Charleston, SC Courier & Post

The prestige, privilege and burden of command at sea
BY R.L. SCHREADLEY Friday, January 7, 2011

"Only a seaman realizes to what great extent an entire ship reflects the personality and ability of one individual, her Commanding Officer.   To a landsman this is not understandable and sometimes it is even difficult for us to understand.   But it is so!

A ship at sea is a distinct world in herself and in consideration of the protracted and distant operations of fleet units the Navy must place great power, responsibility and trust in the hands of those leaders chosen for command.

In each ship there is one man who, in the hour of emergency or peril at sea, can turn to no other man.   There is one who ultimately is responsible for the safe navigation, engineering performance, accurate gunfire, and morale of his ship.   He is the Commanding Officer.   He is the ship.

This is the most difficult and demanding assignment in the Navy.   There is not an instant during his tour as Commanding Officer that he can escape the grasp of command responsibility.   His privileges in view of his obligations are almost ludicrously small; nevertheless Command is the spur that has given the Navy its great leaders.

It is a duty that most richly deserves the highest, time-honored title of the seafaring world … CAPTAIN."

— Joseph Conrad

The recent firing of the commanding officer of the USS Enterprise, a nuclear powered aircraft carrier, by chance coincided with publication in the January issue of the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings of an article titled 'How Are the Mighty Fallen.'   The article was authored by retired Navy Capt. Kevin Eyer, an officer with extensive command experience.   In it he notes that as of midyear 2010 (when the article was written), 15 Navy commanding officers, six of them ship captains, had been relieved for cause.

'While the total number of ships in commission has continued to decline to what is now the smallest inventory of ships since 1916, the total number of ship C.O.s being relieved is steadily increasing year by year,' he wrote.

It used to be that ramming a pier, a collision at sea, or a grounding led to most firings of ship C.O.s (A story that then made the rounds was that after one such collision, the unfortunate captain deemed responsible was signaled, 'What are your intentions?'   To which he replied, 'Buy a farm.')

According to Capt. Eyer, however, this no longer is the case: 'You can still get fired for collision or grounding.   Not always, but sometimes. ... As for personal misconduct, one might also think that a given number of C.O.s, for example, are fired for alcohol-related incidents.   Again, this is untrue.   Even if alcohol is cited as a contributing factor, it is almost never the central issue.   In fact, by far the main reason captains are being fired is for charges connected to fraternization, sexual misconduct, or reasons connected to either of these….

'Casual observers — those who have never served in a fully integrated ship's company — seem convinced that men and women can serve together in ships with utter disregard for one another's sex.   That sounds ridiculous, because it is.   It only sounds sensible to people so determined to make something work that they are able to discount fundamental human nature.   Simply put, you cannot put men and women in a small box, send them away for extended periods of isolated time, and expect them not to interact with one another.   They're like magnets put into a box and shaken — they stick.   It is what has kept our species going for 250,000 years.'

What many have thought, but relatively few have had the guts to say!

Capt. Owen Honors, the relieved-for-cause, ex-skipper of the Enterprise, did indeed show appallingly poor judgment by appearing live on camera in videos meant to be morale boosters for men and women deployed too long, crews too often deprived of what the old Navy used to call 'liberty.'   Though the videos aired three and four years ago, when Honors served as the ship's executive officer, it was not until the Enterprise was being readied for yet another deployment to the Middle East that someone, as yet unidentified, made them available to the Virginian-Pilot, a Norfolk newspaper.   Honor's firing came shortly thereafter, and his formerly distinguished naval career almost certainly has come to a less than distinguished end.

At least one other senior officer's head would seem to be at risk in this sad affair — the commanding officer of the good ship Enterprise when the videos were first aired, now a Washington-based admiral.   For if command responsibility still means anything, he bears prime responsibility for the chain of events that led to his then executive officer's disgrace.

And speaking of responsibility for one's actions, I wonder how many of those now applauding Capt. Honors' relief from command (there have been no allegations that his conduct went beyond ill-considered buffoonery) have considered it in context with former Commander-in-Chief Bill Clinton's l'affaire Lewinski?   Clinton's transgression was by far more egregious than Honors', and it included what many then considered lying under oath.

