Ever since Great Britain “ceded the Trident” in World War II, the United States has been the world’s preeminent maritime power. In one important respect, however, the United States’ experience of maritime hegemony has differed from that of Great Britain. While the Royal Navy enjoyed nearly a century as the sole significant maritime power, the U.S. Navy, during its years of supremacy, has operated nearly always in an environment of competition, first with the Soviet Union, now with Russia and China. Throughout this period, the United States has remained an innovative and energetic naval power, but that power appears to be diminishing relative to these other two competitors for maritime supremacy.
What does history have to teach about rising to such a challenge and maintaining maritime hegemony? Perhaps the answer is to be found in the annals of mid–18th-century Europe—when Great Britain faced similar hurdles as it competed for dominance among the other great naval powers of the day.
In the mid-17th century, Europe had become the center of world power and wealth. Several European maritime states had penetrated to far-distant lands, establishing commercial and naval footholds that fostered the growth of Europe as the world’s richest and most powerful region. Europe’s spectacular rise stemmed in part from competition for wealth and power among several European maritime states. By 1800, Great Britain had attained supremacy over the rest because, alone among the great European maritime states, it had established a culture of continuous growth and innovation across all instruments of sea power. This singular rise began with the Anglo-Spanish War of 1739–48 (aka the War of Jenkins’ Ear)—and, specifically, with the Pacific Ocean voyage of George Anson.
Mission: Ambitious
Anson was born on 23 April 1697 and joined the Royal Navy in 1712. Eleven years later he was appointed to the rank of captain. In 1739, he was captain of the 60-gun ship-of-the-line HMS Centurion, cruising on the British North America Station.1 With the outbreak of war, Anson was appointed a commodore 2nd class (an officer who commanded a squadron as well as his own ship) and, in addition to the Centurion, was given command of two 50-gun ships (HMS Argyle and Severn), one 40-gun ship (the Pearl), one 20-gun ship purchased from the British East India Company (the Wager), and one eight-gun sloop-of-war (the Tyral).
Anson’s mission was one of unprecedented ambitiousness for his day. He was to make the first British voyage in a century to the Pacific Coast (South Sea Coast) of Spanish America and conduct operations there. The complexity of the mission can be inferred from Anson’s orders:
When you shall arrive on the Spanish coast of the South Sea, you are to . . . annoy and distress the Spaniards, either at sea or land, to the utmost of your power, by taking, sinking, burning, or otherwise destroying all their ships and vessels that you shall meet with. . . . In case you shall find it practicable to seize, surprise, or take any of the towns or places belonging to the Spaniards on the coast . . . you are to attempt it. . . . You are to continue your voyage along the coast of Peru, and to get the best information you can whether there be any place before you come to Lima that may be worthy your attention, so as to make it advisable to stop at it. . . . As soon as you shall arrive at Callao you shall consider whether it may be practicable to make an attempt upon that place or not; and if it shall be judged practicable you are accordingly to do it. . . . And whereas there is some reason to believe . . . that the Spaniards in the kingdom of Peru . . . have long had an inclination to revolt from their obedience to the King of Spain . . . (in favour of some considerable person among themselves), you are, if you find that there is any foundation for these reports, by all possible means to encourage and assist such a design in the best manner you shall be able.2
That the British could even contemplate such a mission is a clear indication that the Royal Navy was capable of executing it. It also is an indication the British were beginning to outclass their rivals—especially Spain, which was still a considerable maritime power, although one whose centuries-old monopoly of Pacific Ocean resources and trade was under considerable threat. That threat emerged from the growth of modern government institutions within the British state and the growth of professional expertise within the Royal Navy that made it possible for it to mount such an expedition.
The Ingredients for Naval Dominance
Great Britain differed from the other major maritime powers in that it was never an absolute monarchy. From the Magna Carta of 1215 to the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the landed gentry, who made up the House of Commons, had held an increasing financial stake in the wealth and power of the state, culminating in their assumption of sole responsibility for the national debt from King William III in 1694. The new holders of the debt then financed it by establishing the Bank of England, which henceforth financed government expenditure and made a perpetual naval establishment possible.3
The first piece of the puzzle of British success in attaining maritime supremacy over its rivals, therefore, was empowerment of economic stakeholders through the power of the purse. This was a means to share political power with the King—in the fashion of the European liberal democracies to come—and ensure Parliament’s strategic priorities were met. Great Britain in this era was not the liberal democracy that it is today, but it already possessed many of the characteristics of one. It was these liberal democratic characteristics that permitted the British to gradually gain an advantage over their more absolutist rivals and, eventually, establish maritime supremacy.
