Navy Sailors Research Articles

Neither fish nor fowl: Mercantile seamen on armed merchant cruisers in the Great War

Recent scholarship has re-focused attention on British economic strategy in the Great War, and the role of armed merchant cruisers in blockading Germany’s maritime trade, mainly through the ‘Northern Patrol’. Armed merchant cruisers were crewed by regular Royal Navy sailors and by volunteers from the Royal Navy Reserve or Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve, but also by ordinary merchant seamen who were not necessarily volunteers and who were transferred over with their ships as Royal Navy auxiliaries through T124 agreements. Their particular status as neither regular Royal Navy ratings nor civilian merchant seamen gave rise to problems which occasionally spilled over into industrial action, interpreted as mutiny. This article identifies the main causes of these problems and analyses the relationship between Royal Navy officers and these merchant seamen, who served together in these hybrid warships.

Development of the Military Compass of Shame Scale

ABSTRACTThe Military Compass of Shame Scale (M-CoSS) was designed to evaluate a service member's response to four maladaptive shame regulation strategies. The M-CoSS is composed of two externalizing subscales (attack other, AO; avoidance, AV) and two internalizing subscales (withdrawal, WD; attack self, AS). The final version of the scale was administered to a sample of U.S. Navy sailors preparing to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan (n = 379). The final sample consisted of active duty patients clinically diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and undergoing residential treatment (n = 27). Internal consistency reliability was acceptable to good within both the large predeployment sample (α = .70 to .89) and the PTSD sample (α = .79 to .89). Exploratory factor analysis provided evidence of construct validity in the predeployment sample. Last, compared to the predeployment sample, the PTSD sample was significantly more likely to utilize three of the four maladaptive shame regulation strategies, with the exception of the AV scale. The M-CoSS is recommended for research purposes in the study of shame regulation in service members diagnosed with PTSD and experiencing moral injury.

Cut adrift or towed astern: sailors’ wives in mid-nineteenth century Portsea Island considered in perspective

For nineteenth-century Royal Navy sailors, whalers, fishermen, ferrymen, and merchant seamen, seafaring meant different things: longer or shorter absences at sea, larger or smaller crews, better or worse pay, greater or lesser danger, and differing public perceptions of their seafaring identities. What these mariners had in common was life in a self-contained, almost exclusively male community, surrounded by the sea. Sailors' women, meanwhile, existed in their many thousands on shore, relating to the seafarer as his spouse, mother, grandmother, sister, the parent of his illegitimate child, as foster carer to his motherless offspring, or as purveyor of nursing care, alcohol, or sexual services. They were members of a wider civilian community to whom breadwinner absence was not the norm, and for whom the term “sailors' women” had ambiguous connotations. This paper takes as its focus a community of women in mid-nineteenth-century Portsea Island, Hampshire, whose lives were formally connected with Royal Navy sailors via ties of kinship and financial obligation. It considers these naval women alongside non-seafarers' wives living in the same community, while maritime and military comparators are provided in the form of spouses of New England whalers and Victorian soldiers' wives. Drawing upon naval allotment registers, parish records, census returns, and newspaper reports, it argues that just as seafaring varied from trade to trade, so the lives of “sailors' women” varied more widely than this portmanteau term suggests. It concludes that while our understanding is enhanced by seeing them in terms relative to their menfolk and to other female contemporaries, they should also be considered as women with identities of their own.

