In October 2024, the authors personally participated in the work of an international expedition to Takashima Island in Nagasaki Prefecture in Japan to study the Takashima-3 underwater site, associated with the Mongol invasion of 1281. This article presents an overview of the main results of long-term research in Imari Bay, where sunken ships are buried. The review is accompanied by a brief excursion into the history of the 13th century Mongol invasions. To date, the remains of three ships have been found, the finds from which confirm the hypothesis that the remains of the ships belong to the naval flotilla of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368). The main finds from the sunken ships include iron helmets, fragments of quivers with arrows, anchors, stone cannonballs, Chinese and Korean ceramics and porcelain, bronze Buddhist statues and mirrors, and everyday utensils. The archaeological finds from Takashima Island represent an important source of information about the naval history of the region, the technological level of shipbuilding, and the dynamic interaction of the peoples of East Asia in the early 2nd millennium.

Abstract During the early decades of the eighteenth century, the first general naval histories were published in Britain. Individuals from a range of backgrounds claimed ownership of this new and burgeoning subject, all professing to have produced the most reliable and accurate histories of the navy. Their competing publications provoked considerable debate, with authors drawn into fighting a war of words in the national press. These disputes raised important questions about the study of the past. Who should write naval history? How should it be written? Who was it written for? This article places naval history in the broader context of British politics, society and culture, investigating three works of naval history published between 1720 and 1735. It analyses their authorship and intended audience, suggesting that the production of these works was a symptom of a society quickly becoming enamoured with its naval past, and keen to record and disseminate this history. In addition, this article explores the debates over objectivity, expertise and authority that were central to discussions over who should write naval history. In doing so, it contributes to a broader historiography that considers the development of the historical profession in the early eighteenth century.

This publication attempts to present the history of the sailing ships development, from ancient times to the present day. It is almost impossible to present the development history of such an important technological achievement in a few pages, so we only focus on the most significant turning points in the publication. We present the ancient ships, the long ships of the Vikings, the shipbuilding techniques of the age of great geographical discoveries. We analyse the characteristics of line of ships, which greatly influenced the battles of the great powers of the world. Finally, we give a small overview of currently used sailing ship technologies.

This article examines the relatively unexplored relationship between Royal Navy flag and commissioned officers and shore-based secular and civic voluntary societies in the early Victorian period using the case study of the Shipwrecked Fishermen and Mariners’ Royal Benevolent Society. Portrayed in the literature as heroes and objectivized symbols of the glory of nation, naval officers instead had agency of their own. They were active facilitators, employing personal experience, naval culture and patronage networks to drive forward philanthropic initiatives for the society. They were crucial to the society’s success, moving it forward to incorporation by an act of parliament in 1850, and to national and imperial expansion. It suggests that naval associative voluntary service needs to be considered more fully not only in naval history, but also within broader historical studies.

Abstract Naval and military historians have generally not focused on logistics, and this is true for Second World War naval historians and, more specifically, for United States Navy logistics of the Pacific War (1941–45). Naval logistics deserves more serious study as they circumscribe what surface fleets can accomplish. Recently, historians have started to treat this topic as an integral part of naval strategy, operations, and tactics, which is a step in the right direction. This article explores the current state of historical literature and demonstrates that further historical inquiry is necessary – the topic deserves more attention from historians and, indeed, today’s navies.

Many dharmaśāstra texts, starting from the most famous, the Manusmr+ti, declare sea voyage to be sinful and polluting for a Hindu. At the same time, from remote antiquity, Hindus from various castes, including Brahmans, had actively traversed the seas to the west, south and east of India for the purposes of trade, war, spiritual guidance, adventures and so on. This article seeks to review the geography of ancient and mediaeval Indian seafaring (in which Hindus played a significant role) and, more importantly, to discover why, in colonial India, the notion of sea travel being prohibited to Hindus became widely established, so that the descendants of the merchants who had operated from Aden to the Indonesian and Chinese ports would excommunicate their young caste fellows who desirous to study abroad.

