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Originally Posted by BD3, page 31-32, 学園艦について, translated from toger603's version
Academy ships have been around for some time now, and seeing junior high schools and up aboard academy ships, as they sail across the ocean is the norm.
Earliest record of similar concepts to the academy ships can be traced to Britain just before the First Century. Citing Julius Caesar in his Commentarii de Bello Gallico (Commentaries on the Gallic War), "The Britons educate their young abroad small rafts".
It was during this time that Caesar had acquired shipbuilding and sailing techniques from the Veneti Gauls that occupied the Brittany peninsula, as the Roman fleet was formed by his adjutant, Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus. It has been said that Legionaries were being trained on board the Galleys.
By the times of Imperial Rome, Gaius Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Elder) had made detail account of ships used for educational purposes in his work, Naturalis Historia. These examples have shown that just ships were used as an educational establishment just before and during the First Century, although they were centered around soldiering or the needs of the seafaring races.
The idea of having education aboard ships came even earlier than Roman times; the Phoenician who traded on the Mediterranean did such in the 12 Century BCE.
Phoenicia had difficulty in expanding its territory, being situated over the shores of West Asia (Fertile Crescent), facing Babylon to the east, Egypt to the south and Hittite up north. Such (geopolitical) limitations led to the formation of naval fleets, as the civilization geared itself towards oversea territorial expansion and oceanic trades. It notably extended itself to North Africa (Carthage).
Phoenicia gave rise to Carthage, but the state had to face the expansion of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the Neo-Babylonian Empire and the Achaemenid Empire, then eventually lost its holdings over Phoenicia proper. Most Phoenician, including the women and children, fled from being dominated by their vessels in the light of oppressive environment (such as the forced immigration policy of the Assyrian regime), but as the North African colonies were not able to house the family of the refugees, they had to live on the ocean for a time.
Their seaborne lifestyle at the time was to have the ships moored at shores close to the cities, and then tie various ships together with ropes to anchor them so that they can act as temporary dwellings. These are hardly ancestors to the academy ships.
Some scholars have advocated that the Academy Ships came from the Phoenician practice as it was evident that the seafaring Phoenician lived on their ships starting at tender age.
The proof that gives this Phoenician assumption some credence would be that of the fleet of 60 ships that sailed under the Carthaginian known as Hanno the Navigator in 450 BCE, which sailed to the shores of West Africa in hope of finding new lands to colonize.
Since Pliny the Elder had cited that the written account of this great undertaking was called The Voyage of Hanno, commander of the Carthaginians, Hanno came to be known as Hanno the Navigator.
It was recorded in the Naturalis Historia that this fleet had specialized, large ships made for the education of youth since the long voyage had meant that children and able adults were on this expedition. However, despite having this literary account, it is not known whether if these large ships made for educational needs had sailed with the fleet, or moored at fixed points over safe holdings, nor is the any idea as to the kind of education that the youth would've received on these ships.
The Phoenicians prospered from oceanic trades for a time after this event, but they were eliminated by the Roman Republic in the wake of the Punic Wars, making Rome the master of the Mediterranean Sea. However, as the Roman were no seafaring race, they had no need to conduct education afloat.
It is generally agreed that the Roman Republic had started tuition-based private schools during the 3rd Century BCE by Spurius Carvilius Ruga. The Romans had numerous private and public schools as well. Educational system grew rapidly when Julius Caesar granted Roman Citizenship to educators at large while aggressively pursued policies that aimed to raise the quality of Roman education.
As such, Rome, having built this powerful empire, did not feel any particular need to build schools out in the open sea. The Romans must have found the excerpts on ship-borne education in Commentarii de Bello Gallico and Naturalis Historia to be a very peculiar thing; as a result, ship based education did not prosper in any Roman occupied lands. It is seen that only part of the Roman Britannia Province had remnants of such practices.
Following the breakup of the empire into the Eastern and the Western halves, plus the rise of the Saracens (The Arabian empire), the control of the Mediterranean was yielded to the Saracens, whose empire extended from the Arabian peninsula to the whole of North Africa, and later grew to the Iberian peninsula, Persia and even to Transoxiana (Central Asia) in the East. Saracen influence stretched to the Indian Ocean, as they developed an oceanic network that stretched from India to the South Sea, China and even as far as to Japanese waters.
There is no surviving Saracen account of anything resembling academy ships, despite the Saracens having had actively pursued oceanic trades. Such is because, as it were with the case in Rome, that empires that grew from territorial expansion had little need to educate their youth at sea. Later history would show the same pattern; land-based countries were not very active in the construction of academy ships. On the other hands, islanded and peninsula based countries were very keen in the construction of academy ships, while exiled nationalities without a homeland had little choice but to survive by building academy ships.
