Revolution 250 Podcast
Revolution 250 Podcast
The Maddest Idea: Creating a Navy with B. J. Armstrong
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On this episode of the Revolution 250 Podcast, host Professor Robert Allison welcomes Captain B.J. Armstrong, a 27-year officer in the United States Navy, Associate Professor of War Studies and Naval History at the U.S. Naval Academy, and Director of the Naval Academy Museum.
BJ Armstrong's books include Small Boats and Daring Men, about irregular warfare in the Revolution. HIs regular series of blog-posts, "The Maddest Idea," explores the development of the Continental and the United States Navy.
Their conversation explores one of the most daring and often overlooked decisions of the American Revolution: the creation of an American navy. Armstrong discusses the “maddest idea” debated by the Continental Congress in 1775, when a fledgling rebellion challenged the world’s most powerful maritime empire by taking to the sea. From small-boat raids and irregular warfare to the intellectual legacy of naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan, the discussion connects the Revolution’s naval origins to broader questions of maritime strategy and national power.
Together, Allison and Armstrong examine how the Revolutionary generation imagined sea power, why maritime history is central to understanding the struggle for independence, and what the early American Navy can still teach us today.
WEBVTT
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hello everyone welcome to the revolution
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two fifty podcast i'm bob allison i am
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co-chair of the rev two fifty advisory
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group we're a consortium of about seventy
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five organizations in massachusetts
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planning commemorations of american
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independence and our
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Guest today is Captain Benjamin Armstrong,
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Captain BJ Armstrong,
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who is a twenty seven year naval officer.
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He's a captain in the United States Navy,
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as well as an associate professor of war
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studies and naval history at the U.S.
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Naval Academy.
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And he is also the director of the
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Naval Academy Museum.
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So, BJ, thanks so much for joining us.
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Well,
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thank you for having me aboard today.
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And, you know, before we go any further,
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I need to say,
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as you can see from what I'm wearing
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today and my civilian mufti today,
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I am here in my civilian and academic
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capacity.
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And any opinions I express should not be
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construed as opinions or policies of the
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U.S.
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government,
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Department of the Navy or any government
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agencies.
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Thank you very much.
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And also in your civilian capacity,
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you were the author of seven really
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interesting books on different topics.
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One is Small Boats and Daring Men,
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Maritime Raiding,
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Irregular Warfare in the Early American
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Navy,
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as well as Twenty-First Century Mahan.
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And you actually just came out with a
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revised and expanded edition of Mahan.
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And recently you did the series of pieces
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on LinkedIn on the maddest idea of
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founding a Navy,
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looking at the early history of the Navy.
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So thanks for joining us.
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Thanks for having me today.
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So there's a lot to talk about with
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the Navy.
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So if it were you,
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where would you begin?
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Well, you know,
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I kind of like that phrase,
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that idea that I from Samuel Chase,
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a delegate to the Continental Congress.
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So as I mentioned,
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I'm on LinkedIn since the two hundred and
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fiftieth birthday of the Navy back in
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October.
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I've been every week kind of publishing
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some thoughts on the early American Navy
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and how it affects what we think about
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naval power today occasionally.
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And I use that idea.
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You know, Samuel Chase,
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a delegate from Maryland,
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said that building a Navy was the was
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the maddest idea.
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Yeah, yeah.
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This was before the Declaration of
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Independence, too.
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It's before the Declaration.
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It's about a year before the Declaration,
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almost.
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And he's kind of right.
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He goes on to talk about how the
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Royal Navy is the most powerful navy in
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the world and challenging that and
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potentially bankrupting the continent,
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quote unquote, as he says,
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in order to do so just seems crazy
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to him.
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And there are a lot of other delegates
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in the Continental Congress who feel the
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same way.
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And so I think it's really interesting to
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look at the history of the American
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Revolution and the history of the
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Continental Navy and the Continental
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Marine Corps,
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which we have to separate from the United
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States Navy and the United States Marine
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Corps because they are historically
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different organisms.
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But these Continental Maritime Forces are
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they're really a mixed bag when it comes
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to looking at success and failure.
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They have mixed results in terms of how
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much they help the conflict itself.
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And I think because of all that
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complication,
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they're really interesting in helping us
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understand America as a sea power and
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helping us understand what things were
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like in that era.
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Yeah.
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So aside from the cost of doing this
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and the fact,
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can we compete with the biggest Navy in
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the world?
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Are there other factors involved in let's
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not build a Navy?
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So the expense and the potential
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adversary, right, are two of the big ones,
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I think, in the early days.
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Continental Congress discussions,
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we also start to see a little bit
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of sectionalism coming out that's going to
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be a part of American naval power going
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forward into the United States after it's
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formed.
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Craig Simons,
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one of my professors when I was a
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midshipman at the Naval Academy and a
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highly esteemed naval historian,
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his first book was called Navalists and
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Anti-Navalists,
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looking at the early American era.
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And this idea that there were some
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supporters of naval power,
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but there were very much anti-naval power
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folks.
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And it tended to split along those
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sectional lines.
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You know,
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Jefferson and the Democratic Republicans
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largely, you know,
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stereotypically agriculturally focused and
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Western focused didn't seem to support
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naval power very much.
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And the northern folks,
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the more industrial and merchant-oriented
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folks of the Federalist Party did support
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a navy because, honestly,
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it was all about protecting their ships
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when they go out on the world's oceans
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for trade.
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And we start to see some of that
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in the debates of the Continental Congress
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as well.
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We see Southerners who are very suspicious
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of naval power,
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not just for the expense but also for
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what it's going to do to America's
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standing in the world.
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It's going to get the United States
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involved in the world and they want to
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keep this conflict localized and they want
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to keep it as
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Well,
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they want to keep it as small as
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possible, especially in those early days.
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This was before the Declaration of
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Independence.
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They still think there's a chance of
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finding a negotiated settlement here that
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keeps them as part of the empire.
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And so I do think that there's an
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element of the politics at play here as
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well.
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And then some Virginians, like Washington,
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comes to see the importance of having some
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kind of a maritime force.
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And then even Jefferson,
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when he's in Paris and Algiers starts
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capturing American ships,
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he says to Adams,
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we should build a navy.
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And Adams says,
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good luck persuading Virginia to go along
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with that idea.
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You know, Washington, if you had,
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Nat Felbrook's books on Washington,
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and in particular his one,
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In the Hurricane's Eye,
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I'm drawing a blank on the title.
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You know,
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he talks about Washington and Washington's
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maritime background.
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It was actually in that book that I
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first discovered that Washington was
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supposed to be a midshipman in the Royal
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Navy.
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Right, right.
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And his half-brother was an officer.
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Yeah,
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his older brother had set him up with
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a warrant to join the Royal Navy.
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And only because his mom had, you know,
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broken down in tears that her baby boy
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was going to sail down the Rappahannock
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and disappear that he didn't actually go
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do it.
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Washington did have a sense of...
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the fact that the United States was going
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to be a maritime nation.
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It had this long Atlantic seaboard and
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there was no getting around naval power as
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being a part of what the United States
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required.
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And he's got that great quote that he,
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in the letter he writes to Lafayette about
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requiring a Navy for everything honorable
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and glorious.
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Right, right.
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As opposed to the other reasons.
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You also can have a sense of these
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things.
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Thomas Jefferson gets a bad rap.
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Amongst naval historians,
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we tend to focus on the Jeffersonian
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gunboat era when he shrinks the Navy and
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builds the gunboats.
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Yeah.
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But if you read his writings,
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he actually didn't like that idea.
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He actually he wanted frigates.
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He wanted a bigger Navy.
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He didn't think he could convince his
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party and his fellow southern politicians.
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It's a compromise solution to him.
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But he he was more interested in naval
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power than I think he gets credit for.
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I think you're right.
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And certainly during his administration,
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I mean,
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the Navy in the war with Tripoli really
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makes the Navy safe for the republic.
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is one thing that happens in that war.
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And similarly with Madison, I mean,
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you can't, you know,
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the Navy is the hero of the war
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of eighteen twelve,
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which goes very badly in many other ways
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for the United States.
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So they really prove that it's really a
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valuable thing.
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So it does go some way toward convincing
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these Jefferson and his party that
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actually Navy actually could be a
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beneficial thing.
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But it's still an argument we continue to
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have because navies remain expensive and
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complicated.
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think that's the, you know,
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the key element here is that it takes
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so long, right?
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Like we're, we, you know,
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the United States Navy puts a birthday
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quote unquote on the
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But it's really not until eighteen sixteen
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that having a United States Navy is a
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sure thing going forward.
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Yeah.
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You know,
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this debate between what Craig called the
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navalists and anti-navalists goes on for
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decades.
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And I think it's important for us to
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remember that, you know,
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today we have arguably the global naval
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hegemon as part of the United States Navy.
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You know,
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we are the most powerful navy in the
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world.
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And we have been for decades.
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And it's often, you know,
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we often forget as Americans that that has
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not always been the case.
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That's very true.
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And I think right now we're seeing the
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value of having the most powerful Navy in
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the world.
00:09:04.701 --> 00:09:06.403
We're talking with BJ Armstrong,
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who is an associate professor of war
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studies and naval history at the U.S.
00:09:11.645 --> 00:09:14.307
Naval Academy and also is the director of
00:09:14.326 --> 00:09:15.927
the Naval Academy Museum,
00:09:15.967 --> 00:09:17.349
a tremendous museum if you have an
00:09:17.389 --> 00:09:18.528
opportunity to visit it.
