In Memorium: The Navy Tiara

Each new Navy birthday brings with it a sense of accomplishment and pride in that this great institution has stood the watch and fulfilled its duty around the world for another year.  To commemorate this accomplishment, thousands of current and former members of the naval service, as well as their friends and loved ones, will adorn themselves in their finest for the annual Navy Ball.  Most members of the armed services who attend will wear their respective services' mess dress uniform, usually worn only for "black tie" events.

With each new birthday, however, some old things pass away, and the fanciest Navy uniform has not escaped unscathed.  Amidst the truly historic Navy personnel news of late we have this item concerning the demise of a relatively obscure uniform item.  As of October 1, 2016, in accordance with Article 3501.86 of Navy Uniform Regulations, the Navy Tiara is no longer authorized for uniform wear.

The Navy tiara of Captain Ruth Moeller, USN (Ret), part of the Hampton Roads Naval Museum collection. (HRNM-2015.008.003. Photograph by M.C. Farrington) 

This H. Charles McBarron Jr. illustration of the service dress mess (also called dinner dress blue jacket) uniforms of 1967 shows the Navy tiara as it would have been worn by a female Navy lieutenant, junior grade. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum Collection)

The uniform change was mandated last year, along with the elimination of boat cloaks for male officers and chief petty officers and navy blue capes for females.  Both were worn for most of the twentieth century, although the navy blue cape, like the tiara, was part of the dress mess ensemble. 

The Navy Specialty Mark, 1866-2016

As we move toward a Navy where Sailors may hold multiple occupations, rating titles will no longer be applicable. 

NAVADMIN 218/16

Two-thousand-sixteen has been a year of dramatic change with regards to the naval uniform.  Not a single seabag of any current member of the United States Navy will emerge untouched by the profound changes that have been mandated this year through the Navy Uniform Matters Office.  

Although the decade-long saga of the controversial blue-and-gray camouflage Navy Working Uniform has entered its final chapter and the same Navy headgear is now worn by both male and female personnel, the latest change might prove to be the most profound.  A tiny part of the standard enlisted dress uniform is to be eliminated after almost 150 years, and this will literally change the way Sailors view their occupations.     

Detail of an illustration by H. Charles McBarron, Jr., from the collections of the Hampton Roads Naval Museum, showing a Boatswain's Mate 1st Class dress uniform, behind typical officer uniforms of 1898. Aside from the elimination of port (left sleeve) and starboard (right sleeve) positioning of rating badges in 1949, the appearance of the rating badge itself remained fairly constant from 1886 until 2016.  By comparison, nothing resembling officers' service and full dress uniforms such as those shown here is worn by today's naval officers.   

In contrast to the rather ostentatious gold trimmings symbolizing prestige or power on officers' uniforms that have come and gone over the last 241 years, the more modest specialty mark of the enlisted uniform has been an ubiquitous symbol of Navy professionalism since the first eight types were authorized in December 1866.  

Emerging with the "New Navy" of the 1880s, the positioning of the roughly one square-inch occupational symbols between the eagle (commonly called a "crow") and the chevrons of the petty officer rating badges first authorized in 1886 has remained essentially unchanged since America's emergence as a world-class naval power. 

This rating badge of a coxswain, circa-1898, the oldest one of its kind in the Hampton Roads Naval Museum, can be seen in the museum's Steel Navy gallery.  The specialty mark is the crossed-anchors symbol at the center of the badge.  The image has not been "flipped." The eagle atop the rating badge faced either right or left depending upon which sleeve it was worn.  After the Second World War, a Sailor sporting this rating badge would been known as being a Boatswain's Mate 3rd Class. (Photograph by M.C. Farrington)

Long before the advent of the Steel Navy, Sailors in certain specialized shipboard occupations began embroidering their own specialty marks to distinguish themselves from the rest of the crew.  A woodcut in the Naval Magazine of November 1836, for example, shows a Boatswain's Mate with crossed anchors on his jacket sleeve. 

Nestled within another illustration by H. Charles McBarron, Jr. from 1966, we can see roughly what the enlisted specialty mark of a Boatswain's Mate looked like during the 1830s.  Although no regulations specified the wearing of such occupational symbols at the time, the specialty marks Sailors had been putting on their own uniforms for years were ultimately incorporated into regulations drafted in 1866.  

Although a general sleeve insignia for petty officers was authorized in 1841, the uniform regulations of December 1, 1866 introduced eight specialty marks for petty officers.  The ever more sophisticated naval vessels coming into the fleet over first few decades that followed, particularly during the 1880s, necessitated further division of labor.  With it came more specialty marks, including those for the rank of Chief Petty Officer, established in 1893.  Five years later, there were 15 specialty marks for enlisted personnel.  A century later, there were 71.

