This volume has been called into being by the absence of any brief work covering the evolution and influence of sea power from the beginnings to the present time. In a survey at once so comprehensive and so short, only the high points of naval history can be touched. 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

THE BEGINNINGS OF NAVIES Civilization and sea power arose from the Mediterranean, and the progress of recent archeological research has shown that civilizations and empires had been reared in the Mediterranean on sea power long before the dawn of history. Since the records of Egypt are far better preserved than those of any other nation of antiquity, and the discovery of the Rosetta stone has made it possible to read them, we know most about the beginnings of civilization in Egypt. We know, for

ATHENS AS A SEA POWER 1. THE PERSIAN WAR In determining to crush the independence of the Greek cities of the west, Darius was influenced not only by the desire to destroy a dangerous rival on the sea and an obstacle to further advances by the Persian empire, but also to tighten his hold on the Greek colonies of Asia Minor. Helped by the Phœnician fleet and the treachery of the Lesbians and Samians, he had succeeded in putting down a formidable rebellion in 500 B.C. In this rebellion the Asiatic

THE SEA POWER OF ROME 1. THE PUNIC WARS When peoples have migrated in the past, they have frequently changed their habits to conform to new topographical surroundings. We have seen that the Phœnicians, originally a nomadic people, became a seafaring race because of the conditions of the country they settled in; and on the other hand, at a later period, the Vikings who overran Normandy or Britain forsook the sea and became farmers. The popular idea that a race follows the sea because of an "insti

THE NAVIES OF THE MIDDLE AGES: THE EASTERN EMPIRE The thousand years following the collapse of the Roman empire, a period generally referred to as the Middle Ages, are characterized by a series of barbarian invasions. Angles, Saxons, Goths, Visigoths, Huns, Vandals, Vikings, Slavs, Arabs, and Turks poured over the broken barriers of the empire and threatened to extinguish the last spark of western and Christian civilization. Out of this welter of invasions and the anarchy of petty kingdoms arose

THE NAVIES OF THE MIDDLE AGES [ Continued ]: VENICE AND THE TURK The city-state of Venice owed its origin to the very same barbarian invasions that wrecked the old established cities of the Italian peninsula. Fugitives from these towns in northern Italy and the outlying country districts fled to the islets and lagoons for shelter from the Hun, the Goth, and the Lombard. As the sea was the Venetians' barrier from the invader, so also it had to be their source of livelihood, and step by step throu

OPENING THE OCEAN ROUTES 1. PORTUGAL AND THE NEW ROUTE TO INDIA From the days of the Phœnicians to the close of the 15th century, all trade between Europe and Asia crossed the land barrier east of the Mediterranean. Delivered by Mohammedan vessels at the head of the Persian Gulf or the ports of the Red Sea, merchandise followed thence the caravan routes across Arabia or Egypt to the Mediterranean, quadrupling in value in the transit. Intercourse between East and West, active under the Romans, wa

SEA POWER IN THE NORTH: HOLLAND'S STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE The first sea-farers in the storm-swept waters of the north, at least in historic times, were the Teutonic tribes along the North Sea and the Baltic. On land the Teutons held the Rhine and the Danube against the legions of Rome, spread later southward and westward, and founded modern European states out of the wreckage of the Roman Empire. On the sea, Angles, Saxons, and Jutes in the 5th century began plundering the coasts of what is no

ENGLAND AND THE ARMADA By reason of England's insularity, it is an easy matter to find instances from even her early history of the salutary or fatal influence of sea power. Romans, Saxons, Danes swept down upon England from the sea. By building a fleet, King Alfred, said to have been the true father of the British navy, kept back the Danes. It was the dispersion of the English fleet by reason of the lateness of the season that enabled William the Conqueror, in the small open vessels interesting

RISE OF ENGLISH SEA POWER: WARS WITH THE DUTCH. In the Dutch Wars of the 17th century the British navy may be said to have caught its stride in the march that made Britannia the unrivaled mistress of the seas. The defeat of the Armada was caused by other things besides the skill of the English, and the steady decline of Spain from that point was not due to that battle or to any energetic naval campaign undertaken by the English thereafter. In fact, save for the Cadiz expedition of 1596, in which

