The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783

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1

Thus Hermocrates of Syracuse, advocating the policy of thwarting the Athenian expedition against his city (B.C. 413) by going boldly to meet it, and keeping on the flank of its line of advance, said: "As their advance must be slow, we shall have a thousand opportunities to attack them; but if they clear their ships for action and in a body bear down expeditiously upon us, they must ply hard at their oars, and when spent with toil we can fall upon them."

2

The writer must guard himself from appearing to advocate elaborate tactical movements issuing in barren demonstrations. He believes that a fleet seeking a decisive result must close with its enemy, but not until some advantage has been obtained for the collision, which will usually be gained by manœuvring, and will fall to the best drilled and managed fleet. In truth, barren results have as often followed upon headlong, close encounters as upon the most timid tactical trifling.

3

A ship was said to have the weather-gage, or "the advantage of the wind," or "to be to windward," when the wind allowed her to steer for her opponent, and did not let the latter head straight for her. The extreme case was when the wind blew direct from one to the other; but there was a large space on either side of this line to which the term "weather-gage" applied. If the lee ship be taken as the centre of a circle, there were nearly three eighths of its area in which the other might be and still keep the advantage of the wind to a greater or less degree. Lee is the opposite of weather.

4

See note at end of Introductory Chapter, page 23.

5

The battle of Navarino (1827) between Turkey and the Western Powers was fought in this neighborhood.

6

A "containing" force is one to which, in a military combination, is assigned the duty of stopping, or delaying the advance of a portion of the enemy, while the main effort of the army or armies is being exerted in a different quarter.

7

By a base of permanent operations "is understood a country whence come all the resources, where are united the great lines of communication by land and water, where are the arsenals and armed posts."

8

An interesting proof of the weight attributed to the naval power of Great Britain by a great military authority will be found in the opening chapter of Jomini's "History of the Wars of the French Revolution." He lays down, as a fundamental principle of European policy, that an unlimited expansion of naval force should not be permitted to any nation which cannot be approached by land,—a description which can apply only to Great Britain.

9

Gougeard: La Marine de Guerre; Richelieu et Colbert.

10

Whatever may be thought of Clerk's claim to originality in constructing a system of naval tactics, and it has been seriously impugned, there can be no doubt that his criticisms on the past were sound. So far as the author knows, he in this respect deserves credit for an originality remarkable in one who had the training neither of a seaman nor of a military man.

11

La Serre: Essais Hist. et Crit. sur la Marine Française.

12

Lapeyrouse-Bonfils: Hist. de la Marine Française.

13

Jurien de la Gravière: Guerres Maritimes.

14

Since the above was written, the secretary of the navy, in his report for 1889, has recommended a fleet which would make such a blockade as here suggested very hazardous.

15

The word "defence" in war involves two ideas, which for the sake of precision in thought should be kept separated in the mind. There is defence pure and simple, which strengthens itself and awaits attack. This may be called passive defence. On the other hand, there is a view of defence which asserts that safety for one's self, the real object of defensive preparation, is best secured by attacking the enemy. In the matter of sea-coast defence, the former method is exemplified by stationary fortifications, submarine mines, and generally all immobile works destined simply to stop an enemy if he tries to enter. The second method comprises all those means and weapons which do not wait for attack, but go to meet the enemy's fleet, whether it be but for a few miles, or whether to his own shores. Such a defence may seem to be really offensive war, but it is not; it becomes offensive only when its object of attack is changed from the enemy's fleet to the enemy's country. England defended her own coasts and colonies by stationing her fleets off the French ports, to fight the French fleet if it came out. The United States in the Civil War stationed her fleets off the Southern ports, not because she feared for her own, but to break down the Confederacy by isolation from the rest of the world, and ultimately by attacking the ports. The methods were the same; but the purpose in one case was defensive, in the other offensive.

The confusion of the two ideas leads to much unnecessary wrangling as to the proper sphere of army and navy in coast-defence. Passive defences belong to the army; everything that moves in the water to the navy, which has the prerogative of the offensive defence. If seamen are used to garrison forts, they become part of the land forces, as surely as troops, when embarked as part of the complement, become part of the sea forces.

16

Davies: History of Holland.

17

République d'Angleterre.

18

Lefèvre-Pontalis: Jean de Witt.

19

Martin: History of France.

20

Gougeard: Marine de Guerre.

21

Since the above was written, the experience of the English autumn manœuvres of 1888 has verified this statement; not indeed that any such experiment was needed to establish a self-evident fact.

22

Chabaud-Arnault: Revue Mar. et Col. 1885.

23

The recent development of rapid-firing and machine guns, with the great increase of their calibre and consequent range and penetration, reproduces this same step in the cycle of progress.

24

Gougeard: Marine de Guerre.

25

Vol. lxxxii. p. 137.

26

Mémoires du Cte. de Guiche. À Londres, chez P. Changuion. 1743 pp. 234-264.

27

See Map of English Channel and North Sea, page 107.

28

Plate I., June 11, 1666, Fig. 1. V, van; C, centre; R, rear: in this part of the action the Dutch order was inverted, so that the actual van was the proper rear. The great number of ships engaged in the fleet actions of these Anglo-Dutch wars make it impossible to represent each ship and at the same time preserve clearness in the plans. Each figure of a ship therefore represents a group more or less numerous.

