Naval Force Quotes

It would be a good occasion to begin a navy

[The Barbary States] were a deep designing artful treacherous set of Villains and nothing will keep them so quiet as a respectable naval force near then.

The portion of the naval force of the Union in actual service has been chiefly employed on three stations -- the Mediterranean, the coasts of South America bordering on the Pacific Ocean, and the West Indies

It follows then as certain as that night succeeds the day, that without a decisive naval force we can do nothing definitive, and with it, everything honorable and glorious.

The culminating manifestation of naval force in the history of the world.

I think experience has shown that privateers have done more toward distressing the trade of our enemies, and furnishing these States with necessaries, than Continental Ships of the same force.

One sailor will do us more good than two soldiers. A navy is our natural and only defense.

Ports not effectually blockaded by a force capable of completely investing them have yet been declared in a state of blockade.... If the effectiveness of the blockade be dispensed with, then every port of the belligerent powers may at all times be declared in that state, and the commerce of neutrals be thereby subjected to universal capture. But if this principle be strictly adhered to, the capacity to blockade will be limited by the naval force of the belligerent

The only weapon with which we can expect to cope with other great nations is the Navy.

I am for relying for internal defense on our militia solely till actual invasion, and for such a naval force only as may protect our coasts and harbors from such depredations as we have experienced; and not for a standing army in time of peace which may overawe the public sentiment; nor for a navy which, by its own expenses and the eternal wars in which it will implicate us, will grind us with public burthens and sink us under them.

Without a decisive naval force we can do nothing definitive.

I am impressed with the belief that our naval force ought not to cost more in proportion than the British. In some things they may have the advantage, but we will be found to have equally great in others.

To secure respect to a neutral flag requires a naval force organized and ready to vindicate it from insult or aggression.

Housetops were covered with 'gazers'; all wharves that offered a view were jammed with people ... As British officers happily reminded one another, it was the largest fleet ever seen in American waters. In fact it was the largest expeditionary force of the 18th century, the largest, most powerful force ever sent forth by Britain or any other nation.

A naval power, next to the militia, is the natural defense of the United States.

To an active external commerce the protection of a naval force is indispensable ... it is in our own experience that the most sincere neutrality is not a sufficient guard against the depredations of nations at war. To secure respect to a neutral flag requires a naval force organized and ready to vindicate it from insult or aggression. This may even prevent the necessity of going to war by discouraging belligerent powers from committing such violations of the rights of the neutral party as may, first or last, leave no other option…. These considerations invite the United States to look to the means, and to set about the gradual creation of a navy.

You are instructed with the utmost diligence to proceed with the said fleet to sea and if the winds and weather will possibly admit of it to proceed directly for Chesapeake Bay in Virginia and when nearly arrived there you will send forward a small swift sailing vessel to gain intelligence....If...you find that they are not greatly superior to your own you are immediately to enter the said bay, search out and attack, take or destroy all the naval force of our enemies that you may find there.

The Marine Corps is the Navy's police force and as long as I am President that is what it will remain. They have a propaganda machine that is almost equal to Stalin's.

The war in the Pacific having been happily terminated by the total destruction of the Spanish naval force, I am, of course, free for the crusade of liberty in any other quarter of the globe.

It were, indeed, a vain and dangerous illusion to believe that in the present or probable condition of human society a commerce so extensive and so rich as ours could exist and be pursued in safety without the continual support of a military marine -- the only arm by which the power of this Confederacy can be estimated or felt by foreign nations, and the only standing military force which can never be dangerous to our own liberties at home.

Our Navy is now the smallest it's been since, believe or not, World War I. Don't worry. It's going to soon be the largest it's been.