A Different Kind of Victory: A Biography of Admiral Thomas C. Hart

PREFACE

This is a multipurpose study. It is first and foremost the story of a naval officer and his times, times that were crucial in the history of the U.S. Navy. However, it is also the story of a man who, although the navy was the central, guiding factor in his life, was more than a naval officer. The connecting thread in these two stories is the character of Thomas C. Hart. If nothing else, Tommy Hart was a man of principle, and his principles and the actions they guide him to take are the theme of this work.

The central questions that are explored are: What forces and circumstances shaped Tommy Hart into an officer who was selected to be one of the U.S. Navy’s four full admirals on the eve of World War II? How did he carry out the responsibilities assigned to him? How did he react to the fate that befell him in that conflict? Attempting to answer those questions requires some probing of his personality, but this is no psychological biography. The suggestions made in a psychological vein are few and, although framed after discussions with professionals, they are not intended to be in any way scientific; they are merely attempts to answer questions that are frankly beyond my capacity to answer otherwise.

While being of interest because of his fifty-two-year career that spanned three wars and his varied service in destroyers, submarines, battleships, industrial plants, academic institutions, a fleet command, the first Allied naval command, and the U.S. Senate, Thomas Hart is significant because of where he was between 1939 and 1942 and because he left a written record of his life and times. Aside from Admiral Kimmel’s Story, which reads much like a defense lawyer’s brief, and Admiral Ernest J. King’s collaborative effort, Fleet Admiral King, there are no firsthand accounts of how the senior officers in the U.S. Navy saw the coming of the war or reacted in its early months. There are numerous valuable histories, including Samuel Eliot Morison’s History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, that give overviews, and there are some first-person accounts, such as Captain Robert J. Bulkley’s At Close Quarters: PT Boats in the United States Navy. Histories of the Asiatic Fleet, however, are narrow, novelistic, or shot full of inaccuracies. Unfortunately, from a historical point of view, the army and air forces participants in World War II were prolific writers and their actions have attracted much wider attention than anything written about the navy. The most obvious case in point is that of General Douglas MacArthur, who wrote his memoirs, whose aides wrote their memoirs, and about whom more than a dozen creditable books have been written, including a monumental study published in 1978 and a popular account published in 1979.

Not only was Hart in a position to observe events in the Far East and, through his correspondence, to keep up with developments in Washington, he also maintained a daily diary which gives a unique perspective on what was happening and how he was reacting to it. If that were not enough, immediately after returning to the United States in 1942, he wrote a lengthy narrative of events, to which he later added a supplement. Thus, he left a running account of developments in the Far East.

The period Hart spent in the Philippines and in Java was historically momentous and he was a controversial actor in the drama. Here it should be noted that, in writing this biography, I have attempted to avoid apologizing for Hart or defending him against his critics, unless apology and defense seemed to me justified. He never wrote a justification of his actions, nor would he, I believe, want anyone else to do so. When he was wrong he admitted it and accepted the consequences. This account attempts to follow that admirable example.

Tommy Hart’s diary obviously was a valuable resource in charting his activities and feelings. Let me quickly add that I am aware of the pitfalls of relying too heavily on a personal diary; valid questions can be raised about why a person keeps such a record. My impression is that Tommy Hart did so in large part to vent reactions to people and events that would have been destructive if vented in any other way and equally destructive if kept locked inside himself. One thing is certain. He did not maintain the diary to apologize either for or to himself: in it he is fully as hard on himself as some suggest he was on them. The most amazing thing about the diary and the mass of other Hart material, which includes hundreds of letters between him and his trusted confidante, his wife Caroline Brownson Hart, and the invaluable series of oral history interviews he gave is that they are so consistent. If Hart says he said so and so to a superior on such and such a date, a check of the record proves in every case that that is precisely what he said and that it was said when he claims it was. His geese do not become swans; he does not tell one thing to one person and something else to another. His records are as honest and as straightforward as he was. He kept letters that praised him and, although it must have hurt like the devil, he also kept those that condemned him for making mistakes or losing the lives of loved ones. There was no cant about Tommy Hart, and while the perceptive historian who interviewed him for his oral history and later came to know him well observed that he was not a transparent personality, the twin virtues of honesty and fairness do provide a constant guiding beam in charting the life of Tommy Hart.

