When the envoys of Emperor Hirohito with reluctant steps clambered up the gangway of the battleship Missouri, flying the flag of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz in Tokyo Bay, to ratify the unconditional surrender of Japan, the U. S. Pacific fleet was by far the most powerful naval force in the world. In less than four years American industry had completed, and the Navy Department had commissioned with trained crews and competent commanding and flag officers, eight battleships, twenty-seven aircraft carriers, seventy-seven escort carriers, two large (battle) cruisers, thirteen heavy cruisers, thirty-three light cruisers, three hundred and forty-nine destroyers, four hundred and twelve escort destroyers, and two hundred and three submarines. In four years of combat the American people had created the incomparable Navy visioned by President Wilson in 1916, and with it had become the world’s preponderant sea power, the last in a long line of nations to possess the sceptre of the sea.
The rise of the British Empire, to which their colonial ancestors contributed in no small measure, should be sufficient proof to Americans of the value of sea power, but to comprehend the full and continuing advantages of control of the sea it is essential to go beyond the history of the English people. Before England ceased to be a Roman province, at least three great Mediterranean Empires—the Athenian, Carthaginian, and Roman—had been created and maintained by sea power. If the battle of Salamis, 479 b.c., is accepted as date of Athenian sea supremacy, and 1945 a.d. as the year the United States gained dominion of the sea, for over two thousand and four hundred years of recorded history sea power has been a vital and usually the determining factor in the rise and fall of European and American nations. Eurasian Russia is the only European Empire created primarily by land power that has long endured. Nor should it be forgotten that when Russia, the great land power, was invaded by Napoleon and again by Hitler, she was allied with and succored by nations preponderant on the sea.
The Greeks even more than the British typified sea power. In the sixth and seventh centuries b.c. they established themselves along the shore of Asia Minor, in the Greek Archipelago, as far west as Sicily, along the coast of Egypt, and in the Black Sea. The half century that followed Salamis was the golden age of Athens. Themistocles built the long wall that connected Piraeus with the capital city that Pericles adorned. Athenian men of war added to her dominions, enabled her to control the trade of the eastern and central Mediterranean and to establish colonies in the Black, Aegean, Ionian, and Adriatic Seas, in Sicily and Asia Minor. Based on the Athens-Piraeus area, with a small hinterland beyond the walls in Attica, Athenians literally depended upon the sea for goods and supplies. Nevertheless Athens prospered and reduced her allies to vassals who paid tribute in ships or gold.
The phenomenal growth of Athens increased the jealousy of her ancient rival Sparta, the leading land power and the head of another Grecian league. Their desperate struggle lasted from 431 to 405 b.c., when the Athenian fleet was destroyed at Aegospotami on the shore of the Hellespont. For a while Sparta dominated Greece, and then Thebes; but Philip of Macedon conquered and temporarily united the Greeks and paved the way for his son, Alexander the Great. Mobilizing the Grecian fleets, Alexander, a great land captain who appreciated sea power, established control of the western Mediterranean and secured bridgeheads into Asia Minor. Then he was free to make his famous march into Asia and had little difficulty in maintaining his line of communications or overcoming Asiatic resistance ashore. Alexander’s successors could not retain his conquests in Asia, but in spite of the almost immediate dismemberment of Alexander’s empire his victories halted the advance of Asiatics into Europe for almost a thousand years.
After the death of Alexander the Phoenician trade and commerce revived in the eastern Mediterranean, but very soon the Phoenicians were supplanted by the Greeks in Egypt, Italy and the east of Sicily almost without resistance. One colony of displaced Phoenicians settled at Carthage on a site favorably situated for commerce and agriculture. Carthaginians flourished and extended their settlements to the islands in the central and western Mediterranean, to northwest Africa, and Spain, and reached the Atlantic.
The Romans began their Empire by consolidating their position in the Italian peninsula. They had no natural aptitude for the sea, and in their early days the Senate definitely limited their ambitions to the neighboring land. Not until Roman control of the peninsula was assured did the future mistress of the world challenge Carthaginian sea power.
Before the First Punic War Carthage had absolute control of the central and western Mediterranean. During that war, for sixteen years Roman landlubbers struggled in vain with the Mistress of the Mediterranean. They built and lost four large fleets, three of them accompanied by transports with Roman armies aboard. A fourth army under Regulus was destroyed in Libya. Wealthy and patriotic citizens raised a fifth fleet containing two hundred ships of the line manned by sixty thousand sailors. This Roman fleet which finally defeated the Carthaginian was considered by Mommsen the “noblest creation” of the war. Thereafter Rome controlled the central and western Mediterranean. And twenty-three years later, during the Second Punic War, Hannibal, though one of the world’s greatest soldiers and commanding a magnificent army, was unable to overcome this great handicap.
During the Second Punic War the Macedonians, apprehensive of the growing power of Rome, attempted to assist the Carthaginians. Threatened by a naval war on two seas the Roman Admirals held the Macedonians in check until they had defeated Hannibal. Relieved of the Carthaginian threat, the Romans in three Macedonian wars conquered the Greeks and became masters of the northeastern Mediterranean. Polybius dates the “universal empire of Rome” from the battle of Pydna, 168 B.c., when the Senate abandoned its former policy of holding “no possessions and maintaining no garrisons beyond the Italian seas.” Instigated by Cato, who was jealous of the revival of Carthage, the Senate provoked the Third Punic War, and in 146 b.c. destroyed the former imperial city.
