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Updated: May 31, 2025
Another manifestation of the way in which sea-power works was first observed in the seventeenth century. It suggested the adoption of, and furnished the instrument for carrying out a distinct maritime policy. What was practically a standing navy had come into existence. As regards England this phenomenon was now of respectable age.
The British ministry on its part also realized that the sea-power of their country was the one force from which, because so manifold in its activities, and so readily exerted in many quarters by reason of its mobility, France had most reason to fear the arrest of its revolutionary advance and the renewal of the Continental war.
The artificial basis of the latter's sea-power would not enable it to hold out against serious and persistent assaults. Unless this is perceived it is impossible to understand the story of the Punic wars.
But it is the opinion of the foremost living expert on sea-power that Farragut deserves to be placed not far distant from Nelson, and that the gap which separates the American sailor from the British is smaller than that which stretches between Farragut and the third claimant, whoever he may be and of whatever nationality.
It would not be difficult to show how, during the thirty years which preceded the publication of Captain Mahan's 'Influence of Sea-Power, its most important theories were illustrated and discussed in the pages of the 'Review. The following, by one of the most accomplished officers in our navy, refers to such an article in the January number: From Captain Bridge, R.N. January 19th.
Mahan's comment is striking: 'The magnificence of sea-power and its value had perhaps been more clearly shown by the uncontrolled sway and consequent exaltation of one belligerent; but the lesson thus given, if more striking, is less vividly interesting than the spectacle of that sea-power meeting a foe worthy of its steel, and excited to exertion by a strife which endangered not only its most valuable colonies, but even its own shores. We were, in fact, drawing too largely on the prestige acquired during the Seven Years' war; and we were governed by men who did not understand the first principles of naval warfare, and would not listen to those who did.
Navies had gone in the past to the bottom, beaten and wrecked like the Spanish Armada, or battered to pieces and sunk as at Trafalgar; but never yet had Britain's sea-power led home a captive fleet without a fight.
Canadian history is full of sea-power, but Canadian histories are not.
Nevertheless, Pitt wielded the amphibious might of Britain with a master hand. Sea-power, mercantile and naval, enabled him to 'command the riches of the world' and become the paymaster of many thousand Prussians under Frederick the Great and Ferdinand of Brunswick. He also sent a small British army to the Continent.
As in Canada, so in Cape Breton, the Indians naturally sided with the French, who disturbed them less and treated them better than the British did. The British, who enjoyed the inestimable advantage of superior sea-power, had more goods to exchange. But in every other respect the French were very much preferred.
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