1

CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

On the surface it did not seem an unusual retirement ceremony. The ramrod-straight, white-haired admiral in the starched high collar stood awkwardly at the door, bidding a formal good-bye to sixteen younger officers. The first three or four filed past him without demonstrations of emotion, then a red-haired lieutenant commander grasped the older man’s hand in both of his and said Good-bye, Sir, you are the finest man I’ve ever known. The old admiral’s eyes misted with tears and suddenly he was incapable of speaking to or even seeing the faces of the remaining men. Perhaps this scene requires closer observation; it is not a normal retirement ceremony: there is too husky a timbre in the voices, the participants are somehow too stiff, the atmosphere too highly charged. Moreover, the senior officer in question wears on his shoulders the four gold stars of a full admiral; the doorway is not in some officers’ club, but in the Savoy Hotel, Bandung, Java; and the officers filing out into the night are the only ones who could be rounded up on short notice from the once-proud Asiatic Fleet to bid farewell to their commander. It is 14 February 1942, and Admiral Thomas C. Hart is stepping down as commander of the ABDA (American, British, Dutch, and Australian) naval forces, the first American ever to serve as commander of an allied naval force. Oh, it was hard, he wrote that night; parting always made him sad, but leaving his friends out there in the face of a dangerous enemy and commanded by God knows whom or how was almost too much to bear.

The admiral who made that entry in his diary, Tough Tommy Hart, as he was called by admirer and detractor alike, at sixty-four had served fifty-one years on active duty, but now he was returning home under a cloud. Ill health was the official explanation, but those who knew the situation realized, without having the details, that that was a contrived explanation. Even Admiral Hart did not know all the details and, though he had done nothing wrong, he sensed that it would be a long time before the record was set right. Being removed from command before the final stages of a battle that was going badly was not at all the way he had imagined ending his career. He had hoped to be commanding on the bridge and catch a 14 shell in the mid section, or so he had once said. That would have been more in keeping with the prior service of this strict, stern, extremely proper officer, who was known—even feared—throughout the navy for his sundowner discipline and compulsive dedication to duty. The irony could hardly have been greater. No one had shown more prescience about the coming of the war; no one had trained for it more arduously; no one had risked more in trying to gather intelligence about the Japanese naval force moving down the coast of Indochina before hostilities began; no one had prepared himself more rigorously, or examined more closely his own abilities to command. Now, with the war barely two months old, Tough Tommy was leaving the battle, returning home, probably to retirement on his farm in Connecticut where he could read about younger men, his younger men, getting swept from the bridge by 14-inch shells. Oh, it was hard," he recorded, and the hardest part was that he probably did not have many years left to salvage his career or even to see the record set straight.

What was the record of the Asiatic Fleet in the Philippines and of the short-lived ABDA command? What had happened to bring this man to such an ironic denouement? Perhaps the time has now come when we can gain new insight both into what really happened and into the actual role of the finest man Lieutenant Commander Redfield Mason had ever known.

It all began on 12 June 1877 when Thomas Charles Hart was born in Davison, Michigan, the son of John Mansfield Hart and Isabella Ramsey Hart.¹ His father, who was thirty-seven years old at that time, had enlisted in the Union Navy as a landsman during the War between the States. His home of record was Bangor, Maine, although he actually came from the small community of Holden, and sailors from New England were in great demand. In 1865 John Hart was discharged from the navy where he had served in the frigate Sabine and soon, like many other veterans, made his way west.

Since, in the 1870s, Michigan was still on the frontier, it was a natural place for a Maine lumberjack to settle. Indeed, Bangor lumbermen were in great demand in the Michigan woods, so Hart moved up rapidly from lumberjack to crew chief to supervisor. This was boom time in the small lumber towns that sprang up and vanished with equal rapidity. There was no talk of environmental impact when the forests stretched to the horizon; the only charge was to put the trees on the ground. In 1888 four billion board feet of timber were cut in Michigan, and John Hart did more than his share.

In the course of the employment that took him all over northern Michigan, John Hart met Isabella Ramsey, the daughter of recent Scottish immigrants. Isabella was born in Scotland but now claimed the United States as home. After a short courtship the two were married. Thomas Charles Hart was their first and only child.

