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Whitted essentially whitewashed Worley. He dismissed the accusation that Worley cussed-out George Landgren and that he was unfit for duty; but he did accept that he also was under the influence of alcohol on several occasions. When Whitted conceded that “there was some discrimination used by Chief Engineer S. Dowdy, (now detached) in selecting the liberty party to go to Paris from the Cyclops in that no regular navy men were included in it” he didn’t bother to advance beyond that to implicate Worley as the one who supervised Dowdy. Worley was bigoted against regular Navy men, and Fowler was beginning to find that out. Agents were sending in witness reports from those who had sailed with Worley before. It was not Dowdy. It was Worley.
Fowler (and indeed anybody who has investigated the Navy investigation paperwork) could see that Whitted hadn’t considered much of the testimony. Worley’s outright drunkenness should have been sufficient grounds to sack him. After all, he chased warrant officers at the point of a gun. It was clear that Worley was taking more than “medicinal” amounts of liquor for his beri-beri—(Worley’s excuse is so cliché it becomes almost comical.) If Whitted bothered to read the bottom line of the testimony he would have understood how liquor was the focal point. The bottom line was that Worley was not overseeing the ship properly and was prejudiced in what he did take a hand in.
Revenge for restricted liberty could hardly inspire all these 40 men to so boldly do what they did. There may have been an ulterior motive in a few men like Asper, but unless something else is going on men just don’t join into a private vendetta. Bad food also isn’t going to inspire men to blame their Captain unless he already had a reputation of ignoring daily operations on board the vessel. Did not Daly boldly testify that there was “no system” of doing anything on board? More than bad food and liberty issues, the petition was inspired by the fear these issues could not be redressed at all.
Truly unsettling evidence that Worley was passing the blame can be found in his own written defense. He did not bat an eyelash at claiming a plot existed against him. Now, the idea of a plot against a commanding officer is not one that the Navy buys into easily. But a plot is a hazardous tack for any commander to unscrupulously take; and Worley took it easily enough. This should have been regarded as truly bothersome by Whitted and his superior, N. Abraham.
The petition was just the tip of the iceberg. An explosive atmosphere was brewing in the ship. Problems, deep seated and unaddressed on far more serious topics than food and liberty discrimination snuck out at the Board of Inquiry. From the testimony we know that Worley had shown sensitivity to the issue of unauthorized lights on board ship and other evidence of disloyalty and sabotage, although none of these incidents were directly mentioned in the petition. Yet Worley had— and sometimes at the most unusual moments— brought this subject up in cross-examination.
Unauthorized lights did not just imply “lights out” was being violated. A former officer, Ensign Ryder, came forward and amplified the problems in detail in a letter to ONI and in subsequent personal follow-ups. The report by agent C.J. Gass reveals the amount of suspicious activity that crewmen noted on board the Cyclops during her last voyage off France, the voyage for which the 40 men finally signed that petition to get an investigation. Ensign Ryder (who was stationed aboard from November 15, 1917, to January 5, 1918) was the Deck Engineer on board the vessel. “That on her voyage from France to the United States he had been told by certain officers of the vessel that the boat falls were found to have been cut and that their patches indicated that this cutting had been performed by someone on board; that while he was in charge of the Deck Engineering Force, Fireman 2nd class Schneidelberg, a German born naturalized American citizen, was under suspicion by officers of the vessel and was transferred from the Fireroom Force to the Deck Force where he could be under supervision.”
Gass goes on to speak about an equally controversial occurrence on board the vessel: “Ensign Ryder also states that he was informed by officers of the vessel that on the same trip from France, a wire was found which was connected with the Deck circuit and which ran up the aft mast and that at its end, near the top of the mast, was found connected a lamp socket holding a white electric lamp. This line and lamp were not authorized to be in this position and it was suspected that it was the work of somebody on board to be used in serving notice to enemy submarines.”
Sabotage and acts of betrayal had clearly been committed on board the vessel before her final voyage. An ONI summary report dated February 19, 1918, on Aid for Information letterhead, 5th Naval District, Norfolk, bears out some of the things Ryder would later report. “Learned from Mr. J.S. Glover, in charge optical shop, Building 64, Norfolk Navy Yard that a telescope #2892-Mark 11-Modification 1, had been turned over to him by armed guard office on January 22 for repair; that the cross line lense [sic] and one eye piece doublet were in a reverse position, that he fixed the same and returned telescope to armed guard office next day. Went to the office of the armed guard, where I interviewed Lieut. Meyers, who stated that the telescope in question had been received from the “Arcadia,” and was returned to the ship immediately upon being repaired. . . .” Although Lt. Meyers thought it merely the mistake of a mechanic, “Mr. Glover stated that eight telescopes were taken off the Cyclops in practically the same condition as the one taken from the Arcadia. He stated the effect of the reversed lenses was that the gunner was not able to ‘get on’. Stated that it took about twenty minutes to change the lenses.”
The Navy investigation into this (while the Cyclops was en route to Bahia) proved that the gunner’s mate of the Cyclops had turned these lenses over to the yard, stating that “his predecessor had recently overhauled these instruments and reported them in good condition.” Thus the sabotage had been recent, sometime after the embarrassing Board of Inquiry. Or, even more disturbing, that the claim they were in perfect condition was a complete cover by the gunner’s predecessor.
