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Sea Control 149: Former Secretary and First Lady of the Navy, John and Margaret Dalton, Pt. 1

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By Travis Nicks

We were honored to speak with former Secretary of the Navy John Dalton and his wife, Margaret Dalton, about their service during the Clinton administration.

DOWNLOAD: Sea Control 149: Former Secretary and First Lady of the Navy, John and Margaret Dalton, Pt. 1

TN: Hi, and welcome to another episode of Sea Control. I’m Travis Nicks, the Vice President of CIMSEC, and on behalf of CIMSEC, I’m honored to be joined today by the former Secretary and first lady of the Navy, John and Margaret Dalton. Secretary Dalton served as the Secretary of the Navy from 1993 to 1998. In that time, Mrs. Dalton was instrumental in many quality of life improvements in our Navy, to include improvements in base housing, and has conducted many outreach efforts, even holding frequent visits to aircraft carriers for groups of congressional spouses. Mr. Secretary, Mrs. Dalton, thank you for joining us.

So starting off Secretary Dalton, you served as Secretary of the Navy from 1993 to 1998. Do you mind sharing how you became the Secretary of the Navy?

JD: Sure. I’ll be glad to. The reason I think I was considered to be Secretary of the Navy was because I had prior military service, and also prior service as a government official. I was president of Ginnie Mae, the Government National Mortgage Association in the Carter Administration. And after lunching in Dallas, and sat next to him, and got acquainted with him, and liked him, and decided to work in his campaign, and was actively involved in his campaign. When he was elected, he appointed me to be President of Ginnie Mae. That was my first government service. I really enjoyed it, and did that for two and a half years. And when they formed the Reelection Committee,– I was named Treasurer of the Carter-Mondale Reelection Committee. And I was a young man – I was 37 at the time. I was 35 when I got the Ginny Mae appointment, and 37 when I became the National Treasurer of the campaign. And we had, you know, children. When the seat became available on the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, after having worked in the campaign for about 6 months, I decided to ask the Chief of Staff of President Carter, Hamilton Jordan if I could have this seat at the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. I would still work on the campaign, but I, I’d taken a pay-cut to go into government, and another pay-cut to go on the campaign, and I have small children, and so I thought that would be a better way – better for me personally – so I was able to work that out and do that. After the election in 1980, when President Reagan was elected, I had another – well, on the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, the term didn’t end with the administration. It actually went through June of ’82. And so I stayed on for a number of months, and a headhunter approached me, and I took a job in San Antonio, Texas, and lived in San Antonio for twelve years in the savings and loans business, and then in the private equity business, and then back in the investment banking business – where I’d originally been when I was working for Goldman Sachs – when I met Jimmy Carter (Governor Carter).

But how I became Secretary of the Navy was, I was active in the Clinton campaign. I was active in the Democratic Leadership Council, which was the more moderate wing of the Democratic Party. And Governor Clinton was Chairman of the DLC, or the Democratic Leadership Council. So I got to know him through that. And when he announced his candidacy for president, I supported and was active in his campaign and when he was elected, because of what I’d done in the campaign, and the fact that I had served on active duty and been involved in the Carter Administration, so I had government experience.

Actually, what happened was, Henry Cisneros was Mayor of San Antonio, and he approached me about two weeks before the election and said who with their work in the campaign could serve adequately in the new administration. So I went there, and he said, “Would you please think about that and come see me, and tell me,” since Henry Cisneros was on the transition team. They were, eight or nine people that were on the Transition Committee before the election, and he was one of them. He solicited my advice about people who would serve in the administration. We talked a couple of weeks before the election, and he said, “We’re going to win, and you know, thank you for the names of these people that you think could serve well. But what about you?”

And I said, “You know, Henry, this is not a good time for me – personally, financially. And the only way I would go back into government service is if there were something meaningful that I could do.”

And he said, “I don’t know what you mean by meaningful, but the Cabinet is spoken for. Is there anything other than the Cabinet that you think you would be interested in?”

I said, “Yes, there is one job. The Secretary of the Navy.”

And he said, “I think you’d be great at that.” And he said, “Get me your resume. I’m going to go to Little Rock tomorrow, and I’m going to see Warren Christopher, who’s the chairman of the Transition Committee, and I’ll give him your resume.”

That’s how it happened.

TN: So you started off your time in the Navy at the U.S. Naval Academy and then with submarines, and then afterward, went to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. How did the Naval Academy help you in your professional career? And how did those early formative experiences in your career help you become Secretary of the Navy, and then your career afterward?

JD: Well, it helped me a great deal. First of all, some background. I had an uncle who was a Navy hero in WWII. And, you know, I was a young boy – I was born in ’41, so, I was. But the first naval officer I ever heard about was my uncle, Roy, who actually won the Navy Cross, the Silver Star, and five Distinguished Flying Crosses. I mean, he was a genuine hero in WWII. And so my impression of the Navy was very positive from the get-go, and I wanted to go to the Naval Academy. You know, as a young man particularly, in high school.

But I didn’t get the appointment out of high school. That’s truly the only place I applied, and I was sure that was where I was going to go, and I had good grades, and I was on the student council – and all that kind of thing. So I thought I would get the appointment, but I didn’t. And so I went to LSU for a year, and that was a great experience. And I was active in government politics, was elected to the student government association, and president of my pledge class – that kind of thing. And then, I went to see the Congressman here again – what we’re talking about earlier, the personal aspect of seeing the decision-maker is key – and I went to see Overton Brooks, who was our Congressman, and told him that he had not given me his principle appointment the previous year, but I’d gone to LSU and done well, and I hoped that he would give me the appointment this year. And, I said, “It’s not something you’ll regret, because I will do well there.”

He gave me the appointment and I went to the Naval Academy. I didn’t get off to a great start. The first time they published an UNSAT list, my name was on it. And I went out for the crew team and got cut and so forth. But I made the varsity plebe team, in soccer and lacrosse, and enjoyed that. And, you know, early on was the first time they had the aptitude scores for our company. I was number one in our company. In my youngster year – sophomore year – they took a group to the Air Force Academy. At that time, everybody spent a weekend at the air army at West Point, but this was the first time anybody there had gone to the Air Academy, and I was in the group that was selected for that. And I was a group commander in the second class year, and went on a foreign exchange cruise to the Royal Navy my first class year.

All those experiences were very helpful to me, both in my active duty service and in the training that we had. And the leadership skills we learned, and so forth, were helpful to me – both in business, and when I became Secretary of the Navy.

TN: Over the last decade, rapid innovation in technology has been at the forefront of discussion topics in the maritime security community – particularly in the U.S. Navy. And many specialized organizations – DIUX, CNO’s Rapid Innovation Cell, Deep Blue, et cetera – have been established and disestablished by Navy leaders with the initial objective of speeding up innovation. The relatively slow speed of integrating innovative technology into the Navy has been heavily criticized – inside and outside the Navy.

You served as the Secretary of the Navy during the mass-adoption of the World Wide Web, the personal computer, the cell phone, and other new technologies. How did you achieve the high speed of integration of innovative technologies that occurred under your leadership in the 90s, and in your experience, what is the most effective way for a Navy leader to set up our institution to more rapidly integrate modern technology into things like personnel management, maintenance, and operations?

JD: Well when I was in office, we had some major challenges with respect to acquisition. And we thought that the system needed an overhaul. So we adopted what was called “acquisition reform.” Nora Slatkin was the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, and Acquisition – RDA – she was very good in that job. John Douglas came after her, and he also was very good.

The two major weapons systems that we had to deal with were the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and the Seawolf submarine. That was the biggest aviation challenge that we had, and that system was very successful in that it came in on time, on budget, and underweight. And that was unusual in that typically, major new weapons systems cost more and were delayed and, there were a number of alterations that were having to be done on them. So I think the acquisition reform that we instilled was able to project and to perform, and that system – that weapon system – was very successful.

