Millions of television viewers around the world must have seen above the head of President Richard M. Nixon, as he was sworn into office on 20 January 1969, three allegorical figures on the pediment of the Capitol. These figures, sculptured between 1825 and 1828 from a design suggested by President John Quincy Adams, represent America in the center of the group, with Justice on her right and Hope at her left. It is significant that Hope is supported by an anchor.
In fact, America as a continental island in the world ocean has been dependent upon seapower for its discovery, development, and defense. It was, therefore, particularly apposite that in the allegorical group at the Capitol, Hope should be sustained by the anchor of seapower.
America was discovered by the organized sea power of Spain and populated by transatlantic migration carried in ships. The economy of the 13 original colonies depended upon the sea; and it was in large measure interference with free use of the seas which led to the War of 1812 with Britain, to an undeclared war with France, and ultimately, in President Woodrow Wilson's formulation, to a war to preserve the freedom of the seas against unrestricted German submarine warfare.
Naval power, frequently that of other nations with shared self-interests, likewise was vital to the winning of American independence on both continents in the Western hemisphere. It was the temporary supremacy of French naval power—of DeGrasse over Rodney— which made possible Washington's victory at Yorktown. It was Nelson's destruction of the French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar which made impossible the reassertion of Spanish military strength in South America, and thus ensured the revolutions for independence of Spanish-America; and, although John Adams rebelled against the United States being "a cock-boat floating in the wake of a British man-of-war," it was the implicit sanction of British seapower which put the real teeth into the Monroe Doctrine in 1823 and throughout most of the remainder of the 19th century.
Although Polk's war with Mexico in 1846 was largely a land war, it had oceanic consequences because for the first time it made the United States a continental power facing the world's two most important oceans. Americans thenceforth began to look westward across the Pacific. Theodore Roosevelt won renown as a Rough Rider in storming San Juan Hill but his main military contributions dealt with seapower, both as Assistant Secretary of the Navy and as President. In the Navy Department, he at least knew where Manila Bay was when Dewey sank the Spanish fleet, although as President William McKinley confessed, he "could not have told where those darned islands were within 2,000 miles!" It was Roosevelt who dramatized U. S. seapower by sending the Great White Fleet around the world in 1908; and it was he who debonairly turned over the proceeds of his Nobel Peace Prize to support the recently founded Navy League. He was also the somewhat illegitimate father of Panama and its Canal.
The other great President Roosevelt —F.D.R. —was equally conscious of U. S. reliance on seapower, and his policies were an implicit working out of Adams' allegory. It was Roosevelt who foresaw the need for a two-ocean navy and who, in the destroyers-bases exchange, fortified both British and U. S. naval strength.
Even President Truman, although a son of the Middle West, showed an extraordinary perception of the uses of seapower and a profound knowledge of the narrow places of the sea where the national energies of enemies or friends could be constricted and channeled. Perhaps no other American President was as well informed on the strategic straits, cannals, and sally ports between the oceans as President Truman.
And, finally, the last three Presidents—Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon—have all been ex-Navy men.
Yet, despite the historic importance of the sea to American development, in the years since World War II, there has been an absolute decrease in the size of the U. S. merchant marine and a meteoric increase in Soviet seapower, both in the merchant navy and in the war fleets.
The traditional view of Russian seapower is that Russia has been a maritime nonentity. The Russian disaster in the Straits of Tsushima, the impotence of the Soviet Navy in World War II, and long preceding years of general incompetence in the Baltic and Black Seas seemed to justify the easy dismissal of Russian prowess at sea.
However, the present drive toward formidable naval power on a world-wide, oceanic basis does in fact have an historic precedent, although in this case the ambit of Russian naval ambition was the Baltic Sea. It should not be forgotten that under the impetus of Peter the Great, who himself served in an amphibious warfare action under the nom de guerre of Rear Admiral Mihailoy, the Russians won their first naval battle off Hango Ud in Finland. It was in fact this naval victory, following after the defeat of Charles the Bald at Poltava, which established Russia as a great European power. Those who regard the present rise of Soviet strength at sea as a new phenomenon might recall that to celebrate the Treaty of Nystadt, Peter the Great dragged a battle-ship through the streets of Moscow to show his land bound subjects what a vessel of war looked like.
For those of us who confront the terminal third of the 20th century, the Soviet search for supremacy at sea is a factor that must be considered, the fleets of other 20th century naval powers having dropped below the horizons of history. It is, therefore, necessary to look more closely at the two essential elements of comparative seapower—namely, relative naval strengths and relative capabilities of the merchant marine.
The submarine fleet of the Soviet Union, with 270 attack boats, 45 ballistic missile submarines, and 60 cruise missile craft, seems vastly to outweigh the 105 U. S. attack submarines and 41 ballistic missile ships. In actuality, many of the Soviet conventional submarines are restricted in performance by their power plants and weapons, while in the class of the ballistic missile submarines, despite their fewer numbers, the U. S. undersea fleet is clearly far ahead at this time. However, the Soviets are now producing a new "Polaris-like" submarine in numbers that could eventually bring than abreast, or ahead, of the United States.
