In the early nineties the so-called, and perhaps miscalled movement for “Naval Reserves” came into Connecticut. In 1893 it gathered shape in New Haven and on the petition of Edward G. Buckland and forty-four others. General Edward E. Bradley of New Haven, adjutant-general under Governor Luzon B. Morris, issued an order for the formation of the First Division, Naval Militia, C. N. G. In November of that year a division was organized, a month pregnant with meaning in the annals of the naval establishment of Connecticut, for it marked the institution of a branch destined to endure and to be a just cause of pride to the state of Hull, Gideon Welles and Foote.

The formation of the First Division followed barely two years after that of the First Naval Battalion in New York state. Massachusetts had preceded the Empire State by more than fifteen months, and Rhode Island by about a year, and when the command in New Haven organized, the states which boasted naval militia organizations were Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, California, Pennsylvania and Illinois. The total strength of the naval militia in these states was about 2,100 officers and enlisted men.

It was in March, 1890, that the first command of the kind appeared in Massachusetts, and in the following May that the Naval Battalion, Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, pioneer among “Naval Reserve” organizations in the United States, was organized. From that germ has grown a system which now includes naval militia bodies in twenty-three states and has on the rosters between seven thousand and eight thousand officers and enlisted men; and has recorded several times that number of alumni who are in part trained for the country’s hour of need on salt water.

Interesting stories about the First Division of New Haven came to the ears of many lovers of salt water in Hartford. Stories they were of the splendid success of that crack command, the good times which the fun lovers of the company enjoyed, the good fellowship shown, the capacity for hard technical work and the growing esteem in which it was held both by the adjutant-general’s office and the Navy Department at Washington. And so it was that a little knot of similar spirits in Hartford was formed, men with fondness for yachting on the Sound or with patriotic pride in the Navy who gravitated together after a nucleus had been developed.

The proposition for a naval company was received with a diversity of opinion. One military man of ripe experience raked it fore and aft in print, but in after years he discovered the error of his range finder and became a firm friend of the command in fair weather and foul. His memory long remained green with the company.