The second piece of the puzzle was the size, scope, and sophistication of the British naval establishment. While operational orders in 1739 were given by the King via one of his principal secretaries-of-state, naval operations increasingly were supervised by the Lord High Admiral while maintenance, manning, and logistics were executed by the Navy Board (principal officers and commissioners of the Navy) and a number of subsidiary boards subject to the Navy Board’s supervision. The office of Lord High Admiral was normally placed in commission (Commissioners for Executing the Office of Lord High Admiral). This commission was commonly called the Admiralty Board and was chaired by the First Lord, normally a seagoing officer in this era, who also had a seat in Parliament and the Cabinet and was, effectively, the Chief of the Navy.4
What set this administrative organization apart from other organizations in Britain and in Europe was that there were many fewer placeholders for whom their positions were a means of paying protégés and assistants of important people. The important positions of First Lord and Secretary at the Admiralty; Controller, Master Shipwright, and Clerk of the Acts at the Navy Board; and Commissioners at the Royal Dockyards were all men who had risen to their current positions after long apprenticeships in their areas of expertise. They were selected for the top positions because of their demonstrated expertise and professionalism and, unlike placeholders, spent most of their working hours doing the work of the positions to which appointed.
The size and complexity of Britain’s naval establishment was unmatched. This included six government-owned dockyards and associated rope yards: Deptford, Woolwich, Chatham, Sheerness, Portsmouth, and Plymouth; most of which included at least one dry dock.
In addition, the Navy began construction of a naval hospital at Gosport near the Portsmouth Dockyard in 1745, completing it in 1753. The hospital was designed to move convalescent sailors out of cramped, unhealthy private homes into an airy building less conducive to infection. The first Chief Physician was Dr. James Lind, who discovered and classified the first effective antiscorbutic. This was probably the most significant strategic development of the century. By eliminating scurvy, British ships could remain at sea indefinitely, subject to resupply. This permitted British ships’ crews to train continuously at sea. Therefore, they could sail their ships and fire their guns with much greater speed and efficiency in battle. Although British-built ships were often of lesser quality than their Continental counterparts, they easily outperformed their rivals in battle.5
The third piece of the puzzle was the unquestioned zeal and professional mastery of the British mariner. As the Royal Navy began its transition from a semipermanent and mixed public-private force to a permanent instrument of the government in the 17th century, it institutionalized its manning of both the officer and enlisted corps, ensuring a well-trained force was available to the state at any time.
Evolving Professionalism
William Dampier (1651–1715), Anson’s 17th-century predecessor who circumnavigated the world three times, had been a pirate before becoming a naval officer. He was, essentially, a product of the Navy organized by Samuel Pepys, Secretary of the Admiralty in Restoration England. Although Dampier proved himself to be an able seaman and navigator, he lacked the developing professionalism that characterized the Royal Navy officer of the mid-18th century.
Anson entered the Navy as the teenage son of a member of the gentry. His family, therefore, was connected with other members of this class. These were people whose wealth was measured in acres of English land, who sat in Parliament and served as the King’s ministers, who exerted control of overseas trade as directors of monopolies such as the East India and Hudson’s Bay Companies, and who were always eager for opportunities for capital investment at home and abroad.
Like Anson, the most successful mid–18th-century naval officers had to come from families who were at least connected to the gentry (and therefore could be called gentlemen) and who had the skill in leadership and seamanship to rise to command one of His Majesty’s ships. Officers began to be selected for promotion based on a workable patronage system designed to ensure they came from the right social class and, equally important, to ensure they were capable seamen, navigators, and tacticians. Lacking either requirement meant an officer rarely received a commission or, at best, rose above the rank of lieutenant.6 Because they were so vested in the system, British naval officers were much more likely to advance the maritime interests of the state and ensure maritime supremacy.
