Page 329 - The interest of America in sea power, present and future

Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. 307

out towards Gallinas and Gracias-a-Dios will
give warning of transit before the purposes of
such transit can be accomplished undisturbed.
With such advantages of situation, and with
a harbor susceptible of satisfactory develop-
ment as a naval station for a great fleet, Ja-
maica is certainly the most important single
position in the Caribbean Sea. When one
recalls that it passed into the hands of Great
Britain, in the days of Cromwell, by accidental
conquest, the expedition having been intended
primarily against Santo Domingo ; that in the
two centuries and a half which have since in-
tervened it has played no part adequate to its
advantages, such as now looms before it ; that,
by all the probabilities, it should have been
reconquered and retained by Spain in the war
of the American Revolution ; and when, again,
it is recalled that a like accident and a like sub-
sequent uncertainty attended the conquest and
retention of the decisive Mediterranean posi-
tions of Gibraltar and Malta, one marvels
whether incidents so widely separated in time
and place, all tending towards one end— the
maritime predominance of Great Britain — can
be accidents, or are simply the exhibition of