(September 27, 1840–December 1, 1914) was an American Admiral. He came out of retirement to serve in the Spanish-American War. He was a member of the American delegation to the peace conference at The Hague, 1899; and was elected president of the American Historical Association, 1902. He held the position of president of the Naval War College at Newport, R.I., 1886–89, 1892–93, and authored books on naval strategy. His great works, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783; and The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1892, were not only studied at Annapolis, but were responsible for persuading President Theodore Roosevelt to increase U.S. Naval power. Alfred Thayer Mahan stated:
Upon the Bible my life rests for whatsoever is good and strong. Convinced that Christ is the Son of God, in the deepest sense attributed to those words, I not only find in this belief all the power of my life, but, in the account of His personality, an intellectual satisfaction that surpasses any other in its inexhaustible freshness, daily renewing my strength, and throwing an ever-increasing light upon the problems and difficulties of life.
It is this intellectual satisfaction that most impresses me; that the teachings of Jesus Christ contains a philosophy of life in fullest accord with experience, and also inexhaustible, in that its revelation is continuous.
While the faith in His teachings thus meet all my mental exigencies, I in no way derogate from its supernatural sanctions. He is to me one who speaks with authority no less than Divine, to whom I submit where I do not understand.2814