Chapter 5

Though ordinary prudence would have suggested ample preparation, British ministers allowed their country to remain unprepared. Instead of concentrating their efforts on the main objective, they frittered away force in attempts to relieve two beleaguered garrisons under the pretext of yielding to popular pressure, which is the official term for acting on the advice of irresponsible and uninstructed busybodies. 'Depuis le début de la crise,' says Captain Chevalier, 'les ministres de la Grande Bretagne s'étaient montrés inférieurs à leur tâche.' An impressive result of this was the repeated appearance of powerful and indeed numerically superior hostile fleets in the English Channel. The war--notwithstanding that, perhaps because, land operations constituted an important part of it, and in the end settled the issue--was essentially oceanic. Captain Mahan says it was 'purely maritime.' It may be true that, whatever the belligerent result, the political result, as regards the _status_ of the insurgent colonies, would have been the same. It is in the highest degree probable, indeed it closely approaches to certainty, that a proper use of the British sea-power would have prevented independence from being conquered, as it were, at the point of the bayonet. There can be no surprise in store for the student acquainted with the vagaries of strategists who are influenced in war by political in preference to military requirements. Still, it is difficult to repress an emotion of astonishment on finding that a British Government intentionally permitted De Grasse's fleet and the French army in its convoy to cross the Atlantic unmolested, for fear of postponing for a time the revictualling of the garrison beleaguered at Gibraltar. Washington's opinion as to the importance of the naval factor has been quoted already; and Mahan does not put the case too strongly when he declares that the success of the Americans was due to 'sea-power being in the hands of the French and its improper distribution by the English authorities.' Our navy, misdirected as it was, made a good fight of it, never allowed itself to be decisively beaten in a considerable battle, and won at least one great victory. At the point of contact with the enemy, however, it was not in general so conspicuously successful as it was in the Seven Years' war, or as it was to be in the great conflict with the French republic and empire. The truth is that its opponent, the French navy, was never so thoroughly a sea-going force as it was in the war of American Independence; and never so closely approached our own in real sea-experience as it did during that period. We met antagonists who were very nearly, but, fortunately for us, not quite as familiar with the sea as we were ourselves; and we never found it so hard to beat them, or even to avoid being beaten by them. An Englishman would, naturally enough, start at the conclusion confronting him, if he were to speculate as to the result of more than one battle had the great Suffren's captains and crews been quite up to the level of those commanded by stout old Sir Edward Hughes. Suffren, it should be said, before going to the East Indies, had 'thirty-eight years of almost uninterrupted sea-service.'[44] A glance at a chart of the world, with the scenes of the general actions of the war dotted on it, will show how notably oceanic the campaigns were. The hostile fleets met over and over again on the far side of the Atlantic and in distant Indian seas. The French navy had penetrated into the ocean as readily and as far as we could do ourselves. Besides this, it should be remembered that it was not until the 12th April 1782. when Rodney in one hemisphere and Suffren in the other showed them the way, that our officers were able to escape from the fetters imposed on them by the _Fighting_ _Instructions_,--a fact worth remembering in days in which it is sometimes proposed, by establishing schools of naval tactics on shore, to revive the pedantry which made a decisive success in battle nearly impossible.

[Footnote 44: Laughton, _Studies_in_Naval_Hist._ p. 103.]

