Appendix To The Report Of The Chief Of The Bureau Of Navigation 1898

This new collection of scholarly, readable, and up-to-date essays covers the most significant naval blockades of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Here the reader can find Napoleon’s Continental Blockade of England, the Anglo-American War of 1812, the Crimean War, the American Civil War, the first Sino-Japanese War 1894-95, the Spanish-American War, the First World War, the second Sino-Japanese War 1937-45, the Second World War in Europe and Asia, the Nationalist attempt to blockade the PRC, the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, the British blockade of Rhodesia, the Falklands War, the Persian Gulf interdiction program, the PRC "missile" blockade of Taiwan in 1996, and finally Australia's recent "reverse" blockade to keep illegal aliens out of the country. The authors of each chapter address the causes of the blockade in question, its long and short-term repercussions, and the course of the blockade itself. More generally, they address the state of the literature, taking advantage of new research and new methodologies to provide something of value to both the specialist and non-specialist reader. Taken as a whole, this volume presents fresh insights into issues such as what a blockade is, why countries might choose them, which navies can and cannot make use of them, what responses lead to satisfactory or unsatisfactory conclusions, and how far-reaching their consequences tend to be. This book will be of great interest to all students and scholars of strategic studies, military history and maritime studies in particular.

An important look at how America has won its wars in the past and how it can continue winning in the future. Is there a recipe for military success? In No Substitute for Victory, author David Rigby grapples with this issue and determines that, in the case of the United States, there are a number of different strategies that have brought victory in battle to American forces over the years. In a clear, energetic prose, Rigby explains how the dropping of chocolate bars from airplanes over Berlin turned out to be one of the most successful applications of the Cold War strategy of containment. He argues, too, that far from being a radical change in policy by a desperate President Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation was in fact an essential part of Lincoln’s plan to reunite the nation. While the focus in No Substitute for Victory is on military maneuvers that have been successful, Rigby brilliantly uses the Vietnam War as a touchstone for comparison purposes on how not to fight a war. While the writing of military strategy is a crowded field, Rigby’s approach is unique in that he draws examples from conflicts throughout American history, from the Revolution up through the modern day. Rigby’s ability to find similarities in—and to draw conclusions from—the successes attained by American forces in battles as seemingly dissimilar as Gettysburg and Midway makes No Substitute for Victory essential reading for anyone interested in the riveting history of our nation’s military. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

The “American century” began with the Spanish-American War. In that conflict’s aftermath, the United States claimed the Philippines in its bid for world power. Before the ink on the treaty with Spain had dried, the war in the Philippines turned into a violent rebellion. After two years of fighting, U.S. forces launched an audacious mission to capture Philippine president and rebel commander-in-chief Emilio Aguinaldo. Using an elaborate ruse, U.S. Army legend Frederick “Fighting Fred” Funston orchestrated Aguinaldo’s seizure in 1901. Capturing Aguinaldo is the story of Funston, his gambit to catch Emilio Aguinaldo, and the United States’ conflicted rise to power in the early twentieth century. The United States’ war with Spain in 1898 had been quick and, for the Americans in the Philippines, virtually bloodless. But by early 1899, Filipino nationalists, who had been fighting the Spaniards for three years and expected Spain’s defeat to produce their independence, were fighting a new imperial power: the United States. The Filipinos eventually abandoned conventional warfare, switching to guerilla tactics in an ongoing conflict rife with atrocities on both sides. By March 1901, the United States was looking for a bold strike against the nationalists. Brigadier General Frederick Funston, who had already earned a Medal of Honor, and four other officers posing as prisoners were escorted by loyal Filipino soldiers impersonating rebels. After a ninety-mile forced march, the fake insurgents were welcomed into the enemy’s headquarters where, after a brief firefight, they captured President Aguinaldo. At long last, the rebellion neared collapse. More than a swashbuckling tale, Capturing Aguinaldo is a character study of Frederick Funston and Emilio Aguinaldo and a look at the United States’ rise to global power as it unfolded at ground level. It tells the thrilling but nearly forgotten story of this daring operation and its polarizing aftermath, highlighting themes of U.S. history that have reverberated for more than a century, through World War II to Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

This classic study examines the deployment of U.S. naval vessels in European and Near Eastern waters from the end of the Civil War until the United States declared war in April 1917. Initially these ships were employed to visit various ports from the Baltic Sea to the eastern Mediterranean and Constantinople (today Istanbul), for the primary purpose of showing the flag. From the 1890s on, most of the need for the presence of the American warships occurred in the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Unrest in the Ottoman Empire and particularly the Muslim hostility and threats to Armenians led to calls for protection. This would continue into the years of World War I. In 1905, the Navy Department ended the permanent stationing of a squadron in European waters. From then until the U.S. declaration of war in 1917, individual ships, detached units, and special squadrons were at times deployed in European waters. In 1908, the converted yacht Scorpion was sent as station ship (stationnaire) to Constantinople where she would remain, operating in the eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea until 1928. Upon the outbreak of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson ordered cruisers to northern European waters and the Mediterranean to protect American interests. These warships, however, did more than protect American interests. They would evacuate thousands of refugees, American tourists, Armenians, Jews, and Italians after Italy entered the conflict on the side of the Allies.

A New Force at Sea tells the story of one of the most important officers in the U.S. Navy between the Civil War and World War II. Born in Montpelier, Vermont, George Dewey attended the still relatively new U.S. Naval Academy, graduating in 1858. He served with distinction in the Civil War in the Union Navy, saw a significant amount of action in the Mississippi River and along the Atlantic coast, and was singled out for his leadership and bravery by his superior officers. In the wake of the war, Dewey remained in the Navy as an officer, but the American people were generally uninterested in any role their nation could play in the broader world and the Navy languished. Dewey however, refined his perception of what American global naval strategy could be. By the time the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898, Dewey commanded a squadron of ships on the far side of the Pacific. His victory in the Battle of Manila Bay instantly made him the most famous American military figure after Ulysses S. Grant. The degree to which Dewey bore responsibility for embroiling the United States in what came to be known as the Philippine Insurrection was overlooked by an American public that eagerly named children for him, composed songs in his honor, and competed to stage the most extravagant civic celebrations of the quiet naval officer from Vermont. It was a public role for which he was ill-suited. Such was Dewey‘s celebrity that he when he returned to the United States he was instantly spoken of as a serious candidate for the Presidency in 1900. After an abortive and half-hearted candidacy that damaged his public reputation, Congress raised his rank to the newly created “Admiral of the Navy,” the rank he would hold for the rest of his life. He became the embodiment of Theodore Roosevelt‘s “big stick” attitude and the national symbol for American naval power. He served as the chairman of the new General Board of the United States Navy, created in 1900 as the first body to address questions of strategy and operational readiness. Dewey had a profound understanding that his career bridged two seminal periods in American naval history, and clearly understood the repercussions of his victory at Manila. He died in Washington in January 1917, shortly before the United States entered World War I fighting against Germany as he had foretold years earlier. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery but shortly after reinterred at the Washington National Cathedral, the only U.S. military officer to have such an honor.