In 1779 the navy retrieved the bad effects of some of its disasters. Its changed fortunes can in part be easily accounted for. The transference of the scene of war to the Southern states late in 1778, removed a part of the British land and sea forces from the North, and thereby gave the Naval Department a freer hand in its operations, and rendered the movements of the fleet less perilous. The Department this year had larger success in manning and equipping its fleet. It was, therefore, able not only to send the armed vessels to sea more frequently, but also to send several of them cruising in company. Such little fleets had a decided advantage over single cruisers, both in defensive and offensive operations. No doubt, too, the experiences and past failures of the navy were now telling in a better understanding of naval tactics, and were bringing about a proper subordination and concert of action between officers and men. Possibly, something should be attributed to the Department’s increased experience in marine affairs. The reader has probably already drawn parallels, far from fanciful, between the solutions of the naval problems of the Revolution made by the Marine Committee and those of the Spanish-American war made by the Naval Board of Strategy at Washington. The naval problems presented to the two bodies were in certain respects widely different. Equally striking similarities appear. In both wars the United States was fighting a European power with possessions in the West Indies and in the Asiatic seas. The attacks on Nassau and Morris’s proposed expedition against the British West Indies correspond to the movements of the American fleet in the West Indies during the late war. The operations of Wickes, Conyngham, and Jones off the coasts of the British Isles are matched by the proposed descent on the Spanish coast in 1898. The plan made in 1777 to send a fleet of frigates to Mauritius and from thence to operate against the English trade in the Indian seas looks singularly like Admiral Dewey’s movement from Hong Kong against Manila.