In the vital category of aircraft carriers, the United States is supreme upon the sea, with 15 attack carriers, 5 antisubmarine warfare carriers, and 7 helicopter carriers. The U. S. Navy has long recognized the importance of the offensive power of the airplane against surface ships and has in consequence insisted on the preponderance of air cover and the corollary need for ship-to-air guided missiles. The Soviet Navy possesses two recently commissioned helicopter carriers, Moskva and Leningrad, both based on the Black Sea and destined for antisubmarine or amphibious activity in wider waters. The Moskva in fact recently carried out extensive exercises in the Mediterranean under the vigilant eyes of the U. S. Sixth Fleet. She is a very sophisticated ship, with the latest in sonar, both on board and helicopter-dipped, radar and guided missiles.
It is when we come to minecraft (300 for the U.S.S.R. and 75 for the United States) and above all to surface-to-surface missile ships, both cruisers and destroyers, of which most carry the SS-N-3 cruise missile that the balance swings heavily in favor of the U.S.S.R. In fact, it is clear that the new Russian navy is imbued by the doctrine of missile warfare at sea. Here there is a sharp divergence of development as between the American and Russian navies. Both the Russian and American ships can fire their rockets at airplanes in the sky, but only the Russian ships can also fire their rockets in a flat trajectory, ship against ship, at great range with great accuracy.
This is the great and dangerous difference between the Soviet and U. S. navies.
The Russian Navy has 39 guided missile light cruisers and destroyers. These are led by the so-called rocket cruisers of the Kresta class, followed by the Kynda-class guided missile light cruisers. All of these are capable of standing off far over the horizon and firing their missiles against surface vessels or shore installations. The ships can also defend themselves missile-wise against air attack.
The Soviet Navy likewise possesses 150 short-range guided missile patrol boats of the "Osa" (Wasp) and "Komar" (Mosquito) classes. It was one of these latter boats, ostensibly manned by Egyptians, that fired a Styx missile in October 1967 against the Israeli destroyer Elath, and gave that unlucky vessel the distinction of being the first ship to be sunk in naval warfare by a cruise missile.
At the present time, even the presumably insignificant Cuban navy has some 15 "Komar"-class guided missile boats, which late in 1968 undertook maneuvers off the Isle of Pines. Cuba was the place where Walter Reed made his experiments which led to the stamping out of the mosquito-borne plague, yellow fever. However, no naval Walter Reed has yet found the remedy to the "Komar" mosquito and its Stygian sting.
On the brighter side of the picture, the United States leads the Soviet Navy in its battle-tested techniques of amphibious warfare. From the beaches of Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima to MacArthur's last brilliant victory at Inchon, to say nothing of the many landings in Vietnam, the U. S. Navy, Marines, and Army have perfected methods of amphibious warfare not known before in history. Similarly, in the mined and ambushed rivers of Vietnam, the U. S. Navy has mastered the techniques of riverine warfare.
Despite the present marginal capability in surface-to-surface missile weapons, the U. S. Navy has made startling advances in other ordnance. Already recent improvements have greatly increased the range of conventional naval guns. These and developments now underway for the perfection of rocket-assisted projectiles (RAP) should soon make it possible for the 5-inch guns of a destroyer to outdistance the 8-inch guns of a heavy cruiser; and, ultimately, 16-inch guns will be able to fire about 100 miles.
On balance, therefore, the U. S. Navy is clearly more powerful and more versatile than the Soviet Navy, with the dangerous exception of Soviet surface-to-surface missile capability which underscores clearly the basic Soviet naval doctrine of missile supremacy at sea.
Strategic considerations fixed by the configuration of the world still bind upon the Russians the historic handicaps that geography has always imposed. The Soviet land mass is shut in closed waters, and egress to the high seas in most cases can be had only by passing through narrow straits or channels blocked by Arctic ice. The closed seas of Russian naval dominance, such as the Baltic, the Black Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk, may prove in each case to be a Russian mare dausum—but mare dausum is not equivalent to mare nostrum, and here U. S. naval power places most of the oceans of the earth in the latter category for the United States.
Although there has been much recent comment on the emergence into the Mediterranean of increasingly formidable Soviet naval units, these ships must still transit narrow waters to get there. For example, the helicopter carriers from the Black Sea must ask permission of the Turks to transit the Dardanelles; while submarines and other units coming from the White Sea or the Baltic must pass through the Straits of Gibraltar. The Baltic itself is plugged by the Skaggerak, while even the Barents Sea, from which vessels from Murmansk and Petsamo might emerge into the Norwegian Sea, is frequently blocked by ice.
On the other side of the world, Vladivostok is located on the closed Sea of Japan. Petropavlovsk, with its great submarine base supporting nuclear boats which cruise off the west coast of the United States, still finds itself at the end of the remote Kamchatka Peninsula and below the U. S. Aleutian barrier to the Bering Sea, which itself is separated by a narrow strait from the ice-clogged Arctic Ocean.