During the civil wars that marked the last century and a half of the Roman republic, the navy became the decisive factor in Roman affairs. Despite their internecine struggles, Roman naval predominance enabled Pompey the Great to clear the eastern Mediterranean of pirates and to add Asia Minor to the empire. The struggle between Pompey and Caesar, after the latter had crossed the Rubicon, was determined by naval campaigns extending from Spain to Egypt. Although Pompey had won fame as an Admiral, Caesar gained command of the Mediterranean and made himself master of Rome. The Civil War that followed the death of Julius Caesar was also decided by a naval battle, Actium, in which Octavius, afterwards Augustus Caesar, defeated Antony, gained control of the Republic, and established peace and order.
As Emperor, Augustus reorganized and redeployed the Navy. A fleet was stationed in the Bay of Naples, with an advance squadron at Frejus in Provence (between Toulon and Nice), to control the western Mediterranean; a second fleet at Ravenna
in the Adriatic secured the eastern Mediterranean. To each fleet was attached an amphibious force of several thousand marines. Roman colonies and commerce in the Black Sea were protected by a squadron of forty ships with an amphibious force of three thousand marines. The Danube and Rhine, the Empire’s northern frontiers, were patrolled by river gun boats that maintained communications between garrisons guarding strategic points, and were ready to intercept possible invaders or to harass hostile tribes on the far banks. A third squadron stationed in the English Channel maintained communication between France and the British Isles.
The establishment of the government in Constantinople in 323 a.d. not only divided the Empire into the eastern and western parts, but emphasized its Mediterranean character. As Pirenne wrote in his Mohammed and Charlemagne, “Belgium, Britain, Germany, Roetia, Noricum, and Pannonia (the last three provinces lay between the Danube and the Drave rivers), were merely outlying ramparts against barbarism. . . . Life was concentrated on the shores of the great lake . . . that could be navigated in perfect security since piracy had long disappeared.” In short, control of the Mediterranean was the essential factor in the maintenance of the Roman Empire. And the death blow to the western Empire was dealt by Genseric, who embarked his Vandals from Spain in 429 a.d. and over-ran Africa, the granary of the Empire. Between the battle of Pydna, 168 b.c., when the Senate abandoned its continental parochialism, and 429 a.d., when Genseric broke Roman control of the western Mediterranean, the navy had converted that great sea into a Roman lake.
The security of the commerce on the Mediterranean Sea on which the Empire depended was maintained by the Roman Navy, of which American schoolboys have rarely heard. Mommsen and Gibbon, both aware of the vital importance of the Roman Navy to the Empire, devoted more space to the Legions and the Pretorian Guard; although it was the Navy whose continuous vigilance protected the commerce and secured the peace of the Empire, while licentious soldiers auctioned the imperial diadem to one ambitious general after another. Mahan noted that “Historians generally have been unfamiliar with the conditions at sea, having as to it neither special interest nor special knowledge ...”
The Byzantine control of the southern and western Mediterranean was broken in the seventh century by a nomadic people, the Arabs, who previously had lived in the deserts with no opportunity to develop an aptitude for the sea. Inspired by Mohammed, they accepted monotheism and a simple, but to their neighbors a formidable, creed. They “must obey Allah and compel the infidels to obey him. The Holy War became a moral obligation and offered its own reward.” The Persian Empire, enervated and opulent, fell to the Arabs at a single blow. The Byzantine Empire, equally opulent and temporarily exhausted by a long series of wars, lost almost immediately the rich provinces of Syria, Egypt, and Africa, before its forces rallied. The ports of Egypt furnished ships to Arabian horsemen and camel riders; Moslem fleets in the Mediterranean sailed westward, keeping abreast of their armies as they marched across north Africa. Within seventy years after the death of Mohammed his disciples had spread their conquests from the Indian to the Atlantic Ocean. From the seventh to the eleventh centuries Islam “was incontestably the master of the Mediterranean. . . . The navigation of the Christian people was restricted to a timid coastwise trade along the shores of the Adriatic and southern Italy, and among the islands of the [Grecian] Archipelago.”
Control of the Mediterranean trade caused the Moslems to prosper. Trade and commerce flourished throughout their dominions. As early as the ninth century their civilization reached a peak under Mamun the Great (813 to 833), who established his capital at Bagdad, generously endowed libraries, constructed observatories, and patronized the arts and sciences. Simultaneously northwest Europe was cut off from the Atlantic by the Norsemen (Vikings). “From the eighth century onwards, Europe existed for three hundred years without any intercourse with the countries overseas,” as Pirenne observes. In the first half of the 10th century these Vikings almost extinguished civilization in western Europe.
Among the Roman Provinces over-run by the Norsemen were the British Isles. Celtic natives, enervated by their long submission to external authority, were compelled to admit the Angles and Jutes in the middle of the fifth century after the Roman garrisons were withdrawn. These German pirates were equally skilled with the oar and sword, and after landing, seized Celtic horses and continued their forays as light cavalrymen. The Norman Conquest blended the races that inhabited the British Isles and gave them a stronger and more efficient government. The English Channel became the means of communication between the territories of the Norman Kings, and their subjects were habituated to the sea. Whatever aptitude for the sea the English people possess derives primarily from the Angles and Jutes and next from the Norman conquerors, themselves descendants of Norsemen who had established themselves in France. But it should be noted that nomadic Arabs soon accustomed themselves to fight on the sea, and the sea-roving Vikings on the land. To be supreme, either ashore or afloat, the first essential was and is a martial spirit.
