The New Age of the Sea ' 



By Philip B. Yeager ' 



Member Professional Staff, Committee on Science and Astronautics 

 U.S. House of Representatives 



[With 3 plates] 



If, IN" the past few years, there has been doubt that the world is 

 plunging into unprecedented social and teclinological revolutions, the 

 doubt is swiftly fading. Too much is happening too fast in both areas. 

 It is almost as if someone had pulled keystones from a mountainside 

 and started twin avalanches — one a rapid acceleration of social prob- 

 lems (including economic, political, and military ones), and the other 

 a tumbling series of brilliant teclinological advances. 



But there is a curious phenomenon connected with all this. It is a 

 phenomenon growing more pronounced with each passing day. It 

 consists of the fact that insofar as the world's rising social difficultias 

 may find their answer in science, each is likely to do so by a route 

 leading directly through the sea. That is, nearly all the major chal- 

 lenges of the future which are now discernible seem to point like 

 magnetized needles toward the oceans — indicating that an important 

 part of their respective solutions lies somehow in deep water. 



It is doubtful if there is any parallel for this situation in the history 

 of mankind. Of course the sea has been a powerful influence on the 

 affairs of men for thousands of years, particularly since the age of 

 discovery and exploration spanning the 15th, 16th, and I7th centuries. 

 Most of us are accustomed to the thought that the sea came into its 

 own when venturesome, visionary men like Magellan, Cabot, Colum- 

 bus, and Vespucci proved its utility as a medium of global transport. 

 Some of us would set the date as early as the time of Eric the Red and 

 his son Leif, or of the Mediterranean fleets of Carthage and Rome. 



When the naval frigate and the 80-gun ship-of-the-line material- 

 ized, to be followed quickly by the American clipper and the steam 



^ Reprinted by permission from the United States Naval Institute Proceedings, vol. 87, 

 No. 6, June 1961. 



* The opinions or assertions In this article are the author's personal ones and are not to 

 be construed as official or as the views of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics. 



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