simple things, like organizing birthday parties and handling Christmas festivities, bring forth paeans of praise; complex affairs, like childbearing, overtaxed his supply of laudatory phrases. The diary makes it abundantly clear that Caroline was all a woman could or should be and Tommy loved her without reservation. Any suspicion that he wrote these things so that she could read them is dispelled by the fact that she was not allowed to read the diary during his lifetime.

By the summer of 1914 Hart had been at the torpedo station for three years, so he knew that the happy period with his family would soon come to an end. They had been interesting, grueling, formative years. The work was not really naval, except that the plant was producing a naval weapon. That meant that he gained intimate knowledge of torpedoes and learned as well some other valuable lessons, including something about politics and politicians. On 4 September, as he prepared to move on to his next assignment, he admitted to being sorry to leave a place that was to some extent “my own creation” but he was leaving with pride in the fact that he had “delivered the goods.” Although he requested another destroyer, he was sent as executive officer in the battleship Minnesota. This was not a command, but he could take some satisfaction in being the youngest executive officer in a “first-rate ship in the Navy.” Revolution was raging in Mexico and almost immediately the Minnesota was ordered to Veracruz, where President Wilson had sent a force ashore to seize that vital customs port.

During his entire term in office, the president’s foreign-policy concerns had been dominated by the Mexican Revolution. He wanted the bloody revolution to end, but more than that he wanted, as he said, to “teach the Mexicans to elect good governments.” Not surprisingly, the government of General Victoriano Huerta resented Wilson’s interference in Mexican affairs, thus inducing the U.S. president to throw his support behind Venustiano Carranza, who, with Pancho Villa, was in open revolt against Huerta. The whole situation reached a fever pitch in April 1914 when, after a confused embroglio involving the Mexican seizure of some American sailors, President Wilson decided to intervene directly by seizing Veracruz, thus denying the Huerta government the customs revenues that normally flowed through that major Caribbean port. Seizing Veracruz turned out to be another of Wilson’s well-intentioned, though misguided, attempts to influence events south of the border.¹⁸ When the Huerta government began—as anticipated—to topple, several competing factions arose to share the spoils and contend for power with Carranza. In short, Wilson had succeeded in making the revolutionary situation more, rather than less, confused.

For the American naval and military forces in Mexico the situation quickly deteriorated into a boring routine. Although the initial landing had been contested, once the American presence had been established neither of the contending factions in the revolution had the time or the energy to resist the “gringos.” Action for the Minnesota therefore was minimal and for most of the crew there was not even much liberty ashore. But since Hart had the additional duty and title of chief of staff of Landing Force, U.S. Navy in Mexican Waters, he got ample opportunity to tour the U.S. shore establishments. What he saw did not impress him very much; the army and the marines seemed apathetic and unhappy, consequently they were “drinking a lot and generally going to pot.”

Thomas C. Hart as chief of staff, Landing Force, U.S. Navy in Mexican Waters. Courtesy of Mrs. T. C. Hart

At first, Major General Frederick Funston, the field commander, impressed Hart as “quite a man from a business standpoint” but, after observing him during some evening drinking bouts, Hart determined that the general did not have “the social graces” that his position demanded.¹⁹ Several weeks later Hart came face to face with the general’s drinking problem when, accompanied by a lady, he walked over to Funston’s table during a dance. Funston was so drunk that he had “to use both hands and his teeth” to stagger to his feet. Then the general began what Hart called a “maudlin conversation” and was in such a state “that there was nothing to do but turn my back. I went straight for his Chief of Staff with blood in my eye and said ‘This is no place for your General and he has got to get into his quarters as soon as it can be done.’” While Hart tried to keep the curious away, the chief of staff led the general away without too many people noticing. It was not that Tommy was a prude, rather his sense of propriety was offended by the sight of a senior officer demeaning himself in public. A lot of the officers attending the function were far senior to Lieutenant Commander Hart and they, apparently, were not offended enough to take such peremptory action but, as it later became increasingly clear, when setting his course, Tommy often paid little attention to what others did. As to Funston personally, Hart’s judgment was that “it all goes to prove that a man who was pretty good at bush-whacking war-fare among Dagos and who was above all an excellent press agent for himself doesn’t necessarily make a good General to represent us under such circumstances.” It made Tommy mad and although he was aware that letting people know how he felt would not make him popular, particularly with the army, he thought he was right and, as he told Caroline, “on the whole I don’t think it will hurt me.”

Tommy was far more impressed with his own commanding officer, Captain Roy Simpson, whom he considered “one of the Navy’s best.” “He is an excellent seaman,” Hart wrote, and that is a quality he always looked for in a superior. As a leader of men, Simpson was “a sympathetic but firm disciplinarian.” That, too, Tommy admired. Above all he was “a splendid gentleman” and that put him at the top of Tommy’s list as well as in marked contrast to General Funston. But studying Simpson, fishing, and going on shore occasionally was hardly enough to keep Hart satisfactorily occupied. His frequent letters home make it obvious that he was bored and more than a bit lonely. He missed the children, whom he referred to as either “the livestock” or by their pet name “the Dee Dees,” and most definitely he missed Caroline.

