concerned with securing command or with preventing its being secured by the
enemy. We engage in exercising command whenever we conduct operations which
are directed not against the enemy's battle-fleet, but to using sea
communications for our own purposes, or to interfering with the enemy's use
of them. Such operations, though logically of secondary importance, have
always occupied the larger part of naval warfare. Naval warfare does not
begin and end with the destruction of the enemy's battle-fleet, nor even
with breaking his cruiser power. Beyond all this there is the actual work
of preventing his passing an army across the sea and of protecting the
passage of our own military expeditions. There is also the obstruction of
his trade and the protection of our own. In all such operations we are
concerned with the exercise of command. We are using the sea, or
interfering with its use by the enemy; we are not endeavouring to secure
the use or to prevent the enemy from securing it. The two categories of
operation differ radically in conception and purpose, and strategically
they are on wholly different planes.
Logically, of course, operations for exercising command should follow those
for securing command; that is to say, that since the attainment of command
is the special object of naval warfare, and since that command can only be
obtained permanently by the destruction of the enemy's armed forces afloat,
it follows that in strictness no other objects should be allowed to
interfere with our concentration of effort on the supreme end of securing
command by destruction. War, however, is not conducted by logic, and the
order of proceeding which logic prescribes cannot always be adhered to in
practice. We have seen how, owing to the special conditions of naval
warfare, extraneous necessities intrude themselves which make it inevitable
that operations for exercising command should accompany as well as follow
operations for securing command. War being, as it is, a complex sum of
naval, military, political, financial, and moral factors, its actuality can
seldom offer to a naval staff a clean slate on which strategical problems
can be solved by well-turned syllogisms. The naval factor can never ignore
the others. From the outset one or more of them will always call for some
act of exercising command which will not wait for its turn in the logical
progression. To a greater or less extent in all ordinary cases both
categories of operation will have to be put in motion from the beginning.
Hence the importance of realising the distinction between the two generic
forms of naval activity. In the hurry and stress of war confusion between
them is easy. By keeping a firm grip upon the difference we can see at
least what we are doing. We can judge how far any given operation that may
be called for is a sacrifice of security to exercise, how far such a
sacrifice may be justified, and how far the one end may be made to serve
the other. By applying the distinction as a test much error may be avoided.
The risk we take may be great, but we shall be able to weigh it accurately
against the value of the end, and we shall take it with our eyes open and
of set purpose. Above all, it will enable the Staff to settle clearly for
each squadronal commander what is to be his primary objective, and what the
object or purpose of the operations entrusted to him. It is above all in
this last consideration, and particularly in the determination of the
objective, that lies the main practical value of the distinction.
This will become clear the moment we begin to consider defence against
invasion, which naturally takes the first place amongst operations for the
exercise of control. Of all the current assumptions, not one is so
confusing for the finer adjustments of strategy as that which affirms that
the primary objective of our fleet is always the enemy's fleet. Of the
battle-fleet and its attendant units it is of course true, so long at least
as the enemy has a battle-fleet in being. It is true, that is, of all
operations for securing control, but of operations for exercising control
it is not true. In the case we have now to consider-defence against
invasion-the objective of the special operations is, and always has been,
the enemy's army. On this fundamental postulate our plans for resisting
invasion have always been constructed from the year of the Armada to 1805.
In the old service tradition the point was perfectly well established.
Admirals' instructions constantly insist on the fact that the transports
are the "principal object." The whole disposition of the fleet during
Hawke's blockade in 1759 was based on keeping a firm hold on the transports
in the Morbihan, and when he sought to extend his operations against the
Rochefort squadron, he was sharply reminded by Anson that "the principal
object of attention at this time" was, firstly, "the interception of the
embarkations of the enemy at Morbihan," and secondly, "the keeping of the
ships of war from coming out of Brest." Similarly Commodore Warren in 1796,
when he had the permanent frigate guard before Brest, issued orders to his
captains that in case of encountering enemy's transports under escort they
were "to run them down or destroy them in the most expeditious manner
possible previous to attacking the ships of war, but to preserve such a
situation as to effect that purpose when directed by signal." Lord Keith's
orders when watching Napoleon's flotilla were to the same effect.
"Directing your chief attention," they run, "to the destruction of the
ships, vessels, or boats having men, horses, or artillery on board (in
preference to that of the vessels by which they are protected), and in the
strict execution of this important duty losing sight entirely of the
possibility of idle censure for avoiding contact with an armed force,
because the prevention of debarkation is the object of primary importance
to which every other consideration must give way."[22]
[22] _Admiralty Secretary's In-Letters_, 537, 8 August 1803.
