Such studies are the object of the Naval War College, which was established upon the report of a board of officers, at the head of which was the present Rear-Admiral Stephen B. Luce, to whose persistent initiative must be attributed much of the movement which thus resulted. The other members of the board were the late Admiral Sampson, and Commander—now Rear-Admiral—Caspar F. Goodrich. Luce became the first president of the institution, for which the Department assigned a building, once an almshouse, situated on Coaster's Harbor Island, in Narragansett Bay, then recently ceded to the United States government. It remained still to get together a staff of instructors, and he wrote me to ask if I would undertake the subjects of naval history and naval tactics. The proposition was to me very acceptable; for I had found the Pacific station disagreeable, and, although without proper preparation, I believed on reflection that I could do the work. During my last tour of shore duty I had read carefully Napier's Peninsular War, and had found myself in a new world of thought, keenly interested and appreciative, less of the brilliant narrative—though that few can fail to enjoy—than of the military sequences of cause and effect. The influence of Sir John Moore's famous march to Sahagun—less famous than it deserves to be—upon Napoleon's campaign in Spain, revealed to me by Napier like the sun breaking through a cloud, aroused an emotion as joyful as the luminary himself to a navigator doubtful of his position.
"Then felt I as some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific."
Following this I had written by request a volume on the Navy in the War of Secession, entitled The Gulf and Inland Waters; my first appearance as an author. Herein also I had recognized that the same class of military ideas took possession of my mind. I felt, therefore, that I should bring interest and understanding to my task, and hoped that the defects of knowledge, which I clearly realized, would be overcome. I recalled also that at the Military Academy my father, though professor only of engineering, military and civil, had of his own motion introduced a course of strategy and grand tactics, which had commended itself to observers. I trusted, therefore, that heredity, too, might come to my aid.
As acceptance placed me on the road which led directly to all the success I have had in life, I feel impelled to acknowledge my indebtedness to Admiral Luce. With little constitutional initiative, and having grown up in the atmosphere of the single cruiser, of commerce-destroying, defensive warfare, and indifference to battle-ships; an anti-imperialist, who for that reason looked upon Mr. Blaine as a dangerous man; at forty-five I was drifting on the lines of simple respectability as aimlessly as one very well could. My environment had been too much for me; my present call changed it. Meantime, however, there was delay. A relief would not be sent, because the ship was to go home; and the ship did not go home because there was, first, a revolution in Panama, and then a war between the Central American states, both which required the Wachusett's presence. Mr. Cleveland was elected at this time; there was a change of administration, and with a new Secretary a lapse of Departmental interest. The ship did not go to San Francisco till September, 1885, nearly a year after the admiral's proposition reached me.
The year had not been unfruitful, however. Naturally predisposed, as I have said, my mind ran continually on my subject. I imagined various formations for developing to the best effect the powers of steamships, and sudden changes to be instituted as the moment of collision approached, calculated to disconcert the opponent, or to surprise an advantage before he could parry. Spinning cobwebs out of one's unassisted brain, without any previous absorption from external sources, was doubtless a somewhat crude process; yet it had advantages. One of my manœuvres was to pass a column of ships by an unexpected flank movement across the head of an enemy's column. This I have since heard called "capping;" if, at least, I correctly understand that word. Putting it afterwards before a body of officers attending the College course, all men of years and experience, one said to me, derisively, "Do you suppose an enemy would let you do that?" "It is a question of how quick he is," I replied. "In these days of twelve or fifteen knots he will have no time to ponder, and scarcely time to act." The query illustrates a habit of mind frequently met. It is like discussing the merits of a thrust en carte. If the other man is quick enough, he will parry; if not, he will be run through: sooner or later the more skilful usually will get in.
Naval history gave me more anxiety, and I afterwards found it was that which Luce particularly desired of me. I shared the prepossession, common at that time, that the naval history of the past was wholly past; of no use at all to the present. I well recall, during my first term at the College, a visit from a reporter of one of the principal New York journals. He was a man of rotund presence, florid face, thrown-back head, and flowing hair, with all that magisterial condescension which the environment of the Fourth Estate nourishes in its fortunate members; the Roman citizen was "not in it" for birthright. To my bad luck a plan of Trafalgar hung in evidence, as he stalked from room to room. "Ah," he said, with superb up-to-date pity, "you are still talking about Trafalgar;" and I could see that Trafalgar and I were thenceforth on the top shelf of fossils in the collections of his memory. This point of view was held by very many. "You won't find much to say about history," was the direct discouraging comment of an older officer. On the other hand, Sir Geoffrey Hornby, less well known in this country than in Great Britain, where twenty years ago he was recognized as the head of the profession, distinctly commended to me the present value of naval history. I myself, as I have just confessed, had had the contrary impression—a tradition passively accepted. Thus my mind was troubled how to establish relations between yesterday and to-day; so wholly ignorant was I of the undying reproduction of conditions in their essential bearings—a commonplace of military art.
