Changing Concepts of the Sea, 1550–1950: An Urban Perspective

Sea myths have always proved to have greater appeal than the realities of commercial and military sea power. When England, France, the Netherlands and America began to operate commercial and military systems on the North Atlantic in the seventeenth century, the scale of sea power increased rapidly. But changes in attitudes about the sea and seafaring in the societies responsible for and benefiting from that increase lagged. In a sense they have never caught up