James C. Rentfrow. Home Squadron

James C. Rentfrow's Home Squadron: The U.S. Navy on the North Atlantic Station drives one more nail into the coffin of conventional wisdom that the era between the Civil War and the Spanish American War represented the “dark ages” of U.S. naval history. The author masterfully demonstrates how the post–Civil War navy, then focused on single-ship combat and cruiser warfare in defense of overseas trade, evolved into the powerful fleet that utterly devastated the Spanish navy in 1898. Rentfrow is a U.S. naval officer, faculty member in the U.S. Naval Academy's History Department, and 2007 recipient of the Naval History and Heritage Command's distinguished Samuel Eliot Morison Scholarship. He skillfully exploits navy records held in the National Archives, Library of Congress, the Naval Academy's Nimitz Library, and the Naval War College's Naval Historical Collection to buttress his analysis. Rentfrow's historiographical survey reflects a keen understanding of period scholarship. Rentfrow focuses on the North Atlantic Squadron, familiarly known as the “Home Squadron,” during the years 1874 to 1897. The squadron is a logical choice to investigate new approaches to naval warfare, since it operated in defense of America's most vital North Atlantic, East Coast, and Caribbean interests. Unlike the Asiatic Squadron and the other far-flung units, the Home Squadron—the first among equals—benefited from proximity to national leaders and their control of budgets in Washington and the visionary strategic thinkers at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. The author does not spend much time discussing why Americans wanted a more modern, powerful navy during the second half of nineteenth century but he argues convincingly that the work done by the Home Squadron to bring that about predated the advocacy of Alfred Thayer Mahan, Theodore Roosevelt, and other “navalists.” Rentfrow posits that “[y]ears before Mahan popularized the theory of seapower, the operational patterns of the North Atlantic Squadron were laying the foundations for the development of a national battle fleet” (p. 63). Rentfrow sheds light on key individuals—Foxhall A. Parker Jr., John Grimes Walker, Bancroft Gherardi, and Stephen B. Luce—who as commanders at sea and theorists ashore spurred the transition to multi-ship warfare.

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