One hundred years ago, Alfred Thayer Mahan graduated from the U. S. Naval Academy and began a career as a naval officer and a student of history, becoming an apostle of sea power who, to quote from the Encyclopaedia Britannica, has “had no peer in the annals of literature.” It is significant today that one of the great lessons Mahan sought to impress upon the American public was that a strong merchant marine was an essential ingredient of national prosperity and real sea power. To quote him on the subject “The necessity of a navy, in the restricted sense of the word, springs, therefore, from the existence of a peaceful shipping, and disappears with it, except in the case of a nation which has aggressive tendencies, and keeps up a navy merely as a branch of the military establishment.”
It appears that we need to restudy Mahan’s message when we consider that today the U. S. Merchant Marine is slowly losing ground in its fight with foreign competitors for the passenger, cargo, and tanker business which is its lifeblood and on which its ultimate readiness as a defense weapon of this country, as well as our national prosperity, is dependent. Here are some facts that clearly show what is happening to our “Fourth Service of Defense.”
In 1939 there were 123 American-owned passenger vessels in service with a simultaneous lift capacity of 37,741 people. Today’s active American-owned passenger fleet could lift about 15,000 people simultaneously in a total of 41 ships. This is less than fifty per cent of the lift capacity of our 1939 fleet. Our position in the world’s passenger trade has slipped from second in 1939 to about fifth in 1959. Although there is a commercial demand for more ships by U. S. companies, they cannot afford the expense of constructing them without government subsidy, and although Congress two years ago approved a government subsidy for constructing two additional passenger ships, the money as yet has not been appropriated.
In 1947 American-owned ships carried 54 per cent of our foreign commerce. In 1959 American-owned ships carried twenty per cent of our trade with foreign nations. It is true that about another 27 per cent of our foreign commerce is carried in shipping indirectly owned by U. S. companies, but registered in Honduras, Liberia, and Panama under a so-called “flag of convenience” or “flag of necessity.” This is to avoid manning the vessels with U. S. labor union-controlled manpower and to alleviate the high costs involved. Although the U. S. Government has agreements with the companies concerned that the ships registered under this cost dodge will be available to Uncle Sam in case of war, there is doubt in the minds of many that the crews would continue to man the ships under the threat of war. A good percentage of the ships, therefore, might get stranded overseas under these circumstances. Further, U. S. labor unions and foreign shipping interests are applying political pressure to force these ships to register under the U. S. Flag and to be manned by U. S. labor union members which, of course, would at least double the operating costs and probably make it impossible for the companies concerned to continue their operation. Even accepting the argument that 47 per cent of our foreign commerce today is hauled in U. S.-controlled shipping, this represents a significant reduction, considering other factors involved, such as the impending block obsolescence of our privately owned dry cargo and passenger fleet and the ridiculously low percentage of replacement shipping now scheduled for construction.
U. S. firms have ordered only 3.6% of the world’s new shipping construction, a puny figure for the wealthiest nation in the world, Particularly when compared to the percentages of the world’s new construction shipping of some other nations: Norway 15.6%, England 19%. It is to be noted that ships under construction for British registry are sufficient to replace one-third of her merchant fleet. It also is significant to note that our private fleet represents only ten per cent of the world’s shipping, whereas Great Britain has almost twenty per cent of the world’s merchant fleet.
The entire U. S. Merchant Marine fleet is faced with a block obsolescence of astronomical proportions. Over 75% of our privately owned merchant fleet was built during the World War II shipbuilding emergency and by 1965 will be non-competitive in the world’s shipping trade.
Approximately fifty per cent of our National Defense Reserve Fleet, provided for under the Merchant Marine Act of 1936, is obsolete and is being sold for scrap this year. The balance is not being maintained in an acceptable state of preservation due to lack of funds. Last year over eighty of the dry cargo ships in the Reserve Fleet were sold for scrap. Only nineteen new ships were ordered. This year 1,000 Liberty ships from the Reserve Fleet are being sold for scrap due to their age, slow speed, and inadequacy for present day operations. The remaining 300 Liberty ships in the Reserve Fleet are not likely to see service again for the same reasons.
The parallel images of our merchant marine today and our merchant marine of a century ago make Mahan’s voice strikingly urgent and eloquent. From some twenty volumes and innumerable lectures by Mahan on the subject of sea power, here is the briefest look at his message.
Mahan’s lectures, and subsequently his first book, were not the result of sudden inspiration but of years of reading and reflection, culminating in intense research from 1884 to 1886. He graduated from the Naval Academy just prior to the Civil War and from personal experience and study knew the leading role that the U. S. Navy and the U. S. Merchant shipping played in the defeat of the Confederacy. Further, in each year following the Civil War he had seen a deterioration in the size and condition of both the Merchant Marine and the U. S. Navy. It was against this background that he prepared his lectures and wrote his books.
Mahan’s first book, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783, stemmed from an invitation extended to him by his former captain, Stephen B. Luce, to conduct a lecture course at the then newly established Naval War College. The purpose of the lecture course was to determine facts of naval history on which general principles of naval warfare could be based, as Jomini and others had done for land warfare. Far from mimicking previous writers on land and naval warfare, however, he set for himself the task of examining the general history of Europe and America and of determining the effect that considerations of the sea had had upon that history. These lectures, given in 1886, were so successful with the small student body to which they were addressed that he was persuaded to convert them into a book.
