Two recent reviews of Nat Philbrick’s new book In The Hurricane’s Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown sail parallel courses in their praise for the history. In this month’s Proceedings, Admiral James Stavridis highlights the intrinsic value of partnerships and alliances, the risks of a nation being blind to its relationship with the maritime world, and the value of leadership at the national level. Last month at War on the Rocks, I focused my discussion of the book on the multitude of difficulties that arise from attempts to operate as partners or allies, as well as the role that great power competition had in the very formation of the United States. But in the analysis of both reviews, the Admiral and I left something out. That missing element is a discussion of the role of contingency in our maritime and naval past, and in how today’s naval leaders approach their moment of decision.
Contingency can be a hard concept to explain in simple terms. It is the opposite of inevitability. It is often the reflection of free will, or human choice in the historical decision making process. It is sometimes described simply as the role of luck in the events of the past, which previous generations might have ascribed to the hand of God. But it is an important concept for naval professionals to consider when reading our history and avoiding the pitfalls of present-mindedness or the challenges of over subscribing to a rationality based on hindsight.
The concept of contingency is one of the things that many of the professors in the History Department at the U.S. Naval Academy teach to our midshipmen. The curriculum and our approach to our naval past, has moved beyond the “boats, battles, and bombs” focus on combat at sea that Admiral Stavridis experienced in his “Sea Power” class, and which he describes in the opening of his review. Today’s course, retitled “American Naval History,” continues to teach about the operational and tactical execution of naval combat, but it also spends time wrestling with the social history of the U.S. Navy, the organizational development of the command structure and shore establishment, and the relationship between naval power and the political and economic history of the United States. In addition to understanding the Anaconda Plan or Nimitz’s instructions on calculated risk at Midway, our midshipmen must be prepared to lead a dynamic population of sailors and marines, and do so in a bureaucracy that has grown up over two centuries of development. This requires a broader knowledge of our naval past. Being a naval officer is about far more than action during wartime.
In Philbrick’s narrative of the Yorktown campaign and George Washington’s maritime strategic thought, contingency holds a central place in both the wider history and the battle itself. It is a contingency based in something familiar to all mariners, whether naval or civil: the influence of the natural world on human endeavors at sea. On more than one occasion, it is the weather or climatological factors which play a vital role in what happened, and forced the hand of human decision makers.
In the October before Admiral de Grasse sailed north for the coast of Virginia, the Great Hurricane of 1780 had crushed the Lesser Antilles. It was one of five hurricanes that wracked the Caribbean that summer and autumn, the worst Atlantic hurricane season ever recorded with more than 28,000 deaths. While George Washington was continuously questioning his French allies about their willingness to provide naval support to the American cause, and tensions increased between the American Commander-in-Chief and General Rochambeau over when and if a strong French Fleet would ever arrive, the French Navy desperately sought a way out of the Caribbean for fear that another dangerous storm season would devastate their forces. Washington thought that his strategic concerns were what would drive the French Navy’s decision making. Instead, it was disquiet over the dangers of the natural world and concerns of those in peril on the sea.
The role of the natural maritime environment should not surprise any of us who have spent much time at sea, but it is infrequently talked about in our naval history or considered as a historical actor in its own right. Dr. Jason Smith’s recent book To Master the Boundless Sea: The U.S. Navy, the Marine Environment, and the Cartography of Empire sheds important light on the role of weather, climate, and the natural world on our naval past. It is a formative influence, but it is too often seen simply as descriptive window dressing. As Smith writes:
The sea’s dynamism was the norm . . . In treating the maritime environment as an actor, which, along with human contingency, influences historical change, historians can more deeply understand the process of American empire building.
The book goes on to describe the Navy’s 19th-century effort to control the uncontrollable, and shows the environment as an important independent actor in our naval past. In doing so Smith reminds naval professionals that “in the ocean . . . we can better understand the ebb and flow of power and the pitch and roll of history.”
This was true in the events of 1780 and 1781, just as it was in the 19th century history that is the focus of Smith’s study. It remains true today. While de Grasse and the French fleet fled the Caribbean to escape the hurricane season, the natural world flexed its agency on events in the midst of the Battle of the Virginia Capes as well. Philbrick’s narrative lays out the desperate French rush to create a poorly organized line of battle. There were gaps and holes in that line created by their focus on amphibious operations to support Washington and Rochambeau rather than preparation for the looming decisive battle with the British Fleet. But just as the human decisions that created the lack of organization and poor communications looked ready to doom the French effort, the natural environment changed everything. The wind shifted.
French Captains found themselves with the weather gauge, and the ability to control the maneuvering of the battle. It was in this moment, in reaction to the actions of the environment rather than those of the enemy, that the French turned the tide of the battle from a potential failure into a strategic victory. Admiral Bougainville, in command of the French van which was bearing the brunt of the fighting, chose to drive home his attack on the leading squadron of the British Fleet and took advantage of the fact that the British Admirals Graves and Hood did not understand each other’s signals.
Knowing when and how to respond to changing conditions, how to react to the agency of the environment or the opportunities presented when luck rears its head, is a fundamental part of successful leadership. It is something that benefits from an understanding of contingency, an understanding that events in real time are not an equation with a defined result or a foregone conclusion based only on “readiness” or preparation. Instead, they are a mass of gray where individual decisions come together with technology, the environment, and a multitude of influences and actors. It is within this gray area that individuals make choices which chart the course of history. Looking backward from our vantage point today, those decisions sometimes appear preordained by the sequence of events. But by consciously considering the contingency, complexity, and ambiguity of those historical moments we can better understand the causes, conduct, and consequences of our history.
The way for naval leaders to be prepared for the moment of decision is to study how others have responded in the past. We must pursue this study in addition to maintaining a full understanding of the tools and technology at our disposal. Studies of the environment and naval affairs like Smith’s To Master the Boundless Sea, or narratives of war and strategy like Philbrick’s In the Hurricane’s Eye, offer us the opportunity to recognize and understand the role of contingency, and to prepare ourselves for the ambiguity that will surround our own moment of decision and action in the future.
