One skipper’s view of captain’s mast

Post by John Byron,  Captain, USN (Ret)

Yes, it’s non-judicial. But it needs to be just and seen as such by all the interested parties.

Who are they?

• The accused standing at the bar.
• The rest of the crew, who’ll both judge the skipper and should find lessons on good order and discipline.
•  Higher authority, the Fourth Estate, and the general public, as the Commanding Officer of USS SHILOH (CG-67) recently discovered.

So the question is how best to serve this goal, to make the justice of non-judicial punishment visible to all.

The answer I came to early in my command tours, USS GUDGEON (SS-567) and later Naval Ordinance Test Unit Cape Canaveral: hold all masts in public, with as many of the crew attending as space and other duties allow.

Admittedly, doing so was contrary to my upbringing and experience in the five ships I’d served in previously. In them (and most or all of the rest of the Navy), mast was always held in private, the chain of command and the alleged miscreant the only attendees, even witnesses kept out until called upon. It’s the way it was.

But, with some misgivings at first and an Executive Officer and Chief of the Boat rather dubious, I decided to go back to earlier tradition, the days of sail and punishment in view of the crew topside before the mast. I found the results to be better than I could have anticipated. It really worked. 

Why do it this way, hold mast in public? Three reasons:

• The accused stands before peers and suddenly the bluster and bravado that led to the incident seem a lot less brave. It’s intimidating to be seen as letting down the crew and the ship’s reputation with misbehavior. The prospect of later having to stand before shipmates accused of wrongdoing concentrates the mind wonderfully.
• It informs the crew of the fairness of the proceedings, something often lost when the main source of crew information is the accused—found to have committed the offense with which charged—then going to the crew with his or her version of how they got screwed at mast. Trust me—it happens 100% of the time when no one else sees the actual mast
• Most importantly, it makes the skipper conscious that the whole crew is audience and needs to see clearly that what happens at mast is fair and proper. Being arbitrary and vindictive tells the crew their captain is a jerk, a moral brake on mean behavior that a skipper has authority for but never justification.

Not many masts in a diesel submarine or a happy shore command, but those I did run (with one exception*) were done in front of the whole crew, to its benefit and mine.

Skippers: hold your masts in front of the whole crew.

*I had a really fine young sailor who’d made a mistake and needed to be called to account. But I didn’t want to wreck his future in the boat. So mast was private and very quiet, sentence suspended on good behavior, and I was pleased months later to pin submarine dolphins on a well-qualified squared-away submariner. Judgment call. That’s what you get paid for.