Customer Reviews

Power at Sea, Volume 1: The Age of Navalism, 1890-1918

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As someone who does research in the time period discussed in the book, I pick up anything that's new to see if there's any new research. Unfortunately, there's nothing new in this book, and in all honesty, I can not figure out how this book was published by a university press, considering the poor notation and poor logic behind some of Rose's arguements.

The book sets out to be a popular narrative of the naval affairs from 1890-1918, but is spotty in its coverage. For example, the Spanish-American War gets only a skimming over, as does other significant events in World War I, such as Dogger Bank, Coronel and the Falklands, Gallipoli, and the exploits of SMS Koenigsberg and SMS Emden in the Indian Ocean. Mahan gets a brief mention, but Sir Julian Corbett gets no such love. On the other hand, expect the requisite narrative regarding Jutland, as well as chapters on the Imperial Japanese Navy and the US Navy.

However, this is not the greatest flaw in this work. It ostensibly states how it will cover social aspects of navalism, but the deepest it gets is statements about how harshly officers treated enlisted sailors and the public's reaction to the Anglo-German naval race. Rose has trouble keeping his story straight. He pumps up the role of naval fleets running up to the war, and then laments their uselessness after the war breaks out because they spent the most of their time in port. Perhaps if he had read Corbett, he would have seen their uselessness in port with regards to blockading, but I digress. He also seems to have an affinity for what-if scenarios, as he goes on for at least five pages talking about various ways in which the Germans could have sunk the British reinforcements in August of 1914, and even seriously discusses Jacky Fisher's idea regarding landing troops in Pomerania and marching on Berlin, of course without looking at trivial things like the Swedish-Danish mining of the Kattegat or what the German fleet would do this whole time.

In addition, Rose lambastes the design principles of Dreadnoughts, and in the process states how German guns were better than British guns because they were lighter than their direct British counterparts, then in the next paragraph says how German guns were inferior to British guns because they couldn't make bigger guns than the British. He never gets around to sorting that out, much like he never gets around to explaining how many British Dreadnoughts were sunk by torpedoes after stating how vulnerable they were to them. He also talks about how British ships were so vulnerable to plunging fire because of a lack of deck armour, then fails to point out that British deck armour was equal to their counterparts in other navies.

Speaking of proof, if I hear another "Well, as another scholar has noted..." without a footnote, I may just scream. Rose has a nasty habit of backing up his statements with the credentials of another scholar, without actually citing them. Speaking of citing, the notes in this book is frankly high school level. Rose goes for long sections without footnotes making statements like the ones given above, then goes through a slew of notes over the next several paragraphs covering innocuous statements. As for the bibliography, it is a useful guide to secondary sources, but it is extremely unsettling to see a statement saying how it is highly selective and how they were the works that influenced his line of thinking in writing the book. An actual bibliography covering the works he used in the writing of the book as sources would have been much better.

Rose has two more books covering the rest of the century, but at present I am rather gun-shy about actually reading them if this book is any indication of the quality of the other two. In the end, if you want a good read about the time period, especially in terms of an Anglo-German view, I would definitely go for Robert Massie's classics Dreadnought and Castles of Steel. They read just as easy, have much better notation and research, and provide the in depth coverage of the important events that they deserve.

I really liked this book. I have to admit, I'm no expert on naval power and haven't read many of the books on the topic. Indeed, I find that my lack of knowledge of some of the technical aspects of naval warfare hurt my understanding.

But the book has some tremendous insights. At first, I had trouble deciding exactly what the book was about. Rose discusses doctrine, training, how officers act and are chosen, how the ship mates thought and acted; however, he also talked about grand admirals, naval colleges, plans, and technology.

After reading it, it is clear that the book is about EXACTLY what it is called -- naval power. And to Rose, everything matters, all of the aspects mentioned above.

In essence, Rose appears to be a great believer that naval power is profound, but it must be used correctly. The navy must be built for the purpose it is used, and leaders and sailors must be trained and work to that end.

The book begins with, perhaps, the overestimation of sea power. Mahan's theories were universally believed, and the history of fleet building before WW1 is so linked to international power politics that it first reads like a book on Political Science.

Over and over, the folly of breaking these axioms is displayed. The Germans build a powerful navy, and then don't use it. Rose agrees that Germany's building the large fleet inevitably lead to conflict with Great Britain, a horrible mistake, since Germany's natural enemies were France and Russia. Conversely, unlike many authors who make the same claim, Rose is even more critical of building the fleet and not ever using it.

Rose discusses how a large and bold use of the fleet could have worked and been decisive. But the German fleet wasn't made to fit a doctrine and wasn't used to supplement the strategies of war.

We also learn about heroes that aren't household names. The brilliant American Admiral, William Snowden Slim, and the genius of Japan, Sato Tetsutaro.

I suspect there is a lot here to disagree about, but my son and I have been talking about his theories for weeks.

This book is a history of global sea power during the critical period from the last decade of the 19th century through World War I. Lisle Rose keeps his book manageable in length while broad in scope.

The rise of Japan to dominance in the Asian Pacific through sea power and its resulting threat to the United States share equal billing with the nation-states of Europe and the navies of the Atlantic. We are led through a review of the importance of sea power as a tool and manifestation of waning colonialism and rising industrialism. This allows for insights into the huge technological and cultural shift from the Age of Sail to the mighty dreadnaught and the new era of undersea warfare and air power.

The stubborn resistance of social stratification from an aristocratic past to the adaptations required by rapid advances in technology and industry is explored, which is to say that the common seaman is not ignored. We are continually reminded that his training and treatment were often archaic and unjust, although he was, in the final analysis, the true source of naval power. Rose leaves plenty of time for the theorists and titular leaders, egos and all, but their roles are placed in a large perspective.