Abstract In less than three decades, the People’s Liberation Army Navy developed from a minor coastal-defence force into the largest naval force in the world. China’s rapid rise in seapower has gained significant attention from established naval circles, academia, and the public. In their efforts to explain this development, analysts have often referred to 19th-century naval history, seeking to connect China’s maritime developments to the ideas of influential naval strategists like Alfred Thayer Mahan and Julian Corbett. However, in doing so, these naval thinkers are often used to make a case about long-term developments or strategic implications regarding China’s alleged grand strategy. This paper seeks to turn this methodology around by solely focusing on the reflection of those naval theories—in their own right—against China’s maritime strategy. In doing so, it aims to historicise China’s 21st-century maritime strategy by testing to what extent it is reflected by the ideas of the navalists that are often presumed to influence Chinese strategic circles. It is argued that while on a grand-strategic level, Chinese strategic thinking seems to reflect the essence of Mahan’s seapower argument regarding its focus on the interconnectedness of maritime commerce and national power, a closer analysis reveals significant discrepancies in terms of both implementation and the broader strategic mindset regarding China’s geostrategic situation.

A Century of South African Naval History: The South African Navy and its Predecessors, 1922–2022

This is a condensed version of this article originally prepared for the USNA McMullen Naval History Symposium in 2017 and is a collaboration between David Boslaugh, Peter Marland, and John Vardalas (Stevens Institute of Technology) who have previously written about the postwar development of naval digital systems in their respective countries.

The actions of the Ottoman and Turkish fleets during the war of 1787-1792 in the Khadzhybey region (Odesa) are analysed in the article based on historical sources published in the XIXth – XXth centuries. It is noted that in historiography much less attention was paid to the military operations on the sea near the mentioned settlement than to the military operations on the land. The escalation of the situation in Khadzhybey Gulf during the unfolding of the war is examined. It is stated that in 1787 and at the beginning of 1788 only single clashes of individual ships took place in the Khadzhybey region. At the same time the military commanders of both belligerents attached great importance to Khadzhybey Gulf from the beginning of the war. The influence of the factor of the dislocation of the sizeableTurkish fleet on the events of the assault of Khadzhybey by Russian troops on 14 September 1789 is considered. It is pointed out that after the mentioned assault the Russian side began to use the Khadzhybey Gulf more often for naval communications, but Russian ships were still unable to be there in complete safety. It is claimed that the naval battle on 28-29 August 1790 in the area between Khadzhybey Gulf and Tendra Island became a peculiar naval conquest of Khadzhybey, which allowed the Russian state to establish the ultimate control over Khadzhybey Gulf. The author made the general conclusion that the naval confrontation around Khadzhybey during the war of 1787-1792 was longer and more cruel than the confrontation between the warring armies around this point on land. It is highlighted the necessity of further research of the mentioned issue involving the Ottoman documents.