In tactics, then, the idea was the same as in strategy. The army was the
primary objective round which all dispositions turned. In the French
service the strength and soundness of the British practice was understood
at least by the best men. When in 1805 Napoleon consulted Ganteaume as to
the possibility of the flotilla of transports effecting its passage by
evasion, the admiral told him it was impossible, since no weather could
avail to relax the British hold sufficiently. "In former wars," he said,
"the English vigilance was miraculous."
To this rule there was no exception, not even when circumstances rendered
it difficult to distinguish between the enemy's fleet and army as
objectives. This situation could occur in two ways. Firstly, when the
invading army was designed to sail with the battle-fleet, as in the case of
Napoleon's invasion of Egypt; and secondly, when, although the design was
that the two should operate on separate lines, our system of defence forced
the fleet to come up to the army's line of passage in order to clear it, as
happened in the case of the Armada and the French attempt of 1744.
In the latter case the invading army, whose objective was unknown, was at
Dunkirk, and a French fleet was coming up the Channel to cover the passage.
Sir John Norris, in command of the home fleet, was in the Downs. Though his
name is now almost forgotten, he was one of the great founders of our naval
tradition, and a strategist of the first order. In informing the Government
of his plan of operations, he said he intended to proceed with his whole
squadron off Dunkirk to prevent the transports sailing. "But," he says, "if
they should unfortunately get out and pass us in the night and go
northward, I intend to detach a superior force to endeavour to overtake and
destroy them; and with the remainder of my squadron either to fight the
French fleet now in the Channel, or observe them and cover the country as
our circumstances will admit of; or I shall pursue the embarkation with all
my strength." In this case there had been no time to organise a special
squadron or flotilla, in the usual way, to bar the line of passage, and the
battle-fleet had to be used for the purpose. This being so, Norris was not
going to allow the presence of an enemy's battle-fleet to entice him away
from his grip on the invading army, and so resolutely did he hold to the
principle, that he meant if the transports put to sea to direct his
offensive against them, while he merely contained the enemy's battle-fleet
by defensive observation.
In the Egyptian case there was no distinction between the two objectives at
all. Napoleon's expedition sailed in one mass. Yet in the handling of his
fleet Nelson preserved the essential idea. He organised it into three
"sub-squadrons," one of six sail and two of four each. "Two of these
sub-squadrons," says Berry, his flag-captain, "were to attack the ships of
war, while the third was to pursue the transports and to sink and destroy
as many as it could"; that is, he intended, in order to make sure of
Napoleon's army, to use no more than ten, and possibly only eight, of his
own battleships against the eleven of the enemy.
Many other examples could be given of British insistence on making the
enemy's army the primary objective and not his fleet in cases of invasion.
No point in the old tradition was more firmly established. Its value was of
course more strongly marked where the army and the fleet of the enemy
endeavoured to act on separate lines of operation; that is, where the army
took the real offensive line and the fleet the covering or preventive line,
and where consequently for our own fleet there was no confusion between the
two objectives. This was the normal case, and the reason it was so is
simple enough. It may be stated at once, since it serves to enunciate the
general principle upon which our traditional system of defence was based.
An invasion of Great Britain must always be an attempt over an uncommanded
sea. It may be that our fleet predominates or it may be that it does not,
but the command must always be in dispute. If we have gained complete
command, no invasion can take place, nor will it be attempted. If we have
lost it completely no invasion will be necessary, since, quite apart from
the threat of invasion, we must make peace on the best terms we can get.
Now, if the sea be uncommanded, there are obviously two ways in which an
invasion may be attempted. Firstly, the enemy may endeavour to force it
through our naval defence with transports and fleet in one mass. This was
the primitive idea on which the Spanish invasion of Philip the Second was
originally planned by his famous admiral, Santa-Cruz. Ripening military
science, however, was able to convince him of its weakness. A mass of
transports and warships is the most cumbrous and vulnerable engine of war
ever known. The weaker the naval defence of the threatened country, the
more devoutly will it pray the invader may use this device. Where contact
with the enemy's fleet is certain, and particularly in narrow seas, as it
was in this case, such a course will give the defender all the chances he
could desire, and success for the invader is inconceivable, provided always
we resolutely determine to make the army in its transports our main
objective, and are not to be induced to break our head against its escort.
