“SEA POWER” IN THE AMERICAN MIND

Throughout the 20th century, and well into the 21st, the term “sea power” defined the overarching strategy of the United States Navy. The phrase first entered the U.S. naval lexicon with the publication in May 1890 of Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan's epochal book, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783. In this extraordinary treatise the captain conceived of “sea power” in broad terms, as consisting of “contests between nations, of mutual rivalries, of violence frequently culminating in war.” Mahan's purpose was to advance the thesis of the indispensability of “sea power” to national greatness. Only through pursuing a strategy of gaining victory in fleet engagements could a navy insure that greatness. His model was the Royal Navy of Great Britain before and during the age of Horatio Nelson.

Mahan had written a book for the ages, but his classic work was spawned by the unique American naval conditions of the 1880s. American officers and civilian officials were reluctantly coming to recognize the obsolescence of the navy's wooden-hulled sailing warships featuring auxiliary steam engines and muzzle-loading guns. Beginning in 1883, Congress authorized a new generation of steel-hulled, steam-driven cruisers mounting modern breech-loading rifled guns. With each subsequent congressional appropriation, the cruisers grew in hull displacement and size of guns, but there was no corresponding reconsideration of how to use the new warships. The navy remained wedded to a wartime strategy of coastal defense and commerce raiding, or guerre de course.