Reviewed by: On Wide Seas: The US Navy in the Jacksonian Era by Claude Berube David Head (bio) Keywords U.S. Navy, Andre Jackson, Maritime history, Naval history On Wide Seas: The US Navy in the Jacksonian Era. By Claude Berube. (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2021. Pp. 248. Cloth, $54.95). Claude Berube once asked Robert Remini, the late Andrew Jackson biographer extraordinaire, what Old Hickory thought of the navy. "He didn't like it," Remini replied. "He didn't understand it, and he didn't use it" (xii). Remini's assessment reflects the conventional wisdom. Jackson was an army man, after all, a nationalist who was thrifty with a dollar—not the kind of person to project American power across the globe with expensive ships. But as Berube shows, this view of Jackson is inaccurate, a result of a lack of serious engagement with Jackson's relationship with the navy. It turns out that because of Jackson's support, the U.S. navy emerged from the 1830s as a larger, better organized, more technologically advanced, and more professional service than it had ever been. In six thematic chapters, Berube gives a full appraisal of the antebellum navy. He discusses how the navy differed from the army—cruising distant seas, for example, meant going months without orders from Washington and depending on foreign governments for port access to resupply. The book covers as well how the navy was governed, shipbuilding and the adoption of steam power, the development of a strategy that prioritized protecting commerce through the selective use of force, and the professionalization of an officer corps that participated in a self-conscious maritime republic of letters. Berube deftly uses traditional sources, such as presidential speeches, official correspondence, and magazines, in addition to less often used documents including records of the House and Senate Naval Affairs Committee, which show legislators hashing out policy before it got to the floor of Congress and into the Congressional record. Berube also mined some 16,000 pages worth of courts-martial records. Berube's background as a former Senate staffer allows him to offer insight on the budget process and the nitty-gritty politics of appropriations. Overall, Berube argues that Jackson's presidency was a vital period of growth that left the United States poised to take its place among the naval [End Page 634] powers of the Earth later in the century. The navy created international squadrons. It built ships—seventeen of them, the same number as under James Madison and behind only John Adams, both administrations that fought naval wars (69). It began the transition to a steam fleet, with small steam-driven vessels that would be especially effective during the Second Seminole War (1835–1842) along the coast and through the rivers of Florida. Jackson's administration reformed the naval bureaucracy and brought order to issues of personnel, supply, construction and maintenance, logistics, and budgeting. The officer corps professionalized, particularly in educating new officers. The haphazard system of teenage midshipmen learning math, science, and literature from the ship's chaplain, who was often someone mostly interested in having a naval rank and not an actual clergyman let alone a teacher, gave way to more rigorous shipboard training and, eventually, the founding of the Naval Academy in Annapolis (1845). Though Jackson is present in some chapters more than in others, there's plenty for Jackson scholars to learn about his presidency. For example, Berube argues that the naval dimension of Jackson's foreign policy, centered on protecting American commerce, showed restraint dictated by America's position in the world. Berube discusses four incidents in which American ships suffered attacks in far-flung locales: in the Falkland Islands (1829–1831), Quallah Battoo in Sumatra (1831), Savai'i in Samoa (1834), and the Namorik Atoll in the Marshall Islands (1835). A belligerent Jackson would have authorized naval reprisals in all four, but as Berube points out, Jackson authorized force only for the Falkland Islands and Quallah Battoo, because he saw both as critical to U.S. trade. A naval officer acting on his own attacked Savai'i, which Berube doubts Jackson would have approved, and he ordered no response to the...

ABSTRACT In developing a method to remove marine concretion from the bores of USS Monitor’s XI-Inch Dahlgren shell guns at The Mariners’ Museum and Park, a problem arose: how to determine the curve of the powder chamber to avoid damage during cleaning. Multiple period schematics showed conflicting dimensions, requiring direct measurement. An identical, non-archaeological XI-Inch Dahlgren from USS Kearsarge survives in Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC) collections, creating the opportunity to verify the dimensions of an un-damaged analog of Monitor's guns. Measuring the Kearsarge Dahlgren represented its own set of challenges. A 3-dimensional laser scan would have been ideal, but neither the Museum nor the Navy’s lab possessed a scanner, and it was not financially viable to rent or purchase one. Even if free services could be found, the Kearsarge gun was in a secure military facility, complicating potential access for a third-party company. Instead, it was necessary to measure the gun’s bore with minimal expenditure. An improvised system was developed using a copy stand and a consumer-grade laser-measuring device. This system was transported to NHHC's storage facilities and successfully used to measure the Kearsarge Dahlgren’s bore, confirming the correct drawing and enabling further treatment of Monitor’s artillery.

Sons of the Waves: The Common Seaman in the Heroic Age of Sail

This article applies Stephen Biddle’s “modern system” to naval war in the industrial era, c. 1860–1918. Biddle doubts his model’s transferability beyond continental/land warfare. A historical perspective suggests otherwise. Beginning in the 1860 s, navies—even earlier than armies—confronted industrial firepower and adapted accordingly. Submarines, torpedo boats, cruisers and eventually aircraft all relied on the “modern system” principles of cover and concealment, maneuver and combined arms to survive and perform useful missions. Today, concepts like “distributed lethality” have precedents in a “maritime modern system”—one undercurrent in naval history that is increasingly relevant.