The contrast between the brilliance of the Arab world, that enjoyed control of the Mediterranean and inherited much of the commerce of the Roman Empire, and the gloom of Europe shut off from the sea emphasizes the necessity of overseas trade to civilized nations. The culture and provincial governments of Rome had been concentrated in its great cities, mostly Mediterranean seaports. In Europe these seaports were soon deserted because no ships arrived. Next, the network of Roman roads leading from these ports into the interior fell into disuse, for the seaports no longer received cargoes to be shipped abroad or distributed into the interior. Europe was reduced to a peasant economy. The destitution of France was such that even its Kings and Courts could not live in towns but were compelled to move from one retainer’s estate to another’s where their courtiers subsisted until they had emptied the local barns and granaries. The complete isolation of Europe from the sea was further revealed by the inability of Charlemagne at the height of his power to coerce the Venetian Republic. His authority ceased at tidewater. The exclusion of Europe from the sea, between the seventh and eleventh centuries, was the fundamental reason for the “dark ages.”
Twice in the eighth century Constantinople turned back the Moslems and saved southeastern Europe. These victories have never received the attention given the victory at Tours of Charles Martel in 732, perhaps because the Eastern (Byzantine) Empire was preserved by a fleet, not an army. The Moslem Navy was superior, it kept the Byzantine Navy on the defensive and confined the merchant ships to the northeastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Sometimes aided, occasionally betrayed, by the Venetian Navy, this Byzantine fleet maintained the sea communications of the great fortress city of Constantinople with Venice. The commerce of Christendom in the Mediterranean was confined to the merchantmen that crept along the coasts of the Aegean, Ionian, and Adriatic seas. This trade, although only a trickle, was enough to make Venice a great city and to keep civilization alive in northern Italy—and it should be remembered that it was from the cities of northern Italy that the renaissance came to western Europe.
During the seventh and eighth centuries trade between Constantinople and Venice steadily increased. The Venetian Navy grew stronger, and in the ninth and tenth centuries rid the Adriatic of pirates and Moslem privateers and obtained the privilege of trading in Constantinople without paying custom duties. Although usually allied with the Byzantine Empire, the Venetians joined the Latin Crusaders to capture Constantinople in 1204. Their treachery secured them a large part of Constantinople, Adrianople, Gallipoli, and many Greek Islands. Italian commerce entered the Black Sea, and with the rise of Genoa and Pisa the northern Mediterranean was again opened to through east and west traffic. The re-awakening of the West was at hand.
The last days of Constantinople emphasize the enduring qualities of sea power when skillfully exerted. Emperor Michael VIII recaptured Constantinople from the Crusaders in 1204. The western Christians had thoroughly looted the magnificent city, seat of the Eastern Church and the center of world trade; many of its former defenses were never restored. Nevertheless, due to its fortifications, a few faithful soldiers, and a small proficient professional navy, Constantinople maintained its sea communications and repulsed one Moslem siege after another. The British are justly proud of Gibraltar, so often successfully defended by indomitable garrisons and supplied by indefatigable fleets. Constantinople repulsed the first Moslem siege in the eighth century and only succumbed in the fifteenth! By that time Spain and Portugal had thrown off the Moslem yoke. The control of a small strip of coastal waters in the Mediterranean and Bosporus prolonged the life of the Byzantine Empire and preserved control of the sea in the east until it had been restored in the west Mediterranean. The Byzantine Empire of the Greeks affords the most striking example of sea power yet recorded.
Portugal was the first European exponent of global sea power. Favored by their Atlantic seaboard and the magnificent harbor of Lisbon, Portuguese captains led in the exploration of the Atlantic. Portuguese mariners may have visited the Canary Islands as early as 1340. Certainly in 1418 they explored the Madeira Islands. The enterprise of Prince Henry, famous as the Navigator, inspired further and longer voyages. In 1499 Vasco de Gama doubled Cape Good Hope and in a two-year voyage made a round trip to Malabar. Lisbon succeeded Venice as the focus of Asiatic-European trade. The Portuguese did not neglect the western hemisphere. In 1500 Cabral discovered Brazil.
Even before the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, Spain had become an important factor in the trade of western Europe. Through Barcelona and Sicily their ships exchanged cargoes with the Central Mediterranean, while ports on the Bay of Biscay gave easy access to northern Europe. The discoveries of Columbus offered the Spaniards a great opportunity. They entered grandly and bravely upon their golden age that lasted two full centuries and extended Spanish customs, speech, culture, and religion to the Philippines in the Far East and to over half of the Western Hemisphere.
Charles V, grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella, inherited the territories of three dynasties, Burgundy, Austria, and Spain. Under him and his son Philip II, Spain possessed simultaneously the finest infantry and most powerful navy in Europe. While Henry VII and Henry VIII struggled with domestic problems in England, triumphant Spaniards added the West Indies, Mexico, and Peru to the immense holdings of Charles V in Europe. In 1554 his son, afterwards Philip II, married Mary, Queen of England, and for a time it appeared that Spain would add that country to its Empire.
In 1571 the Spanish Fleet won the battle of Lepanto and the long struggle between Christians and Moslems for the western Mediterranean. Four years earlier, however, Philip II had begun what proved to be a fruitless struggle to suppress a revolt in the Netherlands. In 1567 he despatched the Duke of Alva with twenty thousand of the finest infantry in Europe to open the war on Calvinism. With the capture of the seaport of Brill in 1571 (the year of Lepanto) by the Dutch “Water Beggars,” the contest that ended in control of the sea by Holland really began. In the struggle for independence “the better part of the Dutch population” took to the sea, “their land armies were mainly composed of Germans, English or Scots.” The victories of the Dutch culminated in the defeat of the Spanish fleet off Gibraltar in 1609 and caused Philip III to conclude a twelve-year truce that tacitly conceded their independence, which was formally confirmed by the treaty of Westphalia in 1648. The struggle for control of the Mediterranean had merged with the contest for the Atlantic. Competition for sea power widened its area.
