Books of reference: Bucknill's Submarine Mines and Torpedoes as Applied to Harbor Defense; Scheidnagle's Treatise upon Defensive Submarine Mining. 5. Attendance at the electrical laboratory will be regulated by the instructor. All laboratory work will be done without the use of text-books or text-book diagrams. Officers may, however, use manuscript notes or diagrams previously prepared. Laboratory practice will be had from 9 a. m. to 12 m., and from 1 to 4 p. m. During the last two weeks of the course each engineer officer will prepare a plan (map and memoir) for the defense of such harbor as may be designated by the instructor, special attention being given to the torpedo defense and the batteries protecting the torpedo lines. SURVEYING. 6. Subjects: (1) Adjustment, use, and care of instruments; (2) Topographical surveying with transit and stadia; (3) Hydrographic surveying and gauging of rivers; (4) Geodetic surveying; (5) Railway surveying. Text-books: Johnson's Theory and Practice of Surveying; Henck's Field Book for Engineers. SECOND WINTER'S COURSE. 7. Civil engineering, seven weeks; military engineering, eight weeks; photography, five weeks; torpedoes, four weeks. CIVIL ENGINEERING. 8. Subjects: (1) Improvement of nontidal rivers; (2) Improvement of tidal rivers; (3) Canals; (4) Building superintendence. 9. Text-books: Such parts of the following books as may be designated: Vernon Harcourt's Rivers and Canals; Schlichting's Improvement of Nontidal Rivers; Annual Reports of Chief of Engineers; Current Engineering Literature; Clark's Building Superintendence; Baker's Masonry Construction. Books of reference: (Seo third winter's course). MILITARY ENGINEERING. 10. Subjects: (1) Modern guns, carriages, and projectiles; (2) Steel, compound, wrought, and cast-iron armor; (3) Modern ships of war and sea coast defenses; (4) Modern fortifications and their attack and defense. 11. Text-books: Such parts of the following books as may be designated by the academic staff: Woolwich Text-book of Fortifications; Maguire's Attack and Defense of Coast Fortifications; Fortifications of To-day; Inglis's paper in Professional Papers Royal Engineers, 1884, and a lecture on armored defense in Ordnance Notes No. 151; Very's Development of Armor; Naval Intelligence Papers, June, 1886; Adams's Spezia Experiments, 1886; Baylay's Types of Modern Guns; Abbot's Lectures on Seacoast Defense; Professional Papers No. X, of U. S. Engineer School of Application. 12. Books of reference: Articles on Fortifications and Gunnery, Encyclopædia Britannica; Ordnance Notes No. 135, and Appendix; Volume IX, Professional Papers Royal Engineers; Report of Board on Fortifications; McKinlay's Text-books on Gunnery; Brassey's Naval Annual, 1887. MILITARY PHOTOGRAPHY. 13. Practice will be had in the following methods: Negatives by dry process; developers and intensifiers; silver printing and finishing and mounting of prints; map printing by the blue process and on bromide paper. Each officer to submit for examination two landscapes; negatives, silver and blue prints; two photographic copies; negatives, silver and blue prints; negative of map, with three blue and three bromide prints. Text-books: Griftin's Notes on Photography; von Sothen's The Development of the Latent Image on Gelatino-Bromide of Silver. TORPEDOES. 14. One officer of the second winter's class will be detailed weekly to report to the instructor in torpedoes as assistant for testing core joints and instructing enlisted men on the torpedo detail. THIRD WINTER'S COURSE. 15. Civil Engineering, eleven weeks; Military Engineering, eight weeks; Torpedoes, five weeks. 16. Civil Engineering. Subjects: (1) Wave and current action, and improvement of harbors; (2) Steam Engines and pumps; (3) Road-making; (4) Office methods. 17. Text-books: Such parts of the following books as may be designated: Harcourt's Harbors and Docks; Annual Reports, Chief of Engineers, U. S. Army; Current Engineering Literature; Roper's Engineers' Handy Book; Roper's Care and Management of the Steam Boiler; Pavements and Roads. 18. Books of reference: Trautwine's Engineers' Pocket Book; Bixby's Point de Grave; Whitham's Constructive Steam Engineering; Thurston's Manual of the Steam Engine; Ruffner's Improvement of Nontidal Rivers; Stevenson's Canal and River Engineering; Billings's Ventilation and Heating. MILITARY ENGINEERING. 19. General Derrécagaix Modern War, and preparation of project for the defense of such place as may be designated by the instructor. TORPEDOES. 20. One officer of the third winter's class will be detailed weekly to report to the instructor in torpedoes as assistant for the instruction of officers. COURSE FOR ENLISTED MEN. INSTRUCTION OF ENLISTED MEN IN TORPEDOES. 