ARQUEMENT AUX ILES BRITANNIQUES
(1902) and CAMPAGNE MARITIME DE TRAFALGAR (1907).

See also Col. C. E. Callwell's MILITARY OPERATIONS AND MARITIME
PREPONDERANCE (1913), and Professor Clive Day's HISTORY OF COMMERCE
(revised edition, 1911, with bibliography).

CHAPTER XIV

REVOLUTION IN NAVAL WARFARE: HAMPTON ROADS AND LISSA.

During the 19th century, from 1815 to 1898, naval power, though
always an important factor in international relations, played in
general a passive role. The wars which marked the unification of
Germany and Italy and the thrusting back of Turkey from the Balkans
were fought chiefly on land. The navy of England, though never
more constantly busy in protecting her far-flung empire, was not
challenged to a genuine contest for mastery of the seas. In the
Greek struggle for independence there were two naval engagements
of some consequence--Chios (1822), where the Greeks with fireships
destroyed a Turkish squadron and gained temporary control of the
AEgean, and Navarino (1827), in which a Turkish force consisting
principally of frigates was wiped out by a fleet of the western
powers. But both of these actions were one-sided, and showed nothing
new in types or tactics. In the American Civil War control of the
sea was important and even decisive, but was overwhelmingly in the
hands of the North. Hence the chief naval interest of the period
lies not so much in the fighting as in the revolutionary changes in
ships, weapons, and tactics--changes which parallel the extraordinary
scientific progress of the century; and the engagements may be
studied now, as they were studied then, as testing and illustrating
the new methods and materials of naval war.

_Changes in Ships and Weapons_

Down to the middle of the 19th century there had been only a slow
and slight development in ships and weapons for a period of nearly
300 years. A sailor of the Armada would soon have felt at home in
a three-decker of 1815. But he would have been helpless as a child
in the fire-driven iron monsters that fought at Hampton Roads. The
shift from sail to steam, from oak to iron, from shot to shell, and
from muzzle-loading smoothbore to breech-loading rifle began about
1850; and progress thereafter was so swift that an up-to-date ship
of each succeeding decade was capable of defeating a whole squadron
of ten years before. Success came to depend on the adaptability
and mechanical skill of personnel, as well as their courage a