Word: seamens
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Mahan's Day. There was no denying that against the destructive virtuosity of surface raiders, of Nazi airmen and of seamen lying in the chill, sweating bowels of the U-boats, the British convoy system was far from effective. The great danger was that, with better weather, it would become even less effective. In the tragic, high-hearted history of Britain's first 18 months of war was the admitted record of at least 4,300,000 gross tons of shipping lost at sea. This was a net loss (after replacements) of some 2,650,000 tons (TIME...
...never be another. But for its unreadiness to put ships on the sea it had a sounder reason: for the past 80 years the call of its own domestic empire had increasingly drowned out the call of the sea. The U. S., which had once been a nation of seamen, had become a nation of landlubbers. There had been too much to do at home. And as domestic prosperity heightened, its prices and its wages were scaled too high to make the shipping business as profitable as landbound enterprises...
...railroads, of high tariffs and high wages, when most of the U. S. population clung to the seacoasts, men took to the sea in merchant ships. Clippers like the Flying Cloud, Sovereign of the Seas, Great Republic, Red Jacket, Lightning showed clean heels to anything afloat. U. S. seamen, U. S. ships were the finest in the world. Before the Civil War the U. S. had the best and second-biggest (2,379,000 tons) fleet of merchantmen on the high seas, and carried over 77% of its foreign commerce in its own bottoms. But steam was replacing sail...
...years of college credits ("or the equivalent"), three letters of recommendation, an age between 20 and 27. Next comes a stiff physical examination (with emphasis on eyes and heart) on which about 50% are turned down. A successful applicant becomes one of the flying cadets now enlisted as seamen second class for elimination flight training. During the first month he gets ten hours of flight instruction. If he manages to solo, he gets a crack at advanced training and a commission on graduation (but with Jacksonville and Corpus Christi still abuilding, there is a two-to-three-month wait...
...shoulder of Mt. Aegaleus, watched his hopes of world conquest crushed on the crescent of water below, watched the brazen-beaked Athenian triremes dart in and bite the fat bellies of his own oversized craft, 400 little ships crushing twice as many big ones. One of the Athenian seamen that day was a poetic fellow named Aeschylus...