Sea Power
Sea Power

Author: E. B Potter

Publisher: Naval Institute Press

Published: 2014-06-15

Total Pages: 440

ISBN-13: 1612517676

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A classic work covering over 2,000 years of naval history, from Greek and Roman galley warfare to Vietnam.

Testing American Sea Power
Testing American Sea Power

Author: Craig C. Felker

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 2013-03-28

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 1603449892

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The Pacific Theater in World War II depended on American sea power. This power was refined between 1923 and 1940, when the U.S. Navy held twenty-one major fleet exercises designed to develop strategy and allow officers to enact plans in an operational setting. Prior to 1923, naval officers relied heavily on the theories of Capt. Alfred Thayer Mahan, who argued that sea control was vital to military victory, best attained through use of the battleship. Fleet exercises, however, allowed valuable practice with other military resources and theories. As a direct result of these exercises, the navy incorporated different technologies and updated its own outdated strategies. Although World War II brought unforeseen challenges and the disadvantages of simulation exercises quickly became apparent, fleet "problems" may have opened the door to different ideas that allowed the U.S Navy ultimately to succeed. Testing American Sea Power challenges the conventional wisdom that Mahanian theory held the American Navy in a steel grip. Felker's research and analysis, the first to concentrate on the navy's interwar exercises, will make a valuable contribution to naval history for historians, military professionals, and naval instructors.

Twenty-First Century Seapower
Twenty-First Century Seapower

Author: Peter Dutton

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-05-02

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 1136316965

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This book offers an assessment of the naval policies of emerging naval powers, and the implications for maritime security relations and the global maritime order. Since the end of the Cold War, China, Japan, India and Russia have begun to challenge the status quo with the acquisition of advanced naval capabilities. The emergence of rising naval powers is a cause for concern, as the potential for great power instability is exacerbated by the multiple maritime territorial disputes among new and established naval powers. This work explores the underlying sources of maritime ambition through an analysis of various historical cases of naval expansionism. It analyses both the sources and dynamics of international naval competition, and looks at the ways in which maritime stability and the widespread benefits of international commerce and maritime resource extraction can be sustained through the twenty-first century. This book will be of much interest to students of naval power, Asian security and politics, strategic studies, security studies and IR in general.

Empire, Technology and Seapower
Empire, Technology and Seapower

Author: Howard J. Fuller

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-01-03

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 1134200455

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This book examines British naval diplomacy from the end of the Crimean War to the American Civil War, showing how the mid-Victorian Royal Navy suffered serious challenges during the period. Many recent works have attempted to depict the mid-Victorian Royal Navy as all-powerful, innovative, and even self-assured. In contrast, this work argues that it suffered serious challenges in the form of expanding imperial commitments, national security concerns, precarious diplomatic relations with European Powers and the United States, and technological advancements associated with the armoured warship at the height of the so-called 'Pax Britannica'. Utilising a wealth of international archival sources, this volume explores the introduction of the monitor form of ironclad during the American Civil War, which deliberately forfeited long-range power-projection for local, coastal command of the sea. It looks at the ways in which the Royal Navy responded to this new technology and uses a wealth of international primary and secondary sources to ascertain how decision-making at Whitehall affected that at Westminster. The result is a better-balanced understanding of Palmerstonian diplomacy from the end of the Crimean War to the American Civil War, the early evolution of the modern capital ship (including the catastrophic loss of the experimental sail-and-turret ironclad H.M.S. Captain), naval power-projection, and the nature of 'empire', 'technology', and 'seapower'. This book will be of great interest to all students of the Royal Navy, and of maritime and strategic studies in general.

Seapower in the Post-modern World
Seapower in the Post-modern World

Author: Basil Germond

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2024-05-14

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 0228020905

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In an era of increasing geopolitical tensions, disruptive technologies, and the rise of authoritarianism, the question of who masters the seas is more than ever central to the future of the international order. But while naval operations, maritime security, and ocean governance have become increasingly relevant in world politics, the concept and definition of seapower have largely been neglected by the scholarship in the international relations field. Seapower in the Post-modern World fills this gap with an analysis of the naval, economic, and ideational dimensions of seapower from antiquity to today. Exploring the extent to which the permanent elements associated with seapower – such as technology, commerce, and maritime culture – transcend historical periods, Basil Germond frames contemporary seapower as a combination of components, including traditional naval power, post-modern conceptions of collective and civilian seapower, and the neo-modern phenomena of maritime territorialization and the naval arms race. By giving seapower a new conceptual definition, Seapower in the Post-modern World offers key analytical tools for understanding the stability of the global maritime order and seapower’s contribution to global leadership more broadly.

A Hanging Offense
A Hanging Offense

Author: Buckner Melton

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2007-11-01

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 1416595929

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Mutiny on the Bounty is one of history's greatest naval stories—yet few know the similar tale from America's own fledgling navy in the dying days of the Age of Sail, a tale of mutiny and death at sea on an American warship. In 1842, the brig-of-war Somers set out on a training cruise for apprentice seamen, commanded by rising star Alexander Mackenzie. Somers was crammed with teenagers. Among them was Acting Midshipman Philip Spencer, a disturbed youth and a son of the U.S. Secretary of War. Buying other crew members' loyalty with pilfered tobacco and alcohol, Spencer dreamed up a scheme to kill the officers and turn Somers into a pirate ship. In the isolated world of a warship, a single man can threaten the crew's discipline and the captain's authority. But one of Spencer's followers warned Mackenzie, who arrested the midshipman and chained him and other ringleaders to the quarterdeck. Fearing efforts to rescue the prisoners, officers had to stay awake in round-the-clock watches. Steering desperately for land, sleep-deprived and armed to the teeth, battling efforts to liberate Spencer, Somers's captain and officers finally faced a fateful choice: somehow keep control of the vessel until reaching port—still hundreds of miles away—or hang the midshipman and his two leading henchmen before the boys could take over the ship. The results shook the nation. A naval investigation of the affair turned into a court-martial and a state trial and led to the founding of the Naval Academy to provide better officers for the still-young republic. Mackenzie's controversial decision may have inspired Herman Melville's great work Billy Budd. The story of Somers raises timeless questions still disturbing in twenty-first-century America: the relationship between civil and military law, the hazy line between peace and war, the battle between individual rights and national security, and the ultimate challenge of command at sea.