Highlighting matters of supply, construction, recruitment, discipline, medical care, shipbuilding, and innovation, Dudley helps readers understand the navy's successes and failures in the war and beyond.

When the British blockade of 1813–14 severely constrained American sea trade, reducing the government's income and closing down access to American seaports, the navy was forced to innovate: to make improvements through reforms, to redeploy personnel, and to strengthen its industrial capacity. What did it take, he asks, for the US Navy to build, fit-out, man, provision, and send fighting ships to sea for extended periods of time during the War of 1812? Dudley presents the most complete history of the inner workings of the US Navy Department during the conflict, which lasted until 1815. When the War of 1812 broke out, the newly formed and cash-strapped United States faced Great Britain, the world's foremost sea power, with a navy that had largely fallen into disrepair and neglect. What did it take-logistically and operationally-for the small and underfunded US Navy to face the battle-hardened Royal Navy in the War of 1812? Find out in this book, the magnum opus of one of the deans of American naval history.

War of 1812 royal navy