What double standards are applied between those who wear their country's uniform and those who never did.   The former are shorn of command. Bill Clinton completed two terms as president of the United States and is now a most distinguished senior statesman.

Whoever said life was fair?

R.L. Schreadley is a former Post and Courier executive editor and a retired naval officer whose service assignments included three commands at sea.

E-mail Tracker Programs


Snopes.com and TruthorFiction.com

By now, I suspect everyone is familiar with snopes.com and/or truthorfiction.com for determining whether information received via email is just that: true or false and fact or fiction.   Both sites are free and both are excellent sources to check for scams and bogus e-mails.   Advice from them is VERY IMPORTANT!!   You can find these sites at

• http://www.snopes.com and
• http://www.truthorfiction.com.

Here's some information you should know:

1. Any time you see an email that says, "forward this on to '10' (or however many) of your friends", "sign this petition", or "you'll get bad luck" or "you'll get good luck" or "you'll see something funny on your screen after you send it" or whatever --- Ignore them and don't participate!   They almost always have an e-mail tracker program (cookie) attached that tracks the e-mails of those folks you forward to.   The host sender is getting a copy each time the e-mail gets forwarded and then is able to get lists of 'active' email addresses to use in SPAM e-mails or to sell to other spammers.


2. Even when you get e-mails that demand you send the email on if you're not ashamed of God or Jesus --- Ignore them and don't participate!  That is email tracking, and they are playing on your conscience.   These people don't care how they get your email addresses - just as long as they get them.


3. Also, emails that talk about a missing child or a child with an incurable disease "how would you feel if that was your child" --- email tracking.   Ignore them and don't participate!


4. Almost all emails that ask you to add your name and forward on to others are similar to that mass letter years ago that asked people to send business cards to the little kid in Florida who wanted to break the Guinness Book of Records for the most cards.   All it was, and all any of this type of e-mail is, is a way to get names and 'cookie' tracking information for telemarketers and spammers and to validate active e-mail accounts for their own profitable purposes.   Ignore them and don't participate!


5. Lastly: While it is perfectly acceptable to e-mail your representatives in congress, e-mail petitions are NOT acceptable to Congress or any other organization - i.e. social security, etc. To be acceptable, petitions must have a "signed signature" and full address of the person signing the petition, so this is a waste of time and you are just helping the email trackers.   Ignore petitions and don't participate!

So, do yourself a favor and STOP adding your name(s) to these types of lists regardless how inviting they might sound!   It’s all about getting email addresses and nothing more.   You may think you are supporting a GREAT cause, but you are NOT!   Instead, you are setting yourself and your friends up to get tons of junk mail later and very possibly a virus attached!   Plus, you are helping the spammers get rich!   Let's not make it easy for them!

Forwarding E-mails and Multiple E-mail Addresses

Before you forward an e-mail, you need to remove all of the information that is at the top of e-mails when you get them... you know, the e-mail addresses of who sent them to you and the e-mail addresses of the ones they send them to, and so on.   You can do this by clicking on forward and then highlighting and deleting (or backspacing) to remove this information.

When you add multiple addresses at the top of your e-mail, don't put them in the To: line or the Cc: line.   Instead, put them in the Bcc: line.   This way, the recipients will receive their e-mail saying that you sent it to "Undisclosed Recipients".   This protects everybody's privacy and keeps their e-mail address safe from spammers.   If you do not have a Bcc: line on your email page, get someone to show you how to get it there.   All computers have this feature.   To add BCC line to a new message:   Open the new message, click on view (at the top) and then click on "All Headers" and the BCC line should be there.

Military Service and Social Security


Extra earnings

Your Social Security benefit depends on your earnings, averaged over your working lifetime.   Generally, the higher your earnings, the higher your Social Security benefit.   Under certain circumstances, special earnings can be credited to your military pay record for Social Security purposes.   The extra earnings are for periods of active duty or active duty for training.   These extra earnings may help you qualify for Social Security or increase the amount of your Social Security benefit.   Social Security will add these extra earnings to your earnings record when you file for benefits.