Portugal rose to power by opening an all sea route to India and ending the monopoly of the East-West trade long held by Venice. The naval power of the Turks soon overmatched that of Venice, and by the beginning of the seventeenth century Venetian trade was confined to the Adriatic. The career of Portugal as a sea power was brief. It was annexed by Philip II in 1580; but in that short space Brazil, an enduring monument to the Portuguese people, was founded.
The Dutch, in the midst of their struggle with Spain, sent ships to the Far East where they occupied the Portuguese colonies of Ceylon and Mallaca, after establishing settlements and a naval base at the Cape of Good Hope. A Dutch East India Company was founded in 1601, the forerunner of the many chartered companies of that era. They intervened in a Swedish-Danish war to ensure entrance of their trade in the Baltic. And in 1621 they created a West India Company that purchased Manhattan Island a few years later, and in 1655 took possession of the Swedish colonies along the Delaware. The Dutch were the first Europeans to demonstrate that commerce could flourish during war.
The rivalry between England and Spain had been growing since the voyages of John Cabot, sponsored by Henry VII. But domestic difficulties limited the efforts of the government until late in the reign of Elizabeth. Meanwhile British mariners had begun plundering Spanish possessions with the acquiescence and, sometimes, the encouragement of the Crown. In 1571, the year that Brill was captured by Dutch Rebels, John Hawkins and Francis Drake had a pitched battle with a Spanish Squadron in Vera Cruz. Military and seafaring England desired a formal war, but Elizabeth and her advisers preserved nominal peace. Francis Drake, who personified the high spirited British mariners, was permitted in 1587 to attack the Spanish fleet at Cadiz, where it was fitting out to cover the invasion of England, and his raid delayed the sailing of the Spanish fleet for a year, when the Armada was defeated.
The influence of the Dutch War with Spain on the founding of the English colonies in America deserves emphasis. When Spain absorbed Portugal in 1580, she obtained a monopoly on the Western Hemisphere that she was eager and able to enforce with her navy. Vexed with domestic and foreign problems, Elizabeth during most of her reign placated Spain; the Queen could only wink at the raids made by English privateers and buccaneers on the Spanish colonies in the Caribbean. Beginning with the capture of Brill, sixteen years before the defeat of the Armada, the Dutch continued their attacks on the Spanish Navy until 1609. Elizabeth’s timid successor, James I, made peace in 1604. The Dutch Navy did more than the British to break Spanish control of the Atlantic. Until that control was broken, English colonies could not safely be established in America.
While the struggle for control of the Atlantic was in its infancy, the Thirty- Years War (1618-1648), mainly a continental war, commenced. At its close Germany was in ruins, and France had supplanted Spain as the dominant power on the continent. In 1642 the Civil War broke out in England; Charles I was beheaded in 1649, Cromwell and his son governed until the restoration of Charles II in 1660. During this domestic strife, which lasted almost twenty years, American colonists were compelled to provide their own defenses. Most colonies equipped a province “galley,” a small sailing craft usually also equipped with oars. Massachusetts, with the largest merchant fleet, fitted out a cruiser. All merchantmen were armed with two or more small cannon. This self reliant merchant marine was the father of the Colonial, Continental, and United States Navy.
As soon as it became evident that Spain was no longer to be feared, France and England began to combine against Holland: France, because she coveted the Spanish Netherlands; Britain, because she wanted to supplant the Dutch, who had monopolized the seaborne trade of Europe. In three wars with England the Dutch held their own, but with increasing difficulty. The remaining history of Dutch sea power is inextricably interwoven with the struggle between England and France for control of the sea and overseas possessions in India and America. Spain, usually allied with France, grew steadily weaker as the strength of her ally increased. In order to resist the encroachments of France ashore, the Dutch neglected their fleet and Holland’s position as a sea power slowly declined.
The long struggle between Holland and England for dominion of the sea was decided in favor of England during the War of The Spanish Succession, when both countries were allies and during most of which they had the same monarch, William III. The Netherlands, commercial rivals of England at sea and threatened by France under both Louis XIII and Louis XIV, had much difficulty in maintaining its position as a great power. William III, determined to halt France, organized a coalition that included Holland, England, the Empire, Austria, and Prussia. William also agreed that the main contribution of the Dutch should be with ground troops, while England furnished a smaller quota of soldiers but provided two- thirds of the sea forces. William died during this long war, the largest in Europe since the Crusades, with naval campaigns in the Mediterranean as well as the Atlantic. Since the Dutch were unable to furnish their quotas of ships, England made up the deficiency. At the end of the war the British Navy greatly exceeded that of Holland. In the words of Mahan, England “was the sea power without any second.” She held control of the sea alone, “unshared by friend, unchecked by foe.”
A Dutch King and the British General, the Duke of Marlborough, determined the strategy of the Alliance. There could be no suspicion of British perfidy. If the immediate cause of the loss of Dutch sea power is sought, it is only necessary to compare the Dutch strategy under William III with the strategy they employed in the struggle to gain their independence, “when the better part of the Dutch population took to the sea and their land armies were mainly composed of Germans, English or Scots.”
Great Britain obtained Gibraltar, Minorca, Newfoundland, Hudson’s Bay, and Nova Scotia, plus an advantageous treaty with Portugal that became an alliance existing to this day, and commercial privileges with Spain that enabled her enterprising mariners, accustomed to smuggling, to develop a practical monopoly of trade in Spanish America. The British position in the Mediterranean was established, her position in America strengthened. As early as 1690 Bolingbroke, a Tory Statesman who took a prominent part in ending the war of The Spanish Succession, voiced the sentiments of a growing majority of English people when he asserted “Our true interests require that we should take few engagements on the continent (Europe), and never those of making a land war unless the conjuncture be such that nothing less than the weight of Great Britain can prevent the scales of power from being quite over-turned.” From 1713 to 1906 British statesmen generally avoided continental engagements.
