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Bible Encyclopedias
Sea-Power
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
or This term is used to indicate two distinct, though cognate, things. The affinity of these two and the indiscriminate manner in which the term has been applied to each have tended to obscure its real signifi of the cance. The obscurity has been deepened by the Y P Y frequency with which the term has been confounded with the old phrase, " Sovereignty of the sea," and the still current expression, " Command of the sea " ( vide SEA, Command Of). A discussion - etymological, or even archaeological in character - of the term must be undertaken as an introduction to the explanation of its now generally accepted meaning. It is one of those compound words in which a Teutonic and a Latin (or Romance) element are combined, and which are easily formed and become widely current when the sea is concerned. Of such are " sea-coast," " sea-forces " (the " landand seaforces " used to be a common designation of what we now call the " Army and Navy "); " sea-service," " sea-serpent " and " sea-officer " (now superseded by " naval officer "). The term in one form is as old as the 15th century. Edward III., in commemoration of the naval victory of Sluys, coined gold " nobles " which bore on one side his effigy " crowned, standing in a large ship, holding in one hand a sword and in the other a shield." An anonymous poet, who wrote in the reign of Henry VI., says of this coin: " For four things our noble showeth to me, King, ship and sword, and power of the sea." Even in its present form the term is not of very recent date. Grote ( Hist. of Greece, v. 67, published in 1849, but with preface dated 1848) speaks of " the conversion of Athens from a land-power into a sea-power." In a lecture published in 1883, but probably delivered earlier, the late Sir J. R. Seeley says that " commerce was swept out of the Mediterranean by the besom of the Turkish sea-power " ( Expansion of England, p. 89). The term also occurred in the 9th edition of this Encyclopaedia, vol. xviii. p. 574, in the article " Persia," where we are told that Themistocles was " the founder of the Attic sea-power." The sense in which the term is used differs in these extracts. In the first it means what we generally call a " naval power "- that is to say, a state having a considerable navy in contradistinction to a " military power," a state with a considerable army but only a relatively small navy. In this sense there are many old uses of the phrase. In the last two extracts it means all the elements of the naval strength of the state referred to; and this is the meaning that is now generally, and is likely to be exclusively, attached to the term owing to the brilliant way in which it has been elucidated by Captain A. T. Mahan of the United States Navy.
The double use of the term is common in German, though in that language both parts of the compound now in use are Teutonic. One instance out of many may be cited from the historian Adolf Holm (Griechische Geschichte, Berlin, 1889). He says (ii. p. 37) that Athens, being in possession of a good naval port, could become " eine bedeutende Seemacht," i.e. an important naval power. He also says (ii. p. 91) that Gelon of Syracuse, besides a large army ( Heer ), had " eine bedeutende Seemacht," meaning a considerable navy. The term, in the first of the two senses, is old in German, as appears from the following, extracted from Zedler's Grosses Universal Lexicon, vol. xxxvi. (Leipzig and Halle, 1743); " Seemachten, Seepotenzen; Latin, summae potestates maxi potentes." " Seepotenzen " is probably quite obsolete now. It is interesting as showing that German no more abhors Teuto-Latin or Teuto-Romance compounds than English. We may note, as a proof of the indeterminate meaning of the expression until his own epoch-marking works had appeared, that Mahan himself in his earliest book, Influence of Sea-power on History (1890), used it in both senses. He says (p. 35), " The Spanish Netherlands ceased to be a sea-power." He alludes (p. 42) to the development of a nation as a " sea-power," and (p. 43) to the inferiority of the Confederate States " as a sea-power." Also (p. 225) he remarks of the war of the Spanish Succession that " before it England was one of the sea-powers, after it she was the sea-power without any second." In all these passages, as appears from the use of the indefinite article, what is meant is a naval power, or a state in possession of a strong navy. The other meaning of the term forms the general subject of Mahan's writings. In his earlier works Mahan writes " sea power " as two words; but in a published letter of the 19th February 1897 he joins them with a hyphen, and defends this formation of the term and the sense in which he uses it. We may regard him as the virtual inventor of the term in its more diffused meaning, for - even if it had been employed by earlier writers in that sense - it is he beyond all question who has given it general currency. He has made it impossible for any one to treat of sea-power without frequent reference to his writings and conclusions.
There is something more than mere literary interest in the fact that the term in another language was used more than two thousand years ago. Before Mahan no historian - not even one of those who specially devoted themselves to the narration of naval occurrences - had evinced a more correct appreciation of the general principles of naval warfare than Thucydides. He alludes several times to the importance of getting command of the sea. Great Britain would have been saved some disasters and been less often in peril had British writers - taken as guides by the public - possessed the same grasp of the true principles of defence as Thucydides exhibited. One passage in his history is worth quoting. Brief as it is, it shows that on the subject of sea-power he was a predecessor of Mahan. In a speech in favour of prosecuting the war, which he puts in the mouth of Pericles, these words occur: of ,uiv yap obx g ovot y iiXArl y avrtXa13Eiv a/uaxcL, ( 3E Eart yr% Kai iv o'yrots Kai ear' 1j7rELpov . ,u ya yap OaXavvats Kparos. The last part of this extract, though often translated " command of the sea," or " dominion of the sea," really has the wider meaning of sea-power, the " power of the sea " of the old English poet above quoted. This wider meaning should be attached to certain passages in Herodotus (iii. in two places; v. 83), which have been generally interpreted " commanding the sea," or by the mere titular and honorific " having the dominion of the sea." One editor of Herodotus, Ch. F. Baehr, did, however, see exactly what was meant, for, with reference to the allusion to Polycrates, he says, classe maximum valuit. This is perhaps as exact a definition of sea-power as could be given in a sentence.
It is, however, impossible to give a definition which would be at the same time succinct and satisfactory. To say that " seapower " means the sum total of the various elements that go to make up the naval strength of a state would be in reality to beg the question. Mahan lays down the " principal conditions affecting the sea-power of `telly° nations," but he does not attempt to give a concise definition of it. Yet no one who has studied his works will find it difficult to understand what it indicates. Our present task is, within the necessarily restricted limits of an article in an encyclopaedia, to put readers in possession of the means of doing this. The by best, indeed - as Mahan has shown us - the only effective way of attaining this object is to treat the matter historically. Whatever date we may agree to assign to the formation of the term itself, the idea - as we have seen - is as old as history. It is not intended to give a condensed history of sea-power, but rather an analysis of the idea and what it contains, illustrating this analysis with examples from history ancient and modern. It is important to know that it is not something which originated in the middle of the 17th century, and having seriously affected history in the 8th, ceased to have weight till Captain Mahan appeared to comment on it in the last decade of the 19th. With a few masterly touches Mahan, in his brief allusion to the second Punic war, has illustrated its importance in the struggle between Rome and Carthage. What has to be shown is that the principles which he has laid down in that case, and in cases much more modern, are true and have been true always and everywhere. Until this is perceived there is much history which cannot be understood, and yet it is essential to the welfare of Great Britain as a maritime power that she should understand it thoroughly. Her failure to understand it has more than once brought her, if not to the verge of destruction, at any rate within a short distance of serious disaster.
