TRADITIONS OLD, TRADITIONS NEW

[Music] time is the cruellest test every man fails it sooner or later even nations and empires have failed the test of time for time is really a kind of summation a consensus of all the challenge what is worthy to pass through the nets of time to survive as part of our own time we called tradition tradition outlasts men and nations tradition for all its outward symbols is a state of mind a way of looking at the experience so that men's accumulated wisdom can be brought to bear upon our own time upon our own way of life things change tradition persists perhaps we are making traditions of our own good enough worthy enough to pass the harsh test of time perhaps we serve the world to come only as we honored the world that has gone before [Music] the world is old but from a man's point of view it is always young when you go down to the sea and ships when you join the fraternity of seafaring men older by thousands of years than this very nation [Music] it's a new ship this guided-missile destroyer or DDG up to the minute a ship for our time good enough let's hope so you never know how well the ship or a man will measure up time as we have said will tell you've got a bit of time of your own time to kill the saying goes so kill it constructively think a little especially since this is the age of the thinking man long before this ship was commissioned the experts of this new old navy of yours went to school to learn about her technical education is one of those relatively new customs in the Navy which every indication has it will stand the test of time and become traditional what surprises even the experts is how the ship reflects the age we live in its technology is not just modern it's almost futuristic if you learn how to make this ship dance to your tune there is little in this technological age that will be beyond your grasp even after commissioning the DDG or any other ship for that matter has to undergo about six weeks shakedown during which it faces the problems of battle itself insofar as our best naval minds can foresee the rather unforeseen future [Music] to simulate actual warfare to analyze what man and ship did that was right and what was wrong to inspect the probe to shake men and materiel up as it were is a mild summation of the rigors of first testing so the ship has been certified fit for combat and the men aboard her that too is tradition four men have learned that the best fighting is done by trained men even if they've trained themselves go aboard them and honor the tradition of command and love of country [Music] the ship cuts through these tidal waters of Virginia over these very waters in another age sped the fleet of French fighting ships up from the West Indies commanded by Admiral de Grasse to do battle against the nation called with good reason mistress of the Seas against which the American general had fought a long up-and-down fight victory at sea on that day in the year 1781 meant a British surrender at Yorktown and the birth of something new in the family of Nations these home waters of history give way to the greater Atlantic today as ever before a special neighborhood of the see a much traveled place for most of the 9,000 ships that ply the Seas at any given moment move back and forth with the raw materials and commerce we need to live let alone prosper [Music] we had to earn the right to be a great nation this ship on which you sail is part of the earning it is part of the seafaring tradition of a nation settled from across the sea strong on earth through its power upon the sea power is never an absolute it is always relative your own strength is irrelevant if an enemy is stronger this is one tradition that time will not conquer power is a combination of things but most of all power is man power at sea is what men can do because of what they are with what they have what men have far more than the hardware that meets the eye is spirit for all this dazzling equipment the potential enemy will have his own power of being relative spirit makes the difference during World War two the Allied navies finally overcame the Nazi submarine destroying one sub for every ship lost in the year that broke the submarine onslaught 1944 [Music] up to them it was hard going but it would have been much more simple if we then had the homing torpedoes the rocket launch torpedoes the advanced sonar and the dozens of other up-to-the-minute refinements of today's ASW forces today we have to track down nuclear submarines that run far more silently and far more deeply and evasive ly than the submarines of World War two their speed and endurance their silence and their numbers always tend to counterbalance the new weapons we can now bring to bear upon them look at Polaris our own submarine launched weapon consider that it can strike targets about 3,000 miles away there is every reason to believe that others have similar missiles in their own subs again power is relative so too is the wisdom that must accompany it fighting men can only reflect the wisdom the rightness of the cause and the way to win for it that Springs from the nation that commands the fighting forces and so you stand before the controls of destructive weapons beyond the imagination of your father's generation who fought upon this sea and what - you must seem another age but the buttons have no wisdom of their own the great computers here or on dry land are but a maze of electronic circuits that take the donkey work out