After 1713 the sea power of Great Britain was overwhelming. When William Pitt entered the Cabinet at the beginning of the Seven Years’ War he made full use of control of the sea and the potential reserve of merchant ships and sailors in the American colonies. The colonists did not enjoy providing men or money even for their own defense, but Pitt inspired them to make large contributions. His wise direction of the war brought wonderful results. He limited British effort on the continent to large subsidies for Frederick the Great, who made excellent use of them. British and American resources were employed in amphibious expeditions in America, India, and the Philippines. After expelling France from Canada, British forces captured Martinique and Havana in the Caribbean, and Manila. Great Britain emerged with all French possessions in America east of the Mississippi; she exchanged Havana for Florida and allowed the Spaniards to ransom Manila. She returned Guadalupe and Martinique and received Minorca. American militia, sailors, and ships participated in all the campaigns in the Atlantic certainly, and probably in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. And when Pitt’s successors first proposed taxing Americans to defray the expense of the war, he reminded parliament of the men, money, and ships the colonists had provided.
Efforts of parliament and the Cabinet to levy taxes on the colonies was the immediate cause of the Revolution. Along the Atlantic seaboard there were three and a half million America colonists, mostly of British descent, who were accustomed to more self government than their relatives who had remained in the British Isles. It was not only beyond the powers of the British Armed Forces of that day to suppress the revolt by force, but each year the struggle was postponed the Americans grew relatively stronger. Colonials would not have been long content to be governed by fellow citizens three thousand miles away even if the laws of parliament had been in every respect fair and equitable; shrewd as well as self reliant, they knew that as long as they were governed from London their trade and commerce would be subordinated to the naval policies of the United Kingdom. In a real sense the causes of the Revolution were immaterial. If George III and his advisers had acted with wisdom and restraint the revolution might have been postponed, but sooner or later British citizens domiciled in America would have demanded and obtained their independence.
In the ensuing naval war colonial sailors were pitted for the first time against their former comrades in the Royal Navy. American mariners appreciated the power of the British Navy but, unlike the French and Spanish, they had no feeling of inferiority, either man for man or ship for ship. John Paul Jones expressed the sentiments of the best officers in the Continental Navy when he wrote that the Royal Navy “was the best regulated of any in the world”; therefore, he recommended that the infant American navy “in some ways imitate them, and aim at such further improvement as may one day make ours vie with and exceed theirs.” John Adams, Chairman of the Marine Committee of Congress, had already adapted most of the King’s Regulations for the Royal Navy to American use by simply substituting the authority of Congress for the Crown. Consequently, Commanding Officers of the U. S. Navy have from its origin been required to show a good example “of honor and virtue to the officers and men” and by their personal example to “encourage the inferior officers and men to fight courageously.” When the Navy was revived in 1798, Commodore Truxton was convinced that the British Navy was the foremost in the world; he also knew that the customs and manners of the American sea service were similar to the British, and he thought a study of their naval system would facilitate the introduction of an efficient and uniform system of naval administration. Truxton foresaw the future growth of the U. S. Navy, and before it possessed a single ship of the line he was urging his Midshipmen to prepare themselves to be Admirals so they could command American Fleets.
General George Washington, veteran of the Seven Years’ War, was well aware of the value of sea power. Soon after taking command at Boston he organized a small force known as “Washington’s Navy.” Captain Manly, one of the most successful commanders, brought in several prizes, the most valuable being a transport “loaded with soldiers, arms and ammunition.” The colonists had been kept dependent on the home country for manufactured goods. When trouble threatened in 1774, shipment of all arms and ammunition to America was forbidden. To equip the Continental army and navy it was necessary to attack arsenals and forts on the mainland and to despatch Commodore Hopkins to the Bahamas to seize the munitions in those weakly-held islands. James Fenimore Cooper, the most acute of the early naval historians, was convinced that the Revolution would have been suppressed almost immediately except for the arms and ammunition captured from British forces. Furthermore, the British officers and troops captured by Captain Manly provided Washington with hostages. He promptly informed General Gage that British prisoners would receive the same treatment accorded American; thereafter American prisoners were not treated as rebels but as prisoners of war.
The Royal Navy also had its difficulties. As usual in time of peace, it had been neglected. Corruption prevailed in the government and its dockyards, few ships were properly manned, and many reported by the Admiralty ready for sea were unfit for service. Across the Channel the Due de Choiseul, the dominant member of the French government since the Seven Years’ War, had guided the policy and prepared the Navy of France to avenge its last defeat. The revolt in America gave him his opportunity. He surreptitiously aided the Americans and waited for a favorable moment to openly attack Great Britain. Aware of French sentiment, the Continental Congress despatched a mission to France, headed by Franklin who maintained liaison with the French government. The cruise of Wickes and the first raid of John Paul Jones in British home waters encouraged the French, but Choiseul waited further proof of American strength.
In March, 1776, after Boston was evacuated, Washington hastened with his army to New York. The British retired to Halifax. After a refit, a combined British Force under the two brothers, Admiral Howe and General Howe, landed in Long Island and compelled Washington to evacuate New York City. Next the British High Command proposed to sever New England from the rest of the Colonies. An expeditionary force from Canada invaded New York via Lake Champlain; a junction of this force with one from New York City anywhere along the Hudson would have isolated New England. Washington, aware of the danger, placed General Benedict Arnold in command of a hastily equipped squadron on Lake Champlain. It was completely overwhelmed in October, 1776. But Arnold had delayed the advance of the enemy for a year, and when General Burgoyne renewed the attempt in 1777 he was forced to surrender. Choiseul, finally convinced of the strength of the Colonials, decided the day for revenge had arrived. France declared war on Great Britain in 1778, and the skillful diplomacy of de Choiseul insured that nowhere on the continent could London find any allies. On the contrary, in 1779 Spain, and in 1780 Holland, declared war on England.