The geometry of geography is therefore anti-Russian, and the capability of the Soviet admirals to use their fleets is significantly reduced by comparison with the ease with which U. S. admirals can deploy their forces in a two-ocean navy from a continental island lying in the center of the world ocean.
Nevertheless, the new Soviet Navy has done its best to offset some of these built-in impediments of geography by scientific and technological advances. It has likewise developed new techniques, as, for example, the fairly recent expedient of a number of Soviet submarines rafting up together with oilers and mother-ships in the middle of the South Atlantic, and mooring to sea-buoys in mid-Mediterranean and in the Indian Ocean. The unimpeded range of nuclear submarines has likewise lengthened the arm of the Soviet striking forces (as it has also immeasurably increased the strategic nuclear striking capability of the U. S. ballistic missile submarines). The large and growing modern Soviet merchant marine provides its navy a made-to-order fleet train with supply ships and oilers. And finally, there has been the recent development of Soviet use of naval facilities in client states, particularly in the eastern Mediterranean at Alexandria and Port Said. With the obligation of Algeria to the U.S.S.R. for its armaments, it is possible that eventually the Soviet Navy may find base facilities in the western Mediterranean of which the most notable would be the former great French base at Mers-el-Kebir. It has already been shown how at Port Said such bases can be protected by the venomous sting of the maritime wasps and mosquitoes, the "Osa" and "Komar" guided missile boats.
Yet, in comparison to these few bases known to be available to the Soviet Navy, the United States has ready access to all the oceans of the earth and bases in most of them to support operations anywhere.
It is probable that the essential strategic balance of power as between the United States and U.S.S.R. can be maintained through the end of the present century, provided both sides understand the mathematics of the nuclear equation. As has been pointed out, war without victory might be comprehensible, but war without survival would be meaningless.
In consequence, it seems probable that if both the megaton powers follow the new doctrine of "sufficiency" in naval as well as other armaments, the strategic balance of power can be maintained at sea without necessarily escalating into an arms race which can only end in catastrophe. In the days of the big gun, when Admirals Fisher and Von Tirpitz were piling dreadnaught upon battleship, the equation ended in disaster; but with the atomic bomb added to the mix, the penalties of miscalculation become incalculable.
It is possible, therefore, that the final third of the century will see an equilibrium, if not equality, in the sea forces of the United States and the U.S.S.R., particularly as between nuclear strategic missile and attack submarines. On the surface of the sea, because of the handcuffs which geography has placed on Russian admirals, the United States will probably maintain supremacy above "sufficiency;" but it must find a means to redress the presently dangerous imbalance created by Soviet capability in surface-to-surface guided missile craft. And the U. S. Fleet, with 58 per cent of its 900 ships over 20 years old, suffers from the threat of senescence.
The U. S. Navy is still very much carrier-oriented, but the future of the carrier will depend on how and where airpower can best be used, both as regards the ship-based planes and the land-based planes that can threaten the ships. Furthermore, with respect to the submarine threat, all the seas do not necessarily provide the tacit sanction of Yankee Station in the Gulf of Tonkin. Then there are the new developments in ASW techniques, and the increasingly long range of naval ordnance, whether fired from a gun or a rocket launcher. Ultimately, history will show that there can be greater national security in equilibrium and a sane balance of power than in blind resort to the escalation of armament.
So one comes to the concluding question of relative naval power. This is the ability to control the high seas and to project American fighting strength over the oceans and the heartland seas, the Caribbean and Mediterranean, as well as within the oceanic depths where strategic power is hidden in the nuclear ballistic submarines. The essential element is the right of access to the high seas. The United States must continue to insist, as it has from the first days of the Republic, on the traditional freedom of the seas.
The U. S. merchant fleet, which numbered 1,087 ships in 1950, totaling 13 million deadweight tons, stood at 976 vessels in 1968 of 15.3 million deadweight tons. (As of 30 June 1968, however, American-owned tonnage registered under foreign "flags of convenience' totaled 16.06 million dw.t.)
During the same period, the Soviet merchant fleet increased from 1.9 million tons to 10.7 million, for a total of 1,400 ships. Figure 1 graphically portrays the maximum effort that has been made by the Soviet Union in the construction of merchant vessels.
Even in the hitherto disregarded fishing industry, the Soviet Union has invested $4 billion in a new fishing fleet and its facilities ashore. In 1964, the U.S.S.R. landed 5.4 million metric tons of fish in Soviet ports; almost twice the U. S. catch. The Soviet deep-sea fishing fleet is the largest and most modern in the world, numbering some 3,500 vessels.
Both superpowers use cargo vessels to supply the opposing sides in the Vietnamese War. The visits of Soviet merchant ships to Haiphong increased, for example, from 47 in 1964 to 181 in 1967.
