Thomas Ap Catesby Jones: Commodore of Manifest Destiny Xavier Maruyama

Naval War College Review Volume 54 Article 22 Number 2 Spring 2001 Thomas ap Catesby Jones: Commodore of Manifest Destiny Xavier Maruyama Gene A. Smith Follow this and additional works at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review Recommended Citation Maruyama, Xavier and Smith, Gene A. (2001) "Thomas ap Catesby Jones: Commodore of Manifest Destiny," Naval War College Review: Vol. 54 : No. 2 , Article 22. Available at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol54/iss2/22 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Naval War College Review by an authorized editor of U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen Maruyama and Smith: Thomas ap Catesby Jones: Commodore of Manifest Destiny BOOK REVIEWS 151 principal ideas currently in print in the alongside Mahan should earn this volume United States. Equally riveting to anyone a place on the bookshelves of all students formulating realistic strategy is Corbett’s of strategy who are sated with the current disenchantment with supposedly “deci- deification of Clausewitz and Sun Tzu. sive” grand battles, his concept of geo- KENNETH J. HAGAN graphically shifting and limited command Adjunct Professor of Strategy of the seas, and his praise for interservice Naval War College cooperation and amphibious operations. He was the first English-speaking writer indissolubly to link the military-naval, diplomatic, and economic elements of Smith, Gene A. Thomas ap Catesby Jones: Commo- strategy. dore of Manifest Destiny. Annapolis, Md.: Naval As Jablonsky notes, Captain A. T. Mahan’s Institute Press, 2000. 223pp. $34.95 scope is narrower than Corbett’s. The Thomas ap Catesby Jones is best known American naval officer was writing in for his mistaken seizure of Monterey, 1890 to further the technological and California, on 20 October 1842, believing strategic revolution unleashed by the re- that the United States and Mexico had cent advent of the steam-driven, heavily gone to war. The occupation lasted gunned, thickly armored battleship. barely overnight before the American flag Jablonsky reprints only the first sections had to be ceremoniously lowered and the of Mahan’s opus, those in which Mahan Mexican flag rehoisted. Locally, the event makes his “political-economic argument was an occasion for many banquets and for sea power.” The editor has omitted dances, but on the national level more se- entirely the great bulk of the book, the rious repercussions caused a crisis in re- thirteen historical chapters concerning lations between Mexico and the United both grand strategy and “the art and States. science of command,” as derived from Living in Monterey, I had often won- Anglo-French naval battles in the age of dered about this incident, which is men- square-rigged ships of the line. This is a tioned only briefly as a footnote in local regrettable exclusion, because Jablonsky histories. Now, with this biography of has adopted and emphasized the imagi- Thomas ap Catesby Jones, I have a much native thesis of Jon Tetsuro Sumida that better understanding of a colorful part of Mahan was as interested in “teaching Monterey history. command” as in the strategy of sea power. The limited excerpt from The Influence of But this book offers much more. It ex- Sea Power is insufficient to permit the plores the life of a controversial and reader to judge the validity of Sumida’s complicated man whose naval career proposition or to assess the utility of lasted half a century, from 1805 to 1855. Mahan’s ponderous dissections of sea In this period the United States went battles, which were fought with a technol- through a transformation from a young ogy that had already disappeared when the coastal nation on the Atlantic seaboard to naval officer wrote more than a century ago. a power that spanned the continent, a nation pursuing a “Manifest Destiny,” Half a loaf is nonetheless better than with interests stretching well beyond its none, and Jablonsky’s balanced arrange- borders. ment of Corbett, Douhet, and Mitchell Published by U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons, 2001 1 5/14/01 Monday, May 14, 2001 3:33:13 PM Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen 152 NAVAL WARNaval COLLEGE War REVIEWCollege Review, Vol. 54 [2001], No. 2, Art. 22 While Jones made no truly significant, eventually paid the consequences. The long-lasting contribution to the U.S. earlier era dealt with naval disciplinary Navy, his career personified the times. methods such as flogging, while the more He was a contemporary of better-known recent attitude change concerned male Isaac Hull, Oliver Hazard Perry, Matthew behavior and sexual harassment. F. Maury, and John Dahlgren, and like Although the book is well researched and them he contributed to the evolution of documented, it may be somewhat diffi- the American navy. He was a hero of the cult to follow for those unfamiliar with War of 1812, introduced innovations as the geography. For example, the actions an inspector and superintendent of ord- of Jones in the War of 1812 and around nance, carried the Stars and Stripes to New Orleans and the Hawaiian Islands in Hawaii in the 1820s, and helped to incor- the 1820s would have been easier to fol- porate California into the United States. low if maps had been provided. I could Yet Jones was not an atypical commander easily follow the discussion concerning of his day; he was a striking personality Monterey and California only because I in an age in which individual tempera- live there. ments helped shape the Navy. Beyond the life of Jones, the book describes Gene A. Smith does a masterful job in well the mores, attitudes, and practices of chronicling the life of Thomas ap Catesby the era. For example, career patterns of Jones, from his appointment as a mid- naval officers; the relationship between shipman in 1805 to his court-martial in private, financial, and military affairs; 1850 on charges that included fraud ambivalence toward slavery; the chaos against the United States, libel, neglect of created by the California gold rush; and duty, and oppression. The court found him many other apparently disconnected top- guilty and suspended him for five years. ics are presented in a natural and infor- Today’s standards for court-martial were mative manner. not applied to the Jones case; it is doubt- ful that due process and rules of evidence XAVIER MARUYAMA Naval Postgraduate School were followed. Attitudes about naval dis- Monterey, California cipline were changing, but unfortunately, Jones had not changed with them. He was probably convicted because of his past behavior as an old-fashioned tyrant, Padfield, Peter. Maritime Supremacy and the Open- making him a useful example with which ing of the Western Mind: Naval Campaigns That to enforce new attitudes concerning Shaped the Modern World, 1588–1782. New York: shipboard discipline. Richard Henry Overlook Press, 2000. 340pp. $35 Dana’s Two Years before the Mast and “Maritime supremacy is the key which Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, among unlocks most, if not all, large questions others, had so changed public perception of modern history, certainly the puzzle of that attitudes such as those of Jones were how and why we—the Western democra- no longer acceptable. In a sense, one cies—are as we are. We are the heirs of might liken the 1840s and 1850s to the maritime supremacy.” So begins the ar- 1980s and 1990s, where attitudes of ac- gument of naval historian Peter ceptable behavior changed, and those Padfield’s latest work. Like Nelson, who did not change along with them Padfield is prone to bold acts, and in this https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol54/iss2/22 2 5/14/01 Monday, May 14, 2001 3:33:14 PM.

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