Naval Power—On Land and Sea—During the American Revolution

Sam Willis has written a lively and engaging account of the waterborne dimensions of the Revolution. The book opens on the scene of elite French women wearing their hair "à la Belle Poule," balancing elaborate models of fully rigged sailing ships in their wigs. The Belle Poule was a French frigate charged in 1778 with instigating an incident with the British fleet that would serve as a pretext for France's entrance into the war, which it did with plucky success. Meanwhile, Benjamin Franklin was busy charming the French court. Between the two, "the American cause [became] not just politically and diplomatically appealing but fashionable" (p. 5). Hairdressing does not feature in most naval histories of the war, and the fact that Willis chooses this example to frame his narrative is emblematic of how he approaches the rest of the book: it is "a history more of people than of ships" that frequently returns to the ways that sea power influenced societies on shore (p. 10).

The central question is how "a loose collection of colonies, without any standing army or navy" successfully won independence from "the most powerful country in the world," a question that acquires greater urgency once one realizes that, by the end of the war, Britain "was in a position of exceptional strength at sea—far stronger, even, than she had been at the start of the war" (pp. 14–15). In his introduction, Willis outlines five guidelines that structure his narrative. First, his history includes forms of sea power other than national navies (such as locally organized fleets and individual privateers). Second, it includes inland waterborne endeavors on rivers and lakes on an equal footing with those on the oceans. Third, it acknowledges that the war that ended in American independence involved actors beyond Britain and its colonies. While presumably no naval history of the war could ignore France and Spain, Willis explores the ways that entities like Russia, the Indian kingdom of Mysore, and Native American communities all influenced the exercise of sea power. Fourth, it emphasizes that the global spheres of the war were connected to one another. His fifth and perhaps most important guideline is that fleets often had a significant impact without ever engaging in battle.

The book is organized chronologically and focuses primarily on the period between 1772, with the burning of the naval ship Gaspee in Rhode Island, and 1781, when the inability of the British to defeat the French fleet in the Chesapeake contributed to Cornwallis' surrender at Yorktown. With its large print and bite-size chapters, many of which are as short as seven pages, the book is clearly intended to appeal to a popular audience. It will likely do so: as the Belle Poule opening suggests, Willis has an eye for illuminating anecdotes and a flair for the dramatic. He offers detailed accounts of individual campaigns populated by interestingly drawn characters. In one sense, The Struggle for Sea Power contains little that naval historians do not already know, as is clear from the endnotes, which are primarily drawn from existing secondary literature. The book's contribution is therefore less in unearthing new facts than in combining them in thought-provoking ways to make an argument for the centrality of maritime endeavors to the war and for the incredibly weighty symbolism that sea power carried.

One instance of this holistic approach is Willis' assertion that inland lakes and rivers should be considered as part of sea power. He includes among his examples the campaigns along the Canadian frontier. In Benedict Arnold and Philip Schuyler's 1775 invasion, Schuyler traveled up Lake Champlain toward Quebec while Arnold took a second force along a coastal route, after which he attempted to use shallow boats to travel up the Kennebec River in Maine. While the expedition overall could hardly be termed a success—only seven of the original 220 bateaux and fewer than...