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Congress has as yet taken no action upon these and numerous other recommendations which have been made for the improvement of the apprentice system, and they remain pertinent. The navy, however, in case of war, would not have to depend entirely upon apprentices and graduates of the training-station for its skilled seamen.
The training-station is designed to ensure the thorough efficiency of the corps of men enlisted in the service, and to provide for the manning of the vessels by American citizens instead of by foreigners.
These were the recruiting-ships, from which the boys were being sent to the training-station at Coaster's Island as soon as a squad of twenty were enlisted, at the period of this writing. Sometimes there have been more ships in this duty. There are usually about one hundred boys at the station at one time.
As an experiment two hundred and fifty boys were enlisted and placed on the frigates "Minnesota" and "Constitution" and the sloops of war "Portsmouth" and "Saratoga," which were commissioned as training-ships. Since 1875 the training-station and vessels have been very important features of the naval establishment. The regulations governing the enlistment of boys are simple and few in number.
To his naval training-station at Sagres and the neighboring port of Lagos, Prince Henry attracted the most skillful Italian navigators and the most learned geographers of the day. The expeditions which he sent out year after year rediscovered and colonized the Madeira and Azores Islands, and crept further and further down the unknown coast of the Dark Continent.
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