Letter from Military History – March 2011  Fire and Water  Sea
battles differ in obvious ways from land battles. But fights at
sea have been no less significant or decisive than land battles
throughout recorded history: Think Salamis in 480 BC, Actium in
31 BC, Lepanto in 1571, the Spanish Armada in 1588, Trafalgar in
1805, Tsushima in 1905, Jutland in 1916, Midway in 1942 and the
Atlantic in the 1940s, to name just a few.  When we hear the
word battle, we may reflexively think of fighting on terra firma
and visualize grunts digging foxholes, hitting the dirt at the
scream of incoming artillery shells or going “over the top” from
deep, muddy trenches. But war at sea unfolds on a vast,
trackless, featureless wilderness that (until the advent of
submarines) offers no cover or concealment—a wilderness far more
hostile, indeed life-threatening, than any combination of dust
and mud. Death by drowning is not a common fate in land battles,
while at sea vast distances, deep water and harsh weather
commonly combine to