There often was not even much to say about the war; his letters on 27 November and 5 December, however, were exceptions. He had commented before about the Mexicans, for whom he had very little respect. In these letters, though, he gave a full picture of Veracruz, lapped by the effects of the revolution. The scenes in the city were to him something like a burlesque on the Latin-American military. With the Minnesota at anchor within a hundred yards of the principal pier for several days, Tommy had a seat in the dress circle. The pier swarmed with soldiers and their camp followers. The latter, he explained, among their other duties served as the quartermaster corps for the army. Each soldadera got a certain portion of the pay each month—when there was pay—to use for supplies and provisions in the barracks or in the field. The soldier took the rest of the money, drank it up, “beats the lady if he feels like it and all hands are happy.” There were men and boys, women and girls, and swarms of horses, none of which were more than skin and bone—a fact that, as a horse lover, Tommy was quick to notice. Uniforms were chosen to suit the whim of the wearer with little uniformity, discounting the fact that all were dirty, wrinkled, and torn. In aggregate, the group presented a distinctly ragtag appearance. Of discipline there was little, of alcohol there was a sufficiency, of organization there was none. The sailors in the “Minnie” watched with ill-disguised humor, for instance, as the Mexican officers loaded, unloaded, and then loaded again two decrepit steamers, all, as Tommy wrote, “in the way of making up their minds.”

Amazingly, there seemed to be relatively little trouble between the Mexican soldiers and the people of Veracruz, perhaps because the soldiers were too busy fighting among themselves. The revolutionary leader, General Carranza, “El Jefe,” along with the leader of his army, General Alvaro Obregón, and his entire cabinet had arrived in town the day before Tommy wrote the above description. Word had it that before leaving Mexico City they had stripped the place pretty well clean, at least “we see train loads of automobiles (a particularly favorite variety of loot) and goods coming in.” The money from Mexico City’s banks was circulating freely around Veracruz except that which was being prepared for shipment to Paris and other points east. At a banquet held in his honor, Carranza was reported to have heartily applauded a speech in which it was proposed to rob and kill all foreigners. To Tommy this seemed hardly appropriate, since all the foreign consuls were present at the banquet, or likely, since Carranza did not need a war going on inside Veracruz when he still had so many enemies outside. In any case, it made for interesting speculation and fascinating viewing.

Several weeks later a chance came to get closer to the stage and he duly reported what he saw thereon to Caroline. The admiral allowed him an afternoon’s shore leave and, even though he knew the town would be almost dead in the afternoon, Tommy leapt at the chance. What he found was a very dirty, very sleepy community absolutely crawling with Mexican soldiers. They were not acting like soldiers and most of them looked exactly like what they were—farmers carrying guns. They had set up housekeeping under the broad eaves of the warehouses along the waterfront. It was rudimentary housekeeping, to be sure: “no bedding—a serape [blanket] or two to break the wind—for it doesn’t occur to them to put up screens to hide their very domestic and private affairs—one or two battered cooking utensils and that’s about all.” Most of the shops were shuttered because the merchants did not care to do business with the rabble, not because of their appearance or personal habits, but because of their method of payment. The money from Mexico City had apparently run out because now the army had set up a printing press which was turning out bills as the need arose. Obviously this “currency” had no present or future value, but it took real courage for a shopkeeper to tell that to a Mexican soldier.

Tommy did hear something about what had happened in Mexico City. It seems that when it became clear that the counterrevolutionaries under Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata were going to be successful in driving Carranza and the “constitutionalists” out of the capital, Carranza made a calculation of sorts. Why not pull out quickly and let Zapata, who was closer to the city than Villa, be the first “liberator”? Among the advantages was the fact that Zapata was renowned as a bandit, so he could be counted upon to rob and pillage indiscriminately. That being the case, or so the story went, before they left, the “constitutionalists” could commit whatever outrages they liked because the whole mess would ultimately be blamed on the Zapatistas. Therefore, the “constitutionalists” had taken as much loot as they could carry, only to find out later that the Zapatistas had behaved themselves admirably.

Tommy could not vouch for the truth of that story, but he did know that Veracruz was overrun with automobiles in all sorts of conditions. There seemed to be little mechanical talent in Carranza’s army; when a problem arose with one of the cars they simply parked it. For about $200 Tommy was assured he could buy an excellent—eminently repairable—vehicle. One of his friends was offered a nearly new Packard for $750. The reason it was on the market? One blown-out tire, blown out when a friend of the present owner cut it with a knife.

To Hart it appeared that General Obregón was the real strong man and that El Jefe was just a figurehead. But there was still a lot of maneuvering for position. The United States was now supporting the bandit, Pancho Villa, but Tommy thought it unwise to intervene and try to squeeze the “constitutionalists” out of power. There seemed no leader who could command nationwide support and, in the vacuum, rival factions contended unceasingly. Somewhat contemptuously, Tommy noted that Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan “thinks he has handled this situation splendidly.” On the other hand, he was sure that Woodrow Wilson knew “what a mess he has made of it—so bad that I find myself being sorry for him.”

With all this going on, Tommy would have been hard pressed to be thoroughly bored. However, all he could do was watch, and that palled after a while. Hence, when in late December the Minnesota was ordered to the Philadelphia Navy Yard for replacement of her 8-inch and 12-inch guns, he was pleased.

This movement meant another dull period, the only redeeming factor being that there was frequent opportunity to see his wife and young family. Caroline had moved into her parents’ big house at 1751 N Street, in Washington, so Tommy spent what weekends he could with them. When there, he found himself swept up in the round of dinners, plays, dances, and other entertainments that was so much a part of the Brownsons’ life and with which he had become familiar five years before. By February the refit was complete, and the Minnesota sailed to the Caribbean for gunnery and torpedo practice. That Hart loved. Engine trouble, however, forced a return to Philadelphia, where the ship remained until the early summer of 1915. Tommy’s birthday found him in that port, gloomily contemplating his present and his future. At thirty-eight, he was thinking often of old age and even considering himself a man of advanced years. “I realize,” he wrote in his diary, “that I’ve about reached—or perhaps have passed—the zenith of my powers, mental, physical, nerves and all that, and must in the near future perceive the down-hill tendency. . . .”²⁰ This may have just been a bad time or an early midlife crisis, but it is indicative of the Tommy Hart who will appear again and again in the pages of his diary. Gone is the fun-loving, harum-scarum cadet; here is a somewhat sober, critical man confronting the problems of the world. The humor is still there, but it has been overlaid with a thick veneer of mature sobriety. By and large, the diary is filled with the serious reflections of a man who sees the world as a less than perfect place.

