Types of Naval Officers, Drawn from the History of the British Navy (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

Alfred Thayer Mahan was born in West Point, New York, in 1840 and died in 1914, just before the fleets he had helped to create clashed in the First World War. He was educated at the U.S. Naval Academy, graduating second in his class in 1859, just in time to serve as an officer in the Union Navy during the Civil War that broke out two years later. In 1884, he became first a lecturer and then president of the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.