00:09:18.568 --> 00:09:20.570
Also the author of Small Boats and Daring
00:09:20.610 --> 00:09:23.631
Men, Maritime Raiding, Irregular Warfare,
00:09:23.751 --> 00:09:25.613
and the Early American Navy.
00:09:26.092 --> 00:09:26.192
Now,
00:09:26.253 --> 00:09:29.475
I don't know if you have a dog
00:09:29.495 --> 00:09:31.216
in this particular fight or if you want
00:09:31.355 --> 00:09:31.456
one,
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but
00:09:33.207 --> 00:09:37.710
Towns like Beverly, Marblehead, Whitehall,
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New York,
00:09:38.570 --> 00:09:41.110
all claim to be the birthplace of the
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Navy.
00:09:41.711 --> 00:09:43.091
Do you want to venture into that
00:09:43.131 --> 00:09:44.432
particular minefield?
00:09:45.072 --> 00:09:47.472
This is a minefield, right?
00:09:47.513 --> 00:09:49.254
Maybe just kind of skirting around the
00:09:49.313 --> 00:09:51.634
edges of why we have a debate is
00:09:51.674 --> 00:09:52.554
really interesting,
00:09:53.075 --> 00:09:55.135
because I think it reflects the fact that
00:09:56.416 --> 00:09:58.476
Americans didn't know what kind of Navy
00:09:58.496 --> 00:10:00.498
they needed or wanted at the very
00:10:00.538 --> 00:10:00.957
beginning.
00:10:02.024 --> 00:10:03.466
The reason we have these different,
00:10:03.745 --> 00:10:04.265
quote unquote,
00:10:04.365 --> 00:10:08.788
birthplaces of the Navy is because during
00:10:08.808 --> 00:10:09.668
the revolution,
00:10:09.909 --> 00:10:12.350
all kinds of people were trying all kinds
00:10:12.390 --> 00:10:13.912
of different naval things.
00:10:15.032 --> 00:10:16.572
You know, my colleague and friend,
00:10:16.753 --> 00:10:17.974
actually a classmate of mine from the
00:10:18.014 --> 00:10:19.174
academy, Joe Slaughter,
00:10:19.195 --> 00:10:20.676
who's a professor at Wesleyan,
00:10:21.556 --> 00:10:22.876
he wrote a chapter in one of our
00:10:22.937 --> 00:10:24.357
textbooks where he kind of
00:10:25.082 --> 00:10:27.445
He categorized the early American,
00:10:27.466 --> 00:10:30.327
the revolutionary navies in different ways
00:10:31.249 --> 00:10:33.091
and dragging this back, you know,
00:10:33.110 --> 00:10:33.751
his ideas,
00:10:33.792 --> 00:10:35.052
dragging them back to the revolution
00:10:35.113 --> 00:10:35.614
itself.
00:10:36.134 --> 00:10:37.436
I've thought about this and I've kind of
00:10:37.475 --> 00:10:39.638
created four categories myself.
00:10:40.818 --> 00:10:42.740
One of them was the Continental Navy
00:10:42.780 --> 00:10:43.201
itself.
00:10:44.591 --> 00:10:46.231
Another one were the state navies,
00:10:46.591 --> 00:10:48.793
because many of the states created their
00:10:49.013 --> 00:10:50.313
own naval forces.
00:10:50.394 --> 00:10:53.115
Now, some had sea-going ships.
00:10:53.274 --> 00:10:55.096
Others, like Pennsylvania's state navy,
00:10:55.135 --> 00:10:57.277
were largely just gunboats for protecting
00:10:57.397 --> 00:10:57.917
Delaware.
00:10:58.717 --> 00:10:59.577
And it's a mixed bag,
00:10:59.618 --> 00:11:01.158
but many of the states create their own
00:11:01.198 --> 00:11:01.538
navies.
00:11:01.599 --> 00:11:02.740
So there's a second navy.
00:11:03.716 --> 00:11:05.857
The third Navy is the privateers,
00:11:06.418 --> 00:11:08.239
because we really can't discount them from
00:11:08.278 --> 00:11:09.899
talking about American Revolution and
00:11:09.940 --> 00:11:10.600
naval power.
00:11:11.461 --> 00:11:14.042
The fourth Navy is that there are these
00:11:14.101 --> 00:11:17.222
Continental Army officers that go around
00:11:17.302 --> 00:11:18.844
creating naval forces.
00:11:20.347 --> 00:11:22.869
George Washington does it off of Boston.
00:11:23.009 --> 00:11:24.210
I know you guys are getting ready to
00:11:24.309 --> 00:11:27.890
celebrate the evacuation day.
00:11:27.951 --> 00:11:30.451
Part of the reason the evacuation happens
00:11:30.591 --> 00:11:32.153
is because of the schooners that
00:11:32.232 --> 00:11:34.493
Washington leases to start attacking the
00:11:34.513 --> 00:11:36.374
British supply ships coming in and out of
00:11:36.394 --> 00:11:36.953
Boston.
00:11:39.095 --> 00:11:41.635
That really only lasts for about a year.
00:11:42.636 --> 00:11:44.456
He really just leases the vessels.
00:11:44.476 --> 00:11:45.878
He doesn't even buy them outright.
00:11:45.898 --> 00:11:45.998
Right.
00:11:47.153 --> 00:11:48.552
And they're just for a particular
00:11:48.633 --> 00:11:50.813
operational purpose to attack these supply
00:11:50.874 --> 00:11:51.293
lines.
00:11:51.673 --> 00:11:53.815
And then, you know, on Lake Champlain,
00:11:53.855 --> 00:11:55.754
we've got Benedict Arnold constructing his
00:11:55.815 --> 00:11:58.076
gunboat fleet for the Battle of Lake
00:11:58.096 --> 00:11:59.676
Champlain and Valcour Island.
00:12:00.956 --> 00:12:01.475
So really,
00:12:01.515 --> 00:12:04.116
we've got those four different kinds of
00:12:04.177 --> 00:12:06.057
naval forces in the revolution for the
00:12:06.077 --> 00:12:06.717
Americans.
00:12:07.258 --> 00:12:08.618
And each one is different.
00:12:08.778 --> 00:12:10.399
It has a different operational purpose.
00:12:10.438 --> 00:12:12.178
It has a different strategic outcome.
00:12:12.938 --> 00:12:14.419
And then, of course, there's a fifth one,
00:12:14.559 --> 00:12:16.039
which is the French Navy.
00:12:16.724 --> 00:12:19.126
which plays a critical role in the end
00:12:19.187 --> 00:12:21.190
of the American Revolution itself.
00:12:21.970 --> 00:12:24.432
And so maybe it makes sense to us
00:12:24.452 --> 00:12:26.155
that we have all these competing claims in
00:12:26.196 --> 00:12:28.498
the birthplace of the American Navy,
00:12:29.099 --> 00:12:31.121
because there are so many different things
00:12:31.162 --> 00:12:33.924
that the colonists and our revolutionaries
00:12:34.065 --> 00:12:35.986
are trying out to develop their naval
00:12:36.008 --> 00:12:36.248
power.
00:12:37.346 --> 00:12:41.067
That's a very deft and politic answer to
00:12:41.246 --> 00:12:42.748
a complicated question.
00:12:43.628 --> 00:12:44.908
And it does make me think of it
00:12:44.928 --> 00:12:45.528
in a new way.
00:12:45.589 --> 00:12:49.610
And some of the folks who become leaders
00:12:49.750 --> 00:12:52.211
in the US Navy are also involved in
00:12:52.230 --> 00:12:53.371
the Continental Navy.
00:12:53.432 --> 00:12:54.552
And I wonder if we could talk about
00:12:54.611 --> 00:12:55.032
some of them,
00:12:55.052 --> 00:12:58.073
like John Barry or Thomas Truxton or
00:12:58.234 --> 00:13:00.835
others who play a role in both.
00:13:00.894 --> 00:13:02.054
In fact, on Boston Common,
00:13:02.075 --> 00:13:03.556
there's a monument to John Barry.
00:13:03.576 --> 00:13:04.375
I don't know if you knew that.
00:13:05.687 --> 00:13:08.610
And John Barry has kind of, you know,
00:13:08.630 --> 00:13:11.852
we've got another one of these contentious
00:13:11.913 --> 00:13:14.115
discussions is who is the father of the
00:13:14.154 --> 00:13:14.956
American Navy?
00:13:16.264 --> 00:13:19.307
We've got Teddy Roosevelt who anointed
00:13:19.366 --> 00:13:21.408
John Paul Jones as the father of the
00:13:21.447 --> 00:13:24.029
American Navy, and we have Jones,
00:13:24.070 --> 00:13:26.191
or at least we believe we have Jones,
00:13:26.250 --> 00:13:28.692
in the crypt of the Naval Academy Chapel.
00:13:29.634 --> 00:13:31.173
But there is a strong case to be
00:13:31.234 --> 00:13:33.816
made that John Barry might be the father
00:13:33.975 --> 00:13:36.317
of the United States Navy because John
00:13:36.337 --> 00:13:38.198
Paul Jones never served in the U.S.
00:13:38.298 --> 00:13:38.538
Navy.
00:13:39.500 --> 00:13:41.640
After the Revolution, he moved to Europe,
00:13:41.801 --> 00:13:43.442
and he actually goes and fights for
00:13:43.522 --> 00:13:44.802
Catherine the Great in Russia.
00:13:45.910 --> 00:13:48.312
And it's John Barry who is who has
00:13:48.392 --> 00:13:49.572
commissioned number one.
