Identifier: seanpowerinf00maha (find matches)
Title: The influence of sea power upon history, 1660-1783
Year: 1890 (1890s)
Authors: Mahan, A. T. (Alfred Thayer), 1840-1914
Subjects: Naval history Sea-power
Publisher: Boston : Little, Brown and Company
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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the gen-eral control of the sea, or of a decisive part of it, by the Romanfleets, that the Carthaginian admiral Bomilcar in the fourthyear of the war, after the stunning defeat of Cannse, landedfour thousand men and a body of elephants in south Italy ;nor that in the seventh year, flying from the Roman fleet offSyracuse, he again appeared at Tarentum, then in Hannibalshands ; nor that Hannibal sent despatch vessels to Carthage ;nor even that, at last, he withdrew in safety to Africa withhis wasted army. None of these things prove that the govern-ment in Carthage could, if it wished, have sent Hannibalthe constant support which, as a matter of fact, he did notreceive ; but they do tend to create a natural impression thatsuch help could have been given. Therefore the statement,that the Roman preponderance at sea had a decisive effectupon the course of the war, needs to be made good by an ex-amination of ascertained facts. Thus the kind and degree ofits influence mav be fairly estimated.
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INTRODUCTORY. 15 At the beginning of the war, Moramsen says, Rome con-trolled the seas. To whatever cause, or combination ofcauses, it be attributed, this essentially non-maritime statehad in the first Punic War established over its sea-faringrival a naval supremacy, which still lasted. In the second warthere was no naval battle of importance, — a circumstancewhich in itself, and still more in connection with otlier well-ascertained facts, indicates a superiority analogous to thatwhich at other epochs has been marked by the same feature. As Hannibal left no memoirs, the motives are unknownwhich determined him to the perilous and almost ruinousmarch through Gaul and across the Alps. It is certain, how-ever, that his fleet on the coast of Spain was not strongenough to contend with that of Rome. Had it been, he mightstill have followed the road he actually did, for reasons thatweiglicd with him; but had he gone by the sea, he would nothave lost thirty-three thousand out of the sixty thseanpowerinf00maha

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