As for the United States, 98 per cent of weapons and goods for American and South Vietnamese forces have been transported by sea and 300,000 American troops arrived in Vietnam by ship.
Still, most of the U. S. merchant fleet is obsolescent if not obsolete. Eighty per cent of the American ships are more than 20 years old, while the merchant fleet of the Soviet Union has exactly the same percentage of ships less than ten years old. Because of the higher cost of American seagoing labor, American-flag passenger vessels—with few exceptions—have been practically driven from the seas.
It is a popular misconception that in general the cause of the decline of the U. S. Merchant Marine has been featherbedding, and the inordinately high cost of labor, of which the taxpayer pays the major share in subsidy. Actually, the 70 to 80 per cent subsidy to make up the differential between American and foreign wages is applicable only to the 14 so-called "liner companies," which account for only one-third of the U. S. merchant fleet. The remaining two-thirds of the fleet receives neither construction nor operating subsidies, and the unsubsidized operator pays 100 cents out of every dollar of wages. He may occasionally benefit from a disguised subsidy in the form of preferential rates on AID cargoes, as, for example, the differential rate of $32.00 a ton for American-flag vessels carrying grain from U. S. Gulf and East Coast ports to the West Coast of India, as compared with the world market rate of $14.00 for shipment in foreign-flag ships.
Leaders of U. S. maritime labor organizations point out that it is unfair to blame the high cost of labor for the industry's continued general decline, particularly in light of the increase in productivity of American labor at sea. According to statistics furnished by Paul Hall, President of the Seafarers International Union of North American, AFL-CIO, in the 23 years from 1945 to 1968, there has been a significant increase in size, automation, and efficiency of U. S. cargo liners, accompanied by a marked reduction in the manning scale.
In this period U. S. cargo ships have increased in size from under 10,000 dw. tons to over 30,000, but manning requirements have gone from 49 men per vessel to an average of 38. Thus, productivity per man per ton of ship has greatly increased, to say nothing of the economic advantages of faster point-to-point service and quicker turnaround time in port resulting from the use of these faster, larger, more automated vessels.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that to maintain the U. S. standard of living, wages at sea are higher in the U. S. merchant marine than in any other merchant navy of the world. It remains undoubtedly true that the high cost of maritime labor and the relatively lower cost of ship construction in foreign yards has made it economically more attractive to many American steamship operators to build, man, and register their ships abroad.
There is no doubt as to the ability of U. S. yards to build any kind of ship. Nor is there any doubt that the cost of U. S. construction will be higher than abroad. To the obvious reasons for this, one must add a less obvious reason: because of statutory requirements and the practices of bidding for government contracts, an inordinate amount of paperwork is involved in U. S. shipbuilding. As the president of one large shipyard put it, "For every pound of steel that goes into the ship, there is a pound of paper somewhere." Paper is becoming more expensive each day and so, too, are paper-shufflers.
Yet, although the U. S.-subsidized construction program has been grievously lagging for some years, at the present time, the some two dozen American private shipyards are heavily occupied with orders. These are for naval construction and repair (85 per cent of present orders), or commercial contracts (15 per cent, of which a high proportion is for conversions). There are in addition 10 naval shipyards which do a small amount of naval shipbuilding and a preponderance of naval repair and conversion.
As indicated previously, only one-third of the U. S. merchant marine is subsidized, either for construction (55 per cent) or for wage differentials (70-80 per cent). Despite the handicap of not receiving government financial support, other than in windfall AID cargoes, many of the unsubsidized operators have been able to move ahead with ship construction, and in recent years in fact have been building or rebuilding ships at a faster pace and with a greater investment of private dollars than have the subsidized operators.
In the past two years, unsubsidized operators invested $159.3 million of their own private capital in building or converting merchant ships. In addition, they have another $317.6 million tied up in ships under construction or on order—a total of $476.9 million without any government assistance.
By contrast, the subsidized operators have spent only $138.1 million of their own money on ship construction in the past two years and have another $317.5 million committed for ships under contract or being built—a total of $455.6 million. Over-matching this private money was the Federal government's investment of more than $550 million of taxpayer's money in construction subsidies.
Despite these commitments, the ship replacement program for the 14 subsidized lines is today more than 100 ships behind schedule. And, as indicated in Figure 1, U. S. ships on order in November 1968 numbered only 62, as contrasted with 458 for the Soviet Union.
One of the principal advantages of foreign countries in building large ships at low cost has been their capacity for mass production. This has been particularly noteworthy in Japan, Germany, and Sweden. It is perhaps ironic that the techniques of mass production were inculcated in Japan by an American shipbuilder and operator from Michigan, Daniel K. Ludwig, who is today one of the largest operators of foreign-flag, American-owned bulk carriers in the world. Mr. Ludwig and his Japanese pupils learned in fact from U. S. shipbuilders who in World War II mass-produced Liberty and Victory ships at the rate of 5,000 a year.
