Maritime supremacy

“ Americans have long looked to the sea as a source of security and prosperity. Bounded by two oceans and the Gulf of Mexico, and criss-crossed by a myriad of inland waterways, America's destiny as a maritime nation was a story foretold. The Merchant Marine took up arms alongside the Continental Navy to help defeat the British Navy during the American Revolution. Since then, they have served bravely as the United States has faced threats ranging from war to piracy, and our seafaring fleet has proven instrumental in protecting our safety. ”

“ Let us start from the fundamental truth, warranted by history, that the control of the seas, and especially along the great lines drawn by national interest or national commerce, is the chief among the merely material elements in the power and prosperity of nations. It is so because the sea is the world’s great medium of circulation. From this necessarily follows the principle that, as subsidiary to such control, it is imperative to take possession, when it can be done righteously, of such maritime positions as contribute to secure command. ”

“ Since its birth as a Nation, the United States has relied on the oceans for commerce and as avenues for the protection of national interests. The United States is truly a maritime power by necessity.
Maritime power has two principal components. One component, the Navy and the Coast Guard, guards America's free use of the seas while the other component, the Merchant Marine, supports trade with nations and, in an emergency, becomes a part of our military establishment-integral with our military forces. ”

“ Its enactment will ensure that United States flag merchant ships will maintain their role in carrying a significant portion of our vast trade and that American ships and American seafarers will continue to provide reliable sealift support in national emergencies.
Our Nation is charting a new course, reinforcing our heritage as a great maritime power and supporting our interests as the world's leading international trader. ”

“ Some nations more than others, but all maritime nations more or less, depend for their prosperity upon maritime commerce, and probably upon it more than upon any other single factor. Either under their own flag or that of a neutral, either by foreign trade or coasting trade, the sea is the greatest of boons to such a state; and under every form its sea-borne trade is at the mercy of a foe decisively superior. ”

“ The reason we rule the seas at the moment—if we do rule them—is because we are an island country, and because our past necessities have forced us to stride far ahead in maritime affairs of all other nations, while they possessed no full realization of the value of sea power. But the late war has shown us that now, at last, every country in the world understands to the full the necessity for wresting from any one Power the dominance of the seas. ”

“ In peace our Navy performs the important duty of protecting our commerce, and in the event of war will be, as it has been, a most efficient means of defense.
The successful use of steam navigation on the ocean has been followed by the introduction of war steamers in great and increasing numbers into the navies of the principal maritime powers of the world. A due regard to our own safety and to an efficient protection to our large and increasing commerce demands a corresponding increase on our part. ”

“ Today, the men and women who crew ships remain essential to our Nation's prosperity and security. Those in the maritime industry, including merchant mariners, promote our economic growth, facilitating the export of more than $475 billion in goods just last year and sustaining our critical defense industrial base. Merchant mariners also actively protect our homeland, serving as our eyes and ears on the seas. ”

“ It could not be held that the existence of these released the fleet from all duty but that of protecting our ocean commerce, because, if any enemy's navy was able to carry out an operation of such magnitude and difficulty as a serious attack on our home territory, it would assuredly be able to carry out the work of damaging our maritime trade. Power to do the latter has always belonged to the navy which was in a position to extend its activity persistently to the immediate neighbourhood of its opponent's coast-line. ”

“ There were many reasons why a strong fleet should be provided, apart from any question of enforcing a new political sovereignty over the North Sea and the Channel. The maritime strength of the United Provinces was growing quickly, and France, under the wise and energetic guidance of Richelieu, was rapidly becoming a formidable naval power. ”

“ If the protection of their coasts in time of war might become a great strain upon our navy, this disadvantage is largely balanced by the importance of distant maritime possessions to every nation that desires to maintain an efficient fleet ”

“ Even if the Navigation Laws could be revived in all their old stringency—and this is an impossible supposition—they would be a minor factor in the wider economic struggles now determining the ability of great maritime States to equip fleets and to support the financial strain of modern war. We have half the merchant shipping of the world. ”

“ Such are the tremendous effects of an adverse [Pg 54] command of the sea on an insular kingdom and an oceanic empire, which carries on—not by virtue of any artificial monopoly, but solely by virtue of its hardly won ascendency in the economic struggle for existence—half the maritime commerce of the world. On the other hand, its effects on any nation which does not depend on the sea for its existence can never be so overwhelming and may even be insignificant. ”

“ I do not know whether it is a dream or a vision, or the foresight of a future reality that sometimes passes across my mind—I like to dwell upon it—but I frequently think the time may come when the maritime nations of Europe—this renowned country of which we are citizens, France, Prussia, resuscitated Spain, Italy, and the United States of America—may see that vast fleets are of no use; that they are merely menaces offered from one country to another ”

“ To other states the land, with its privileges and its glories, is the chief source of national prosperity and distinction. To Great Britain and the United States, if they rightly estimate the part they may play in the great drama of human progress, is intrusted a maritime interest, in the broadest sense of the word, which demands, as one of the conditions of its exercise and its safety, the organized force adequate to control the general course of events at sea ”

“ Ocean commerce in war should be rendered inviolable. In effecting this we not only abolish a barbarous custom, but at the same time remove one of the chief causes of great navies. As long as the safety of the merchant marine is not guaranteed by international agreement, just so [Page 107] long will nations with commercial aspirations build enormous navies for their protection. It is true England has hitherto opposed this reform,—confident in her naval supremacy,—but she cannot again fly in the face of a general demand without too great a sacrifice of prestige. ”