The high antiquity of decisive naval campaigns is among the most interesting features of international conflicts. Nothwith- Early standing the much greater frequency of land wars, the course of history has been profoundly changed tions of more often by contests on the water. That this has not - received the notice it deserved is true, and Mahan tells us why. " Historians generally, " he says, " have been unfamiliar with the conditions of the sea, having as to it neither special interest nor special knowledge; and the profound determining influence of maritime strength on great issues has consequently been overlooked. " Moralizing on that which might have been is admittedly a sterile process; but it is sometimes necessary to point, if only by way of illustration, to a possible alternative. As in modern times the fate of India and the fate of North America were determined by sea-power, so also at a very remote epoch sea-power decided whether or not Hellenic colonization was to take root in; and Hellenic culture to dominate, central and northern Italy as it dominated southern Italy, where traces of it are extant to this day. A moment's consideration will enable us to see how different the history of the world would have been had a Hellenized city grown and prospered on the Seven Hills. Before the Tarquins were driven out of Rome a Phocaean fleet was encountered (537 B.e.) off Corsica by a combined force of Etruscans and Phoenicians, and was so handled that the Phocaeans abandoned the island and settled on the coast of Lucania (Mommsen, Hist. Rome, English trans. i. p. 1 53). The enterprise of their navigators had built up for the Phoenician cities and their great off-shoot Carthage, a sea-power which enabled them to gain the practical sovereignty of the sea to the west of Sardinia and Sicily. The control of these waters was the object of prolonged and memorable struggles, for on it - as the result showed - depended the empire of the world. From very remote times the consolidation and expansion, from within outwards, of great continental states have had serious consequences for mankind when they were accompanied by the acquisition of a coast-line and the absorption of a maritime population. We shall find that the process loses none of its importance in recent years. " The ancient empires, " says the historian of Greece, Ernst Curtius, " as long as no foreign elements had intruded into them, had an invincible horror of the water." When the condition, which Curtius notices in parentheses, arose the " horror " disappeared. There is something highly significant in the uniformity of the efforts of Assyria, Egypt, Babylon and Persia to get possession of the maritime resources of Phoenicia. Our own immediate posterity will perhaps have to reckon with the results of similar efforts in our own day. It is this which gives a living interest to even the very ancient history of sea-power, and makes the study of it of great practical importance to us now. We shall see, as we go on, how the phenomena connected with it reappear with striking regularity in successive periods. Looked at in this light the great conflicts of former ages are full of useful, indeed necessary, instruction.
In the first and greatest of the contests waged by the nations of the East against Europe - the Persian wars - sea-power was the governing factor. Until Persia had expanded to the shores of the Levant the European Greeks had little to fear from the ambition of the great king. The conquest of Egypt' by Cambyses had shown how formidable that ambition could be when supported by an efficient navy. With the aid of the naval forces of the Phoenician cities the Persian invasion of Greece was rendered comparatively easy. It was the naval contingents from Phoenicia which crushed the Ionian revolt. The expedition of Mardonius, and still more that of Datis and Artaphernes, had indicated the danger threatening Greece when the master of a great army was likewise the master of a great navy. Their defeat at Marathon was not likely to, and as a matter of fact did not, discourage the Persians from further attempts at aggression. As the advance of Cambyses into Egypt had been flanked by a fleet, so also was that of Xerxes into Greece. By the good fortune sometimes vouchsafed to a people, which, owing to its obstinate opposition to, or neglect of, a wise policy, scarcely deserves it, there appeared at Athens an influential citizen who understood all that was meant by the term sea-power. Themistocles saw more clearly than any of his contemporaries that, to enable Athens to play a leading part in the Hellenic world, she needed above all things a strong navy. " He had already in his eye the battle-field of the future." He felt sure that the Persians would come back, and come with such. forces that resistance in the open field would be out of the question. One scene of action remained - the sea. Persuaded by him the Athenians increased their navy, so that of the 271 vessels comprising the Greek fleet at Artemisium, 147 had been provided by Athens, which also sent a large reinforcement after the first action. Though no one has ever surpassed Themistocles in the faculty of correctly estimating the importance of sea-power, it was understood by Xerxes as clearly as by him that the issue of the war depended upon naval operations. The arrangements made under the Persian monarch's direction, and his very personal movements, show that this was his view. He felt, and probably expressed the feeling, exactly as - in the war of American Independence - Washington did in the words, " Whatever efforts are made by the land armies, the navy must have the casting vote in the present contest." The decisive event was the naval action of Salamis. To have made certain of success, the Persians should have first obtained a command of the Aegean, as complete for all practical purposes as the French and English had of the sea generally in the war against Russia of 1854-56. The Persian sea-power was not equal to the task. The fleet of the great king was numerically stronger than that of the Greek allies; but it has been proved many times that naval efficiency does not depend on numerical superiority alone. The choice sections of the Persian fleet were the contingents of the Ionians and Phoenicians. The former were half-hearted or disaffected; while the latter were, at best, not superior in skill, experience, and valour to the Greek sailors. At Salamis Greece was saved not only from the ambition and vengeance of Xerxes, but also and for many centuries from oppression by an Oriental conqueror. Persia did not succeed against the Greeks, not because she had no sea-power, but because her sea-power, artificially built up, was inferior to that which was a natural element of the vitality of her foes. Ionia was lost and Greece in the end enslaved, because the quarrels of Greeks with Greeks led to the ruin of their naval states.
