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Moving From The Old Navy Into The New Navy
Today's navy is the most powerful navy. How did it all start and how did we get to where we are today? Well it wasn't always the way it is today. It first started small with some small sailing boats. Even though it was small it was still respected. They brought something different. They started to use ironclads. It was used during the civil war. What are ironclads? Well they are steam-propelled warships. They were designed because wooden ships were too vulnerable to explosive or incendiary shells. The first to use this type of new technology was the French navy.
It didn't stop there; as times changed so did our military. Even though our military had won the Civil War the navy had a huge decline. The number of men dropped dramatically. The ships were either broken down or sold. After the Civil War the navy was left with about fifty small ironclads. By the 1870's most of these ships had found themselves in reserve. This basically left the US navy without an ironclad fleet.
Then in 1873 when the Virginius affair broke. The Spanish anchored their ironclad in New York Harbor. At that time the US military had no way of defending themselves. This brought on the development of five more ironclads. It also helped jump start the repair of several more ships.
In 1881 the Secretary of the Navy was William h. Hunt. He found that over half of the military's ships were inoperable. The navy at that time also had the monitors, which were small boats that didn't move very fast nor did they have good armor. They were small but they carried large guns. So he began the start of modernizing the navy. These boats were not going to help them if a war had begun. Hunt set up an advisory board to begin making recommendations.
There were even some of the naval officers who complained that if the military was to go to war, the boats would not hold up. At that time they were criticized and ignored. Eventually by 1897, their concerns were taken into consideration and the ships were modernized. These ships were large and there was about six of them made.
The construction of the modern ships were being developed so quickly. The old navy quickly became the new navy. Even though the navy was modernizing it's self the secretary of the navy still wanted to build more modern ships. Unfortunately congress denied their request. But a year later congress accepted their request and started to build three small steel cruisers.
This is how the navy got from being the old navy to the new navy.
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