The mighty conflict which raged between Great Britain on one side and France and her allies on the other, with little intermission, for more than twenty years, presents a different aspect from that of the war last mentioned. The victories which the British fleet was to gain were generally to be overwhelming; if not, they were looked upon as almost defeats. Whether the fleet opposed to ours was, or was not, the more numerous, the result was generally the same--our enemy was beaten. That there was a reason for this which can be discovered is certain. A great deal has been made of the disorganisation in the French navy consequent on the confusion of the Revolution. That there was disorganisation is undoubted; that it did impair discipline and, consequently, general efficiency will not be disputed; but that it was considerable enough to account by itself for the French naval defeats is altogether inadmissible. Revolutionary disorder had invaded the land-forces to a greater degree than it had invaded the sea-forces. The supersession, flight, or guillotining of army officers had been beyond measure more frequent than was the case with the naval officers. In spite of all this the French armies were on the whole--even in the early days of the Revolution--extraordinarily successful. In 1792 'the most formidable invasion that ever threatened France,' as Alison calls it, was repelled, though the invaders were the highly disciplined and veteran armies of Prussia and Austria. It was nearly two years later that the French and English fleets came into serious conflict. The first great battle, which we call 'The Glorious First of June,' though a tactical victory for us, was a strategical defeat. Villaret-Joyeuse manoeuvred so as to cover the arrival in France of a fleet of merchant vessels carrying sorely needed supplies of food, and in this he was completely successful. His plan involved the probability, almost the necessity, of fighting a general action which he was not at all sure of winning. He was beaten, it is true; but the French made so good a fight of it that their defeat was not nearly so disastrous as the later defeats of the Nile or Trafalgar, and--at the most--not more disastrous than that of Dominica. Yet no one even alleges that there was disorder or disorganisation in the French fleet at the date of anyone of those affairs. Indeed, if the French navy was really disorganised in 1794, it would have been better for France--judging from the events of 1798 and 1805--if the disorganisation had been allowed to continue. In point of organisation the British Navy was inferior, and in point of discipline not much superior to the French at the earliest date; at the later dates, and especially at the latest, owing to the all-pervading energy of Napoleon, the British was far behind its rival in organisation, in 'science,' and in every branch of training that can be imparted without going to sea. We had the immense advantage of counting amongst our officers some very able men. Nelson, of course, stands so high that he holds a place entirely by himself. The other British chiefs, good as they were, were not conspicuously superior to the Hawkes and Rodneys of an earlier day. Howe was a great commander, but he did little more than just appear on the scene in the war. Almost the same may be said of Hood, of whom Nelson wrote, 'He is the greatest sea-officer I ever knew.'[45] There must have been something, therefore, beyond the meritorious qualities of our principal officers which helped us so consistently to victory. The many triumphs won could not have been due in every case to the individual superiority of the British admiral or captain to his opponent. There must have been bad as well as good amongst the hundreds on our lists; and we cannot suppose that Providence had so arranged it that in every action in which a British officer of inferior ability commanded a still inferior French commander was opposed to him. The explanation of our nearly unbroken success is, that the British was a thoroughly sea-going navy, and became more and more so every month; whilst the French, since the close of the American war, had lost to a great extent its sea-going character and, because we shut it up in its ports, became less and less sea-going as hostilities continued. The war had been for us, in the words of Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, 'a continuous course of victory won mainly by seamanship.' Our navy, as regards sea-experience, especially of the officers, was immensely superior to the French. This enabled the British Government to carry into execution sound strategic plans, in accordance with which the coasts of France and its dependent or allied countries were regarded as the English frontier to be watched or patrolled by our fleets.

[Footnote 45: Laughton, _Nelson's_Lett._and_Desp._ p. 71.]

Before the long European war had been brought to a formal ending we received some rude rebuffs from another opponent of unsuspected vigour. In the quarrel with the United States, the so-called 'War of 1812,' the great sea-power of the British in the end asserted its influence, and our antagonists suffered much more severely, even absolutely, than ourselves. At the same time we might have learned, for the Americans did their best to teach us, that over-confidence in numerical strength and narrow professional self-satisfaction are nearly sure to lead to reverses in war, and not unlikely to end in grave disasters. We had now to meet the _élite_ of one of the finest communities of seamen ever known. Even in 1776 the Americans had a great maritime commerce, which, as Mahan informs us, 'had come to be the wonder of the statesmen of the mother country.' In the six-and-thirty years which had elapsed since then this commerce had further increased. There was no finer nursery of seamen than the then states of the American Union. Roosevelt says that 'there was no better seaman in the world' than the American, who 'had been bred to his work from infancy.' A large proportion of the population 'was engaged in sea-going pursuits of a nature strongly tending to develop a resolute and hardy character in the men that followed them.'[46] Having little or no naval protection, the American seaman had to defend himself in many circumstances, and was compelled to familiarise himself with the use of arms. The men who passed through this practical, and therefore supremely excellent, training school were numerous. Very many had been trained in English men-of-war, and some in French ships. The state navy which they were called on to man was small; and therefore its _personnel_, though without any regular or avowed selection, was virtually and in the highest sense a picked body. The lesson of the war of 1812 should be learned by Englishmen of the present day, when a long naval peace has generated a confidence in numerical superiority, in the mere possession of heavier _matériel_, and in the merits of a rigidly uniform system of training, which confidence, as experience has shown, is too often the forerunner of misfortune. It is neither patriotic nor intelligent to minimise the American successes. Certainly they have been exaggerated by Americans and even by ourselves. To take the frigate actions alone, as being those which properly attracted most attention, we see that the captures in action amounted to three on each side, the proportionate loss to our opponents, considering the smallness of their fleet, being immensely greater than ours. We also see that no British frigate was taken after the first seven months of a war which lasted two and a half years, and that no British frigate succumbed except to admittedly superior force. Attempts have been made to spread a belief that our reverses were due to nothing but the greater size and heavier guns of our enemy's ships. It is now established that the superiority in these details, which the Americans certainly enjoyed, was not great, and not of itself enough to account for their victories. Of course, if superiority in mere _matériel_, beyond a certain well-understood amount, is possessed by one of two combatants, his antagonist can hardly escape defeat; but it was never alleged that size of ship or calibre of guns--greater within reasonable limits than we had--necessarily led to the defeat of British ships by the French or Spaniards. In the words of Admiral Jurien de la Gravière, 'The ships of the United States constantly fought with the chances in their favour.' All this is indisputable. Nevertheless we ought to see to it that in any future war our sea-power, great as it may be, does not receive shocks like those that it unquestionably did receive in 1812.