The Peloponnesian was largely a naval war. The confidence of the Athenians in their sea-power had a great deal to do with its outbreak. The immediate occasion of the hostilities, which in time involved so many states, was the opportunity offered by the conflict between Corinth and Corcyra of increasing the sea-power of Athens. Hitherto the Athenian naval predominance had been virtually confined to the Aegean Sea. The Corcyraean envoy, who pleaded for help at Athens, dwelt upon the advantage to be derived by the Athenians from alliance with a naval state occupying an important situation " with respect to the western regions towards which the views of the Athenians had for some time been directed" (Thirlwall, Hist. Greece, iii. 96). It was the " weapon of her sea-power," to adopt Mahan's phrase, that enabled Athens to maintain the great conflict in which she was engaged. Repeated invasions of her territory, the ravages of disease among her people and the rising disaffection of her allies had been more than made up for by her predominance on the water. The scale of the subsequent Syracusan expedition showed how vigorous Athens still was down to the interruption of the war by the peace of Nicias. The great expedition just mentioned overtaxed her strength. Its failure brought about the ruin of the state. It was held by contemporaries, and has been held in our own day, that the Athenian defeat at Syracuse was due to the omission of the government at home to keep the force in Sicily properly supplied and reinforced. This explanation of failure is given in all ages, and should always be suspected. The friends of unsuccessful generals and admirals always offer it, being sure of the support of the political opponents of the administration. After the despatch of the supporting expedition under Demosthenes and Eurymedon no further great reinforcement, as Nicias admitted, was possible. The weakness of Athens was in the character of the men who swayed the popular assemblies and held high commands. A people which remembered the administration of a Pericles, and yet allowed a Cleon or an Alcibiades to direct its naval and military policy, courted defeat. Nicias, notwithstanding the possession of high qualities, lacked the supreme virtue of a commander - firm resolution. He dared not face the obloquy consequent on withdrawal from an enterprise on which the popular hopes had been fixed; and therefore he allowed a reverse to be converted into an overwhelming disaster. " The complete ruin of Athens had appeared, both to her enemies and to herself, impending and irreparable. But so astonishing, so rapid and so energetic had been her rally, that (a year after Syracuse) she was found again carrying on a terrible struggle " (Grote, Hist. Greece, v. p. 354). Nevertheless her sea-power had indeed been ruined at Syracuse. Now she could wage war only " with impaired resources and on a purely defensive system." Even before Arginusae, it was seen that " superiority of nautical skill had passed to the Peloponnesians and their allies " ( ibid. P. 503).
The great, occasionally interrupted, and prolonged contest between Rome and Carthage was a sustained effort on the part of one to gain and of the other to keep the control of the western Mediterranean. So completely had that control been exercised by Carthage, that she had anticipated the Spanish commercial policy in America. The Romans were precluded by treaties from trading with the Carthaginian territories in Hispania, Africa and Sardinia. Rome, as Mommsen tells us, " was from the first a maritime city and, in the period of its vigour, never was so foolish or so untrue to its ancient traditions as wholly to neglect its war marine and to desire to be a mere continental power." It may be that it was lust of wealth rather than lust of dominion that first promoted a trial of strength with Carthage. The vision of universal empire could hardly as yet have formed itself in the imagination of a single Roman. The area of Phoenician maritime commerce was vast enough both to excite jealousy and to offer vulnerable points to the cupidity of rivals. It is probable that the modern estimate of the sea-power of Carthage is much exaggerated. It was great by comparison, and of course overwhelmingly great when there were none but insignificant competitors to challenge it. Mommsen holds that, in the 4th and 5th centuries after the foundation of Rome, " the two main competitors for the dominion of the Western waters " were Carthage and Syracuse. " Carthage," he says, " had the preponderance, and Syracuse sank more and more into a second-rate naval power. The maritime importance of the Etruscans was wholly gone.. .. Rome itself was not exempt from the same fate; its own waters were likewise commanded by foreign fleets." The Romans were for a long time too much occupied at home to take much interest in Medi terranean matters. The position of the Carthaginians in the western basin of the Mediterranean was very like that of the Portuguese long afterwards in India. The latter kept within reach of the sea; " nor did their rule ever extend a day's march from their ships " (R. S. Whiteway, Rise of the Portuguese Power in India. Westminster, 188 9;; p. 12). " The Carthaginians in Spain," says Mommsen, " made no effort to acquire the interior from the warlike native nations; they were content with the possession of the mines and of stations for traffic and for shell and other fisheries." Allowance being made for the numbers of the classes engaged in administration, commerce and supervision, it is nearly certain that Carthage could not furnish the crews required by both a great war-navy and a great mercantile marine. No one is surprised on finding that the land-forces of Carthage were composed largely of alien mercenaries. We have several examples from which we can infer a parallel, if not an identical, condition of her maritime resources. How, then, was the great Carthaginian carrying-trade provided for? The experience of more than one country will enable us to answer this question. The ocean trade of those off-shoots or dependencies of the United Kingdom, viz. the United States, Australasia and India, is largely or chiefly conducted by shipping of the " old country." So that of Carthage was largely conducted by old Phoenicians. These may have obtained a " Carthaginian Register," or the contemporary equivalent; but they could not all have been purely Carthaginian or Liby-Phoenician. This must have been the case even more with the war-navy. British India for a considerable time possessed a real, and indeed highly efficient navy; but it was officered entirely and manned almost entirely by men from the old country. Moreover, it was small. The wealth of India would have sufficed to furnish a larger material element; but, as the country could not supply the personnel, it would have been absurd to speak of the sea-power of India apart from that of England. As soon as the Romans chose to make the most of their natural resources the maritime predominance of Carthage was doomed. The artificial basis of the latter's sea-power would not enable it to hold out against serious and persistent assaults. Unless this is perceived, it is impossible to understand the story of the Punic Wars. Judged by every visible sign of strength, Carthage, the richer, the more enterprising, ethnically the more predominant among her neighbours, and apparently the more nautical, seemed sure to win in the great struggle with Rome which, by the conditions of the case, was to be waged largely on the water. Yet those who had watched the struggles of the Punic city with the Sicilian Greeks, and especially that with Agathocles, must have seen reason to cherish doubts concerning her naval strength. It was an anticipation of the case of Spain in the age of Philip II. As the great Elizabethan seamen discerned the defects of the Spanish naval establishment, so men at Rome discerned those of the