Naval Battles of the World: Great and Decisive Contests on the Sea ... with an Account of the Japan-China War and the Recent Battle of the Yalu; The Growth, Power, and Management of Our New Navy.

Written at the height of American naval ambition in 1898, this sweeping history surveys the great sea battles that shaped empires and altered the course of civilization. Shippen, a naval historian writing in the era when the United States emerged as a Pacific power, traces maritime conflict from the ancient Egyptians and Greeks through the Romans and on to the modern age of ironclads and steel warships. The volume arrives at a moment of profound transformation: the recent Japan-China War and the Battle of the Yalu have demonstrated that Asian naval forces can decisively defeat a European-style fleet, while America own 'New Navy' stands at the threshold of its imperial moment. Shippen makes the case that sea power is not merely a military asset but the very foundation upon which nations rise and fall. Whether recounting the tactics of Trafalgar, the terror of the submarine menace, or the strategic implications of the Yalu, this is a work consumed by a single urgent question: what does it mean to command the waves? Essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the naval thinking that drove late-Victorian imperialism and American expansion into the Pacific.