E-text prepared by Steven Gibbs
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(/)
Types of Naval Officers
Drawn from the
History of the British Navy
With Some Account of the Conditions of Naval
Warfare at the beginning of the Eighteenth
Century, and of its subsequent development
during the Sail Period
By
A. T. Mahan, D.C.L., LL.D.
Captain, United States Navy
Author of the "Influence of Sea Power upon History,
1660-1783," and "Upon the French Revolution
and Empire;" of "The Life of Nelson,"
and a "Life of Farragut"
London
Sampson Low, Marston & Company
Limited
1902
Copyright, 1893,
By Houghton, Mifflin And Company.
Copyright, 1901,
By A. T. Mahan.
All rights reserved
November, 1901
UNIVERSITY PRESS · JOHN WILSON
AND SON · CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.
PREFACE
Although the distinguished seamen, whose livesand professional characteristics it is the objectof this work to present in brief summary, belongedto a service now foreign to that of the United States,they have numerous and varied points of contact withAmerica; most of them very close, and in some instancesof marked historical interest. The older men,indeed, were during much of their careers our fellowcountrymen in the colonial period, and fought, someside by side with our own people in this new world,others in distant scenes of the widespread strife thatcharacterized the middle of the eighteenth century, thebeginnings of "world politics;" when, in a quarrelpurely European in its origin, "black men," to useMacaulay's words, "fought on the coast of Coromandel,and red men scalped each other by the great lakes ofNorth America." All, without exception, were actorsin the prolonged conflict that began in 1739 concerningthe right of the ships of Great Britain and her coloniesto frequent the seas bordering the American dominionsof Spain; a conflict which, by gradual expansion, drewin the continent of Europe, from Russia to France,spread thence to the French possessions in India andNorth America, involved Spanish Havana in the westernhemisphere and Manila in the eastern, and finally[Pg vi]entailed the expulsion of France from our continent.Thence, by inevitable sequence, issued the independenceof the United States. The contest, thus completed,covered forty-three years.
The four seniors of our series, Hawke, Rodney, Howe,and Jervis, witnessed the whole of this momentousperiod, and served conspicuously, some more, some less,according to their age and rank, during its variousstages. Hawke, indeed, was at the time of the AmericanRevolution too old to go to sea, but he did not dieuntil October 16, 1781, three days before the surrenderof Cornwallis at Yorktown, which is commonly acceptedas the closing incident of our struggle for independence.On the other hand, the two younger men, Saumarez andPellew, though they had entered the navy before theAmerica