One day while Tommy, as he was always called, was still a baby, his father returned from work and in a normal burst of emotion Isabella ran across the yard to greet him. But then to John’s horror, this common domestic scene turned into a nightmare. Before she reached her husband, Isabella lost consciousness and collapsed. Soon she was dead and John was a widower. So horrified was he that he seldom thereafter could bring himself even to reminisce about his wife or their life together. Thus, Tommy was robbed not only of association with his mother but also of any intimate knowledge of her. He did, however, as he grew older and gleaned some details of her death, learn an indelible lesson about the transitory nature of life and the suddenness with which a loved one could be swept away.

Before the turn of the century Michigan was a rather paradoxical environment in which to be raised. The natural beauty of the forests and the lakes was balanced by the scars left by man. The warm and sunny days of July and August were more than offset by the brutal cold of January and February. In fact, the Davison area was usually gray and bleak from November through May. And then there were the people—hardy, robust, pioneering types—but, behind the facade of physical wellbeing, there often lurked the debilitating effects of poor diet, hard work, and exposure to a harsh climate. Doctors were few and people had to rely mainly on home remedies or wait for infrequent trips to town. A healthy man could prosper, but staying vigorous was a constant challenge. For a young boy there were the woods and streams to offer diversions but, as Bruce Catton recalls in Waiting for the Morning Train, there were also times when the brooding presence of the wilderness and the chilling reality that the north wind blew undeflected from the arctic, sent shivers, not of cold, down the spine. In this environment people worked hard, assumed little would come easily, and respected the man who kept his troubles to himself. Thus, it was natural for Tommy, despite his high spirits, to absorb a system of values more often associated with New England: thrift, prudence, self-reliance, and rugged individualism.²

No doubt John Hart mourned his young wife, but there was little outward sign of it. Within two years he was married again, this time to Mary Conklin. In some ways having a mother again was good for the growing Tommy, but his stepmother was never well and apparently made little effort to replace her predecessor. In the end it made no difference anyway since after only a year Mary Conklin Hart sickened and died. Again there was an interval without a woman in the house and then John Hart married for the third time. This stepmother, Amelia Sager Smith, was a widow with two daughters and for the first time since his natural mother died Tommy had someone who at least tried to fill the void. The problem was that after so little motherly attention Tommy was quite a handful to care for. According to his own stories, he was an active perhaps even devilish boy who, since his father was away supervising logging operations during most of the nonsummer months, required considerable looking after. When that looking after was neglected, high spirits and a sense of adventure took control—sometimes with serious consequences. For instance, there was the time Tommy and his friends burned down the hitching shed behind the church and another when a homemade bomb blew a chunk from a tree in the yard. His stepsister Maude Smith, with whom he became quite close, and other female relatives tell of high jinks that would have tried the patience of a saint, much more that of his inexperienced stepmother. Apparently his pranks did not endear him to his new mother who had her hands amply filled running her home and had not bargained on being warden to a young hellion. School officials as well took an unsympathetic view of the growing accumulation of indiscretions. The result was Tommy’s suspension, a circumstance that would inevitably mean trouble when his father returned in the spring. The solution was simple, but not inexpensive: Tommy took his savings, bought a horse, and rode to school in a nearby community. It was an act of initiative, perhaps leavened with a pinch of desperation, and indicated a resourcefulness Thomas Hart would demonstrate often in the future.

The education he got in his newly chosen school and in the small rural schools that had preceded it was scarcely quality, or that was how it seemed when he looked back seventy-five years later. When Davison was incorporated as a town in 1889 it numbered only 456 people, so it is not surprising that the schools were of the one-room, one-teacher, all-classes-meet-together variety. Only two teachers, he said, had any impact on him. One was a man, a tough, stern, intellectual, in Hart’s words, who scared him but, he recalled, I needed to be scared. The other was a woman whom he deeply respected and for whom he felt a sincere affection that inspired him to extra effort.³ With those exceptions, his early school years were rather dreary; there was neither competition nor stimulation. Although he usually finished near the top of his class, he did not consider this standing an accomplishment. Later events suggest that Tommy’s assessment of his academic achievement should not be taken too seriously, but we probably should accept his judgment that I was rather a bad boy, taking it all together.⁴