To complete this dolorous statistical picture, consider Figure 2. In 1947, 57.6 per cent of U. S. foreign trade by tonnage was carried in American flag bottoms; it dropped to 17.6 per cent in 1957, reaching a nadir of 5.6 per cent a decade later. The value (liner) percentages were better, but still only 22 per cent in 1967. What this means in terms of gold flow and in loss to the United States in the international balance of payments accounts is obvious.
There are, however, brighter prospects for the future if Americans live up to their historic reputation for Yankee ingenuity and enterprise at sea.
The most important new development, American in origin, is the advent of the container at sea. Long prevalent on U. S. highways and adopted with enthusiasm by the railroads, the container is now crossing the oceans in specially-built ships to be unloaded at ports served by specialized handling gear and expedited with a minimum of stevedoring to markets in the hinterland.
The container has brought down the costs of packing, handling, and insurance. To discharge and unload about 11,000 tons cargo aboard a conventional ship, using conventional labor practice, requires 126 men working 84 hours each for a total of 10,584 man hours. The same amount of cargo on a container vessel can be handled by 42 men working 12 hours each for a total of 546 man hours. Because of the efficiency with which container ships can be loaded and unloaded, their turnaround time in port is now comparable to that of a tanker. One U. S. container steamship operator is presently contemplating the order of six new vessels, each over 900 feet in length, designed to cruise at 33 knots with conventional propulsion (high pressure steam with geared turbines). Such ships may cross the Atlantic in four days, turn around and be back in U. S. East Coast ports fully loaded, within 10 days.
There are indications that a revitalized, containerized U. S. merchant marine will find a powerful and enthusiastic ally in the American truck and railroad industries. The railroads already visualize a transoceanic-continental transportation system which would take freight by container from the Far East to U. S. West Coast ports, thence across the continent by land, and onward from East Coast ports to Europe. Costs could be brought down because of the higher efficiency of container operations and the ability of the railroads to quote special low rates on such cargoes. If such an integrated system is developed, the necessity of building a second Panama Canal might be obviated.
Tonnage (Millions of Long Tons) | |||
---|---|---|---|
Year | Total | U. S. Flag | Percentage |
1947 | 142.2 | 81.9 | 57.6 |
1957 | 289.3 | 50.8 | 17.6 |
1967 | 386.7 | 21.7 | 5.6 |
Value (Billions of Dollars) | |||
Year | Value | U. S. Flag | Percentage |
1957 | 22.8 | 7.3 | 32.1 |
1967 | 37.0 | 8.1 | 21.9 |
U. S. Maritime Administration |
What the future portends, therefore, is a new era in which land and sea transportation would join in an amphibious enterprise, and the container which started its life astern of a truck and rode piggyback on a train would take to the high seas.
Naturally, there are problems to be worked out. A vice president of one large U. S. shipping company recently complained to the author that he knew where his containers were when at sea but lost them almost irrecoverably once they got to Europe. Another problem is to standardize the size of containers. On the West Coast, Matson has 24-foot containers; on the East Coast, Sea Land goes in for large 35-foot containers; and the railroads have standardized on units of 10, 20, and 40 feet. The latter system, because of its flexibility, would seem to commend itself for the "amphibs" of the future.
There are, however, ports and places in the world where containers do not yet fit. There are the trade areas served by the so-called "break-bulk" ships, the traditional cargo carriers which have been the dray horses of the sea. Still, new efficiencies can be introduced. As J. W. Gulick, U. S. Deputy Maritime Administrator, points out, "For break-bulk ships which serve areas without such (container) accommodations, unitization-palletization, offers interesting possibilities of improving turn-around time. This is a luxury break-bulk ships have never enjoyed and, in fact, have seldom sought."
Coincident with the development of these new amphibious transportation concepts are exciting new breakthroughs in ship propulsion and design. Although the extraordinarily fast M.S.T.S. cargo ship Callaghan, which cruises at 27 knots with two airplane gas turbines, may be too expensive to run for purely commercial account, her operation does show the economies of time and turnaround. Perhaps more promising will be the development of high-speed steam turbine container vessels whose source of steam will come from nuclear heat. And U. S. Conventional propulsion systems, using geared turbines and hitherto unknown pressures of steam and degrees of superheat, have shown how high speeds can be attained at economic costs once thought to be out of the question.
There are on U. S. drawing boards new concepts of hull design for cargo ships. One is an audacious improvement on the British Hovercraft; a so-called "surface-effect ship" which according to the experts, will offer advantages in efficiency and sea-keeping quality While at the same time increasing her speed in direct Pro Portion to the length of her hull. If this design is successful for the first time in 6,000 years man will depart from the displacement-type hull for a new concept in the carrying of cargoes at sea.
An equally audacious design would seek the opposite environment. This is the proposal by a professor at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute for an underwater nuclear "eel," 1,400 feet in length, which would travel at a speed of 40 knots, carrying container cargoes of 5,000 tons 200 feet below the surface.