Reviewed by: Inside the US Navy of 1812-1815 by William S. Dudley Michael A. Verney (bio) U.S. Navy, Military history, Naval history, War of 1812, Logistics Inside the US Navy of 1812-1815. By William S. Dudley. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021. Pp. 348. Cloth, $54.95.) In the vast field of the early U.S. republic, there are few acres better tilled than the naval aspects of the War of 1812. The U.S. Navy's performance in that conflict has fascinated scholars for generations. Given the extensive historiography on the subject, it may be surprising to hear of a historian with a new angle—particularly one who does not examine the topic in terms of race, class, gender, culture, emotions, empire, borderlands, law, or citizenship. Nonetheless, William S. Dudley accomplishes this with his new book, Inside the US Navy of 1812-1815. His central theme is logistics or naval administration. His goal, in his words, is "to explain what it took to build, maintain, man, fit out, provision, and send fighting ships to sea for extended periods of time" (xii). Unlike many naval histories, much of his book stays in port. Inside the US Navy recounts how Madison's three secretaries of the Navy and their commanders managed the Navy's material and human resources. These included recruiting and deploying officers and seamen; constructing and overseeing shipyards; building vessels; and ordering and dispatching weapons, cannons, powder, rations, and medical supplies. Successive chapters detail the organizational and clerical structures of the Navy Department; the challenges of managing the oceanic, Great Lakes, and Gulf Coast theaters of the war; the effects of the British blockade on naval finances and operations; and the lives and hardships of naval seamen. Dudley's central argument is that the outcome of naval battles often hinged on logistics. This was especially true on the Great Lakes and on Lake Champlain, where U.S. and British forces competed to build and launch freshwater navies. While leadership in battle was important, Dudley demonstrates that commanding officers also had to be adept administrators. Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry's squadron, for example, [End Page 124] emerged victorious in the Battle of Lake Erie in September 1813 not only through Perry's daring change of ship command but also through meticulous planning with the full backing of the Navy Department and U.S. Army officers. In contrast, British shortcomings in supplying their own Lake Erie squadron hampered Commodore Robert Barclay's ability to contend with Perry's forces. Among Barclay's challenges was the diverse array of ordnance aboard his flagship, which made it harder for the gun crews to deliver the right balls and powder bags to each class of cannon during the battle. A similar dynamic was at play on Lake Champlain, where Commodore Thomas Macdonough's ability to surmount a "logistical nightmare in recruiting sailors, ordering provisions, and requisitioning guns" contributed to his success in that theater (205). While Dudley pays close attention to how logistics shaped the U.S. Navy's victories, he also discusses logistical failures. In common with most naval historians, he is critical of Democratic-Republican leaders like Thomas Jefferson and Albert Gallatin for neglecting the Navy in the opening years of the nineteenth century. He recounts how the British blockade contained much of the U.S. Navy, forcing Secretary William Jones to invest in new war machines and in what Benjamin Armstrong has called "guerre de razzia" or war by raiding."1 Dudley believes that naval forces could have contributed much more to the defense of New Orleans in 1814 and 1815 had they been adequately supported. Finally, and most importantly, Dudley narrates how the strains of war led to new modes of naval organization. Managing the logistics of the Navy Department was an onerous, even herculean, task. It broke Madison's first Secretary of the Navy, Paul Hamilton, and wore out his more qualified successor, William Jones. Near the end of his tenure in late 1814, an exhausted Jones drafted a bill to reorganize and expand the Navy Department. Congress acted swiftly on his proposals, establishing a Board of Navy Commissioners in 1815 to assist the Secretary with...

Berry, Helen. <i>Orphans of Empire: The Fate of London’s Foundlings</i>.

This study is based on the information from different textbooks and manuals on the Naval and Navigation History. The Ukrainian publications on the history of navigation and naval history of Ukraine intended for teaching this subject in higher educational institutions are considered. The primary purposes of this study are: firstly, the emphasis is on the argumentation and reliability of historical constructions depending on the maritime professionalism of the researcher; secondly, the visualisation of historical material is presented clearly in the form of both photographs and relevant informative tables, which facilitate the perception of information, and in some cases replace a large number of narrative texts; thirdly, the author’s version of the structuring of the naval history of Ukraine was developed in tabular form. The study uses the statistical, chronological, and comparative approaches. As results, several tables and visual information were compiled, which could replace descriptive verbal historical texts. The connection between the national history of navigation and the Maritime Code of the Nation is established. The conclusion on the security of the state from the maritime threats was made due to the motivation of its defenders due to the professional study of the naval history of Ukraine.