At home John Hart—probably seeking some relief from his familial responsibilities and perhaps for his new wife—arranged to send Tommy east during the summers. John’s family still lived in Maine and since he was one of nine brothers, there were plenty of relatives to welcome Tommy. These summers were perhaps the happiest times of his boyhood. There was always lots to do, many games to be played, animals to be tended and ridden, and places to be seen. There were some sobering times as well. The Harts were hardworking country people who apparently prayed the way they did everything else—fervently. Hence, during his summers in Maine Tommy got a thorough introduction into the formalities of the Methodist church. Maine meant variety, but religion meant boredom and, eventually, resistance. Partially as a result of his early exposure, he never became an avid churchman. But perhaps we should not be too hard on his well-meaning aunts and uncles. Tommy was not introspective or philosophical, so the long hours spent on hard benches in the white clapboard churches may have been simply painful and not necessarily formative.

In 1891 a change took place that had wide-ranging consequences in Tommy’s life. His father sold his small business and his farm and moved into the relative urbanity of Flint, Michigan. Not only did this mean an end to the family’s moving from town to town, but it also resulted in Tommy’s entrance into the more sophisticated and competitive school system of Flint. Since this happened in his first year of high school, the subject matter was more difficult as well; so difficult that he rebelled, ending up, according to him, with a rather dreary showing. Actually his grades were quite good; he made all 90s in his first semester and did only slightly less well in the spring of 1892.⁵ The next year his grades were uniformly worse, but in the first semester he still scored in the high 80s or low 90s in all subjects. However, his lowest grade was an 83 in general history, which hardly seems to justify his comment that he was in jeopardy of having to repeat the grade. Still, he may have known something we do not, for it is curious that he received grades in only three subjects rather than the customary four. From what we know of his previous and future experiences, it would not be surprising to learn that he was having some disciplinary difficulties.

For whatever reason, when one afternoon in the spring of 1893 Tommy saw a notice in the local paper announcing that an appointment to the Naval Academy was available, prospects of escape beckoned. From hours spent with Youth’s Companion and other literature for boys, he knew about West Point and Annapolis and they sounded exciting. When he showed the notice to his father, John Hart immediately dampened his enthusiasm. You haven’t any chance for that appointment, the elder Hart informed him. It seemed that Congressman David D. Aitken, who had the appointment, was a first-term Republican with whom the elder Hart was acquainted, but the acquaintance was not a happy one. John Hart knew that many boys would be after the appointment and, aside from having more influence with the congressman and better school records, they would be more mature than fifteen-year-old Tommy.

His father’s reasoning seemed sound, so the subject was dropped until a few days later when Tommy heard that a competitive exam was to be held in Orchard Lake, Michigan, to ease Congressman Aitken’s task of selection among the many applicants. With renewed hopes, Tommy asked his father for permission to go to Orchard Lake. It was something of a lark; several of his friends attended the military academy in Orchard Lake so he could see them, get out of school for two or three days and, of course, take a shot at the exam. No doubt he did not explain all this to his father who, though still dubious about his son’s prospects, agreed to let him go.

Thomas C. Hart, c. 1887. Courtesy of Mrs. T. C. Hart

It would have been hard to disagree with his father when, upon arrival at Orchard Lake, he checked out the competition. There were ten applicants for the appointment, three of them from the University of Michigan, and all older and better educated than the high-school sophomore from Flint. All hope seemed lost. But apparently the commandant of the school had turned the preparation of the examination over to an assistant who knew little about the academy curriculum. Consequently, the test was heavily weighted with basic subjects, grammar school subjects, to quote Hart. Most of the competitors had forgotten a lot of that material, but Tommy Hart had covered it recently. He was especially lucky that the exam had many questions in his favorite subject, mathematics, and, joy of joys, a large part of that section consisted of trick questions in which he excelled. Finally it was over and the examiner left to correct the results. When he returned, he walked to the corner, where Tommy was seeking relative security, and put his hand on the shoulder of the new appointee to Annapolis—Thomas C. Hart.

