Early Life and Career
Fitch was born in Saint Ignace, Michigan, on June 11, 1883. He entered the U.S. Naval Academy in the summer of 1902 and graduated on February 12, 1906. After serving the two years of sea duty then required by law before commissioning in the armored cruiser Pennsylvania and the torpedo boat Chauncey Fitch became as ensign on February 13, 1908 and served afloat in Rainbow and Concord before receiving instruction in torpedoes at the Naval Torpedo Station, Newport, R.I., in the school conducted on board the old cruiser Montgomery.
Upon completion of the torpedo course, Fitch helped to fit out the battleship Delaware, which commissioned on April 4, 1910 before returning to Annapolis for consecutive tours of duty at the Naval Academy, first as assistant discipline officer between 1911 and 1912 and later as an instructor of physical training from 1912 to 1913. Service in the destroyers Balch and Duncan followed before he received his first sea command, the destroyer Terry, with the 2nd Division, Reserve Torpedo Flotilla, Atlantic Fleet.
After serving on the staff of the Commander in Chief, Atlantic Fleet, Fitch assumed command of the yacht Yankton in January 1915, with additional duty as aide to the Commander in Chief.
Read more about this topic: Aubrey Fitch
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:
“It is so very late that we
May call it early by and by. Good night.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“To finish the moment, to find the journey’s end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom. It is not the part of men, but of fanatics, or of mathematicians, if you will, to say, that, the shortness of life considered, it is not worth caring whether for so short a duration we were sprawling in want, or sitting high. Since our office is with moments, let us husband them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)