U. S. shipbuilding is undergoing a renaissance. The old concept of ship building is giving away to the concept of ship manufacturing. Two notable new developments are the purchase of additional land in the South by two large ship manufacturing companies: one, Avondale Shipyards at New Orleans, Louisiana, for its private account; and the other by the Ingalls Shipyard, a subsidiary of Litton Industries, at Pascagoula, Mississippi. This latter development was financed by a $130 million bond issue of the State of Mississippi. And at Sparrows Point in Baltimore, Bethlehem Steel is undertaking a program of expansion and automation which will eventually enable it to assemble tankers and other bulk carriers of up to 200,000 dw. tons. Container ships cannot carry everything. There is a worldwide trend for increasingly large bulk carriers for the transport of oil, grain, and ore.
One example of this new type of thinking is the recent design, by Litton Industries, of an iron ore freighter for the Great Lakes. The bow and stern sections of this giant ship will be built at Pascagoula and will sail to Erie, Pennsylvania, through the St. Lawrence Seaway. Once on the Great Lakes, the compact little vessel, 184 feet long by 75 feet wide, will be stretched to form the bow and stern sections of a 1,000-foot ship, which will be made up of building-block cargo modules fixed to the keelson. The four diesel engines astern will be on either side of a unique rotary elevator unit which can discharge iron ore at the rate of 20,000 tons an hour.
If using new designs and better propulsion systems, U. S. shipyards can manufacture a containerized and bulk-carrying merchant marine by series production methods, it should be possible to contemplate a new era for the merchant marine which will no longer require government subsidy, either for construction or the payment of seagoing labor. If the new merchant marine joins hands with the trucks and railroads in this amphibious enterprise, operators of ships will make enough money to be able to pay the extra wages of the crews which result from the high U. S. standard of living. At the same time, the new generation of labor leaders will realize that labor will benefit if all hands are prosperous through the application of new techniques, new concepts, and a fresh helping of old American ingenuity.
Any future rationale for the U. S. merchant marine—and particularly the symbiosis of ships with railroads—should look boldly at the advantages to be gained by placing the Maritime Administration where it belongs—namely, under the aegis of the Department of Transportation.
Thus, one comes to the development of a policy for the merchant marine. The United States can divest itself of subsidizing large passenger vessels on the grounds that they are disguised troop transports; however, with the lessons of World War II and the wars of Korea and Vietnam, we must keep in mind that the transportation of heavy tonnages, and to a large extent troops, will continue to go by sea. Therefore, the maintenance and further development of an up-to-date and fast merchant marine is essential to the national security. The unprofitable passenger-carrying business will be dispensed with, and the carrying of fast cargoes will be in amphibious containers traveling by land on truck and railroad and by sea in specialized ships. This will restore a healthy balance of the U. S. foreign-carrying trade to American flag vessels with beneficial effect on our balance of payments, our shipbuilding industry, our maritime labor force, and the entrepreneurs who inherit the Yankee tradition of bold free enterprise at sea.
As the preceding section of this article dealt with American naval pre-eminence at sea, so this discussion of the merchant marine foreshadows a restoration of American pre-eminence in the merchant fleet. To sum up, there will be pre-eminent American naval power on the high seas, protecting a pre-eminent merchant marine which specializes in amphibious transportation. Both concepts depend on the freedom of the seas.
Thus far, our study has been limited to two dimensions. A third, the navigation of the depths has in fact been undertaken, but even today only the specially developed deep submergence vehicles, such as Trieste II and Detpstar, can survive operations in the abyssal ocean, and the loss of the Thrasher and the Scorpion have dramatically shown the immense crushing power of the deeper sea.
The pelagos, to use the original Greek word for the high seas, is that region of the waters in the dictionary definition, "upon the outer border of the littoral zone above the abyssal zone to which light penetrates."
It is the modest aim of this study to cast some light upon a pelagic policy for the United States. There now remains the task of evolving an oceanic doctrine, of which the use of the high seas and the surface of those seas is only an important part.
Heretofore, we have not been concerned with the neritic zone, more commonly known as the continental shelf, although it too is covered by salt water and therefore by an American oceanic doctrine; nor have we thus far been concerned with the abysses of the sea—the bathypelagos—although in recent years man has already penetrated these depths beyond the reach of sunlight and his eyes in future are focused on the conquest of Inner Space. Therefore, an American oceanic doctrine will cover a three-dimensional zone of world-encircling water from the surface of the sea to the light-illumined depths and below them to the blackness of the abyss.
To meet the challenge of exploring and exploiting inner space, the United States has been prompt to recognize the issues and to organize government energies, endeavor and agencies to achieve a national purpose. In June 1966, Public Law 89-454 brought into being the National Council on Marine Resources and Engineering Development, under the chairmanship of the Vice President. The Council is a Cabinet-level body Its twin is the Commission on Marine Science, Engineering, and Resources, whose members were appointed by the President on 9 January 1967. To fulfill its Congressional mandate to study the "steps necessary to stimulate marine exploration, science, technology, and financial investment on a vastly augmented scale," the Commission examined the nation's stake in the development and use of its marine environment, reviewed all current and contemplated marine activity, and formulated a comprehensive long-term national program for marine affairs. Its report, Our Nation and the Sea, was published in January 1969.
