Word: albions
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When Robert G. Albion graduated from Bowdoin in 1918, he had to choose between the newspaper business or a stretch at graduate work in history. "I took a look at the old boys in the city room, compared 'em with the professors mellowing at Bowdoin, and off I went to Harvard...
...Albion, who was appointed Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs here last spring, says he likes that decision better every day. "The best thing about teaching history," he says, "is that you can gratify almost any interest...
Professor Albion's interest is the sea. He was born in Malden but managed to grow up on Maine's Casco Bay; by World War I his seafaring ancestry was showing its effect, and Albion joined the Naval Reserve. After what he calls a "delightful" series of training eruises, Albion began to feel that he would like a little combat action, so he jumped leagues and promoted himself a commission as an infantry licutenant...
This promptly backfired. Albion was sent to Louisville, Ky. and "assigned to breaking in Hillbillies." He got so lonesome for the sight of water that he started riding a ferry back and forth across the Ohio River "just to remember what it felt like." After his discharge, Albion traveled via Harvard to the Admiralty in London, where he turned out a Ph.D thesis for another naval historian, Professor Samuel Eliot Morison...
...Albion got an appointment to Princeton the same day he took his General Exams here, and soon was made an Assistant Dean in charge of Flunking. He interspersed earnest warnings to errant Prinetonians with a couple of courses in military and naval science, and eventually worked his way to a position teaching his favorite subject, maritime history...