00:13:49.611 --> 00:13:51.231
We actually we actually have the
00:13:51.272 --> 00:13:53.312
commission in the museum where I work at
00:13:53.332 --> 00:13:54.472
the Naval Academy Museum.
00:13:55.253 --> 00:13:57.714
He is the very first officer commissioned
00:13:57.874 --> 00:13:59.714
in the United States Navy when it is
00:13:59.854 --> 00:14:03.034
reformed in the seventeen nineties to
00:14:03.095 --> 00:14:05.716
address the challenges that the new Nathan
00:14:05.775 --> 00:14:06.235
faces.
00:14:07.573 --> 00:14:09.195
So Warren is a really interesting guy.
00:14:09.855 --> 00:14:11.998
He serves in the American Revolution.
00:14:12.038 --> 00:14:14.220
He serves well in the American Revolution.
00:14:14.519 --> 00:14:16.301
He does have,
00:14:17.581 --> 00:14:20.404
let's just say he's not worthy the way
00:14:20.445 --> 00:14:21.466
John Paul Jones was.
00:14:22.465 --> 00:14:26.129
John Paul Jones was a very adept self
00:14:26.389 --> 00:14:28.972
promoter, adept self promoter.
00:14:29.793 --> 00:14:31.095
One of my favorite stories of him is
00:14:31.134 --> 00:14:32.496
that famous sculpture,
00:14:32.517 --> 00:14:33.818
the famous bust of him,
00:14:34.339 --> 00:14:37.383
that he had twenty some copies made so
00:14:37.423 --> 00:14:38.924
that he could distribute them to the
00:14:38.965 --> 00:14:40.767
people he thought needed to remember him.
00:14:41.647 --> 00:14:43.008
That's why you find them all over the
00:14:43.028 --> 00:14:43.327
world.
00:14:43.628 --> 00:14:47.130
I've seen one at the Greenwich Maritime
00:14:47.711 --> 00:14:48.270
Museum.
00:14:48.331 --> 00:14:49.831
We have one at the Naval Academy.
00:14:49.851 --> 00:14:51.033
There's one in the Pentagon.
00:14:51.734 --> 00:14:54.655
Both of these are going around because
00:14:54.735 --> 00:14:56.876
Jones needed to make sure we remembered
00:14:56.897 --> 00:14:57.076
him.
00:14:57.437 --> 00:14:58.538
Barry wasn't like that.
00:14:58.577 --> 00:15:00.339
Barry was more of the kind of quiet
00:15:00.379 --> 00:15:00.919
professional.
00:15:02.576 --> 00:15:03.356
Yeah.
00:15:03.496 --> 00:15:05.337
And he had a significant role in the
00:15:05.398 --> 00:15:07.099
formation of the United States Navy.
00:15:07.219 --> 00:15:09.921
You know, he's the very first captain.
00:15:10.480 --> 00:15:12.282
He has a significant role to play in
00:15:12.302 --> 00:15:15.063
the quasi war and helping to develop the
00:15:15.083 --> 00:15:16.344
way the Navy deploys,
00:15:16.403 --> 00:15:19.365
the way the Navy thinks about preparing
00:15:19.385 --> 00:15:20.807
ships and sending them to sea.
00:15:22.469 --> 00:15:24.510
And then the other person you mentioned
00:15:24.530 --> 00:15:25.652
was Thomas Truxton,
00:15:26.673 --> 00:15:28.453
also one of the first captains of the
00:15:28.494 --> 00:15:29.534
United States Navy.
00:15:29.674 --> 00:15:32.096
Truxton was a privateer during the
00:15:32.277 --> 00:15:34.778
American Revolution and a successful one
00:15:35.720 --> 00:15:36.160
as well.
00:15:36.640 --> 00:15:39.123
He and Jones actually had a run-in in
00:15:39.202 --> 00:15:39.764
France.
00:15:40.224 --> 00:15:41.365
They didn't really get along,
00:15:41.424 --> 00:15:42.365
didn't really like each other.
00:15:43.787 --> 00:15:45.227
It's kind of common for John Paul Jones.
00:15:45.288 --> 00:15:46.548
Not a lot of people really got along
00:15:46.568 --> 00:15:46.870
with him.
00:15:48.349 --> 00:15:50.509
But Houston goes on to have the first
00:15:50.570 --> 00:15:54.011
two really significant naval victories of
00:15:54.052 --> 00:15:55.572
the United States Navy during the
00:15:55.592 --> 00:15:57.293
Quasi-War when he's in command of
00:15:57.333 --> 00:15:58.193
Constellation,
00:15:58.894 --> 00:16:00.674
when he defeats the Insurgent and the
00:16:00.695 --> 00:16:01.416
Vengeance,
00:16:01.556 --> 00:16:02.895
the French frigates that are in the
00:16:02.936 --> 00:16:04.236
Caribbean during the Quasi-War.
00:16:05.480 --> 00:16:09.803
And so there's this break between the
00:16:09.884 --> 00:16:12.065
Revolution and the formation of the United
00:16:12.105 --> 00:16:12.926
States Navy.
00:16:13.566 --> 00:16:14.866
It's about a decade,
00:16:14.886 --> 00:16:16.307
a little bit more than a decade.
00:16:17.089 --> 00:16:20.171
But many of these men who sailed in
00:16:20.191 --> 00:16:22.091
the Revolution and gained a lot of great
00:16:22.131 --> 00:16:23.552
experience in the Revolution,
00:16:23.952 --> 00:16:25.134
they are the ones who go on to
00:16:25.173 --> 00:16:27.394
found the service that we know today as
00:16:27.434 --> 00:16:28.255
the United States Navy.
00:16:29.667 --> 00:16:31.609
It's really an interesting story about how
00:16:31.729 --> 00:16:33.289
it comes to be when, as you said,
00:16:33.330 --> 00:16:34.951
there's a real question about whether it
00:16:34.971 --> 00:16:38.495
would come to be in these individuals who
00:16:38.534 --> 00:16:41.496
are really important in making it happen.
00:16:44.013 --> 00:16:46.195
We also have certain innovations that
00:16:46.235 --> 00:16:47.456
happen in the Navy.
00:16:48.017 --> 00:16:50.499
David Bushnell develops the Turtle,
00:16:50.519 --> 00:16:53.022
which is an attempt to get into submarine
00:16:53.062 --> 00:16:54.783
warfare during the Revolution.
00:16:54.802 --> 00:16:55.844
I wonder if we want to say anything
00:16:55.864 --> 00:16:56.365
about that.
00:16:57.426 --> 00:16:59.268
I guess you have this idea that if
00:16:59.288 --> 00:17:01.370
you can't build enough ships to contest
00:17:01.389 --> 00:17:02.250
those on the surface,
00:17:02.291 --> 00:17:03.412
you find a way to
00:17:05.178 --> 00:17:06.759
basically destroy them or blow them up.
00:17:06.818 --> 00:17:10.361
Well, in modern naval violence, right,
00:17:10.381 --> 00:17:12.521
we call this asymmetric approaches to
00:17:12.582 --> 00:17:13.541
conflict, right?
00:17:13.982 --> 00:17:17.104
If your enemy is the biggest and best
00:17:17.304 --> 00:17:18.644
at insert the blank,
00:17:19.144 --> 00:17:21.226
you don't do that thing against them.
00:17:21.266 --> 00:17:23.186
You go find something else that's
00:17:23.287 --> 00:17:24.008
asymmetrical.
00:17:24.048 --> 00:17:25.828
And so Bushnell and his attempt at a
00:17:25.868 --> 00:17:27.930
submarine is kind of a great example of
00:17:27.970 --> 00:17:28.230
that.
00:17:28.894 --> 00:17:29.594
In the War of XVIII,
00:17:30.054 --> 00:17:31.734
we've got Robert Fulton developing
00:17:32.214 --> 00:17:32.875
torpedoes.
00:17:32.914 --> 00:17:34.474
What we know of today is sea mines
00:17:34.494 --> 00:17:36.155
with that same thing in mind.
00:17:37.256 --> 00:17:37.556
And, you know,
00:17:37.576 --> 00:17:40.076
when we look at naval history across time,
00:17:40.116 --> 00:17:42.196
that is a common element of it,
00:17:42.257 --> 00:17:43.678
even up until the present day.
00:17:44.057 --> 00:17:45.817
I talk with my students a good deal
00:17:45.917 --> 00:17:47.458
about the war in Ukraine,
00:17:47.498 --> 00:17:49.739
and we keep track of how the Ukrainians
00:17:49.898 --> 00:17:52.200
are exercising their coastal defense and
00:17:52.240 --> 00:17:52.880
naval power.
00:17:53.440 --> 00:17:55.500
And it's very much an asymmetric approach
00:17:55.519 --> 00:17:57.520
to things because they don't have a
00:17:57.560 --> 00:17:58.421
classical navy.
00:17:59.992 --> 00:18:01.653
And so I do think that those are
00:18:02.074 --> 00:18:03.255
interesting elements.
00:18:04.075 --> 00:18:04.496
Honestly,
00:18:04.556 --> 00:18:06.696
privateers are one of those things that
00:18:06.757 --> 00:18:09.638
seem foreign to us today that were an
00:18:09.719 --> 00:18:12.000
asymmetric approach to conflict in the
00:18:12.080 --> 00:18:13.401
American Revolution as well.
