navy

navy, from the Latin, naves, ships, in its original meaning the entire shipping of a nation, but now only that part which is armed to defend the nation to which it belongs, its shipping routes, and its merchant marine.

Navies have been described as instruments of national policy, and while this is an accurate enough definition from about the Middle Ages onwards, many of the world's earlier navies were no more than collections of vessels capable of warlike action and used for private gain in the raiding and harassing of weaker peoples. There were some, organized on a national basis, which were used to further national policies of conquest or defence, but it was more usual to find squadrons of national ships in the hands of leaders licensed to use them for piracy. Typical of these were the Danish and Viking longships which harried western Europe in the 8th–10th centuries.

It was not until the early years of exploration by sea, in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, that national navies began to grow and to assume a shape and function akin to the navies of today. As the known world opened up the growing volume of lucrative trade, and the national competition which it invoked, called for navies to control and defend these routes and the trade monopolies claimed as a result of the prior right of discovery. This was the start of the national struggle for sea power on which so much of the wealth of the trading nations depended. From the start of the 15th century to the early years of the 19th century, Spain, Holland, France, and Britain were more or less permanently engaged in warfare at sea to win mastery of the oceans and control vital trade routes.

At the end of the 19th century three new navies, those of the USA, Japan, and Germany, emerged to challenge Britain's naval dominance, which had eventually triumphed at sea over all the other European powers. Following the Second World War (1939–45), the US Navy, though once challenged by the fleets of what was the Soviet Union, is now by far the largest in the world and is centred around its twelve Carrier Battle Groups, or Carrier Strike Groups as they are to be called. With the end of the Cold War, and the emergence of terrorism and rogue states, future US Navy strategy, known as ‘Sea Power 21’, provides the way forward for the next twenty years. The nuclear submarine fleet in particular is facing substantial changes.

Cuts in the Royal Navy surface fleet, announced in 2004, mean that for the first time since the 17th century it will be smaller than the French Navy, while the Russian government is making strenuous efforts to modernize and reorganize its sea forces. For a glimpse of how small surface warships may evolve, see illus. in corvette. See also surface effect ship; swath ship.

Royal Navy.

Two early English monarchs, Alfred and Canute, were both known for their abilities to conduct warfare at sea, but neither could be said to have founded the British Navy as none was permanently established until Tudor times. Before then ships and men were recruited as necessary, the Cinque Ports being one of the mainstays of this system. The office of the Lord High Admiral was established in 1391 but it was the Tudors, notably Henry VII (1457–1509) and his son Henry VIII (1491–1547), who laid the foundation for the modern navy, building such ships as the Henry Grâce à Dieu and the Mary Rose. During the latter's reign, in 1520, the beginnings of the Admiralty took shape and later the navy prospered under the able administration of Sir John Hawkins.

With the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, and the boldness of adventurers like Drake and Frobisher, the navy came of age under Elizabeth I. Neglect followed, but between 1642 and 1688, aided by that talented

Major Warships of Selected Navies Built, Building, and Planned, 2003.

Country	Carrier	Cruiser	Submarine	Destroyer	Frigate	Corvette
*excludes amphibious forces and military sealift command
p = planned, gm = guided missile,
np = nuclear powered
bc = battle‐cruiser
Submarine Types
ssbn = ballistic missile, np
ssgn = surface‐to‐surface missile, np
ssn = attack, np
ssk = patrol, ASW capabilities
ssa(n) = auxiliary, np
ssg = guided missile, diesel engines
Australia				4p
Canada			4	4	12
China	1p		2 ssbn	25 + 2p	45
			1 ssb
			7 ssn + 3p
			6 ssg + 2p
			67 patrol
France	1 + 2p		6 ssbn	14 + 2p	20 + 17p
	1 helicopter		6 ssn + 6p
Germany			18	2	15	5
Italy	2	1	8 + 2p	6 + 2p	13 + 10p	8
NZ				c	3
Russia	1	5 + 2(bc)	18 ssbn	16	51	45
			25 ssgn/ssn
			12 ssk
			6 ssa(n)
SA			2		4
Spain	1		6 patrol + 4p		15	4
UK	3 + 2p		4 ssbn	17 + 6p	20
			15 attack + 2p
US*	10np + 1p	27gm + 27	16 ssbn	49gm +	33gm	45
	3	gmp	2 ssgn	14gmp +
			59 ssn + 2p	19

administrator Samuel Pepys, its strength grew from 35 vessels to 151. Led by commanders such as Blake, it fought three wars against the Dutch during this period, and fought the Spaniards and the Barbary pirates as well. But it was during the next century and a quarter that the Royal Navy fought its most bitter battles, nearly all of them against France, which it mostly won, but against the new American nation as well, in which it lost the ones that mattered. These decades produced some of the country's outstanding leaders at sea, Hood, Nelson, and many more, and the battles fought during the Napoleonic Wars (1793–1815), such as the Glorious First of June (June 1794) and Trafalgar (October 1805), are part of the nation's heritage. It was during this era that some of the great voyages of exploration by naval officers also took place, those led by James Cook and those searching for the North-West Passage being outstanding examples.

After 1815 the Royal Navy emerged bruised but triumphant, and led the 19th-century transition from sail to steam propulsion, from ships of the line to the early ironclad warships such as HMS Warrior, to the Dreadnought battleship. Its role during the First World War (1914–18) was to keep the world's sea lanes clear of German submarines and commerce raiders, and few set battles were fought against the German Navy, the Falkland Islands (December 1914) and Jutland (May 1916) being the exceptions. After the First World War, when its decline as a maritime power was gathering pace, Britain remained in the forefront of developing a new type of warship, the aircraft carrier, improving established ones, such as the submarine, and perfecting new seaborne weapons like ASDIC and radar.