It was a primary purpose in his lectures and his writings to make his own fellow citizens of the United States aware of the fact that sea power meant first and foremost having a strong commercial shipping industry with friendly overseas seaports and foreign trade agreements. It was a central thesis of his argument that a producing nation, such as the United States, needed a strong merchant marine to maintain prosperity and that the need for a strong Navy, unless a nation was bent on aggression, was based on the need to protect a nation’s commercial shipping interests. He emphasized that the objective of naval strategy in peace and war is to increase the sea power—which includes the commercial shipping industry—of a nation and therefore that the study of sea power has an interest and value for all citizens of a free country.
Although his analyses, including his argument for an Isthmus of Panama Canal, primarily developed the thesis of sea power for the United States, it is an ironical fact that his first book, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783, was not enthusiastically received in the United States, whereas in England not only was it widely read, but its arguments were used by the British Government to justify a course of naval expansion upon which it had launched. In 1892, Emperor William II, in a historic speech, quoted Mahan’s book to justify his conviction that Germany needed a Navy to protect her rapidly expanding merchant marine and seaborne trade. Further, it was translated almost immediately into all the important languages and studied closely in Japan, as well as in all of the important chancellories and admiralties in Europe. In America, however, his message largely went neglected except by a few. One of the few was Theodore Roosevelt who was so impressed by Mahan’s writings that a close, lifelong friendship grew between them. It would not be an exaggeration to say that it was Mahan’s influence on Theodore Roosevelt which resulted in the revival of the U. S. Merchant Fleet in the early 1900s, in the building of the Great White Fleet, in the construction of the Panama Canal, and in the dynamic, expansionist policies of the United States in that era.
There is an urgent need again today for every citizen of the United States to understand Mahan’s doctrine of sea power. There is an equally urgent need to understand that the U. S. merchant fleet is in dire need of modernization and therefore of money if it is to be ready to meet our defense needs, as well as to meet foreign competition in the world shipping market. The cost of shipbuilding in the United States has increased about six-fold since 1945. Predicted steel shortages and increasing labor costs will drive these replacement costs even higher. Further, operating costs have doubled for U. S.-manned ships. The magnitude of the problem is plain to see:
(1) For survival, economically and as a free nation, we must maintain ourselves as a sea power that is second to none;
(2) To have sea power, we must have a powerful modern navy and a strong modern merchant marine;
(3) For a strong modern merchant marine, funds are required vastly beyond the capacity of the shipping industry to provide;
(4) For such funds, therefore, there is an immediate and urgent need for a long-range government program to expand the present subsidy policy and to appropriate the necessary funds over the required number of years.
(5) To support such a long-range government program, there is a need for public understanding of the issues involved.
The deterioration of our merchant marine that is facing us and the need for an extension of our present government subsidy policy are hard, unpleasant, but vital facts on which there is a need for a public education program.
This is Alfred Thayer Mahan’s message applied to an acute national need today.
A Graduate of the U. S. Naval Academy in the Class of 1933, Captain Campbell’s postwar duty includes CO, USS Leary; ACOS for Logistics, ComNavGer; ComDesDiv 322; Deputy Chief of Staff, ComOpDevFor; CO, USS Muliphen; ACOS for Plans & Operations ComPhibGru TWO; Chief of Staff, ComPhibGru TWO. He is now Staff Assistant to the Special Assistant to the Joint Chiefs of Staff for National Security Council Affairs.
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THE MOST IMPORTANT ITEM
Contributed by Commander Samuel R. Hall, SC, USNR-R
When families and dependents left Guantanamo early in World War II, I was fortunate enough to invited to join the mess of the base ordnance officer. Our cook was a Chinese by the name of Hang. He spoke Spanish and some English, but he could not read in either language. With the assistance of the mess members, however, he had learned to make up a grocery list by carefully copying the names off the labels on cans, packages, and boxes.
One day we had a telephone call from an amused commissary officerwho had just seen one of Hang’s orders. Neatly printed on a sheet of paper was a list headed by the following entry:
Quantity: 4 Item: Uncle Sam Says Ship It Flat
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A SHIP’S A LADY
Contributed by Captain J. S. Cowie, RN
When it was decreed shortly after the conclusion of World War I that destroyers of the Britiish Mediterranean Fleet should be painted white, many of them succeeded in scrounging considerable quantities of white enamel, with a view to adding luster to their appearance, and enhancing the reputation of their first lieutenants.
On one occasion, a particularly shining example was steaming past the flagship on her way to sea, with her officers and ship’s company all in spotless white uniforms drawn up and standing to attention in the traditional manner. The officers, contrary to the current regulations, were also wearing white gloves, and all concerned were clearly expecting a congratulatory signal on the appearance of their ship.
They were, therefore, delighted when the admiral made “Very pretty indeed,” but not so delighted, however, to receive a follow-up signal reading: “May I have the pleasure of the next dance?”
(The Naval Institute will pay $5.00 for each anecdote accepted for publication in the Proceedings.)