The rest of 1915 was spent in a variety of activities, including a leave at the Adirondack League Club on Little Moose Lake, in upstate New York. The countryside and the activities reminded Hart of his boyhood home in Michigan. There were fishing, tennis, and long tramps through the woods, and he thought if he could stay all summer “it would renew my long lost youth.”²¹ Neither a whole summer on leave nor a regained youth was possible, though. Fall meant putting Isabella and Roswell in school, so the Brownsons’ home in Washington again became their home, too. This might not have been the most satisfactory arrangement, as Admiral Brownson had not yet fully accepted Tommy into the bosom of the family, but it was convenient for Caroline and since Tommy should be going to sea soon, it seemed practical.

In November, while the Minnesota was at Hampton Roads, Virginia, preparing to be put through full-power trials with her newly reworked engines, reports began to come in from Flint suggesting that Tommy’s father was dying. He did not feel he should go to Flint until he heard something definite regarding his father’s condition because, he said, he often denied his men leave unless their relative’s death were imminent.

On 4 December John Hart died. Absorbing this blow, coupled with the guilty realization that he had been imprudent in not going home immediately, put Hart in a very low state of mind. “I haven’t seen my father in the past ten months of his life and he has undoubtedly known that he was on his death bed and would have liked to see his only child before he went over the great divide,” Hart wrote. “I’ve never been a very good son and I’ve failed lamentably in the end.”²² “My father,” he went on, “was in many respects much more of a man than his son will ever be. He had only a common school education and was never of keen mentality. What he got came by hard work. He was positively determined, never ‘quit’ and never spared himself. All who knew him trusted him implicitly and respected his many excellent qualities. Yet he was always unlucky and his last few years were unhappy ones.” He had lost what funds he had through unwise—“they were more than that, they really were foolish”—investments, and died almost penniless. Hart sent him some money, small amounts, but now he felt terribly guilty that he had not done more to make his father’s last years easier.

When he arrived in Flint he found the family had already gathered and most arrangements had been made. The weather was bitter on the day of the funeral, with dark clouds and blowing snow. John Hart’s friends from the Grand Army of the Republic managed the ceremony, which saw him laid to rest in a woodland cemetery outside of Davison where Tommy’s mother was buried. “It was oh so cold bleak and dreary,” Hart wrote. But finally the casket was lowered into the frozen ground.

The next two days he spent with his stepmother and her daughter’s family, trying to get his father’s affairs straightened out. As anyone who has been through this routine knows, it is sad under the best of circumstances. In this case, where there were few comforts or financial reserves to fall back on, it was especially poignant. He resolved to do what he could to assist the two women financially and provided what emotional support he could muster. Everything seemed so rough and barren compared with the life he had made for himself. The contrasts between Michigan and the East Coast were striking, between his new family and his old, between his luck and his father’s lack of it.

It was with a sense of relief that on 10 December he boarded a train bound for Washington. He arrived home to find everyone thriving. With his father’s death, he realized that he was “down to Caroline and the babies” but “no man, no matter how good he is, deserves more than that.”²³ It must have made him even more guilty or at least apprehensive to see how blessed he was because he wrote in the next sentence, “This good luck of mine is due for an awful change.” Whereas it seems somewhat unusual for a man to be referring to his good luck a week after his father has died, the pessimism is vintage Hart.

The relationship between a father and a son is obviously very important in determining the character of the son. In Hart’s case, the slight contact there had been makes it extremely difficult to estimate what influences were exerted; however, certain reasonable suggestions can be made. There is often a feeling of guilt between children and parents and there surely was a measure of that here. On the other hand, there is an avoidance of responsibility evident in Tommy’s attribution of “bad luck” as the cause of his father’s poor showing in life. It is as though Tommy were denying that anyone, not his father, not himself, was responsible for the unhappy way things turned out. Perhaps the safest thing to say is that the relative lack of contact between these two people was the most important factor in their relationship. Away for long periods when Tommy was a child, distant and taciturn even when present, seldom visited or visiting during Tommy’s years at Annapolis or after, John Hart had a slight impact on his son’s life. Part of Tommy’s immediate sadness may well have arisen from the recognition of opportunities missed and now lost forever. Whatever the case, it does not appear that he mourned for long.

Christmas was spent at the Brownsons’ where a spirit of old-fashioned festivity prevailed, but it was becoming increasingly clear, as 1915 gave way to 1916, that world events might soon impinge on Hart’s domestic preoccupation. On land the struggle for Verdun would begin within weeks, and eventually hundreds of thousands of men would be poured into the maw of battle. At sea a tenuous truce was being maintained following the sinking of the Arabic. Brilliant, committed young Americans were joining the Allied forces as volunteers and Teddy Roosevelt was stimulating the preparedness movement in the United States. Wilson was to run for president again in the fall, pointing with pride at his success in keeping America out of war. Yet the signs were ominous. Could the Allies hold on without aid from the United States? Did Americans have a “right” to travel where they wished on the high seas? Would the Germans really restrain their U-boats?