Probably no one was more surprised than Congressman Aitken but, to his credit, he abided by the result. He presented Tommy with his letter of appointment and advised him to get to Annapolis quickly and begin prepping for the formal entrance examination which was only one month away. It is easy to imagine the scene and the emotion as Tommy was bundled aboard the train bound east. Emotions were surely mixed for his parents: sorrow at seeing him leave, pride, and relief that he was going off to get some discipline. For Tommy it meant leaving a not-totally-happy home, but what he knew of the academy must have included the fact that he was bound for a rigorous life, indeed. Fortunately, he had traveled alone before, because the anxiety of this leap into the unknown was almost overwhelming.

Things did not improve when he arrived at Werntz Preparatory School on the corner of Franklin and Cathedral Streets in Annapolis. The Naval Academy had just adopted new requirements, one of which was that applicants have a year of algebra. With that blow, Tommy was about to close his bags and return to Flint. One year of algebra! The mathematics he had had, although called algebra, was not nearly as advanced as the algebra in the entrance exam. No doubt his return would please Congressman Aitken and fulfill the dire predictions of other doubters. But Bobby Werntz, the headmaster of the school, persuaded him to stay by offering to give him private lessons. These were held in the evening at the Werntz home where, by patient coaching and careful handling, he was kept alert and awake so that the sessions could go on until midnight—and this after a full day of regular schooling. But it paid off. By examination day Tommy had completed the equivalent of one year of algebra and he passed on the first try. What a triumph, not only for Hart but for Werntz as well, who subsequently used the success story as an advertisement.

So now it was T. Hart, naval cadet. Looking at him in 1893, it would have been difficult to believe that he was ready for his first year of college. He was by far the smallest man admitted that year, standing only five feet, seven inches, and weighing ninety-eight pounds. He was promptly dubbed Dad. He looked fresh-faced and he was, since he had not yet begun to shave. But he had gotten over the numerous hurdles placed in his way and, while he attributed his success to luck, one could perceive an inner toughness behind that shy, youthful look. In many ways he was young like those other young men who thirty years before had filled the ranks of the 24th Michigan and 20th Maine regiments and served so valiantly in the Civil War.

The winters in Michigan had toughened him, and his body, though slight, had known hard physical labor. He had traveled perhaps an unusual amount for a boy of that day and he had also adapted to numerous changes of school and surroundings. In addition, he had experienced separation from his family; from his mother permanently, and from his father for extended periods. Therefore, in some ways, going to school eight hundred miles from home at the age of fifteen was not as hard for Tommy Hart as it might have been for other boys. There is little indication that he and his father were unusually close; indeed, though always respectful of one another, there was a sense of distance between them. In many important ways the boy grew up without the usual family ties. No mother, only two stepsisters as siblings, and a father often absent. In these circumstances, the academy was bound to play an important formative role.

The Naval Academy that Tommy Hart entered in May of 1893 had changed surprisingly little since its founding forty-eight years before, so the dormitory occupied by Hart and his 91 classmates was already a relic.⁶ With a total of only 263 cadets, there was little need for a big yard. The school had been through difficult times, as had the navy as a whole, during the decades following the Civil War and only the wise policies of Superintendent Francis M. Ramsay (1881–1886) and Superintendent William T. Sampson (1886–1890) saved it from what might have been a disastrous decline. Ramsay instituted a series of reforms and proposed still others that were epochal in the history of the academy; Sampson had the wisdom to conserve what had been done by his predecessor and expand upon it.

When Hart entered through the gates and walked down the tree-lined walks that May, Sampson had been succeeded by Captain Robert L. Phythian whose immediately preceding billet was superintendent of the Naval Observatory. Phythian followed in Sampson’s path and changed few of the basic policies that were leading toward a rebirth of vigor in Annapolis. His methods were direct and kindly: He believed in granting to the cadets all possible privileges which were consistent with the regulations and imposing no restrictions inconsistent with them and in taking advantage of the smooth-running discipline and scholastic work to cultivate more highly the social amenities of academic life.⁷ This should not be taken to mean that discipline was lax or academic standards less than rigorous; the fact that only approximately 50 per cent of each entering class survived to graduation testifies to the contrary, but within certain limits Phythian tried to make life tolerable.

