Commissioned in 1998, the Mahan honors Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, the naval strategist whose 1890 masterwork The Influence of Sea Power upon History reshaped how every great power on earth understood navies and national strength. His argument that command of the sea was the decisive factor in world power influenced Theodore Roosevelt, Kaiser Wilhelm, and a generation of admirals who built the modern fleets. Without Mahan's ideas, the U.S. Navy as it exists today might never have been built.