Study Finds No Link Between Deployment, Suicide

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Clinical and Research NewsFull AccessStudy Finds No Link Between Deployment, SuicideAaron LevinAaron LevinSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:30 Apr 2015https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.pn.2015.5a11AbstractSeparation from the military was strongly associated with an increased risk of suicide, suggesting more could be done to support personnel during this transition period.A study of the 3.9 million U.S. military service members who served in Iraq or Afghanistan finds that suicide mortality was associated with discharge from service but not with deployment to the war zones.The retrospective cohort study included personnel in the Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, or Navy, including National Guard and reservists, who served between October 7, 2001, and December 31, 2007. Suicide data were tracked until the end of 2009. Those who were deployed went to any of several Middle Eastern countries or to surrounding oceans to fight in Iraq or Afghanistan or to support the war efforts there.Overall, service members who deployed had no greater risk of suicide than those who had never deployed, concluded Mark Reger, Ph.D., of the National Center for Telehealth and Technology at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Tacoma, Wash., and colleagues in JAMA Psychiatry, online April 1.However, separation from military service was strongly associated with suicide risk, they said. Rates were 15 suicides per 100,000 person-years for those in uniform, a figure that jumped to 26 per 100,000 person-years following separation.“Transitions are generally high-risk periods for suicides,” said retired Army Col. Elspeth Cameron Ritchie, a former Army psychiatrist. “We need to pay attention to the transition period when people are leaving military service. Many are discharged with little safety net to support them.”The long-promised “seamless transition” from the Department of Defense health care system to the Veterans Health Administration has not happened yet, and such a connection may take time, said Ritchie.Increased time in the Armed Forces also reduced the risk of suicide, according to Reger and colleagues. Troops with less than a year’s service had more than double the rate of suicide compared with those who completed between four and 20 years of service.The present study is likely to be compared with the Army Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Servicemembers (Army STARRS)—a multiyear project investigating suicide in the U.S. Army, which last year reported an elevated suicide risk among currently and previously deployed soldiers.“These two studies cover different populations, different times, with different deployment experiences,” said Army STARRS principal investigator Robert Ursano, M.D., a professor and chair of psychiatry at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., in an interview. Compared with the Army STARRS study, which examined only those on active duty in the Army in 2004 through 2009, the JAMA Psychiatry study examined all personnel who served during that era, on or off active duty. Reger and colleagues also noted that they did not have access to data about combat exposure or the mental health status of those personnel, another important difference between the two studies, said Ursano.“Army combat units on the ground in Iraq faced a very different environment compared with Air Force personnel stationed in Kuwait or Navy sailors on a ship at sea,” he noted. “It’s well known that combat exposure increases the risk for mental health problems, and mental health problems increase the risk for suicide.”Both the fact and the circumstances of discharge may prove problematic for some service members, for several reasons.“Loss of a shared military identity, difficulty developing a new social support system, or unexpected difficulties finding meaningful work may contribute to a sense that the individuals do not belong or are a burden on others,” wrote Reger and colleagues. Someone whose hopes and dreams have been invested for years in a military career may feel unmoored following separation from the service, regardless of the cause, said Ritchie.“People who don’t do well in the service and are discharged are at high risk, but it’s a chicken-and-egg situation,” she added. “Behavioral problems and suicidality may have led to the discharge.”Better outreach to service members at this high-risk time through veterans service organizations, educational institutions, and workplaces is needed to reduce the risk of suicide, Ritchie said. ■“Risk of Suicide Among U.S. Military Service Members Following Operation Enduring Freedom or Operation Iraqi Freedom Deployment and Separation From the U.S. Military” can be accessed here. ISSUES NewArchived

Comparing Simple Scoring With IRT Scoring of Personality Measures: The Navy Computer Adaptive Personality Scales.

This article analyzes data from U.S. Navy sailors (N = 8,956), with the central measure being the Navy Computer Adaptive Personality Scales (NCAPS). Analyses and results from this article extend and qualify those from previous research efforts by examining the properties of the NCAPS and its adaptive structure in more detail. Specifically, this article examines item exposure rates, the efficiency of item use based on item response theory (IRT)-based Expected A Posteriori (EAP) scoring, and a comparison of IRT-EAP scoring with much more parsimonious scoring methods that appear to work just as well (stem-level scoring and dichotomous scoring). The cutting-edge nature of adaptive personality testing will necessitate a series of future efforts like this: to examine the benefits of adaptive scoring schemes and novel measurement methods continually, while pushing testing technology further ahead.

Assessing Sailor and Civilian Gestural Optimal Relationships for Multi-touch Gestures and Functions in Computer Applications

With touchscreen-enabled devices becoming more prevalent throughout military applications, it is important to create a standardized set of touchscreen gestures for military purposes. This standardized set must easily transfer among the devices military personnel use for operations. The authors describe two experiments targeting Department of Defense (DoD) civilians and active-duty Navy sailors to determine optimal gesture-to-function mapping of common gestures. Results indicate the two populations sampled had significant differences in their experiences with several categories of touchscreen (TS) and non-TS enabled devices. Results for gestural agreement between the military and civilian populations continued, showing substantial differences in their expectations for gestural functions. Through this research, the authors provide a beneficial first step in evaluating the set of gestures currently under development and suggest further research with military personnel as a necessary next step for developing a standardized gesture set for military purposes.