Tommy Hart was going to have little time to make extensive tours or observations of his new home, for as a member of the class accepted in May (the other three-quarters came in September) he soon found himself aboard the venerable sailing frigate Constellation preparing for a practice cruise. The cruise was the last extended service for the USS Constellation, launched just ninety-nine years before, and by all accounts it was a memorable one. It started out badly when, just after the midshipmen came on board, a sailor got his head crushed as a result of the youngsters helping to raise the anchor. With that as a start, the Constellation headed down the Chesapeake Bay and pointed her bow east toward the Azores and the Madeira Islands. Soon after she reached the open sea she ran into the first of a series of gales and, as could be expected, the midshipmen got seasick. As they wrote in the 1894 Lucky Bag, the academy’s first year book: Pell mell, slipping, sliding on the slanting deck, our faces distorted with the keenest anguish, we hurried to it (the rail), to give our tribute to old Ocean, and then to lie down and feel that death and dry land were the two finest things in the world. Added to these natural calamities was the devilment of the upper classmen who delighted in hazing their less experienced juniors. Hart does not say he got seasick, but almost surely he did; he does say, however, that there was more concentrated misery in those three months than I’ve had all the rest of my life.⁸

The constant gales so weakened her rigging that for a time it appeared possible that the Constellation would be dismasted in mid-Atlantic. But even when that catastrophe was averted, there was inconvenience aplenty. For the 123 midshipmen on board there were five washbasins and a limited supply of fresh water. The upper classmen got first call on the basins—and on the water—the result being that the plebes were left to bathe, if at all, with sticky salt water. It is not surprising that Hart recalled years later that the plebes became none too immaculate. Then there was the food—salt beef, codfish, sauerkraut, and canned pears. It was served to the midshipmen on the berth deck by black messmen who, slipping and sliding, seldom arrived below with full bowls.

But even under those conditions the midshipmen found, at least for a while, a way to entertain themselves. During bad weather, Hart wrote, a favorite sport was to coast on the mess stools between table and hatch covering—snatching a bit of food at each bump against the table. Not many had spirits enough to engage and the practice of it was soon stopped incident to one of their number toppling through a hatch. The consequent injury was a nuisance—the midshipman had to be cared for and someone had to do his work! There was other excitement such as going aloft to man the yards, and one must simply imagine how exciting that was for a Michigan farm boy. There also was drill with the 8-inch smoothbore guns which had to be manually wrestled out of the gun ports and in again for reloading because the blank charges issued did not provide enough recoil.⁹

Eventually they reached the Azores, probably just in time for the plebes, every one of whom, according to Hart, had written out a letter of resignation. The islands provided opportunity to revisit terra firma and tour the sights. With these distractions most of the miseries were forgotten, as were the resignations. The return passage was made by the southern route which proved far more pleasant for the Constellation. By now the plebes were salty ‘seagoing’ and proud of themselves. Nevertheless, they were delighted to enter the estuary of the Severn River and behold the grounds of the Academy, looking like a forest of great trees, above whose all-enshrouding verdure appeared the slim white flag staff and the gray clock tower of New Quarters.¹⁰

Back in Annapolis, it was time to board the dismasted practice ship—and place of detention for unruly cadets—the Santee, moored permanently at the academy, and await the September plebes. And when they came, the May plebes had an opportunity to teach them some of the fun things the upper classmen had delighted in teaching them during the cruise. This entertainment was short-lived, though, because on 23 September they all moved to quarters, there to await the return of the upper classmen from September leave. On 1 October this tide broke over them like a mighty deluge, for all plebes were alike to their seniors. We bowed our heads to the torrent, and in time it abated its wild exhilaration, though it continued in abated form for the next nine months.¹¹

Ironically, we know more about this opening phase of Tommy Hart’s career at the academy than about the balance of his four years. He says in his oral history that his first year was extremely difficult for him academically and he was anything but a success for the first two and a half years. The record more or less bears him out. In his first year, in a class of seventy-seven, he rated fortieth in algebra and geometry, fiftieth in English and history, and thirty-ninth in Spanish, French, and German. In his second year he improved his academic position, although his demerits rose. This rise was a direct result of his having more free time now that he had his studies under control.

