The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-09-07
THE MAKING OF FINE MEN
1RAINING OF THE APPRENTICE
 BOTS IN THE N4VY.

An Experience Likely to Bring Out
 Their Good Qualities-The Lads Who
 Fail In the Navy and Their Defects
 Prizes That Are to be Gained at Sea
 or on Shore.
 It seldom happens that an apprentice
 boy in the regular naval service goes over the side of his ship until his time
 IS out. Deserticns among the school Ship boys on the other hand are com- mon. enough. A bunch of lads from the
 New York school ship jumped their craft at Gibraltar the other day and when they made thenr way to New York they relieved themselves of many mournful taie of hard treatment.
 Yet the treatment of the boys on the
 State ship for lads who want to be heavy weather men is not essentially
 different from that of the boys who en- list as apprentices in the regular Navy. If anything, the boys on the State school-ships are handled a little better than those in the regular outfit
 AppTellllceSIllp III lie OHlLeu DtilSo Navy is capable of making either man or reprobate of a boy. Just what manner of chap he will be when he at
 tains his majority in the service and is at liberty to quit or ship again as a full-hedged bluejacket with a petty officers billet dangling before him as a bait, depends altogether upon the boy
 He has every opportunity to become a square solid man, whether he continues as a member of a man-o'War ships company or seeks a livelihood ashore
 The officers of the American Navy give the apprentice boys considerably the better of it over the bluejackets who ship as such in all that concerns their interest and advancement, and the boy who during that period that he wears the apprentices figure-of-eight knot on his mastering shirt goes wrong and be- comes a rowdy and a sea-lawyer has only his own innate cussedness to blame for it.
 The whole tendency of the appren- tice's training on board an American man-o'-war makes for the conversion of the lad intoa dignifed, self-controlled man, matchless seaman and tiptop gunner, to say nothing of the substan- tial equipment it furnishes him for lu- crative employment ashore should he elect at the conclusion of his appren- ticeship to settle down on the beach. For example one of the most skilful and postpaid electricians in New York city is young man whom the writer saw sparring on the deck of a ship in Honolulu Harbor four or five years ago. He was then an apprentice of the first class. He had genius for electricity and the officers took him iii hand, gave him facilities for study, and finally sent him to the electrical school for seamen gunners at the navy yard here. The lad galloped over all hands in the class here and could have had gunner's warrant for the asking. He didn't ask for it, however, but went on to New York and started to making money from the out set as an unusually clever electrician The last time the writer saw young Gunner Kuhlwein, to whose ability and energy on the Olympia during the Man fla engagement Admiral Dewey has testified in earnest terms, the lad was a first-class apprentice on a ship at the Mare Island Navy Yard. and he was getting a raking down from a gruff old bo'sun's mate winking joyousy at the other old time bluejackets while he did his scolding.
 It Is the old fatfeet, the men who have spent about an equal number of years in the merchant marine and in the UnAted States Navy, who possess the greatest power for good or evil in mak- ing or breaking American naval ap- premiership. The officers aft hold the, lads with a strong rein when they have them under immediate supervision. but the boys live forward among the men, and they form their characters in the fo'c'sle. If tte material is in them, it Is bound to come out. The old time biuejackets can tell at glance whether a newly shipped boy or boy fresh on board cruising man-o'-war from a training ship has the making of a nn- lshed sailor and a good shipmate in his composition. If their careful inspec- tion of such boy convinces them that the lad is worth their pains they go to work on him from the very outset of his cruising career, season him with all the practical ship-and-gun information that they themselves picked up after years of experience, and thus supple | ment the technical education which | the boy receives from the officers The | sailors who thus take a kindly interest | in boy who looks promising do not treat him with partiaIity, and he gets swat.ed about just as much as a boy l who is a sluggard and "don't-care-a- | darn," as the old-timers say in speak, ing among themselves of lad without ambition in the apprentice uniform
 But the interest they exhibit in drill ling sea-lore into his mind and their pairs in instructing him in every little valuable detail as the occasion arises plainly show that they have got him in their minds. and observation proves that the boys who are thus picked out by the oldtimers up forward as being worth these efforts are the lads who get the warrant officers blouses when l their apprenticeship is over. Ask any warrant officer in the United States Navy to-day about the struggle he had to attain the wearing of a sword from the wearing of figure-of eight knot, and he will begin to speak affectionate- y of two or three grumpy savage old oo suns mates or quartermasters, as the men whom he owes his eventual success Ii is a matter of pride with