The Struggle for Sea Power: A Naval History of the American Revolution

The Struggle for Sea Power: A Naval History of the American Revolution PDF Author: Sam Willis
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393248836
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 672

Book Description
A fascinating naval perspective on one of the greatest of all historical conundrums: How did thirteen isolated colonies, which in 1775 began a war with Britain without a navy or an army, win their independence from the greatest naval and military power on earth? The American Revolution involved a naval war of immense scope and variety, including no fewer than twenty-two navies fighting on five oceans—to say nothing of rivers and lakes. In no other war were so many large-scale fleet battles fought, one of which was the most strategically significant naval battle in all of British, French, and American history. Simultaneous naval campaigns were fought in the English Channel, the North and Mid-Atlantic, the Mediterranean, off South Africa, in the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean, the Pacific, the North Sea and, of course, off the eastern seaboard of America. Not until the Second World War would any nation actively fight in so many different theaters. In The Struggle for Sea Power, Sam Willis traces every key military event in the path to American independence from a naval perspective, and he also brings this important viewpoint to bear on economic, political, and social developments that were fundamental to the success of the Revolution. In doing so Willis offers valuable new insights into American, British, French, Spanish, Dutch, and Russian history. This unique account of the American Revolution gives us a new understanding of the influence of sea power upon history, of the American path to independence, and of the rise and fall of the British Empire.

A Brief History of British Sea Power

A Brief History of British Sea Power PDF Author: David Armine Howarth
Publisher: Constable
ISBN: 9781841197920
Category : Great Britain
Languages : en
Pages : 464

Book Description
The British did not take to water like ducks, for centuries doing little but cling to coastal waters. The Romans and Vikings knocked spots of us as seamen, and the English upper classes saw seafaring as mercantile and beneath them. Britain's success at sea began with Elizabeth I and the defeat of the Armada, thanks to superior gunnery and seamanship. Elizabeth employed practical seamen like Hawkins and Drake - and they repaid her trust. Howarth reconstructs the expansion of trade routes and the great 18th - century days of the line of battle ships. With Napoleon's fall, the British were free to expand, and their prestige rose so high that sea warfare almost ceased as British ships patrolled the oceans. In the 20th century, the British navy was twice as big as any other. Full of anecdote, erudition and humour, this is a classic account.

Sea Power

Sea Power PDF Author: Admiral James Stavridis, USN
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735220611
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 386

Book Description
From one of the most admired admirals of his generation—and the only admiral to serve as Supreme Allied Commander at NATO—comes a remarkable voyage through all of the world’s most important bodies of water, providing the story of naval power as a driver of human history and a crucial element in our current geopolitical path. From the time of the Greeks and the Persians clashing in the Mediterranean, sea power has determined world power. To an extent that is often underappreciated, it still does. No one understands this better than Admiral Jim Stavridis. In Sea Power, Admiral Stavridis takes us with him on a tour of the world’s oceans from the admiral’s chair, showing us how the geography of the oceans has shaped the destiny of nations, and how naval power has in a real sense made the world we live in today, and will shape the world we live in tomorrow. Not least, Sea Power is marvelous naval history, giving us fresh insight into great naval engagements from the battles of Salamis and Lepanto through to Trafalgar, the Battle of the Atlantic, and submarine conflicts of the Cold War. It is also a keen-eyed reckoning with the likely sites of our next major naval conflicts, particularly the Arctic Ocean, Eastern Mediterranean, and the South China Sea. Finally, Sea Power steps back to take a holistic view of the plagues to our oceans that are best seen that way, from piracy to pollution. When most of us look at a globe, we focus on the shape of the of the seven continents. Admiral Stavridis sees the shapes of the seven seas. After reading Sea Power, you will too. Not since Alfred Thayer Mahan’s legendary The Influence of Sea Power upon History have we had such a powerful reckoning with this vital subject.

Sovereign of the Seas

Sovereign of the Seas PDF Author: David Armine Howarth
Publisher: Atheneum Books
ISBN: 9780689105173
Category : Great Britain
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
No ship, large or small, goes to sea without some benefit of Britain's illustrious four-hundred-year-old tradition of seafaring enterprise and ingenuity. As he did in his highly successful earlier books, Waterloo and Trafalgar, David Howarth has woven together the colored threads of a vast tapestry figured with men, treasure hoards, unexplored coastlines and wild and smoky battles. Sovereign of the Seas begins as a book about British sea power and turns into the story of the British Empire and the tale of the adventuresome men--the admirals, captains, explorers, seamen and pirates--who manned the ships and mastered the waves that the world came to regard as Britain's own. Sovereign of the Seas does not assume a deep knowledge of maritime history. Each period--medieval, Elizabethan, the age of Nelson, the reign of steam and iron, the now-faded ideal of Pax Britannica--is excitingly described through stories of individual ships, sailors, voyages and battles. Lavishly illustrated with 24 pages of color and 24 pages of black-and-white plates plus maps, Sovereign of the Seas is a dramatic and international tale told with enthusiasm and flare by a master storyteller. -- Inside jacket flap.

A History of Sea Power

A History of Sea Power PDF Author: William Oliver Stevens
Publisher: DigiCat
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Book Description
DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "A History of Sea Power" by William Oliver Stevens, Allan F. Westcott. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Steam Power and Sea Power

Steam Power and Sea Power PDF Author: Steven Gray
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137576421
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Book Description
This book examines how the expansion of a steam-powered Royal Navy from the second half of the nineteenth century had wider ramifications across the British Empire. In particular, it considers how steam propulsion made vessels utterly dependent on a particular resource – coal – and its distribution around the world. In doing so, it shows that the ‘coal question’ was central to imperial defence and the protection of trade, requiring the creation of infrastructures that spanned the globe. This infrastructure required careful management, and the processes involved show the development of bureaucracy and the reliance on the ‘contractor state’ to ensure this was both robust and able to allow swift mobilisation in war. The requirement to stop regularly at foreign stations also brought men of the Royal navy into contact with local coal heavers, as well as indigenous populations and landscapes. These encounters and their dissemination are crucial to our understanding of imperial relationships and imaginations at the height of the imperial age.
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