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.)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)