00:18:13.461 --> 00:18:16.262
And I was going to ask,
00:18:16.282 --> 00:18:18.384
since you do teach at the Naval Academy,
00:18:18.444 --> 00:18:20.726
where you're not simply teaching what
00:18:20.786 --> 00:18:21.787
happened in the past,
00:18:21.807 --> 00:18:22.567
but you're looking for...
00:18:23.549 --> 00:18:25.651
things that leaders in the Navy today need
00:18:25.671 --> 00:18:27.510
to know is how do you translate this
00:18:27.550 --> 00:18:29.491
or what is it that you can draw
00:18:29.551 --> 00:18:31.673
from the stories of the founding of the
00:18:31.712 --> 00:18:34.953
Navy or men like Barry and Truxton and
00:18:34.993 --> 00:18:38.075
John Paul Jones that is something that
00:18:38.434 --> 00:18:41.855
naval officers today should be able to
00:18:41.915 --> 00:18:43.557
have in their memory bank.
00:18:44.789 --> 00:18:44.910
Yeah,
00:18:45.009 --> 00:18:46.550
I think it's worth pointing out that
00:18:46.830 --> 00:18:48.071
working in the history department,
00:18:48.132 --> 00:18:49.093
the Naval Academy,
00:18:49.173 --> 00:18:51.054
we are an academic history department.
00:18:51.134 --> 00:18:51.374
Right.
00:18:51.473 --> 00:18:54.896
We we approach this in an educational
00:18:56.377 --> 00:18:58.598
approach rather than a training approach.
00:18:59.318 --> 00:18:59.439
Right.
00:18:59.460 --> 00:19:01.480
And really what we're trying to do with
00:19:01.520 --> 00:19:02.842
our students is to get them to think.
00:19:03.402 --> 00:19:05.203
Get them to consider what happened in the
00:19:05.263 --> 00:19:05.763
past.
00:19:06.204 --> 00:19:07.365
And as you pointed out,
00:19:07.746 --> 00:19:09.788
try to make some connections to the
00:19:09.827 --> 00:19:11.869
challenges of our contemporary moment.
00:19:11.970 --> 00:19:12.349
Yes.
00:19:12.951 --> 00:19:14.711
But also not to take those too far.
00:19:14.912 --> 00:19:15.192
Right.
00:19:15.232 --> 00:19:17.094
Like Sir Michael Howard famously said,
00:19:17.134 --> 00:19:18.695
there are no lessons of history.
00:19:18.736 --> 00:19:20.837
There are only lessons from historians.
00:19:21.480 --> 00:19:21.759
Right.
00:19:21.799 --> 00:19:22.119
Yeah.
00:19:22.140 --> 00:19:22.259
Right.
00:19:22.279 --> 00:19:23.540
Everything is interpretive.
00:19:24.840 --> 00:19:25.622
And, you know,
00:19:25.642 --> 00:19:27.761
I also like that great apocryphal Mark
00:19:27.801 --> 00:19:29.782
Twain quote that history doesn't repeat
00:19:29.823 --> 00:19:31.784
itself, but it certainly does rhyme.
00:19:32.044 --> 00:19:32.743
Yeah.
00:19:32.763 --> 00:19:34.305
We want to make sure that our students
00:19:34.384 --> 00:19:37.226
are not trying to repeat what has happened
00:19:37.306 --> 00:19:38.105
in the past.
00:19:38.145 --> 00:19:40.326
History is not a checklist that will tell
00:19:40.366 --> 00:19:41.688
you what you can do today.
00:19:42.667 --> 00:19:44.489
I often frame it for them as history
00:19:44.528 --> 00:19:46.410
is going to have a knowledge of history
00:19:46.450 --> 00:19:48.250
and thinking historically is going to
00:19:48.270 --> 00:19:51.073
allow you to ask questions about what's
00:19:51.093 --> 00:19:53.453
happening today so that you can approach
00:19:53.493 --> 00:19:55.355
finding the right answers for today.
00:19:56.856 --> 00:19:57.958
But you're exactly right.
00:19:57.998 --> 00:19:59.679
There are key things from the American
00:19:59.719 --> 00:20:02.540
Revolution that even today we see as
00:20:02.641 --> 00:20:04.402
really important to American naval power.
00:20:04.882 --> 00:20:06.763
One of the big pushes in the United
00:20:06.784 --> 00:20:08.585
States today when it comes to naval power
00:20:08.964 --> 00:20:11.567
is a discussion of the maritime industrial
00:20:11.606 --> 00:20:11.926
base.
00:20:13.018 --> 00:20:14.858
How many shipyards do we have?
00:20:14.878 --> 00:20:16.799
How many big shipyards that can build
00:20:16.880 --> 00:20:18.380
complex warships?
00:20:18.780 --> 00:20:20.780
What's the supply chain like for those
00:20:20.820 --> 00:20:21.541
shipyards?
00:20:22.261 --> 00:20:24.282
These are all things that the current
00:20:24.303 --> 00:20:25.022
administration,
00:20:25.063 --> 00:20:26.323
the previous administration,
00:20:26.423 --> 00:20:29.244
others have worked on for quite some time
00:20:29.944 --> 00:20:32.625
and was a key element of the challenge
00:20:32.645 --> 00:20:34.067
that the Americans faced in the
00:20:34.106 --> 00:20:34.707
revolution.
00:20:35.559 --> 00:20:38.240
Figuring out how to build complex,
00:20:38.500 --> 00:20:40.761
purpose-built and designed warships,
00:20:41.561 --> 00:20:42.642
it's a hard thing.
00:20:42.741 --> 00:20:44.663
And it's different from just building a
00:20:44.682 --> 00:20:45.262
merchant vessel.
00:20:45.282 --> 00:20:47.923
And the Americans in the Revolution pretty
00:20:47.983 --> 00:20:49.403
much discovered this, right?
00:20:49.963 --> 00:20:52.744
When they tried to form the Continental
00:20:52.785 --> 00:20:54.865
Navy, the first ships they did it with.
00:20:55.531 --> 00:20:56.853
were converted merchantmen.
00:20:57.752 --> 00:20:58.554
Joshua Humphreys,
00:20:58.673 --> 00:21:00.153
his tip yard in Philadelphia,
00:21:00.294 --> 00:21:02.015
brought in a couple of merchantmen and
00:21:02.055 --> 00:21:06.096
started reinforcing the decks so that they
00:21:06.116 --> 00:21:07.998
could hold the cannon and the bulwarks and
00:21:08.018 --> 00:21:10.599
the gunnels so that they could hold the
00:21:10.640 --> 00:21:12.800
heavier material of a warship.
00:21:13.654 --> 00:21:15.596
Redesigning the interior so there was more
00:21:15.636 --> 00:21:17.719
room for more sailors and doing those
00:21:17.739 --> 00:21:18.459
kinds of things.
00:21:19.000 --> 00:21:20.300
But very quickly,
00:21:20.540 --> 00:21:23.483
after December of seventeen seventy five,
00:21:23.523 --> 00:21:25.726
the Americans started to try to actually
00:21:25.846 --> 00:21:27.968
build frigates from scratch.
00:21:29.349 --> 00:21:29.970
It's delightful.
00:21:30.009 --> 00:21:32.352
If you read that first congressional
00:21:32.813 --> 00:21:34.594
resolution on building the frigates,
00:21:35.115 --> 00:21:36.615
they think they're going to have them done
00:21:36.655 --> 00:21:37.817
in ninety days.
00:21:37.836 --> 00:21:38.198
Yeah.
00:21:39.133 --> 00:21:43.675
And they have a very unrealistic budget
00:21:44.016 --> 00:21:45.916
for what it's going to take to build
00:21:45.957 --> 00:21:47.718
these ships, too.
00:21:47.817 --> 00:21:50.140
And then they spread them out across seven
00:21:50.200 --> 00:21:52.300
different cities to build them in.
00:21:53.281 --> 00:21:55.563
And so now they've got a huge complication
00:21:55.603 --> 00:21:56.363
of logistics.
00:21:56.443 --> 00:21:58.265
How do you get the supplies that those
00:21:58.325 --> 00:22:00.625
seven different shipyards need to them all
00:22:00.645 --> 00:22:01.586
at the same time?
00:22:02.406 --> 00:22:04.868
And they start discovering this is way
00:22:04.949 --> 00:22:06.670
harder than it looks on paper.
00:22:08.067 --> 00:22:10.548
The British make this look really easy
00:22:10.607 --> 00:22:12.348
because they've developed their maritime
00:22:12.388 --> 00:22:14.169
power over a couple centuries,
00:22:14.288 --> 00:22:16.769
and they have figured out that there's a
00:22:16.950 --> 00:22:19.290
bureaucracy and an administration that
00:22:19.330 --> 00:22:22.832
goes alongside running a powerful navy to
00:22:22.872 --> 00:22:24.653
manage the finances and manage the
00:22:24.692 --> 00:22:27.113
supplies and the logistics and dockyards
00:22:27.153 --> 00:22:27.773
and all that.
00:22:28.273 --> 00:22:30.454
The Americans really don't understand any
00:22:30.494 --> 00:22:31.295
of that at first.
00:22:32.509 --> 00:22:34.431
And they struggle throughout the war.
00:22:34.451 --> 00:22:36.211
You know, those first thirteen frigates,
00:22:36.352 --> 00:22:37.012
I think it's what,
00:22:37.133 --> 00:22:38.294
six of them get to sea.
00:22:38.334 --> 00:22:40.715
They're all captured or defeated.