It was this proclivity for impish diversion that brought him into contact with a man who made a significant impact on his life. In 1894 Captain Phythian was replaced as superintendent by Captain Philip H. Cooper. To tighten up discipline, Cooper brought with him Commander Willard H. Brownson, an officer of considerable experience and stern demeanor. Brownson was installed as commandant of cadets, the billet most immediately responsible for the cadets’ training in military discipline and leadership.

Hart’s class was very much in need of discipline and, apparently, Hart and several of his friends composed a group most definitely deficient. In the spring of 1894 four cadets, Hart and three others, formed a group called Coxey’s Army, the sole purpose of which was devilment. They soaked upper classmen’s beds and their occupants with water, pulled other tricks on upper classmen as well as their fellows, and caused late-night rackets. The identity of Coxey’s Army was known to many of the cadets, but the instructional staff had yet to ferret them out.

Brownson arrived in November 1894 and within a month he had a confrontation with the army when Hart and his three friends decided to take on the authorities in a very direct way. The officer in charge of the quarters deck on which Hart’s class lived was a lieutenant derisively called Savvy Dan. Dan was strict, devoid of humor, something of a prig, and had a trait that the midshipmen conceived of as meanness. One afternoon after infantry drill Hart was presented with some seventy-five blank cartridges and told by his fellows to make a bomb with a slow-burning fuse. Coxey’s Army was going to blow up Savvy Dan’s desk, his pride and joy. Tommy did as directed, constructing a bomb in a half-pint ink bottle. At 3:00 a.m. this was duly set in a drawer of the desk. Soon, the entire dormitory was shocked into wakefulness by a tremendous roar.¹²

Obviously Brownson could not allow this challenge to authority to go unpunished, so he announced that the third class would mount two sentries on the floor all night in two-hour shifts. The class felt that damaging Savvy Dan’s desk and reputation was worth this sacrifice, so after a few days Brownson increased the pressure. Letting it be known that he feared the culprits might be from outside the academy and capable of God knows what, he doubled the number of sentries. After a few days of this and the surmise that Brownson would continue the mathematical progression ad nauseam, Coxey’s Army surrendered. Instead of dismissing them, which he could have done, the commandant had them quartered in the Santee for two months with no recreation time. No demerits were assigned, so none of the cadets suffered in their class standing, and Brownson told them he was confining them merely to guard against danger to life and property. This method of both finding the guilty and leavening justice with mercy, Hart later considered a perfect example of correct handling of men in a matter of discipline even though he suffered on the Santee for two months.

It should not be assumed, though, that Brownson had turned Thomas Hart into a model cadet. For instance, although he says that by his third year he had decided to straighten up and come around, he was enticed to go to a party one Saturday afternoon even though he was restricted to barracks for previous indiscretions. In this case he not only made the mistake of leaving the barracks but also of going to a party hosted by the daughters of Commander Edwin White, who had succeeded Brownson as commandant of cadets. As if that were not bad enough, he made the fatal error of being so noteworthy that one of the hostesses mentioned him by name to her father. Commander White was not as accommodating as his predecessor had been. He ordered Hart and his roommate to account for themselves between the hours of 3:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. on that Saturday. When they did so, he gave them fifty demerits each and sent them back to the Santee for confinement.

The class of 1897, U.S. Naval Academy. Naval Cadet Hart is immediately behind the man in the middle of the front row. Courtesy of Mrs. T. C. Hart

Statistics probably best tell the story of Hart’s career under academy discipline. In his youngster, or second, year he stood fifty-second out of seventy-seven in discipline; by his second-class year he had improved his conduct to stand thirty-first out of sixty; but in his first-class year, belying his comments about reforming, he stood thirty-second out of thirty-seven. What this means is problematic, but it is likely that Thomas Hart, who was only nineteen when he graduated, was full of boyish high spirits and they could not be dulled by the academy’s rigid rules. Whether he was misbehaving to gain attention will be left to the psychologists. Hart later took some pride in the fact that throughout his career he was considered by superiors to be slightly insubordinate; there is no doubt that he displayed these traits early.

