Poking around Wikipedia a bit more (I've no good naval history book of the period handy), I'd say you're right about that incident. But serious rebuilding of t

Poking around Wikipedia a bit more (I've no good naval history book of the period handy), I'd say you're right about that incident. But serious rebuilding of the USN only started under President Arthur - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_Arthur#Naval_resurgence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_Arthur#Naval_resurge... - who only came to office in 1881. And things still moved quite slowly for most of a decade after that. Here's the best overview I found: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_U.S._foreign_policy,_1861%E2%80%931897#Military_modernization_and_build-up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_U.S._foreign_policy... So, obviously: My notion that the US quickly got its ship together, after the initial oh shit moment, was 99.97% wrong. TBD if Australia can do less poorly.