Where, however, contact is not certain, the invasion over an uncommanded
sea may succeed by evasion of the defender's battle-fleet, as it did in the
case of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt. But that operation belongs to an
entirely different category from that which we are now considering. None of
the factors on which the traditional system of British defence is based
were present. It was an operation over an open sea against a distant and
undetermined objective that had no naval defence of its own, whereas in our
own case the determining factors are permanent naval defence, an
approximately determined objective, and a narrow sea where evasion by any
force of invasion strength is impossible. Napoleon's exploit was in fact
nothing more than the evasion of an open blockade which had no naval
defence beyond it. The vital importance of these things will appear as we
proceed and note the characteristics which marked every attempt to invade
England. From such attempts we of course exclude the various descents upon
Ireland, which, not being of invasion strength, fall into another class, to
be dealt with hereafter.
Since the expedient of forcing an invasion by the strength of a powerful
battleship escort has always been rejected as an inadmissible operation,
the invader has had no choice but to adopt a separate line for his army,
and operate with his fleet in such a way as may promise to prevent the
enemy controlling that line. That, in short, is the problem of invasion
over an uncommanded sea. In spite of an unbroken record of failure scored
at times with naval disaster, continental strategists from Parma to
Napoleon have clung obstinately to the belief that there is a solution
short of a complete fleet decision. They have tried every conceivable
expedient again and again. They have tried it by simple surprise evasion
and by evasion through diversion or dispersal of our naval defence. They
have tried it by seeking local control through a local naval success
prepared by surprise, or by attempting to entice our fleet away from home
waters to a sufficient extent to give them temporarily local superiority.
But the end has always been the same. Try as they would, they were faced
ultimately by one of two alternatives--they must either defeat our covering
battle-fleet in battle, or they must close their own battle-fleet on the
transports, and so set up the very situation which it was their main design
to avoid.
The truth is, that all attempts to invade England without command of the
sea have moved in a vicious circle, from which no escape was ever found. No
matter how ingenious or complex the enemy's design, a determined hold on
their army as the primary naval objective has always set up a process of
degradation which rendered the enterprise impracticable. Its stages are
distinct and recurrent, and may be expressed as it were diagrammatically as
follows:--
Two lines of operation having been decided on, the invading army is
gathered at a point as close as possible to the coast to be invaded; that
is, where the intervening sea is narrowest, and where the army's passage
will be exposed to interference for the shortest time. The covering fleet
will operate from a point as distant as convenient, so as to entice the
enemy as far as possible from the army's line of passage. The defender
replies by blockading the army's ports of departure with a flotilla of
light vessels capable of dealing with transports, or by establishing a
mobile defence of the threatened coasts which transports cannot break
unaided, or more probably he will combine both expedients. The first
fallacy of the invasion plan is then apparent. The narrower the sea, the
easier it is to watch. Pure evasion becomes impossible, and it is necessary
to give the transports sufficient armed strength by escort or otherwise to
protect them against flotilla attack. The defender at once stiffens his
flotilla defence with cruisers and intermediate ships, and the invader has
to arrange for breaking the barrier with a battle-squadron. So weak and
disturbing a position is then set up that the whole scheme begins to give
way, if, that is, the defender has clung stubbornly to the strategy we
always used. Our battle-fleet refused to seek out that of the invader. It
has always held a position between the invader's fleet and the blockaded
invasion base, covering the blockade and flotilla defence. To enable a
battle-squadron to break our hold and to reinforce the army escort, the
invader must either force this covering position by battle, or disturb it
so effectively as to permit the reinforcing squadron to evade it. But since
_ex hypothesi_ he is trying to invade without securing the command by
battle, he will first try to reinforce his transport escort by evasion. At
once he is faced with new difficulty. The reinforcement entails dividing
his fleet, and this is an expedient so vicious and disturbing to morale,
that no invader has ever been found to risk it. And for this reason. To
make evasion possible for the detached squadron, he must bring up the rest
of his force and engage the attention of the enemy's fleet, and thus unless
he is in very great superiority, and by hypothesis is not--he runs the
hazard of having his two divisions beaten in detail. This method has
sometimes been urged by Governments, but so loud have been the protests
both from the fleet and the army, that it has always been dropped, and the
invader finds himself at the end of the vicious circle. Unable to reinforce
his transport escort sufficiently without dividing his battle-fleet, he is
forced to bring his whole force up to the army or abandon the attempt till
command shall have been secured by battle.