The greatest single contribution to American independence by the Continental Navy was undoubtedly made by Arnold’s squadron on Lake Champlain that led to Burgoyne’s surrender which decided France to intervene. The exploits of John Paul Jones and others established the traditions of the Navy. The activity of American privateersmen caused consternation among British shippers and inclined the merchants to peace. But at the end of 1781 the Continental Navy had been practically annihilated. It was a French Fleet under Admiral de Grasse that defeated the British Admiral Graves and thereby secured temporary control of the western Atlantic and Chesapeake Bay. Cornwallis was then forced to surrender and the British government abandoned further efforts to suppress the Revolution.
The war at sea continued two years longer. Rodney’s victory over de Grasse in the Caribbean restored the prestige of the British Navy; but the English nation was weary of war and humiliated by the loss of its American colonies. Pessimists predicted the end of an Empire that was on the eve of preserving itself “by its own exertions and Europe by its example.” In 1783 William Pitt II, son of the great leader during the Seven Years’ War, became Prime Minister. Within three years Pitt’s financial and economic reforms enabled Britain to rise from its economic depression and obtained for him the confidence of Crown, Parliament, and people. In 1793 France declared war on Great Britain, and except for a brief interval Pitt directed the course of the war until his death in 1806. After another brief interlude, Pitt’s veteran colleagues, Liverpool, Castlereagh, Canning, Perceval, and a youngster named Palmerston, took over the direction of the war, and following the policies of Pitt brought the war to a successful conclusion.
Pitt, like his father, concentrated British resources in the Navy. Only small detachments of soldiers were committed to the European theater, and they were often driven back into the sea. But in 1808 Napoleon’s invasion of Spain offered an excellent opening for a British Expeditionary Force that was exploited by Wellington. The Spanish campaign became a permanent drain upon the French Army. The British Blockade and the provisions of Napoleon’s Continental System had caused widespread poverty in Europe, extending to Russia. In 1810 the Czar refused to comply with Napoleon’s demand that Russia seize all ships brought in by the English. Relations grew steadily worse between the Emperor and the Czar. After preparing a Grand Army that eventually included six hundred thousand men, in June, 1812, Napoleon invaded Russia. Three years later he was defeated at Waterloo.
During the long struggle both Great Britain and France had exercised their belligerent rights on the sea with extreme severity. The United States, a neutral without a navy, possessed a large and increasing merchant marine that became second only to the British during the war. In 1798 French exactions on the sea led to the re-establishment of the U. S. Navy. Captain Truxtun of the Constellation was the leading naval officer, and in two frigate engagements set the standard of the new Navy in his capture of the frigate Insurgente and defeat of the Vengeance. The Honorable Benjamin Stoddert, first Secretary of the Navy, supported Truxtun in his resolve to promote good officers and rid the Navy of the lazy and incompetent.
The quasi-war with France was scarcely over before it became necessary to punish the Barbary Corsairs, who were pillaging American ships and enslaving their crews. Commodore Preble in a Mediterranean campaign that included gun duels between ships at extreme range, yard-arm to yardarm fights followed by boarding, bombardments of fortified cities and cutting out expeditions, taught his squadron to fight by fighting. He maintained the same taut discipline instituted by Truxtun. Ill health forced Preble to relinquish command, and it fell to Commodore John Rodgers, Truxtun’s former Executive Officer, to bring the war to a victorious conclusion. Fenimore Cooper wrote that during these two wars officers acquired “the tone, discipline, pride, emulation, and spirit” that prepared them for the second war with Great Britain.
The war of 1812 gave the American Administration ample warning of its approach. Early during the Anglo-French struggle it became evident that the British could not abandon the practice of impressment nor repeal their arbitrary Orders in Council without relinquishing their only means of opposing Napoleon. The United States could not submit to British exactions and preserve its independence on the sea. It would have been comparatively easy for the United States to construct and man a fleet of at least ten ships-of-the-line, with a corresponding number of frigates and sloops of war. This force operating on the Atlantic seaboard would have compelled Great Britain to respect our rights at sea. She could not have afforded to add that fleet to her enemies. If she had taken the risk, Americans could have entered the conflict with some assurance of victory. Instead, under the policies of Jefferson and Madison, the Government submitted to all the humiliations until 1812, just as Napoleon’s invasion of Russia relieved London of all fears of France.
Perry’s and MacDonough’s victories on the Lakes prevented the serious invasion of the country and preserved our territory; our frigates and sloops of war added luster to the Navy and sustained the spirits of the people; our privateers harried British commerce. But at the end of the war our Navy was practically destroyed or bottled up in port, our merchant marine, second only to the British, had been sunk, captured, or blockaded. Great Britain would not even discuss compensation for illegal damage done our trade or the abandonment of impressment.
The Administration that had led the country into war unprepared was so eager for peace that it hastened to accept the British terms. At the conclusion of hostilities the Navy entered upon a period of neglect and stagnation, which lifted briefly in the Mexican War only to settle down again until the Civil War. During this time officers like John Rodgers, Charles Stewart, Decatur, Porter, Matthew Perry, Stockton, Maury, and Wadsworth kept the spark alive among the personnel, and as far as limited funds permitted they improved the material during the change from sail to steam and from wooden to steel ships.
