US Navy

5 Key excerpts on "US Navy"

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  The Pursuit of Technological Superiority and the Shrinking American Military

  • Daniel R. Lake(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  © The Author(s) 2019 Daniel R. Lake The Pursuit of Technological Superiority and the Shrinking American Military https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-78681-7_5

  Begin Abstract

  5. The Navy and Technology

  Daniel R. Lake

  1   

  (1) State University of New York College at Plattsburgh, Plattsburgh, NY, USA

   

    Daniel R. Lake

  Email: [email protected]

  End Abstract

  The Navy is the second oldest American armed service, established by the Second Continental Congress in 1775. During the Revolution, it experienced some success at commerce raiding but was disbanded after independence due to a lack of funds (Carrison 1968 ; Howarth 1991 ; Love 1992 ; Morris 1984 ). After being reconstituted, for most of its first century the Navy was relatively small and insignificant by the standards of the day. Its main mission during its early years was protecting US merchant ships from predators like the Barbary pirates and French privateers, though it also started to develop a proud wartime tradition with victories against the British during the War of 1812. During the nineteenth century, the Navy played an important role in achieving victory in the Mexican-American and Civil Wars by blockading ports, supporting ground troops, and carrying out the amphibious landing at Veracruz. By mid-century the Navy was also increasingly engaged in gunboat diplomacy, such as Commodore Perry’s expedition to Japan. While the Navy grew quite large during the Civil War, it was not until the 1880s that the United States began to build a modern Navy commensurate with its status as a rising great power. This was used to demonstrate American power and might, defeating the Spanish Navy in 1898 and circumnavigating the globe as the “Great White Fleet.” The Navy was relegated to an important supporting role in World War I, protecting convoys from German U-boats, and during the interwar years the Navy started to experiment with aircraft carriers. World War II was a transformative experience for the Navy, both because of the central role it played in Allied victory and in the rise of the aviation and submarine communities within the Navy (Mahnken 2008

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  Securing The Seas

  The Soviet Naval Challenge And Western Alliance Options

  • Paul H Nitze(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  7Evolution of the U.S. Navy

  Early History

  Until the last decade of the nineteenth century, the United States was concerned primarily with coastal defense, and most of its ships were constructed for that specific purpose. Although the U.S. Navy had a significant mission of maintaining a presence overseas and took action against Caribbean and Barbary pirates, its major concern was the protection of coastal cities and shipping. Throughout most of that century, U.S. naval objectives remained limited. The combination of remoteness of location, the protection afforded by British naval supremacy, and limited international objectives hardly demanded a massive navy that could stand up to European fleets on the open seas.

  From about 1890 to 1910, U.S. naval objectives were entirely revised. Crises with England, Germany, Chile, and finally with Spain brought U.S. foreign relations impressively to the fore. The need to supply protection for U.S. citizens in South America and China, the threat of European penetrations in Central and South America, and the growing interest in the Pacific and in the acquisition of overseas possessions all forced a reevaluation of U.S. naval objectives. Under the influence of Alfred Mahan and the leadership of Theodore Roosevelt, the purely defensive navy gave way to the concept of the fighting fleet.

  The Battleship Navy

  The nineteenth century had seen a revolution in naval ship construction. The advent of steam propulsion, screw propellers, shell ammunition, rifled ordnance, and armor plate all contributed to a great change in naval warfare. Many of these innovations were of American origin.

  The Russo-Japanese War established the supremacy of the battleship. The early 1900s witnessed major debates over the optimum displacement of that vessel (similar to present-day arguments over aircraft carrier size). The United States emphasized big guns and heavy broadsides rather than speed. Its aim was to acquire an oceangoing battleship navy of second rank, with the heaviest and most powerful units in the world. At this time, aircraft were in their infancy, and their military potential had not been foreseen.

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  Contemporary Military Culture and Strategic Studies

  US and UK Armed Forces in the 21st Century

  • Alastair Finlan(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  3 The US Navy has the strength and the funding to engage in every aspect of naval warfare: surface, sub-surface, air and land operations. Its overall force structure offers evidence of institutional preferences for particular technologies with regard to naval warfare. In other words, emphasis on one dimension, such as ships, for instance, would indicate which aspect of the maritime environment the US Navy has a greater liking for. Such an analysis reveals that the US Navy has deliberately chosen a balanced fleet with high-end capabilities in every role at sea and on land.

  Social Origins

  A genealogical analysis of the US Navy and the US Marine Corps reveals that they can trace their origins to the American War of Independence, when ‘General George Washington initiated America’s first sea-based offensive against the British’.4 Unlike the original US Army, the forerunners of the US Navy and Marine Corps could not hope to compete on a parity with the enemy, the Royal Navy, one of the most powerful naval forces in the world at the time; however, it did sow the seeds of tradition in the daring exploits of Captain John Paul Jones and individual duels between American and British frigates, such as the Bonhomme Richard versus HMS Serapis in 1779.5 It must also be acknowledged that it was the French Navy under Rear Admiral de Grasse that ultimately cut off General Cornwallis from his naval supply line when they successfully blockaded Chesapeake Bay, which contributed to the overall British surrender at Yorktown.6