21. Instruction will comprise telegraphing with the dial instrument, including the code for action, and practice in the Morse system of telegraphy; the duties of the loading room, and, so far as practicable, of the boat service as prescribed in the Torpedo Manual, comprising preparing the plugs of the buoyant and ground torpedoes; charging the mines; charging the cut-off boxes, three methods; jointing the cores; making turk's heads on the electrical cable; using the junction boxes; attaching a cable stop; splicing and knotting hemp rope; inserting thimble in wire mooring rope. They will also receive from the instructor in torpedoes, or his assistant, lectures respecting the fuses, explosives, torpedo material (except that of the operating room), voltaic batteries, simple electrical testing, and the use of the portable apparatus for the electrical ignition of mines. The unit" detail for this instruction will consist of 1 non-commissioned officer and 4 privates. Six such details will report for duty Monday morning and will continue their instruction during fatigue hours, until their work has been inspected and accepted by the officer in immediate charge. One or two of the unit details will probably finish their tasks by Tuesday evening, when other details may be made to commence work Wednesday morning. As soon as a man has had his work accepted, i. e., has received a rating of "2.5," he will be excused from further attendance, and in case he has shown a commendable amount of skill and intelligence in his duties he will be a candidate for such special privileges as it may be deemed expedient to give him. A soldier qualifying twice as "2.5" will be excused from further detail during the winter season. Recruits on their first detail will be kept under instruction indefinitely until they have done each task at least twice, and have received a rating of at least "2.0." They will then be placed on the same footing as old soldiers for further details. The officer in immediate charge will be present in the loading rooms a large portion of each day, frequently inspecting the work of the several details. He will make it a special object to note the character of instruction given by the noncommissioned officers who should know their duties well, and who should be held to a strict account for any defective work that their details may do. He will rate the men as they complete their tasks by a detailed examination of their finished work and a more or less detailed course of questioning. In determining a man's "mark” regard will be had to the degree of intelligence displayed as well as to the mechanical skill with which the work has been done. At the close of each week he will submit a "proficiency" report of the detail, and state what verbal or other instruction was given during the week. INSTRUCTION OF ENLISTED MEN IN PHOTOGRAPHY. 22. Two noncommissioned officers will be detailed each week for instruction in photography. Practice will be had in the following methods: Negatives by dry process; developers and intensifiers; silver printing, and finishing and mounting of prints; map printing by blue process and on bromide paper. II. The following assignment of instructors is made: Military Engineering: Capt. R. L. Hoxie, Corps of Engineers. Military Photography: First Lieut. Henry Jervey, Corps of Engineers, battalion quartermaster. By order of Lieut. Col. King: ROBERT MCGREGOR, Second Lieutenant of Engineers, Post Adjutant. APPENDIX C.-PROGRAMME OF STUDY AND INSTRUCTION FOR SUMMER SEASON. [Printed Orders No. 115.] UNITED STATES ENGINEER SCHOOL, Willets Point, New York Harbor, May 29, 1893. The following programme of study and instruction for the ensuing summer season, to commence June 1, and end November 14, 1893 (24 weeks), having been recommended by the academic staff and approved by the Chief of Engineers, will be carried into effect. A roster of the student officers will be kept by the post adjutant, who will make weekly details for the various duties so that they shall not conflict. I. MILITARY ENGINEERING. 1. Practical instructions by the company officers in the nomenclature, dimensions, and construction of modern field and siege batteries and saps. Also practical instructions in the location of works on irregular ground and the adaptation to site. 2. A full course of trestle and ponton bridge drill. 3. Instruction in building spar bridges. 4. Instruction in military mining. 5. Military map making. Each lieutenant of engineers, who has not already done so, and such noncommissioned officers and privates as may be selected from each company, will make satisfactory foot reconnaissances about 4 miles long, in the vicinity of the post, the maps thereof to be submitted by company commanders to post headquarters on or before November 14, 1893. II. TORPEDO drills. 6. After receiving such preliminary practice as may be necessary to acquaint them with the practical details of preparing and planting a torpedo, the officers of the torpedo class will be divided into details of at least two officers each, for the purpose of taking charge of the preparation and planting of a grand group of torpedoes, under the direction of the instructor in torpedoes, assisted by one engineer officer of the second or third winter's class. 7. The senior officer will be in general charge, and will keep a daily journal of operations, noting particularly any difficulties encountered and any suggestions that may occur to him, looking to the avoidance of similar difficulties in the future. 8. The officers will frequently interchange duties so that each one shall have some experience in each part of the drill. 9. The electric light will be set up and operated. 10. The grand group being completed and the search light in position, the post commander will order an exhibition drill illustrating the operations of the torpedo defense against an attempted passage of the mine field by an enemy's vessel under cover of night. 11. The group will then be taken up by the same detail and the parts dismantled, cleaned, and conveniently grouped for the inspection of the instructor. 