XPost: rec.arts.sf.tv, rec.arts.startrek.current   
   From: nebusj-@-rpi-.edu   
      
   Dimensional Traveler  writes:   
      
   >Now, I wouldn't be too terribly surprised if someone dug up a historical   
   >incident from (counts how long its been since the US Civil War ended)   
   >140+ years ago where something like that "ship of cadets in combat"   
   >scenario actually happened.  If they did, I would expect it was done   
   >solely on the authority of the Commandant of that particular academy,   
   >_not_ on orders from far enough up the chain of command that some   
   >Admiral signed his name to the order.  I _would_ be very surprised if   
   >that same historical incident ended with one of those cadets being   
   >assigned command of the ship before he graduated over one of those   
   >commissioned officers after the emergency was over and the ship had   
   >returned to home port.   
      
   	Well, you're sort of right in that I don't have an example on   
   hand of a cadet pulled right off of being vindicated in a disciplinary   
   hearing to command a mission.  And yet there are examples of comparable   
   magnitude.  Yes, they date to the age of sailing ships, but since the   
   feel of Star Trek is supposed to be inspired by Horatio Hornblower and   
   that lot, how is it inappropriate to use things which really happened   
   in that era as inspiration?   
      
   	Consider for example the Wilkes Expedition, a four-year mission   
   to explore strange new oceans, to seek out new shorelines and new --- er,   
   pardon.  But it was a multiple-year exploring expedition for the young   
   United States, which was put in the hands of Charles Wilkes --- who, I   
   grant, was not a cadet; but his naval experience was also fantastically   
   irrelevant to commanding a squadron of ships, and it showed.  (He'd been   
   tucked safely in the Department of Charts and Instruments as a surveyor   
   for his whole career and as far as I can tell actually sailed in the line   
   of duty once before this started.)   
      
   	And in putting together his officer corps he sought out, wherever   
   possible, the freshly-graduated or the just-about-to-graduate, for reasons   
   best known to him.  (It's possible he wanted to not be upstaged by officers   
   with more time actually sailing.  Note that it's been speculated that Alan   
   Shepherd insisted on two rookies for the Apollo 14 crew with him so that   
   *his* command wouldn't be undermined by having a subordinate with more   
   flight time than his 15 minutes.)   
      
   	Despite many more crises than one of those, you know, tried or   
   experienced commands and officers might have had (maybe; the attempts by   
   the experienced to organize the expedition failed impressively compared   
   to Wilkes's experience) the expedition turned out to be a staggering   
   success, however.   
      
   	I grant that it is not exactly what we got in the New Trek Movie.   
   But a six-ship, multi-year exploring expedition commanded by a person who   
   had never commanded a rowboat and was pulled in from non-line duty, with   
   the support of people who were barely finished training, is of a similar   
   enough order of magnitude that the movie's proposition gains credibility.   
      
   	Oh, by the way, on the course of the expedition Wilkes took his   
   actual rank of Lieutenant and bumped it up to Commodore, at the time the   
   highest rank the Navy granted at all.  On his own.  Resentful underlings   
   were really hoping they would run into an actual Captain, or at least see   
   how he sailed back into port with the Commodore's ensign flying.  New Kirk   
   at least didn't show that level of arrogance.   
      
   --   
   								Joseph Nebus   
   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)