Although the Commission covered a vast agenda dealing with national capability and the sea, it did not address itself to the question of naval power nor to the problems of the U. S. Merchant Marine. Among its more far-seeing proposals was a plan for a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, to be established as an independent body reporting directly to the President. This new entity, with the appropriate acronym, NOAA, would load aboard its 20th century ark not only such present agencies as the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, the Coast Guard, the Environmental Science Services Administration, and the U. S. Lake Survey, but also would undertake new programs in environmental modification, fundamental technology, grants to states for coastal management, institutional support of coastal laboratories, and similar support for national laboratories dealing with the sea. Such a national ocean effort would of necessity relate also to private industry, where the great aerospace companies, which have been so successful in projecting astronauts to the moon, are now turning, their scientific and engineering resources to the conquest of the deep sea.
As in the case of so many other aspects of U. S. national development, there is a basic motivation of economic interest which spurs on this new conquest of the subsurface of the sea. For example, in the past ten years, U. S. production of offshore oil has increased from 10 to 17 per cent of the total Free World oil production. Oil and gas rigs have proliferated, not only on the continental shelf of the United States, but also they have extended even to the centers of shallow seas; such as the North Sea, with its immense resources of gas for the United Kingdom and northern Europe, and the Persian Gulf, with its apparently inexhaustible resources of oil beneath the bottom of that politically neuralgic sea.
Recent developments in the marine minerals industry have shown startling results; there are now submarine mines for diamonds, gold, platinum, magnesium, iron and tin. As A. Denis Clift, former editor of the U. S. Naval Institute PROCEEDINGS, and now an expert of the Committee on Marine Research, Education and Facilities, writes:
New technological advances which have led to mining sonar instrumentation, new geophysical survey instrumentation, high-speed seismic profiling techniques, and improved bottom coring and sampling techniques are aiding the mineral prospectors in their expanding marine activities. In addition, submersibles operated by universities, foundations, and industry are increasingly engaging in undersea operations.
Finally, returning once more to the surface of the sea, it is to be noted that there have been vast new developments in exploring the protein resources of the waters. Ocean fishing, of course, goes back centuries in time, and some commercial fishing fleets, such as those of Portugal and France, have been operating on the Grand Banks for over 300 years. However, it has only been since World War II that there has been a vast increase in high seas fishing, with fleets from Japan and South Korea operating in West African waters, the Soviet Union fishing all over the globe, and Peru creating a whole new industry in its fishmeal factories on the Pacific coast of South America.
In a parallel way to the new Marine Council and Commission, the U. S. Navy has established a far-reaching oceanic program. In August 1966, the office of the Oceanographer of the Navy was established, replacing the long-established Hydrographer of the Navy. Operating under the Chief of Naval Operations, this office receives policy and direction from the Secretary of the Navy via the Assistant Secretary for Research and Development.
There are three Assistant Oceanographers in the Navy Department: one heads a Division for Ocean Science, and he is also the Chief of Naval Research; a second Assistant Oceanographer is responsible for oceanic operations, which includes the Oceanographic and Hydrographic Service, the development of charts—both of the surface and the depths—and general scientific study of the regions of the sea; and the third Assistant Oceanographer handles ocean engineering and development, with special accent on developmental vehicles for deep ocean research, rescue, and exploration. Under this Assistant Oceanographer a deep-submergence search vehicle is being developed which can operate at depths as great as 20,000 feet, which would enable the vehicle to reach some 98 per cent of the ocean floor. The nuclear-powered, deep-submergence and ocean engineering vehicle NR-1, will bring manned deep-submergence submarines to levels of the sea never reached before.
The Navy supports between 50 and 60 per cent of the national oceanic program, including the funding of the operations of oceanic research vessels at 12 U. S. universities and institutions. The over-all government-sponsored program includes planning for the forthcoming International Decade of Ocean Exploration, and participation by the United States in the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission.
All this points to the international character of the high seas and the need for international agreement on peaceful uses of the sea.
Since the time when Grotius established the limit of the territorial sea as the range of a 16th century cannon shot, the surface of the high seas has belonged to no nation. It is international water on which navies may deploy their vessels without let or hindrance and the merchant fleets of the world may go at will. This limit set by Grotius has in recent times been challenged by littoral nations which have become increasingly aware of the resources of the continental shelf. In general, the trend of national, and ultimately international, law is to set the territorial boundaries at 12 miles from mean low water mark on the shore. However, it has likewise been agreed internationally that the natural resources of the continental shelf out to the 100-fathom line belong to the adjacent sovereign. Beyond that extends mare incognita; but with the advent of oil and diamonds and other valuable minerals on the bottom of the sea, the ordinary cupidity of man will fire desires for extending territorial claims downward even to the abyssal bottom.