Nineteenth-Century Royal Navy Sailors from Africa and the African Diaspora: Research Methodology

The paper explains a methodology, where previously there was none, for identifying African and diasporan naval personnel hired by the British Royal Navy to serve in the West African Station in the mid-nineteenth century. The methodology employs a variety of naval documents including: ship’s musters, description books, daily sick lists, and medical journals to identify African and diasporan personnel. The Royal Navy employed four categories (Kroomen, Liberated Africans, Africans, Blacks) to describe and to differentiate the African and diasporan work force within the Station. By identifying African and diasporan naval personnel more can be learned about the ways in which race and ethnicity were constructed and applied during the age of abolition. It also provides a method capable of examining the shipboard lives and socio-economic niches carved out by ‘subject’ people within the British maritime Atlantic World.

Clinical Utility of the Brunel Mood Scale in Screening for Post-Traumatic Stress Risk in a Military Population

Measures of mood states and post-traumatic stress (PTS) symptoms are commonplace in many studies. However, the conventional application of these measures conjointly raises questions whether they actually correlate, and whether mood states have a meaningful role in predicting PTS symptoms. This study aimed to assess the degree to which the Brunel Mood Scale (BRUMS) and the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R) would be useful in detecting adverse psychological experiences (e.g., PTS). A sample of South African Navy sailors (N = 103) completed the BRUMS during demobilization after a traumatic deployment, and 6 weeks later completed a repeat BRUMS and the IES-R. Significant correlations were found between some BRUMS and IES-R subscales, but the lack of other subscale correlations indicates that the two measures probably tap different expressions of psychological distress following exposure to adverse events. Greater mood distress correlated with more severe PTS. A BRUMS total mood distress score cutoff of ≥24 gave a sensitivity of 100% and specificity of 79% for severe PTS 6 weeks later. Using a BRUMS score of ≥24 at demobilization to assess for possible elevated PTS response later could be useful in the screening of large groups of people.

Transnational Business and US Diplomacy in Late Nineteenth-Century South America: W. R. Grace & Co. and the Chilean Crises of 1891

AbstractThe final decades of the nineteenth century were marked by diplomatic confrontations between Chile and the United States. In 1891 the killing of US Navy sailors in a riot in Valparaíso threatened to provoke armed conflict, an event known as the Baltimore Crisis. This article investigates how William Russell Grace, the head of a merchant firm based in New York, played a central role in negotiating between Chile and the United States. By placing his activities in a transnational framework, Grace responded to the demands of multiple nation-states in the Americas. Observing changes in Grace's transnational economic infrastructure can help to identify larger long-term shifts in diplomacy and power on South America's Pacific coast in the late nineteenth century, especially Chile's emergence as a regional hegemon. The actions of Grace also raise larger questions regarding the power of business in the Americas in the late nineteenth century, especially with regard to growing US interests in the region.

Postdeployment symptom changes and traumatic brain injury and/or posttraumatic stress disorder in men

In Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom, blast-related injuries associated with combat are frequent and can result in traumatic brain injury (TBI) symptoms that may be difficult to distinguish from psychological problems. Using data from the Post-Deployment Health Assessment and Reassessment, we identified 12,046 male U.S. Navy sailors and Marines with reported combat exposure from 2008 to 2009. Symptoms potentially associated with blast-related TBI and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that were reported immediately after deployment were compared with symptoms present several months later. Our study supports others that have found that subjects with blast-related injuries may experience the development or worsening of symptoms during the months following deployment. Additionally, our study found that those who screened positive for PTSD and TBI formed a unique group, with the presence of TBI exacerbating development of PTSD symptoms at reassessment. Providers should recognize the late development of symptoms, consider the possibility of comorbidity, and be prepared to treat multiple symptoms rather than a specific diagnostic category.

The Relationship Between the ASVAB and Multitasking in Navy Sailors: A Process-Specific Approach

This study investigated the relationship between ASVAB scores and multitasking performance in Navy Sailors. Sailors performed a “synthetic work” task designed to simulate demands for multitasking common to many different jobs, as well as elementary cognitive tasks designed to measure two mental processes—the ability to update the contents of working memory (memory updating) and the ability to switch flexibly between tasks (task switching). Structural equation modeling revealed that a general factor of ASVAB subtest scores positively predicted multitasking. Furthermore, memory updating partially accounted for this relationship and added incrementally to the prediction of multitasking, above and beyond the ASVAB.

The relationship between the ASVAB and multitasking in Navy sailors: A process-specific approach.

The relationship between the ASVAB and multitasking in Navy sailors: A process-specific approach.