“ History has taught us how important a nation's flag presence is on the high seas. Heeding the lessons of the past, the Congress and I reaffirmed our pledge for a strong U.S.-flag fleet when I signed into law the Maritime Security Act of 1996. This legislation sets the course for America's Merchant Marine into the 21st century, sustaining a strong sealift capability and bolstering national security. The Act will strengthen American maritime and allied industries, while energizing our efforts to further stimulate the economy through trade and commerce. ”

“ It is in the nature of a paradox that the brilliant success of the packet ships in dominating the North Atlantic trade should have been a factor in the decline of the nation's maritime prestige and resources. Through a period of forty years the pride and confidence in these ships, their builders, and the men who sailed them, was intense and universal. They were a superlative product of the American genius, which still displayed the energies of a maritime race. On other oceans the situation was no less gratifying. American ships were the best and cheapest in the world. ”

“ The geographical conditions of the Atlantic seaboard are so favourable for the development of naval power, that it is evident that the United States have every possible natural advantage placed at their disposal to enable them to become a great maritime nation.
There is, however, a difficulty for them to surmount. Serviceable American-born men do not readily volunteer to join their ships of war, and, consequently, the crews are largely composed of foreigners, chiefly of English and German origin. ”

“ Her great length of sea coast, the productive fisheries east and, west, the facility for ship-building given by her forests, have stimulated her maritime activity to such an extent that in tonnage of shipping she now ranks fourth among the nations of the world, counting the United Kingdom as one. Her sailing ships are found in every quarter of the world, taking part in the carrying trade. ”

“ America cannot certainly pretend to wage a maritime war with us. She has no navy to do it with. But America has nearly a hundred thousand as good seamen as any in the world, all of whom would be actively employed against our trade on every part of the ocean, in their fast-sailing ships of war, many of which will be able to cope with our small cruisers ”

“ After winning independence, the Founding Fathers considered shipping and trade so crucial to the survival of the new Nation that five of the initial acts passed by the first Congress were designed to foster American trade and maritime development.
Over the years, in war and peace; the American merchant marine has served the Nation. Today, in its position of world leadership, the United States continues to rely on its maritime industries. Shipping, shipbuilding, and the vast flow of trade through our ports contribute to the Nation's economic development and security. ”

“ This means that the Navy, in spite of all its losses, became bigger than any other country's navy, mercantile marine, fishing fleet, river steamers, and all other kinds of shipping, put together, since the world began. When we add the British mercantile marine, British shipbuilding, the British fishing fleets, and all the shipping interests of the Empire overseas, we shall find that British sea-power of all kinds equalled all the sea-power of all the rest of the world together. Destroy that sea-power and we die. ”

“ This faith in the maintenance of the Supremacy of the Seas remains potent to this present day, as is shown by the demand of the British people that their navy shall be maintained at a two-power standard, and so be equal in strength to the navies of any other two of the nations which sail the oceans. It is no new ardour, nor the outcome of any modern development or exigency, but is the outgrowth of the determination of the nation from its earliest days to maintain the supremacy of its flag, and is strengthened by the lessons learned in those centuries. ”

“ With so many prospective advantages before us, it is therefore to be hoped that the time has arrived when Great Britain will take the initiative, and promote the combinations necessary to establish a commercial intercourse between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, an event that would widen the scope for maritime enterprizes more than any that has happened within the memory of the present generation, and connect us more closely with those countries which have lately been the theatre of our triumphs. ”

“ To the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, to the Empires that owe allegiance to the British Crown, to the United States of America, sea-power is at once their origin and the fundamental essential of their continued free and independent existence. And it is their predominant races that have produced the world’s greatest sea fighters and sea writers. It is to the British Fleet that the world owes its promise of safety from German diabolism bred of autocracy. It is to sea-power that America must look if she is to finish the work the Allies have begun. ”

“ If the ocean paths used by our merchant ships—the trade routes or sea communications of the United Kingdom with friendly or neutral markets and areas of production—could be kept open by our navy, that is, made so secure that our trade could traverse them with so little risk of molestation that it could continue to be carried on, it resulted as a matter of course that no sustained attack could be made on our outlying territory. ”

“ If, as these gentlemen have stated, the sailing ships have been made to succumb, it has been under the force of an agency more certain and not less powerful than the one named by them—wielded by foreign capitalists and directed by a foreign government claiming for itself the supremacy of the ocean. ”

“ Although the development in this direction is of comparatively recent date, the protection of maritime trade is being carried out in accordance with a comprehensive policy, so that within a few years the coasts of the Dominion will be rendered as safe to the shipping of the world as human ingenuity can contrive. ”

“ We have, by letters to our correspondents at the several ports, done all in our power to prevent such mischiefs for the future, a copy of which we herewith send you. The European maritime powers embarrass themselves, as well as us, by the double part their politics oblige them to act; being in their hearts our friends, and wishing us success, they would allow us every use of their ports consistent with their treaties, or that we can make of them without giving open cause of complaint to England ”

“ From this classification we are given a hint as to what a sailor means by "naval supremacy," "freedom of the seas," and other terms so misused that to-day they mean nothing. "Coast defense" means defense against invasion; "colonial defense" means the safeguarding of distant possessions against enemy forces; the "defense of commerce" means such supremacy on the seas as will insure absolute safety of the mercantile marine from enemy commerce-destroyers.
To-day every great nation is waging a trade war. The industrial competition of peace is as keen as the [xix] competition of war. ”