There is a liberal sprinkling of anecdotes and quotations, which add interest and bring history alive. We are, for example, deftly told that the American navy had an underside along with its justifiably proud past when we learn that a young George Dewey, later to become famous at Manila Bay, once "found over a hundred men in chains between the guns and rioters in possession of part of the lower decks."

Along with the sweep of history there is technical review of naval design, production and budgeting in readable form. Rose does not exaggerate, but his engaging style serves to highlight his dramatic descriptions of the tensions, uncertainties and horrors of sea warfare. This is a thoughtful, well-written book, which will be fascinating and informative for navy buffs and historians, as well as those who just enjoy a good read.

This unsatisfactory book is most useful to the readers it will annoy most: those who have already studied the subject area. They can read it defensively and get value from its strengths without being bamboozled by its many doubtful arguments and mistakes. But it will annoy them, for the reasons that reviewer Loren Klein has given separately here on Amazon's page.

The main strength of Lisle Rose's book is that he takes a wide approach to the naval history of 1890 to 1918. He looks at the political, diplomatic and cultural background to naval expansion, not just battles and technology.

In addition to the flaws mentioned by other reviewers, the book is unbalanced in the space it gives to the various naval powers. Coverage of the US Navy is disproportionately great while not enough space is given to Germany and Russia. France, a great naval power of the 1890s, is deliberately but wrongly ignored.

The cruise of the US Navy's Great White Fleet gets almost 10 pages, the Battle of Coronel two sentences.

While Rose is usefully critical of the Royal Navy (overcritical, in places), he often seems unaware of faults of other navies. He stresses and sometimes exaggerates the strengths of the US Navy but mentions few of its weaknesses. For example, his overgenerous account of USN operations in World War One only hints at the alarming 1917-18 discovery that US shooting was deficient.

So the non-specialist reader looking for an education from this book will end up ill-educated. A reader who already feels moderately well informed, on the other hand, may well learn a thing or two from Rose's broad background material: the training and quality of US sailors, for example, the influence of racism on Japanese-US naval relations.

The text is easily read, with good syntax and punctuation, and it is not long. University of Missouri Press has at least done a good job of production, even if it should never have published such an unsatisfactory book.

I know of no alternative work that covers all the navies of this period in a single volume. But for the main Anglo-German game, I suggest two long but absorbing books of Robert Massie: Dreadnought and Castles of Steel.

As a former naval officer and, for the last six years, a docent at the USS Lexington (CV-16) museum, I have had a strong interest in the history of the US Navy for some time. I found Dr. Rose's first volume of Power at Sea an outstanding read. What I particularly liked was that, rather than a dull retracing of each and every historical event, it was an easily read, fascinating, and insightful foray into how the major nations used, or misused, sea power during the age of the battleship. The book unifies the different threads of naval development into a consistent whole and, in the process, brings to light areas of influence the average reader may not have considered. I recommend this book as an enjoyable addition to the library of any person interested in the naval history of the battleship era regardless of their academic background.

I am a little amazed when I realize how much I learned playing board games as a child and I doubt I'm alone. For example, I'd guess plenty of kids learned the fundamentals of world geography from Risk. While reading Volume One of Lisle Rose's Power at Sea, I kept going back to my days with Battleship: this book is a history of the ships from that game: destroyers, submarines, cruisers, battleships (of course), and even in a limited sense (for this volume), aircraft carriers.

Volume One is subtitled The Age of Navalism and covers 1890 to 1918. The starting point is significant in that it's around the beginning of the era of steel clad ships driven by steam (although there were predecessors even in the Civil War with ships like the Monitor). The Age of Sail in warfare was over. The concluding point is more easily defined: the conclusion of World War I.

Prior to the Great War, the navies were beginning to develop more and more powerful ships, particularly battleships and their smaller, faster cousins, the cruisers. Governments became obsessed with the strategic value of these fleets, but the transition was far from painless: besides beings expensive, they were generally untested.

Although other countries are discussed, the three nations most discussed are Britain, Germany and the United States. Britain had the biggest navy, the better to support its far-flung empire. Germany, with ambitions of its own, decided that a strong navy was important to remain competitive with Britain. The U.S. developed greater strength primarily to protect its interests in the Americas and the Pacific.

When World War I broke out, the naval conflict was untested ground (or ocean) for all involved, and it became obvious that there were significant problems with battle strategies; too much naval brass still though in terms of sailing ships. In addition, both the German and British navies were very aristocratic, with officers treated very well and most regular sailors mistreated. The U.S. Navy, while not perfect, was more respectful to its crews (due in part to the more democratic principles of the country in general). In fact, Rose depicts the U.S. as looking the best of the big navies in World War I.

This is not a perfect book. For one thing, I found Rose's writing slow going at times, though it did eventually pick up. Another issue is that he is focuses so much on the big picture we don't get much of a picture about how life was on these ships; yes, we are told that things were rough, but for the most part, we only see the ships from the outside, not how they looked from within. Finally, Rose assumes a basic knowledge of ships on the reader's part: if you don't know what distinguishes a cruiser from a destroyer, he doesn't provide much beyond the most basic details. With these caveats, this book is still good and informative and should be appreciated by those interested in learning about naval history.

The bet apparently was to prove that somebody could write something that was full of inaccurate, ill-informed opinion, and still get it published as a work of history.

I struggled through the first 1/3rd the gritting my teeth as I read some of the things, but finally gave up when I read that problems with accuracy of long range, large caliber, naval gunnery weren't solved until the development of the proximity fuse, give me a break!