Carthaginian. Dates in connexion with this are of great significance. A comprehensive measure, with the object of " rescuing their marine from its condition of impotence " was taken by the Romans in the year 267 B.C. Four quaestores classici - in modern naval English we may perhaps call them port-admirals - were nominated, and one was stationed at each of four ports. The objects of the Roman Senate, so Mommsen tells us, were very obvious. They were " to recover their independence by sea, to cut off the maritime communications of Tarentum, to close the Adriatic against fleets coming from Epirus, and to emancipate themselves from Carthaginian supremacy." Four years afterwards the first Punic War began. It was, and had to be, largely a naval contest. The Romans waged it with varying fortune, but in the end triumphed by means of their sea-power. The victory of Catulus over the Carthaginian fleet off the Aegadian Islands decided the war and left to the Romans the possession of Sicily and the power of possessing themselves of Sardinia and Corsica. It would be an interesting and perhaps not barren investigation to inquire to what extent the decline of the mother states of Phoenicia, consequent on the campaigns of Alexander the Great, had helped to enfeeble the naval efficiency of the Carthaginian defences. One thing was certain. Carthage had now met with a rival endowed with natural maritime resources greater than her own. That rival also contained citizens who understood the true importance of sea-power. " With a statesmanlike sagacity from which succeeding generations might have drawn a lesson, the leading men of the Roman Commonwealth perceived that all their coast fortifications and coast garrisons would prove inadequate unless the war-marine of the state were again placed on a footing that should command respect " (Mommsen, i. 427). It is a gloomy reflection that the leading men of the United Kingdom could not see this in 1860. A thorough comprehension of the events of the first Punic War enables us to solve what, until Mahan wrote, had been one of the standing enigmas of history, viz. Hannibal's invasion of Italy by land instead of by sea in the second Punic War. Mahan's masterly examination of this question has set at rest all doubts as to the reason of Hannibal's action ( Influence on Hist. pp. 13-20. The naval predominance in the western basin of the Mediterranean acquired by Rome had never been lost. Though modern historians, even those belonging to a maritime country, may have failed to perceive it, the Carthaginians knew well enough that the Romans were too strong for them on the sea. Though other forces co-operated to bring about the defeat of Carthage in the second Punic War, the Roman navy, as Mahan demonstrates, was the most important. As a navy, he tells us in words like those already quoted, " acts on an element strange to most writers, as its members have been from time immemorial a strange race apart, without prophets of their own, neither themselves nor their calling understood, its immense determining influence on the history of that era, and consequently upon the history of the world, has been overlooked." The attainment of all but universal dominion by Rome was now only a question of time. " The annihilation of the Carthaginian fleet had made the Romans masters of the sea " (Schmitz, Hist. Rome, p. 256). A lodgment had already been gained in Illyricum, and countries farther east were before long to be reduced to submission. A glance at the map will show that to effect this the command of the eastern basin of the Mediterranean, like that of the western, must be secured by the Romans. The old historic navies of the Greek and Phoenician states had declined. One considerable naval force there was which, though it could not have prevented, was strong enough to have delayed the Roman progress eastwards. This force belonged to Rhodes, which in the years immediately following the close of the second Punic War reached its highest point as a naval power (C. Torr, Rhodes in Ancient Times, p. 40). Far from trying to obstruct the advance of the Romans the Rhodian fleet helped it. Hannibal, in his exile, saw the necessity of being strong on the sea if the East was to be saved from the grasp of his hereditary foe; but the resources of Antiochus, even with the mighty cooperation of Hannibal, were insufficient. In a later and more often quoted struggle between East and West - that which was decided at Actium - sea-power was again seen to " have the casting vote." When the whole of the Mediterranean coasts became part of a single state the importance of the navy was naturally diminished; but in the struggles within the declining empire it rose again at times. The contest of the Vandal Genseric with Majorian and the African expedition of Belisarius - not to mention others - were largely influenced by the naval operations (Gibbon, Decline and Fall, chaps. xxxvi., xli.).
A decisive event, the Mahommedan conquest of northern Africa from Egypt westwards, is unintelligible until it is seen how great a part sea-power played in effecting it. E westward Purely land expeditions, or expeditions but slightly supported from the sea, had ended in failure. The emperor at Constantinople still had at his disposal well as by land, that the Saracenic dominion was definitely established. It has been generally assumed that the Arabian conquerors who, within a few years of his death, spread the faith of Mahomet over vast regions, belonged to an essentially non-maritime race; and little or no stress has been laid on the extent to which they relied on naval support in prosecuting their conquests. In parts of Arabia, however, maritime enterprise was far from non-existent; and when the Mahommedan empire had extended outwards from Mecca and Medina till it embraced the coasts of various seas, the consequences to the neighbouring states were as serious as the rule above mentioned would lead us to expect that they would be. " With the conquest of Syria and Egypt a long stretch of sea-board had come into the Saracenic power; and the creation and maintenance of a navy for the protection of the maritime ports as well as for meeting the enemy became a matter of vital importance. Great attention was paid to the manning and equipment of the fleet " (Amir Ali, Syed, Short Hist. Saracens, p. 442). At first the fleet was manned by sailors drawn from the Phoenician towns, where nautical energy was not yet quite extinct; and later the crews were recruited from Syria, Egypt and the coasts of Asia Minor. Ships were built at most of the Syrian and Egyptian ports, and " also at Obolla and Bushire on the Persian Gulf," whilst the mercantile marine and maritime trade were fostered and encouraged. The sea-power thus created was largely artificial. It drooped - as in similar cases - when the special encouragement was withdrawn. " In the days of Arabian energy," says Hallam, " Constantinople was twice, in 668 and 716, attacked by great naval armaments." The same authority believes that the abandonment of such maritime enterprises by the Saracens may be attributed to the removal of the capital from Damascus to Bagdad. The removal indicated a lessened interest in the affairs of the Mediterranean Sea, which was now left by the administration far behind. " The Greeks in their turn determined to dispute the command of the sea," with the result that in the middle of the Toth century their empire was far more secure from its enemies than under the first successors of Heraclius." Not only was the fall of the empire, by a rational reliance on sea-power, postponed for centuries, but also much that had been lost was regained. " At the close of the Toth century the emperors of Constantinople possessed the best and greatest part " of southern Italy, part of Sicily, the whole of what is now called the Balkan Peninsula, Asia Minor, with some parts of Syria and Armenia (Hallam, chap. vi.; Gibbon, chap. li.).
