Taking a quick look in Sumida’s “Inventing Grand Strategy and Teaching
Command: The Classic Works of Alfred Thayer Mahan Reconsidered” (1997),
one finds that a) Mahan has more than just “one thesis” b) it seems
Mahan’s viewed individual ship designs as unimportant and c) I might
speculate that if Mahan rejected a Dreadnought-type program, it was done
so not because of its design, but for financial reasons. He wrote (in
1911) that “To prepare for war in time of peace is impractical to
commercial representative nations, because the people in general will
not give sufficient heed to military necessities, or to international
problems, to feel the pressure which induces readiness.” (88)

Of course, he wrote that line when the British government was still
struggling with vast amounts of social spending, to the significant
detriment of the Royal Navy. That probably influenced his thinking.

Timothy L. Francis
Historian
Naval Historical Center
email address: Francis.Timothy@nhc.navy.mil
voice: (202) 433-6802

The above remarks are my opinions, not those of the U.S. Navy or the
Department of Defense

> ———-
> From: Brooks Rowlett[SMTP:brooksar@indy.net]
> Reply To: mahan@microworks.net
> Sent: Thursday, January 22, 1998 12:12 PM
> To: mahan@microworks.net
> Subject: Re: The Kaiser’s Fleet
>
>And by the way, didn’t Mahan say the DREADNOUGHT was a mistake and >the
US should not follow suit? The idea being that individually powerful
ships
>wre contrary to his thesis? Of course he said this before director
>control and the advantages of all big guns combined with the produciton
>rates to make dreadnought – style BB’s the new standard.