Neptune's Needle

Naval officer Benson was one of the first men from the Reconstruction South to attend the U.S. Naval Academy, graduating forty-third in a class of forty-six in 1877. After first serving on the Hartford, he received his commission as ensign in 1881.

During the following three decades Benson moved slowly through the ranks of the navy with polite and competent, if uninspiring, service in a variety of posts, mainly at sea or at the Naval Academy. During this period the navy was experiencing major intellectual, strategic, technological, and administrative changes, but Benson remained far from the cutting edge; he was not counted among the era's prominent naval reformers; Stephen Luce, Alfred Mahan, Bradley Fiske, and William Sims. Benson also missed the Spanish-American War, and his one stint at the Naval War College in 1906 was limited to two months.

Only while serving as chief of staff to the Pacific Fleet (1909-1910) did Benson attract positive notice, although he did not receive a major command until his billet on the dreadnought Utah(1911-1913). From there, he was given command of the Philadelphia Navy Yard--a comfortable post but one that generally did not presage major advancement. Certain historical developments, however, worked to Benson's favor. By 1915 the U.S. Navy had become one of the world's largest, and along with the beginning of the First World War there was increasing pressure on the secretary of the navy to create a new position similar to the army's chief of staff. The civilian secretary, the Democratic and pacifist-leaning Josephus Daniels, resisted creating the position for fear that it would shift policy formulation from civilian to military quarters. By 1915 he could resist no longer. Instead of appointing one of the leading navy reformers, either Sims or more likely Fiske, Daniels reached down past all twenty-six flag officers and five senior captains to select Benson as the first chief of naval operations (CNO). (The reformers called for improving fire-control by increased target practice and gun-sight machinery, consolidating command at the highest levels, and improving tactics through a "scientific" study of previous wars and war-gaming.) Daniels's maneuver enabled him to accede to the demands for a chief while ensuring that the post would not become a pulpit for naval politics.

As CNO Benson set out to prepare the fleet for America's possible entry into the European war, he had to juggle logistical and manpower issues with the secretary's concern that the United States not appear too belligerent. Soon Benson received a huge boost with President Woodrow Wilson's call for a "navy second to none," which resulted in massive new battleship appropriations. These new measures, however, failed to account for the threat of the rapidly developing German submarine and had to be altered during the course of the war. In the meantime, Benson's navy participated in the large-scale interventions in Haiti in July 1915 and in Santo Domingo (now Dominican Republic) in November 1916, missions similar to those undertaken by the navy in the Caribbean during previous decades.

With Germany's reintroduction of unrestricted submarine warfare and Congress's vote for war in April 1917, Benson demonstrated his strength for organization and hard work; the fleet was mobilized within five hours of the declaration of war. The actual military conduct of the war, though, proved the inutility of battle fleets. For the most part, the German fleet generally remained bottled up, unable to engage the superior British Royal Navy. Refusing to fight, thereby protecting their fleet from severe loss or damage, the Germans made other fleets, like the American's, expensive deterrents and nothing more.

The German strategy, however, did not mean that the Allies maintained freedom of the seas. Germany had established a deadly submarine blockade around Britain, which proved remarkably effective until the introduction of serious antisubmarine warfare measures such as destroyers, mines, and especially convoys. Working with Sims as commander of U.S. Naval Forces in Europe, Benson effected these changes with what then appeared to be considerable success. At its height the U.S. Navy had over half a million men and over two thousand ships, all under Benson's command.

After the armistice, Benson served as technical advisor on naval issues for President Wilson at the Versailles Peace Conference. Upon his return he was dismayed to hear that Sims was charging naval leaders with incompetency in their war efforts. As part of his overall criticism that the navy had been woefully unprepared for war in 1917, Sims charged that Benson had been appointed first CNO based on personal and political service and not on merit. These claims, most publicly described in Sims's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Victory at Sea (1920), were refuted, but Benson's name was soiled. Despite such public controversies, Benson was awarded two Distinguished Service Medals (U.S. Navy and U.S. Army) as well as several major honors from Allied governments and Catholic organizations in the years following the war.

After retiring from the navy in 1919, Benson was appointed by Wilson to chair the United States Shipping Board. He diligently attempted in his new position to secure the advances that U.S. commercial shipping had made during the war; in support of this effort, he published The Merchant Marine in 1923. Finally, in 1928 Benson retired from public life, and in 1930 Congress promoted him to his highest wartime rank--admiral. He died in Washington, D.C.

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Peter Richards