Pepper and Pirates on Memorial Day 2019

May 25th 2019

Memorial Day; Families will get together, perhaps have the first cookout of the summer: hot dogs, hamburgers, steaks, barbecued ribs, barbecued chicken, corn-on-the-cob, seasoned to taste. But, it is Memorial Day, for remembering those who died in service to the nation. And while we may, from time to time, question the reason Americans find themselves in combat, for the Soldiers and Sailors and Airmen and Marines, they often have found little time to question the precise political motivations that led to the actions they find themselves in; they were, and are, too busy taking care of their buddies.

Since 1775 some 1,355,000 Americans have died in combat in service to this country. The numbers are inexact, and almost assuredly higher, perhaps quite a bit higher. Recent estimates of the number killed in the Civil War suggest the commonly accepted number may be thousands short of reality. (And, while not all of those killed were, strictly speaking, American citizens, they died in defense of the nation and thereby certainly earned the title.) 

We need to remember them all for their service, no matter how we may feel about the particular war, even as we stand around the grill. 

And yet, there’s a connection between Memorial Day and much of what is taking place at the cookout; the political freedom that we celebrate, purchased at the price of a good deal of blood; the free markets and our amazing standard of living; or the access to goods from around the world, guaranteed by our more than 200 years of defense of free and fair trade, particularly from pirates. Consider pepper, for example.

Pepper is the world’s most heavily traded and consumed spice, made from grinding up the seeds of the pepper plant. (Green, white and black pepper all come from the same seeds, but it just depends on whether it is cooked or uncooked, and ripe or unripe when processing starts.) Pepper appears to have originated in southern India, but spread across South East Asia and by at least the 16th century was being cultivated in what is modern Indonesia. (Vietnam is currently the largest single producer of pepper.) 

Following the US War for Independence US merchant ship activity blossomed in certain corners of the world, and between 1790 and the 1850s Salem, Massachusetts was the de facto pepper capital of the world, a lucrative trade that brought a good deal of money into the ship owners of New England, as New England merchantmen moved cargoes of spice from the pepper coast of Sumatra (the island’s north-west coast) to the United States and Europe.

In 1827 the ship “Friendship,” out of Salem, entered into that pepper trade. 

And so, in January 1831, Friendship’s master, Charles Endicott, brought Friendship into the port of Kuala Batu, a port on the West coast of the island of Sumatra, to buy a cargo of pepper. (Kuala Batu is about 100 miles or so south of Banda Aceh, the north-west tip of the great island.) While Captain Endicott was ashore negotiating for a load of pepper, Malay pirates seized his ship, killed three of the crew, looted the ship (to include various high-value goods and $40,000 in gold and silver) and drove her into shallow waters. Endicott immediately appealed to the masters of three other US merchantmen in the port, and they eventually managed to retake his ship. Endicott and Friendship headed back to Boston, arriving in July 1831. The ship's owners then protested to President Jackson. (It didn’t hurt their case that one of the owners of Friendship was Massachusetts Senator Nathaniel Silsbee.)

Jackson responded, and on August 28th USS Potomac, a 44 gun frigate under the command of Captain John Downes (from Canton, Massachusetts), departed New York harbor and headed for Sumatra, with orders to investigate the incident, and if Endicott’s account was correct, to demand restitution, and to insist on justice for the pirates.

Downes and USS Potomac arrived off Kuala Batu on February 5th, 1832 - disguised as a Danish merchantman - and Downes began reconnoitering. A local contact informed Captain Downes that the pirate chief, Raja Po Mohammed (though it may have been Raja Teuku Sarullah), was not likely to negotiate under any circumstances and so, while he had been instructed to negotiate with the local chieftain, based on his intelligence Downes decided to skip negotiations, to immediately put ashore a force of 282 men - Marines and armed Sailors, and assault the four pirate forts. 

On the morning of the 6th, at 0200, Downes put ashore his landing force without being detected, and just before dawn, under the overall command of LT Irvine Shubrick (Potomac’s Executive Officer), with separate units under LTs A.B. Pickham, Henry Hoff, and Jonathan Ingersoll, USN, and 1stLTs Alvin Edson and George H. Terrett, USMC, assaulted each of the four forts. After several hours of intense, hand-to-hand fighting, the four forts were taken. The leader of the pirates and some 150 of his pirates were killed, along with 2 Sailors and 1 Marine.

By 1000 all were back aboard ship. Downes held a burial at sea for the three men, then, on the morning of the 7th bombarded the town until the new Raja agreed there would be no recurrence of the Friendship incident and that they would stop harassing merchant ships. Potomac headed east and home - becoming just the second US Navy ship to circumnavigate the globe.

