Sea power

“ The vital question of the future is how this transfer of power over the narrow seas affects the international situation—particularly that of Great Britain, which is concerned with both spheres of sea-power. ”

“ On sea-power, thus based, British adventurers have founded an overseas Empire of colonies, plantations, depots, and protectorates, and have established, by means of sea-borne armies, local land-powers in India and Egypt. So impressive have been the results of British sea-power that there has perhaps been a tendency to neglect the warnings of history and to regard sea-power in general as inevitably having, because of the unity of the ocean, the last word in the rivalry with land-power.
Never has sea-power played a greater part than in the recent War and in the events which led up to it. ”

“ Its outward and visible sign is a navy, strong in the discipline, skill, and courage of a numerous personnel habituated to the sea, in the number and quality of its ships, in the excellence of its matériel, and in the efficiency, scale, security, and geographical position of its arsenals and bases. History has demonstrated that sea-power thus conditioned can gain any purely maritime object, can protect the trade and the communications of a widely extended empire, and whilst so doing can ward off from its shores a formidable invader. ”

“ Like many other things, sea-power is composed of several elements. To reach the highest degree of efficacy it should be based upon a population naturally maritime, and on an ocean commerce naturally developed rather than artificially enticed to extend itself. ”

“ The injury to trade and to military transportation by sea may be said to have been about equal on either side; and the credit for successful use of sea power for these most important ends must therefore be given to the weaker party. ”

“ Our ships are of iron; they are propelled through the calm sea by an irresistible power faster than a gale of wind would drive them; they are of proportions so colossal that many of them could sling the “tall schippes” of our forefathers over their sides, and stow them on skids as they stow their boats; and yet just the same sort of sufferings are endured now by mariners as were experienced by them in the days when a vessel of thirty tons was reckoned big enough not only to seek the North-West Passage but to hunt the unnavigated oceans after continents. ”

“ Historians generally 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 upon great issues has consequently been overlooked. This is even more true of particular occasions than of the general tendency of sea power. It is easy to say in a general way, that the use and control of the sea is and has been a great factor in the history of the world; it is more troublesome to seek out and show its exact bearing at a particular juncture. ”

“ If sea power be really based upon a peaceful and extensive commerce, aptitude for commercial pursuits must be a distinguishing feature of the nations that have at one time or another been great upon the sea. ”

“ To the lay reader, therefore, the study of sea-power, based upon these ancient campaigns, seemed not only the pursuit of a subject vague and elusive in itself, but one that becomes doubly unreal through the successive revolutions of modern times. ”

“ These true stories of the sea will, I trust, have not only the interest that belongs to all records of courage, danger, and adventure, but also some practical lessons of their own, for they may help to keep alive that intelligent popular interest in sea power which is the best guarantee that the interests of our own navy—the best safeguard of the Empire—will not be neglected, no matter what Government is in power, or what political views may happen for the moment to be in the ascendant. ”

“ Yet it is the hope of the authors that they have not, for that reason, slighted the significance of the story. Naval history is more than a sequence of battles. Sea power has always been a vital force in the rise and fall of nations and in the evolution of civilization. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It must however be admitted, and will be seen, that the wise or unwise action of individual men has at certain periods had a great modifying influence upon the growth of sea power in the broad sense, which includes not only the military strength afloat, that rules the sea or any part of it by force of arms, but also the peaceful commerce and shipping from which alone a military fleet naturally and healthfully springs, and on which it securely rests. ”

“ He makes it cut a bed for itself out of the soil, which is heavier than Admiral Smyth’s deep sea water, to the depth of more than two hundred feet below the top of the bar which obstructs its entrance into the sea. Could not the same power which scoops out this solid matter draw the brine up from the pool in the Mediterranean, and pass it out across the barrier in the Straits? The traction of locomotives on rail-roads and the force of that traction are well understood. Now have not currents in the deep sea power derived from some such force? ”

“ Article, Sea-Power—Use of the term to mean (1) a state pre-eminently strong at sea; and (2) —as in this article—the various factors in a state’s naval strength. Thucydides as a forerunner of Mahan; he makes Pericles in comparing Athenian resources with those of her enemies comment on the importance of “sea-power.”
The meaning of sea-power can only be learned historically. Although there have been more land-wars, “the course of history has been profoundly changed more often by contests on the water.” Salamis saved Greece and held back Oriental invasion. ”

“ Sea power is the typical expression of the inner strength and unity of a nation—of a strength which must expand abroad because it cannot find adequate employment within the limits of the mother country. ”

“ In what does naval power consist and what are its principal characteristics?
If one looks at a fleet of war-ships on the sea, he will be impressed consciously or unconsciously with the idea of power. If he is impressed consciously, he will see that the fleet represents power in the broadest sense—power active and power passive; power to do and power to endure; power to exert force and power to resist it. ”

“ As these mammoth ships lie in port beside the wharf, it seems as though their size and enormous weight would place them beyond the influence of the wind and waves: but the power of the latter is so great as to be beyond computation, and makes a mere toy of the largest hull that floats. No one can realize the great strength of the waves who has not watched the sea in all of its varying moods. ”

“ In discussing the effects upon the development of a nation's sea power exerted by its government and institutions, it will be necessary to avoid a tendency to over-philosophizing, to confine attention to obvious and immediate causes and their plain results, without prying too far beneath the surface for remote and ultimate influences. ”

