Scope and Content Note
The papers of Albert Gleaves (1858-1937) span the years 1803-1946 with the bulk of the papers dating from 1877 to 1937. The papers are organized into the following series: Diaries, Journals, and Notebooks; Official Correspondence; General Correspondence; Records of the Asiatic Fleet; Speech, Article, and Book File; Scrapbooks; Newspaper Clippings; Photographs; and Miscellany.
Like all midshipmen of his time, Gleaves was required to maintain a professional journal of his duties and stations aboard ship. Gleaves continued this practice all during his career. Twenty-two of his personal diaries and journals, covering the years from 1902 to 1936, record his interests and activities in detail during that period.
Gleaves was an intensive reader and carried on extensive correspondence about his reading with friends and colleagues in and out of the navy. His four books, published between the years 1904 and 1925, document his interest in naval biographical research and historical authorship. In his diaries and journals are marginal annotations showing his reading habits formed during long passages at sea. Also noted are lists of reading material to be included in his personal "stores" before departing on a cruise or an anticipated tour of duty at an overseas station.
For the ten-year period after graduation from the United States Naval Academy in 1877, Gleaves served at sea in both the Atlantic and the Pacific Fleets. The collection contains official and personal correspondence as well as diaries and journals to document this period of his life. For the next decade he alternated between duties afloat and ordnance billets in various naval yards around the country. For the period from about 1885 to 1897 there is only minimum documentation. Only a few diaries, a scrapbook, and a file of correspondence with John Henry Gibbons cover his service for these years.
The beginning of the Spanish American War in 1898 found Gleaves in command of the Cushing, carrying dispatches between Florida and Cuba. His ship was anchored close to the Maine the night before it was blown up in Havana harbor. There is material in both the official and general correspondence files to document Gleaves's actions immediately preceding and during the war.
After the war and a brief tour of duty as navigator on board the battleship Alabama, Gleaves commanded the Dolphin and then the Mayflower, both of which were used as presidential yachts by Theodore Roosevelt. In the collection are occasional exchanges of correspondence between the two men on naval, professional, and social matters.
Following duty in the presidential yachts, Gleaves assumed command of the Naval Torpedo Station, where his first reports to the secretary of the navy resulted in a review of torpedo ordnance. After a trip to Europe in 1907 to inspect foreign ordnance installations, Gleaves returned home to help persuade the Navy Department to establish its own facilities for manufacturing torpedoes independent of private or foreign sources. Typically, the details of his investigations in Europe and his part in the establishment of these facilities are incorporated in a small notebook labeled "Torpedoes, Mines, and Nets."
His activities and observations are recorded in a 1907 personal narrative-type diary. For his period as inspector of ordnance in Newport there is an exchange of letters in the correspondence files with the Navy Department.
After a tour of duty in the office of the assistant secretary of the navy with collateral duty as a member of the General Board, Gleaves was again ordered to sea in 1910. From 1911 to 1914 he was stationed ashore as commander of the Second and then the Third Naval District.
In 1916 Gleaves was promoted to flag rank and ordered to command the Torpedo Flotilla and later the entire Destroyer Force of the Atlantic Fleet. Material readiness reports from the squadrons, plus orders, dispatches, and letters from his flagship, the Birmingham, document the preparation of the Destroyer Force for combat readiness. After a convoy system got under way, Gleaves was detached from the Destroyer Force and assigned as commander of the cruiser and transport force for the duration of World War I.
The war years and postwar period are documented by correspondence, diaries and journals, newspaper clippings, and magazine articles in his scrapbooks. Gleaves was promoted to vice admiral in 1918 and less than one full year later, to admiral. In September 1919 he was assigned to be the commander of the Asiatic Fleet.
Topics of importance in the Records of the Asiatic Fleet series concern the Japanese Army in Russia after the war, the Communist takeover in Siberia, the evacuation of Czechoslovakian troops from Russia, and the general state of affairs in Russia at the time of revolutionary unrest. The collection also includes firsthand observations on the status of the United States in the Far East and other intelligence information. His diaries, typed each day aboard his flagship, contain source material on the conditions in that part of the world between the wars. Correspondents for the years 1919 to 1922 include Norman E. Allman, Lee Yek Cheng, Ernest Batson Price, C.P. Sah, and T.K. Yaw.
Included in the papers are copies of most all of Gleaves's speeches, articles, radio broadcasts, lectures, and pamphlets. This material covers a variety of topics, usually naval, generally delivered or addressed to civic, patriotic or service groups. In the Speech, Article, and Book File is correspondence concerning his publications, especially the book James Lawrence. Correspondents include J. Lawrence Boggs, Julian W. Bowes, George Dewey, Stephen Bleeker Luce, and Gertrude Hill Gavin. Also in the series are typescripts that Gleaves intended to use as a basis for an autobiography. In the Miscellany series are stories and anecdotes he collected for his memoir or other writings.
The scrapbooks and newspaper clippings in the collection relate mainly to Gleaves's career or to notable incidents in naval history. Correspondence concerning his decorations, awards, and promotions to flag rank, a file of biographical material, and poetry file completes the collection.
Correspondents include Harry Alexander Baldridge, W. E. Beard, William Shepherd Benson, Edward G. Blakeslee, John C. Breckinridge, Louisa P. Breckinridge, Willard H. Brownson, Paul Chack, French Ensor Chadwick, E. T. Constieu, Josephus Daniels, Richard C. Darby, Ernest M. Eller, Decoursey Fales, Charles Eli Fox, William Howard Gardner, Jules James, Hilary Pollard Jones, Dudley Wright Knox, Edith Rolfe Maxwell, V. C. Percy, W. W. Phelps, Frank L. Polk, Charles K. Post, Waldron Kintzing Post, George Haven Putnam, A. D. Rockenback, Raymond Perry Rodgers, David Foote Sellers, M. E. Shearer, Montgomery Sicard, Joshua Slocum, Clifford Hardy West, and Spencer Shepherd Wood.