And what of America’s submarines? Even after innumerable modifications as well as considerable help from the British, who were the leaders in the field, American boats continued to have trouble. On 25 March 1915 the F-4 sank off Hawaii, with the loss of twenty-one lives, the first submarine disaster in the history of the U.S. Navy. Complicating the issue, the U.S. Navy’s torpedoes were not performing properly. No one was quite certain whether the root of the difficulties rested with the submarines, the weapons, or the officers in command. One solution was to replace the three remaining F-boats at Pearl with four new K-boats; another was to assign an older, experienced officer and see what he could do in a troubled situation. The Navy Department decided that Hart, in part because of his familiarity with torpedoes, was just the man for the assignment. Thus it was that his detailer at the department asked him about taking a job with submarines. “No good,” said Hart, “I’m too old to learn anything about submarines.”²⁴ His superiors thought otherwise and after he realized that, with the Minnesota in reserve status for an indefinite time, the alternative was probably a shore billet, he became most enthusiastic about the prospects. On 1 February 1916 the orders came through designating him as commander of the Third Submarine Division, Pacific Torpedo Flotilla, based at Pearl Harbor. This was a command that counted as sea duty, yet he could take his family along. The only unpleasant note was a hint that he was being sent out to whip the division into shape; in other words, as a “tough guy,” a designation he did not exactly relish.

The leave-taking was sad; the Brownsons had grown used to having the grandchildren and Caroline around, and it was Hart’s guess that his wife’s parents would be happy to “arrange my drowning” for taking them away. He made no comment about whether he thought they would miss him or not. The trip across the country and then across the Pacific was uneventful, and the Harts arrived in Honolulu on 22 February, just twelve days after leaving Washington. After a short but intensive search, the family rented a large rambling house in the Nuana Valley. It was surrounded by seventeen acres of jungle literally alive with flowers and other green growing things; unfortunately, the inside of the house had fallen into disrepair and also had green growing things in it. That problem he left in Caroline’s capable hands, certain that she and the staff she would hire would soon have everything well in hand.

Hart’s interests centered around the newly established base at Pearl Harbor which, even though barely functioning, was home for his submarines. He immediately concluded that the shore facilities offered far too attractive an alternative to sea duty for the health and welfare of his command. He decided, therefore, that the division would spend enough time cruising in local waters to ensure that his men did not become too comfortable. Naturally that included himself, and he went out in a submarine for the first time on 1 March. After a little consideration, he decided that this “first” should be kept a secret as it might detract from his influence were it known that the CO was not an old submariner in terms of experience afloat. Although conditions in the small submarines were crowded, smelly, and far from comfortable, down she went and up she came and Tommy’s rites of passage were performed with no one being the wiser.

The first few weeks were anything but difficult to take, even though it rained hard, the “water coming down without the formality of forming rain-drops,” and often. The family thrived and he was able to spend hours with them on weekends, playing, romping, motoring, and pursuing with particular enthusiasm his self-appointed duty of teaching his children the art of swimming. At first they just tumbled in the warm surf, but with the application of much time and effort he began to see results.

His personnel did leave something to be desired, so the “tough guy” role had to be played. His method was to move swiftly and summarily, thereby sending a clear signal that a new, firm hand was on the controls. One day he summoned several of the senior slackers into his office. He advised them that a transport had arrived in port that morning; it was leaving the next day. They were ordered to pack their gear and be on board. He went into no details, but the message apparently came across clearly because almost before the transport left the dock the word had spread through the command and performance began to improve.

The basic problem, he decided, was the division’s lack of activity or at least its lack of practical experience. The solution was to take the submarines to sea, but the weather and the equipment just would not cooperate. The most difficult thing was to make torpedo runs when the seas were choppy, as they always seemed to be outside the confines of Pearl Harbor itself. Then there were “cranky” submarines; at times there was only one out of four available for service. But after dry-docking the boats, scraping their hulls, making short full-power runs, and giving his officers long pep talks on teamwork, Hart was ready to take the full division to sea for a week-long cruise. As an indication of how overdue this training was, it might be noted that it was the first time in four years that the tender Alert had been out of port overnight. The specific purposes of the cruise were to find a place to establish a torpedo practice range and to give the crews a view of the waters in which they might be operating during wartime. The first mission was accomplished when they found the protected anchorage off Lahaina ideal for measured torpedo runs. This meant the end of estimating distances, the method usually employed by the navy at this time. The other part of the mission was accomplished as well as it could be, given the fact that Hart could get no definitive word on exactly what role U.S. submarines in the Pacific were to play in case of war. Furthermore, the performance of his boats and the morale of his men showed signs of real improvement, so it appeared that his methods for “tautening up” the crews were paying off.

When at the base, Hart occupied himself trying to improve the rather primitive facilities at Pearl Harbor, participating in the requisite number of charitable and social functions, and getting about in Hawaiian society. Because the only facilities for servicing and maintaining the torpedoes were those in the submarines themselves, he devoted considerable energy to establishing a miniature torpedo station. It was Hart’s impression that torpedoes had been accorded a rather low priority, well behind other mechanical devices on board. This was a “rather hopeless proposition,” he thought, since it took more mechanical ability to maintain the torpedoes than anything else in the submarine business. His solution was to put the specialists together in one place and have them do the torpedo maintenance for all the submarines. Even though considerable improvisation was involved, the performance curve began to incline upwards.

Charity balls for such causes as Navy Relief could not be handled so rationally; they simply had to be gotten through. Most private social affairs seemed to fall into the same category. Hart found the island’s society by and large to be provincial and composed of either colonials who had made lots of money by questionable means or missionaries who were far too sanctimonious for his taste. As for service society, that, too, struck him as narrow and inbred, particularly army society. There were exceptions, to be sure, but generally Hart judged his colleagues harshly; he weighed them and found them wanting.

