BY JOHN RICHARD HALE WITH THIRTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS AND SEVENTEEN PLANS BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY 1911...

Three hundred years ago Francis Bacon wrote, amongst other wise words: "To be Master of the Sea is an Abridgement of Monarchy.... The Bataille of Actium decided the Empire of the World. The Bataille of Lepanto arrested the Greatnesse of the Turke. There be many Examples where Sea-Fights have been Finall to the Warre. But this much is certaine; that hee that commands the Sea is at great liberty, and may take as much and as little of the Warre as he will. Whereas those, that be strongest by land,

SALAMIS B.C. 480 The world has lost all record of the greatest of its inventors—the pioneers who in far-off ages devised the simple appliances with which men tilled the ground, did their domestic work, and fought their battles for thousands of years. He who hung up the first weaver's beam and shaped the first rude shuttle was a more wonderful inventor than Arkwright. The maker of the first bow and arrow was a more enterprising pioneer than our inventors of machine-guns. And greater than the buil

ACTIUM B.C. 31 Actium was one of the decisive battles of the world—the event that fixed the destinies of the Roman Empire for centuries to come, made Octavian its dictator, and enabled him, while keeping the mere forms of Republican life, to inaugurate the imperial system of absolute rule, and reign as the first of the Roman Emperors, under the name and title of Augustus. It brought to a close the series of civil wars which followed the murder of his grand-uncle, Julius Cæsar. The triumvirs, Mar

THE BATTLE OF SVOLD ISLAND A.D. 1000 In the story of the battles of Salamis and Actium we have seen what naval warfare was like in Greek and Roman times. It would be easy to add other examples, but they would be only repetitions of much the same story, for during the centuries of the Roman power there was no marked change in naval architecture or the tactics of warfare on the sea. We pass, then, over a thousand years to a record of naval war waged in the beginning of the Middle Ages by northern

SLUYS 1340 The gold "nobles" of the coinage of King Edward III show in conventional fashion the King standing in the waist of a ship with a high bow and poop, the red-cross banner of St. George at the stern and the lions of England and the lilies of France emblazoned on his shield. The device typifies his claim to the sovereignty of the narrow seas between England and the Continent, the prize won for him by the fleet that conquered at Sluys. Sluys is often spoken of as the sea-fight that inaugur

LEPANTO 1571 The Turk has long been known as the "sick man of Europe," and the story of the Ottoman Empire for a hundred years has been a tale of gradual dismemberment. Thus it is no easy matter for us to realize that for centuries the Ottoman power was the terror of the civilized world. It was in 1358 that the Ottomans seized Gallipoli, on the Dardanelles, and thus obtained their first footing in Europe. They soon made themselves masters of Philippopolis and Adrianople. A crusading army, gather

THE GREAT ARMADA 1588 Thus Macaulay begins his stirring ballad of the Armada. The lines have helped to perpetuate a popular error—one of the many connected with the story as it is generally told in our English histories. It somehow became the fashion at a very early date to speak of the defeat of the so-called "Invincible Armada" of Spain. But the Spaniards never gave their fleet such a name. In the contemporary histories and in Spanish official documents it is more modestly and truthfully spoke

THE BATTLE OFF THE GUNFLEET 1666 The decline of Spain as a great power was largely due to the unsuccessful attempt to coerce the Dutch people. Out of the struggle arose the Republic of the United Provinces, and Holland, won from the sea, and almost an amphibious state, became in a few years a great naval power. A hardy race of sailors was trained in the fisheries of the North Sea. Settlements were established in the Far East, and fleets of Dutch East Indiamen broke the Spanish monopoly of Asiati

THE BATTLE OF THE SAINTS' PASSAGE 1782 In the days when fleets in action relied upon the oar, all fighting was at close quarters, and, as we have seen in our study of typical battles of this period, naval engagements fought out at close quarters gave very definite results, the fleet that was defeated being practically destroyed. When battles began to be fought under sail, with the gun as the chief weapon, a new method had to be evolved. The more the fire of broadside batteries was relied upon, t

TRAFALGAR 1805 The closing years of the eighteenth century and the opening years of the nineteenth represent the most splendid period in the annals of the British Navy. Howe destroyed the French fleet in the Atlantic on "the glorious First of June, 1794," Nelson died in the midst of his greatest victory off Cape Trafalgar on 21 October, 1805. Little more than eleven years separated the two dates, and this brief period was crowded with triumphs for Britain on the sea. The "First of June," St. Vin

THE COMING OF STEAM AND ARMOURED NAVIES THE FIGHT IN HAMPTON ROADS March , 1862 Trafalgar was the greatest fight of the sailing-ships. There were later engagements which were fought under sail, but no battle of such decisive import. It was a fitting close to a heroic era in the history of naval war, a period of not much more than four centuries, in thousands of years. Before it, came the long ages in which the fighting-ship depended more upon the oar than the sail, or on the oar exclusively. Aft

LISSA 1866 In the American Civil War there had been no battle between ironclad fleets. "Monitors" had engaged batteries. The "Merrimac" had had her duel with the first of the little turret-ships. But experts were still wondering what would happen when fleets of armoured ships, built in first-class dockyards, met in battle on the sea. The war between Austria and Italy in 1866 gave the first answer. The experiment was not a completely satisfactory one, and some of its lessons were misread. Others

THE BATTLE OF THE YALU 1894 One result of the victory won by Tegethoff at Lissa was that an exaggerated importance was for many years to come attached to the ram as a weapon of attack. In every navy in the world ships were built with bows specially designed for ramming. The sinking of the "Re d'Italia" had made such an impression on the public mind, that it was in vain for a minority among naval critics to urge that the ram was being overrated, and to point out that even at Lissa for one success

SANTIAGO DE CUBA 1898 The United States Navy had taken a decisive part in securing victory for the Union in the War of Secession. It had effectively blockaded the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the Confederacy, captured New Orleans, given valuable help to the army, in seizing the line of the Mississippi, and by the combined effect of these operations isolated the Confederate States from the rest of the world, destroyed their trade, and cut off their supplies. One would have expected that the import

TSU-SHIMA 1905 When the war of 1894–5 between China and Japan was brought to a close by the Treaty of Shimonoseki (17 April, 1895), the Japanese were in possession of Korea and Southern Manchuria, Port Arthur and the Liao-tung Peninsula, Wei-hai-wei and the Pescadores Islands, and a joint naval and military expedition was ready to seize Formosa. By the second article China ceded to Japan the fortress and dockyard of Port Arthur and the Liao-tung Peninsula. As soon as the terms of the treaty were