This paper focuses on small navies and seeks to examine the extent to which traditional approaches to maritime policy and strategy are relevant to them. It will examine alternative ways of defining what is meant by the term ‘small navy’ before addressing traditional interpretations about the roles and missions of navies, and of maritime strategy, in order to question the extent to which ‘small navies’ are different or distinct from their larger counterparts or, indeed, from each other. In terms of their size, capabilities and aspirations most navies are small. This is as true today as it has always been. Large navies dominate the headlines and receive ample coverage in both popular and academic publications but they are the exception not the rule. Their smaller counterparts have a lower profile except when they emerge as potential allies or enemies and there is a tendency to approach them in such terms, defining them by their relationship to larger navies regardless of whether this actually provides the most useful way in which to understand them. Equally, there is a tendency for historians and commentators to approach maritime strategy from a perspective built upon an examination of the activity of larger navies on the assumption that the resultant concepts and principles will apply to small navies as much as large ones. While this may be the case the relative paucity of literature devoted specifically to smaller navies makes it difficult to draw firm conclusions