Warship-building cost restrictions turned fleet size into deterrent signals.

Evidence

The cost of building warships was enormous. The hull of a single seventy-four-gun ship required 3,500 oak trees—mature hardwood trees at least a hundred years old each—and a one-hundred-gun ship needed almost six thousand trees. With European nations largely deforested already, these hardwood costs were incredible; only countries with extensive networks of shipping routes and colonies could afford to import the necessary lumber, and, most of the time, they simply assembled the ships in their colonies. Add in the costs of shipyards, engineers and shipwrights, labor crews, cannons, rigging, and trained officers and crews, and the price of the biggest warships was way out of reach for hundreds of the world’s nations. Fleet size and ship size became signals of a country’s fighting ability—perfect cues for deterrence. — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 392

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the ‘cost handicaps make honest signals’ logic from the crab arms-race discussion earlier in this chapter. — connects to: Submarines converted the battleships’ size advantage into a defensive liability. — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 452; Expensive war-fleet dominance deterred conflict and produced relative peace — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 395
• SEED: Essay angle: imperial naval races as honest-signal evolution — expensive capital ships play the same deterrent role as oversized crab claws.

Related

• Expensive war-fleet dominance deterred conflict and produced relative peace (similarity 0.85)
• The most expensive weapons serve as deterrents by projecting power globally. (similarity 0.82)
• Submarines converted the battleships’ size advantage into a defensive liability. (similarity 0.81)
• British imperial dominance depended on naval supremacy. (similarity 0.80)
• Known military inferiority of rivals creates an effective monopoly (similarity 0.80)
• Slow-killing weapons made big warships advantageous and drove an arms race. (similarity 0.79)
• Modern naval weapons cost billions and thus only wealthy nations can field them (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Expensive war-fleet dominance deterred conflict and produced relative peace #expands (0.65) — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 395
• Submarines converted the battleships’ size advantage into a defensive liability. #complicates (0.60) — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 452