An interesting post from the Naval History blog at the link above (click the title), detailing the founding and mission of the US Naval Institute to honor the Navy. Rear Admiral Bradley A. Fiske said of the Institute in 1919:

“Without some such stimulus as the Institute, the navy would be less a profession and more like a trade; we would less like artists, and more like artisans; we would become too practical and narrow; we would have no broad vision of the navy as a whole.

Each one of us would regard his own special task as the only thing that concerned him, and would lose that sympathetic touch with his brother officers which all of us now enjoy.”

Above all, the Institute sees itself as a forum for ideas and a way for Navy men to incorporate and further the technological milestones which have been provided to them by the theorists of the Institute. It has spent many years overcoming the stigma of being a purely “intellectual” institution in the face of a score of officers who saw themselves as supremely practical.

“In the early days of the Naval Institute, it was ridiculed by a large class of naval officers who called themselves ‘practical.’ They were practical, but that was all. To them, the whole of the naval profession was comprehended in the practice of the various drills and exercises in gunner, seamanship, navigation, etc., which they saw in any ship. Their highest ideal of an officer was a man who performed those duties well.”

But this was, of course, shortsighted. Without those who could “think,” there would not be the means to conceive and enact the novel ideas which propelled our navy from a group of six frigates to the largest on the globe. I am happy to see that USNI is going strong. As one who finds great educational value in their historical pieces, I hope that such a trend will continue with all due enthusiasm and support.