If you served in the military from 1940 through 1956, including attendance at a service academy, you did not pay Social Security taxes.   However, we will credit you with $160 a month in earnings for military service from September 16, 1940, through December 31, 1956, if:

• You were honorably discharged after 90 or more days of service, or you were released because of a disability or injury received in the line of duty; or

• You are applying for survivors benefits based on a veteran’s work and the veteran died while on active duty.

You cannot receive these special credits if you are receiving a federal benefit based on the same years of service, unless you were on active duty after 1956.   If you were on active duty after 1956, you can get the special credit for 1951 through 1956, even if you are receiving a military retirement based on service during that period.

If you served in the military from 1957 through 1977, you are credited with $300 in additional earnings for each calendar quarter in which you received active duty basic pay.

If you served in the military from 1978 through 2001, you are credited with an additional $100 in earnings, up to a maximum of $1,200 a year, for every $300 in active duty basic pay.   After 2001, additional earnings are no longer credited.

If you began your service after September 7, 1980, and did not complete at least 24 months of active duty or your full tour, you may not be able to receive the additional earnings.   Check with us for more information.

NOTE:   In all cases, the additional earnings are credited to the earnings that we average over your working lifetime, not directly to your monthly benefit amount.

When you apply for Social Security benefits, you will be asked for proof of your military service (DD Form 214) or information about your reserve or National Guard service.

The Submariner

The tragic loss of the submarine Thresher and 129 men had a special kind of impact on the nation....a special kind of sadness, mixed with universal admiration for the men who choose this type of work.   One could not mention the Thresher without observing, in the same breath how utterly final and alone the end is when a ship dies at the bottom of the sea......and what a remarkable specimen of man it must be who accepts such a risk.   Most of us might be moved to conclude, too, that a tragedy of this kind would have a damaging effect on the morale of the other men in the submarine service and tend to discourage future enlistment.   Actually, there is not evidence that this is so.   What is it then, that lures men to careers in which they spend so much of their time in cramped quarters, under great psychological stress, with danger lurking all about them?

Bond Among Them

Togetherness is an overworked term, but in no other branch of our military service is it given such full meaning as in the so called "silent service. "   In an undersea craft, each man is totally dependent upon the skill of every other man in the crew, not only for top performance but for actual survival.

Each knows that his life depends on the others and because this is so, there is a bond among them that both challenges and comforts them.   All of this gives the submariner a special feeling of pride, because he is indeed a member of an elite corps.   The risks, then, are an inspiration rather than a deterrent.   The challenge of masculinity is another factor which attracts men to serve on submarines.   It certainly is a test of a man's prowess and power to know he can qualify for this highly selective service.   However, it should be emphasized that this desire to prove masculinity is not pathological, as it might be in certain daredevil pursuits, such as driving a motorcycle through a flaming hoop.

Emotionally Healthy

There is nothing daredevil's about motivations of the man who decides to dedicate his life to the submarine service.   He does, indeed, take pride in demonstrating that he is quite a man, but he does not do so to practice a form of foolhardy brinkmanship, to see how close he can get to failure and still snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.   On the contrary, the aim in the submarine service is to battle danger, to minimize the risk, to take every measure to make certain that safety rather danger, is maintained at all times.

Are the men in the submarine service braver than those in other pursuits where the possibility of sudden tragedy is constant?   The glib answer would be to say they are.   It is more accurate, from a psychological point of view, to say they are not necessarily braver, but that they are men who have a little more insight into themselves and their capabilities.

They know themselves a little better than the next man.   This has to be so with men who have a healthy reason to volunteer for a risk.   They are generally a cut healthier emotionally than others of the similar age and background because of their willingness to push themselves a little bit farther and not settle for an easier kind of existence.

We all have tremendous capabilities but are rarely straining at the upper level of what we can do, these men are.

The country can be proud and grateful that so many of its sound, young, eager men care enough about their own stature in life and the welfare of their country to pool their skills and match them collectively against the power of the sea.

by Dr. Joyce Brothers