US Marine Corps - The Black Vault

46 Amphibians Came To Conqner
it. But instead, the Bureau of Navigation showed compassion and with a
soft answer signed by “Victor Blue, from South Carolina too,” the 48-yearold
Chief of Bureau, accepted Turner’s substitute statement that he had
“every desire to remain
tinue my service in the
eight (8) years. ”
in the Navy my whole life” and intended “to con-
Navy of the United States for a period of at least
TO THE CARIBBEAN
The first six months of postgraduate education flowed smoothly otherwise,
until all of a sudden on 24 April 1914, Lieutenant (junior grade)
Turner was detached by commercial telegram to sea duty in the 1,000-ton,
1,loO-horsepower Marietta,
The years 1913 to 1916 were years of revolution and counter revolution in
the Dominican Republic, and of United States involvement in the safety of
United States lives and property investment resulting therefrom. Provisional
President Jose Bordas of the Dominican Republic, in of?ice since 13 April
1913, for a term ‘(no longer than one year,” refused to step down at the end
of his provisional term, and a new and strongly supported revolution against
him broke out, augmenting the small revolution proclaimed on 1 September
1913, over his sale of control of the National Railways.121
The good gunboat M~rietta was part of the Cruiser Squadron, U.S.
Atlantic Fleet, under Rear Admiral William B. Caperton, U.S. Navy, which
the Navy Department made available to support the State Department’s
“Gunboat Diplomacy” in Santo Domingo in April 1914.
The only major trouble with the Marietta was that she was in that nebulous
condition labeled “in reserve” and assigned to training the New Jersey Naval
Militia with only one officer, a chief boatswain, on board. Her state of war
readiness, in mid-April 1914 thus was questionable. The Bureau of Naviga-
tion, in 1!914, as in other years of sudden demands for officers, stripped the
Postgraduate School to oficer the Marietta and additional ships needed for
Santo Domingo, noting that “there are only 329 officers on shore duty other
than Postgraduate School and War College.” ’22
Lieutenants (junior grade) Turner and H. Thomas Markland, the latter
also an ordnance student, were sent to the Marietta post haste. They brought
‘mSumner Welles, Ndw/h’J Virzeyurd, Vol. II (New York: Payson and Clark, LTD, 1928),
chs. XI–XIII.
m CHBUNAV, Annual Report, 1914, p. 146.