Navy warships and history

History may not repeat itself, yet sometimes seems to do so. I am thinking of the long May 17 news article headlined “Navy chief [of Operations] claims U.S. needs more ships fast. Says necessary for military’s credibility.” It is a headline straight out of the years of the feverish naval arms race that preceded the first world war. Yet in all of that war but a single naval battle, inconclusive and inconsequential, was fought, between the British and Germans fleets off Jutland in 1916.

The British navy chiefs back then, like their American counterparts today, wanted not only more ships but wanted them built faster as well and got both over time, with completion times falling markedly and cost rocketing in the quarter century to 1914.

If the American Navy gets its way about building more warships, many jobs will be created, although only at (the very few) seaports having suitable shipyards. The impact of the naval arms race on employment in the United Kingdom was considerable. Employment in the Royal Navy’s own shipyards grew from 18,000 to 43,000 (240 percent), in the eighteen years from 1895 to 1913. Battleships built in private yards, as eventually more than half were, accounted for many thousands of more workers.

Jim Haas

Pullman