Similarly, another major weapons system was to get the third Seawolf submarine built because it was a political issue. The previous administration, the George H. W. Bush administration, had been opposed to building the third Seawolf, and President Clinton wanted to have it done. But it was a political football. And I thought that we needed to build it for the industrial base. I mean, we needed to have that submarine so that Electric Boat at New London, and also the submarines that were built in Newport News, would not lose all their people if we went two or three years without building a submarine. And we were able to prevail on that issue, and you might recall, going back politically – Clinton was elected in ’92, and in ’94, it was a big sweep from the standpoint of the Republican Party winning most of the seats. I asked some of my friends on the Hill about the possibility about getting the third Seawolf built. And, you know, Phil Gramm (R-Texas) and others that I knew from Texas and other states said, “You can forget it. You’re not going to build or pull that off.”

Well, I thought it was so important that we dedicated a lot of resources to get that third Seawolf built. And we were successful, and we ended up getting 75 votes in the Senate for it. That’s not the exact number, but anyway, it wasn’t close, because we really worked it hard, and it was important. And then once we got that done, the next big thing was the new attack submarine – which is the Virginia-class submarine. And that, too, was an important victory for the Navy Department. And similarly we moved forward with the V-22 in the Marine Corps, and that was a big weapons system that was controversial and had some early failures in terms of people being killed – testing it and so forth. Those were big weapons systems that were all important and all needed some leadership to get done, and we were able to get that done.

In terms of the internet and the other things that you mentioned, that was all late in my term. I can remember having a tutor come in to help me learn how to use a computer, you know, he’s coming in once a week. I was a novice – and still am in many ways. At any rate, some of the technology that you mentioned was late in my administration.

TN: Was it a priority to integrate computers and the internet?

JD: Yeah. I knew there were some people who were using email. But I remember sending my first email to Richard Danzig who was more savvy than I was with new technology. And I said something about something that he sent me, and he sent me an email back that said, “Welcome to cyberspace.”

TN: That’s pretty good.

JD: Yeah, he’s a great guy. He was a great undersecretary and also an outstanding successor.

TN: The two of you worked together – you and Secretary Danzig created programs like NAVFIT98, the eval and fitness report system that we still use today, and a series of programs that were created in the mid-90s and were used for more than a decade, and in some cases, for decades afterward. From a personnel standpoint, did it seem like it would be important to inject the internet and computers and software into personnel management and into communications?

JD: Absolutely. I think those tools that you mentioned were very important. And I think that what we emphasized the most in the five-and-a-half years I was there was people and the importance of treating people with dignity and respect. I mean, the emphasizing our core values of honor, courage, and commitment. When I came into office, we had some significant issues with respect to dealing with people. We had the Tailhook Convention, and the discipline of all that was on my plate. We had the cheating at the Naval Academy. We had the change in the culture of the Navy from the standpoint of gays in the military and women in combat. And both of those things happened within six months of each other – which was a big culture shock to the Navy. When I assumed office, I had been there two weeks before there was a major headline in the Navy Times which read, “Navy Moral at All Time Low.”

TN: Wow.

JD: I had a leadership challenge on my hand, and I think we answered the bell with respect to that. But personnel and evaluation reforms – doing all of that properly and using the technology that we helped developed was very important to evaluating people and making sure that everybody got a fair say.

TN: What was it like dealing with those kinds of situations in the Naval Academy and Tailhook? I mean, I guess Tailhook was very early on.

JD: Well, Tailhook was the biggest. It was the thing I spent more time on than, early in my tenure, than probably anything else. And it was – some refer to it as the biggest blow the Navy has taken since Pearl Harbor. It was on the front page three days out of seven, some kind of story dealing with Tailhook for a long period of time. And so you can see how the people would be concerned about morale, when you’re reading negative stories about your organization all the time, on the front page of the newspaper.

MD: It also happened before he got there.

JD: Yeah, it happened two years before I got there, but the discipline of it was my responsibility.

TN: I’m just wondering – we’re going through what they’re calling the Fat Leonard Scandal right now, and it sort of has the bell ringing of the Tailhook time, particularly because of the impact it’s having on promotion, and other things.

JD: You know, it’s a very similar problem.

TN: How did you maintain morale in the Navy at all levels – in the Pentagon and in the fleet?

JD: I made a big point of accountability and responsibility. I let it be known that everyone in a position of authority was going to be held responsible. If they were in charge with a duty with respect to people, they had to carry out those responsibilities. And accountability and responsibility, treating every individual with dignity and with respect, and living by our core values of honor, courage, and commitment, were key. And you know, if people didn’t measure up, they weren’t going to be promoted. I took a tough stand on that.

MD: He also made it a point to visit as many ships and bases as he could and to let them know that not only did he expect that from them, but he also let them know that he cared about them and he cared about the Navy and what they were doing and what they were contributing.

JD: And I really do feel like that, when I left five-and-a-half years later, I felt like the Navy was stronger, the morale was better. The other problem we had was how we’re going to drawdown from the military and spend this money on other things.

Well, as a result, promotion rates were much lower than the normal, and I remember a year – less than a year – after I assumed office, we went to the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day in England. And President Clinton came aboard a ship – an aircraft carrier – to talk to all the sailors. And I saw David Kirken before the President had gotten there (he got on board earlier), and he was a principle adviser to President Clinton. And he came to me. He said, “What should the President know about the status of morale of the Sailors?”

And I said, “We got a problem.” And I said, “The problem is, promotion rates are really behind. But the good news is, promotion rates this year are higher than they were last year, and promotion rates are going to be higher next year than they were this year. And within three years, we’re going to be back like we’ve always been with respect to promotion rates.”

And he said, “I want you to tell the President that when he gets here.”

And so, the president already had his remarks planned for what he was going to say, but David Kirken called him over and the three of us visited for a moment, and I told him the same thing. I said, “Mr. President, these are the facts. Because of the drawdown, promotion rates have really been slow. And as a result, morale is slow. But, the good news is…”

And so President Clinton, without a note, gets up and goes through his spiel and he says, “But before I leave you today, I want you to know this. I know you’re concerned about your advancement rates and your level of promotion. But let me tell you young men and women, your promotion rates this year are going to be better than they were last year. And your promotion rates next year will be better than they were this year. And within three years, you’re going to be right back like you’ve always been.”

Aboard, the troops just rallied – I mean, he was as good a politician. He just heard what I said and he walked out onto the platform, and brought it to life. He came into office as the – I’m sure he didn’t get 20 percent of the vote from the armed forces, personally. But he earned the trust of the leadership and ultimately, the rank and file because he was able to do stuff like that. I mean, he was a good Commander in Chief even though the typical armed services personnel didn’t think he was going to be. But I think he genuinely earned their trust, and he was a fine Commander in Chief.

TN: You spoke about the drawdown and the reduction in funding, and the peace dividend, and the subsequent, dramatic drop in budgeting for the Department of Defense and the Department of the Navy. Much has been made in recent months about the strain of life while deployed at sea, and how that conversation has been driven by the collision of USS John McCain and USS Fitzgerald recently. The Senate Church Committee was very interested in the work week for sailors – how sleeping is, and the short maintenance in training timelines, and some of that that has been attributed to the remnants of the peace dividend period. I’m just curious how you see the budgeting from the 1990s having played out over the last 20 years, the predictions that you and undersecretary Danzig, and the three CNOs that you served with– how those predictions have manifested over time.