The Royal Navy's role in the Second World War (1939–45) was a crucial one, for it not only had to keep open the sea lanes across the Atlantic and the Arctic Sea, escorting vital convoys from the USA and to the beleaguered USSR, but had to counter a German Navy with powerful surface ships and U-boats which threatened to sever Britain's supply lines. For the Royal Navy the lowest points of the war came when the battlecruiser HMS Hood was sunk by the German battleship Bismarck in May 1941, and when Japanese forces sank the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser HMS Repulse off the Malayan coast in December 1941. The sinking of the Hood was soon revenged, when the Home Fleet tracked down and sank the Bismarck (see also ballard), but the Royal Navy's part in defeating the Japanese was relatively minor. Task Force 57, as the British Pacific Fleet was called, was the Royal Navy's largest fleet of the war, and worked as part of a numerically superior US Pacific Fleet. The Mediterranean Fleet defeated the Italian Navy at the battle of Cape Matapan (March 1941), played a vital role in supporting the British Army in North Africa, and ensured that its vital island base of Malta continued to be supplied. Further reductions in its size after the Second World War inevitably restricted its capabilities, but it was in the forefront of operating nuclear submarines and has been involved in numerous local conflicts, from the Korean War (1950–3) to the Gulf War of 2003.

United States Navy.

The newly independent United States of America had no navy after 1785, when the last of its Continental Navy's ships had been sold, although it then possessed the world's second largest merchant marine. Depredations on this by the Barbary pirates of North Africa led, in March 1794, to the construction of six frigates, the United States, Constellation, Constitution, President, Chesapeake, and Congress. By the time the first three became operational in 1798, the dispute had been settled, but a ‘quasi-war’ with France began. In May 1801 trouble broke out again in the Mediterranean when the Pasha of Tripoli declared war, but after Commodore Edward Preble (1761–1807) had blockaded and then bombarded the Pasha's home port a peace treaty was signed in 1805, along with renewed treaties of friendship with Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco.

The War of 1812–15 pitted seventeen ships against the Royal Navy's thousand or more. The best-remembered actions are the three consecutive American victories scored by two of these original 44-gun frigates, which led to their becoming the world standard in this type of warship for the remaining age of fighting sail. However, the most important victories strategically, securing a lasting peace with Britain, were those on Lakes Erie (1813) and Champlain (1814), and at New Orleans (1815). During the following decades squadrons were deployed worldwide to protect US interests, naval forces saw action during a war with Mexico (1846–8), and Commodore Perry opened Japan to American trade (1853).

In the American Civil War (1861–5) the US Navy, in its ultimately successful struggle with the Confederate States Navy, became larger than ever before. In 1862 it promoted its first admirals and introduced the monitor. It was also the first navy to lose a ship to a submarine, a weapon two Americans, David Bushnell and Robert Fulton, had earlier done so much to develop.

The post-war decline in naval strength was almost as rapid as its expansion, but fuelled by the writings of naval theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan, the navy began a resurgence in the early 1880s. War with Spain in 1898 left the USA with overseas possessions in the Caribbean and the western Pacific which, in turn, led to the construction of the Panama Canal. Involvement in the First World War (1914–18) came late and amounted to no more than convoy duties. Afterwards, the US Navy developed aircraft carriers and landing craft, and built battleships and cruisers to the maximum size allowed. Further expansion, aimed at creating a ‘two-ocean navy’ capable of fighting simultaneously in the Pacific and the Atlantic, began before the USA entered the Second World War (1939–45).

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941 the American carriers were at sea. Their survival allowed a tactical victory over the Japanese in the Coral Sea (May 1942) and then a pivotal one at Midway (June 1942). Later others (Philippine Sea, Leyte Gulf, Okinawa) virtually destroyed Japanese naval power, and led to the Japanese surrendering aboard the battleship USS Missouri on 2 September 1945.

It was a different war in the Atlantic, where the US Navy's first task was to overcome Hitler's U-boats. This took time as it required the construction of anti-submarine forces, and their training, but by mid-1943 the Atlantic was secured. This underpinned the second task, the seaborne invasions of Nazi-occupied Europe—Sicily (July 1943), mainland Italy (September 1943), Normandy (June 1944), and southern France (August 1944). In each instance, the US Navy transported, landed, and provided supporting gunfire and logistic support that culminated in Germany's surrender on 8 May 1945.

At war's end, the US Navy had approximately 5,000 warships, auxiliaries, and large landing craft, and more than 30,000 aircraft. It was the mightiest navy the world had ever seen, but these numbers shrank rapidly as pre-war ships were scrapped and many war-built ones placed in reserve. During the second half of the 20th century the US Navy's biggest commitments were supporting United Nations forces in the Korean War (1950–3), providing air support, coastal interdiction, and special forces operations in the Vietnam War (1965–75), and, of course, ensuring an adequate submarine and surface screen, both nuclear and conventional, against the Soviet bloc.

After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the US Navy was reduced to about 300 warships. However, individual units have, with the advent of long-range, extremely accurate missiles, extended range guns, and sophisticated detection and command and control systems, markedly increased their potency. On balance, it remains the most powerful navy in the world.

See also liberty ships; marines; us coast guard.

Bibliography

Miller, N. , The US Navy: A History (3rd edn. 1997).
Sweetman, J. , American Naval History (3rd edn. 2002).

www.history.navy.mil

Tyrone G. Martin