Neglect of sea-power by those who can be reached by sea brings its own punishment. Whether neglected or not, if it is an artificial creation it is nearly sure to disappoint those who wield it when it encounters a rival power of natural growth. How was it possible for the Crusaders, in their various expeditions, to achieve even the transient success that occasionally crowned their efforts? How did the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem contrive to exist for more than three-quarters of a century ? Why did the Crusades more and more become maritime expeditions? The answer to these questions is to be found in the decline of the Mahommedan naval defences and the rising enterprise of the seafaring people of the West. Venetians, Pisans and Genoese transported crusading forces, kept open the communications of the places held by the Christians and hampered the operations of the infidels. Even the great Saladin failed to discern the important alteration of conditions. This is evident when we look at the efforts of the Christians to regain the lost kingdom. Saladin " forgot that the safety of Phoenicia lay in immunity from naval incursions, and that no victory on land could ensure him against an influx from beyond the sea " (Amir Ali, Syed, pp. 359-3 60) . Not only were the Crusaders helped by the fleets of the maritime republics of Italy, they also received reinforcements by sea from western Europe and England, on the " arrival of Malik Ankiltar [Richard Coeur de ] with twenty shiploads of fighting men and munitions of war." Participation in the Crusades was not a solitary proof of the - a fleet capable of keeping open the communications with his African province. It took the Saracens half a century (A.D. 647-698) to win " their way along the coast of Africa as far as the Pillars of Hercules " (Hallam, Mid. Ages, chap. vi.); and, as Gibbon tells us, it was not till the Commander of the Faithful had prepared a great expedition, this time by sea as of Italian ments of the Moguls and the confusion consequent republics. g q on the rise of the Ottomans. However that may have been, the naval strength of those Italian states was great absolutely as well as relatively. Sismondi, speaking of Venice, Pisa and Genoa, towards the end of the firth century, says " these three cities had more vessels on the Mediterranean than the whole of Christendom besides " ( Ital. Republics, English ed. p. 29). Dealing with a period two centuries later, he declares it " difficult to comprehend how two simple cities could put to sea such prodigious fleets as those of Pisa and Genoa." The difficulty disappears when we have Mahan's explanation. The maritime republics of Italy - like Athens and Rhodes in ancient, Catalonia in medieval and England and the Netherlands in more modern times - were "peculiariy well fitted, by situation and resources, for the control of the sea by both war and commerce." As far as the western Mediterranean was concerned, Genoa and Pisa had given early proofs of their maritime energy, and fixed themselves in succession to the Saracens, in the Balearic Isles, Sardinia and Corsica. Sea-power was the Themistoclean instrument with which they made a small state into a great one.
A fertile source of dispute between states is the acquisition of territory beyond sea. As others have done before and since, the maritime republics of Italy quarrelled over this. Seapower seemed, like Saturn, to devour its own children. In 1284, in a great sea-fight off Meloria, the Pisans were defeated by the Genoese with heavy loss, which, as Sismondi states, " ruined the maritime power " of the former. From that time Genoa, transferring her activity to the Levant, became the rival of Venice. The fleets of the two cities in 1298 met near Cyprus in an encounter, said to be accidental, that began " a terrible war which for seven years stained the Mediterranean with blood and consumed immense wealth." In the next century the two republics, " irritated by commercial quarrels " - like the English and Dutch afterwards - were again at war in the Levant. Sometimes one side, sometimes the other was victorious; but the contest was exhausting to both, and especially to Venice. Within a quarter of a century they were at war again. Hostilities lasted till the Genoese met with the crushing defeat of Chioggia. " From this time," says Hallam, " Genoa never commanded the ocean with such navies as before; her commerce gradually went into decay; and the 15th century, the most splendid in the annals of Venice, is till recent times the most ignominious in those of Genoa." Venice seemed now to have no naval rival, and had no fear that any one could forbid the ceremony in which the Doge, standing in the bows of the Bucentaur, cast a ring into the Adriatic with the words, " Desponsamus te, mare, in signum veri perpetuique dominii." The result of the combats at Chioggia, though fatal to it in the long run, did not at once destroy the naval importance of Genoa. A remarkable characteristic of sea-power is the delusive manner in which it appears to revive after a great defeat. The Persian navy occasionally made a brave show afterwards; but in reality it had received at Salamis a mortal wound. Athens seemed strong enough on the sea after the catastrophe of Syracuse; but, as already stated, her naval power had been given there a check from which it never completely recovered. The navy of Carthage had had similar experience; and, in later ages, the power of the Turks was broken at Lepanto and that of Spain at Gravelines notwithstanding the deceptive appearances afterwards. Venice was soon confronted on the sea by a new rival. The Turkish naval historian, Haji Khalifeh ( Maritime wars of the Turks, Mitchell's trans. p. 12), tells us that, " After the taking of Constantinople, when they [the Ottomans] spread their conquests over land and sea, it became necessary to build ships and make armaments in order to subdue the fortresses and castles on the Rumelian and Anatolian shores, and in the islands of the Mediterranean." Mahommed II. established a great naval arsenal at Constanti nople. In 1470 the Turks, "for the first time, equipped a fleet, with which they drove that of the Venetians out of the Grecian seas" (Sismondi, p. 256). The Turkish wars of Venice lasted a long time. In that which ended in 1 503 the decline of the Venetian naval power was obvious. " The Mussulmans had made progress in naval discipline; The Venetian fleet could no longer cope with theirs. " Henceforward it was as an allied contingent of other navies that that of Venice was regarded as important. Dyer ( Hist. Europe, i. p. 85) quotes a striking passage from a letter of Aeneas Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius II., in which the writer affirms that, " if the Venetians are defeated, Christendom will not control the sea any longer; for neither the Catalans nor the Genoese, without the Venetians, are equal to the Turks." The last-named people, indeed, exemplified once more the rule that a military state expanding to the sea and absorbing older maritime populations becomes a serious menace to Sea-power its neighbours. Even in the fi 5th century Mahommed and pro- II. had made an attack on Southern Italy; but his gress of sea-power was not equal to the undertaking. Suley- the Turks. man the Magnificent directed the Ottoman forces towards the west. With admirable strategic insight he conquered Rhodes, and thus freed himself from the danger of a hostile force on his flank. "The centenary of the conquest of Constantinople was past, and the Turk had developed a great naval power besides annexing Egypt and Syria " (Seeley, British Policy, i. 143). The Turkish fleets, under such leaders as Khairad-din Barbarossa), Piale and Dragut, seemed to command the Mediterranean, including its western basin; but the repulse at Malta in 1565 was a serious check, and the defeat at Lepanto in 1571 virtually put an end to the prospect of Turkish maritime dominion. The predominance of Portugal in the Indian Ocean in the early part of the 16th century had seriously diminished the Ottoman resources. The wealth derived from the trade in that ocean, the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea had supplied the Mahommedans with the sinews of war, and had enabled them to contend with success against the Christians in Europe. "The main artery had been cut when the Portuguese took up the challenge of the Mahommedan merchants of Calicut, and swept their ships from the ocean" (Whiteway, p. 2). The sea-power of Portugal wisely employed had exercised a great, though unperceived influence. Though enfeebled and diminishing, the Turkish navy was still able to act with some effect in the 17th century. Nevertheless, the sea-power of the Turks ceased to count as a factor of importance in the relations between great states.