00:22:41.296 --> 00:22:44.038
The rest are pretty much burned at the
00:22:44.378 --> 00:22:46.901
yards or on the wharfs as the British
00:22:46.941 --> 00:22:48.521
come to attack the cities that they're
00:22:48.541 --> 00:22:49.442
being built in.
00:22:50.183 --> 00:22:51.625
They're kind of a failure.
00:22:51.644 --> 00:22:51.744
Right.
00:22:53.598 --> 00:22:55.560
And a measure of that is because they're
00:22:55.601 --> 00:22:57.104
not built in ninety days.
00:22:57.163 --> 00:22:59.547
Many of them take years to be finished.
00:23:00.228 --> 00:23:02.371
And it's because a maritime industrial
00:23:02.391 --> 00:23:05.455
base is a challenging thing.
00:23:05.496 --> 00:23:07.499
Building ships is hard and expensive.
00:23:08.682 --> 00:23:09.344
Yeah.
00:23:09.364 --> 00:23:10.545
And it does seem like they learned a
00:23:10.585 --> 00:23:12.566
few things by the seventeen nineties when
00:23:12.605 --> 00:23:14.288
then they build the six frigates.
00:23:14.407 --> 00:23:14.548
Well,
00:23:14.567 --> 00:23:16.328
they actually finished three initially
00:23:16.368 --> 00:23:16.809
because, again,
00:23:16.829 --> 00:23:18.411
they're more expensive and take longer
00:23:18.431 --> 00:23:19.511
than they anticipated.
00:23:20.392 --> 00:23:22.554
And so so they had learned that.
00:23:22.634 --> 00:23:24.055
And at that point,
00:23:24.095 --> 00:23:27.258
then Fox and Humphreys are able to make
00:23:27.278 --> 00:23:29.480
some really interesting innovations in the
00:23:29.500 --> 00:23:30.760
design of these frigates.
00:23:32.196 --> 00:23:33.218
That's a great point.
00:23:33.538 --> 00:23:34.699
And it's another example, right?
00:23:34.719 --> 00:23:38.321
So they learn things from the experience
00:23:38.342 --> 00:23:39.482
of the revolution, right?
00:23:39.542 --> 00:23:41.284
Humphreys has been running this shipyard
00:23:41.324 --> 00:23:42.904
in Philadelphia through the revolution.
00:23:42.924 --> 00:23:44.266
He learns an enormous amount.
00:23:44.787 --> 00:23:46.147
But what do they do when we get
00:23:46.188 --> 00:23:47.888
to the seventeen nineties and it's time to
00:23:47.909 --> 00:23:48.849
construct frigates?
00:23:49.410 --> 00:23:51.412
They don't take the lessons that they've
00:23:51.511 --> 00:23:54.693
learned really produce the same kind of
00:23:54.713 --> 00:23:56.596
ship that they now know how to make.
00:23:57.384 --> 00:23:59.426
They've got to go one step further and
00:23:59.487 --> 00:24:01.950
create these innovative super frigates,
00:24:01.990 --> 00:24:05.032
these designed, you know,
00:24:05.253 --> 00:24:08.317
live oak constructed massive forty four
00:24:08.356 --> 00:24:10.960
gun frigates with all of the design
00:24:11.019 --> 00:24:12.803
elements that are new and innovative in
00:24:12.843 --> 00:24:15.346
order to keep the fogging or bending under
00:24:15.445 --> 00:24:16.105
all the weight.
00:24:17.596 --> 00:24:18.455
And Humphreys,
00:24:18.635 --> 00:24:20.176
and you mentioned Josiah Fox,
00:24:20.278 --> 00:24:22.659
who are the two main constructors of the
00:24:22.699 --> 00:24:24.601
United States Navy when it's formed in the
00:24:24.641 --> 00:24:25.381
seventeen nineties.
00:24:26.041 --> 00:24:29.703
They have a really contentious debate over
00:24:29.723 --> 00:24:32.066
the construction of these ships because
00:24:32.105 --> 00:24:34.367
Humphreys says we should build the most
00:24:34.407 --> 00:24:36.028
powerful in the world because we're only
00:24:36.048 --> 00:24:37.970
going to be able to build a couple
00:24:38.029 --> 00:24:38.471
of them.
00:24:38.510 --> 00:24:39.951
We don't have the money for a big
00:24:40.011 --> 00:24:40.352
Navy.
00:24:40.852 --> 00:24:41.913
So we need to have the biggest and
00:24:41.952 --> 00:24:43.653
most powerful, most innovative thing,
00:24:43.815 --> 00:24:45.134
even if we can't build a lot of
00:24:45.154 --> 00:24:45.256
them.
00:24:46.056 --> 00:24:46.777
And Fox,
00:24:47.237 --> 00:24:48.858
coming from a British background and
00:24:48.919 --> 00:24:50.759
having worked in the dockyards in Britain,
00:24:51.280 --> 00:24:53.061
is more interested in know if we're
00:24:53.082 --> 00:24:55.384
efficient and we have standardized smaller
00:24:55.423 --> 00:24:55.805
designs,
00:24:55.845 --> 00:24:57.405
we can construct more of them and we
00:24:57.425 --> 00:24:59.007
can cover more of the coastline and
00:24:59.028 --> 00:25:00.288
they're going to be more effective.
00:25:00.909 --> 00:25:03.791
This is debate on force design that goes
00:25:03.832 --> 00:25:05.452
throughout American history.
00:25:06.193 --> 00:25:07.855
And we even see to a certain extent
00:25:07.894 --> 00:25:10.657
today, you know, bigger, more powerful,
00:25:10.798 --> 00:25:11.959
but fewer ships.
00:25:12.785 --> 00:25:14.586
Or smaller, more numerous,
00:25:15.246 --> 00:25:17.067
more easily constructed and more efficient
00:25:17.086 --> 00:25:19.328
to construct that you can spread out?
00:25:19.548 --> 00:25:21.108
This is a core debate.
00:25:22.170 --> 00:25:22.630
And really,
00:25:22.710 --> 00:25:24.330
they come out of the American Revolution
00:25:25.152 --> 00:25:27.173
wanting to reinvent their ideas all over
00:25:27.212 --> 00:25:27.492
again,
00:25:27.613 --> 00:25:28.993
which I also feel like is a very
00:25:29.013 --> 00:25:29.894
American thing.
00:25:30.153 --> 00:25:31.474
We're all about innovation.
00:25:31.535 --> 00:25:32.875
We're all about doing something new and
00:25:32.915 --> 00:25:35.537
exciting and better the next time.
00:25:36.163 --> 00:25:37.505
Yeah, yeah.
00:25:37.645 --> 00:25:39.508
And I was also thinking about the huge
00:25:39.548 --> 00:25:41.068
ships that we built after the War of
00:25:41.128 --> 00:25:41.829
eighteen twelve,
00:25:41.869 --> 00:25:44.071
and many of them never get get finished
00:25:44.132 --> 00:25:46.375
and then wind up as simply as barracks.
00:25:46.974 --> 00:25:47.355
Yeah, right.
00:25:47.395 --> 00:25:48.856
We got five ships of the line that
00:25:48.896 --> 00:25:49.317
get built.
00:25:49.417 --> 00:25:51.160
I think only three of them ever really
00:25:51.200 --> 00:25:52.221
go on a deployment.
00:25:53.315 --> 00:25:55.016
It's similar in the Revolution.
00:25:55.276 --> 00:25:57.576
The last ship that the Continental Navy
00:25:57.636 --> 00:25:59.758
has under construction as the Revolution
00:25:59.938 --> 00:26:01.939
ends is the ship of the line America.
00:26:02.878 --> 00:26:04.380
And you want to talk about hubris.
00:26:04.440 --> 00:26:06.280
The Americans thinking that they're going
00:26:06.320 --> 00:26:07.842
to build one of the most powerful
00:26:07.882 --> 00:26:10.303
battleships in the world in one of these
00:26:10.363 --> 00:26:12.124
shipyards that they can barely build
00:26:12.163 --> 00:26:14.944
privateers and frigates in is kind of
00:26:14.984 --> 00:26:15.424
crazy.
00:26:16.184 --> 00:26:17.346
I mean, they actually do.
00:26:17.546 --> 00:26:18.707
America is finished.
00:26:18.866 --> 00:26:20.207
It's just not done in time for the
00:26:20.346 --> 00:26:21.708
war to be over.
00:26:22.500 --> 00:26:23.281
And then at the end,
00:26:23.342 --> 00:26:24.222
what do they do with it?
00:26:24.282 --> 00:26:24.482
Well,
00:26:24.522 --> 00:26:25.943
they give the ship to the French as
00:26:25.983 --> 00:26:27.525
a thank you gift for the French
00:26:27.565 --> 00:26:28.526
involvement in the war.
00:26:30.990 --> 00:26:32.351
We're talking with B.J.
00:26:32.431 --> 00:26:33.652
Armstrong, Captain B.J.
00:26:33.731 --> 00:26:34.352
Armstrong,
00:26:34.413 --> 00:26:36.253
who's an associate professor of war
00:26:36.294 --> 00:26:38.516
studies and naval history at the U.S.
00:26:38.556 --> 00:26:39.395
Naval Academy,
00:26:39.916 --> 00:26:42.057
as well as being the director of the
00:26:42.097 --> 00:26:43.479
Naval Academy Museum,
00:26:44.660 --> 00:26:46.942
author of Small Boats and Daring Men,
00:26:46.981 --> 00:26:48.041
Maritime Raiding,
00:26:48.103 --> 00:26:50.483
Irregular Warfare in the Early American
00:26:50.523 --> 00:26:50.924
Navy,
00:26:51.765 --> 00:26:54.866
as well as Twenty-First Century Mahan,
00:26:54.926 --> 00:26:56.509
revised and expanded edition,
00:26:56.568 --> 00:26:57.750
recently came out.
