XPost: rec.arts.sf.tv, rec.arts.startrek.current   
   From: nebusj-@-rpi-.edu   
      
   Greg Goss  writes:   
      
   >nebusj-@-rpi-.edu (Joseph Nebus) wrote:   
   >>	I put to you a hypothetical: the United States Navy commissions   
   >>a ship.  It puts on this ship two commissioned officers, and a handful   
   >>of non-commissioned, and otherwise fills it up with over a hundred and   
   >>fifty cadets, half of them under the age of seventeen, and gives them an   
   >>actual mission.  It's intended in part to be training for these cadets,   
   >>to be sure, but it's still the Navy ordering official business.   
   >>   
   >>	Is this scenario remotely credible to you?   
      
   >In an panic emergency situation, remotely credible.  When they come   
   >back, no.  The cadets are scattered to the rest of the fleet and the   
   >experienced officers come back from where they were hiding when the   
   >emergency hit.   
      
   	You're very nearly cautious enough.  The case I had in mind was   
   the USS Somers, a brig launched in 1842 and a ship that was basically   
   all-trainee.  (The Navy was suffering a critical manpower shortage, and   
   needed *lots* of bodies warmed up swiftly.)   
      
   	The mission they were sent on was not a particularly challenging   
   one --- delivering messages to a ship stationed off of Africa, which they   
   missed anyway, which happened in those days --- but it was the sort of   
   routine actual operational business that the Navy did.   
      
   	I don't have a record of what happened to the cadets/trainees   
   after the mission, or what the precise intent for them after the training   
   voyage was, but that's probably because the mutiny and summary executions   
   confused whatever the original plans were.   
      
   --   
   								Joseph Nebus   
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