Posted on 03/14/2005 5:09:15 PM PST by quidnunc
At first glance, the British maritime empire made little sense. Unlike Spain or France, England had no Mediterranean ports and was without a venerable seafaring heritage of the old galley states. It was distant from the ancestral Roman locus of power, and its population was religiously divided, torn by ethnic strife, smaller than France's and without the natural resources of larger European continental states. Indeed, there was not much of any British naval history before the 15th century. Far earlier, Viking longboats had freely raided the English coast and gone on to discover the New World; Portuguese and Spanish, not British, galleons would first chart the sea routes to Asia and the Americas.
Yet by the late 16th century, England had launched the most technologically advanced, nautically skilled and professionally led fleet in the world. And by 1630 no combination of French or Spanish ships could stop its 100-ship mastery of the seas, which by the mid-18th century had resulted in a worldwide empire protected by 300 capital ships. How did it all come to pass, and what effect did the nearly 500-year reign of British naval mastery have on the world at large?
Jeremy Black, perhaps the most prolific military historian in the English-speaking world today, seeks to answer the first question with his trademark flurry of names, dates and facts crammed into a reliable recitation. Over some 400 pages, we are overwhelmed with the details surrounding the establishment of British trading colonies in India and the Far East, the colonial fighting in North America and the wars with Spain and France.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at victorhanson.com ...
To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World by Arthur Herman (HarperCollins: 648 pp.)
FYI
Jack Aubrey ping.
Horatio Hornblower says BTTT
What's with all of the British bashing? /sarcasm
What's the status today?
I've seen Jeremy Black on various History Channel programs. Very impressive guy.
Amazing how slim is the margin that alters history
The first of the line. 
HMS Revenge, revolutionary galleon design of 1577, built just 11 years before she and her race-built sister ships outmanouvered the great ships of the Invincible Armada
The sixth 
HMS Revenge of Trafalgar
The eighth 
HMS Revenge of 1892
The Ninth 
HMS Revenge of Jutland
The last 
OK How long will it take to build a line of 10 ships named "Jimmy Carter"?
If not, you can get Master and Commander on DVD.
Nice article. And it all began from entrepreneurship (and piracy). The desire to take S. American gold from the Spanish was the driving force at the outset.
The O'Brian books were great, but Aubrey was a piker compared to Cochrane! (wink, Aubrey was based on him).
ROFL!!! Thank you! I put it up in my blog!!
Already got one. (Still haven't been able to make a "backup" copy that works perfectly yet :)
Don't have a commercial DVD yet. All my DVD drives are my computers, and haven't hooked my ATI All-In-Wonder card up to the big screen yet.
Speaking of movies, watching a James Bond movie and he just got married! I don't remember Bond ever getting married.
I don't remember the Connery replacement actor, but Diana Rigg more than makes up for it!
Oh, nevermind, Diana Rigg just got shot to death.
Who was Cochrane? Is he a fictional character? Are there a series of books telling of his exploits? My husband is the Aubrey fan and he just finished Blue at the Mizzen and is depressed because there was obviously more to the storyline, but Mr. O'Brian up and died! It would be great if I could get Dear Hubby another line of books to read.
That would be Australian, George Lazenby as Bond. The film is "On Her Majesty's Secret Service". One of the better films.
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