The royal sea.(Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649-1815)(Book Review)

The royal sea

N. A. M. Rodger Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649-1815. W. W. Norton, 976 pages, $45

Academic scholarship often treats maritime history as a narrow subfield of military history, but several recent books indicate a renewed interest in Britain's relationship with the sea. Jeremy Black's British Seaborne Empire (Yale University Press) and Arthur Herman's To Rule the Waves (HarperCollins) each connect aspects of maritime history with broader themes. The eagerly awaited second installment of Nicholas Rodger's three-volume Naval History of Britain makes a worthy counterpart.

Rodger's first volume, Safeguard of the Sea, published in 1997, explored the impact of naval affairs on British history from 660, a period before the emergence of either an English state or a permanent navy, through the end of English Civil Wars in 1648. Command of the Oceans continues the story from Oliver Cromwell's regime, carrying it through the age that Patrick O'Brian and C. S. Forester depict so vividly. Rodger divides the book into chapters on operations, social history, administration, and technology that provide impressive detail without overwhelming the narrative.

England's navy played a decisive role in the Civil War when it sided with Parliament against Charles I. Sea power proved vital in preventing a Stuart revival before 1660. Rodger shows how the navy operated as an independent political force during the interregnum with different views from the army. Cromwell devoted much effort to keeping the navy politically quiescent, and, besides appointing generals at sea whom he could trust, he used war as a means of keeping the fleet busy. Englishmen thought naval warfare could be profitable, but maintaining fleets involved ruinous expense and the navy placed even more strain on public finance than Cromwell's army. While tactics and administration improved, the overall system failed to cohere. Nonetheless, the navy made England feared abroad under Cromwell, and that became the great lesson of the 1650s.

The Stuart Restoration in 1660 combined the English Republic's navy with royalist exiles to form a new, permanent force. Although the restored monarchy had a more stable financial base than Cromwell's regime, it could not avoid the fits and starts that plagued naval operations. Few people besides professionals understood the costs involved, and justifying expenditures brought conflict with Parliament. Charles II realized that political power at home and sea power abroad both depended upon the ability to raise money. Rodger depicts him as more engaged with administration than his reputation as a shrewd but debauched king suggests. Charles and his brother James realized the potential that sea power offered, and they found a worthy servant in the diarist Samuel Pepys, whose administrative work deserves to be better known. Finances remained a limiting factor that led ...