JD: Well, I think it’s the civilian leadership’s responsibility to make sure that the military has adequate resources. And we went through the quadrennial defense review every four years and reviewed what the needs were, and it was our job then to articulate those needs to the Congress and to the public and to generate the necessary resources. And I think we did well at that. I think you always want more than you can get. But I think we did well from the standpoint of generating the resources. And then the other thing you talked about was training, and I think that is more the leadership of the military’s responsibility. We don’t get – civilian leadership doesn’t get involved in the actual training of people and the dealing of the amount of sleep and the kind of thing you talked about. But I tried to always emphasize the importance of our people and that means quality of life issues, and Margaret was very helpful with respect to those issues. I can tell you some stories, and she’ll talk to you about that as well. But we made quality of life a priority, and Margaret deserves a lot of credit for things she did with respect to that. I know at that time we had six months deployments. That was a hard stop. And the CNO had to come see me if a ship was going to be deployed longer than six months. And it didn’t happen very often because he didn’t want to come to talk to me about a six-month deployment being longer than that. And so, it rarely happened in the five and a half years that I was there. And it sort of set the tone, that the Secretary of the Navy was interested enough in the quality of life of the Navy and the Marines. That was a stipulation that the CNO had to get it cleared for me if there was going to be a deployment longer than six months. And that sort of mindset permeated the Navy Department.

TN: As recently as 2011, I know that there was one aircraft carrier that went on deployment for 11 months, then turned around and went back to sea very shortly thereafter for several months at a time – that’s just incredible to hear.

JD: People start voting with their feet when that happens. I mean, today, I don’t think we have a retention problem. But if you continue to do 11 month deployments and they become commonplace…people have families and obligations and those kind of deployments, that long, really deteriorates the morale of Sailors and Marines. They understand if there’s an exception and they have to do something for the national security and that’s what they’re there for, but by the same token, they have personal lives that require our looking out for them.

TN: How were you able to strike that balance? Sounds that like you made a decision that you would focus more on quality of life than operational tempo, and I’m just curious how that conversation played out with the admirals that are focused more on operational tempo.

JD: Well, I think part of it was, you know, what I inherited with Tailhook and the cheating scandal and the drawdown and so forth. I wanted to emphasize people. And you know, if the Secretary of the Navy is talking about that kind of stuff…the admirals know that I select who goes where, in terms of who is going to be in what job, and if they flop the things that I’m for, it’s not going to be in their interest. So I think the tone does get set at the top. Clearly, you work with the admirals and generals of the Navy and the Marine Corps and they know more about the operational aspects of it than I do. I’d been out of the Navy – I left in 1969, I became Secretary in 1993. I mean, that’s a good period of time to be away from the naval service. I think I had the ability to assess the situation and make good decisions.

TN: Do you feel like your time that you’d been in business in those intervening years between 1969 and when you became Secretary of the Navy helped you make decisions quickly? We’ve been talking in the last year or so about how this particular administration’s been talking a lot about the importance of having business practices interjected into government. And you did have that experience. You had a long career in business and then came into government again.

JD: Well, I think that having a business background is useful. I mean, we’ve had many successful Secretaries of the Navy and Secretaries from other services who were not in business, but I think the practicality of meeting a payroll and assessing a bottom line and having things work well are useful. But I mean, similarly there are high qualities and traits that come from being a lawyer and from other occupations as well. I mean, I think my business experience was helpful. I also think my prior government service was helpful. I also think having served on active duty was helpful. There are plenty of fine Secretaries who didn’t do those things, but I think they were helpful to me.

TN: So shifting gears just a little bit, one more question about the drawdown, the financial drawdown, and the reduction in budgeting. 1990 saw a consolidation of the defense industry from about 37 firms to five prime firms. And we ended up with Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing. I’m just curious how you feel like the consolidation of the defense industry has impacted the Navy.

JD: I mean, I still believe we have enough quality providers of resources, providers of equipment and operation needs that there’s enough competition from those five firms that (and they’re all quality firms and well-run organizations) and I’m not concerned about the consolidation. I think there’s adequate competition today.

John Dalton served as the 70th Secretary of the Navy from 1993 to 1998. 

Mary Dalton is Secretary Dalton’s spouse.

Travis Nicks formerly served as the Vice President of CIMSEC. These questions and views are presented in a personal capacity.

Cris Lee is Senior Producer of the Sea Control podcast. 

Future Tech

Harnessing Tech Innovation from Blockchain to Kill Chain

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By Jimmy Drennan

With all of the hype surrounding bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, it can be difficult to sort through the noise and it might seem trendy to ask the question “How can this technology benefit my organization?” After all, a cryptocurrency started as a joke in honor of dog memes recently achieved a $2B valuation. Still, the underlying technological innovation behind Bitcoin, the blockchain, has real, concrete advantages that can impact numerous industries, from banking to logistics.

Applications in maritime operations are no exception. Blockchain is essentially a distributed database that incentivizes network consensus to make it extremely difficult to alter recorded data. Think of it this way: blockchain is like a museum that offers free entry, but heavily secures each exhibit with anti-tamper systems such that they can only be observed, not stolen or defaced. That so-called “immutability property” makes blockchain useful any time data integrity (i.e. preservation of data) is more important than data security (i.e. privacy of data).

Ideas are already being formulated by the Secretary of the Navy’s Innovation Advisory Council on how blockchain can improve additive manufacturing. Perhaps the most intriguing example of how blockchain can assist naval operations lies in ensuring an accurate recognized maritime picture (RMP). In naval warfare, nothing is more important when forming a kill chain than ensuring one has properly identified the target. RMP is even more critical when relying on networks, and the U.S. Navy has invested heavily for decades to become the world’s preeminent networked force. Blockchain has the potential to solve two of the Navy’s biggest problems associated with building RMP: ambiguity and manipulation. In fact, the broader maritime industry can also benefit from the use of blockchain due to inherent security flaws in the widely used automatic identification system (AIS).

What is a Blockchain?

A brief primer on how blockchains work will help to illustrate how they can impact naval operations. A blockchain used to record financial transactions, called “cryptocurrency,” is perhaps the best example to use. It is a distributed ledger that keeps track of every transaction ever conducted. Bitcoin, the original and most well-known cryptocurrency, relies upon a large network of independent users to prevent “double spending.”  Since cryptocurrency is just data, and not something tangible that is traded for goods or services, it would normally be easy for someone to spend it twice and delegitimize the entire system. Bitcoin’s unique process solved the double spending problem by calling upon its network users to work together to verify each transaction. Bitcoin conducts “consensus building” by offering a prize (currently 12.5 bitcoin) to a randomly selected user helping to verify the latest transaction. Once consensus is built and a transaction is verified, a new 12.5 bitcoin is awarded (i.e. mined) and the transaction is recorded to the blockchain. Each subsequent transaction is built upon the last, making it very difficult to retroactively manipulate data on the blockchain. In fact, the only way for a nefarious actor to alter a previous transaction or record an invalid transaction would be to achieve 51 percent of the computing power on the bitcoin network. For reference, today the world’s most powerful supercomputer, China’s Sunway Taihulight, would comprise just 0.6 percent of the bitcoin network’s computing power, which is growing exponentially.

Recognized Maritime Picture

U.S. and coalition navies rely on secure tactical data networks to share information from a variety of sensors to build RMP. Since RMP is built from the input of numerous, widely distributed users in these networks, they are susceptible to errors like “dual tracks” (i.e. a single ship or aircraft being broadcast to the network as two contacts) or faulty navigational data causing a ship to misreport its own course and speed. These errors can lead to ambiguity in RMP that could lead to critical delays in successfully identifying a threat. Tactical data networks are also susceptible to intrusion and manipulation, no matter how secure they are. Like any cybersecurity system designed to keep unauthorized users out, navies constantly strive to make their tactical data networks more secure against ever more determined adversaries.

Blockchain technology can help navies mitigate the problems of ambiguity and manipulation in building RMP. By building tactical data networks on a blockchain foundation, ambiguity will be resolved naturally as “consensus” develops around new tracks and they are distributed throughout the network. Once consensus is built around a track, blockchain’s immutability property makes it very difficult for subsequent users to clutter RMP with errant data on that track. Likewise, an unauthorized user trying to manipulate RMP by infiltrating tactical data networks will be challenged to alter data on established tracks. Even if a cyber attack attempted to insert new false tracks into the network, specialized blockchain features could be developed to override track data that is not corroborated by friendly sensors. A blockchain that utilizes special features and operates on secure networks is an example of a  private blockchain. Going back to the museum example, a private blockchain is like a museum that employs robust anti-tamper systems on the exhibits, but also restricts entry to museum members only. A disadvantage of a private blockchain is the reduction in available computing power, due to limited users, to ensure data integrity. The cost of rebuilding U.S. and coalition navy tactical data networks from the ground up utilizing blockchain will likely be significant; however, the advantages in data integrity by mitigating ambiguity and manipulation are worth analyzing.