When word of his actions reached the US in July 1832 Captain Downes received a good deal of criticism for his actions, the suggestion being that he should have first negotiated.  (Downes and USS Potomac didn’t reach the US until May 1834.) President Jackson’s opponents seized on the incident in an attempt to embarrass the President. Accordingly, President Jackson found himself defending Downes, and suggested that perhaps this action would deter any further interference by Malay pirates. The Secretary of the Navy did, however, privately censure Captain Downes, and while he dodged a court-martial, his career at sea was effectively over.

Interestingly enough, the Daily National Intelligencer, an anti-Jackson newspaper, raised the issue that the President had usurped Congressional authority to declare war, nearly a century and a half before the Korean and later Vietnam Wars raised the same issue.

In any case, the Malay pirates did not remain deterred for long. In December 1838 the merchant ship “Eclipse,” (another ship out of Salem, under Captain Charles F. Wilkins) pulled into the West Sumatran coast to trade for pepper. 24 Malay pirates approached the ship and after handing over their weapons were allowed onto Eclipse. The crew then, to display friendship, returned the weapons to the pirates. The pirates then proceeded to seize control and one at a time massacred the captain and crew, then looted the ship of some $20,000 in gold and silver. 

Word soon reached Commodore George Read, Commander of the East India Squadron, and he proceeded to the Sumatran coast, to Kuala Batu, with the 44 gun frigate USS Columbia and the 12 gun sloop USS John Adams. Read had learned the lesson of Capt. Downes and on December 22nd sent ashore Commander T. W. Wyman (commander of USS John Adams) to demand “the pirates and the property.” The pirates stalled and Read fired on several of their forts on Christmas Day. On the 1st of January 1839 Read landed a 360 man force, under Commander Wyman, that captured and destroyed 5 pirate forts and spiked their guns; he then collected a payment from the Raja. Amazingly, no Sailors or Marines were killed in the action, and only one Malay pirate, the others having all fled. And, the Pirates stopped bothering US merchants on the Sumatran coast; after this action the pepper moved without troubles.

Remember that when you ask someone to “Pass the pepper, Please.”

Of note, 1stLT Edson, who later led a raid into Tabasco during the War with Mexico, was apparently a distant relative of MajGen Merrit “Red” Edson, USMC, of Edson Raiders fame; LT Shubrick rose to the rank of Rear Admiral and commanded the squadron off of the west coast of Mexico during that war; LT Hoff rose to the rank of Rear Admiral and commanded in succession both the Pacific Squadron and the North Atlantic Squadron. Commodore Read (who had served as a lieutenant on USS Constitution during her successful engagement with HMS Guerriere, and later served under Stephen Decatur aboard USS United States), also rose to the rank of Rear Admiral.

Have a great Memorial Day.

HMS Pinafore and the Navy Staff

May 19th, 2019

In Gilbert & Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore Sir Joseph Porter sings that he’s done many things in his career that led to being named First Lord of the Admiralty, but none of them took place at sea, or, for that matter, had anything to do with ships. The Chorus tells us: “Stick close to your desks and never go to sea and you all may be rulers of the Queen’s Navee!”

The US Navy isn’t led by men who’ve never been to sea, but there’s growing room to wonder whether it’s led by men who know more about the Navy than Sir Joseph.

Consider our newest destroyer class, USS Zumwalt. Zumwalt has been called “the most sophisticated ship ever built,” and perhaps she is, with electric propulsion, a wave-piercing bow, new sensors, etc.; all intended to reduce the “signature” of the ship. The ship, you see, was designed to operate near shore, using its sophisticated guns to provide precision strike to support US forces ashore.

Each ship would carry (per the internet) some 700 rounds for the two guns.

Except for one small problem: the shells (originally expected to cost $35,000 each) were a tad expensive: more than $800,000 per shell. The Navy decided that $800,000 or more per round was too much and cancelled production. So, Zumwalt (and  her two sister-ships) has no rounds for her two guns.

The Navy originally wanted 32 of these ships, but when costs mounted the total number was eventually cut to just three ships, at a total cost of $22 billion. Production of USS Zumwalt began in 2009, the ship’s keel was laid in 2011 and she commissioned in 2016. The second and third ships are now outfitting. Zumwalt has conducted short “operational periods” at sea but has yet to operationally deploy to the Western Pacific and Indian Ocean, and the Navy states the ship will be “operationally delivered” this coming September.

If this were just one ship, albeit a very expensive one, there would be a temptation to say: “oh well, and move on.” But, there’s every reason to believe it’s the way the Navy Staff functions these days.

Consider the statement made by a Vice Admiral last week as he talked about increased readiness:  “We’re also coming to realize what that is going to cost, and how you’re going to sustain today’s fleet while continuing to grow.” The planning process is “much more challenging than anyone realized,” he said, “but we’re much smarter about our business” than just a few years ago.

He added that :“We don’t have the complex modeling to even understand what all of these costs are going to materialize to over the next 20 years,” he said, but the service is “working hard to converge on a model” to sustain the ships over the long haul. 