One of such exiled people would be that of the Venetians, which came about when the Germanic people invaded the Italian provinces during the 5th century. Some of the Roman fled to present-day Venetian lagoon, and established a nation-state over those islands. The influx of refugees only increased after the foundation of Venice, which simply hadn't the living space to accommodate. As such, these settlers used the ships that they made their escape in as temporary dwellings while living quarters were being constructed.
These ships were not just used for housing, but they were the center of everyday life, and they even evolved to the point where each ship may have its own dedicated use, which, among other utilities, include educational facilities. This development has been accepted to be the beginning of European academy ships.
These ships however were quite small, and the vessels marked for educational use cannot sail in blue-waters, and exist only to navigate around the lagoons. Moreover, as Venetian islands became better developed, these vessels, include the ships used for education were broken up. It can be concluded that these schools were temporary substitutes that would only exist before the land-based constructions were complete.
What formed the basis of modern academy ship operation could be traced to that of the Crown property, the 550 ton Galleon Elizabeth Bonaventure, a ship modified from the Bonaventure. This ship took part in the battle against the Spanish "Invincible Fleet", with a fleet commanded by Sir Francis Drake, during his last voyage in 1595. The ship was heavily damaged in this expedition to the Spanish possessions in the Americas, and Drake died of dysentery in the following year.
When the fleet returned to England by June, the Elizabeth Bonaventure was extensively refitted, and modified to allow naval training of the noblemen aboard, who were to be sent to the various oversea colonies. Elizabeth Bonaventure was not an ordinary naval training vessel however. Aside from teaching the essentials of maritime knowledge such as that of navigation and maneuvering, advanced subjects such as foreign languages and etiquette were provided as they were mandatory for the nobles; the ship was to educate the nobles as it went under way.
It has been said that what gave rise to such ships were from the growing seafaring distance, as Britain reached out to the corners of the earth, following Drake's circumnavigation of the world in 1577-1580.
Queen Elizabeth I had monopolized the trading operations to the Ottoman Empire and granted the rights to the chartered company, known as the Levant Company. This company used to purchase the eastern goods from the Ottoman empire as they transport them to England while exporting English wool and cotton. During 1595 however, the Dutch traders had developed the trade route to Java and had started their own trading operations. *(Dutch East India Company), which led to the creation of the British East India Company, developing more emphasis on Far Eastern trades.
It was during this time that the English colonial settlement grew. Having the men properly educated before reaching settling overseas however proved difficult, which explained rather convincingly that, the demand had to be met with the retrofitting and creation of ships dedicated to educational needs.
An alternate conjecture is men such as Drake, being noblemen and admirals, lacked the social skills and court etiquette, despite their combat prowess. As it was essential for those in command to achieve a certain degree of education, the birth of ships that are capable of teaching etiquette were of necessity.
As such, the academy ship came into being in England, and the system of teaching while on the high seas came about.
As such, the academy ship came into being in England, and the system of teaching while on the high seas came about.
Following the growth of the British Navy, the needs to educate the crew more effectively grew, which led to more academy ships. Retired older ships would fill this duty, and several of these ships would form into a squadron to act as a single school.
Britain, with a long tradition of academy ships, had rendered pre-dreadnoughts obsolete in one stroke by the birth of the Dreadnought in 1906. The pre-dreadnoughts were modified into academy ships and training vessels.
Britain, America and Japan immediately after the two, went and converted the pre-dreadnaughts into academy ship. France on the other hand would make dedicated academy ships, being the Jeanne d'Arc class. Although the lead ship was a naval school ship, the second ship of class, the Orléans, was made as a pure academy ship, used for the education of oversea French nationals.
Following the Meiji Restoration, Japan became active in reaching out to sea and contact with the outside world. Academy ships were converted from merchant vessels with Sakamoto Trade Association driving the initiative. Although plans were tabled for the Katori class pre-dreadnoughts to be converted into academy ships, but they failed to materialize due to the change in circumstances at the time.
However, following the war, the call to conduct education aboard brand-new academy ships were made to foster talents with global view, to have them develop a sense of independence and for them to be self-governing, so that they can face the upcoming global society. These new academy ships were much larger than the ships before, and were made with hollow brick modules with the length of 50 meters that were formed into the shape of a ship.
The reason why that the Ooarai academy ship would bear such uncanny resemblance to that of aircraft carriers was due to that it was made following the designs of the Unryū-class carrier Amagi, which capsized over the port of Kure. This block construct, with its ample space, can be used in a variety of roles, and was quite able to host Senshado tournaments, while being easy to relocate to other locations; academy ships had become indispensible to Senshado.
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2013-04-11, 09:13
Graphic Designer