Much as U.S. and coalition navies could benefit from private blockchain, the maritime industry at large could benefit from public blockchain to improve its RMP. Worldwide, mariners use AIS – an open network of ship position, course, and speed data – as a primary tool for building RMP. Implemented in the early 2000s, AIS has been critical to improving safety of navigation. Still, AIS has inherent flaws that blockchain could be used to fix. Because it is open source, AIS data can easily be manipulated to make a ship appear in a different location, report false course and speed, or even mimic another ship’s identity. As Glenn Hayes explains in the Maritime Electronics Journal, AIS “is vulnerable to malicious transmissions and runs the risk of being manipulated by individuals seeking to deceive the system.”  Illegal fishing, piracy, and smuggling are just a few of the reasons one might seek to deceive AIS. As use of AIS spreads, potential security issues will only increase. The data manipulation that AIS is susceptible to is exactly the type of vulnerability that blockchain was developed to address. With targeted funding and industry-wide effort, blockchain can provide data integrity to AIS to improve maritime safety and deter illegal activity at sea.

Countering Maritime Smuggling

Another potential application of blockchain in maritime operations could be in supply chain improvements to counter maritime smuggling of drugs, weapons, or any illicit cargo. Lieutenant Junior Grade Henry Bond wrote an insightful article for U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings on the potential for blockchain to protect the DoD supply chain. Lieutenant Bond’s analysis can be expanded to include the global shipping industry. Specifically, smugglers often exploit the inherent difficulties in conducting cargo inspections on container ships by concealing contraband within legitimate cargo in innocuous, unmarked containers. Economic and operational constraints do not often allow for the time it would take to open and inspect hundreds of containers pierside, and physical constraints usually prohibit at-sea inspection. So, to counter maritime smuggling via container ships, navies and law enforcement agencies must focus on deterring the use of containers vice locating illicit cargo in transit. Blockchain portends to act as a potential deterrent by openly and irrevocably recording the status of every container in the supply chain. Essentially, each container could be treated like a “transaction” in the blockchain, so that once it is loaded as part of a legitimate shipment, its status relative to all other nearby containers is “locked down,” making it very difficult to mix in an illegitimate container at a later point. Events like the opening or repositioning of a container could also be recorded as “transactions” to further complicate smugglers’ to conceal illicit cargo.

Ideas like those of Lieutenant Bond or the SECNAV Innovation Board are sound, but they require further development because blockchain is still a nascent technology. DoD, and the maritime industry at large, would do well to assign additional research funding to pursue ideas for applying blockchain in national defense and maritime safety.

Jimmy Drennan is the Vice President of CIMSEC. These views are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect the position of any government agency.

Featured Image: ORLANDO, Fla. (August 12, 2014) Sailors train on a new diesel generator simulator during a project review at Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division in Orlando, Fla. (U.S. Navy photo by Darrell Conley/Released)

Capability Analysis

The Surface Navy: Still in Search of Tactics

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By Captain Christopher H. Johnson

A month before deployment, the captain of an Oliver Hazard Perry (FFG-7)-class frigate sits quietly in his cabin. With the long process of pre-deployment inspections over and the threatening waters of the Persian Gulf a few short weeks ahead, now, more than ever before, he considers his three line department heads in the context of their impending role as Tactical Action Officers (TAOs) for the ship when it arrives in the Northern Persian Gulf. To this point, these young officers have been measured by their ability to juggle priorities, pass inspections, sustain planned maintenance at acceptable accomplishment levels, keep the squadron staff happy, and perform a number of other administrative tasks. Now they must become tacticians, and a fleeting sense of despair crosses the captain’s mind.

He recalls when he was a lieutenant junior grade serving on a destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin, and he remembers the officers who taught him. There were operators who could sense what was happening around them with a gut instinct that distinguished them as mariners and naval officers. For a moment, he thinks about his TAOs and realizes that they are different. Yes, the world was simpler when the most complicated weapon on board was a 5-inch/38-caliber gun, but despite new weapons of enormous capability and complexity, today’s officer is better at paperwork than he is at tactics and operations.

The captain also recalls a discouraging afternoon three months ago when the operations officer and three petty officers brought to his cabin every tactical memorandum, tactical note, and Naval Warfare Publication on the ship, as references for new battle orders. Surely, within the tactics library of his ship, there would be the pearls of wisdom he needed for operations in the Persian Gulf.

Instead, he found an endless succession of publications that often dealt with obscure tactical problems and were generally out-of-date, long-winded, rarely insightful, and almost always too complex. As the petty officers packed up the publications and departed, the captain wondered why, after all this effort in tactics, there was so much paper with so little knowledge to show for it.

Now, the same question haunts him again. “I must find a way to make these department heads into tacticians,” he says aloud. “But what are tactics, and how do I prepare a tactician?” His thoughts are interrupted by a knock on his door. “Sorry to bother you, Captain,” booms the executive officer, “but we’ve got to talk about Seaman Jackson and his family problems.”

This captain’s plight is not unusual, but it is dismaying. Where have tactics gone in the modern surface Navy? Perhaps officers are too focused on being managers and administrators, and maybe the emphasis on engineering has diverted them from tactical thinking. Maybe we have accepted the contention that, in an era of overwhelming technical complexity, everything must be reduced to a lifeless, static procedure to be understood. Whatever the cause, the loss of tactics – and the subsequent appearance of hundreds of publications which masquerade as tactics – is a problem that reaches the very heart of our profession. Tactics must be resurrected.

Brilliant success on the battlefield is the object of command as practiced by Spruance, Nimitz, and other great naval tacticians of the past. Such success is not simply the result of perfect methodology, but rather it is rooted in a hierarchy of preparation and thought. First, success requires knowledge of the technical environment in which naval operations take place. Second, it requires specific procedures to guide the operation of combat systems. Third, and most important, it requires tactics.

Tactics build on knowledge and procedure, but go far beyond either. Contrary to the common definition, tactics are not like check-off lists, diagrams, or procedural doctrine. Tactics are the educated process of thought by which a battlefield commander adapts procedure, knowledge, and insight to the situation at hand and molds a winning plan. Tactics, therefore, are characterized by responsive, analytical, and individualized solutions to real-life circumstances. Tactical ideas or procedures may be found in books, publications, or manuals, but tactics rely on ingenuity, instinct, and innovation. Tactics are never a single answer to a generic tactical problem; but a continuous effort to find the right way to undermine, exploit, and beat the enemy.

In the tactician’s mind, the heart of this tactics thought process is his continuous, individual, and deeply personal struggle with an assortment of intangible measurements, including his vision of the mission at hand, its bounds, rules of engagement, sequences, priorities, and urgencies; analysis of the critical capabilities and limitations of own force; experience, courage, and determination; his commitment to the safety of the ship and personnel; an evaluation of the enemy’s frame of mind, liabilities, strength, and mission; and an appreciation of the opportunities provided by geography, environment, or political conditions.

The process has an immediate and an ultimate product. The immediate object of tactics is a real-time vision, or sense of the tactical balance sheet. What are the key opportunities and critical liabilities inherent in the situation? Where are we strong, and where is the enemy weak? What actions will confuse the enemy? How can friendly forces further undermine enemy strength? How can the enemy’s confidence be shaken?