Really? OPNAV didn’t know? What have they been doing for the past few decades?

The Navy has people who do their jobs well; the sailors at sea now in the Persian Gulf, the sailors, in particular the SEALs, deployed around the world performing their assigned missions quietly and professionally. 

But, meanwhile, back at the farm, the system is breaking down. 

Consider the report several weeks ago that the V-22, which will take over all delivery of cargo to our carriers within a few years, can’t seem to get past 52% readiness - 12 years after becoming operational.

Again, this would be acceptable if it were an isolated incident. But it’s not. F-35 budget woes are - sadly - well documented; $13 billion USS Ford remains non-operational 2 years after her commissioning; and the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) remains complex and expensive to maintain, too expensive, and, most importantly, unchanged since an Under Secretary of Defense found it would not survive in combat; and the list goes on.

Bad decisions have become systemic at OPNAV.

The Navy recently introduced a new promotion process to allow officers selected for promotion to be additionally re-ranked for “merit.” But, this new system was created and will be implemented by the same officers who’ve brought you this procurement and readiness mess. It’s probable that they’ll accelerate the promotion of the wrong people.

Before we go any further, the DOD needs to take a hard look at the Navy; the Navy needs new leadership, leadership that doesn’t trace its pedigree from the current crop of admirals. Or we’re going to get more Joseph Porters, and USS Zumwalts.

A Letter to Secretary Shanahan

May 12th, 2019

I wish Secretary of Defense Shanahan all the best; by all accounts it’s a thankless job. That said, I offer these thoughts from the cheap seats, things he might want to “take a second look at.”

War Plans - there are multiple OPLANS and CONPLANS (Operations Plans and Contingency Plans); someone needs to start working on War Plans. This isn’t semantics; OPLANS and CONPLANS are the purview of the various combatant commanders. But, before there were combatant commanders, before there was a joint staff, in fact, before World War II, the Navy and the Army worked on something called the Rainbow Plans. While common myth has it that the Army and Navy were top heavy, deadwood-laden messes prior to WWII, the facts are otherwise. The work of the Army and Navy in the 1920s and 1930s, specifically on War Plan Orange and later the Rainbow plans, led to  Rainbow 5; it’s how we fought World War II. Further, the Rainbow plans were responsible for initiating multiple ship, aircraft and weapon development plans well before Pearl Harbor - these efforts allowed the US to go on the offensive in 1942. 

We need an organization that looks at what global war might look like, and what would need to be done to fight and win such a war.

While doing so, review current planning practices and assumptions. We‘ve spent the last 29 years fighting enemies far below our weight class, enemies over whom we had existing, extensive, glaring technological edges, and virtually unlimited intelligence. There are few “lessons learned” from those fights that will apply to global war scenarios.

Nuclear Forces and Special Operations Forces - both are strategic in the strictest sense of the word; take a hard look at how we’re treating them. Nuclear forces need to be modernized and ready and the personnel well trained and well lead in order to be a creditable deterrence; insist on it. 

Special operations forces have been on a high tempo grind for nearly two decades; they’ve developed exceptional capabilities but at great cost to the personnel. DOD needs a path ahead on how to maintain those capabilities and that performance while also preserving the individuals who are special operations.

Procurement - The Pentagon is fascinated with getting “the very best” thing. And there’s merit to that. But better can be the enemy of good enough. The Navy wanted all electric ships; it led to buying three destroyers for $22 billion, and an aircraft carrier that, while commissioned, is still years away from deploying. Fascinated with high technology, we risk losing sight of the need for overall combat effectiveness.

It’s worth remembering that when WWII started the US did NOT have the best fighter aircraft, the best submarines, the best tanks, the best artillery, etc. When the war ended that was still true. But we had the best intelligence…

Personnel - Look at how we’ve implemented the all volunteer force. There’s more than one way to do it, but we seem to have chosen the most expensive of all possible models. Personnel costs are consuming the DOD. Things to consider might include: “Up-or-Out” sounds good should everyone be trying to be a general - sometimes being simply the best at what you do is more important to both the individual and the organization. Why can you enter the military if you’re already married? Should there be rank limits on marriage? Military housing: why do we have any? The need for military housing developed because we had bases in the middle of nowhere. That’s not true anymore. The free market is much better at managing real estate than DOD; adjust housing allowances and then get DOD out of the real estate business. Have we become too focused on Joint operations and lost sight of service competencies? Lots of issues…

Strategic Thought - And honest appraisals of the enemy and of DOD - You need a real Office of Net Assessment. One hasn’t operated (in fact) since the 90s, when the Pentagon started to ignore Andy Marshall. He remained on the job for another decade, and the office remains open, but they’ve been ignored and their product hasn’t been linked to DOD efforts. Get it linked. Bring in new leadership, some folks you can trust to do hard thinking and to tell you the truth even when it hurts, and get the ONA running again.

Good Luck, Mr. Secretary.