By August he was well settled into life in the islands and into his command. In the competitions held at the end of that month, his boats came in first, third, fifth, and eighth out of the twenty-four competing. That made him mighty proud. Part of the reason for his success was, as he put it, that he had established a pattern of “crowding” his work rather than having “my work crowding me.”²⁵ He also gave high marks to his subordinates because they were reacting positively to his methods.

Even when crowding his work, he found time for reading in preparation for the exams he had to take in connection with his promotion to full commander. The writings of Alfred Thayer Mahan formed a good part of his literary diet. “When a War College student reads such literature,” he wrote in September, “he claims to be working.” Tommy, however, found the first serious studying he had done perhaps since he left the Naval Academy, but certainly in the previous ten years, highly enjoyable. Mahan seemed to him to be preaching the gospel and it made him more eager than ever to work up a practical strategic plan for naval war in the islands. Why not try it, he asked himself. After expending considerable effort working on such a plan, he presented his product to his commanding officer only to find him uninterested. “As I might have expected,” Hart grumbled, “we have very few men of that age who have kept their minds in training to do anything.”²⁶

He had the same gloomy reaction to the political campaign that was raging at home in that fall of 1916 between Woodrow Wilson and Charles Evans Hughes. Wilson won and Hart delivered himself of a blast:

Well, we will have four more years of this same sort of administration—inefficient in its Federal Departments and most provincial. The Republicans have no better morals but they are efficient as far as they go. But the nation’s wants and ideas are fairly well represented by either party—which are of scant patriotism and only sectionalism counts with them. We are not a real Nation—just an enormous and rather unhealthy fungus mass. Mr. Roosevelt is our only leader of broad enough view to steer us in our international relations—and he is not followed. Well, the Navy is to blame for its worst troubles; had we 500 thoroughly excellent officers in the upper half of our list, we could, and would do pretty well. As things look, I’ve scant hope for me.²⁷

Things are relative, though, and he believed Americans, though not perfect, were more industrious than many other people. He found the native Hawaiians, for instance, lazy, shiftless, undependable workers. They worked only until they were paid and then did not return to work the next day. His conclusion? “The white and yellow races are the only ones with mainsprings.”²⁸

Despite all this negativism, and Hart did have more than a normal measure of it, he was personally very happy. On Thanks-giving, a day that had an almost religious significance for him, usually prompting some introspective comments in his diary, he wrote again about all he had to be thankful for. He had spent a successful year in his profession, had reasonably good health, healthy children, and “a dear wife who is still so misguided as to love me.” In summation, his luck had continued, and he regretted that “I am so heathen that I know not how to thank.”²⁹

To ensure that his submarines continued on their positive course, he started the next month by taking them for a five-hundred-mile, ten-day cruise to Hilo. It was the first time such a lengthy training cruise had been attempted. There were exercises on and below the surface, practice maneuvers to attack or evade the tenders, which posed as enemy cruisers, and still other exercises pitting submarine against submarine. Not only was the cruise a success in itself, but it served to point up the excellent work that Hart had done. As the commander of the Pacific Torpedo Flotilla commented in his fitness report, “His work during this period deserves the highest commendation.” As an officer, the report continued perceptively, he was “quiet, unassuming but thorough with a determined spirit to overcome all difficulties” and was not unwilling to “put up a fight” when necessary.

With this kind of commendation it is little wonder that Hart was on the promotion list published on 6 January 1917. His joy was muted somewhat by the knowledge that some good men and good friends had been passed over. Moreover, since he had been in grade for seven years, it was no real surprise that he was going up. He did note and privately agree with the selection board’s decision not to promote his immediate commanding officer, Captain Clark, who had shown no interest in his strategic plan. It was an indication of Hart’s tenacity that, despite that rebuff, he went ahead and developed a “campaign order” without Clark’s support. He took his inspiration from the plans developed by German General Helmuth von Moltke, who had orchestrated the invasion of France in August 1914. On 17 January, when Hart finished his plans, he felt that the war could now begin and, like von Moltke, he would simply have to pull his orders from their pigeonhole, dispatch them to his ships, and all would roll automatically.

It was less than three months before that occasion arose, but before then Thomas Hart had his initiation in the war. The German gunboat Geier had been interned in the harbor at Honolulu since shortly after the war began in Europe.³⁰ During the intervening months her captain and two-hundred-man crew had the run of the city, where they were the toast of the large German community. Although the men of the Imperial Navy were slightly overbearing, relations with the U.S. Navy were good, both sides entering boat races and other competitions enthusiastically. But on 3 February 1917 the United States severed diplomatic relations with Germany. Early the next morning, smoke was seen billowing from the Geier: she was being scuttled by her crew lest she fall into unfriendly hands. She could not be allowed to sit at her commercial berth on the waterfront and burn, so Lieutenant Commander Hart was ordered to take a boarding party, put out the fires, and take over the ship.

It sounded risky, since there was reason to believe the ship’s crew had set explosive charges. Quickly he boarded, giving the captain as his reason the fact that the ship was obviously endangering the waterfront; the U.S. Navy would take her over, he explained, and the crew would be interned ashore. But, he noted, he wanted all hands to stay on board until the ship had been searched for explosive charges and the harbor beneath her for mines. If there were to be an explosion, he wanted the Germans on hand for it.

