• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

French Navy - 1896 - Enlisted

The Inscription Maritime and voluntary enlistment furnish nearly the whole of the personnel of the Navy, but if these two sources of supply were insufficient the Army would be called upon to furnish to the Navy the number of men needed. The naval conscripts are about 135,000 in number, distributed as follows : coast fisheries 71,000; deep-sea fisheries, 10,000; small boat fisheries, 10,000; coasting trade, 18,000 ; long voyages, 21,000 ; and the remainder in pilotage or yachts. They are entered at eighteen years of age and remain on the rolls to the age of fifty-five. At twenty they receive their orders to leave their homes, and are sent to one of the naval ports. Bound to a period of service of seven years, they may be retained in the first instance for five years by the naval authority. They are then sent on furlough, and for the remaining two years are kept in reserve. After the seven years have elapsed they can only be called upon to serve by a decree of the President. In reality the period of service in the fleet rarely exceeds forty-eight months; in 1895 it was forty-two months, and had been recently fixed at forty months.

The Inscrits Maritimes have many advantages. They had a monopoly of the fisherman's and the sailor's professions, they paid for no licences, and they had a pension which puts them out of reach of want in their old age after 300 months' service afloat, whether on a man-of-war or on a merchant vessel. Their children were admitted to the school for the orphans of sailors, and to the Naval Boys' School (Ecole des Mousses). It was generally admitted that the Inscription Maritime could furnish in time of war a solid contingent of 40,000 men, omitting all non-effectives, but as this number of men would not find employment on board ship, it had for some time been demanded that they should be attached to the defence of the coast.

A first step had already been taken in this direction. Conscription also provided the Navy with some of its personnel, more especially with the greater part of its engineers. The latter came forward, before they are called upon, to join the naval service, in which they had the advantage of being adequately paid. The seamen were divided into three classes, according to the rate of their ordinary pay. They were also distributed in several special ratings which give them the chance of promotion, brevets, and motion, additional pay, when they left the schools where they have been through a period of instruction. The special ratings corresponded with the exigencies of naval service: able seaman, gunner, rifleman, torpedo man, signalman, artificer, writer, only to mention those which are of interest.

The men coming into the service are placed under observation at the naval depots ashore. Some were distributed to the various training-schools, in accordance with the aptitudes they displayed, and as far as possible in accordance with their own individual taste ; the remainder formed the contingents of so-called deck sailors and were used for all kinds of work on board ship which did not require a special training. They had no future, and always remained third-class seamen.

The Ecole des Mousses provided the Navy with a number of excellent men, who formed the nursery of the petty-officer class, or, as it was called in the French Navy, "la maistrance." To whatever class he belonged the seaman can be promoted to the rank of petty officer (caporal) ; he then became second-class petty officer (sergeant), and first-class petty officer. In the latter rank he was on board the head of the personnel of the special branch to which he belonged. If he is specially able, he may be appointed chief petty officer (maitre principal) in a dockyard, which gave him officer's rank, but in this case he does not again go to sea.

The order of promotion in the corps of engineers offered certain Engineers peculiarities. To assure a sufficient supply of officers for the higher ranks the Navy admits young men, who had been through the Schools of ' Arts et Metiers,' as engineer students, and gave them at once an intermediate rank between that of quartermaster and that of second-class petty officer. These young men, whose training in the theory of their profession was sufficiently extensive, rapidly became second-class petty officers for the higher duties ; whereas the engineers who had risen from the ranks become second-class petty officers for the practical work. All of them, moreover, received special instruction in the engineer schools at Toulon and Brest. From second-class petty officers the best men rose to the rank of first-class and chief petty officers, and finally to that of chief engineers of the second class, which gave them the status of an officer corresponding with that of sub-lieutenant. The engineering branch was better paid than the other branches. There has been a long struggle to reach the state of things which placed the engineer officers on the same footing as the other secondary branches of the Navy.

The small special branches which play a part in the working of a ship have not been mentioned, but they are swamped among those described, and would take too long to describe. Some have had their duties modified in accordance with the progress of the art of naval warfare. The able seaman, for example, was still the sailor who works the ship ; but as ships with masts and sails become more and more rare, on modern ships he was told off to the small quick-firing guns. The rifleman, who corresponded with the marine of the British Navy, and who formed the backbone of the landing force, received as complete a training in the handling of small guns as in that of the rifle. The engineer was electrician and torpedo man. The duties of the gunner had not changed ; but the complications and the great variety of modern ordnance increased the requirements for instruction. The signalman remains what he has always been - the man who steers the ship, keeps the lookout, and attends to signals.

All the seamen specialists were competent men, thanks to the very costly system of training schools, which the French Navy carried to a high degree of perfection. Under the guidance of executive officers, who were devoted to their profession, they formed the elite of the crews. The training schools took them in hand when they had been selected for their special branches, after a preliminary stage in the naval depots, and brought them to the end of their period of instruction by a system of training which was, at the same time, intelligent, and of a kind always suitable to the requirements of the various ships in which they are embarked. They afterwards perfected themselves in the practice of their profession, and more particularly in the special branches which they had adopted. Many rose in the service, became valuable auxiliaries to those in command, and made a career of the Navy.