The United States Maritime Service (USMS) was established in 1938. It was the body responsible for training merchant seamen as legislated for by the Merchant Marine Act of 1936. During the Second World War, it performed the essential function of training over 100,000 individuals to fill berths on United States merchantmen as either unlicensed or licensed crew members. To do such, it operated about two dozen training establishments including training stations, training ships, upgrade schools, and the Merchant Marine Academy and its satellite Basic Schools, as well as correspondence courses. Post-war, the USMS’ functions were curtailed and its personnel slashed. Over the decades, the numbers of individuals in the Service steadily declined until reaching the handful of cadre of the present day. By the mid-2000s, the USMS was comprised only of a handful of administrators at State Maritime schools and those in leadership positions at the United States Merchant Marine Academy. In the 2020s, USMS commissions were opened to civil service employees at Kings Point, and its ranks were bolstered as a result.
The Service began as a training organization, and then its ranks grew as licensed officers of the American Merchant Marine sailed on War Shipping Administration-owned ships. Besides instructors and administrators who came from the maritime industry, it initially inducted members of the American Merchant Marine into its ranks after they had taken part in its training programs. Joining the USMS was wholly voluntary; its numbers were bolstered by the law that holding active, sailing membership in the Service exempted a seaman from the draft; military planners did not state as such, but while serving on a merchant ship, seamen were an important munition that was far more costly to replace than a soldier or a sailor due to their compartmentalized knowledge.
At the close of the Second World War, Administrators in Washington D.C. floated the idea that all U.S. merchant seamen join the USMS to create something akin to the British Merchant Navy. This proved unpopular with the maritime unions at the time, with the Masters, Mates, and Pilots union leading the charge that such a move was akin to Fascist regimentation. This proved to be the Death Knell of the Service; its role was diminished and it shuttered its schools for unlicensed seamen. These training programs were ostensibly taken by the unions, and to some respect by the U.S. Navy. By the late 1950s, licensed officer training remained on the books for the USMS, but only in the context of the State Nautical schools and the United States Merchant Marine Academy; it stopped offering officer upgrade schools and stopped its correspondence courses. At the Academy, the USMS remains since a uniformed staff promotes the military aspect of the Academy; although it may be argued such a system is anachronistic and made sense in the context of a world war – a war long passed.
The legacy of the wartime USMS was a highly-trained core of Merchant Marine officers and seamen who led the United States shipping industry through the difficulties of the post-war Cold War up until the first Gulf War. After these seamen retired, the failure in government foresight and sole dependence upon private industry to recruit, train, and retain merchant seaman has resulted in a decline of a maritime workforce. The USMS remains and continues as an integral part of the training program at the United States Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point.
