The hour is late, but Congress and the White House have bestirred themselves in the cause of shipbuilding. Last week, the House and Senate Armed Services Committees espoused sluicing $33.8 billion in one-time supplemental funding into sixteen new U.S. Navy battle-force ships, medium landing ships to ferry U.S. Marines from island to island, and a bevy of unmanned vessels. This new-construction scheme is part of a $150 billion defense bill, which in turn constitutes part of “reconciliation” dealmaking between the houses of Congress on larger legislation.

Nor was that all. A bipartisan clutch of lawmakers reintroduced the “SHIPS for America Act,” a measure first broached late last year. Among other things, the SHIPS Act would institute an Office of the Maritime Security Advisor to superintend the nation’s nautical enterprise, a Maritime Trust Fund to ensure steady funding for the U.S.-flagged commercial fleet, and a Strategic Commercial Fleet Program, under which the U.S. government would purchase 250 merchantmen to augment the nation’s threadbare sealift contingent.

These welcome developments came on the heels of last month’s executive order from President Trump aimed at revivifying the mercantile arm of American sea power. Sea power is not just about ships of war. It is an all-consuming national endeavor connecting industrial production—including production of merchant and naval shipping—with access to far-flung rimlands. The SHIPS Act acknowledges that symbiosis between commercial and military sea power. And the latest-breaking news indicates that the White House will request $1.01 trillion for defense for the next fiscal year, up 13 percent from this year’s budget. Presumably shipbuilding, maintenance, repair, and overhaul will claim a sizable share of that sum, assuming lawmakers approve it.

Here’s hoping.

It’s starting to feel like 1940 again. That year, thunderstruck at the fall of France to German arms, Congress passed the Two-Ocean Navy Act. The act marked the crescendo of a........

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