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
