Comment by csdreamer7

> The US was a shipbuilding superpower because it had what Europe did not, access to vast untapped timber. It wasn't until globalization that the US lost its shipbuilding industry.

Where did you get this information? The Spanish-American war wasn't considered much of a war by Americans at the time since the American fleet had been built with steel vs the Spanish that still used wooden ships. Those ships were run on coal. The US lost its shipbuilding industry because of cheaper competition from Japan and S. Korea in the civilian sector and Congress favors aircraft carriers over smaller ships like frigates and destroyers from what I read.