This analysis leads to the ultimate object of tactics: a course of action, springing from inspiration and evaluation of all factors, which will win with minimal cost. To win while taking few losses defines brilliant action and is the indisputable purpose of tactics, inherent in all the greatest naval victories in history. Our country wants us to act boldly and bring our sailors home safely. Sadly, the tactics underpinning this goal have come to be procedures for pitting one weapon against another, rather than a thought process for winning.

It is useful at this point to contrast the tactician with today’s officer who is more accustomed to the role of technician. Technicians live in a world of black and white, focusing exclusively on mechanics and measurements; they are often caught up in an engineering-oriented ethic which asserts that there is a single, discrete solution for every situation. To the technician, combat is a toe-to-toe struggle where the most perfectly designed and operated system wins. Conversely, the tactician sees this technical struggle as essential but subordinate to other vital issues. To him, the engagement is a series of chess moves where the best thinker, the most accomplished facilitator of quick, decisive, and perfectly timed action will win. To the technician, the victory at Midway was fortune; to the tactician, Midway was brilliant tactical instinct reaping its rightful reward.

The tactician also is distinguished from the technician by the breadth of innovative weapons that he brings to bear on the tactical problem. Modern technician-tacticians think in terms of missiles, guns, torpedoes, and mines. These are valid pieces of the tactical problem, but the real tactician also thinks in terms of influences and effects far beyond ordnance. The tactician must consider the aspects of positioning and timing, secrecy, surprise, deception and confusion, demonstration and intimidation, and command and control.

Tacticians strive to anticipate; to be constantly ahead of the enemy; to occupy the high ground; to use land or water conditions to advantage; and never to allow the enemy an open, unobscured, or unambiguous shot. They seek ways to strike first and to preempt the enemy at every juncture. They use weapons envelopes to advantage; they position friendly forces so they can always concentrate fire and support one another while forcing the enemy to scatter his attack. Consider some of the following facets of tactics:

There is nothing as fundamental to warfare as secrecy. The unalerted enemy is an ill-prepared enemy. Without warning, he cannot ready, deploy, instruct, maneuver, position, or effectively command his forces.

Surprise is another quintessential ingredient. The Trojan War, Washington’s crossing of the Delaware, Pearl Harbor, Midway, Grenada, Libya, and Desert Storm were all overwhelming victories because of surprise, a navy’s greatest force multiplier. Not technologically demanding, not requiring budget in the Future Years Defense Plan, and not necessitating field changes, this aspect of tactics consistently achieves victory with minimum loss.

For deception and confusion, the tactician uses the natural cloak of the sea to misdirect, blind, disrupt, or coax an adversary into apathy. The opportunities are endless, limited only by imagination. Merchant shipping lanes, land, emission control, turn-count masking, zig-zag patterns, and mock radio communications all offer opportunities to keep the enemy off-guard, to delay or unravel his tactical plan.

For years, U.S. aircraft carriers always intercepted foreign aircraft at long ranges from the carrier. Such intercepts conveyed the unmistakable message that aircraft could not approach in wartime and hope to survive. It is a superpower’s privilege to sap an enemy’s will and confidence by repeatedly demonstrating how surely and decisively he can be detected and destroyed. A true tactician showcases his abilities in peacetime as a continual, effectual reminder of his inherent superiority.

Perfectly anticipated, precisely controlled action is another mark of the tactician. He collects the right pieces of information to predict the enemy’s next move, and he consistently develops the ability to act more quickly and with more precision than his opponent.

Commanding officers and their key subordinates must embrace these aspects of tactics. Regrettably, the technician has generally eclipsed the tactician, especially in the case of TAOs, which exist on the crease of two powerful interpretations of their role. On one hand, it is fashionable to view the TAO as an automaton whose role is to react to threats with machine-like, button-pushing precision. On the other hand, the TAO’s real purpose is to be the intelligent being who measures the evolving situation and takes every conceivable step to win and keep the ship safe.

If the TAO’s purpose is simply to direct scripted action, then the technician will suffice; if the TAO is there to guide action intelligently and to find resourceful ways to win, however, he must be a tactician first and foremost. With the technician, the CO enters the combat information center (CIC) and sees a TAO bent over the scope, immersed in the mechanics. With the tactician, the CO should see an officer rising above the details with every option in mind, ready to act in ways that are both sure and insightfully adapted to the situation.

Is it possible that modern technology has made tactics irrelevant? Are today’s operations so linked to technical issues or foreordained by combat system mechanics that there is no place for tactics? No, the opposite is true. The advent of modern technology makes greater, not lesser, demands for superb tacticians.

Consider a single navy ship on a critical mission that will take it through a strait guarded by an adversary. On the west side of the strait at least one conventional submarine is on patrol; on the east shore are truck-mounted, anti-ship cruise missiles. In these days of modern weapons, this scenario may seem like a simple matchup of combat systems. Torpedoes, helicopters, and sonars against the submarine; missiles, guns, and electronic warfare against the cruise missiles. The prudent CO will be assured that these weapons are ready and that the procedures for using them are optimized, in place, and practiced.

The tactician, of course, will go one enormous step farther. He will employ tactics. He will measure the situation carefully, looking for opportunities to exploit. Should he transmit on electronic sensors or remain passive? Should he challenge the enemy or avoid him? In what ways should he confuse, delay, deceive, or surprise the enemy? What pieces of tactical information does he require to anticipate the enemy’s moves, and exactly how will he control his ship’s weapons to assure lightning-quick yet accurate responses?

On the west side of the strait, this tactician will probably “attack” the submarine by using merchant shipping lanes, darkness, and darken ship to hide his approach. He will use speed and maneuver to disrupt any track a submarine might gain. He will take his ship through shallow water to confound and outmaneuver the submarine. He will cover his close-in weapon system mount with gray herculite, remove white windscreens, and paint out distinctive white hull numbers to take away any visual cue of his identity. Finally, he will use helicopters to search for periscopes and masts and drive the submarine to depth.

On the other side of the strait, he might avoid the enemy’s attempts to find him by mixing with merchants or by land shadowing; he could shut down his electronic emissions to prevent identification and classification; he might use oil platforms, or other natural obstructions, as shields against an attack; conceivably communications jamming or deception might be used to misdirect or confuse the enemy’s targeting reports.

In this example the tactician dramatically alters the battle equation. More than simply preparing his ship to repel any attack, through tactics he shields his ship from even becoming a target. He achieves the successful transit without confrontation, without having to pit one weapon against another. He has in essence opened up a panorama of tactical options that improves the probability of success and significantly reduces the levels of risk.

Tactics impel commanders not to be slaves to preconceived or formalized procedures. With tactics, the logistics or amphibious ship is not inherently defenseless in these straits, nor should the Aegis cruiser feel compelled by its mystique or its combat system to transit the straits openly, daring the enemy to react.

In this hypothetical situation, as in virtually all offensive and defensive tactical scenarios, the tactician opens a larger sphere of thought and action – and he guarantees success more assuredly than either the warrior or the technician.

Tactics are more vital now to the U.S. Navy than at any time in the past 20 years. Operations in the littoral areas of the world will put navy ships at great risk. At the edge of the sea, detection of modern antiship cruise missiles, mines, and conventional submarines will be difficult, and reaction times will be compressed. Defense in depth, the doctrine of the past, will be impossible so close to shore, and the dwindling number of carriers will reduce the combat power that has so frequently been just over the horizon. Survival will rest increasingly, therefore, on ingenuity, secrecy, deception, speed, and positioning.

Tactics must return to the forefront as a critical element of our profession. Tactics are our highest calling, and ought to be the focus of preparation for our officers, but today they are not. Tactical savvy is no longer our strong point; we have largely become a Navy of technicians and managers instead of tacticians. Reviving tactical proficiency does not require more money, more people, or a new doctrine command. It requires a dedicated, well-organized, and redirected return to the basics of knowledge, procedure, and tactics.

While naval tactics organizations have long pursued tactical knowledge and procedures, their search has been flawed in many significant ways. Efforts routinely confuse information for knowledge and persistently fail to extract from our tactical and technical experience the penetrating insights that support tactical decision making. To a great extent, our tactical procedures, as embodied in current tactical memorandums, tactical notes, and doctrines, lack coherence and essence. They are like having 50 street maps for various American cities without a map of the interstate system to describe how to get from one to another.

They are often unexecutable in a practical scenario and are frequently too complex to be internalized and fully understood by the lieutenant TAOs who must execute them. They fill a vault with their volume yet provide so little satisfaction to the captain. Despite decades of commitment and work, much remains to be done and undone in the area of communicating knowledge and designing procedure.

These well-intentioned efforts, though, are flawed not by lack of dedication but rather by lack of definition and expectation. We are a Navy largely focused on maintenance and are too comfortable with technical details, parameters, and procedures. Accordingly, we are generally satisfied with descriptions of how a combat system operates technically instead of insisting to know how a system performs tactically.

We understand, for example, how various modes of the SPS-49 affect the moving target indicator circuits or make the antenna scan faster, but we do not see the necessity of knowing explicitly how these modes change the radar’s performance against an incoming missile. We know in detail how much power the radar should have without a clear notion of how much power is enough to see targets of interest at suitable ranges. We have failed to extract the concise and meaningful insights required by tacticians to make correct decisions on the battlefield.

In the area of tactical procedures, the story is similar. Efforts at developing tactical procedures, apparently unaware of the tacticians ultimate role in defining tactics, often overstep the logical bounds of procedure, resulting in procedures that are too long, too intricate, and too numerous to be absorbed and understood by operators in the fleet. Moreover, the procedures fall out of date quickly as conditions, assumptions, and intelligence estimates change.

Finally, development and support of the tactics thinking process are even more adrift. As a rule we do not understand the nature of tactics; we do not perceive the essence. We neither nurture this tactical care in our careers nor explain or support it in “tactics” publications. Seniors do not groom it in juniors and frequently fail to employ sound tactics themselves.

The resurrection of tactics, today buried in procedure and cloaked by fundamental misunderstandings of their essential nature – now requires an extraordinary effort. It is essential that the surface community find the few real tacticians in its ranks – not the ones who claim to be tacticians because of their total recall of threat matrices or their superb dexterity on combat system consoles – but the innovative deep thinkers of our time.

These tacticians must be brought together and given a mandate to redesign the entire structure of our tactics effort. They must identify the essential pieces of tactical knowledge which truly support tactical decision making, and they must design a compact and useful system for conveying that information to the fleet. They must sift through the vaults of current tactical publications and identify the quintessential procedures that are the bedrock of effective tactical action. Then, they must distill them into knowable, concise, and simple guidance.

Finally, the core of these tacticians must form a tactics institute for the surface Navy. The institute must become a think-tank charged with exploring the science of tactical operations. They must investigate the envelope of tactical thought to include advancing new concepts of data fusion, analysis, command and control, maneuvering, targeting, positioning, deception, surprise, secrecy, mutual support, and teamwork. Through this institute the surface Navy can begin to ensure that the art of tactics formulation is nurtured in its officers, that suitable curricula for officers in the surface warfare training continuum is developed and supported, and that the commanding officer’s role as a bone fide tactician is established and solidified within the fabric of surface warfare. If we truly want to preserve tactics and tacticians from extinction, we must take radical steps and take them quickly.

As the frigate pulls away from the pier, the captain waves to his wife and family. The deployment has begun, but he agonizes because he is no closer to building tacticians than he was three weeks ago. He sees before him young officers who have been “methodologized,” consumed by the mechanical and procedural tasks which are properly the domain of senior enlisted men. He tries to make them think on their own, to make decisions, to have a vision, but it is slow progress.

He wonders, “Have we gone too far? Can we turn back the tide of administrators and managers and revive tacticians?”

His thoughts are interrupted by a knock on the door. “Trouble, Captain,” says the XO. “We forgot to send in our monthly retention report.”

This article originally featured in the September 1993 issue of USNI Proceedings, read it in its original form here. Reprinted from U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings magazine with permission; Copyright © U.S. Naval Institute/www.usni.org.

Captain Johnson is the program manager for the Advanced Research Project Agency’s Maritime Systems Technology Office. His sea duty includes tours as executive officer USS Ramsey (FFG-2) and commanding officer USS Vandegrift (FFG-48) where he served as antiair warfare coordinator for the Persian Gulf during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. His last shore assignment was Director, Prospective Commanding Officer Course at the Surface Warfare School, Newport, Rhode Island.

Featured Image: PACIFIC OCEAN (June 25, 2018) The guided-missile destroyer USS Dewey (DDG 105) transits the Pacific Ocean while underway conducting operations in the U.S. 3rd Fleet area of operations. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Devin M. Langer/Released)

History

Teaching Maritime History – A Suggested Reading List

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By Christopher Nelson

At the end of our discussion about the Eighteenth-Century British Royal Navy and her new book, Disciplining the Empire, I asked Professor Kinkel what books she would teach in a graduate level course on maritime history. She kindly provided me a draft syllabus of the books that she would have her students read. 

There are some fascinating titles to add to your reading list. A short description from the publisher follows each book.

From the Atlantic to the Mediterranean (and Beyond)

Carlo M. Cipolla, Guns, Sails and Empires: Technological Innovation and the Early Phases of European Expansion, 1400-1700 (New York: Sunflower Univ. Press, 1966)

“Guns, Sails and Empires is that rarity among works of history: a short book with a simple, powerful thesis that the entire book is devoted to proving. Carlo Cipolla begins with the question, “Why, after the end of the fifteenth century were the Europeans able not only to force their way through to the distant Spice Islands but also to gain control of all the major sea-routes and to establish overseas empires.” (Amazon)

Richard T. Rapp, “The Unmaking of the Mediterranean Trade Hegemony: International Trade Rivalry and the Commercial Revolution,” Journal of Economic History, 35.3 (1975): 499–525

“The shift in the locus of European trade from the markets of the Mediterranean to the North Atlantic overthrew a centuries old pattern of commerce and established the basis for the predominant role of North Atlantic Europe in the era of industrialization. While the expression “commercial revolution” no longer has quite the currency that it once enjoyed, students of the early modern economy have not been negligent about trying to understand the causes of the commercial shift. The impact of entrepreneurship and Weltanschauung, capital accumulation, technical innovation in shipping and industry, and the economic and political organization of nation-states have all received attention from students of the age.” (Cambridge/Journal of Economic History)

Herman Van Der Wee, “Structural Changes in European Long-Distance Trade, and Particularly in the Re-Export Trade from South to North, 1350–1750,” in The Rise of Merchant Empires: Long-distance Trade in the Early Modern World, 1350–1750, ed. James D. Tracy (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990), pp. 14–33

“European dominance of the shipping lanes in the early modern period was a prelude to the great age of European imperial power in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yet in the present age we can see that the pre-imperial age was in fact more an ‘age of partnership’ or an ‘age of competition’ when the West and Asia vied on even terms. The essays in this volume examine, on a global basis, the many different trading empires from the end of the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century.” (Amazon)

Commodities and Trade

Molly Warsh, American Baroque: Pearls and the Nature of Empire, 1492–1700 (Omohundro Institute, 2018)

“Pearls have enthralled global consumers since antiquity, and the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella explicitly charged Columbus with finding pearls, as well as gold and silver, when he sailed westward in 1492. American Baroque charts Spain’s exploitation of Caribbean pearl fisheries to trace the genesis of its maritime empire. In the 1500s, licit and illicit trade in the jewel gave rise to global networks, connecting the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean to the pearl-producing regions of the Chesapeake and northern Europe.

Pearls—a unique source of wealth because of their renewable, fungible, and portable nature—defied easy categorization. Their value was highly subjective and determined more by the individuals, free and enslaved, who produced, carried, traded, wore, and painted them than by imperial decrees and tax-related assessments. The irregular baroque pearl, often transformed by the imagination of a skilled artisan into a fantastical jewel, embodied this subjective appeal. Warsh blends environmental, social, and cultural history to construct microhistories of peoples’ wide-ranging engagement with this deceptively simple jewel. Pearls facilitated imperial fantasy and personal ambition, adorned the wardrobes of monarchs and financed their wars, and played a crucial part in the survival strategies of diverse people of humble means. These stories, taken together, uncover early modern conceptions of wealth, from the hardscrabble shores of Caribbean islands to the lavish rooms of Mediterranean palaces.” (Amazon)

Nuala Zahedieh, The Capital and the Colonies: London and the Atlantic Economy, 1660–1700 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2010)

“Between 1660 and 1700, London established itself as the capital and commercial hub of a thriving Atlantic empire, accounting for three quarters of the nation’s colonial trade, and playing a vital coordinating role in an increasingly coherent Atlantic system. Nuala Zahedieh’s unique study provides the first detailed picture of how that mercantile system was made to work. By identifying the leading colonial merchants, she shows through their collective experiences how London developed the capabilities to compete with its continental rivals and ensure compliance with the Navigation Acts. Zahedieh shows that in making mercantilism work, Londoners helped to create the conditions which underpinned the long period of structural change and economic growth which culminated in the Industrial Revolution.” (Amazon)

Patrick O’Brien, “European Economic Development: The Contribution of the Periphery,”Economic History Review, 35.1 (1982): 1–18

“Economic history has enjoyed a revival in the study of development. Provocative interpretations of the course and causes of long-term growth continue to emerge from the writings of Immanuel Wallerstein, Gunder Frank and Samir Amin. While the basic purpose of their research is to explore the origins of underdevelopment, their commitment to a ‘global perspective’ has led them into wide ranging excursions into the economic history of Western Europe because, to quote Wallerstein, ‘Neither the development nor underdevelopment of any specific territorial unit can be analyzed or interpreted without fitting it into the cyclical rhythms and secular trends of the world economy as a whole.'”

People at Sea

Kris Lane, Pillaging the Empire: Global Piracy on the High Seas, 1500–1750, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2016)

“Between 1500 and 1750, European expansion and global interaction produced vast wealth. As goods traveled by ship along new global trade routes, piracy also flourished on the world’s seas. Pillaging the Empire tells the fascinating story of maritime predation in this period, including the perspectives of both pirates and their victims. Brushing aside the romantic legends of piracy, Kris Lane pays careful attention to the varied circumstances and motives that led to the rise of this bloodthirsty pursuit of riches, and places the history of piracy in the context of early modern empire building.

This second edition of Pillaging the Empire has been revised and expanded to incorporate the latest scholarship on piracy, maritime law, and early modern state formation. With a new chapter on piracy in East and Southeast Asia, Lane considers piracy as a global phenomenon. Filled with colorful details and stories of individual pirates from Francis Drake to the women pirates Ann Bonny and Mary Read, this engaging narrative will be of interest to all those studying the history of Latin America, the Atlantic world, and the global empires of the early modern era.” (Amazon)

Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700–1750, 2nd ed. (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989)

“The common seaman and the pirate in the age of sail are romantic historical figures who occupy a special place in the popular culture of the modern age. And yet in many ways, these daring men remain little known to us. Like most other poor working people of the past, they left few first-hand accounts of their lives. But their lives are not beyond recovery. In this book, Marcus Rediker uses a huge array of historical sources (court records, diaries, travel accounts, and many others) to reconstruct the social cultural world of the Anglo-American seamen and pirates who sailed the seas in the first half of the eighteenth century. Rediker tours the sailor’s North Atlantic, following seamen and their ships along the pulsing routes of trade and into rowdy port towns. He recreates life along the waterfront, where seafaring men from around the world crowded into the sailortown and its brothels, alehouses, street brawls, and city jail.

His study explores the natural terror that inevitably shaped the existence of those who plied the forbidding oceans of the globe in small, brittle wooden vessels. It also treats the man-made terror–the harsh discipline, brutal floggings, and grisly hangings–that was a central fact of life at sea. Rediker surveys the commonplaces of the maritime world: the monotonous rounds of daily labor, the negotiations of wage contracts, and the bawdy singing, dancing, and tale telling that were a part of every voyage. He also analyzes the dramatic moments of the sailor’s existence, as Jack Tar battled wind and water during a slashing storm, as he stood by his “brother tars” in a mutiny or a strike, and as he risked his neck by joining a band of outlaws beneath the Jolly Roger, the notorious pirate flag. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea focuses upon the seaman’s experience in order to illuminate larger historical issues such as the rise of capitalism, the genesis the free wage labor, and the growth of an international working class. These epic themes were intimately bound up with everyday hopes and fears of the common seamen.” (Amazon)

Sowande M. Mustakeem, Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage (Univ. of Illinois Press, 2016)

“Most times left solely within the confine of plantation narratives, slavery was far from a land-based phenomenon. This book reveals for the first time how it took critical shape at sea. Expanding the gaze even more widely, the book centers on how the oceanic transport of human cargoes–known as the infamous Middle Passage–comprised a violently regulated process foundational to the institution of bondage. Sowande’ Mustakeem’s groundbreaking study goes inside the Atlantic slave trade to explore the social conditions and human costs embedded in the world of maritime slavery. Mining ship logs, records and personal documents, Mustakeem teases out the social histories produced between those on traveling ships: slaves, captains, sailors, and surgeons. As she shows, crewmen manufactured captives through enforced dependency, relentless cycles of physical, psychological terror, and pain that led to the making–and unmaking–of enslaved Africans held and transported onboard slave ships. Mustakeem relates how this process, and related power struggles, played out not just for adult men, but also for women, children, teens, infants, nursing mothers, the elderly, diseased, ailing, and dying. As she does so, she offers provocative new insights into how gender, health, age, illness, and medical treatment intersected with trauma and violence transformed human beings into the most commercially sought commodity for over four centuries.”

Dean King and John B. Hattendorf, eds. Every Man Will Do His Duty: An Anthology of Firsthand Accounts from the Age of Nelson (Henry Holt, 1997)

“The history of the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars comes alive through letters, diaries, official chronicles, accounts of life at sea, and eyewitness descriptions of great sea battles, such as Cape St. Vincent and Trafalgar, the death of Nelson, and more.” (Amazon)

A Maritime World

Andrew Lipman, The Saltwater Frontier: Indians and the Contest for the American Coast (Yale Univ. Press, 2015)

“Andrew Lipman’s eye-opening first book is the previously untold story of how the ocean became a “frontier” between colonists and Indians. When the English and Dutch empires both tried to claim the same patch of coast between the Hudson River and Cape Cod, the sea itself became the arena of contact and conflict. During the violent European invasions, the region’s Algonquian-speaking Natives were navigators, boatbuilders, fishermen, pirates, and merchants who became active players in the emergence of the Atlantic World. Drawing from a wide range of English, Dutch, and archeological sources, Lipman uncovers a new geography of Native America that incorporates seawater as well as soil. Looking past Europeans’ arbitrary land boundaries, he reveals unseen links between local episodes and global events on distant shores.” (Amazon)

Michael Jarvis, In the Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World,1680–1783 (Chapel Hill: Omohundro Institute, 2012)

“In an exploration of the oceanic connections of the Atlantic world, Michael J. Jarvis recovers a mariner’s view of early America as seen through the eyes of Bermuda’s seafarers. The first social history of eighteenth-century Bermuda, this book profiles how one especially intensive maritime community capitalized on its position “in the eye of all trade.”

Jarvis takes readers aboard small Bermudian sloops and follows white and enslaved sailors as they shuttled cargoes between ports, raked salt, harvested timber, salvaged shipwrecks, hunted whales, captured prizes, and smuggled contraband in an expansive maritime sphere spanning Great Britain’s North American and Caribbean colonies. In doing so, he shows how humble sailors and seafaring slaves operating small family-owned vessels were significant but underappreciated agents of Atlantic integration.

