[On July 31, 1876, the U.S. Revenue Cutter School of Instruction—now known as the Coast Guard Academy—was founded. So this week for its 150th anniversary I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Coast Guard contexts!]
On a very AmericanStudies way to contextualize the Coast Guard’s unique first school.
One of my favorite things about this blog is how often I begin planning and researching a series and realize just how much I still have to learn, not only about all of America (although yes) but also about the specific subjects that have provided me with my prompts. So, for example, when I initially read about the historic anniversary that has provided the prompt for this week’s series, I certainly expected to learn about a building or institution, a brick-and-mortar facility of some kind, that housed the newly-created U.S. Revenue Cutter School of Instruction. But the reality is quite different: that school was a ship, the schooner Dobbin (named for an influential mid-century Secretary of the Navy), on which the first nine cadets sailed on a two-year training voyage beginning on July 31, 1876. The instruction would continue to be asea for more than three decades, as it was only in 1910 that New London, Connecticut’s historic Fort Trumbull was turned over to the Revenue Cutter Service to host the now-landbound Revenue Cutter Academy (which would be renamed the Coast Guard Academy in 1915, on which more in tomorrow’s post).
I think I’d have to turn in my AmericanStudier Card (and as I’ve said before, you have no idea how difficult it is to get one of those) if I didn’t note that the first thing this fascinating fact made me think of was a quote from Chapter 24 (“The Advocate”) of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale (1851): “A whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.” Throughout this short chapter Ishmael advocates for the profession of whaling and its importance; he does so mostly in economic and social and global terms, but comes in the moving final paragraph to its importance for individuals like him: “And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet undiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real repute in that small but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably ambitious of; if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a man might rather have done than to have left undone; if, at my death, my executors, or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the honor and the glory to whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.”
As is the case with some frequency in the novel, Ishmael is clearly speaking for Herman Melville in this moment. But as is also the case with Melville’s masterpiece, the paragraph nonetheless also has a great deal to tell us about both historical and human experiences and themes. Certainly that’s true for what the world not only of whaling specifically, but of shipboard settings and life more generally, can mean and has meant for the countless young people (especially young men, at least for most of our history) who have experienced it at length—and those Revenue Cutter cadets had incredibly lengthy shipboard experiences to be sure. But it’s also an important reminder that “education” has always included not only the teaching and learning that takes place in literal schools (although y’all know I’ll always advocate for such settings, like my father before me), but also the parallel forms of education that can be found in the experience of training in any number of ways. That idea goes back to foundational concepts like apprenticeships and guilds, and it’s easy to imagine this 1876 shipboard school as an evolution from those practices and roles.
Next Coast Guard context tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What you do think?
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