He who seeks, finds, if he does not lose heart; and to me, continuously seeking, came from within the suggestion that control of the sea was an historic factor which had never been systematically appreciated and expounded. Once formulated consciously, this thought became the nucleus of all my writing for twenty years then to come; and here I may state at once what I conceive to have been my part in popularizing, perhaps in making effective, an argument for which I could by no means claim the rights of discovery. Not to mention other predecessors, with the full roll of whose names I am even now unacquainted, Bacon and Raleigh, three centuries before, had epitomized in a few words the theme on which I was to write volumes. That they had done so was, indeed, then unknown to me. For me, as for them, the light dawned first on my inner consciousness; I owed it to no other man. It has since been said by more than one that no claim for originality could be allowed me; and that I wholly concede. What did fall to me was, that no one since those two great Englishmen had undertaken to demonstrate their thesis by an analysis of history, attempting to show from current events, through a long series of years, precisely what influence the command of the sea had had upon definite issues; in brief, a concrete illustration. In the preface to my first work on the subject, for the success of which I was quite unprepared, I stated this as my aim: "An estimate of the effect of Sea Power upon the course of history and the prosperity of nations; ... resting upon a collection of special instances, in which the precise effect has been made clear by an analysis of the conditions at the given moments." This field had been left vacant, yielding me my opportunity; and concurrently therewith, untouched from the point of view proposed by me, there lay the whole magnificent series of events constituting maritime history since the days of Raleigh and Bacon, after the voyages of Columbus and De Gama gave the impetus to over-sea activities, colonies, and commerce, which distinguishes the past three hundred years. Even of this limited period I have occupied but a part, though I fear I have skimmed the cream of that which it offers; but back behind it lie virgin fields, in the careers of the Italian republics, and others yet more remote in time, which can never be for me to narrate, although I have examined them attentively.
I cannot now reconstitute from memory the sequence of my mental processes; but while my problem was still wrestling with my brain there dawned upon me one of those concrete perceptions which turn inward darkness into light—give substance to shadow. The Wachusett was lying at Callao, the seaport of Lima, as dull a coast town as one could dread to see. Lima being but an hour distant, we frequently spent a day there; the English Club extending to us its hospitality. In its library was Mommsen's History of Rome, which I gave myself to reading, especially the Hannibalic episode. It suddenly struck me, whether by some chance phrase of the author I do not know, how different things might have been could Hannibal have invaded Italy by sea, as the Romans often had Africa, instead of by the long land route; or could he, after arrival, have been in free communication with Carthage by water. This clew, once laid hold of, I followed up in the particular instance. It and the general theory already conceived threw on each other reciprocal illustration; and between the two my plan was formed by the time I reached home, in September, 1885. I would investigate coincidently the general history and naval history of the past two centuries, with a view to demonstrating the influence of the events of the one upon the other. Original research was not within my scope, nor was it necessary to the scheme thus outlined.
Perhaps it is only a subtle form of egotism, but as a condition of my life experience I could wish to convey to others an appreciation of my profound ignorance of both classes of history when I began, being then forty-five; not that I mean to imply that now, or at any time since, I have deluded myself with the imagination that I have become an historian after the high modern pattern. I tackled my job much as I presume an immigrant begins a clearing in the wilderness, not troubling greatly which tree he takes first. I laid my hands on whatever came along, reading with the profound attention of one who is looking for something; and the something was kind enough to acknowledge my devotion by shining forth in unexpected ways and places. Any line of investigation, however unsystematic in method, branches out in many directions, suggests continually new sources of information, to one interested in his work; and I have felt constantly the force of Johnson's dictum as to the superior profit from time spent in reading what is congenial over the drudgery of constrained application. Every faculty I possessed was alive and jumping. Incidentally, I took up the study of land warfare, using Jomini and Hamley. For naval history the first book upon which I chanced—the word is exact—was just what I needed at that stage. It was a history of the French navy, by a Lieutenant Lapeyrouse-Bonfils, published about 1845. As naval history pure and simple, I think little of it; but the author had a quiet, philosophical way of summing up causes and effects in general history, as connected with maritime affairs, which not only corresponded closely with my own purpose, but suggested to me new material for thought—novel illustration. Such treatment was with him only casual, but it opened to me new prospects.
It would be difficult to define precisely to what degree the art of naval warfare had been formulated, or even consciously conceived, in 1885. There could scarcely be said to exist any systematic treatment, or extensive commentary by acknowledged experts, such as for generations had illuminated the theory of land warfare. Naval histories abounded, but by far the most part were simply narratives. Some valuable research, however, had then recently been done; notably by Captain Chevalier, of the French navy, who had produced from French documents a history of the maritime war connected with the American struggle for independence. This he followed with a less exhaustive account of the wars of the French Revolution and Empire, which also appeared in time for me to use. These were marked by running comment, rather than by a studied criticism such as that of Jomini or Napier. In Great Britain, James held, and I think still holds, the field for exhaustive collection of information, documentary or oral in origin, during the period treated by him, 1793–1815; but he has not a military idea in his head beyond that of downright hard fighting, punishing and being punished. In his pages, to take a tactical advantage seems almost a disgrace. The Navy Records Society of Great Britain had not then begun the fruitful labors which within the last decade and a half has made accessible in print a very large amount of new matter; nor had the late Admiral Colomb published his comprehensive book, Naval Warfare. So far as I was concerned, the old works of Lediard, Entick, Campbell, Beatson,—in French, Paul Hoste, Troude, Guérin, and others equally remote,—had to be my main reliance; though numerous modern scattered monographs, English and French, were existent. In connection with these one of my most interesting experiences was lighting upon a paper in the Revue Maritime et Coloniale, describing in full the Four Days' battle between the English and Dutch in 1666. It purported to be, and I have no doubt was, from a personal letter recently discovered; but I subsequently found it almost word for word in the Mémoires du Comte de Guiche, also a participant, printed in 1743. This Revue contained many able and suggestive articles, historical and professional, as did the British Journal of the United Service Institution; each being in its own country a principal medium for the exchange of professional views. Conspicuous in these contributions to naval history and thought, in England, were Admiral Colomb and Professor Laughton; upon the last named of whom, since these words were first written, has been bestowed the honor of knighthood, a recognition in the evening of life which will be heartily welcomed by his many naval friends on both sides of the Atlantic. In short, apart from the first-hand inquiry which I did not yet attempt, the material available in 1885 was chiefly histories written long before, supplemented by a great many scattered papers of more recent date.