Includes bibliographical references and index.

The United States Navy today is the greatest and most powerful sea force in the world. But it was not always so. In this book, Symonds traces the uneven historical path that transformed the U.S. Navy from a handful of small sailing craft in the late eighteenth century into a world superpower. The Navy's story is not merely, or even essentially, one of simple increase over time from small beginnings to global behemoth, but rather the Navy's changing structure and varying missions were the product of a constantly shifting sense of America's proper role in the world.