The weight of naval influence is multiplied by those who will rally to the Navy’s banner, men and women disposed to supporting its causes and joining or rejoining its ranks during crises. It would be easy for the Navy to attend to the professionals -- its regulars -- exclusively, and forget its irregulars in preparing for future naval commitments, but to do so would be tragically short-sighted. An exclusive preoccupation with the regular Navy might lend it a neat and well-ordered appearance, but to do so is to assume that future conflicts will be predictable, of foreseeable magnitude, and as neat and well-ordered.

Connection to the People

The National Guard and Reserve are considered to be the bridge between national security policy and the will of the people. For this reason, the militia republic concept on which our nation was founded, the Laird Total Force Policy, and the Abrams Doctrine, hold that we should never go to war without the involvement of the Guard and Reserve, because they bring the national will of the people to the fight.(1)

The Laird Total Force Policy and the Abrams Doctrine were outgrowths of General Creighton Abrams’ determination to maintain a link between the employment of the Army and the engagement of public support for military operations. General Abrams forged the link that integrated Reserve and Active components so closely that a President would never again send the Army to war without its Reserves and the commitment of the American people. “. . . [I]n order to ensure that the American people are aware of [and get mentally engaged in] U. S. military actions, the Reserve Components should be utilized early-on.”(2)

The Abrams Doctrine owes its impetus to the criticisms voiced by the late Colonel Harry Summers in On Strategy.(3) Among Colonel Summers’ “lessons learned” for Vietnam was the need for marshalling the national will to fight. He specifically cited the failure to mobilize the Reserve as one of the key failings in the prosecution of the Vietnam War.

The Navy has no equivalent to the Abrams Doctrine, and that is a dangerous oversight. The Navy may feel more insulated from loss of public support than the Army with the implementation of an all-volunteer military, but it is a false comfort. Insulation can become isolation.

The Abrams Doctrine is unpopular with many, because it forces a dependence on the performance of the part-time irregulars. Though politically prudent, the doctrine is perceived as a restraint that will make the armed forces inefficient and undependable. Yet it assures the military will not get too far ahead of the population it is sworn to protect and will not become isolated from that touchstone.

This bridge to the public will offers the Navy two alternatives; use will result in bonding and non-use, isolation. Reliance on irregulars can be an expedient rather than an impediment. Today, it may offer the Navy greater benefits than the Army. Irregulars can provide a supportive constituency for the naval vision.

Eating Its Seed Corn?

The Global War on Terrorism has made us aware that the cost of victory must bear a proper correlation to the benefit of victory. We cannot prepare to be victorious in all possible conflicts at once. That level of preparedness can only lead to economic ruin and defeat.

The Navy has announced it intends to achieve a 15 percent reduction in its reserve during the next three years.(4) This is wartime. Historians will be hard-pressed to find another instance when reserve numbers were cut in wartime especially when reserves were routinely being recalled. Stranger still, the cutbacks in naval irregulars are in direct proportion to those in naval regulars. An argument might be made that if the regulars are being reduced, then the irregulars ought to be increased as a counterbalance.

Hedging, a common investment practice, means “to protect oneself from losing or failing by a counterbalancing action.” An increase in the number of reservists, it would seem, would preclude a continuous series of back-to-back reserve call-ups that leave reservists wondering if they are irregulars or full-time regulars. Moreover, an increase in the reserve would be a hedge not only against foreseeable continuation of the present conflict, but against a new conflict or radical developments requiring more manpower.

In reducing the reserve, with no other viable irregulars, is the Navy eating its seed corn? How can it respond to a sudden and unexpected demand?

Blue-chip investments are great, but times change and even they falter. Irregular stocks offer alternatives, sometimes premiums, but always a counterbalance.

Presently, any serious manpower influx must come in the form of full-time regulars. The trouble is, the majority of regulars will come in at entry level that sorely limits the ability of the Navy to surge to a balanced larger force. Near the end of the Vietnam War, the armed forces were scraping the bottom of the manpower barrel by focusing on a very narrow age and background range. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s category IV program demonstrated the folly of bypassing irregulars. The barrel is now even shallower without a draft.

Lagan, the Nautical Hedge

Our present manpower posture and its vulnerabilities cannot have gone unnoticed by potential adversaries. Any time a country commits to one path, its enemies will attack the weaknesses inherent to that single path.

That lone road, with too high a percentage of regulars, becomes a closed system. Over time, that system invariably becomes rigid. Improvisation and innovation give way to an extremely centralized command mindset. It may, therefore, be time to look at the historical descendants of the sea fencibles, the naval militia, the beach patrol, the coastal picket patrol, and other irregulars.(5)

Are we overlooking the value of the reduced reservists, the discharged regulars, the retirees, and the naval aspirants? Are we ignoring potential pools of committed, often seasoned, manpower that can serve as bridges to the popular will?

The insurance industry was a maritime invention. The nautical habit of counterbalancing risk did not stop there. “Lagan,” an Admiralty law term, has been defined as cargo or equipment thrown into the sea in time of distress to lighten the load, but attached to a float or buoy so that it can be recovered. The time-honored tradition of jettisoning lagan in extremis is a short-term remedy, which addresses long-term possibilities. Sea conditions, at the moment, may require throwing items over the side, but sea conditions change. Have we put a significant portion of potentially supportive manpower irrevocably over the side? Has that been wise from a will of the public and manpower crisis standpoint? Lagan, the ability to identify and recover items of value, has broader application than cargo.

Sea Fencibles and the Republic

The American Revolution was primarily fought by irregulars. General Benedict Arnold’s force of militia built and sailed ships against the British on Lake Champlain in 1776 in one of the first instances of part-time American sailors engaging foreign regulars.

While in Flanders in 1793, Admiral Sir Home Popham, Royal Navy, collected a group of fishermen into a seafaring militia or “sea fencibles,” and when an invasion by the French seemed imminent, he suggested in 1798 that a similar corps be formed in Britain. Sea fencibles were volunteers, usually fishermen or boatmen, commanded by serving or retired naval officers. In the event of an alarm, the men would make to a rendezvous point and proceed to patrol a specific length of coast. They would also assist with coastal signal stations and man small boats. They were disbanded shortly after the close of the Napoleonic Wars.(6)

Several U.S. coastal states adopted the Popham model as part of their militia.(7) The War of 1812 prompted Federal action to protect coastal communities against the country that had introduced sea fencibles: “. . . within the five cities of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Norfolk, there are a large number of seafaring men, who from their hardihood and habits of life, might be very useful in the defense of the seaboard, particularly in the management of the great guns. . . .” (8)

Congress passed “[a]n act to authorize the raising [of] a corps of sea fencibles . . . not to exceed one year [service], and not to exceed ten companies who may be employed for the defense of the ports and harbors of the United States . . .” in 1813 to address the hostilities. American sea fencibles were engaged in several actions along the eastern seaboard, and part of the garrison of Fort McHenry during the Battle of Baltimore. A sizeable detachment of sea fencibles sailed with Stephen Decatur’s ill-fated East Indies expedition.(9) Federal financing for the U.S. Sea Fencibles did not outlast the War of 1812, but they survived until the end of the century as militia in several states.(10)

After the Civil War, many naval officers and the U.S. Naval Institute advocated a reserve system similar to what they saw in Europe. In 1887, U.S. Senator Washington C. Whitthorne of Tennessee introduced a bill “[t]o create a naval reserve of auxiliary cruisers, officers and men from the mercantile marine of the United States.” The bill was defeated, but the organizational plans, prepared by the Navy, led to the formation of a number of state naval militias.

Many were mobilized during the Spanish-American War and several deployed to Cuba.(11) A Secretary of the Navy report in 1898 stated:

Prior to the outbreak of hostilities it was found necessary in the preparations for coast defense and for the purpose of providing crews for auxiliary ships to make a large increase in the enlisted force of the Navy.

The only additional trained men available were the officers and men of the naval militias of the several States, which, under appropriations from Congress, had been armed and equipped and given a certain amount of training in the line of preparation for the defense of the shores and harbors of their several States. In the absence of authority for calling these men into service, the governors of these States patriotically granted them leaves of absence or permitted them to resign from the State organizations in order to enlist in the Navy. During the war about 4,000 officers and men were added to the enlisted force of the Navy in this manner, and were assigned to duty in the Auxiliary Naval Force, the Coast Signal Service, and especially on board of cruising ships, some of which, for instance the Yankee, Dixie, Prairie, and Yosemite, were entirely officered and manned by them with the exception of the commanding, executive, and navigating officers.

These organizations were largely recruited outside of the seafaring class, and lacked the experience in gunnery, navigation, and the habits of the sea, which are essential to immediate efficient service in the Navy. On the other hand, they were men of a high standard of education and intelligence, and rapidly acquired while on shipboard the knowledge necessary for their efficiency. Considering their 1ack of experience, the services rendered by them were so valuable that the country has been amply repaid for the money expended in their instruction and training.

Congress continued to consider the need for naval irregulars. In 1914, it passed the Naval Militia Act, which placed the state naval militia organizations under the supervision of the Navy Department, and in 1916, established the United States Naval Reserve Force. Unfortunately, only those persons with prior naval service could affiliate. The Naval Militias were the only alternate avenues for landsmen who wanted to become Sailors. The National Defense Act of 1916 created the National Naval Volunteers, which the New York Naval Militia, for example, joined en masse. World War I found naval militia units in 22 states and the territory of Alaska and the District of Columbia.

