Naval history is the area of military history concerning war at sea and the subject is also a sub-discipline of the broad field of maritime history.
Traditionally, the focus has been on direct combat between ships at sea, rather than the use of ships to transport armies or military supplies, although frequently naval strategy hinges on the need to protect transport shipping. Recent writing in naval history has expanded the scope of the subject to include the full range of issues associated with navies, including matters of technology, finance, bureaucracy, social history, shipbuilding, supply, and logistics.
Famous quotes containing the words naval and/or history:
“It is now time to stop and to ask ourselves the question which my last commanding officer, Admiral Hyman Rickover, asked me and every other young naval officer who serves or has served in an atomic submarine. For our Nation M for all of us M that question is, “Why not the best?””
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)