TYPES OF NAVAL OFFICERS. 9 



upon the masters. Put to work in a rope-yard, he shortly organized 

 the boys into a company to fight the boys of another part of the town. 

 He did not stick to his work and became more and more unmanageable. 

 "Always at the waterside, or in boats, or up the mast of some ship, or going 

 about with young sailors just returned from a long voyage, to whose yarns 

 he listened with eagerness, he no sooner got to his wheel or in the rope- 

 yard than he showed signs of laziness and unwillingness to act the drudge." 

 (De Liefde, 17: 152-3.) Sent out as boatswain's boy hi 1618, "He seemed 

 to have left all of his vices ashore with his old clothes." He was without 

 fear. Made a prisoner in Spain by pirates, he walked all the way home. 

 He became very fond of mathematics and map-making. Many of his 

 maps are still in use. 



Witte Cornelis de Witt did so much mischief at school when he was 

 11 years of age that his mother lectured him and made him promise that, 

 as a Baptist, he would not fight again. The boys jeered him when they 

 heard of his promise, so he quietly joined the Lutherans in order to be free 

 to fight as much as he wanted to. He now tried all sorts of trades, but 

 everywhere fought the other apprentices and lost his jobs. He hated the 

 trades, anyway. At 17 years he went as a cabin boy in an East Indian 

 merchantman bound for Java. He became a harsh, cruel, jealous, over- 

 bearing man, but a great fighter. He was engaged hi 50 sea fights and 

 commanded in 15 great battles. He could not curb his temper. His body 

 was covered with wounds. He died poor and without friends. It is said : 



" At the age of 17 he entered the navy, and even then his smartness and ac- 

 tivity, his feats of daring and his spirit of resolute independence awakened remark 

 and pointed him out as one specially fitted to distinguish himself in his profession." 

 (Encyclop. Britt. X, 73.) 



4. THE HEREDITARY TRAITS OF NAVAL OFFICERS. 



The performance of any man depends to a large degree upon his 

 inherent, inheritable traits; for behavior is reaction to stimulus, and the 

 nature of the reaction is determined in part by the nature of the reacting 

 nervous machinery. The nature of this nervous machinery depends upon 

 hereditary factors of whose development the course is influenced by environ- 

 ment. Thus heredity and environment are closely interwoven hi deter- 

 mining the history of a man's performance, as Mahan so clearly states in 

 the words quoted (page 4). Since heredity is so potent in determining 

 the product, and particularly the vocation which a man selects and hi 

 which presumably he is more or less successful, it is worth while to con- 

 sider the occupations of close relatives of the propositus (table 5). Since 

 for our purpose it is desirable to consider less the administrative than the 

 belligerent naval officers, especial emphasis is laid upon the occurrence of 

 vocations related to that of the naval fighter. 