The American Revolution starkly revealed the extent of British America’s integration before 1775 as it shattered interregional links that Bermudians had helped to forge. Reliant on North America for food and customers, Bermudians faced disaster at the conflict’s start. A bold act of treason enabled islanders to continue trade with their rebellious neighbors and helped them to survive and even prosper in an Atlantic world at war. Ultimately, however, the creation of the United States ended Bermuda’s economic independence and doomed the island’s maritime economy.” (Amazon)

Benjamin Carp, “Port in a Storm: The Boston Waterfront as Contested Space, 1747–74,” Rebels Rising: Cities and the American Revolution (Oxford Univ. Press, 2009), pp. 23–61

“The cities of eighteenth-century America packed together tens of thousands of colonists, who met each other in back rooms and plotted political tactics, debated the issues of the day in taverns, and mingled together on the wharves or in the streets. In this fascinating work, historian Benjamin L. Carp shows how these various urban meeting places provided the tinder and spark for the American Revolution.

Carp focuses closely on political activity in colonial America’s five most populous cities–in particular, he examines Boston’s waterfront community, New York tavern-goers, Newport congregations, Charleston’s elite patriarchy, and the common people who gathered outside Philadelphia’s State House. He shows how–because of their tight concentrations of people and diverse mixture of inhabitants–the largest cities offered fertile ground for political consciousness, political persuasion, and political action. The book traces how everyday interactions in taverns, wharves, and elsewhere slowly developed into more serious political activity. Ultimately, the residents of cities became the first to voice their discontent. Merchants began meeting to discuss the repercussions of new laws, printers fired up provocative pamphlets, and protesters took to the streets. Indeed, the cities became the flashpoints for legislative protests, committee meetings, massive outdoor gatherings, newspaper harangues, boycotts, customs evasion, violence and riots–all of which laid the groundwork for war.

Ranging from 1740 to 1780, this groundbreaking work contributes significantly to our understanding of the American Revolution. By focusing on some of the most pivotal events of the eighteenth century as they unfolded in the most dynamic places in America, this book illuminates how city dwellers joined in various forms of political activity that helped make the Revolution possible.” (Amazon)

Bringing the Sea Home

Nicholas Rogers, Mayhem: Post-War Crime and Violence in Britain, 1748–1753 (Yale Univ. Press, 2012)

“After the end of the War of Austrian Succession in 1748, thousands of unemployed and sometimes unemployable soldiers and seamen found themselves on the streets of London ready to roister the town and steal when necessary. In this fascinating book Nicholas Rogers explores the moral panic associated with this rapid demobilization.

Through interlocking stories of duels, highway robberies, smuggling, riots, binge drinking, and even two earthquakes, Rogers captures the anxieties of a half-decade and assesses the social reforms contemporaries framed and imagined to deal with the crisis. He argues that in addressing these events, contemporaries not only endorsed the traditional sanction of public executions, but wrestled with the problem of expanding the parameters of government to include practices and institutions we now regard as commonplace: censuses, the regularization of marriage through uniform methods of registration, penitentiaries and police forces.”

Eleanor Hughes, ed., Spreading Canvas: Eighteenth-Century British Marine Painting (Yale Univ. Press, 2016)

Spreading Canvas takes a close look at the tradition of marine painting that flourished in 18th-century Britain. Drawing primarily on the extensive collections of the Yale Center for British Art and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London, this publication shows how the genre corresponded with Britain’s growing imperial power and celebrated its increasing military presence on the seas, representing the subject matter in a way that was both documentary and sublime. Works by leading purveyors of the style, including Peter Monamy, Samuel Scott, Dominic Serres,  and Nicholas Pocock, are featured alongside sketches, letters, and other ephemera that help frame the political and geographic significance of these inspiring views, while also establishing the painters’ relationships to concurrent metropolitan art cultures. This survey, featuring a wealth of beautifully reproduced images, demonstrates marine painting’s overarching relevance to British culture of the era. 

Geoff Quilley, “Art History and Double Consciousness: Visual Culture and Eighteenth-Century Maritime Britain,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 48:1 (2014): 21–35

“This article addresses eighteenth-century maritime visual culture and its historiography by questioning fundamental fractures within it and the implications of these for the disciplines of history and art history. Using the Abolitionist print of the Brooks slave ship as a starting point alongside Paul Gilroy’s formulation of “double consciousness,” it questions the bypassing of the Black Atlantic and the wider maritime sphere within the history of eighteenth-century British art and argues for a revision of the periodization, classification, disciplinary boundaries, and ideological parameters by which it has been defined, to take full account of the significance of the maritime sphere.” (Project Muse)

Projecting Power

Richard Harding, Seapower and Naval Warfare, 1650–1830 (Routledge, 1999)

“From the author of ‘Amphibious Warfare in the Eighteenth Century’ and ‘The Evolution of the Sailing Navy, 1509-1815”, this book serves as a single- volume survey of war at sea and the expansion of naval power in the 18th century. The book is intended for undergraduate courses on 18th century European history, and for amateur and professional military historians, and for navy colleges, and navy and ex-navy professionals.”

Sam Willis, Fighting at Sea in the Eighteenth Century: The Art of Sailing Warfare (Boydell Press, 2008)

Our understanding of warfare at sea in the eighteenth century has always been divorced from the practical realities of fighting at sea under sail; our knowledge of tactics is largely based upon the ideas of contemporary theorists [rather than practitioners] who knew little of the realities of sailing warfare, and our knowledge of command is similarly flawed. In this book the author presents new evidence from contemporary sources that overturns many old assumptions and introduces a host of new ideas. In a series of thematic chapters, following the rough chronology of a sea fight from initial contact to damage repair, the author offers a dramatic interpretation of fighting at sea in the eighteenth century, and explains in greater depth than ever before how and why sea battles (including Trafalgar) were won and lost in the great Age of Sail. He explains in detail how two ships or fleets identified each other to be enemies; how and why they maneuvered for battle; how a commander communicated his ideas, and how and why his subordinates acted in the way that they did. (Amazon)

N.A.M. Rodger, The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy (W.W. Norton, 1986)

“Meticulously researched, Rodger’s portrait draws the reader into this fascinatingly complex world with vivid, entertaining characters and full details of life below the decks. The Wooden World provides the most complete history of a navy at any age, and is sure to be an indispensable volume for all fans of Patrick O’Brian, English history, and naval history.”

Sam Willis, The Struggle for Sea Power: A Naval History of the American Revolution (W.W.Norton, 2016)

“The American Revolution involved a naval war of immense scope and variety, including no fewer than twenty-two navies fighting on five oceans―to say nothing of rivers and lakes. In no other war were so many large-scale fleet battles fought, one of which was the most strategically significant naval battle in all of British, French, and American history. Simultaneous naval campaigns were fought in the English Channel, the North and Mid-Atlantic, the Mediterranean, off South Africa, in the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean, the Pacific, the North Sea and, of course, off the eastern seaboard of America. Not until the Second World War would any nation actively fight in so many different theaters.

In The Struggle for Sea Power, Sam Willis traces every key military event in the path to American independence from a naval perspective, and he also brings this important viewpoint to bear on economic, political, and social developments that were fundamental to the success of the Revolution. In doing so Willis offers valuable new insights into American, British, French, Spanish, Dutch, and Russian history.

This unique account of the American Revolution gives us a new understanding of the influence of sea power upon history, of the American path to independence, and of the rise and fall of the British Empire.” (Amazon)

Sarah Kinkel received her PhD from Yale University in 2012.  From 2012-2015, she was the managing editor of Eighteenth-Century Studies.  She has since taught as an Assistant Professor at Ohio University.

Christopher Nelson is a U.S. Naval Officer stationed at the U.S. Pacific Fleet Headquarters. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval War College and the Maritime Advanced Warfighting School. He is a regular contributor to CIMSEC. The questions and views here are his own.

Featured Image: (Pixabay)