George Washington knew his forces could not win the American Revolutionary War without some measure of sea power. “It follows then as certain as that night succeeds the day,” he later wrote in a letter, “that without a decisive naval force we can do nothing definitive, and with it everything honorable and glorious.”
The problem was that the American commander did not have a navy.
Professor of American History Christopher Magra has taught courses on the American Revolution for more than 20 years and has written two books on its maritime dimensions. Magra explains that Washington’s solution wouldn’t come from a French shipyard or a congressional committee. It would come from a group of angry out-of-work New England fishermen. Read more at The Conversation.
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