00:27:00.011 --> 00:27:02.794
There are so many great stories to tell
00:27:02.814 --> 00:27:03.654
about the Navy.
00:27:03.714 --> 00:27:05.636
I'm just wondering about your role as the
00:27:05.696 --> 00:27:08.259
director of the Naval Academy Museum.
00:27:09.813 --> 00:27:10.513
you know,
00:27:10.594 --> 00:27:12.994
how you decide what to focus on or
00:27:13.015 --> 00:27:15.517
if it's simply a position where the
00:27:15.797 --> 00:27:17.198
exhibits are there and we,
00:27:18.259 --> 00:27:19.259
can we talk a little bit about the
00:27:19.299 --> 00:27:19.700
museum?
00:27:19.720 --> 00:27:20.660
Because it's such a great place.
00:27:20.681 --> 00:27:21.421
Yeah, absolutely.
00:27:22.301 --> 00:27:22.521
You know,
00:27:22.561 --> 00:27:24.782
Google thinks in terms of how we think
00:27:24.803 --> 00:27:25.723
about our museum,
00:27:25.763 --> 00:27:27.305
we consider ourselves a little bit
00:27:27.444 --> 00:27:30.307
different from most other museums,
00:27:30.366 --> 00:27:32.167
including most of the Navy's other
00:27:32.228 --> 00:27:32.769
museums,
00:27:33.628 --> 00:27:35.371
in that we think of ourselves as an
00:27:35.471 --> 00:27:37.211
undergraduate teaching museum.
00:27:37.951 --> 00:27:38.153
You know,
00:27:38.173 --> 00:27:40.265
our primary job is the midshipmen.
00:27:41.631 --> 00:27:43.372
And the midshipmen come to the museum for
00:27:43.412 --> 00:27:43.852
class.
00:27:44.471 --> 00:27:46.731
We have a classroom that's actually in the
00:27:46.771 --> 00:27:47.653
museum itself.
00:27:47.692 --> 00:27:49.032
So the classes I teach,
00:27:49.173 --> 00:27:51.253
I teach physically in the museum and
00:27:51.294 --> 00:27:53.054
several of the other professors do.
00:27:53.854 --> 00:27:54.973
But we also have classes.
00:27:54.993 --> 00:27:56.515
We have an education specialist,
00:27:56.535 --> 00:27:57.434
Sandra Duplantis,
00:27:57.974 --> 00:27:59.695
who coordinates with professors.
00:27:59.816 --> 00:28:02.096
And we have professors from disciplines
00:28:02.115 --> 00:28:05.136
from across our institution who come to
00:28:05.217 --> 00:28:07.998
the museum with their students for maybe
00:28:08.038 --> 00:28:09.238
just one class section.
00:28:09.978 --> 00:28:11.838
But to discuss different things that the
00:28:11.878 --> 00:28:13.720
museum can help them with.
00:28:13.859 --> 00:28:15.080
We get a lot of business, obviously,
00:28:15.101 --> 00:28:16.080
from the history department,
00:28:16.741 --> 00:28:19.222
but also from political science and from
00:28:19.262 --> 00:28:21.683
the language department and from even the
00:28:21.723 --> 00:28:23.805
English department and from our STEM
00:28:23.845 --> 00:28:24.865
disciplines as well.
00:28:25.806 --> 00:28:28.307
There was a really cool project done with
00:28:28.327 --> 00:28:29.907
the physics department a couple of years
00:28:29.949 --> 00:28:32.109
ago under my predecessor, Dr. Barabay.
00:28:32.930 --> 00:28:35.513
Where we have one of our own facts
00:28:35.694 --> 00:28:37.397
is a pair of field glasses that was
00:28:37.478 --> 00:28:40.382
recovered from Iwo Jima on Mount Suribachi
00:28:40.903 --> 00:28:41.805
in the Second World War.
00:28:42.887 --> 00:28:45.588
And a group of students from the physics
00:28:45.608 --> 00:28:48.230
department in an optics class took the
00:28:48.269 --> 00:28:50.351
field glasses to the top of the Mahan
00:28:50.371 --> 00:28:53.251
Hall bell tower and looked out across the
00:28:53.311 --> 00:28:55.813
Severn River towards the naval station to
00:28:55.952 --> 00:28:58.553
try and measure the targets out there in
00:28:58.573 --> 00:28:59.114
the naval station.
00:28:59.513 --> 00:29:01.354
And they wanted to measure how effective
00:29:01.374 --> 00:29:04.174
the glasses were and then use that on
00:29:04.234 --> 00:29:06.836
a map of Iwo Jima to determine how
00:29:06.915 --> 00:29:09.076
far the Japanese general looking through
00:29:09.096 --> 00:29:11.458
the glasses could see during the battle.
00:29:12.208 --> 00:29:13.488
Wow, amazing.
00:29:13.508 --> 00:29:15.568
So now we've got history and physics
00:29:15.628 --> 00:29:18.528
coming together in how we're teaching
00:29:18.568 --> 00:29:19.190
midshipmen.
00:29:19.789 --> 00:29:22.089
And it's really those kinds of projects
00:29:22.150 --> 00:29:24.451
are some of the delightful elements of
00:29:24.550 --> 00:29:26.490
working in the Naval Academy Museum.
00:29:27.991 --> 00:29:29.332
Exhibit space itself,
00:29:29.571 --> 00:29:32.373
we've got two floors of exhibit space.
00:29:32.432 --> 00:29:34.053
The main deck, the first floor,
00:29:34.633 --> 00:29:36.294
is really the two hundred and fifty year
00:29:36.334 --> 00:29:37.134
history of the U.S.
00:29:37.173 --> 00:29:38.034
Navy and Marine Corps.
00:29:39.653 --> 00:29:40.693
And we need to make sure that we
00:29:40.733 --> 00:29:42.315
emphasize the Marine Corps is in there as
00:29:42.394 --> 00:29:42.714
well.
00:29:42.815 --> 00:29:44.896
About twenty to twenty five percent of
00:29:44.957 --> 00:29:47.258
midshipmen who graduate go on to be
00:29:47.358 --> 00:29:49.059
officers in the United States Marine
00:29:49.079 --> 00:29:49.400
Corps.
00:29:50.621 --> 00:29:51.602
And so it's you know,
00:29:51.642 --> 00:29:55.444
it's your it's a well-designed museum with
00:29:55.505 --> 00:29:57.586
a circuitous little path through that we
00:29:57.625 --> 00:29:59.627
hit all the highlights of two hundred and
00:29:59.667 --> 00:30:00.828
fifty years of history.
00:30:02.105 --> 00:30:03.605
Upstairs on the second deck,
00:30:03.645 --> 00:30:05.346
we have our ship model gallery.
00:30:06.508 --> 00:30:08.729
We have one of the best ship model
00:30:08.749 --> 00:30:10.931
collections in the world at the Naval
00:30:10.951 --> 00:30:11.411
Academy.
00:30:12.172 --> 00:30:13.692
It is a delight every time I go
00:30:13.752 --> 00:30:16.114
visit our friends at Greenwich in the UK
00:30:16.733 --> 00:30:18.375
to talk ship models with them because
00:30:18.715 --> 00:30:19.997
they're what we consider a peer
00:30:20.057 --> 00:30:21.698
institution when it comes to ship model
00:30:21.718 --> 00:30:22.137
collection.
00:30:23.365 --> 00:30:25.506
And so that collection is on the upstairs.
00:30:25.665 --> 00:30:27.448
So upstairs we focus on the Age of
00:30:27.548 --> 00:30:29.169
Sail because that's what most of our ship
00:30:29.209 --> 00:30:29.969
models come from.
00:30:30.809 --> 00:30:32.570
Many of them are dockyard models from the
00:30:32.611 --> 00:30:33.351
United Kingdom.
00:30:34.211 --> 00:30:36.432
And it's really a fascinating collection,
00:30:36.492 --> 00:30:37.773
both from its history,
00:30:38.314 --> 00:30:41.635
but also the pure artistry of these model
00:30:41.675 --> 00:30:43.876
makers and some of the things that they've
00:30:43.936 --> 00:30:44.298
done.
00:30:44.978 --> 00:30:47.058
One of the really stunning collections
00:30:47.078 --> 00:30:49.461
that we have is the bone models from
00:30:49.480 --> 00:30:50.201
the Napoleonic.
00:30:50.221 --> 00:30:50.701
Oh, yeah, yeah.
00:30:51.902 --> 00:30:54.284
So French prisoners of war in British
00:30:54.364 --> 00:30:57.266
prisons would construct models of the
00:30:57.306 --> 00:31:00.407
ships they had served on from bones,
00:31:00.488 --> 00:31:02.648
leftover bones from their meals or,
00:31:02.769 --> 00:31:03.170
frankly,
00:31:03.190 --> 00:31:05.090
from rats that they captured in the prison
00:31:05.131 --> 00:31:05.911
and killed.
00:31:07.071 --> 00:31:08.792
And they made these models,
00:31:08.833 --> 00:31:11.414
and some of them were mantle-sized models.
00:31:12.938 --> 00:31:14.919
And the Dormans actually let them sell the
00:31:14.959 --> 00:31:17.101
models in order to get a little spending
00:31:17.161 --> 00:31:19.122
money to buy extra food, extra clothing.
00:31:19.662 --> 00:31:21.182
The Dormans, of course, got a cut.
00:31:21.262 --> 00:31:21.563
Right.
00:31:22.303 --> 00:31:24.584
And so these models kind of transitioned
00:31:24.944 --> 00:31:27.665
into the wealthy families of Great
00:31:27.726 --> 00:31:27.986
Britain.
00:31:28.006 --> 00:31:29.126
And that's kind of how they've been
00:31:29.166 --> 00:31:30.448
collected through the years.
00:31:31.528 --> 00:31:32.669
And over the years,
00:31:32.689 --> 00:31:34.369
a number of them have been donated to
00:31:34.589 --> 00:31:36.971
our museum so that we have what might
00:31:36.991 --> 00:31:38.893
be the largest single collection of these
00:31:38.932 --> 00:31:40.433
bone models anywhere in the world.
00:31:40.733 --> 00:31:43.556
And they're amazing pieces of art,
00:31:44.175 --> 00:31:45.416
never mind the history of them,
00:31:45.717 --> 00:31:48.798
the artistry itself is really incredible.
00:31:49.140 --> 00:31:49.839
They're impressive,
00:31:49.859 --> 00:31:50.441
they're really incredible.
00:31:50.881 --> 00:31:52.402
Is the museum open to the public?
00:31:53.398 --> 00:31:55.140
So actually, currently,
00:31:55.259 --> 00:31:57.221
we have access restrictions to the Naval
00:31:57.260 --> 00:31:58.882
Academy because we are a military base
00:31:58.902 --> 00:31:59.563
like any other.
00:32:00.123 --> 00:32:01.364
So based on what's going on in the
00:32:01.403 --> 00:32:02.124
world right now,
00:32:02.183 --> 00:32:03.505
we're not open to visitors.
00:32:04.165 --> 00:32:06.047
But generally speaking, yes,
00:32:06.487 --> 00:32:10.148
the museum is open to anybody who comes
00:32:10.249 --> 00:32:11.289
visit the Naval Academy.
00:32:11.309 --> 00:32:13.131
And of course,
00:32:13.151 --> 00:32:14.771
you also have the Tripoli Monument,
00:32:14.832 --> 00:32:17.133
one of the first military monuments.
00:32:17.153 --> 00:32:18.074
We do, we do.
00:32:21.905 --> 00:32:23.928
And I actually have just been doing a
00:32:23.968 --> 00:32:26.290
project involving the USS Constitution's
00:32:26.330 --> 00:32:27.152
world cruise.
00:32:27.192 --> 00:32:28.814
And there was a midshipman aboard who got
00:32:28.854 --> 00:32:30.556
into an argument about how far a
00:32:30.596 --> 00:32:31.876
cannonball would go.
00:32:31.997 --> 00:32:36.342
And he talks about the midshipman arguing
00:32:36.362 --> 00:32:36.883
about this.
00:32:38.324 --> 00:32:39.565
I had no idea what the right answer
00:32:39.585 --> 00:32:40.704
to the problem was so I asked a
00:32:40.744 --> 00:32:42.806
colleague who's a physics professor who
00:32:42.846 --> 00:32:45.445
just took this and uh as midshipman
00:32:45.465 --> 00:32:47.227
William Buckner who goes on to actually to
00:32:47.247 --> 00:32:50.508
teach math at the Naval Academy and you
00:32:51.087 --> 00:32:52.929
know we it really does a good job
00:32:52.969 --> 00:32:56.170
of teaching engineering and as well as um
00:32:57.109 --> 00:32:58.830
I'm wondering do all midshipmen have to
00:32:58.851 --> 00:32:59.730
take history classes
00:33:00.834 --> 00:33:02.255
Yes, it's a good question.
00:33:02.815 --> 00:33:05.175
We at the Naval Academy still have a
00:33:05.256 --> 00:33:07.856
core curriculum that is fundamentally a
00:33:07.997 --> 00:33:10.357
liberal arts curriculum in the classic
00:33:10.397 --> 00:33:11.719
sense of liberal arts, right?
00:33:11.739 --> 00:33:13.940
Meaning both the arts and the sciences.
00:33:14.853 --> 00:33:15.814
And so, you know,
00:33:15.973 --> 00:33:17.094
I was a history major.
00:33:17.693 --> 00:33:20.895
I took in the core an American naval
00:33:20.915 --> 00:33:23.517
history class and two semesters of world
00:33:23.557 --> 00:33:23.977
history,
00:33:24.037 --> 00:33:25.998
a pre-modern and a modern world history
00:33:26.018 --> 00:33:26.419
class.
00:33:26.878 --> 00:33:28.619
And then I took my history classes as
00:33:28.660 --> 00:33:29.559
a history major.
00:33:30.119 --> 00:33:32.260
But I also took electrical engineering and
00:33:32.300 --> 00:33:33.961
weapons systems engineering and two
00:33:33.981 --> 00:33:35.883
semesters of physics and two semesters of
00:33:35.903 --> 00:33:37.983
chemistry and three semesters of calculus
00:33:38.703 --> 00:33:39.644
as a history major.
00:33:40.410 --> 00:33:42.250
Because everybody from the Naval Academy
00:33:42.270 --> 00:33:44.593
graduates with a Bachelor of Science
00:33:44.633 --> 00:33:45.093
degree.
00:33:45.933 --> 00:33:49.375
The idea being that we have the technical
00:33:49.415 --> 00:33:51.416
background that you need to go into any
00:33:51.457 --> 00:33:53.218
of the career fields in the Navy.
00:33:54.419 --> 00:33:56.640
But the core also includes the liberal
00:33:56.720 --> 00:33:56.961
arts,
00:33:57.480 --> 00:33:59.821
the more classically humanities and social
00:33:59.882 --> 00:34:01.262
science based classes.
00:34:01.303 --> 00:34:01.884
So as I said,
00:34:01.943 --> 00:34:04.244
three semesters of history are required
00:34:04.285 --> 00:34:05.105
for every midshipman.
00:34:06.016 --> 00:34:07.837
Two semesters of English literature and
00:34:07.857 --> 00:34:09.079
rhetoric are required for every
00:34:09.119 --> 00:34:09.679
midshipman.
00:34:10.059 --> 00:34:11.661
A semester of American government.
00:34:13.322 --> 00:34:16.184
And then also we have many leadership and
00:34:16.264 --> 00:34:17.766
ethics classes that are taught in the
00:34:17.786 --> 00:34:19.407
Department of Leadership, Ethics, and Law.
00:34:20.027 --> 00:34:22.349
And really those, as I said before,
00:34:22.429 --> 00:34:23.911
these are academic courses.
00:34:23.951 --> 00:34:25.612
So when you look at the curriculum of
00:34:25.652 --> 00:34:26.452
those courses,
00:34:27.134 --> 00:34:29.315
they really compare with like psychology
00:34:29.356 --> 00:34:32.217
classes and sociology classes at other
00:34:32.297 --> 00:34:33.298
universities, right?
00:34:33.818 --> 00:34:36.500
in terms of what they're teaching in terms
00:34:36.519 --> 00:34:38.019
of the content of the class.
00:34:38.380 --> 00:34:40.800
It's just oriented specifically towards
00:34:40.880 --> 00:34:42.860
naval officers and the kinds of ideas
00:34:42.880 --> 00:34:44.440
they're going to need to understand to be
00:34:44.481 --> 00:34:46.802
effective leaders.
00:34:46.922 --> 00:34:50.621
And before you returned to academia and
00:34:50.661 --> 00:34:52.402
you earned a PhD, I mean,
00:34:52.443 --> 00:34:54.503
you were an active duty naval officer.
00:34:55.422 --> 00:34:56.483
Can you tell us a little bit about
00:34:56.503 --> 00:34:57.744
what you did and what are some of
00:34:57.764 --> 00:34:58.903
the high points of your service?
00:35:00.889 --> 00:35:00.989
Yeah,
00:35:01.010 --> 00:35:02.952
so I was a helicopter pilot by trade.
00:35:02.992 --> 00:35:04.914
And so when I graduated from the Academy
00:35:04.954 --> 00:35:06.034
in nineteen ninety nine,
00:35:06.094 --> 00:35:07.356
I went off to flight school.
00:35:07.936 --> 00:35:09.639
And while I was finishing flight school
00:35:09.679 --> 00:35:11.000
was when nine eleven happened.
00:35:11.039 --> 00:35:13.001
And so I spent my career as a
00:35:13.081 --> 00:35:14.884
search and rescue and special operations
00:35:14.923 --> 00:35:15.864
helicopter pilot.
00:35:17.521 --> 00:35:19.704
During Operation Enduring Freedom and
00:35:19.744 --> 00:35:20.947
Operation Iraqi Freedom,
00:35:21.427 --> 00:35:24.891
my first deployment was the invasion of
00:35:24.952 --> 00:35:28.115
Iraq, Operation Iraqi Freedom,
00:35:28.456 --> 00:35:29.358
the first phase.
00:35:32.119 --> 00:35:34.621
And we took the Marines over there in
00:35:34.641 --> 00:35:36.501
the Second Marine Expeditionary Brigade,
00:35:36.521 --> 00:35:37.483
and we landed them,
00:35:37.523 --> 00:35:39.985
and we provided support operations to
00:35:40.005 --> 00:35:40.324
them,
00:35:41.505 --> 00:35:44.668
provided logistics to the massed naval
00:35:44.708 --> 00:35:46.610
forces that were in the Arabian Gulf at
00:35:46.630 --> 00:35:47.090
the time.