The minesweeping took several hours and while it was going on Hart confronted another problem. What should be done about the Imperial German flag still flying at the Geier’s masthead? His boarding party clamored to haul it down, but did the United States, under international law, have the right to seize a German warship when she was not at war with Germany? Hart had not the foggiest idea. At that point he spotted his father-in-law, who was visiting the Harts and was on the waterfront watching the excitement. Knowing no one more likely to give sound advice, Tommy appealed to Admiral Brownson. “Don’t haul down that flag!” the admiral immediately replied. That was good enough for Hart; the flag continued to fly even as he towed the Geier to Pearl Harbor for a permanent and safe internment. Her crew, with their pets, their tubas, their souvenirs, and their only slightly dampened Teutonic arrogance, were marched off to hastily improvised camps. It was a “rather ticklish job,” Hart wrote, which did nothing to diminish his respect for Admiral Brownson’s quick thinking and good judgment.

Early the next morning Caroline contributed her part to making February memorable by giving birth to Thomas Comins Hart, or Tom as he was called. There was little time for even becoming acquainted with his youngest before Tommy took off for San Francisco to take his written examinations for promotion to commander. All went well and, despite the discovery that he had very poor color sense, which he had known for years, he was duly promoted.

He was back in Hawaii by the time the United States declared war on 6 April. Because of the preparations he had made, all that remained to be done was to change the status of the interned German sailors to that of prisoners of war and put warheads on his torpedoes. Then he settled down to wait. It was a long wait and more than a trifle anticlimactic. There really was very little to do other than exercise to keep up efficiency and hope that a German raider would appear in the area to make life interesting. About the most warlike thing he did was set his crews to cultivating a victory garden.

Finally, in May, came orders that at least moved him closer to the scene of hostilities. He was assigned as commander of the submarine base at New London, Connecticut, with additional duty as chief of staff to the commander of the Atlantic Fleet’s submarine force. Within three days the whole family was aboard a ship headed home. Hart was not happy with a shore detail, but to get it changed he would have to go to Washington. The chief of the Bureau of Navigation was his old friend and member of his wedding, L.C. Palmer, who heard him out patiently but could not, at the moment, offer him a more exciting billet.

The problem was that Hart was the victim of some rather sloppy detailing, which was to have long-range consequences. Since the previous commander of U.S. submarine forces, Rear Admiral Albert W. Grant, had not been moving as expeditiously as some would have liked to get American submarines into actual combat, he was to be replaced by Captain Samuel S. Robison.³¹ But before Grant turned over the command and before Robison could choose his own chief of staff, Hart had been selected for the billet. It was more than slightly awkward. Robison brought his former executive officer, Commander Arthur Japy Hepburn, a classmate of Hart, with him and made it clear that Hart’s duty commanding the base at New London was going to be his only duty. As Hart told Robison and Palmer, he was not qualified to command the major U.S. submarine base, since he really was not an experienced submarine officer, nor did he care to be stuck in the States with a war going on.

For the moment there was nothing to be done so he went, with what grace was possible, to New London, where he reported on 20 July. It was a big job, a sensitive situation, and, seemingly, a dead end. After plugging away unenthusiastically through the remainder of July and half of August, luck, or something much like it, came through. Either as a result of his continued pressure on Palmer, or possibly because Robison was as eager as Tommy to ease the personality situation, Hart was to be relieved. The Navy Department needed someone with long-range cruising experience in submarines to take an expeditionary force of boats across the Atlantic to conduct antisubmarine warfare against the Imperial Navy in the waters off the British Isles. Hart qualified. They wanted a volunteer—Hart more than qualified. Tommy Hart was going to war again.

When he arrived at the Philadelphia Navy Yard on 30 August he found that his submarines were still undergoing refit and repairs. He was not pleased by this news, by the way the workmen in the yard approached their tasks, by the general efficiency of his own crews, or, for that matter, by the state of the nation. Everyone at the yard seemed to be rushing about throwing money at problems and building more facilities than were necessary, instead of paying attention to simple matters such as doing small tasks well. He stomped around in a dark-brown study for weeks.

Complaints to Captain Robison accomplished little, and before all was in readiness late summer had turned into early fall. The first consignment of U.S. submarines, four K-boats, accompanied by Commander Hart in the tender Bushnell, set sail for the Azores on 13 October 1917. The route was by way of Nova Scotia and thence across the North Atlantic to Ponta Delgada in the Azores. The submarines were supposed to be towed part of the way because they were not designed for eighteen-hundred-mile cruises across open ocean. Towing was fine when the weather was decent, but as any sailor knows, the North Atlantic can be treacherous in the fall. When winds and seas rise, as they did midway in the trip, tow lines part and problems multiply. However, after ten and a half days—a record—Hart and his charges arrived safely in the Azores.

With four submarines at least in the arena of the war, Hart turned back to pick up the rest of his command. With the experience of one crossing under his belt, he thought he would be able to make a quick turn-around voyage. He figured without the mediocre efforts of the workmen at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. When he arrived there, he found that the remaining submarines were not ready. For the next two weeks he fretted and stormed, trying to put some fire under the workmen in the yard. Whether this had any effect is hard to tell, but by 18 November his next detachment was ready for sea. When he had picked up more submarines at New London, his group consisted of seven submarines, three seagoing tugs, and the tenders Bushnell and Fulton. These boats plus the submarines already in the Azores were to base in the British Isles for the duration of the war, so there were serious good-byes to be said. Caroline, instead of breaking down in tears as she had every right to do, sent him off with a smile, a slap on the back, and a cheery “Good luck!” “Is there another woman who could thus have sent her man to war?” he wondered. As for himself, he was unable to speak.

