'Dare’ Is Its Middle Name

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The principal worldwide forum for debating naval and maritime issues and ideas, the U.S. Naval Institute celebrates its 150th anniversary this year

Excerpted from a 1765 dissertation, the words of American Founding Father John Adams—“Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write”—have been and still are at the heart of a local institution commemorating its sesquicentennial on October 9. If you’ve never heard of it, you’re in good company, even though it’s the premier conduit for the most influential naval and maritime literature in the world. The Naval Institute features a sword in its logo, overlaid by a quill, making it clear that it subscribes to “the pen” being “mightier than the sword.” 

The Naval Institute’s headquarters complex features a new state-of-the-art, 400-seat conference center, named for Jack C. Taylor, founder of Enterprise rental cars (which he named after the ship from which he flew in World War II). The current CEO, retired Navy Vice Admiral Peter H. Daly, considers the center, funded entirely through charitable gifts, as the Naval Institute’s long-sought “home field.” And it’s right here in Annapolis.

The late National Book Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough had for years politely declined invitations to speak at a Naval Institute event. Having once uttered the words, “You don’t know history if you don’t know naval history,” the historian decided the time was right to appear at the Institute’s Annual Meeting in spring 2001. The occasion would coincide with the impending release of his second presidential biography, the first being titled Truman. His new bio was destined not only to win—again—the world’s highest literary honors for the avuncular former host of the PBS series, “The American Experience,” but John Adams was also adapted for an HBO miniseries by the same title. And Adams was, the author knew, the veritable patron saint of the Naval Institute.

When It All Began

The loosely conceived organization convened its first meeting in the U.S. Naval Academy’s Department of Physics and Chemistry building on an early October day—eight years after the end of the Civil War. And it came in the midst of a national economic crisis, “The Panic of 1873,” which temporarily closed the New York Stock Exchange as U.S. bank reserves plummeted from $50 million to $17 million between September and October that year. Economists would later suggest it rivaled the gravity of the Great Depression in the 20th century. 

Since its inception, the Naval Institute has prided itself on its open forum to those who choose the profession of arms as a career and seek a vehicle for making their voices heard and thus their profession better. Setting a course for the organization as an outlet for the latest scholarship in naval history, Commodore Foxhall Parker read his rendition of the 1571 Battle of Lepanto at that first meeting. Those 15 original “members”—led by Lieutenant Charles Belknap, himself a Civil War veteran—consisted of a Navy rear admiral, commanders, lieutenant commanders, lieutenants, a Marine Corps captain, a chief engineer, a medical director, and a pay inspector.

To this day—after two world wars, Korea, Vietnam, and various interventions in the Middle East, including Operation Desert Storm, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the ongoing global war on terrorism—no one is restricted from participating in its discussions. The organization’s principal contributors and patrons are serving or retired professionals in the Sea Services: the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. They are presumed to know, first-hand, whence they speak. And even in this politically charged era, the Naval Institute remains staunchly non-partisan. One testament to the organization’s function is the popularity and heft of its monthly Proceedings magazine’s consistently lengthy “Comment and Discussion” section.

The Naval Institute’s Board of Directors and Editorial Board advise on but do not censor new material that will appear in Proceedings, the topics proposed to be published by its book arm, the Naval Institute Press, and the subjects to be discussed at its internationally known annual series of conferences. Speaking “truth to power” often has been hazardous to those courageous enough to question professional conventions. But the very existence of the Naval Institute depends on such unfettered discussion.

Attention from the National Media and Hollywood

While some readers of this story may believe that Tom Clancy’s first novel, The Hunt for Red October (soon to celebrate, incidentally, its 40th anniversary in 2024) represents the only time filmmakers and general news media have paid attention to stories that have emanated from the Naval Institute, they should think again.

The earliest such interest stemmed from “The Post-War Petty Officer: A Closer Look,” winner of the Institute’s 1948 Enlisted Prize Essay Contest. It was an account of life in China on board a Yangtze Patrol gunboat in 1926 and written by Navy Chief Machinist’s Mate Richard McKenna. From that evolved the 1962 novel, The Sand Pebbles, which spawned the 1966 movie of the same title, starring Steve McQueen and Candice Bergen. 

Following The Hunt for Red October came Stephen Coonts’ naval-aviation novel Flight of the Intruder, which led to a 1991 film starring Willem Dafoe and Roseanna Arquette. Novels aside, the best-selling Naval Institute Press book continues to be The Bluejacket’s Manual, a prominent part of every Navy sailor’s seabag.

The Naval Institute Press series “Classics of Naval Literature” presented opportunities to highlight contributors to such an august collective, including Proceedings author Captain Edward ‘Ned” Beach, whose most well-known book-length work was Run Silent, Run Deep, the basis for the submarine movie by the same title starring Burt Lancaster and Clark Gable. In fact, the Naval Institute’s headquarters, Beach Hall, is named for father and son, both Sr. and Jr. Edward Beaches, in what was once part of the Naval Academy hospital on a hill overlooking the academy’s classroom buildings across College Creek.