Modeling the Unites States government’s economic cost of noise-induced hearing loss for a military population

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the feasibility and utility of developing economic cost models for noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL). First, we outline an economic model of NIHL for a population of US Navy sailors with an "industrial"-type noise exposure. Next, we describe the effect on NIHL-related cost of varying the two central model inputs--the noise-exposure level and the duration of exposure. Such an analysis can help prioritize promising areas, to which limited resources to reduce NIHL-related costs should be devoted. NIHL-related costs borne by the US government were computed on a yearly basis using a finite element approach that took into account varying levels of susceptibility to NIHL. Predicted hearing thresholds for the population were computed with ANSI S3.44-1996 and then used as the basis for the calculation of NIHL-related costs. Annual and cumulative costs were tracked. Noise-exposure level and duration were systematically varied to determine their effects on the expected lifetime NIHL-related cost of a specific US Navy sailor population. Our nominal noise-exposure case [93 dB(A) for six years] yielded a total expected lifetime cost of US $13,472 per sailor, with plausible lower and upper bounds of US $2,500 and US $26,000. Starting with the nominal case, a decrease of 50% in exposure level or duration would yield cost savings of approximately 23% and 19%, respectively. We concluded that a reduction in noise level would be more somewhat more cost-effective than the same percentage reduction in years of exposure. Our economic cost model can be used to estimate the changes in NIHL-related costs that would result from changes in noise-exposure level and/or duration for a single military population. Although the model is limited at present, suggestions are provided for adapting it to civilian populations.

Lookism: The New Frontier of Employment Discrimination?

The reason that Chinese navy sailors must be good looking and well-mannered, according to a navy spokesman, is that, as China opens up to the world and its navy vessels visit and engage in joint exercises with other countries, its sailors become representatives of China. Beyond the media's attention-grabbing headlines, there is now established academic research from the USA and UK, as well as some emerging indications from Australia, highlighting links between an individual's looks and his or her pay and employment prospects.

Active Duty Military Personnel Presenting for Care at a Gay Men's Health Clinic

ABSTRACT Under the “Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Pursue, Don't Harass” Department of Defense policy, gay men and women are allowed to serve in the military, but they are not allowed to disclose their sexual orientation. This study was performed to determine the incidence of active duty military personnel seeking care at a Gay Men's Health Clinic. Nine percent of the clients, who had served between June and August 2002, were active duty U.S. Navy sailors. They all expressed fears of being discharged from the military when asked why they did not access military healthcare. The “DADTDPDH” policy breeds distrust between men who have sex with men (MSM) service-members and their healthcare provider and this ensures inadequate healthcare.

Employee Relationship Management: Applying the Concept of Personalization to U.S. Navy Sailors

Using customer relationship management (CRM) techniques, companies target market to their customers on an individualized basis. A variation on the CRM theme is employee relationship management (ERM), in which a company uses Web-based personalization techniques to develop a more effective relationship with its employees. This article reports some of the findings for a study sponsored by the U.S. Navy to determine how personalization can be used for a Web portal with the objective of boosting sailor morale and retention. It also discusses ways that CRM personalization techniques can be generalized to fields beyond marketing and employee relations.

Pacific Alamo: The Battle for Wake Island (review)