of remembering details and doing routine calculations yes it is a thinking man's world this continually puzzling planet of ours it is therefore a thinking man's Navy you got to know things today as an enlisted man that officers didn't know just a generation ago not only your country right or wrong but your world good or bad what would your mates of yesteryear think to see you now getting college credits during a seagoing correspondence course you can be sure those seagoing ancestors would note some difference in the way they were recruited and the way you were are their Midshipmen more resplendent today than those of yesteryear when Captain Bligh called the Midshipmen the lowest form of life in the British Navy certainly he exaggerated the sea tradition was long aborning in times of old a Persian King Xerxes by name sat upon a special throne to look down upon the cataclysmic Battle of Salamis we're his Navy fell before the fighting spirit and wisdom of Greece when our own John Paul Jones in Bonham Rashard grappled with British Serapis the fighting was bloody and hand-to-hand it called war and bred a special kind of man perhaps no man alive has seen an admiral up in the rigging as was David Farragut at Mobile Bay in 1864 and in our own time Nimitz and Halsey peered figuratively over the vastness of the Pacific and lived and died a thousand battles on that troubled ocean where Americans paid in blood for victory at sea were pivotal and epic clashes Coral Sea Midway Guadalcanal hinged the great swing across the Pacific to end on the decks of a battleship called Missouri in Tokyo Bay men who lived today remember those days when the tide of the Rising Sun was turned men lived today who could tell the tsavo and thus lot of Leyte Gulf and Okinawa [Music] of the beachheads in hell on terrible Evo every single amphibious landing resulted in victory but there was always the price their reward was a nation's second to none the nation you defend today guide bears to 4-0 range 3,500 yards today in a thermal nuclear age you need the same fighting spirit and then summer you two are a Knievel ants ready to go in harm's way even though the potential killer is far beyond the horizon of sight letting go a guided missile at you well we have two unidentified air contact bearing one eight zero range about a hundred miles forces zero zero zero at 300 knots out a few 10,000 feet Brian course two three zero speed 20 oh well I believe you sir stand relieved this is mr. Morse mr. Lao Hezekiah I mr. laugh I have a gun come right to two seven zero increase speed 25 knots right standard rudder all engines ahead flank indicate two zero two rpm coming to the southern girl all ahead flank 2:02 rpm Kenmore we have two bogies wandering 0 40 miles as combat determined of course speed and altitude on the bogies yes sir we have 1 4 0 0 0 300 knots 10,000 feet very well have you commenced maneuvering to unmask the batteries yes sir coming right to to Sub Zero very well and so if time is the test endurance as part of it as the man proves himself time after time so does the nation [Music] perhaps all men are not yet brothers upon this troubled earth of ours but the sea imposes its own Brotherhood the comradeship of the long living tradition the fraternity of the ship the ongoing individualism of the sailing man even when the machines wink out their suggestion that sophisticated hardware might make button pushers of us all pure illusion that idea men today must be smarter than ever to use the new gear which like the old is there to be useful even in this age of iron ships you need iron men to go with them whose minds are as sharp as their muscles if the canvas is gone from the mast of the fighting ship the seagoing tradition remains even as we build our part of it in our own generation Joseph Conrad wrote of men who came together to talk of the sea they talked of rough weather of the good old time that is perhaps better to remember than to experience they talked of life that goes all too soon of youth that is here for the fleeting moment of youth and the sea glamour and the sea a good strong sea Oh better see that could whisper to you and roar at you and knock your breath of it by all that's wonderful it is the sea I believe the sea itself or is it youth alone but wasn't that the best time that time when we were young at sea to know the sea the single but infinitely varying sea is to know the past and the future too it leads now as ever to the land where your fathers died and where your sons will be born it is a realm for man's new adventures to seek oil and gold and other treasures a place to move or to stay a while perhaps in time to dwell for the sea too is part of our father's house and contains many mansions [Music] [Applause] even as ocean science opens up new prospects for things to do within the sea such as oil fields on the ocean bottom where men can go stay work and live to get a job done already the deep-sea going vehicles emerge fantastic shapes to travel far and deep to explore this realm that is so new to man [Music] to explore this wet dimension where fish and plant life could feed the growing population of a hungry planet the Navy has an oceanographic fleet of surface ships and underwater craft to study the nature of the bottomland the winds and weather of the subsurface water the migration of fish to listen to the nature of sounds within the waters to find what nature has for sonar to find ways of communication and the ocean depths [Music] the