Early career Bunce was appointed an acting
midshipman on 28 May 1852 and attended the
United States Naval Academy in
Annapolis, Maryland, from which he graduated on 10 June 1857. He was warranted to the rank of midshipman the same day. His first assignment was to the
sloop-of-war in the
East India Squadron from 1857 to 1860. Promoted to
passed midshipman on 25 June 1860, he reported aboard the sloop-of-war , which was engaged in supporting a scientific expedition
surveying a route across the
Isthmus of Panama in the
Chiriquí area. He was promoted to
master on 24 October 1860 and to
lieutenant on 11 April 1861. Bunce returned to
Penobscot, which then moved to
Wilmington,
North Carolina, to participate in the
blockade of the port there. While off Wilmington,
Penobscot exchanged fire with
Fort Fisher and with Confederate artillery
batteries around
Fort Caswell. Bunce disembarked from
Penobscot to command a group of boats that made a successful expedition up the
Little River, destroying several
schooners, an extensive
salt works, and large amounts of
cotton,
turpentine, and
resin. After Bunce returned to
Penobscot,
Penobscot captured the
blockade runner Robert Bruce, and Bunce went aboard
Robert Bruce as
prize master and commanded her on her voyage to New York City, where she arrived on 1 November 1862. On 30 June 1890, he took command of both
Training Station Newport in Newport, Rhode Island, and the
training ship stationed there, the sloop-of-war . His next assignment, as a member of the
Board of Inspection and Survey, began on 21 August 1894. Promoted to commodore on 1 March 1895, he relieved Rear Admiral
Richard W. Meade III as commander-in-chief of the North Atlantic Squadron on 27 June 1895.
North Atlantic Squadron Since its creation in November 1865, the North Atlantic Squadron had received the U.S. Navy's newest ships and latest equipment, and its commanders-in-chief had the closest relationship with and access to the Department of the Navy's senior leadership in Washington, D.C., of any U.S. Navy
squadron commander; both factors made commanding it a plum assignment for senior U.S. Navy
flag officers late in their careers. However, like all U.S. Navy squadrons of the nineteenth century, it generally had operated as an administrative command arranging logistics for and coordinating the independent movement of its ships, which operated individually rather than as integrated components of a naval formation trained to operate as a cohesive unit during combat against an enemy fleet; moreover, the squadron's ships generally were poorly designed for such tactical cooperation, and many U.S. Navy officers of the era preferred to operate independently when in command of a ship. Efforts to exercise the squadron as a single combat unit, notably in 1874 and 1886, began to lay the foundation for change but had proved abortive or had limited success in the face of the priority for the squadron's ships to perform individual missions in support of American business interests in the
Caribbean, American
commercial fishing rights off eastern
Canada and the then-separate
Crown Colony of Newfoundland, and U.S. Navy public relations goals in visits to American cities along the East and
Gulf coasts of the United States. Bunce believed that modernization of the U.S. Navy required it to develop a true capability to operate its ships effectively in tactical formations, and he took command of the North Atlantic Squadron at a time when it finally had acquired ships designed for tactical squadron operations and had begun to develop a true identity as an operational squadron. His predecessor, Rear Admiral Meade, had taken advantage of political quiet in the Caribbean in 1895 to have ships of the squadron make its annual winter visits to Caribbean ports as a multiship formation rather than relying on visits by individual ships, and had exercised his ships at sea during voyages between the ports. As soon as he took command, Bunce set about building upon Meade's work, conducting tactical exercises in the Atlantic Ocean between August and November 1895 both off
New England during the squadron's annual social visit to ports there and during its voyages south to
Tompkinsville on
Staten Island, New York, and on to
Hampton Roads, Virginia. Bunce planned to follow this up with a Caribbean cruise by the entire squadron from 21 December 1895 to 12 May 1896, with it operating together throughout the cruise and visiting ports strictly as a squadron, without the diversion of individual ships to other tasks; this would have been the first time the entire squadron had made such a cruise together. However, the outbreak of the
Cuban War of Independence in
Cuba – then a part of the
Spanish Empire – and the Department of the Navy's fear that such a deployment would heighten tensions with Spain led to the Department of the Navy cancelling these plans, and the squadron remained at Hampton Roads. Bunce continued to exercise the squadron at sea off Virginia, and gradually sent his ships into various navy yards for refits in the winter and spring of 1896 in order to keep them ready for any operations against Spain. By August 1896, enough ships had returned to the squadron and enough newly commissioned ships had joined it in time for planned late-summer tactical exercises that
The New York Times called it "the largest fleet ever assembled by the Navy Department for instruction in fleet tactics at sea." During a social and diplomatic visit to New York City in August 1896, the squadron carried out extensive and complicated tactical exercises at sea, and in early September 1896 under Bunce's command the North Atlantic Squadron
battleships , , , and operated together in line and in column during a voyage from New York City to
Fishers Island, New York, the first time in history that a division of U.S. Navy battleships operated together as a tactical unit. Bunce's leadership of the North Atlantic Squadron between 1895 and 1897 proved important in the history of the U.S. Navy and by extension of the future course of
United States history, forging the squadron's ability to conduct modern naval warfare as a cohesive fighting unit in time for it to be prepared for combat against the
Spanish Navy in 1898 during the
Spanish–American War, a capability it did not have during the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s. It also provided a foundation for the continued development of U.S. Navy tactical doctrine in the early twentieth century. Discussing the U.S. Navy's handling of battleships at sea, Rear Admiral
Robley D. Evans wrote in 1901, "We had mastered it in the only way possible of seamen – by constant work and practice out on the blue water. We all owe much to Admiral Bunce." On 1 May 1897, Bunce turned command of the North Atlantic Squadron over to Rear Admiral
Montgomery Sicard and moved to the final tour of his career, relieving Sicard as commander of the
New York Navy Yard in
Brooklyn, New York.
Later career As commander of the New York Navy Yard, Bunce gave the fateful order to the battleship USS
Maine on 8 December 1897 to get underway from New York City and steam to
Key West, Florida, to join the North Atlantic Squadron; ==Death==