In Worley’s letter to his commanders dated while off France in 1917, he makes mention of the fact the ship could not keep up with gunnery. Was it the lenses? If so, why were they not checked? And if they were and they had been found put in wrong, why wasn’t it reported? Someone aboard was holding out on Worley or the old seadog wasn’t supervising well at all.
Hints of the Captain’s increasing inability to run the ship well and consistently can be found in other places in the same letter. Worley had written this letter to the Commander Destroyer Force and the Commander U.S. Convoy Operations in the Atlantic. It is dated from St. Nazaire, France, on 1 July 1917. In it he stated some of the deficiencies for why his vessel wasn’t keeping in line with the fleet maneuvers:
This vessel up to the present time has fortunately been permitted to retain her trained winchmen and some of the seamen from the Naval Auxiliary ‘SERVICE.’ All of the enlisted men were assigned to this ship less than a month prior to her departure on this voyage and a large percentage of them joined the ship at New York just prior to sailing. These young men have just recently been enlisted in the Navy for their first time of service and have no knowledge of working a ship or life on board ship. The engine room force have suffered severely from this condition. The compliment in the engine room is deemed quite sufficient provided they were well trained and experienced in the duties they are required to perform. . . The urgent need for trained signalmen has been greatly felt on board this vessel as she has been required to do a great deal of maneuvering with the fleet and it is deemed absolutely necessary that the ship be provided with at least three trained signalmen if her future duties are to be of the character she is now performing.
The Cyclops was clearly not toeing the line with the other ships. Worley’s answer in July was that the new regular enlisted Navy men were simply untrained raw recruits. This was the first voyage, in fact, in which Worley had to deal with a large amount of Navy men as opposed to the Auxiliary men he usually had aboard. Amazingly, he blames them. Since the Navy had no previous complaints about him they accepted his answer. The Navy didn’t know that Worley disliked regular Navy men and that he was beginning to blame everybody else for problems aboard the ship.
In light of this, one can understand why this was the infamous voyage on which the 40 men had signed a petition requesting a Board of Inquiry. Navy men were being treated badly and Asper may have seen his chance to finally get rid of Worley. In poignant contrast to Worley’s letter originating from St. Nazaire, Roy Swoveland had testified that Worley was drunk at St. “Baziere” when he must have meant Nazaire (it could also be a clerk’s typo).
A captain who claims there is a plot to get rid of him, especially one who has been drinking to excess, should have been a concern to Whitted and Abraham and not the recipient of a whitewash. Abraham, however, didn’t bother to give Whitted’s findings or Worley’s defense much review. He addressed a formal letter to his superiors in Washington D.C. at the Bureau of Navigation on the following day of Whitted’s letter, August 10, 1917, in which he asserted: “It is evident that these charges were not inspired by a sense of duty, nor from a fear for the safety of the ship due to the intemperate habits of the Captain, but rather by a spirit of revenge. Most of the signers felt aggrieved by the refusal of the Captain to grant them leave, to which they considered themselves entitled. . .” He added: “Most of the signers of the complaint do not appear to appreciate the seriousness of their act. They simply followed some leader without much thought of the possible consequences.” In his next paragraph Abraham had to admit that “apparently, from the testimony” Worley “drank intoxicating liquor on the ship’s passage to France, and, was at times, under its influence, but there is no evidence that he was, at any time, incompetent to perform his duties. . .”
Unbeknownst to Abraham the Cyclops had not been keeping up with the Atlantic fleet properly while on maneuvers off France. Equally, he didn’t know that Worley had tactlessly blamed it on the crew and on untrained signalmen. Thus Abraham could admit Worley was indeed, well, drunk at times, without believing it affected his performance. What would happen if Worley were stone drunk on the next voyage and something major should happen? No sense of future caution influenced Abraham. He finished his letter with an adamant declaration of character: “Captain Worley has been in the auxiliary service since 1900 with the exception of a few months. His standing and reputation are of the best, and he is considered one of the most efficient and competent Captains of the auxiliary service.”
Those “few months” were actually in 1908 when Worley was tried at Norfolk in connection with the infamous beheading of his first mate, Witchardt. Worley was acquitted but upset he was ever tried. He went to Canada for a while but then came back into the Service. It is a disturbing coincidence that after Worley was tried this time, on August 3 and 4, that he also considered himself the recipient of “shabby treatment.” He didn’t leave the Navy, but from the testimony of another Navy seaman his loyalty might have been faltering.
W.J. Jeffers, a seaman aboard the Cyclops from August 20, 1917, to January 2, 1918, also wrote the Navy to inform. Jeffers gives us some insight into Worley’s behavior on his first voyage after the embarrassing Board of Inquiry. “While we were in the fleet at Port Jefferson, the Captain and Doctor were drunk most of the time. He would not give us liberty that went on aboard at Norfolk, but the men who served in the Auxiliary with him were granted liberty at any time.”
The effects of the whitewash Worley received from Abraham and Whitted is keenly testified to here, for Jeffers came aboard only a couple of weeks after the Board of Inquiry and yet testifies to the exact same abuses the ‘Round Robin’ had brought against their drunken Captain during the earlier voyage to France.
Jeffers would continue with more observations that squarely cast an eye of suspicion on his bucko captain’s loyalty. When ONI learned that Worley was actually a native German, they understood why the crew of the Cyclops referred top their master as the “damned Dutchman.”
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