We also know that Thomas Hart did not follow the same erratic course in academic matters. At the start of his youngster year, he stood forty-second out of seventy-seven; the next year he stood twenty-sixth out of sixty; he went to thirteenth out of fifty-six the following year; and by graduation he was seventh out of thirty-seven. Considering the aggregate of the four years, he stood twelfth out of thirty-seven, with a score of 610.23 out of a possible 700. Thus Hart showed steady improvement in his classroom work. And here it should be stressed that, although the academy has always put primary emphasis on turning out line officers rather than intellectuals, the teaching methods were rigorous. Classes were very small, eight to ten cadets, and, since recitation was the pedagogical procedure rather than lecture, it was virtually impossible for a cadet to go to class unprepared—and get away with it. Hence one can assume that Hart’s grades accurately reflected his knowledge. The subjects in which he did best were steam machinery, marine engines and boilers, physics and chemistry, history, international law, and seamanship. His worst subjects were French, calculus, mechanical drawing, trigonometry, and geometry.

But it was not all classroom work and inspections at the academy. Since 1890 there had been a renewed interest in athletics. At the alumni gathering in that year Robert M. Thompson, of the class of 1868, pointed out that however valuable scholastic attainments might be, all would be useless if, at the crucial moment of conflict, nerves and body failed.¹³ This remark fell on receptive ears and the cadets’ young bodies were soon being subjected to a full schedule of athletic events. Football was greeted with the greatest enthusiasm and the greatest spectacles were the contests between the two service academies. But that game became a victim of its own success and was not played for four years after 1894 because of a supposed deleterious influence upon the class standing of the participants and the discipline of the academies.¹⁴ One can fairly assume that Hart was one of those whose discipline was so affected. Although he was too small to participate in football, he found his niche in another sport revived in the athletic renaissance of the ’90s—crew. Dad was just the right size to act as coxswain in the academy’s eight-man shell and there he performed valuable service in 1895 and 1896. Then, partially in response to a challenge from the New York Naval Reserves and presumably at the urging of Superintendent Cooper, who wanted to see the cadets’ athletic energies expended as much as possible in their natural element, the water, Hart and some associates organized a cutter crew. Lieutenant Albert W. Grant of the Mathematics Department helped, offering such sage advice as If a man only put his blade in the water and pulled hard enough it did not matter if he feathered a few inches too high. Some of the academy crew were not paragons of physical prowess, but they had desire and they apparently took to heart Grant’s suggestion that they put enthusiasm ahead of style. In the end they won the race with the reserves by a length, aided, as Hart said, by their pluck and endurance.¹⁵

Evincing some of those same qualities, Tommy Hart made it to 4 June 1897 and graduation. There had been significant changes in him and in the school since his arrival a little more than four years before. He entered as a boy and was leaving at least well on his way to manhood. His knowledge had been increased and he had demonstrated an ability to master difficult academic subjects. His sense of decorum still left something to be desired, but at least he had learned the consequences of misconduct and, presumably, benefited from his punishment. He also had learned a number of practical things as a result of his athletic participation and his summer cruises. By the time he graduated, he had spent eight months and twenty-seven days afloat, most of that under sail. From these experiences he learned a life-long respect for seamanship and all manner of things to do with ships. Some of this may be attributed to the changes in the academy’s curriculum, in that more and more emphasis was being placed on shiphandling. Physical changes were also taking place in Annapolis; acreage was added to the grounds and the Board of Visitors began agitating for some uniformity in architecture. The renaissance of the school’s physical plant was yet to come, but like Naval Cadet Hart, the academy was poised to spring into a new and exciting period.

But first there was what should have been a triumphal return home on a short leave. However, as he would have been the first to admit, his activities at the academy, in things nonacademic, could hardly be pointed to with pride, and the results of some of his indiscretions could not be swept away with a diploma. Therefore, when Tommy Hart returned to Michigan he brought a sheepskin and a handful of bills for debts unwisely incurred. His father reached for the diploma and did not even look at the bills; they were Tommy’s personal property. Hence Tommy Hart would have slowly to pay off his debts, and buy his meals, all on the ninety dollars per month he would earn for the next two years.

At this period in the navy’s history, getting a commission took six years rather than four. This meant that Hart, now a passed midshipman, would spend two years at sea before taking his final