Reviewed by: Pacific Alamo: The Battle for Wake Island Robert J. Cressman Pacific Alamo: The Battle for Wake Island. By John Wukovits. New York: New American Library, 2003. Maps. Photographs. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xi, 308. $24.95. "How the 'Devil Dogs of Wake Island' battled long odds is one of the great stories in the annals of military lore," historian John Wukovits declares in his introduction to Pacific Alamo. However, how Wake's beleaguered understrength U.S. Marine defense battalion, augmented by a small aviation component, navy sailors, army communicators, and varying numbers of civilian construction workers, withstood almost daily bombings, gallantly withstood one landing attempt, and, in the end, reluctantly surrendered, is a tale that has indeed been told within the last decade. The knowledgeable reader will find no revelations in Pacific Alamo but may, in fact, be annoyed by the errors that appear not only in the main story but in its context. The miscues are minor (some reflecting the vagaries of human recollection) but prompt one to ponder the larger issues of mastery of subject matter and context: for example, President Roosevelt did not change the Pacific Fleet's base to Pearl Harbor in October 1939 (it was May 1940) (p. 20); Major Devereux actually set foot on Wake on 12 October, not 9 October, 1941 (the ship arrived on the 9th but bad weather prevented him from going ashore until the 12th) (p. 35); and, the author's declaration to the contrary, the Philippine Clipper was being prepared for a reconnaissance flight when the first Japanese raid hit (hence the marine pilots at the field being briefed for escorting her) (p. 54). Interestingly, the author notes that Captain Elrod "scribbled" a letter to his wife—on a typewriter? (p. 129). Careful editing might have caught statements such as the "Navy Roosevelt had loved since youth . . . lay in smouldering ruins at the bottom of Pearl Harbor" (p. 3) or that the destruction wreaked by the Japanese on 7 December 1941 left the fleet "a smoking ruin" (p. 2), or that "much of the fleet lay on Pearl Harbor's bottom" (p. 117) that sound dramatic but are [End Page 1286] gross exaggerations. There are puzzling omissions, too: outside of one reference to the appendicitis case transferred ashore from the submarine Triton before the siege, neither Triton nor Tambor, the subs deployed off Wake, are even mentioned. While neither boat accomplished anything of note, the submariners' presence should at least have been recognized. Written in an easy-to-read, popular, acronym-free style, Pacific Alamo reflects solid primary research in the limited but pertinent American document collections, at the National Archives and the Boston University Library, as well as the standard secondary literature, although the way the primary sources are treated leaves a lot to be desired. The book contains some fresh perspectives from veterans (for whom Wukovits's warm well-founded admiration and affection is obvious) of that "magnificent fight" that do not essentially duplicate any previous accounts utilized by others who have written about Wake, and reflect their efforts to obtain compensation from the Japanese. The book's glaring weakness, however, lies in its lack of accurate Japanese sources, leading a knowledgeable reader to conclude that however well-written and absorbing Pacific Alamo may be, that shortcoming introduces errors into the narrative and thus limits its value to the serious historian. Pacific Alamo is not, as the liner notes proclaim, "the first complete picture of the historic events of that dark December." Robert J. Cressman Silver Spring, Maryland Copyright © 2004 Society for Military History

Slaves, sailors, citizens: African Americans in the Union navy

As many as one in six Union navy sailors was African American, many of them former slaves. This richly detailed history shows that the free blacks and contraband slaves who joined the U.S. Navy during the Civil War were essential to Northern victories at sea. Through their role in preserving the Union, they helped to win recognition for African Americans as full citizens. African Americans joined the U.S. Navy from the first days of the war and soon demonstrated to a skeptical Northern population that they would fight for their freedom. Faced with the hazards of battle, African American sailors performed with great heroism, and several earned the nation's highest military tribute, the Medal of Honor. Their service in the navy paved the way for their wider employment in the U.S. Army. Despite the lack of official records on the subject, Ramold has combed through mountains of memoirs, court documents, pension reports, and other sources to discover the true magnitude of African Americans' contribution to the naval effort. The book presents a vivid description of the lives of these sailors from enlistment to discharge, telling the story as much as possible in the words of the sailors themselves. A dozen rare photographs illustrate the range of African American service. Ramold demonstrates that the navy, from necessity and from tradition, treated African Americans in its ranks far more equitably than did the army or any other public institution in antebellum America. Decades later, black sailors would be consigned to work in the mess hall, but in the Civil War era they fought side by side with white sailors, were treated equally in courts-martial, and received the same pay and benefits. Slaves, Sailors, Citizens allows us to rediscover these largely forgotten heroes, whose story can now take its rightful place in the history of the war and in the struggle of slaves and free blacks to become citizens.

Contraceptive Knowledge, Contraceptive Use, and Self-Esteem among Navy Personnel

This study evaluated the sexual knowledge (including contraceptive and reproductive knowledge), contraceptive use, and self-esteem among a sample of 158 male and female United States Navy sailors assigned to Navy ships. In spite of the fact that men and women viewed themselves as relatively knowledgeable with respect to contraception, results showed substantial knowledge deficits. Women demonstrated significantly greater sexual knowledge than men, and contraceptive/ reproductive knowledge was highly correlated with self-reported use of contraceptives. Finally, self-esteem was highly correlated with sexual knowledge and certain contraceptive use behaviors.

An Initial Evaluation of the Use of Captioned Television to Improve the Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension of Navy Sailors

The Navy is interested in finding low-cost, low intervention, methods of improving the reading skills of sailors. Enlisted sailors from the USS LEXINGTON participated in a series of thirty-six captioned TV sessions between February 11 and April 19, 1991. The captioned TV sessions consisted of viewing and reading the audio portion of a regularly televised TV program. The session procedure consisted of turning on the television program and, after a few seconds, turning down the volume so it was inaudible. This procedure encouraged subjects to read the visual presentation of the normally audible soundtrack. All subjects were volunteers.