The Naval Order of the United States
Ask vic for meeting id and passcode vic@buzzcreek.com
NAVAL ORDER OF THE UNITED STATES
presents
Dwight Hughes
“The Naval Civil War in Theaters Near and Far”
13 September 2023: 2000 EDT
In his classic treatise of strategy, On War, Carl von Clausewitz discussed “different factors of space, mass, and time” related to battle, one of which is “theater of operations.” He defined an operational theater as: “A sector of the total war area which has protected boundaries and so a certain degree of independence.” Protected boundaries might consist of fortifications, natural barriers, or simply distance. Combat theaters of the Civil War are identified as the Eastern, the Western, and the Trans-Mississippi with subordinate campaign theaters in each.
The naval side of the conflict also can be defined in terms of theaters, which interacted with but are distinct from military counterparts. These naval theaters warrant independent consideration as: the Offshore Blockade, Littoral Coasts and Harbors, Heartland Rivers, and the Wide Oceans.
Bounded primarily by land-water interfaces, some wet theaters overlapped terrestrial sectors and extended into the continental core while others stretched beyond familiar battlefields to the far side of the world. Each exhibited unique characteristics and posed exceptional challenges to the United States and Confederate States navies and to their command authorities. Each employed unprecedented technologies, strategies, tactics, and command procedures.
The blockade was a bold and contentious strategy for a novice commander in chief, the largest military campaign of the war. In the littoral, titanic clashes erupted against powerful defenses while the U.S. Navy and Army began to envision joint operations leading to massive amphibious invasions. Naval and military operations converged most thoroughly in the heartland where riverine warfare was invented blending maritime mobility and firepower with hard fighting on land.
More successful than should have been expected, the Confederate Navy focused on underdog strategies: commerce raiding and blockade running at sea, with defense of key fortified positions along interior lines ashore bolstered by asymmetric new technologies including ironclads, torpedoes (mines), and submarines. On the oceans, swift Rebel commerce raiders blended the ancient technology of sail with revolutionary machine propulsion causing immense damage to powerful Yankee shipping and whaling interests.
This presentation introduces naval theaters and discusses their unique strategic, tactical, technological, and command characteristics. Based on an essay in The Civil War on the Water: Favorite Stories and Fresh Perspectives from the Historians at Emerging Civil War (Savas Beatie, 2023).
About the Speaker: Dwight Hughes is a public historian, author, and speaker in Civil War naval history (www.CivilWarNavyHistory.com). Dwight graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1967 and served twenty years as a surface warfare officer including with river forces in Vietnam. He holds an MA in Political Science and an MS in Information Systems Management. Dwight authored A Confederate Biography: The Cruise of the CSS Shenandoah (Naval Institute Press, 2015) and Unlike Anything that Ever Floated: The Monitor and Virginia and the Battle of Hampton Roads, March 8-9, 1862 (Savas Beatie, 2021). He edited and contributed to The Civil War on the Water: Favorite Stories and Fresh Perspectives from the Historians at Emerging Civil War (Savas Beatie, 2023). Dwight is a contributing author at the Emerging Civil War blog and has presented at numerous roundtables, historical conferences, and other venues.
Watch this Naval Order History Presentation Zoom Meeting!
Join Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81241470593?pwd=bEVtR1I4RFZNZ3BmWDBtR1dMWG15QT09
