![]() ![]() ![]() The first attacks on American merchant vessels came in the Mediterranean, where piracy had been a danger for centuries, Toll tells us. ![]() The question now became: How would the new nation, whose merchant ships plied the oceans of the world, protect them? When the virtually navy-less Colonies gained their independence, they found themselves without the British Royal Navy's protection of their merchant fleet - a protection they had enjoyed before 1776. But they were "weakly constructed and easily overwhelmed in action," Toll writes. At the outset of the American Revolution, Toll writes, the Continental navy "was a wasteful and humiliating fiasco." Since American shipbuilders possessed neither naval combat experience nor the expertise required to build warships, the new nation was forced to convert its merchant vessels into warships. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |