The Struggle for Sea Power: A Naval History of the American Revolution

About this book

A fascinating naval perspective on one of the greatest of all historical conundrums: How did thirteen isolated colonies which in 1775 began a war with Britain without a navy or an army win their independence from the greatest naval and military power on earth? The American Revolution involved a naval war of immense scope and variety including no fewer than twenty-two navies fighting on five oceansto 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. 8 pages of color illustrations