In the meantime the state which had a leading share in winning the victory of Lepanto had been growing up in the West. Before the union of its crown with that of Castile and the Spanish formation of the Spanish monarchy, Aragon had been sea-power, expanding till it reached the sea. It was united with Catalonia, Catalonia in the 12th century, and it conquered C. Valencia in the firth. Its long line of coast opened the way to an extensive and flourishing commerce; and an enterprising navy indemnified the nation for the scantiness of its territory at home by the important foreign conquests of Sardinia, Sicily, Naples and the Balearic Isles. Among the maritime states of the Mediterranean Catalonia had been conspicuous. She was to the Iberian Peninsula much what Phoenicia had been to Syria. The Catalan navy had disputed the empire of the Mediterranean with the fleets of Pisa and Genoa. The incorporation of Catalonia with Aragon added greatly to the strength of that kingdom. The Aragonese kings were wise enough to understand and liberal enough to foster the maritime interests of their new possessions (Prescott, Ferdinand and Isabella, Introd. sects. i., ii.). Their French and Italian neighbours were to feel, before long, the effect of this policy; and, when the Spanish monarchy had been consolidated, it was felt not only by them, but by others also. The more Spanish dominion was extended in Italy the more were the naval resources at the command of Spain augmented. Genoa became " Spain's water-gate to Italy.... Henceforth the Spanish crown found in the Dorias its admirals; importance of the naval states of Italy. That they had been able to act effectively in the Levant, may have been in some measure due to the weakening of the Mohammedans by Sea-power the disintegration of the Seljukian power, the move their squadron was permanently hired to the kings of Spain." Spanish supremacy at sea was established at the expense of France (G. W. Prothero, in M. Hume's Spain 1 4791 7 88 , p. 65). The acquisition of a vast domain in the New World had greatly developed the maritime activity of Castile, and Spain was as formidable on the ocean as in the Mediterranean. After Portugal had been annexed the naval forces of that country were added to the Spanish, and the great port of Lisbon became available as a place of equipment and as an additional base of operations for oceanic campaigns. The fusion of Spain and Portugal, says Seeley, " produced a single State of unlimited maritime dominion.. .. Henceforth the whole New World belonged exclusively to Spain. " The story of the tremendous catastrophe - the defeat of the Armada - by which the decline of this dominion was heralded is well known. It is memorable, not only because of the harm it did to Spain, but also because it revealed the rise of another claimant to maritime pre-eminence - the English nation. The effects of the catastrophe were not at once visible. Spain still continued to look like the greatest power in the world; and, though the English seamen were seen to be something better than adventurous pirates - a character suggested by some of their contemporary exploits - few could have comprehended that they were engaged in building up what was to be a sea-power greater than any known to history. They were carrying forward, not beginning, the building of this. " England," says Sir J. K. Laughton, " had always believed in her naval power, had always claimed the sovereignty of the Narrow Seas; and more than two hundred years before Elizabeth came to the throne, Edward III. had testified to his sense of its importance by ordering a gold coinage bearing a device showing the armed strength and sovereignty of England based on the sea " ( Armada, Introd.). It is impossible to make intelligible the course of the many wars which the English waged with the French in the middle ages unless the true naval position of the former is rightly appreciated. Why were Crecy, Poitiers, Agincourt - not to mention other combats - fought, not on English, but on continental soil ? Why, during the so-called " Hundred Years' War," was England in reality the invader and not the invaded? We of the present generation are at last aware of the significance of naval defence, and know that, if properly utilized, it is the best security against invasion that a sea-surrounded state can enjoy. It is not, however, commonly remembered that the same condition of security existed and was properly valued in medieval times. The battle of Sluys in 1340 rendered invasion of England as impracticable as did that of La Hogue in 1692, that of Quiberon Bay in 175 9 and that of Trafalgar in 1805; and it permitted, as did those battles, the transport of troops to the continent to support Great Britain's allies in wars which, had she not been strong at sea, would have been waged on the soil of her country. Her early continental wars, therefore, are proofs of the long-established efficiency of her naval defences. Notwithstanding the greater attention now paid to naval affairs, it is doubtful if Great Britain even yet recognizes the extent to which her security depends upon a good fleet as fully as her ancestors did seven centuries ago. The narrative of pre-Elizabethan campaigns is interesting merely as a story; and, when told - as, for instance, D. Hannay has told it in the introductory chapters of his Short History of the Royal Navy - it will be found instructive and worthy of careful study at the present day. Each of the principal events in England's early naval campaigns may be taken as an illustration of the idea conveyed by the term " sea-power, " and of the accuracy with which its meaning was apprehended at the time. To take a very early case, we may cite the defeat of Eustace the Monk (see Dover: Battle of ) by Hubert de Burgh in 1217. Reinforcements and supplies had been collected at Calais for conveyance to the army of Prince Louis of France and the rebel barons who had been defeated at Lincoln. The reinforcements tried to cross the Channel under the escort of a fleet commanded by Eustace. Hubert de Burgh, who had stoutly held Dover for King John, and was faithful to the young Henry III., heard of XXIV. 18 a the enemy's movements. " If these people land," said he, " England is lost; let us therefore boldly meet them." He reasoned in almost the same words as Raleigh about four centuries afterwards, and undoubtedly " had grasped the true principles of the defence of England. " He put to sea and defeated his opponent. The fleet on which Prince Louis and the rebellious barons had counted was destroyed; and with it their enterprise. " No more admirably planned, no more fruitful battle has been fought by Englishmen on water " (Hannay, p. 7). As introductory to a long series of naval operations undertaken with a like object it has deserved detailed mention here.
