What are the chances? Im currently right this minute writing my MA dissertation entitled “Emaciated”, “Withered”, “Emasculated” and “Crippled” – A reappraisal of the decline of British Sea power in the interwar years.[1] Reddit was supposed to be a distraction.

Your basic assumption that the 30s was the period of drop off is absolutely supported by the bulk of the historiography and a large amount of the primary sources. Its pretty much standard narrative of the interwar Royal Navy. To just steal my own intro… The image of declining British sea power, through naval disarmament, funding reductions and industrial stagnation is the inescapable conclusion drawn from the large majority of existing historiography. These conditions, it is held, led to a relative and absolute decline in British sea power. This decline manifested itself through limitation and financial stringency in the nineteen twenties, leading to “deficiencies” and a problematic rearmament period in the nineteen thirties. These problems helped result in a policy of appeasement, war time problems, and eventual post war malaise..…I don’t really hold a great deal of faith in this assessments for a number of reasons but I think I will leave my own findings out of it for the time being. Historians basically argue when and where this decline happened within the period. Earlier in the 20s with the Washington Treaty and the financial controls on naval policy? Later during the depression and the London Treaty, or later still and the problems during rearmament? Either way “most” narratives buy the idea that decline takes place at some point. Not everyone agrees and there are several notable voices of dissent that not only suggest that the arguments of decline are exaggerations in a material sense, e.g that historians have misinterpreted data and naval opinion to present an entirely Glass half empty negative appraisal. As well as more conceptually suggesting that judgements of decline are based on the inability to achieve really quite lofty ambitions of global sea supremacy. Basically equating lack of supremacy = inadequacy. Or Suggesting that naval historians are too native and implicitly want more ships and more sea power and more influenced by their own feelings regarding British power [2]

Regardless, the standard approach is something like this:

“In 1919 Britain possessed the worlds greatest fleet and naval armament capacity and the ability to master any threat at sea; so too did it in 1929. By 1939, all of these characteristics had vanished.” [3]

And this damning statement is from a historian actually well known for his fairly revisionist take on things like the extent the Treasury influenced naval policy and the impact of government naval standards.

I don’t agree with this at all, but it does seem to be the consensus. However not many historians actually flat out suggest that Britain physically lost #1 sea power status until into the war itself. Again my into… For most commentators, the end of the Second World War, is the clear turning point in British sea power. Britain, “Effectively Bankrupt” and having “encountered, in the pacific, a level of naval capability far beyond their own means”, had “handed seapower to the United States” and “ceased to be a strategic seapower”. Common interpretations suggest that while war had not defeated Britain, it had been a “Pyrrhic Victory” with “deleterious consequences” for its place in the world and its accompanying power at sea…

The US and Britain has been increasingly and specifically pegged together during the interwar years and naval parity is implied within the treaty system, crucially though this implication is never accepted by Britain. Britain continues to attempt naval and sea superiority through aspects not limited by naval treaties. Smaller ships, auxiliaries, bases, plans for civilian militarisation. How far this was successful is arguable. The US for example were continuously worried by the British ability to control trade and by implication conduct global trade war. The conversion of armed merchant cruisers to conduct global trade war was a continuous example of superiority, but how does that stack up against a markedly inferior Fleet Air arm? There will be numerous examples of how and where either the US or Britain had marginal advantage, but generally the Royal Navy was the larger fleet throughout the entire period and into the second world war.

Both Britain and the US embark on large building programs of capital ships, carriers, cruiser and destroyers, with Britain additionally building many more smaller ships for trade protection. In many respects the programs during the late 30s and the slide into crisis are very similar. The big departure becomes the first few years of the war. British naval building, other than shifting towards smaller ships, remains remarkably consistent. British industry is only just able to cope with continued large naval construction, building 1.5m tons of merchant ships per year alongside absolutely huge demands for repairs that take everyone by surprise. Despite initially very similar scale of building between Britain and the US this begins to rapidly change and the US begins to produce far more naval and merchant shipping than the UK. That said British building is pretty large knocking out 55 major fleet units, 251 destroyers, 316 escorts and 170 subs. But by 1945 that pales against the output of the US.

In my personal view the real shift from Britain to the US doesn’t really occur until the results of the 1940 Two Ocean Navy Act begins to appear probably in the latter half of 1942. This is compounded by war losses By late 1942 the Royal navy has lost a large number of ships.

I think that the Royal Navy was still #1 navy in 1939, just. But there is no doubt who emerges in 1945 as the primary naval force in the world.

[1] Lord Chatfield, The Navy and Defence Volii: It Might Happen Again (London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1947). p12: Paul G Halpern, ed. The Keyes Papers Voliii (London, United Kingdom: The Navy Records Society, 1981). ). P250-252. #138. Richmond to Keyes, June 29, 1942

[4] David Edgerton is perhaps the best example of this he describes “declinists” literature as suffering from serious problems of

[3][John Ferris, "“It Is Our Business in the Navy to Command the Seas”: The Last Decade of British

Maritime Supremacy, 1919–1929’," in Far-Flung Lines : Studies in Imperial Defence in Honour of Donald Mackenzie Schurman, ed. Greg Kennedy and Keith Neilson (London: Routledge, 1996). P125]

[4] First quote is from Norman Friedman, "The Royal Navy and the Post War Naval Revolution, 1946 to the Present," in The Oxford Illustrated History of the Royal Navy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).p410 ; second is from Eric. J Grove, Vanguard to Trident (London: The Bodley Head, 1987). ; third from Lambert, Seapower States : Maritime Culture, Continental Empires and the Conflict That Made the Modern World. P303/7 ; Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery. P321