Naval History
PEARL HARBOR (DECEMBER 7, 1941)
President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the U. S. Pacific fleet moved to this shallow harbor in Hawaii in May 1940, thousands of miles from its base at San Diego. The idea was to deter a Japanese assault on Southeast Asia. Instead, American-Japanese relations continued to deteriorate toward war over the course of 1941. An Imperial Conference convened on September 6…
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NAVAL FORCES AS A POLITICAL WEAPON – THE WARS OF THE ROSES
In the absence of royal initiative in England, however, there were others who were willing and able to wield the strength derived from a force of ships to intervene in the increasingly complex struggles between competing factions and claimants to the throne. This is most clearly seen in the case…
The Ottomans and Their Rivals, Galleys and Galleons, Portolan Charts and Isolarii,
 Svat Soucek, “The Ottomans and Their Rivals, Galleys and Galleons, Portolan Charts and Isolarii,” from his Piri Reis & Turkish Mapmaking After Columbus: The Khalili Portolan Atlas, Nour Foundation, 1995, pp. 10-33. THE OTTOMANS AND THEIR RIVALSTurkey is a country blessed with long and beautiful coasts along three seas:…
AMPHIBIOUS WARFARE I
Charles V meets with the Bey of Tunis, 1535. Both Habsburg and Ottoman power in North Africa depended in part on agreements with local clients. Here the size of the Imperial expedition of 1535 is apparent. Note the lines of galleys in the bay to the upper right – projecting…
THE MEDITERRANEAN
Genoese Dromone 11th Century Genoese Trader 12th Century The trajectory of naval warfare in the Mediterranean had some similarities with that in the north: a power vacuum at the start of our period, in which new contenders arose and disputed mastery of the sea. By C.1100 the naval war against…