Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,848

This is the grave of Albert Niblack.

Born in Vincennes, Indiana in 1859, Niblack did well as a student and won an appointment to the Naval Academy, where he began in 1876. He graduated in 1880. For the next 25 years, he was basically a slowly rising naval officer in an era where it was hard to rise much because the military wasn’t exactly growing. A lot of his work was on scientific matters, including collaborations with the Smithsonian and time with the Bureau of Navigation. He finally won command of a ship in 1904 with the Vincennes. He later became the military’s Naval attaché to several nations, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Germany, and the Netherlands. Most of these are of course small and not very relevant to American interests at this time, but the German Navy, that must have been an interesting experience at that time when it was seeking to break the British dominance of the seas.

By the time the United States entered World War I in 1917, Niblack was a leading naval officer, if not quite yet an admiral. But he was promoted to rear admiral shortly after the beginning of the war, as the military expanded and new slots opened up. He commanded the Alabama and received his promotion. There wasn’t a ton of naval action during the war, so Niblack’s service here isn’t very exciting. It’s not as if the Germans by 1917 had big ships engaging in naval battles, the British still controlled the seas, and as for the submarines, well, there wasn’t a ton an admiral could do about that. After the war, he was assigned to command American naval forces in the eastern Mediterranean, based in Venice.

Niblack wrote about his World War I experiences, more from a strategic than a memoir perspective, in his book Putting Cargoes through Gibraltar During the First World War, 1917-1919, which was republished in 2018, for whatever reason. Then, in 1919, Niblack was named Director of Naval Intelligence. The first thing he did in this role was disconnect his agency’s work from anything associated with the Red Scare, which was an important principle that he stuck to, however little sympathy he may have had for radicals. But keeping military intelligence away from domestic matters, well, I wish the current administration and its chosen leaders had such principles. The ONI had engaged in questionable anti-radical work during the war, which Niblack believed was not only what the Navy should not be involved in on principle, but which he also believed was full of mistakes and false accusations. His belief was that investigations should use “scientific principles” and get away from gumshoe nonsense.

Niblack also separated his work as head of ONI from the scandal around gay sex among sailors in Newport, Rhode Island that Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Delano Roosevelt was very interested in prosecuting, which greatly frustrated the future president and homophobe. He was promoted to vice admiral and given command of American naval forces in Europe in 1921. After another command based in Charleston, he retired from active duty in 1923.

In 1927, Niblack was appointed the head of the International Hydrographic Bureau. That was based in Monaco, so not a bad gig. He only served in that role for two years though, because he died while in Europe, in 1929. He was 70 years old.

Albert Niblack is buried on the confiscated lands of the traitor Lee, Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia.

If you would like this series to visit other American admirals, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. David Dixon Porter is also in Arlington and so is Frank Fletcher. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.