A World War I-era Chief Storekeeper rating badge.  The job specialty itself, along with its specialty mark, was merged into the Logistics Specialist rate in 2010. (Jim Leuci Collection)

Over the twentieth century, hundreds of different ratings emerged with new technologies and missions, then disappeared or merged into other rates as those technologies and missions receded.  At the time the decision was made in September 2016 to replace Navy ratings with an alphanumeric Navy Occupational Specialty code (with no corresponding specialty mark), 57 distinct specialty marks remained.

A closeup of a Master Chief Boatswain's Mate rating badge from the late-1950s. (Jim Leuci Collection)

Although specialty marks might not completely disappear, it appears that they will never symbolize the jobs that U.S. Navy Sailors do in the same way that they have for the last 150 years.  Nevertheless, you can trust that the Hampton Roads Naval Museum and the other museums under the Naval History and Heritage Command will preserve these small yet profound symbols of professionalism in our collections as long as the Sailors of today  have a job to accomplish.  

The U.S. Navy Outlaws Flogging, 28 September 1850

Punishment on board ship, from the Journal of a Cruise on the USS Cyane, 1842-43, by William H. Myers, Gunner, NH001905

"Seize that man up, Mr. A-! Seize him up! Make a spread eagle of him! I'll teach you all who is master aboard!' - Two Years Before the Mast, Richard Henry Dana, Jr.

Young Richard Henry Dana, Jr. did not intend to write an American classic. Yet the horrible descriptions of life aboard an American Navy vessel during the early nineteenth century did much to pique the interest of the general public about the institution of flogging at sea. As a student entering Harvard University, he contracted measles. Searching for other options, Dana dropped out of school and enlisted as a common sailor in the U.S. Navy. Dana traveled around Cape Horn on the brig Pilgrim, keeping a diary during the entire voyage. When he returned two years later, he penned Two Years Before the Mast with the intention to detail how poorly common sailors were treated. The institution of flogging, or punishing by striking with a cat-o’-nine tails, was highlighted as a particularly cruel form of punishment. The publication quickly became a best seller:

"Swinging the rope over his head, and bending his body so as to give it full force, the captain brought it down upon the poor fellow's back. Once, twice - six times." – Two Years Before the Mast, Richard Henry Dana, Jr.

Flogging was not unique to the U.S. Navy. Historical accounts from other navies around the world detail the horror displayed through corporal punishment during the age of sail. Royal Navy sailor Aaron Thomas remarks of one instance of such corporal punishment in a journal kept between 1798-99 aboard HMS Lapwing:

“At 10 AM Thomsons arms was lashed; the Ships Company formed a Lane all around the Waiste of the Ship, every man being provided with a Nettle, 2 Marines faced him with each a Bayonet pointed at the Theife, a Cord was thrown over the prisoners body, the ends of which were held behind by Two Quartermasters, Things being thus ordered he run the Gauntlet, every man striking him as he passed; the noise of which I thought at the time, resembled Reapers at work, when cuting Corn. After passing once round, he fainted and & droped down. -- The Surgeon threw some Hartshorn in his face, and he was ordered into Irons, to receive more punishment when his back recovers." (reprinted courtesy of University of Miami Libraries)

Sixteen years after the Dana’s publication, Herman Melville, best known for Moby Dick, published White-Jacket, or The World in a Man-of-War.

A Cat-o'-nine tails - The tool of flogging

White-Jacket, much like Dana’s work, detailed shipboard life during the Age of Sail. One of the best chapters of the book concerned descriptions of the “inhuman practice” of flogging:

“And here, though the subject of punishment in the Navy has been canvassed in previous chapters, and though the thing is every way a most unpleasant and grievous one to enlarge upon, and though I painfully nerve myself to it while I write, a feeling of duty compels me to enter upon a branch of the subject till now undiscussed. I would not be like the man, who, seeing an outcast perishing by the roadside, turned about to his friend, saying, "Let us cross the way; my soul so sickens at this sight, that I cannot endure it." – “Flogging Through the Fleet,” in White-Jacket

If Two Years Before the Mast was the start of flogging’s downfall, White-Jacket proved to be the final swing. The general public once again responded in outrage. Many naval officers steeped in tradition took offense to Melville’s writings, publishing remarks in newspapers and pamphlets. One such possible publication, A Plea in Favor of Maintaining Flogging in the Navy, intended to restore the practice of flogging back into the U.S. Navy. The effort proved fruitless. The winds of change were too strong for the “old guard.” On 28 September 1850, Congress abolished the practice with an appropriation bill signed by President Millard Filmore.

In 1855, Congress passed a law establishing better disciplinary measures for the Navy and a system of summary courts martial for minor offenses. Whatever punishment doled out to sailors, it was far more humane than flogging.