The 16th century was marked by a decided advance in both the development and the application of sea-power. Previously its operation had been confined to the Mediterranean or to coast waters outside it. Spanish or Basque of seamen - by their proceedings in the English Channel - had proved the practicability of, rather than been power. engaged in, ocean warfare. The English, who withstood them, were accustomed to seas so rough, to seasons so uncertain and to weather so boisterous, that the ocean had few terrors for them. All that was wanting was a sufficient inducement to seek distant fields of action and a development of the naval art that would permit them to be reached. The discovery of the New World supplied the first; and consequently increased length of voyages and of absence from the coast led to the second. The world had been moving onwards in other things as well as in navigation. Intercommunication was becoming more and more frequent. What was done by one people was soon known to others. It is a mistake to suppose that, because the English had been behindhand in the exploration of remote regions, they were wanting in maritime enterprise. The career of the Cabots would of itself suffice to render such a supposition doubtful. The English had two good reasons for postponing voyages to and settlement in far-off lands. They had their hands full nearer home; and they thoroughly, and as it were by instinct, understood the conditions on which permanent expansion must rest. They wanted to make sure of the line of communications first. To effect this a sea-going marine of both war and commerce, and, for further expansion, stations on the way were essential. The chart of the world furnishes evidence of the wisdom and the thoroughness of their procedure. Taught by the experience of the Spaniards and the Portuguese, when unimpeded by the political circumstances of the time, and provided with suitable equipment, the English displayed their energy in distant seas. It now became simply a question of the efficiency of sea-power. If efficiency was not a quality of the English sea-power, then their efforts were bound to fail; and, more than this, the position of their country, challenging as it did what was believed to be the greatest of maritime states, would have been altogether precarious. The principal expeditions now undertaken weredistinguished by a characteristic peculiar to the people, and not. to be found in connexion with the exploring or colonizing. activity of most other great nations even down to our own time.. They were really unofficial speculations in which, if the government took part at all, it was for the sake of the profit expected, and almost, if not exactly, like any private adventurer. The participation of the government, nevertheless, had an aspect which it is worth while to note. It conveyed a hint - and quite consciously - to all whom it might concern that the speculations were " under-written " by the whole sea-power of England. The forces of more than one state had, been used to protect its maritime trade from the assaults of enemies in the Mediterranean or in the Narrow Seas. They had been used to ward off invasion and to keep open communications across not very extensive areas of water. In the 16th century they were first relied upon to support distant commerce, whether carried on in a peaceful fashion or under aggressive forms. This, naturally enough, led to collisions. The contention waxed hot, and was virtually decided when the Armada shaped course to the northward after the fight off Gravelines.
The expeditions against the Spanish Indies and, still more, those against Philip II.'s peninsular territory had helped to define - the limitations of sea-power. It became evident, and it was made still more evident in the next century, that for a great country to be strong it must not rely upon a navy alone. It must also have an adequate and properly organized mobile army. Notwithstandingthe number g Y
of times that this lesson has been repeated Great Britain has been slow to learn it. It is doubtful if she has learned it even yet. English seamen in all ages seem to have mastered it fully; for they have always demanded - at any rate for upwards of three centuries - that expeditions against foreign territory oversea should be accompanied by a proper number of landtroops. On the other hand, the necessity of organizing the army of a maritime insular state and of training it with the object of rendering effective aid in operations of the kind in question, has rarely been perceived and acted upon by others. The result has been a long series of inglorious or disastrous affairs, like the West Indies voyage of 1 5951 59 6, the Cadiz expedition of 1625 and that to the Ile de Re of 1627. Additions might be made to the list. The failures of joint expeditions have often been explained by alleging differences or quarrels between the naval and the military commanders. This way of explaining them, however, is nothing but the inveterate critical method of the streets by which cause is taken for effect and effect for cause. The differences and quarrels arose, no doubt; but they generally sprang out of the recriminations consequent on, not producing, the want of success. Another manifestation of the way in which sea-power works was first observed in the 17th century. It suggested the adoption of, and furnished the instrument for, carrying out a distinct maritime policy. What was practically a standing navy had come into existence. As regards of England this phenomenon was now of respectable standing age. Long voyages and cruises of several ships in company had been frequent during the latter half of the 16th century and the early part of the 17th. Even the grandfathers of the men who sailed with Blake and Penn in 1652 could not have known a time when ships had never crossed the ocean, and squadrons kept together for months had never cruised. However imperfect it may have been, a system of provisioning ships and supplying them with stores, and of preserving discipline among their crews, had been developed, and had proved fairly satisfactory. The parliament and the Protector in turn found it necessary to keep a considerable number of ships in commission, and make them cruise and operate in company. It was not till well on in the reign of Queen Victoria that the man-of-war's man was finally differentiated from the merchant seaman; but, two centuries before, some of the distinctive marks of the former had already begun to be noticeable. There were seamen in the time of the Commonwealth who rarely, perhaps some who never, served afloat except in a man-of-war. Some of the interesting naval families which were settled at Portsmouth and the eastern ports, and which - from father to son - helped to recruit the ranks of bluejackets till a date later than that of the launch of the first ironclad, could carry back their professional genealogy to at least the days of Charles II., when, in all probability, it did not first start. Though landsmen continued even after the Civil War to be given naval appointments, and though a permanent corps, through the ranks of which every one must pass, had not been formally established, a body of real naval officers - men who could handle their ships, supervise the working of the armament and exercise military command - had been formed. A navy, accordingly, was now a both English and Dutch were desirous of getting a larger share of them. English maritime commerce had increased and needed naval protecticn. If England was to maintain the international position to which, as no one denied, she was entitled, that commerce must be permitted to expand. The minds of men in western Europe, moreover, were set upon obtaining for their country territories in the New World, the amenities of which were now known. From the reign of James I. the Dutch had shown great jealousy of English maritime enterprise. Where it was possible, as in the East Indian Archipelago, they had destroyed it. Their naval resources were great enough to let them hold English shipping at their mercy, unless a grand effort were made to protect it. The Dutch conducted the carrying trade of most of the world, and the monopoly of this they were resolved to keep, while the English were resolved to share in it. The exclusion of the English from every traderoute, except such as ran by their own coast or crossed the Narrow Seas, seemed a by no means impossible contingency. There seemed also to be but one way of preventing it, viz. by war. The supposed unfriendliness of the Dutch, or at least of an important party amongst them, to the regicide government in England helped to force the conflict. The Navigation Act of 1 65 i was passed and regarded as a covert declaration of hostilities. So the first Dutch war began. It established England's claim to compete for the position of a great maritime commercial power.