sea becomes in our own time the birthplace of man's newest traditions the age of ocean exploitation reminds us of the age of geography when a new world was found and settled just as the protection of great navies nourished the Seabourn commerce of earlier days so today a newer Navy protects and encourages the notion to explore the prospect to use to dwell within this newest of man's frontiers upon the planet and perhaps his last this promising frontier where every decade yields more knowledge than all the centuries that have gone before in time the science of aquaculture will see underwater farms where plants and fish are cultivated and harvested for a protein hungry world this new side of sea power strikes the imagination of scientists and engineers of businessmen and mathematicians of agronomists and mineralogists of lawyers and diplomats as well as sailors for sea power now means ability to use the oceans for man's newer purposes in an age of explosive change a new tradition coming to fruition in our times [Music] see grant colleges will rise to encourage pursuit of knowledge from the sea just as the land-grant colleges grew from small agricultural beginnings to the great universities of today the Seas the thing to catch the awareness of the young who have lives to live careers to follow from the great sea that gave life to us all forty times the size of America the sea is an extension of America's purposes on the planet it is ours to compete for these oceans that belong to no man to no nation therefore to all men and to all nations [Music] the C's domain stretches from as far beneath the oceans bottomland as future seagoing miners can dig upward through this Kubek realm of water covering a topography of mountains canyons and plains far more extensive than those upon the dry land upward to the surface of the waves that hide the empire beneath still upward to the air above the sea where men move in peace if peace is our destiny in war if that is our destiny perhaps men will be wise before the promise of the inner sea perhaps they will not carry their quarrels here having learned that history teaches us expensively only time will tell what man's ventures on the floor of the sea will bring for man's technology offers a new world to use undersea dwellings workshops mining towns and factories storage depots military bases or concentrations of defensive weapons nuclear power on in and under the sea as in the past the use will fit the endeavor and the endeavor will fit the use man who has inherited the earth has inherited the sea as well if he is to have true dominion over the waters he has a lot of self-improvement to bring about in everything from his attitude to his scholarship the sea abides but it doesn't care it is up to us the people of the earth to explore the new sea with the same humility yet with the same fervor with which we presume to adventure into outer space a [Music] far more distant place than this whose new Shores are at our feet [Music] the new technology changing more in this one generation than it has in all the centuries that have gone before from shaking sale to white-hot cores of nuclear reactors one thing is certain the Navy is attuned to the pace of the age this ongoing revolution is part of the very air it breathes [Music] throughout this changing realm of ocean land the Seas domain men are beginning to see the futures promise in this far from perfect world nations have much to learn before they can live together as a family of friends until they do naval forces must consider the see a place where rights and treasures are to be defended where new forms of international law to fit the need must evolve nations who would enjoy their rights within the seas far boundaries must be able to assert these rights with more than words today we can launch missiles from submarines soon the sea will afford launching spots for anti-missile missiles we may well see surface effects ships that carry cargo across the oceans at better than 80 knots merchant ships at such speeds can open entire new markets just as the jet age opened the airways from continent to continent as the sea becomes visible explorable and exploitable it becomes a destination as well as a highway it will have to be protected to be made as secure for the rights of men and nations as the land itself the future always has its share of fantasy but this future is already partly here already partly planned tomorrow's Navy to defend tomorrow's rights will move and if necessary fight within this multi-dimensional sea you are one man upon a single ship but no fact on earth is more symbolic of what men call history the sea is the visible face of time recording greatness and Oblivion depending always upon how young men served their native land young men manned the ships the challenged first the sea then the enemy command is but the apex of the wisdom below the spirit below on which command depends these are the secondary weapons the tools that will seem primitive if we let time cut them down to less than they are today and this is relative to the job ahead to keep America great upon the earth because she is strong upon the sea the primary weapons if you would see their faces look around man is still the measure [Music] and so we must cherish the old traditions that have proved their worth none so old none so enduring as those of this scene upon which we sail yet the old forever forgets the new thus we already savored tomorrow's promise [Music]