00:35:47.911 --> 00:35:49.132
But I've also, you know,
00:35:49.371 --> 00:35:50.313
gone on deployments.
00:35:50.373 --> 00:35:54.795
We were off of Liberia in the Liberian
00:35:54.876 --> 00:35:57.677
Civil War when Charles Taylor finally laid
00:35:57.717 --> 00:35:59.300
down his arms and turned things over to
00:35:59.320 --> 00:35:59.840
the U.N.,
00:36:00.809 --> 00:36:03.677
I was deployed to the Caribbean for kind
00:36:03.797 --> 00:36:05.181
of deployment,
00:36:05.300 --> 00:36:07.686
where we worked with the DEA extensively
00:36:07.726 --> 00:36:09.210
in operations throughout the Caribbean.
00:36:10.148 --> 00:36:12.690
I went on a deployment in two thousand
00:36:12.771 --> 00:36:14.472
eleven and two thousand twelve,
00:36:14.572 --> 00:36:17.253
where it was the longest amphibious
00:36:17.873 --> 00:36:19.635
deployment since World War Two.
00:36:20.135 --> 00:36:22.717
We initially deployed because Libya was in
00:36:22.777 --> 00:36:23.458
a civil war.
00:36:23.498 --> 00:36:24.918
And so we went to Libya for the
00:36:24.958 --> 00:36:25.579
civil war,
00:36:26.059 --> 00:36:27.880
worked with our NATO allies there,
00:36:28.061 --> 00:36:30.262
provided support to them and then
00:36:30.322 --> 00:36:30.963
transitioned.
00:36:31.103 --> 00:36:32.784
Once that once that conflict,
00:36:32.943 --> 00:36:33.923
not necessarily over,
00:36:33.963 --> 00:36:35.284
but simmered down a little bit,
00:36:35.485 --> 00:36:37.347
we transitioned through the straits.
00:36:38.007 --> 00:36:40.148
or through the Suez Canal into the Red
00:36:40.228 --> 00:36:43.670
Sea and through the Baba Madab into the
00:36:43.990 --> 00:36:46.052
Gulf of Aden to conduct counter-piracy and
00:36:46.072 --> 00:36:48.173
counter-tanker operations off the coast of
00:36:48.313 --> 00:36:49.994
Africa.
00:36:50.436 --> 00:36:53.958
Most of my career as a helicopter pilot
00:36:54.057 --> 00:36:56.300
was flown in support of Marine Corps units
00:36:56.800 --> 00:36:58.300
off of amphibious ships.
00:36:59.481 --> 00:37:01.083
And a lot of it was stuff that,
00:37:02.164 --> 00:37:02.324
well,
00:37:02.344 --> 00:37:04.005
let's just say it wasn't about tips
00:37:04.025 --> 00:37:04.766
fighting tips, right?
00:37:05.753 --> 00:37:05.954
Right.
00:37:05.994 --> 00:37:06.195
Right.
00:37:06.394 --> 00:37:08.059
Think of naval power and we think of
00:37:08.119 --> 00:37:09.481
naval history and we tend to think of
00:37:09.521 --> 00:37:11.505
those big ship on ship battles.
00:37:12.025 --> 00:37:13.929
But that really wasn't what my career was
00:37:13.989 --> 00:37:14.510
made up of.
00:37:15.362 --> 00:37:16.983
Which, in all honesty,
00:37:17.003 --> 00:37:18.742
is part of the reason why I studied
00:37:18.782 --> 00:37:20.324
what I did when I went to King's
00:37:20.364 --> 00:37:22.085
College London for my Ph.D.
00:37:22.405 --> 00:37:24.945
And the studies ended up being small boats
00:37:25.005 --> 00:37:25.746
and digging men.
00:37:25.826 --> 00:37:27.246
I wanted to go back to the early
00:37:27.286 --> 00:37:30.708
American era and see what the history was
00:37:30.768 --> 00:37:33.009
of these kinds of operations that I had
00:37:33.048 --> 00:37:35.650
been a part of during my operational time.
00:37:37.039 --> 00:37:37.780
That's interesting.
00:37:37.800 --> 00:37:41.244
And again, thank you for your service.
00:37:41.324 --> 00:37:43.646
And what made you choose the Navy when
00:37:43.686 --> 00:37:45.288
you were a much younger man?
00:37:45.829 --> 00:37:46.489
Well, I'll be honest,
00:37:46.509 --> 00:37:47.791
I think I was brainwashed as a small
00:37:47.851 --> 00:37:48.251
child.
00:37:50.213 --> 00:37:52.516
My uncle was class of nineteen seventy
00:37:52.536 --> 00:37:54.478
seven from the academy and was an A-six
00:37:54.518 --> 00:37:56.619
and footer pilot before he left the Navy
00:37:56.639 --> 00:37:57.820
and went on to fly for Delta.
00:37:58.751 --> 00:38:00.614
And there are many photos of me as
00:38:00.634 --> 00:38:04.277
a young, young man visiting Ed's squadron,
00:38:04.358 --> 00:38:05.639
wearing Ed's helmet,
00:38:05.920 --> 00:38:07.981
wearing Naval Academy apparel.
00:38:09.244 --> 00:38:11.186
And so I think that certainly had an
00:38:11.266 --> 00:38:12.286
influence on me.
00:38:12.547 --> 00:38:14.789
And so I applied to the Academy straight
00:38:14.809 --> 00:38:15.590
out of high school,
00:38:15.731 --> 00:38:17.572
and I've been in the Navy ever since.
00:38:17.592 --> 00:38:18.594
Good for you, Bill.
00:38:19.353 --> 00:38:19.795
Thank you.
00:38:20.530 --> 00:38:22.291
We've been talking with Captain Benjamin
00:38:22.391 --> 00:38:23.192
Armstrong, B.J.
00:38:23.291 --> 00:38:23.851
Armstrong,
00:38:23.891 --> 00:38:25.853
Captain in the United States Navy,
00:38:25.873 --> 00:38:27.795
Associate Professor of War Studies and
00:38:27.875 --> 00:38:29.275
Naval History at the U.S.
00:38:29.356 --> 00:38:31.916
Naval Academy and Director of the Naval
00:38:31.956 --> 00:38:34.579
Academy Museum and author of Small Boats
00:38:34.599 --> 00:38:35.400
and Daring Men,
00:38:35.579 --> 00:38:38.141
along with a number of other books.
00:38:38.402 --> 00:38:41.543
And his blog, The Maddest Idea,
00:38:41.643 --> 00:38:42.943
is available on LinkedIn.
00:38:43.324 --> 00:38:44.965
Thank you so much for talking with us
00:38:44.985 --> 00:38:45.606
today, B.J.
00:38:45.626 --> 00:38:47.347
Is there anything else we think we should
00:38:48.188 --> 00:38:49.668
cover before we let you get back to
00:38:49.688 --> 00:38:49.789
your
00:38:51.574 --> 00:38:53.516
I could talk for hours about the United
00:38:53.556 --> 00:38:55.739
States Navy.
00:38:56.019 --> 00:38:57.922
So I really appreciate having me on today.
00:38:57.942 --> 00:38:58.702
It's been a lot of fun.
00:38:59.242 --> 00:38:59.344
Well,
00:38:59.364 --> 00:39:01.326
we'll have to have you back to cover
00:39:01.365 --> 00:39:02.086
more of the story.
00:39:02.126 --> 00:39:04.429
So thank you so much for joining us.
00:39:04.469 --> 00:39:04.969
My pleasure.
00:39:05.427 --> 00:39:06.768
I want to thank Jonathan Lane,
00:39:06.807 --> 00:39:08.670
our producer, the man behind the curtain.
00:39:09.250 --> 00:39:11.030
And every week we thank folks in different
00:39:11.070 --> 00:39:12.632
places who we know are tuning in
00:39:12.693 --> 00:39:13.353
regularly.
00:39:13.393 --> 00:39:14.733
And if you're in one of these places
00:39:14.793 --> 00:39:16.715
and want some of our Revolution two fifty
00:39:16.755 --> 00:39:18.536
swag, send Jonathan an email.
00:39:18.898 --> 00:39:21.099
Jay Lane at Revolution two five o dot
00:39:21.239 --> 00:39:21.400
org.
00:39:22.119 --> 00:39:23.041
And if you're not in one of these
00:39:23.061 --> 00:39:25.342
places and Jonathan loves to hear from
00:39:25.402 --> 00:39:26.101
folks anyway.
00:39:26.121 --> 00:39:26.682
So this week,
00:39:26.722 --> 00:39:28.503
I want to thank our listeners in San
00:39:28.543 --> 00:39:31.746
Diego and in San Francisco, in Denver,
00:39:31.905 --> 00:39:33.427
Brooklyn, Philadelphia,
00:39:33.487 --> 00:39:35.248
as well as Coatesville, Pennsylvania,
00:39:35.628 --> 00:39:37.369
Mystic, Connecticut, Acushnet,
00:39:37.409 --> 00:39:40.110
Massachusetts, and in Taipei,
00:39:40.190 --> 00:39:42.992
Hong Kong and Long Jammu and all places
00:39:43.032 --> 00:39:43.793
between and beyond.
00:39:43.833 --> 00:39:44.652
Thanks for joining us.
00:39:44.773 --> 00:39:46.614
Now we'll be piped out on the road
00:39:46.635 --> 00:39:47.175
to Boston.