12. The detail will be instructed and exercised in automatic and judgment firing drills at such times as may be most convenient before the final exhibition drill. 13. The detail of enlisted men for each grand group drill will consist of 3 noncommissioned officers and about 12 privates. 14. The hours of work will be from 7 to 11:30 a. m., and from 1 to 4:30 p.m. In bad weather when no work is done and the men are in barracks, the latter will attend the same company duties and roll calls as daily duty men. 15. Weekly reports of progress will be rendered by the senior officer of the detail, and at the conclusion of the work, each officer will submit a report of the work done by him, mentioning difficulties encountered and any suggestions he may desire to make. 16. A detailed record will be kept of what each man does with the view of tracing out the author of defective work and determining the degree of proficiency developed by individual members of the detail. An account of the character of work done by each man will be submitted by the senior officer with his final report. 17. Occasionally, if practicable, loaded mines will be planted and fired as in actual service, height of jet, effect on neighboring mines and other phenomena being carefully observed and recorded. 18. At such times as will not interfere with the drills above mentioned, the officers of the class will make practical experiments in calibrating commercial ammeters and voltmeters, testing efficiency of dynamos and motors. III. CIVIL ENGINEERING. 19. A topographical survey of about one-half square mile of ground by each officer of the first summer's class. Time allotted, five weeks. 20. A hydrographic survey of about one-quarter square mile by each officer of the second summer's class. Time allotted, four weeks. 21. While engaged in the field work in topographical and hydrographic surveys the officers will be assisted by details of enlisted men, and will be excused from all other duties. IV. FIELD ASTRONOMY. 22. All the lieutenants of engineers who have not already completed the course, and been excused from further observations, will constitute the observers. 23. Officers wishing to use the instruments for special observations or practice must apply for authority to do so and are not permitted to handle any instruments unless specifically assigned to them by the instructor. 24. In case of damage to instruments or apparatus, it will be promptly reported to the instructor for the action of a board of survey. 25. The following will be the ordinary routine of observations with the several instruments, after reasonable proficiency has been attained by preliminary practice. Sextant.-After becoming skillful in the use of this instrument upon the sun, observers will deduce at least one satisfactory latitude by observing a north and a south star, using the time deduced from an east and a west star-each based on ten altitudes taken on the same night. These observations for latitude and time must be made at the observatory. The observer may get "time" from an assistant using a portable chronometer and will determine, by comparison, the error of standard chronometer at observatory. Chronograph.-Daily determination, by time signal from Washington, D. C., of error and rate of astronomical clock, by the officer of the day. Transit.-A satisfactory set of time observations will be taken by each officer on two nights, successive if possible, determining satisfactorily the error of sidereal clock. The junior class will employ the eye and ear method; the senior class will use the chronograph. Zenith telescope.-Observers will first determine the level correction by daylight, using a distant terrestrial object, or at night using a slow circumpolar star. They will then find the value of a turn of the micrometer by observing Polaris at elongation. Lastly they will observe for latitude, until they have obtained a satisfactory determination. 26. Suitable blank forms will be provided, both for observations and computations; and all problems must be submitted, complete in every detail, upon these forms. The original records after inspection by the commanding officer will be returned to the officers as their personal property. 27. Hours of attendance at the observatory will be, for both classes, daily except Saturday and Sunday, from 8 to 10 a m., from 2 to 4 p. m., and from 8 to 10 p. m. Evening hours will be extended when it is necessary to secure complete sets of observations. V. MILITARY PHOTOGRAPHY. 28. The officers' laboratory will be opened daily from 1.30 p. m. to 4 p. m. 29. The building, apparatus, chemicals, etc., will be under the charge of the battalion quartermaster, whose duty it is to furnish any desired assistance, and who will be held responsible for the judicious use of the property. 30. Officers are invited to avail themselves of the advantages of the laboratory, making such arrangements with the officer in charge as shall insure no confusion in his official duties, or in those of the men under his instruction. 31. The instruction of enlisted men will be restricted to a weekly detail of one noncommissioned officer from each company. 32. The battalion quartermaster will submit to this office weekly reports showing the nature of the instruction given, the results attained and the progress made. By order of Lieut. Col. King: ROBERT MCGREGOR, Second Lieutenant of Engineers, Post Adjutant. |