The Old Navy

by Daniel P Mannix

 

Forward

As a child, I saw my father only once or twice a year and many times not even that often, for he was an officer in the United States Navy, and cruises were cruises in the early years of this century. It seemed to me that he always arrived unexpectedly and at night. I slept in a little room next to my grandparents on the second floor of their Delancey Place house in Philadelphia, and suddenly I would be awake and conscious of a bustling downstairs. I would run along the dark hallway in my white nightgown to the top of the great staircase that led down to the entrance hall, a checkerboard of black and white marble slabs far below me. By the light of a yellow, fan-shaped gas flame I was able to make out hurrying figures as the maids started a fire in the living room barely visible through the hastily opened sliding doors. Mother and my grandparents were already down, and then I would see Bounds, our houseman, open the glass doors that gave onto a tiny hallway beyond which was the massive street door.

Clinging to the mahogany baluster, I would start down the carpeted steps one at a time, terrified of falling but determined not to miss this great moment which rated with Christmas. Long before I reached the bottom, the glass doors would reopen and Bounds would return. After him would come a tall figure with gold lace gleaming on his blue uniform and a boat cape thrown over his shoulders. Then would follow two seamen carrying a huge sea chest big enough to hold a corpse. Under Bounds' direction, they would carry it into the living room, emerging a few moments later empty handed and take their departure after touching their round caps to Father. It behooved me to get there before Father entered the living room and the sliding doors were closed, for it was hard for a little boy to make himself heard through the oaken panels and I would be left standing alone in the cold hallway.

Even in the safety of the living room, no one paid any attention to me, nor did I expect it. Father would first greet Grandmother and Grandfather as they were the eldest and he was a stickler for seniority. Then he would speak to Mother and, after an embarrassed pause, kiss her on the cheek. Both of them were obviously self-conscious and hardly knew how to behave after so many months' separation. Then, I think almost with relief, Father would turn to me. "Did you take good care of your mother while I was away?" he would ask severely. It was part of my training to know that men always took care of women, no matter what the disparity in their ages might be. After I assured him that I had came the ceremonial opening of the sea chest.

That sea chest was better than all the Christmas stockings in the world. You never knew what would be revealed except that it would be rare and wonderful. One year there was a gush of sandlewood scent as the lid was raised and then, wrapped in palm fronds, were teak elephants with real ivory tusks, a Gurkha kukri, alabaster boxes inlaid with semiprecious stones, a hookah, and many more exotic marvels. On another occasion, there was a model full-rigged ship that turned out to sail beautifully when father set the sails (the box she was in was labeled "tres fragile" so I named her that), a set of Black Watch lead soldiers, their kilted uniforms accurate down to the finest detail, and a hand-carved chess set. Again there was a necklace of fresh water pearls from South America, a set of bolas, brilliant scrapes, and strange shells. Once after the Russian-Japanese War, Father brought back a human rib from a place he called 203 Meter Hill where, he explained, the ground was too hard to bury the dead. He always had presents for everyone, including the maids, who came up from the servants' quarters to curtsy as they received their gifts.

It seemed to me that Father was never home for more than a few weeks and I saw little of him. Like most well-raised children of that era I spent much of my time in the nursery with my nurse and, except to inquire into my studies, Father seldom spoke to me. I was, of course, destined for the Naval Academy. I was Daniel Pratt Mannix 4th, and every Daniel Pratt Mannix had been in the armed services. It was the only respectable profession for a gentleman. Whenever Father spoke of "civilians", he always did it with a sneer.

As a midshipman, my father served on sailing ships, and he was still an officer in the Navy (although retired) when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. During his long career, he met the Empress Dowager of China, the German Kaiser, Edward VII of Great Britain, the Mikado of Japan, and Her Imperial Highness Zekie, Sultana of Turkey. He fought in eight wars, was awarded six medals, and saw action against the Moro pirates and the Imperial German Navy. He watched the United States grow from an obscure, third-class nation to the most powerful country in the world. Many of the campaigns he described so familiarly I had trouble finding in any historical texts. Today we have no idea how far-ranging was American influence in the early years of this century.

Often I disagree with his dogmatic views, as I am sure many readers will. At other times, I am astonished at his insight. I feel that whether you agree or disagree with his beliefs, it is important to realize that they were the beliefs of many men in this country nearly a hundred years ago, and it was these men who made our nation great. You may be convinced that they were often wrong, but you today are living on their bounty.

After my father's death, my step-mother, Claudia, was kind enough to send me his trunks full of letters, notes, diaries, and photographs. For a long time the task of organizing the material seemed hopeless, but with the help of the Naval History Division in Washington, D.C., I have done my best to reconstruct a picture of the times. I have had to omit a number of his cruises (he sailed the equivalent of eight times around the world) and combined several others (for example, he made three cruises to the Philippines, which I have put together). I hope this has not resulted in contradictions or confusions.

I consider this to be a revealing epic of America from 1880 to 1928, as seen through the eyes of a man who played a role in forming it. If naval officers or trained historians read this, I hope they will excuse any technical errors I may have made. The errors will be mine, not those of my father, Rear Admiral Daniel P Mannix 3rd. Now I will allow him to tell his story in his own words.

Daniel Pratt Mannix 4th

 

Chapter 1
Boyhood in China 1881-1885

Long ago, and far away

My first memories are of China of the 1880's — a China of fat mandarins, of ladies with bound feet, of men with pigtails and of soldiers who carried paper umbrellas as part of their equipment and who never fought when it was raining. Their way of fighting was to frighten the enemy by exploding firecrackers and then suddenly opening their umbrellas on which were painted pictures of devils. It worked quite well on other Chinese but was not nearly as successful against the Russians, French, British, Germans, and Japanese who were invading China. My father, Lt. Daniel P Mannix, Jr., of the United States Marine Corps, had the task of turning these Chinese levies into efficient combat troops. He had brought Mother, my older sister, me, and Mammy — Mammy who, until the Civil War had been one of our family's slaves — to China with him.

I can also remember, very faintly, myself as a four-year-old boy who ran crying to Mammy because the little Chinese boys laughed at me for not having a pigtail. As always when she heard my cries, Mammy rushed to the rescue and at the sight of her, the Chinese children fled screaming, "First a white devil and now a black one!"

Mother tried to comfort me, saying angrily, "How terrible that these stupid children should be prejudiced against someone just because his skin is a different color than theirs!" I remember Mammy gave Mother a curious look and after a brief pause said, "Yea, Miz Mannix, it sure is a sin."

Mammy soon solved the problem by pinning a false pigtail to the inside of the round cap I always wore. The cap had a coral button on top, insignia 17 of a mandarin, third class, which was the rank that the Empress Dowager had bestowed on Father. I still have the cap and the pigtail.

Father was "loaned" to the Chinese government as the result of an accident. He was Marine officer on board the USS Ticonderoga under Commodore Shufeldt who had been sent to the Orient in 1878 to open Korea — as Commodore Perry a few years before had opened Japan — and persuade the king to allow American merchants to trade there. At that time, Korea was a vassal state of China and technically, at least, under the Chinese emperor. The Korean king had refused to receive Shufeldt and the commodore did not wish to use force, although that was customary in those days. While hoping that his majesty would change his mind, the Ticonderoga anchored in the Wu long River, emptying into the Gulf of Chihli in northern China. Father was a torpedo expert and to pass the time, Shufeldt had him practice launching torpedoes.

 

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