Enlisted sailors did not share the zeal of their officers. Instead, they could be considered as skilled tradesman much as are sailors today. Their skills ranged from seamanship to carpentry to metallurgy to stitching and mending. Many also were experienced leaders who, as petty officers, kept the ship sailing and the guns firing. During peacetime, many could be found among the crews of merchant ships. On the outbreak of war, they volunteered for naval service or were involuntarily pressed into it. Yet the value of skilled sailors was not lost on the government. A sailor’s diet was coarse but ample and often better than what was consumed by his counterpart ashore. The sailor’s living conditions were adequate, and he received good medical care. The men who commanded the Royal Navy worked diligently with the resources available to preserve the manpower base that had become vital to national security.7
Scurvy and a Rough Passage ’Round Cape Horn
The six ships of Anson’s squadron sailed from Portsmouth on 18 September 1740 en route to the Pacific Coast of South America via Cape Horn. Although Anson was to carry 500 marines to act as his landing force to secure Spanish settlements, higher-priority requirements left none for Anson. Replacing the marines, therefore, were 500 pensioners—old men who had fought with John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, on the Continent during the late 17th century. Although they were experienced soldiers, they were in no way fit for arduous overseas service.
Sailing around Cape Horn is much more difficult than around the Cape of Good Hope, since the former extends much farther south and possesses so many navigational hazards. Storms are frequent and intense, with winds blowing from west to east, the opposite direction of a ship sailing from Europe to the Pacific. Consequently, it could take a ship weeks to sail a few miles if she didn’t wreck on a lee shore first. Anson lost three ships during the passage, as well as most of his pensioners to exposure and scurvy.
Anson’s original orders called for him (almost as a second thought) to seize the annual Manila-Acapulco treasure galleon that brought Chinese goods to New Spain in return for silver plate mined in the Viceroyalty of Peru. For two centuries, the galleon had carried the silver from Acapulco in Baja to Manila in the Philippines. There, the silver was traded for Chinese silks and other luxury goods, which then were taken back to Acapulco for transshipment to Europe.
In the absence of a reliable method of determining longitude, the galleon sailed along predetermined latitudes between continents. Anson, with only the Centurion, by now having lost the remainder of his additional ships, and with a crew being repeatedly decimated by scurvy, decided to cross the Pacific, stopping at islands he could find to recuperate and replenish. In this way, Anson was able to preserve enough men, originally from his own ship and survivors from the others, to sail and fight when the Centurion found the westbound galleon Nuestra Señora de Covadonga off Manila, took her, and brought her fabulous treasure home to England.8
Anson was hailed as a hero upon his return, and the treasure was cheered by the crowds as it was paraded through London’s streets. Anson was rewarded with promotion to rear admiral, elevation to the peerage as Baron Anson, and a large percentage of the value of the treasure, making him one of the richest men in England.
He also became First Lord of the Admiralty, the head of the Royal Navy, in 1757, instituting reforms in navigation, hygiene, and health that were based on lessons learned from his own voyage. His reforms resulted in successful voyages of exploration throughout the Pacific led by officers such as James Cook, George Vancouver, and William Bligh.
Despite the obvious failure to accomplish the bulk of its mission objectives, and despite the loss of ships and lives, Anson’s voyage set Great Britain apart from its rivals in positive ways. First, it demonstrated that the British were willing to attempt such a voyage and, had it not been for the storms off Cape Horn and for the ravages of scurvy, would have had much more success. Second, the British identified and applied lessons learned to improve fleet performance on long voyages. Within 20 years, they returned to the Pacific to try again, this time with much greater success.
Lessons from a Disaster-Fraught Voyage
In the decade following the end of the war, Great Britain embarked on another conflict, the Seven Year’s War with France. Also called “the great war for empire,” the conflict would resolve issues of overseas empire once and for all in Britain’s favor. At the outset of the war, the Royal Navy fully implemented a strategy introduced by Admiral Anson in 1748, deploying ships from Plymouth and Portsmouth to levy a close blockade of French ports, including Cherbourg and Brest, to deny the French fleet access to the sea.