During the Civil War an improvised Navy opened the Mississippi and maintained the longest and most effective blockade yet maintained. At the peace the Navy again entered a period of stagnation that continued until the Spanish War. Farragut, Dupont, Dahlgren, and the second David Porter raised a group of officers including Luce, Dewey, Sampson, Mahan, and others that preserved the naval traditions in probably the darkest days of the Navy. For over thirty years the U. S. Navy was physically the worst in the world. During this era Luce founded a War College so that officers could prepare themselves to wage naval war even at a time when we had no fleet worthy of the name. Mahan expounded the theory of sea power in the hope of turning the eyes of Americans towards the sea. In 1898 Dewey and Sampson showed that the Navy had not forgotten how to fight, but it was fortunate for the nation that the U. S. Navy was pitted against another navy that also had been neglected.
After Waterloo the nineteenth century was one of European and American expansion. British sea power was scarcely challenged.
The greatest manifestation of sea power’s usefulness was given in the American Civil War in the blockade of the Confederacy by the U. S. Navy. Russia and Great Britain had emerged as the strongest powers from the Napoleonic Wars; they expanded their territories, Russia by land, England by sea, without opposition except when their acquisitions converged. In 1853 the Crimean War showed that sea power had lost none of its effectiveness even when inefficiently used. Again, in 1878, Disraeli, boldly despatching the Mediterranean Fleet to the Marmora, halted Russia at the gate of Constantinople. But the greatest contribution of the British Fleet to the Empire was made without a sea battle during the Boer War. There had been a revival of British interest in the Royal Navy in the 1880’s which was increased by Mahan’s first book on sea power. When the Boer War began, British supremacy at sea was unquestioned. France, Germany, Russia, and Holland openly sympathized with “Oom” Paul, the Boer leader, but they looked on helplessly while the Royal Navy supplied and reinforced the Army and enabled it to redress its early defeats and add South Africa to the Empire.
In the nineteenth century there was none of the contemporary criticism of imperialism or expansion. Russia’s expansion by land substituted equally despotic but more efficient government in Asia. British occupations of backward or sparsely inhabited countries were obviously beneficial to the natives. And the British Foreign Office exercised control of the sea with moderation. Holland preserved her colonial empire, France added to hers, and Germany and Italy, after their unifications, acquired overseas territory. European rivalry was fierce, but the Concert of Six Great Powers, Great Britain, Russia, Germany, Austria, France, and Italy, usually could agree upon a common policy and eventually partitioned Africa without a European War. Great Britain not only did not abuse sea power, but after the Crimean War she voluntarily adhered to the Declaration of Paris that “The neutral flag covers enemy merchandise with the exception of contraband of war,” thereby surrendering a vital attribute of sea power.
This British concession was made by Palmerston, one of the most aggressive Prime Ministers, at the end of a successful war. It was not wrung from a defeated Empire. Many reasons have been given for this complete reversal of naval policy. None of them are even plausible. Probably forty years of peace had caused the British government and people to forget that they had saved themselves and overthrown Napoleon by the most ruthless exercise of their belligerent rights on the sea. In any event, in 1856 they obligingly abandoned their rights to please three great land powers, France, Russia, and Austria, that had never failed to exercise their powers on land with the utmost severity. Only Lord Derby opposed this concession when made. Not until 1862 did Disraeli apparently realize the injury done to British sea power. Subsequently J. S. Mill, Lord Salisbury, and Field Marshal Lord Roberts pointed out to their countrymen the limitations their government had placed upon the exercise of sea power during war.
Except for the Indian Mutiny, small frontier campaigns, and the Boer War, the British Empire was at peace until 1914. Like most other possessor races the British began to think they would never again be called upon to fight for their possessions. The government was ready to abandon more belligerent rights. In 1908-09 the Liberal Cabinet offered to abandon the principle of “contraband of war” altogether, “to limit the right of search in every way practicable,” and if other nations would surrender the right to seize contraband goods, His Majesty’s Government was willing to forego the right to “intercept the carriage of belligerent despatches and of persons in the services of the belligerents.” Control of the sea could scarcely be made more gentle and considerate.
Sir Edward Grey and Sir John Reid, afterwards Lord Loreburn, led the movement to abandon belligerent rights on the sea when Great Britain was the preponderant sea power. Loreburn admitted that “no operation of war inflicts less suffering than the capture of unarmed merchant vessels.” He urged the change,' not as a humanitarian but as a British advocate, because he feared that “if the present law prevails we (British) are not only liable to be ruined by a naval defeat; we are also liable to be ruined by a doubtful war.” Loreburn’s distrust of the ability of the navy led him to believe and to persuade many of his countrymen that it was wiser to trust the future of the British Isles and Empire to international agreements than to the Royal Navy. The lusty self-reliance of the Pitts had departed from Downing Street.
American statesmen and naval officers, who are now responsible for maintaining and directing the world’s most powerful fleet, should ponder the consequences of British policies since 1902. To halt the Russian advance in the Far East, the British Foreign Office negotiated an alliance with Japan. Russia was halted in Manchuria, but was also eliminated temporarily as a balancing factor in Europe. Did the British Empire benefit? No; Germany, relieved from any fear of Russia, increased her pressure on western Europe, openly bullied France, supported Austria in the Balkans, and hastened the construction of her fleet. Japan became the dominant power in the western Pacific. Did this experience teach British Ministers that it was wiser to depend upon their own strength, particularly upon their Navy? No; the Japanese alliance having boomeranged, Edward Grey immediately negotiated one with France and another with Russia. There was no difficulty in arranging the French alliance. Paris wanted to avoid increasing its Army and expected London to supply the deficiency; London wanted to avoid increasing its Navy and sought assistance from the French Navy in the Mediterranean. In 1907 Russia, not yet recovered from the Japanese war, joined to make the Triple Entente.