RISE OF ENGLISH SEA POWER [ Continued ]. WARS WITH FRANCE TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION The effect of the expulsion of James II from the throne of England coupled with the accession of the Dutch prince, William of Orange, was to make England change sides and take the leadership in the coalition opposed to Louis XIV. From this time on, for over 125 years, England was involved in a series of wars with France. They began with the threat of Louis to dominate Europe and ended with the similar threat on th

THE NAPOLEONIC WARS: THE FIRST OF JUNE AND CAMPERDOWN Ten years after the War of American Independence, British sea power was drawn into a more prolonged and desperate conflict with France. This time it was with a France whose navy, demoralized by revolution, was less able to dispute sea control, but whose armies, organized into an aggressive, empire-building force by the genius of Napoleon, threatened to dominate Europe, shaking the old monarchies with dangerous radical doctrines, and bringing

THE NAPOLEONIC WARS [ Continued ]: THE RISE OF NELSON In the Mediterranean, where the protection of commerce, the fate of Italy and all southern Europe, and the exposed interests of France gave abundant motives for the presence of a British fleet, the course of naval events may be sufficiently indicated by following the work of Nelson, who came thither in 1793 in command of the Agamemnon (64) and remained until the withdrawal of the fleet at the close of 1796. Already marked within the service,

THE NAPOLEONIC WAR [ Concluded ]: TRAFALGAR AND AFTER The peace finally ratified at Amiens in March, 1802, failed to accomplish any of the purposes for which England had entered the war. France not only maintained her frontiers on the Scheldt and the Rhine, but still exercised a predominant influence in Holland and western Italy, and excluded British trade from territories under her control. Until French troops were withdrawn from Holland, as called for by the treaty, England refused to evacuate

REVOLUTION IN NAVAL WARFARE: HAMPTON ROADS AND LISSA. During the 19th century, from 1815 to 1898, naval power, though always an important factor in international relations, played in general a passive rôle. The wars which marked the unification of Germany and Italy and the thrusting back of Turkey from the Balkans were fought chiefly on land. The navy of England, though never more constantly busy in protecting her far-flung empire, was not challenged to a genuine contest for mastery of the seas.

RIVALRY FOR WORLD POWER Even more significant in its relation to sea power than the revolution in armaments during the 19th century was the extraordinary growth of ocean commerce. The total value of the world's import and export trade in 1800 amounted in round numbers to 1-1/2 billion dollars, in 1850 to 4 billion, and in 1900 to nearly 24 billion. In other words, during a period in which the population of the world was not more than tripled, its international exchange of commodities was increas

THE WORLD WAR: THE FIRST YEAR (1914-1915) The Russo-Japanese war greatly weakened Russia's position in Europe, and left the Dual Alliance of France and Russia overweighted by the military strength of the Teutonic Empires, Germany and Austria, whether or not Italy should adhere to the Triple Alliance with these nations. To Great Britain, such a disturbance of the European balance was ever a matter of grave concern, and an abandonment of her policy of isolation was in this instance virtually force

THE WORLD WAR [ Continued ]: THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND There was only one action between the British Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet in the World War, the battle of Jutland. This was indecisive, but even in a history with the limits of this book it deserves a chapter of its own. In the magnitude of the forces engaged, a magnitude less in numbers of ships—great as that was—than in the enormous destructive power concentrated in those ships, it was by far the greatest naval battle in history

THE WORLD WAR [ Continued ]: COMMERCE WARFARE Interdiction of enemy trade has always been the great weapon of sea power; and hence, though mines, submarines, and the menace of the High Seas Fleet itself made a close blockade of the German coast impossible, Great Britain in the World War steadily extended her efforts to cut off Germany's intercourse with the overseas world. Germany, on the other hand, while unwilling or unable to take the risks of a contest for surface control of the sea, waged c

CONCLUSION The brief survey of sea power in the preceding chapters has shown that the ocean has been the highway for the march of civilization and empire. Crete in its day became a great island power and distributed throughout the Mediterranean the wealth and the arts of its own culture and that of Egypt. In turn, Phœnicia held sway on the inland sea, and though creating little, she seized upon and developed the material and intellectual resources of her neighbors, and carried them not only to t