Sacred Vessels

This was required reading for a graduate course in the history of American military affairs. The goal of Robert O'Connell's book Sacred Vessels: The Cult Of The Battleship And The Rise of the U.S. Navy, was to examine the over fifty-year "love affair" that the U.S. Navy had for its battleships. O'Connell very ably articulated that after reading Alfred Thayer Mahan's book published in 1890, Influence of Seapower Upon History, naval and political leaders in the U.S. and in several other countries such as Britain, Germany, and Japan, quickly adopted the battleship as their weapon of choice to defend their shores, and as the ultimate weapon to project their military power abroad. Mahan's thesis was that great nations possessed mighty navies that protected their sea-lanes for commerce and also had the offensive capability of destroying the enemies' navy, which in turn allowed them to blockade and starve their enemy into submission. Thus, O'Connell's thesis was that Mahan's philosophy of naval warfare lent itself to the adoption and "myopic adoration" by American politicians; especially naval leaders of the battleship as its set piece weapon for over fifty years. In addition, most naval leaders stubbornly ignored the strategic and tactical technological advancements of such weapons as submarines and carrier-based airplanes, in deference to keeping the battleship on top of the navy's weapon pyramid. "To those men the battleship was the single most important artifact of their professional existence: It symbolized everything that was acceptable and orderly about naval life" (3). The strengths of O'Connell's book was in his examination of the U.S. Navy's traditions and how they caused its officer corps to hold onto their obstinate adoration of the battleship, which caused a culture of malevolent neglect towards any other technological advances in naval warfare that threatened to remove the battleship from atop the navy pyramid. In particular, with regards to the training, assigning, and promotion system of its officer corps, the battleship became the logical ship to which all officers aspired to be assigned to and take command of someday. In addition, O'Connell pointed out that until 1899, the promotion system was based on seniority and not meritocracy like other major navies. "In 1906 the youngest captain in the U.S. Navy was fifty-five years old, or twenty years the senior of his youngest European counterpart. Promotion to rear admiral before the age of sixty was considered unusual" (23-24). Except for a few daring officers like Admiral William S. Sims, who was open to and promoted technological advancements in naval war fighting, O'Connell's book adeptly proved that the navy's antiquated culture was extremely slow to change. Even the empirical evidence provided by Germany's successful submarine warfare during World War I, as well as General Billy Mitchell's successful aerial bombing and sinking of the captured German battleship Ostfries

Are you a fan of naval history? Then read this book. Are you a fan of technological development, especially persistent effort on expanding and improving a flawed concept? Then read this book. Are you a fan of light, entertaining history? Then Read This Book. O'Connell's Sacred Vessels reads like beach-towel history, but this is merely the sugar coating that lets the otherwise bitter medicine of piles of historical facts slide down easy. In any other author's hands this book would have been dry, dull, and dense. In O'Connell's hands we get the same in depth analysis of the development of the battleship (even after its proven vulnerability) without that bitter, stodgy historical aftertaste. A Great Read.

Few images are as evocative of the "romance" of naval warfare as that of the wooden, square-rigged, line-of-battle ship. Combining soul-stirring beauty with a underlying sense of power, these ponderous vessels dominated maritime strategy and professional thinking for more than two hundred years. Generations of sea-going officers passed from callow youth to old age on their rolling decks, and it is not therefore surprising that the tradition of "fighting sail" became the dogma that was most deeply entrenched in naval sociologic values. When the metal, steam-powered, heavily-gunned battleship of the late 1800's finally replaced the obsolete wooden man-of-war, the naval officer corps transferred to the former the emotional attachment and affection previously invested in the latter. And the modern battleship (particularly the massive, all-big-gun Dreadnought's that began coming down the slipways in the early 1900's) was a worthy successor: while lacking the innate charm of the earlier ships, they conveyed by their size, speed, and massive armament a manifestly obvious power that was commensurate with the self-perceived seriousnous and importance of those that sailed in them. Just as the naval community was loathe at one time to accept the demise of sail-power, it too was subsequently extremely reluctant to see technological change overtake the battlewagons from which so much of their self-image was derived. Consequently, such ships continued to be built at great national expense long after submarines and aircraft (both land- and carrier-based) had displaced them as the prime agents of naval warfare.Robert L. O'Connell ducuments the above with great skill and insight. He writes from the self-admitted perspective of one who has always been fascinated with modern battleships. His ambivalence is all the more telling since he effectively shows how tradition, ingrained and self-serving sociologic factors, and other human elements combine to cloud professional judgement and stiffle technological innovation. It is not just lack of imagination, or bureaucratic inertia, or maladroit management that results in navies preparing inappropriately for the last-- and not the next--war; it is also the near religious, personal attachment to a particularly beloved weapon that is sometimes even more important. As a paradigm for (to use an overworked expression) present day selection of weapon systems, this represents and important and cautionary tale.

Deserving five stars for courage, this book presents the heretical fact about battleships: their only successful mission was to enrich their makers. Although the author avoids stating the obvious about big aircraft carriers as well, this book should be read, along with Ritchie's CAPTAIN KIDD and Hagan's THIS PEOPLE'S NAVY, by every American taxpayer who is curious about our trillion-dollar "defense" industry.