The rise of the sea-power of the Dutch, and the magnitude which it attained in a short time, and in the most adverse circumstances, have no parallel in history. The case of Athens was different, because the Athenian power had not so much been unconsciously developed out of a great maritime trade, as based on a military marine deliberately and persistently fostered during many years. Thirlwall believes that it was Solon who " laid the foundations of the Attic navy " (Hist. Greece, ii. p. 52 ), century before Salamis. The great achievement of Themistocles was to convince his fellow-citizens that their navy ought to be increased. Perhaps the nearest parallel with the power of the Dutch was presented by that of Rhodes, which rested largely on a carrying trade. The Rhodian undertakings, however, were by comparison small and restricted in extent. Motley declares of the Seven United Provinces that they " commanded the ocean " (United Netherlands, ii. 132), and that it would be difficult to exaggerate the naval power of the young Commonwealth. Even in the days of Spain's greatness English seamen positively declined to admit that she was stronger than England on the sea; and the story of the Armada justified their view. The first two Dutch wars were, therefore, contests between the two foremost naval states of the world for what was primarily a maritime object. The identity of the cause of the first and of the second war will be discerned by any one who compares what has been said about the circumstances leading to the former, with Monk's remark as to the latter. He said that the English wanted a larger share of the trade enjoyed by the Dutch. It was quite in accordance with the spirit of the age that the Dutch should try to prevent, by force, this want from being satisfied. Anything like free and open competition was repugnant to the general feeling. The highroad to both individual wealth and national prosperity was believed to lie in securing a monopoly. Merchants or manufacturers who called for the abolition of monopolies granted to particular courtiers and favourites had not the smallest intention, on gaining their object, of throwing open to the enterprise of all what had been monopolized. It was to be kept for the exclusive benefit of some privileged or chartered company. It was the same in greater affairs. As Mahan says," To secure to one's own people a disproportionate share of the benefits of sea commerce every effort was made to exclude others, either by the peaceful legislative methods of monopoly or prohibitory regulations, or, when these failed, by direct violence." The apparent wealth of Spain was believed to be due to the rigorous manner in which foreigners were excluded from trading with the Spanish oversea territories. The skill and enterprise of the Dutch having enabled them to force themselves into this trade, they were determined to keep it to themselves. The Dutch East India Company was a powerful body, and largely dictated the maritime policy of the country. We have thus come to an interesting point in the historical consideration of sea-power. The Elizabethan conflict with Spain had practically settled the question whether or not the weapon of undoubted keenness ca able of ver effective P P Y torial ex- use by any one who knew how to wield it. Having tasted the sweets of intercourse with the Indies, whether in the occupation of Portugal or of Spain, P g P ' World." expanding nations were to be allowed to extend their activities to territories in the New World. The first two Dutch Wars were to settle the question whether or not the ocean trade of the world was to be open to any people qualified to engage in it. We can see how largely these were maritime questions, how much depended on the solution found for them, and how plain it was that they must be settled by naval means.
Mahan's great survey of sea-power opens in 1660, midway between the first and second Dutch Wars. " The sailing-ship fairly begun. " The art of war by sea, in its more important details, had been settled by the first war.
era, with its distinctive features, " he tells us, " had From the beginning of the second the general features of ship design, the classification of ships, the armament of ships, and the handling of fleets, were to remain without essential alteration until the date of Navarino. Even the tactical methods, except where improved on occasions by individual genius, altered little. The great thing was to bring the whole broadside force to bear on an enemy. Whether this was to be impartially distributed throughout the hostile line or concentrated on one part of it depended on the character of particular admirals. It would have been strange if a period so long and so rich in incidents had afforded no materials for forming a judgment on the real significance of sea-power. The text, so to speak, chosen by Mahan is that, notwithstanding the changes wrought in naval materiel since about 1850, we can find in the history of the past instructive illustrations of the general principles of maritime war. These illustrations will prove of value not only " in those wider operations which embrace a whole theatre of war," but also, if rightly applied, " in the tactical use of the ships and weapons " of our own day. By a remarkable coincidence the same doctrine was being preached at the same time and quite independently by Vice-Admiral Philip Colomb in his work on Naval Warfare. As a prelude to the second Dutch War we find a repetition of a process which had been adopted somewhat earlier. That was the permanent conquest of trans-oceanic territory. Until the 17th century had well begun, naval, or combined naval and military, operations against the distant possessions of an enemy had been practically restricted to raiding or plundering attacks on commercial centres. The Portuguese territory in South America having come under Spanish dominion in consequence of the annexation of Portugal to Spain, the Dutch - as the power of the latter country declined - attempted to reduce part of that territory into permanent possession. This improvement on the practice of Drake and others was soon seen to be a game at which more than one could play. An expedition sent by Cromwell to the West Indies seized the Spanish island of Jamaica, which has remained in the hands of its conquerors to this day. In 1664 an English force occupied the Dutch North American settlements on the Hudson. Though the dispossessed rulers were not quite in a position to throw stones at sinners, this was rather a raid than an operation recognized warfare, because it preceded the formal outbreak of hostilities. The conquered territory remained in English hands for more than a century, and thus testified to the efficacy of a sea-power which Europe had scarcely begun to recognize. Neither the second nor the third Dutch War can be counted amongst the occurrences to which Englishmen may look back with unalloyed satisfaction; but they, unquestionably, disclosed some interesting manifestations of sea-power. Much indignation has been expressed concerning the corruption and inefficiency of the English government of the day, and its failure to take proper measures for keeping up the navy as it should have been kept up. Some, perhaps a good deal, of this indignation was deserved; but it would have been nearly as well deserved by every other government of the day. Even in those homes of political virtue where the administrative machinery was worked by, or in the interest of speculating capitalists and privileged companies, the accumulating evidence of late years has proved that everything was not considered to be, and as a matter of fact was not, exactly as it ought to have been. Charles II. and his brother, the duke of York, have been held up to obloquy because they thought that the coast of England could be defended against a naval enemy better by fortifications than by a good fleet and, as Pepys noted, were " not ashamed of it. " The truth is that neither the king nor the duke believed in the power of a navy to ward off attack from an island. This may have been due to want of intellectual capacity; but it would be going a long way to put it down to personal wickedness. They have had many imitators, some
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Chisholm, Hugh, General Editor. Entry for 'Sea-Power'. 1911 Encyclopedia Britanica. https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/bri/s/sea-power.html. 1910.