This passage was a little different from the first. Hart decided to take the most direct route across the open Atlantic to make up lost time. Unfortunately he did not take enough account of two things: the shortcomings of the tugs and the weather. Bad weather set in four days out of New London. The barometric pressure dropped to 28.98 as Hart and his little fleet found themselves in the center of a real stem-winder of a gale, which served to point up the deficiencies of the tugs as well as of some of the submarines. Consequently, when Hart was forced to put in to Bermuda on 13 December, five of his submarines and two of his tugs were missing. He went through ten anguished days of searching before he found all but one of his charges: one of the tugs, perhaps prudently, had given up and returned to New York.

Hart and his detachment spent late December 1917 and early January 1918 in the Azores. Finally, after much muddling, which he attributed to the difficulties of operating an alliance, he was ordered to take his force to Queenstown, Ireland. This port proved unsatisfactory because it was also serving as headquarters of the surface patrol forces, so Hart’s operation was transferred to the base at Berehaven in Bantry Bay.

The place might well have been called “Barrenhaven.” Its shore line was surrounded by low peat hills broken here and there by rocky piles 800 feet to 1,000 feet high. The wind blew rain or snow from all points of the compass while heavy dark clouds usually obscured the sun. Technically Hart was serving under Rear Admiral William S. Sims, who commanded all American forces in European waters, but his immediate superior was Captain Martin E. Dunbar-Nasmith, RN. Hart soon became very fond of Nasmith who had an enviable war record, a quick wit, and a love of the outdoors that equaled his own. Rainy, blustery afternoons would often find the two captains—Hart’s temporary promotion came through on 1 February 1918—tramping over the hills or clambering over the rock piles around the bay.

As commander of the only U.S. submarine flotilla in the European theater, Hart could hardly wait to send his boats into action. The British had found that a submarine with her low profile was much better able to approach another submarine undetected than was a larger vessel. Hence the game was to send one ship-killer in search of another. First, the American crews absorbed all they could from the experience of their British cousins, then they worked up their boats under Hart’s stern eye, and finally they went out on their own. The first patrol was dispatched on 6 March, eleven months to the day after America entered the war. Much effort had gone into whipping the green crews with their cranky submarines into shape, so hopes were understandably high. Yet, time after time, opportunity passed just beyond their grasp. Sometimes they would not see the U-boat until she was already diving; sometimes they fired and missed; sometimes the boat commander forgot to fire a full spread of torpedoes. Despite the frustration of not chalking up any kills, they were gaining valuable experience.

Antisubmarine patrols were an exhausting, often unpleasant, way to learn a trade. They usually lasted eight days, long hours of which were spent submerged so as to avoid detection. “Arduous” was the term Admiral Sims later applied to his particular form of hazardous duty:

Even on the coldest winter days there could be no artificial heat, for the precious electricity could not be spared for that purpose, and the temperature inside the submarine was the temperature of the water in which it sailed. The close atmosphere, heavily laden also with the smell of oil from the engines and the odors of cooking, and the necessity of going for days at a time without a bath or even a wash added to the discomfort. The stability of a submerged submarine is by no means perfect; the vessel is constantly rolling, and a certain number of the crew, even the experienced men, are frequently seasick. This movement sometimes made it almost impossible to stay in a bunk and sleep for any reasonable period; the poor seaman would perhaps doze off, but a lurch of the vessel would send him sprawling on the deck. One could hardly write, for it was too cold, or read, for there was little light; and because of the motion of the vessel, it was difficult to focus one’s eyes on the page. A limited amount of smoking was permitted, but the air was sometimes so vitiated that only the most vigorous and incessant puffing could keep a cigarette alight. One of the most annoying things about the submarine existence is the fact that the air condenses on the sides as the coldness increases, so that practically everything becomes wet; as the sailor lies in his bunk this moisture is precipitated upon him like rain drops. This combination of discomforts usually produced, after spending a few hours under the surface, that mental state commonly known as “dopey.”³²

Hart considered the experience his commanders were getting and the work he was doing with the British were well worth the effort and sooner or later, he knew, would pay off. After two months of patrolling without success came a telegram from Admiral William S. Benson, the chief of naval operations, via Admiral Sims, giving Hart the additional duty of surveying British methods of conducting submarine warfare, including upkeep and administration. Previously, what detailed observation there was had concentrated on material features such as batteries, power plants, and so on. Hart was to look into the practical matter of how the British actually fought their submarines.

He turned over the operation of his flotilla to his executive officer so that he could spend the next six weeks touring the British submarine command. What he found was instructive and much to his liking. It appealed to his innate conservatism to find that the British were frugal, wasting little space or time on comforts for their crews. The command organizations also fitted his tastes, being so run that individual commanders had considerable latitude. In his view the bureaucracy seemed streamlined in comparison with the American system. By and large, the British submarine command appeared to Hart an efficient, tight, businesslike outfit, filled with hard-working sailors willing to put up with a minimum of creature comforts. And whereas the officers and men of the Royal Navy might have lacked the broad experience that characterized the U.S. Navy, because they changed assignments less regularly, they knew their specialties thoroughly and performed efficiently. By the time he was back on board the Bushnell to celebrate his twenty-five years of naval service on 19 May, he felt he had a thorough understanding of how the British fought their submarine war as well as some examples of how the U.S. service could become more efficient.