There would seem, therefore, to be an urgent need for international agreement on the uses of the high seas in all dimensions beyond the limits of the continental shelf. Here the traditional policy of the U. S. Navy—of accommodation to the civilian economic interest—would seem the wise course to follow. It likewise expresses a principle long inherent in the present international law of the sea.
Already by international agreement there have been self-inhibiting measures adopted in respect to Outer Space, following the basic prototype agreement embodied in the international treaty on Antarctica. Here for the first time, despite a multiplicity of conflicting international claims and recurring postage stamp wars between Argentina and Chile as to which cone or zone of influence national sovereignty extended, there was at last negotiated a live-and-let-live international instrument which in effect de-nationalized the Antarctic continent and recognized no claims of sovereignty anywhere at the bottom of the world. A similar principle under United Nations auspices was applied to the moon and Outer Space in January 1967. It is essential, therefore, that these principles be applied to the international waters and to the bottom of the sea, which is both the threshold and the soon-to-be-discovered lost continent of Inner Space, or what Senator Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island more aptly calls Ocean Space.
Senator Pell, in fact, on 21 January 1969, submitted a draft resolution to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee proposing the negotiation of a Treaty on Ocean Space. One of the basic provisions of such an instrument would be that the seabed shall be used only for peaceful purposes; although Senator Pell has publically stated that the treaty would permit the continued operation of U. S. Polaris submarines and the defensive detection device, Sosus (Sonar Surveillance System). This draft treaty contrasts with that proposed on 18 March 1969 to the U. N. Disarmament Commission by the Soviet Union, whose first article would not only prohibit placing on the ocean floor and the subsoil thereof "objects with nuclear weapons or any other types of weapons of mass destruction, to set up military bases, structures, installations, fortifications and other objects of a military nature." The instructions of President Nixon to the U. S. Delegation to the Disarmament Commission provided only that "The U. S. is interested in working out an international agreement that would prohibit the implacement or fixing of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction on the seabed." It is clear from all three drafts, however, that there is general agreement that, in the words of President Nixon, "The seabed, man's latest frontier, remains free from the nuclear arms race."
All of this brings us back to a third restatement of the eternal principle that the comity of nations rests in large measure on freedom of the seas. The seas shall be free from any but international control. The seabed shall be free from the nuclear arms race. An American oceanic doctrine must start as its basic principle with freedom of the seas—but this time freedom in the Third Dimension.
This is an appropriate time to analyze the present and future situation of the United States in relation to oceanic power. Under the Administration which has just taken office, new opportunities can be discerned and decisions made to develop and exploit them. As the Marine Commission declared in the preface to its report, Our Nation and the Sea.
How fully and wisely the United States uses the sea in the decades ahead will affect profoundly its security, its economy, its ability to meet increasing demands for food and raw materials, its position and influence in the world community, and the quality of the environment in which its people live.
In the military domain, by the exercise of naval power, based on a continental island in the center of the world ocean, the United States can control both the surface and the depths of the sea. In so doing, it must be sedulous to maintain the strategic balance of power as between the United States and the Soviet Union, or any other naval nation whose fleets might traverse in three dimensions the oceans of the future. It will not be necessary to embark upon a blind building program or to call for more and more expensive weapons and ships, but to analyze the elements of world Power and to maintain an exquisitely modulated equilibrium. This is the real meaning as between the megaton powers of the Pax Ballistica. Important adjustments will constantly have to be made to ensure the maintenance of the balance of power. It has already been indicated, for example, that the United States must redress its present inferiority vis-a-vis the Soviet Navy in ship-to-ship guided missiles. On the defensive side, improvements will continue to be made in antisubmarine warfare techniques. The vital need will continue, to maintain "sufficiency" in ballistic missile submarines which, coupled with the Minuteman missile on land, are the greatest insurance the United States has against the onset of nuclear war. Call it "sufficiency" or "superiority." The United States must remain supreme upon the sea.
So far as the future U. S. merchant marine is concerned, new engineering techniques and new concepts of integrated transportation systems should be able to restore the American merchant flag to the high seas. With the expenditure of brains, energy, and private capital, there should result a non-subsidized, labor-efficient, seagoing, amphibious transportation system made up of ships, trains, and trucks carrying containerized cargoes any place on earth. New multiple production techniques of ship manufacture will continue the trend toward larger and more efficient bulk and break-bulk vessels.
The conquest of Inner or Ocean Space, upon which the United States and the Soviet Union have just embarked, must be organized and co-ordinated by governments using to the utmost the contributions of science and industry. The development of Ocean Space will be advanced by organizing the governance of the world ocean and the abyssal depths by international agreement. Paramount American naval power, protecting economic enterprise at sea, will guarantee that peace which the international treaty structure shall have organized. Such a peace in essence would be founded on the Freedom of the Seas.
As the Marine Commission concluded in its report, "A time of decision is here. Multiple pressures force the Nation to turn to the sea, and multiple opportunities await the seaward turning."