[Footnote 46: _Naval_War_of_1812_, 3rd ed. pp. 29, 30.]

SEA-POWER IN RECENT TIMES

We have now come to the end of the days of the naval wars of old time. The subsequent period has been illustrated repeatedly by manifestations of sea-power, often of great interest and importance, though rarely understood or even discerned by the nations which they more particularly concerned. The British sea-power, notwithstanding the first year of the war of 1812, had come out of the great European conflict unshaken and indeed more preeminent than ever. The words used, half a century before by a writer in the great French 'Encyclopédie,' seemed more exact than when first written. '_L'empire_des_mers_,' he says, is, 'le plus avantageux de tous les empires; les Phoeniciens le possédoient autre fois et c'est aux Anglois que cette gloire appartient aujourd'hui sur toutes les puissances maritimes.'[47] Vast out-lying territories had been acquired or were more firmly held, and the communications of all the over-sea dominions of the British Crown were secured against all possibility of serious menace for many years to come. Our sea-power was so ubiquitous and all-pervading that, like the atmosphere, we rarely thought of it and rarely remembered its necessity or its existence. It was not till recently that the greater part of the nation--for there were many, and still are some exceptions--perceived that it was the medium apart from which the British Empire could no more live than it could have grown up. Forty years after the fall of Napoleon we found ourselves again at war with a great power. We had as our ally the owner of the greatest navy in the world except our own. Our foe, as regards his naval forces, came the next in order. Yet so overwhelming was the strength of Great Britain and France on the sea that Russia never attempted to employ her navy against them. Not to mention other expeditions, considerable enough in themselves, military operations on the largest scale were undertaken, carried on for many months, and brought to a successful termination on a scene so remote that it was two thousand miles from the country of one, and three thousand from that of the other partner in the alliance. 'The stream of supplies and reinforcements, which in terms of modern war is called "communications,", was kept free from even the threat of molestation, not by visible measures, but by the undisputed efficacy of a real, though imperceptible sea-power. At the close of the Russian war we encountered, and unhappily for us in influential positions, men who, undismayed by the consequences of mimicking in free England the cast-iron methods of the Great Frederick, began to measure British requirements by standards borrowed from abroad and altogether inapplicable to British conditions. Because other countries wisely abstained from relying on that which they did not possess, or had only imperfectly and with elaborate art created, the mistress of the seas was led to proclaim her disbelief in the very force that had made and kept her dominion, and urged to defend herself with fortifications by advisers who, like Charles II and the Duke of York two centuries before, were 'not ashamed of it.' It was long before the peril into which this brought the empire was perceived; but at last, and in no small degree owing to the teachings of Mahan, the people themselves took the matter in hand and insisted that a great maritime empire should have adequate means of defending all that made its existence possible.

[Footnote 47: _Encyclopédie_, 7th Jan. 1765, art. 'Thalassarchie.']

