Sacred Vessels : the cult of the battleship and the rise of the U.S. Navy

Sacred Vessels is an irreverent account of the modern battleship and its place in American naval history from the sinking of the coal-fired Maine in Havana Harbor in 1898 to the deployment of the cruise missile-armed Missouri in the Persian Gulf in 1991. With provocative insight and wit, Robert O'Connell conclusively demonstrates that the vaunted battleship was in fact never an effective weapon of war, even before developments in aircraft and submarine technology sealed its doom. The worlds navies failed to recognize the full implications of rapid technological change at the turn of the century but were enthralled by the revolutionary design of the HMS Dreadnought, launched in 1903. Nations raced to build and deploy the biggest, the fastest, and the greatest possible number of battleships, usually at the expense of much more effective forms of naval force. Dreadnoughts became the international currency of great power status, subject to the same anxious accountancy as nuclear weapons today. Their awesome beauty captured the public s imagination and won the unquestioning devotion of naval officers everywhere. When war came in 1914, the world held its breath in anticipation of a modern-day Trafalgar, but dreadnoughts everywhere avoided battle, and when they were forced to fight, the results were inconclusive or irrelevant. In spite of this display of impotence, the world's shipyards continued to turn out the great vessels. The sinking of the heart of the U.S. battlefleet at Pearl Harbor-an event that finally forced the United States into World War II-ironically also began to shake the U.S. Navy free from its infatuation with the dreadnought in favor of the more practical charms of the aircraft carrier. Still, sheer faith in the battleship ensured that it would live to fight again, this time with even more questionable results. In fact, says O'Connell, battleships have never played an important role in the outcome of any modern war, but they have continued to be resurre Writing critically about something you have come to regard with affection must provoke mixed emotions. As I learned more and more about the modern battleship's shortcomings, I found myself, like so many before me, falling under its spell. I have traveled hundreds of miles to visit these wonderful ships, reverently preserved like a necklace of talismans around our nation's coasts. I have stood in awe under the great guns, wondering what it must have been like to hear them fire. Perhaps it is true that their sound and fury signified very little in terms of actual destructive power. But most people thought they did, and that was and still is important. Besides, for the most part, we were proud of those ships. Now we live in a time of weapons so terrible that we must actually hide them-beneath the ground and below the surface of the sea. But, like battleships, they keep the peace precisely because of what others think they can do. All things being equal, who would not prefer the dreadnoughts?