On re-release of his book, The Caine Mutiny, novelist Herman Wouk made a surprise appearance at the 1995 Annual Meeting to sign copies of the new “Classic,” which itself was the basis of a movie by the same name, starring Humphrey Bogart as the principal character, Captain Queeg. A moving component of his visit was the address he delivered before attendees at that year’s event.

When the Naval Institute Makes News

Along with the articles published in the magazines Proceedings and Naval History, the Institute has drawn attention for the interviews it’s conducted, which have included movie stars (Oscar-winner Gene Hackman was a Marine; and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. was a decorated World War II naval officer in Europe, whose widow donated his medals and memorabilia to the Naval Institute for display), filmmakers (Academy Award-winner James Cameron—in a satellite interview just after breaking Navy veteran Captain Don Walsh’s world record for the deepest ocean dive ever achieved), prominent media members such as Ben Bradlee and Bob Woodward (both long-time fixtures at The Washington Post—and themselves Navy veterans), stalwart TV newsmen Walter Cronkite and Tom Brokaw, as well as CNN’s chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour (whose interview devolved into a lesson in journalistic ethics to all involved, but that’s a story for another time), and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano. The Naval Institute’s support of and reporting on deep-diving expeditions on sunken ships requires its own story, which is too long and complicated to include here.

In this same vein, the relatively new “USNI News” continues to draw envious international attention from other media for its connections and exclusive online reporting presence. And not to be overlooked, the Naval Institute’s oral history collection is an unparalleled array of primary-source material, much of it still unmined.

A Picture Is Worth…

One of the Naval Institute’s “go-to” services continues to be “the largest naval and maritime photo archive in the world.” Because the ‘bread and butter” of the Naval Institute Press is its publication of nonfiction, all those books require historically significant photos and illustrations, often found in the Institute’s archive, which has been perused by researchers world-wide. 

Whether you’re looking for that rare photo of the destroyer your father or grandfather served on in World War II or “pop-singer” Cher performing in the 1980s on board the battleship Missouri, it’s there in the archive.

For an organization 150 years old, the Naval Institute has enthusiastically embraced technology at every turn, including the digitization of the photo archive, every issue of Proceedings, and electronic preservation of the oral history program. 

Not necessarily surprising has been the popularity of discussions regarding some of the most burning and controversial topics, not in current affairs, but in naval history. Those presentations, on occasion integral parts of the Naval Institute’s Annual Meeting each spring, have included the great debate on whether the USS Maine’s sinking (which presumably led to the Spanish-American War) was caused by intentional Spanish espionage, or was the result of an accidental explosion. The gist of “What Really Sank the Maine?” was a comparison of the unstable characteristics of brown gunpowder as opposed to black powder. Even though Admiral Hyman Rickover (who had become known as the “Father of the Nuclear Navy”) ordered an earlier study of the ship’s demise, the discussion before the Naval Institute, based on existing evidence, proved essentially inconclusive.

Equally “shadowy” (so to speak) and sometimes incendiary was the panel exchange between proponents of Rear Admiral Robert E. Peary’s “discovery” of the North Pole. The minutiae (orchestrated beforehand in 1989 by the National Geographic Society) included presentations that employed “photogrammetry” to analyze the shadows in the photos claimed to have been taken in 1909 of Peary staking his North-Pole-discovery claim. The 1990 Annual Meeting exchange, which included members of the Peary family, was so inflammatory, in fact, that the session reconvened later in the day in a Naval Academy classroom, with a substantial monetary bet on the table. Reportedly, the discussion ended in a draw, and no cash ever changed hands.

To celebrate and commemorate the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ “discovery” of America, the Naval Institute assembled a panel discussion in April 1992 that pitted proponents of exactly which island Columbus must have landed on in “the New World.” The moderator of the discussion, William F. Buckley, was well-known for his own sailing prowess and more so for being the founding editor of the ultra-conservative periodical, The National Review and for his televised debates with the nation’s “most famous democrat,” Gore Vidal. The Columbus exchange, while entertaining and compelling, was also declared inconclusive.

The featured luncheon speaker that day was General Colin L. Powell, at the time the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. General Powell was a long-time life member of the Naval Institute and had been a rare Army officer who wrote for Proceedings. As the story goes, he called the editorial offices one day, distraught that he had lost the commemorative pen he received for having been a Proceedings author. Assured he would receive a replacement pen, he accepted an invitation to speak at the Annual Meeting lunch in 1992. At the middle of the head table was General Powell, flanked by the moderators (neither having been known as moderate) of the morning and afternoon panels.

As a testament to the independence of the Naval Institute, the irony of the seating was not lost on General Powell, who summed up the essence of what it’s all about. To his right (naturally) was Buckley and on his left (equally naturally) was afternoon panel moderator and then-Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward. General Powell began his speech with words that reinforced what the organization represents—an open forum of ideas, political and otherwise: “Where else but the Naval Institute,” General Powell began, “would the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs find himself seated at lunch between Bob Woodward and Bill Buckley?”

An Interview with Retired Navy Vice Admiral Peter H. Daly, Current Naval Institute CEO