In forms differing in appearance, but identical in essentials, the efficacy of sea-power was proved again in the American Secession war. If ever there were hostilities in which, to the unobservant or short-sighted, naval operations might at first glance seem destined to count for little, they were these. The sequel, however, made it clear that they constituted one of the leading factors of the success of the victorious side. The belligerents, the Northern or Federal States and the Southern or Confederate States, had a common land frontier of great length. The capital of each section was within easy distance of this frontier, and the two were not far apart. In wealth, population, and resources the Federals were enormously superior. They alone possessed a navy, though at first it was a small one. The one advantage on the Confederate side was the large proportion of military officers which belonged to it and their fine training as soldiers. In _physique_ as well as in _morale_ the army of one side differed little from that of the other; perhaps the Federal army was slightly superior in the first, and the Confederate, as being recruited from a dominant white race, in the second. Outnumbered, less well equipped, and more scantily supplied, the Confederates nevertheless kept up the war, with many brilliant successes on land, for four years. Had they been able to maintain their trade with neutral states they could have carried on the war longer, and--not improbably--have succeeded in the end. The Federal navy, which was largely increased, took away all chance of this. It established effective blockades of the Confederate ports, and severed their communications with the outside world. Indispensable articles of equipment could not be obtained, and the armies, consequently, became less and less able to cope with their abundantly furnished antagonists. By dominating the rivers the Federals cut the Confederacy asunder; and by the power they possessed of moving troops by sea at will, perplexed and harassed the defence, and facilitated the occupation of important points. Meanwhile the Confederates could make no reply on the water except by capturing merchant vessels, by which the contest was embittered, but the course of the war remained absolutely unaffected. The great numbers of men under arms on shore, the terrific slaughter in many battles of a war in which tactical ability, even in a moderate degree, was notably uncommon on both sides, and the varying fortunes of the belligerents, made the land campaigns far more interesting to the ordinary observer than the naval. It is not surprising, therefore, that peace had been re-established for several years before the American people could be made to see the great part taken by the navy in the restoration of the Union; and what the Americans had not seen was hidden from the sight of other nations.

In several great wars in Europe waged since France and England made peace with Russia sea-power manifested itself but little. In the Russo-Turkish war the great naval superiority of the Turks in the Black Sea, where the Russians at the time had no fleet, governed the plans, if not the course, of the campaigns. The water being denied to them, the Russians were compelled to execute their plan of invading Turkey by land. An advance to the Bosphorus through the northern part of Asia Minor was impracticable without help from a navy on the right flank. Consequently the only route was a land one across the Danube and the Balkans. The advantages, though not fully utilised, which the enforcement of this line of advance put into the hands of the Turks, and the difficulties and losses which it caused the Russians, exhibited in a striking manner what sea-power can effect even when its operation is scarcely observable.

This was more conspicuous in a later series of hostilities. The civil war in Chili between Congressists and Balmacedists is specially interesting, because it throws into sharp relief the predominant influence, when a non-maritime enemy is to be attacked, of a navy followed up by an adequate land-force. At the beginning of the dispute the Balmacedists, or President's party, had practically all the army, and the Congressists, or Opposition party, nearly all the Chilian navy. Unable to remain in the principal province of the republic, and expelled from the waters of Valparaiso by the Balmacedist garrisons of the forts--the only and doubtful service which those works rendered to their own side--the Congressists went off with the ships to the northern provinces, where they counted many adherents. There they formed an army, and having money at command, and open sea communications, they were able to import equipment from abroad, and eventually to transport their land-force, secured from molestation on the voyage by the sea-power at their disposal, to the neighbourhood of Valparaiso, where it was landed and triumphantly ended the campaign.

It will have been noticed that, in its main outlines, this story repeated that of many earlier campaigns. It was itself repeated, as regards its general features, by the story of the war between China and Japan in 1894-95. 'Every aspect of the war,' says Colomb, 'is interesting to this country, as Japan is to China in a position similar to that which the British Islands occupy to the European continent.'[48] It was additionally interesting because the sea-power of Japan was a novelty. Though a novelty, it was well known by English naval men to be superior in all essentials to that of China, a novelty itself. As is the rule when two belligerents are contending for something beyond a purely maritime object, the final decision was to be on land. Korea was the principal theatre of the land war; and, as far as access to it by sea was concerned, the chief bases of the two sides were about the same distance from it. It was possible for the Chinese to march there by land. The Japanese, coming from an island state, were obliged to cross the water. It will be seen at once that not only the success of the Japanese in the struggle, but also the possibility of its being carried on by them at all, depended on sea-power. The Japanese proved themselves decisively superior at sea. Their navy effectually cleared the way for one army which was landed in Korea, and for another which was landed in the Chinese province of Shantung. The Chinese land-forces were defeated. The navy of japan, being superior on the sea, was able to keep its sister service supplied or reinforced as required. It was, however, not the navy, but the army, which finally frustrated the Chinese efforts at defence, and really terminated the war. What the navy did was what, in accordance with the limitations of sea-power, may be expected of a navy. It made the transport of the army across the sea possible; and enabled it to do what of itself the army could not have done, viz. overcome the last resistance of the enemy.

[Footnote 48: _Naval_Warfare_, 3rd ed. p. 436.]