  Building a powerful navy was simply beyond the capabilities of the American revolutionaries because large ships take time to build, often years, and skilled crews to use them effectively. Such a task calls on all of the resources of a state, and for a proto-state, such as America, it was simply beyond their means. Unsurprisingly, these tentative measures, the Continental Navy and Marine Corps, proved to be merely temporary structures until victory was achieved against the British, and it was not until 1798 that the Department of the Navy and the Marine Corps were formally ‘established’.7 The development of naval forces, unlike their landlocked equivalents, is generally not the first priority of a new state unless it happens to be a very small island facing predatory attacks from seaborne neighbours. Ships are expensive and, in the absence of a sea-based threat, generally considered superfluous to the needs of the state. This was particularly the case with the United States, which devoted much of its resources and attention in its nascency to opening up the great lands of the continent to the growing numbers of immigrants swelling the overall population of white settlers. Consequently, the relationship between the US Navy and the Marine Corps with the most important political institution of the United States, the presidency, in the early years of its evolution was certainly not as strong as that of the US Army. Nor did they enjoy a strong link with the iconic George Washington himself. Instead, the US Navy was kept to a relatively small size, not only in the numbers of ships but also in the size of vessels constructed, until the mid-nineteenth century. Its roles varied from anti-piracy patrols to blockade work in the Mexican War in the late 1840s.8

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  War and Society Volume 2

  A Yearbook of Military History

  • Brian Bond, Ian Roy(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  All of these uses of naval power were consistent with the basic American outlook and were directly related in every case to foreign policy considerations. Of course, foreign policy may not be the sole reason for which a navy exists. Certainly in the present case, the existence of a viable national defence was crucial to the very unity of the federal republic. But even with such an additional factor, the uses of the American Navy in this period were significantly different from those which Mahan outlined for great powers, even though the basic naval elements involved were very similar. There was proper geographic position, overseas bases, maritime commerce, deployed squadrons, but the ‘distant, storm-beaten ships’ of the American Navy sought neither commercial nor political dominion. There was no thought given to command of the sea.

  No body of naval theory has been written which will help us to understand fully why a small nation might wish to build a navy. In the American case, however, it seems apparent that the navy was used to secure a national identity amongst other nations as well as to assert, protect and defend those particular elements which were necessary to maintain that identity.

  One may take as the refrain to the history of the American Navy in the years of its birth, the words of advice which Benjamin Stoddart gave to Congress in 1798: The wisest, cheapest, and most reasonable means for obtaining the end we aim at, will be prompt and vigorous measures for the creation of a navy sufficient for defence, but not for conquest. Bibliography This essay is based on the following sources:

  R.G. Albion, Sea Lanes in Wartime (1968).

  G. Allen, Naval History of the American Revolution (1913).

  American State Papers: Naval Affairs, Foreign Affairs (1832).

  B. Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967).

  S.F. Bemis, The Diplomacy of the American Revolution (1935).

  E. B. Billingsley, In Defense of Neutral Rights (1967). A. De Conde, The Quasi-War (1966).

  J. A. Field, America and the Mediterranean World, 1776-1882 (1969).

  J.C. Fitzpatrick (ed.), Writings of George Washington (1931-44).

  R. Glover, The French Fleet 1807-14: Britain’s Problem and Mr Madison’s Opportunity’, Journal of Modern History, 39 (1967), 233-52.

  G.S. Graham, The Empire of the North Atlantic (1958).

  F. H. Hayes, ‘John Adams and American Sea Power’, American Neptune, 25 (1965), 35-45.

  D. W. Knox, History of the United States Navy (1936).

  ——, The Naval Genius of George Washington (1932).

  C. L. Lewis, Admiral Grasse and American Independence

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  The Navy as a Fighting Machine

  • Bradley A. (Bradley Allen) Fiske(Author)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Perlego

    (Publisher)

  Fortunately, Admiral Luce and a very few other officers had learned the salient lessons of war during the Rebellion, and sturdily stood up against the decadent tendency of the times. Against much opposition, Luce succeeded in founding the Naval War College at Newport, where the study of war as an art in itself was to be prosecuted, and in enlisting Captain Mahan in the work. In a few years Mahan gave to the world that epochal book, "The Influence of Sea Power upon History" (embodying his lectures before the War College), which stirred the nations of Europe to such a realization of the significance of naval history, and such a comprehension of the efficacy of naval power, that they entered upon a determined competition for acquiring naval power, which continues to this day.

  Meanwhile, a little before 1880, the people became aroused to the fact that though the country was growing richer, their navy was becoming weaker, while the navies of certain European countries were becoming stronger. So they began in 1880 the construction of what was then called "the new navy." The construction of the new ships was undertaken upon the lines of the ships then building abroad, which were in startling contrast with the useless old-fashioned American ships which then were flying our flag.

  The construction of the material of the navy has progressed since then, but spasmodically. At every session of Congress tremendous efforts have been made by people desiring an adequate navy, and tremendous resistance has been made by people who believed that we required no navy, or at least only a little navy. The country at large has taken a bystander's interest in the contest, not knowing much about the pros and cons, but feeling in an indolent fashion that we needed some navy, though not much. The result has been, not a reasonable policy, but a succession of unreasonable compromises between the aims of the extremists on both sides.

  Great Britain, on the other hand, has always regarded the navy question as one of the most difficult and important before the country, and has adopted, and for centuries has maintained, a definite naval policy. This does not mean that she has followed a rigid naval policy; for a naval policy, to be efficient, must be able to accommodate itself quickly to rapid changes in international situations, and to meet sudden dangers from even unexpected quarters—as the comparatively recent experience of Great Britain shows. At the beginning of this century the British navy was at the height of its splendor and self-confidence. Britannia ruled the waves, and Britannia's ships and squadrons enforced Britannia's policies in every sea. The next most powerful navy was that of France; but it was not nearly so large, and seemed to be no more efficient, in proportion to its size. Owing to Britain's wise and continuing policy, and the excellence of the British sailor and his ships, the British navy proudly and almost tranquilly held virtual command of all the seas.

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