The German threat was sufficient to cause the three powers to join forces. On a map their combined territories were immense, but militarily they were weak and their governments were not willing to increase their individual strength. In 1912 Haldane, British Minister of War, warned Bethman-Holwegg that Britain would build two ships for every German—but the Cabinet would not provide the funds. On the contrary Lloyd-George, next to Asquith the most influential member of the Government, announced early in 1914 that the time had come to reduce expenditures on the Armed Forces as “the prospects of the world were never more peaceful.” When Field Marshal Kitchener became Minister of War he immediately began to increase the Army which eventually contained four million soldiers. Men and material that should have gone into the defense against U-boats were absorbed into the Army. By 1916 the Royal Navy was unable to cope with the undersea menace. And the British soldiers were in danger of having their communications with the home country cut and the British Isles were in peril from the submarine blockade. Jellicoe told Sims early in 1917 of the imminent danger threatening the United Kingdom.
The magnificent behavior of the British people during World War I and II proves their willingness to defend the Empire. Inadequate leaders since 1902 are mainly responsible for the subsequent perils to the Empire and the unnecessary suffering of the citizens. In 1906 British statesmen and some Army and a few naval officers succumbed to the French argument that if Great Britain permitted the Germans to occupy the French Channel ports, the British Isles were doomed. Napoleon had controlled the western European seaboard for years and had failed to blockade or invade England. In World War II Hitler occupied France and Belgium and Holland. He had a numerically superior air force as well as army. He was equally unable to blockade or invade England. Yet this imaginary peril that resulted from a lack of confidence in the fleet was allowed to divert forces from the Royal Navy to the Army and actually endangered the Empire.[1]
This summary account of sea power indicates that for over four thousand years it has been a vital, often decisive, influence in the rise and fall of nations. It has served small as well as large nations; it has delayed the fall and hastened the rise of Empires. A potential if often dormant force, it has always been ready to serve statesmen astute enough to avail themselves of it. It manifests its strength by protecting friendly and destroying hostile seaborne trade, and by landing armies, if available, on enemy territory. Its great value has been recognized for centuries; the desire to attain it has caused many wars. Its possession benefits its possessor in peace and in war; but in peace it protects the seaborne trade of the world and is a boon to all mankind. In World War II sea power attained its greatest strength; control of the sea and control of the air over fleets and certain strategic sea areas enabled Great Britain to resist Hitler at the peak of Nazi power; permitted Japan to over-run the western Pacific with a sea-air-land campaign of only three months; and eventually allowed the stronger U. S. Pacific Fleet to destroy the Japanese Navy and compel the Emperor to surrender unconditionally. Sea power in World War II surpassed its achievements in the Seven Years’ War and the Napoleonic Wars. New weapons and scientific inventions strengthened its control of the sea and extended its range over the land.
The main purpose of recalling the past is to obtain guidance for the future. Today the U. S. Navy, with its integrated Marine Corps, its aviation, and its fleet submarines, is the most powerful in the world. It succeeded Great Britain during a war when the two countries were allied to defeat the Axis nations; there is no reason for future rivalry between the Anglo-American Navies that together dominated the oceans. The two navies can continue to cooperate.
Militarily the United States should be regarded as an almost self-contained, continental island with friendly neighbors. Its Atlantic and Pacific seaboards are connected by the Panama Canal and linked with several transcontinental railroads. Overseas bases extend its frontiers; if they are fortified and maintained, all potential enemies will be kept at the maximum possible distance from our territory, which can only be attacked by air or sea. A preponderant Navy and Air Force will provide the greatest security possible to the nation. The Air Force and Navy will intercept many, probably most, of the attacking planes; some are bound to get through, perhaps carrying atomic bombs.
The Army, in addition to furnishing garrisons for overseas bases, should accept full responsibility for the local defenses of important cities and industrial areas. Ground troops with tactical air forces attached can make it increasingly difficult for planes to reach vital areas. By coordinating the efforts of all defense agencies the Army can restore the facilities or evacuate the survivors of bombed areas. England, Japan, and Germany carried on their war industries in spite of massed air attacks. The United States can do the same. To survive, a nation must be able to absorb as well as deliver blows. Of all nations the United States has the least to fear in a total war during the atomic era; in fact, as war becomes more scientific, its relative strength increases.
The real danger to the United States is not the atom bomb nor any weapon in the laboratory or floating around in the mind of an inventor. Proper preparation can meet them all. The peril, and it is a real peril, arises from the national characteristic of neglecting to prepare for war in time of peace. No longer can Americans depend upon creating an air or naval fleet after war begins. On the other hand, if Congress provides the funds, American scientists and industry can provide, and the High Command can direct, the land, sea, and air forces. The war making ability of nations is relative; if Americans give heed to their defense and insist that Congress make sufficient appropriations, the Navy can control the sea and keep potential enemies at the greatest distance. Absolute security for every part of the United States every minute is impossible. But if Americans maintain their Armed Forces and depend for their security primarily upon their own strength and stamina, they can not only face the future with confidence but they can make a major contribution to the peace of the world.
A graduate of the Naval Academy in 1902, Captain Puleston saw continuous duty until his retirement in 1937. Recalled to active duty with World War II, he served with the Foreign Economic Administration. He has won wide recognition as a naval historian and analyst with such books as the Life of Mahan, and The Dardanelles Expedition.
[1] A detailed account of British policy and grand strategy is given in Sea Power, by Captain Grenfel, who wrote under the pen name “T-124.” He reveals how completely the British Foreign Office and Committee of Imperial Defense departed from the policy and strategy that had created the Empire.