Purpose

In early modern England (after the Union with Scotland in 1707, Britain), there was an argument supporting war at sea, especially in Spanish America, as a suitable means of warfare. As N.A.M. Rodger has pointed out, this argument's origin can be traced back to a joint struggle at sea involving English and Huguenot seamen against Catholic powers in the 1560s. This idea recurrently appeared in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when conflicts with Spain occurred, and continued to exist until the early nineteenth century.

Several historians have dealt with the argument supporting maritime war Richard Pares has referred to a ‘maritime and American policy’ as one of the major policies in the debates on British war aim and war strategy in the mid eighteenth century. Also, Philip Woodfine has analysed a popular idea about the omnipotence of the British navy, especially against allegedly impotent Spain, which was strengthened by the memories of the Elizabethan and Cromwellian maritime wars. The idea of the British navy's omnipotence was current in the late 1730s and early 1740s among the public and many politicians. More recently, Rodger has examined the English ‘national myth’ of sea power in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. According to him, this was composed of three tenets. First, English sea power was essentially Protestant and exercised for the defence of religious freedom. Second, exercising English sea power also could defend the liberties of Englishmen from foreign and domestic threats.