“ In all ages the naval commander who sought to achieve his purpose by avoiding battle went to disaster. The true objective must be, now as always, the destruction of the enemy's fleet.
Such are the material and the spiritual essentials of sea power. ”

“ The only escape from this process of gradual starvation was by an effectual control of the sea; the creation of a strong sea power which should insure free play for the wealth of the land and the industry of the people. ”

“ It rarely happens, however, that a great naval Power is devoid of transmarine possessions altogether, or that such as it holds are esteemed by it to be of [Pg 52] so little value or importance that their seizure by an enemy would leave matters in statu quo. Sea power is, as a rule, the outcome of a flourishing maritime commerce. ”

“ When European experiments had fairly shown what European practice was likely to be, we started in to adopt the European ideas, and suddenly learned, what had never occurred to us as a nation, that the foundation of all sea power is a shipyard. ”

“ So Northern sea-power could make its controlling influence felt in one continuous line all round the eastern South, except for fifty miles where small craft were concerned and for two hundred miles in the case of larger vessels. ”

“ So, on the sea, the advance from the galley timidly creeping from port to port to the sailing-ship launching out boldly to the ends of the earth, and from the latter to the steamship of our own time, has increased the scope and the rapidity of naval operations without necessarily changing the principles which should direct them ”

“ On the other hand, wars arising from other causes have been greatly modified in their conduct and issue by the control of the sea. Therefore the history of sea power, while embracing in its broad sweep all that tends to make a people great upon the sea or by the sea, is largely a military history ”

“ Quite apart from the large general question, however, and granting that on paper England's sea-power is equal to that of any three powers combined, it cannot have escaped the attention of the interested that the foreign naval experts view our whole flotilla with a singular calm, and appear to be quite amused when we talk of naval efficiency and advancement. ”

“ But with the issue of life and death always dependent on sea power, and with so many men of every class following the sea, there was at all events the biggest rough-and-tumble school of practical seamanship that any leading country ever had. ”

“ There are other ways in which every trans-marine possession of the Crown can lend a hand towards perfecting the efficiency of the fleet—ways, too, which would leave each in complete and unmenaced control of its own money. Sea-power does not consist entirely of men-of-war. There must be docks, refitting establishments, magazines, and depots of stores. ”

“ I think that no idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered and viewed with a searching, but at the same time, I hope, with a steady eye. We must never forget the solid assurances of sea power and those which belong to air power if it can be locally exercised. ”

“ The answer—a broad formula—is that it must be great enough to take the sea, and to fight, with reasonable chances of success, the largest force likely to be brought against it, as shown by calculations which have been indicated previously. ”

“ But if we have no perfectly certain ideas regarding the propagation of the motions of the sea in depth, we can assert, that, whatever that extent and that power may be, the submarine currents no more abrade the rocks than rivers do the surface of the land. ”

“ In a sea war, as in all others, two things are from the first essential,—a suitable base upon the frontier, in this case the seaboard, from which the operations start, and an organized military force, in this case a fleet, of size and quality adequate to the proposed operations. ”

“ While in itself the ocean opposes no obstacle to a vessel taking any one of the numerous routes that can be traced upon the surface of the globe between two points, conditions of distance or convenience, of traffic or of wind, do prescribe certain usual courses. Where these pass near an ocean position, still more where they use it, it has an influence over them, and where several routes cross near by that influence becomes very great,—is commanding. ”

“ For this seemingly remote contingency preparation will be made, if men then shall be found prepared, by a practical recognition now of existing conditions—such as those mentioned in the opening of this paper—and acting upon that knowledge. Control of the sea, by maritime commerce and naval supremacy, means predominant influence in the world; because, however great the wealth product of the land, nothing facilitates the necessary exchanges as does the sea. The fundamental truth concerning the sea—perhaps we should rather say the water—is that it is Nature's great medium of communication. ”

“ The sea, now as always the great means of communication between nations, is traversed with a rapidity and a certainty that have minimized distances. Events which under former conditions would have been distant and of small concern, now happen at our doors and closely affect us. ”

“ The necessity to a maritime state of a powerful navy, including abundant resources for manning it, is now no more disputed than the law of gravitation. If the proportion of foreigners in our merchant service is too high it is certainly deplorable ”

“ Of late, careful study of the winds and currents of the ocean has laid down certain advantageous routes, which will be habitually followed by a careful seaman, and afford some presumption as to his movements ”

“ The sea, washing the equator and the poles, offers its perilous aid, and the power and empire that follow it, — day by day to his craft and audacity. "Beware of me," it says, "but if you can hold me, I am the key to all the lands." ”

“ Mediterranean Sea, control of, influence on Second Punic war, 14-21; strategic points in, 13, 20, 22, 23, 32, 62, 63, 82, 141, 142, 202, 203, 215, 220, 285, 298, 327, 328, 335, 393, 515; advantage of strategic study of, 33; analogy to Caribbean Sea, 33; increase of English power in, 206, 210, 212, 215, 219, 220, 229, 235, 239, 263, 322, 327, 328 ”

“ Instead of blinding your eyes and crushing your soul with a terrible apparatus of cloud and mists and seas and rain, the King of the West turns his power to contemptuous pelting of your back with icicles, to making your weary eyes water as if in grief, and your worn-out carcass quake pitifully. But each mood of the great autocrat has its own greatness, and each is hard to bear. ”