In South of the Border: Women Travelers to Latin America, Evelyn M. Cherpak, PhD, has compiled an extensive collection of essays, letters, and diaries by women who traveled to Latin America between 1818 and 1956. Cherpak, a former archivist, curator, and teacher at the US Naval War College, has focused on women from the United States and Europe, and this collection provides fascinating insights into the diverse attitudes, assumptions, and experiences of a particular class of international traveler.Cherpak has gathered 12 writers who published accounts of their travels and adventures in Latin America upon their return home. An additional three entries—those by Sarah Sabin Wilson, Mary Robinson Hunter, and Virginia Heim George—are based on previously unpublished letters and diaries. A short biographical section introduces each author. Among the women included here are some who traveled to Latin America as the wives of diplomats, businessmen, and mineowners; others were scientists, educators, or missionaries, while more than one woman was a thrill seeker.Among those who were professional writers is the journalist Nellie Bly, who reported from Mexico during a visit in 1886. Less than a year later, she became famous for her exposé of the insane asylums in New York City. Other notable women tried to establish themselves in Latin America on a more permanent basis, often without the aid of husbands or other family. Sarah Sabin Wilson describes her experiences running a Cuban plantation, Mary Lester recounts teaching in a rural school in Honduras, and Virginia Heim George tells of working for the YWCA in Brazil. The fact that few of the women included here were professional authors at the time of their travel is often an advantage, offering an unpolished but unguarded window into their experiences.Readers will benefit from Cherpak's inclusion of previously unpublished and difficult-to-find materials, and entries such as these allow researchers who cannot travel to archives access to original primary resources. The collection also combines material intended for widespread public consumption with private reflections and observations on Latin American culture, giving us access to a broad range of perspectives. These primary sources reveal how these largely middle-class white women from Europe and the United States judged the cultures, customs, and races of Latin America. It is an approach that usefully informs us of these women's cultural biases toward the Latin American people, although more contextualization in the classroom will be necessary to move beyond the stereotypes expressed by some of the authors.Placing their writings side by side permits us to discover commonalities in these women's experiences, informed by such factors as class, nationality, and gender. For example, through this collection one can track how the act of travel—its motivations, means, and meaning—changed from traveler to traveler in the intervening years and across locations. In this regard, a more extensive and detailed introduction would have been useful in framing the collection and highlighting its underlying continuities and tensions. For example, three of the authors—Sarah Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren, Marguerite Bates Dickins, and Wilma Jerman Miles—are the wives of naval officers. It would have been interesting for Cherpak, a historian of naval history, to draw out the implications of such connections.Cherpak's contributors comment on a wide variety of topics, including slavery, contemporary political figures, and women's customs regarding fashion, education, and the ability to socialize in public and private spheres. Few of these authors specifically addressed their lives as women or set out to write about the women whom they met while traveling. Nonetheless, although these travelers often did not see themselves as exceptional, they were able to gather information about women's lives that male travelers would have been uninterested in, unaware of, or unable to record.By letting these women speak in their own voices, Cherpak's volume allows them to tell us as much about themselves—including their prejudices and misconceptions—as they tell us about Latin America. With selections drawn from throughout Latin America and ranging from the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, the digital edition of this book will be particularly useful for classrooms in which one might assign a pertinent chapter based on time and place. Our historical record is incomplete without the varied perspectives of women, and a collection that brings forgotten voices to our classrooms is something for which many instructors long. We need more compilations, anthologies, and websites that draw together and recontextualize unfamiliar primary sources, and Cherpak's book takes a step toward filling this gap in the literature.

During the interwar era, German naval history and naval doctrine exercised a profound influence on the development of the Italian Navy. The subject is relevant to understand how continental sea powers naval doctrines developed after the First World War, attempting to integrate new weapon systems to overcome the previous limits of the Fleet in being strategy. Italian naval thinkers incorporated the lessons offered by their German counterparts, preparing to repeat many of their mistakes, which explained in part the failures of Italian sea power in the early years of the Second World War.

When it comes to the naval history of the Crimean War very little attention has been given to the effort to establish a new home defence force during those years: the Royal Naval Coast Volunteers. To date the historiography has focused on the operations, ships, and officers of the campaign abroad, while omitting the effort of the Admiralty, through the Coastguard, and guided by the Naval Coast Volunteers Act 1853, to establish, recruit, and train a new naval reserve. Utilizing a four-nations perspective and drawing upon a cross-section of sources from the same, this article documents the efforts to establish the RNCV in 1854–6. It details the people, strategies, responses, and regions involved, before ending with a brief appraisal of those activities within the context of similar efforts to embody other naval reserves.