Successful application of this strategy resulted from lessons learned from Anson’s voyage. Improvements in diet and health permitted the British fleet to remain at sea indefinitely, making the blockade virtually impenetrable. As aforementioned, extended periods afloat permitted training of ships’ crews to a higher level of efficiency than any other navy. The blockade permitted Royal Navy overseas squadrons to defeat residual French squadrons in Canada and the Indian subcontinent, finally establishing British maritime supremacy.9
Immediately following the Seven Years’ War, Britain began a series of exploratory voyages in the Pacific to chart those areas off the normal sea lanes. The most famous, those of Captain James Cook, included three such voyages that were successful because an antiscorbutic with a long shelf-life had been discovered, ending the threat of scurvy, and the British had solved the problem of easily determining longitude at sea by adopting John Harrison’s workable chronometer for naval use.10
Cook’s voyages were quickly followed by expeditions by other Royal Navy captains such as William Bligh, George Vancouver, and Matthew Flinders. Captain Arthur Philip of HMS Sirius led a fleet of ten ships with convicts on board to settle a penal colony at Sydney Cove in what would become the State of New South Wales in Australia. The Pacific Ocean ceased to be a “Spanish lake,” becoming instead a “British lake” as Great Britain achieved maritime supremacy over the other states of Europe.
Taking a page from Great Britain’s experience, the United States should consider the following to maintain maritime supremacy:
• Sustain liberal democracy as the governing philosophy of the United States, as it has proven the most capable of supporting maritime supremacy.
• Always put manpower first by maintaining health and welfare and placing renewed emphasis on afloat training in all warfare areas.
• Cultivate greater proficiency in afloat commanding officers in seamanship/airmanship, shiphandling/flight proficiency, navigation, engineering, and leadership. Officers in line for command at sea should spend much more time at sea than they do today before appointment to command.
• Streamline the organization and cut unnecessary bureaucracy. Ensure the right people are in the right jobs. Strive for efficiency.
• Invest/reinvest in intermediate- and depot-level maintenance support.
• Spend limited funds on things that work well. Stop spending on things that don’t. Arleigh Burke–class destroyers work, littoral combat ships don’t.
• Quash the myth that the naval service is risk-averse. Encourage rational risk-taking.
In other words: Focus on creating more Ansons, more Centurions, and more sailors with the resiliency of the survivors of Anson’s voyage. That is how the United States will remain supreme at sea.
1. Nick Ball and Simon Stephens, Navy Board Ship Models (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2018), 194–95. In addition to an actual contemporary model of the Centurion, this work depicts models similar to the ones in Anson’s squadron.
2. Glyndwr Williams, ed., Documents Relating to Anson’s Voyage Round the World, 1740–1744 (London: Navy Records Society, 1967), 9; Instructions to Commodore Anson, 1740 (S.P. 42/88, if. 2–10), 34–38.
3. Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James II, vol. V (London: Folio Society, 2009), 1–20.
4. Daniel A. Baugh, ed., Naval Administration 1715–1750 (London: Navy Records Society, 1977), 1–3.
5. Christopher Lloyd and Jack L. S. Coulter, Medicine and the Navy, 1200–1900, vol. III, 1714–1815 (Edinburgh: E. and S. Livingstone, 1961), 293–303. See also Brian Lavery, Anson’s Navy: Building a Fleet for Empire, 1744 to 1763 (Barnsley, UK: Seaforth Publishing, 2021), 88.
6. N. A. M. Rodger, The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy (London: Folio Society, 2009), 244–72.
7. Rodger, The Wooden World, 65–90.
8. Richard Walter, Voyage Round the World in the Years MDCCXL, I, II, III, IV by George Anson, Esq; Commander in Chief of a Squadron of His Majesty’s Ships, Sent upon an Expedition to the South-Seas (London: John and Paul Knapton, 1748).
9. Julian S. Corbett, England in the Seven Years’ War: A Study in Combined Strategy (London: Longmans, Green, and Company, 1907).
10. James Cook, The Journals of Captain James Cook on His Voyages of Discovery, J. C. Beaglehole, ed. (London: Hakluyt Society, 1968).