29

Campbell: Lives of the Admirals.

30

Plate I., June 12, Fig. 1, V, C, R.

31

Plate II., June 14, Fig. 1, E, D.

32

Fig. 1, V, C, R. This result was probably due simply to the greater weatherliness of the English ships. It would perhaps be more accurate to say that the Dutch had sagged to leeward so that they drifted through the English line.

33

Lefèvre-Pontalis. Jean de Witt.

34

Mémoires, pp. 249, 251, 266, 267.

35

Chabaud-Arnault: Revue Mar. et Col. 1885.

36

The true significance of this change has often been misunderstood, and hence erroneous inferences as to the future have been drawn. It was not a case of the new displacing the old, but of the military element in a military organization asserting its necessary and inevitable control over all other functions.

37

Chabaud-Arnault: Revue Mar. et Col. 1885.

38

Campbell: Lives of the Admirals.

39

Lapeyrouse-Bonfils: Hist. de la Marine Française.

40

Campbell: Lives of the Admirals.

41

Martin: History of France.

42

Martin: History of France.

43

Lapeyrouse-Bonfils.

44

Annual Reg., vol. xxvii. p. 10.

45

Martin: History of France.

46

Martin: History of France.

47

Ledyard, vol ii. p. 599; Campbell: Lives of the Admirals. See also letter of Sir Richard Haddock, Naval Chronicle, vol. xvii. p. 121.

48

Hoste: Naval Tactics.

49

See Map, p. 107.

50

Martin: History of France.

51

Brandt: Life of De Ruyter.

52

Campbell: Lives of the Admirals.

53

Troude: Batailles Navales de la France, year 1673.

54

Ibid.

55

Troude: Batailles Navales de la France, year 1673.

56

Chabaud-Arnault: Revue Mar. et Col. July, 1885.

57

Jurien de la Gravière: Guerres Maritimes.

58

Mémoires.

59

See Map of Mediterranean, p. 15.

60

Lapeyrouse-Bonfils: Hist. de la Marine Française.

61

This movement, according to Clerk, was not made by the whole of a French line together, but in a way much more scientific and military. A group of two or three ships withdrew at a time, being covered by the smoke and the continued fire of the rest of their line. In time a second line was partly formed, which in its turn protected the ships which had remained on the first, as they executed the somewhat exposed movement of falling back. In Plan V., Dutch ships at b, b, b, are represented as thus withdrawing. English official reports of the eighteenth century often speak of French ships acting thus; the English officers attributing to their superior valor a movement which Clerk more plausibly considers a skilful military manœuvre, well calculated to give the defence several opportunities of disabling the assailants as they bore down on a course which impeded the use of their artillery. In 1812 the frigate "United States," commanded by Decatur, employed the same tactics in her fight with the "Macedonian;" and the Confederate gunboats at Mobile by the same means inflicted on Farragut's flag-ship the greater part of the heavy loss which she sustained. In its essential features the same line of action can now be followed by a defendant, having greater speed, when the ardor of the attack, or the necessities of the case, force the assailant to a direct approach. An indirect cause of a lee line falling farther to leeward has never been noticed. When a ship in that line (as at c) found itself without an opponent abeam, and its next ahead perhaps heavily engaged, the natural impulse would be to put up the helm so as to bring the broadside to bear. This advantage would be gained by a loss of ground to leeward and consequent disorder in the line; which, if the act were repeated by several ships, could only be restored by the whole line keeping away.

62

Davies: History of Holland.

63

Martin: History of France.

64

Gougeard: Marine de Guerre.

65

Troude: Batailles Navales.

66

Campbell: Lives of the Admirals.

67

Martin: History of France.

68

See Map of English Channel, etc., p. 107.

69

That is, nearly motionless.

70

Hoste: Naval Tactics.

71

Ledyard says the order to remove the buoys was not carried out (Naval History, vol. ii. p. 636).

72

Seignelay, the French minister of marine of the day, called him "poltron de tête, mais pas de cœur."

73

The author has followed in the text the traditional and generally accepted account of Tourville's orders and the motives of his action. A French writer, M. de Crisenoy, in a very interesting paper upon the secret history preceding and accompanying the event, traverses many of these traditional statements. According to him, Louis XIV. was not under any illusion as to the loyalty of the English officers to their flag; and the instructions given to Tourville, while peremptory under certain conditions, did not compel him to fight in the situation of the French fleet on the day of the battle. The tone of the instructions, however, implied dissatisfaction with the admiral's action in previous cruises, probably in the pursuit after Beachy Head, and a consequent doubt of his vigor in the campaign then beginning. Mortification therefore impelled him to the desperate attack on the allied fleet; and, according to M. de Crisenoy, the council of war in the admiral's cabin, and the dramatic production of the king's orders, had no existence in fact.

74

Campbell: Lives of the Admirals.

75

Martin: History of France.

76

Lapeyrouse-Bonfils: Hist. de la Marine Française.

77

Campbell: Lives of the Admirals.

78

Martin: History of France.

79

Campbell: Lives of the Admirals.

80

Afterward Lord Torrington; father of Admiral John Byng, shot in 1757.

81

Campbell: Lives of the Admirals; quoted by Lord Mahon in his History of England.

82

Lives of the Admirals