After World War I, Congress repealed all laws regarding naval militias, and the President was authorized to transfer all personnel to the Naval Reserve. Control of the naval militia again returned to the states, but interest declined, and many continued in state codes and statutes only. During World War II, many naval militias were reactivated, and reservists comprised 90 percent of the Navy.

Today, naval militia units are operating in New York, New Jersey, Ohio, and Alaska. California, Connecticut, Georgia, and Virginia, for example, still have laws on the books allowing for naval militia, but their programs have fallen into dormancy. Recent newspaper articles indicate Wisconsin’s and California’s interest in naval militia.(12)

A Need to Hedge

There are sound short-term reasons why the Navy must reduce the number of its regulars, but its justification for reducing the size of the reserve is less clear. Failure to develop potential sources of naval manpower and foster communications with irregulars is self-destructive. The irregulars, be they reserves, naval militia, or some other organization, are not an impediment, but rather a long-term expedient to achieving the naval mission.

The Navy must acknowledge that cutting its dependence on part-time manpower severs a significant intangible -- its bridge to the public will -- and constricts its ability to address fluctuations in manpower needs. The Navy must assign a greater priority to encouraging the states to develop naval irregulars. It is in danger of becoming a comfortable, rigid, closed system that can fall into habits that lead inexorably to isolation and irrelevancy.

The country needs a source of emergency naval manpower. A shrinking Navy needs all the friends it can rally to its banner, both physically and politically.

In times of crisis, experienced seafarers favorably disposed toward naval service are not easily identified or mobilized. The Navy must mark off its irregulars in the same way a ship at sea identifies its lagan.

Flotsam and jetsam, kindred words to lagan, are naval slang for “riffraff” and carry negative connotations. Lagan should bear a positive connotation. It can be an enlightened way of hedging against reversals of fortune, developing broader awareness, and protecting the naval vision.

(1) The Annual Report of the Reserve Forces Policy Board, Office of the Secretary of Defense, May 2001, Chapter 3.
(2) Robert A. McIntosh, “Good Work by DoD and Some Views on ROA’s Fundamental Operating Principles,” The Officer, April, 2004.
(3) Harry Summers, On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War (Novato, California: Presido Press, 1982).
(4) “Navy Eyes Reserve Cut of 14.6 Percent,” Navy Times, 28 March 2005, p. 12.
(5) Dennis L. Noble, U.S. Coast Guard (Ret.), The Beach Patrol and Corsair Fleet (Washington, D.C.: Coast Guard Historian’s Office, 1992).
(6) William Laird Clowes, The Royal Navy, A History from the Earliest Times to 1900 (London: Chatham, 1996/7), v. 4, p. 186.
(7) ”Portsmouth Sea Fencibles and New Castle Sea Fencibles, New Hampshire Militia, 1808-1822.” Military Collector and Historian, 44 (Fall 1992), pp. 133-134.
(8) 13 Cong. Ch. 27; 3 Stat. 47, Public Law, Sea Fencibles, July 26, 1813, United States Statutes at Large 13th Congress -- 1st Session (Potomac Publishing Company, Inc., 2003).
(9)Dr. James Sullivan, Ed., The History of New York State, Book XI, Chapter III, Part VI.
(10) 13 Cong. Ch. 64; 3 Stat. 219, Public Law, Repeal of the Acts Authorizing the Acceptance of the Services of State Troops and Volunteers, and Authorizing the Raising of Sea Fencibles, Feb. 27, 1815, United States Statutes at Large 13th Congress -- 3rd Session (Potomac Publishing Company, Inc., 2003).
(11) Many took on coastal defense responsibilities and protected coastal targets in their home states, for instance the Connecticut Naval Militia protected key ordnance manufacturing cities, Bridgeport and New Haven and the California Naval Militia maintained picket tugboats in key California port cities, others manned reactivated monitors built during the Civil War.
(12) Pete Millard, “Terrorist Threat Revives Proposal for Wisconsin Naval Militia,” The Business Journal (Milwaukee), 2 November 2002, and Jim Sanders, “State May Be Getting New Militia: Agency Would Draw on Naval, Marine, Coast Guard Reserves, Adding Protection at Low Cost,” Sacramento Bee, 19 December 2004.

Captain Crossland, a civilian trial lawyer, began his career as a regular naval officer and served as a SEAL in Vietnam. In 2002, he was mobilized as a reserve officer for duty with Naval Special Warfare Group One in Southwest and Central Asia as part of Operation Enduring Freedom