control of communications across the isthmus of Central America drove the country towards naval expansion. Rapid growth in overseas markets and a foreign policy aimed at U.S. Modernization began during the administration of President Chester Arthur in the early 1880s. Navy's newest ships were wooden-hulled steam sloops built in the previous decade. Naval technology had stagnated in the U.S., illustrated by the fact that there was not a single high-power, long-range rifled gun in the entire fleet. By 1879 only forty-eight of the navy's 142 vessels were available for immediate service, and these were obsolete wooden or old ironclad ships. In spite of international crises such as the Virginius Affair in 1873, contention with Great Britain over the Alabama Claims, and problems with France over a projected canal in Panama, the strength of the navy continued to decline. After the war, most were sold off or destroyed. Nearly all of the new ships were wartime purchases, hasty constructions, or made from unseasoned timber. Navy had in commission over 600 vessels at the close of the American Civil War. Navy, like all navies, was in the process of overcoming the challenges presented by the technology of the new steel warships. However, the war itself revealed the growing tactical and logistical complexities of modern naval warfare, and the U.S. The implications of these changes for the conduct of war at sea were not lost on America's naval leadership, who had spent the years and months prior to the war with Spain preparing for conflict with a European power. After twenty years of rapid decline into obsolescence following the American Civil War, the navy was in the process of re-equipping itself with steel warships of modern design. In contrast, the navy was asked during the Spanish-American War to gain control of the waters around the Philippine Islands and the Caribbean Sea. Traditionally the navy embraced a defensive strategy with an emphasis on commerce raiding. The United States Navy, much like the nation itself, was in a state of transition in 1898.
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