In June he had an opportunity to pass on some of what he had learned to Captain Robison, now an acting rear admiral, who, with his new chief of staff, Lieutenant Commander Chester W. Nimitz, was visiting American forces in England.³³ Robison and Nimitz were also trying to learn what they could of British fighting methods and operating procedures, so their talks were beneficial. Unfortunately, Hart could not yet tell them that his submarines had sunk a U-boat. “I’d pretty nearly give up my hope of future salvation if one of them would get (Fritz) before I have to leave here,” he wrote in frustration on 19 June. The next day word came that he was not likely to be around if and when that happened. The Navy Department was rotating officers out of the war zone, bringing them home for debriefing, and then sending them back with newer ships. When Sims asked Hart to nominate an officer to go home and report on his observations of British methods, Tommy nominated himself, assuming that he would then get one of the new O-class submarines in the process. Sims and the navy accepted his nomination and, after a little less than five months in British waters, he was on his way home. On the evening of 20 June he set down his reflections in his diary:

I was not proud of them [his men] for quite a while. They had long been spoiled, the Bushnell was nothing but a yacht and the submarine people were just tinkers who knew little about the sea and gave it scarcely a thought. For months I was clubbing them all about trying to make officers and seamen of them and to get into them some proper conception of what the job means. At times I nearly gave up hope. But the stuff was there and it has come out. They are now a good lot who may be depended upon to deliver the goods—and they are quiet and modest about it too.

While on his way to Liverpool to catch a ship home he visited several manufacturing plants, including Vickers Ltd. and Cammell Laird & Co., where British submarines were built. Although it was his general impression that they were turning out a product superior to ours, his conclusion was that the most helpful thing would be to capture a couple of the efficient German submarines and copy their designs.³⁴ Once on board the liner Baltic, his primary concern became avoiding those German submarines. There were plenty of them about, but the Baltic, at 23,000 tons and with lots of speed, was not assigned any escort. The voyage, however, passed uneventfully, 6 July marking his return to American soil after eight months out of the country. He went immediately with his family to Little Moose Lake, in the Adirondacks, since those plans had already been made by Caroline before she knew he was coming home. Although offered more leave, he felt he was needed in Washington, so after two days in the woods he reported to the Navy Department. There he received two shocks: he was not to get command of the O-boats and return to England, but was to stay in Washington in some yet-to-be-determined role: and, no one seemed vitally interested in picking his brain for information on the British submarine service. Washington was still in its wartime flurry, no one seemingly knowing who was doing what or why. There were rumors about the particularly bad state of the U.S. submarine forces. On 3 August 1918 Hart set up his desk in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations and was advised by Admiral Benson that he, Hart, had full authority to make decisions on submarine matters in the name of the chief of naval operations. In short, Tommy was given carte blanche to run the submarine service as he saw fit. But the command relationship between his office, Admiral Robison, and the commanding officers of submarines in the field had yet to be resolved.

At this point Admiral Robison was running all U.S. submarine operations out of his office on board the cruiser Chicago at anchor off New London. As Hart would have been the first to admit, Robison had a tremendous load of work thrust on him by the war.³⁵ There were boats to be worked up, crews to be trained, maintenance to be done, and a constant flow of paper work. It did not make matters any simpler that Robison was also trying to run antisubmarine operations. Indeed, one of the first impressions Hart formed was that antisubmarine warfare could be handled more efficiently out of Washington and he could think of no one more qualified for the job than himself. He realized that this suggestion might well ruffle Robison’s feathers, something that he was extremely loath to do, both because of his regard for Robison and because actuarial statistics showed that it was unhealthy for temporary captains to run counter to the wishes of admirals. However, in this case, Robison proved amenable, telling Hart that he viewed him as the submarine service’s friend at court and agreeing to let him run some of the antisubmarine show. Tommy enthusiastically took on the task because U-boats were beginning to harry shipping off the East Coast. Furthermore, he was eager to apply some of what he had learned from the British. One scheme adopted was based on the idea of using decoys. As applied by Hart, a U.S. submarine would be mothered by a schooner or other such vessel, which would tow the silent submarine behind her. Should a U-boat spot the lone schooner and approach on the surface, the U.S. boat, lurking in wait, would be provided an attractive target.³⁶ It was a good idea and, given more time, it very likely would have borne fruit.

The submarines’ friend at court had other ideas and they caused some disruption in the U.S. Navy. One day in a conference he mentioned that the commander of the British submarine service had found by experience that he could better control his command from London than from an outlying base. That idea was enthusiastically taken up by Captain William V. Pratt, the assistant chief of naval operations, in part because the Navy Department was eager to free Robison’s flagship, the Chicago, for escort duty. Hart was asked to draft a memorandum on the British command establishment. He did so, and on the basis of that memorandum Robison was told to haul down his flag and move to Washington. According to Hart, the admiral arrived “as full of ire as a man of his temperament could be” and doubtless blamed Hart for his unhappy state. His most immediate counter was to suggest that, since his office was to be in Washington, Hart should go to New London. Tommy, with the powerful assistance of Admiral Benson, resisted this ploy. The chief of naval operations was apparently very pleased with the work Hart was doing and wanted him in Washington. Tommy could see that terrible strains would be created by having overlapping submarine commands, but believed that he could most effectively apply what he had learned by operating out of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. The result was that Tommy stayed and, for several very awkward weeks, existed in a kind of no-man’s-land, trapped between Benson and Robison. “It was a very disagreeable time for me,” he recalled. In late October, tensions boiled over; there was some kind of a blowup involving Robison and Benson, the upshot of which was that Robison found himself out of the submarine service and on his way to France to take up a coastal command.

On 22 October Tommy moved formally into the billet that later became known as the director of submarines with considerable authority in determining policy and operations. For the next several weeks things worked smoothly; he had only one assistant but most of the bureaus of the Navy Department seemed willing to accept directions from the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, so there was little bureaucratic obstruction. It was the calm before the chaos into which the Navy Department’s internal structure was thrown when peace came. It was a short honeymoon; on 11 November 1918 the armistice was announced. Tommy Hart’s second war was over.