Thus the traditional British system has never failed to bring about the
deadlock, and it will be observed it is founded on making the invading army
the primary objective. We keep a hold on it, firstly, by flotilla blockade
and defence stiffened as circumstances may dictate by higher units, and
secondly, by battle-fleet cover. It is on the flotilla hold that the whole
system is built up. It is the local danger to that hold which determines
the amount of stiffening the flotilla demands, and it is the security of
that hold which determines the position and action of the battle-fleet.
A few typical examples will serve to show how the system worked in practice
under all kinds of conditions. The first scientific attempt to work on two
lines of operation, as distinguished from the crude mass methods of the
Middle Ages, was the Spanish enterprise of 1588. Though internal support
from Catholic malcontents was expected, it was designed as a true invasion,
that is, a continuing operation for permanent conquest. Parma, the military
commander-in-chief, laid it down that the Spanish fleet would have not only
to protect his passage and support his landing, but also "to keep open his
communications for the flow of provisions and munition."
In advising the dual line of operation, Parma's original intention was to
get his army across by surprise. As always, however, it proved impossible
to conceal the design, and long before he was ready he found himself
securely blockaded by a Dutch flotilla supported by an English squadron. So
firm indeed was the English hold on the army, that for a time it was
overdone. The bulk of the English fleet was kept on the line of passage
under Howard, while Drake alone was sent to the westward. It was only under
the great sailor's importunity that the disposition, which was to become
traditional, was perfected, and the whole fleet, with the exception of the
squadron supporting the flotilla blockade, was massed in a covering
position to the westward. The normal situation was then set up, and it
could only have one result. Surprise was out of the question. Parma could
not move till the blockade was broken, nor in face of the covering fleet
could the Spanish fleet hope to break it by a sudden intrusion. The vague
prospects the Spaniards had conceived of keeping the English fleet away
from the line of passage by threatening a descent in the West Country or
blockading it in a western port would no longer do. No such expedient would
release Parma, and the Duke of Medina-Sidonia was ordered to proceed direct
to Dunkirk if possible without fighting, there to break the blockade and
secure the passage.
There was some idea in the King's mind that he would be able to do this
without a battle, but Parma and every seasoned Spanish sailor knew that the
English fleet would have to be totally defeated before the transports could
venture out of port. Such a battle was indeed inevitable, and the English
dispositions secured that the Spaniards would have to fight it under every
disadvantage which was inherent in the plan of dual lines of operation. The
English would secure certain contact at such a distance from the line of
passage as would permit prolonged harassing attacks in waters unfamiliar to
the enemy and close to their own sources of support and supply. No battle
to the death would be necessary until the Spaniards were herded into the
confined and narrow waters which the army's passage demanded, and where
both sections of the British fleet would be massed for the final struggle.
They must arrive there dispirited with indecisive actions and with the
terrors of unknown and difficult seas at the highest point. All this was no
matter of chance. It was inherent in the strategical and geographical
conditions. The English dispositions had taken every advantage of them, and
the result was that not only was the Spanish army unable even to move, but
the English advantages in the final battle were so great, that it was only
a lucky shift of wind that saved the Armada from being driven to total
destruction upon the Dutch banks.
In this case, of course, there had been ample time to make the necessary
dispositions. It will be well to follow it with an example in which
surprise came as near to being complete as it is possible to conceive, and
where the arrangements for defence had to be improvised on the spur of the
moment.
A case in point was the French attempt of 1744. In that year everything was
in favour of the invader. England was undermined with Jacobite sedition;
Scotland was restless and threatening; the navy had sunk to what is
universally regarded as its worst for spirit, organisation, and command;
and the government was in the hands of the notorious "Drunken
Administration." For three years we had been making unsuccessful war with
Spain, and had been supporting Maria Theresa on the Continent against
France, with the result that our home defence was reduced to its lowest
ebb. The navy then numbered 183 sail--about equal to that of France and
Spain combined--but owing to the strain of the war in the Mediterranean and
Transatlantic stations only forty-three, including eighteen of the line,
were available for home waters. Even counting all cruising ships "within
call," as the phrase then was, the Government had barely one-fourth of the
fleet at hand to meet the crisis. With the land forces it was little
better. Considerably more than half the home army was abroad with the King,
who was assisting the Empress-Queen as Elector of Hanover. Between France
and England, however, there was no war. In the summer the King won the
battle of Dettingen; a formal alliance with Maria Theresa followed in the
autumn; France responded with a secret alliance with Spain; and to prevent
further British action on the Continent, she resolved to strike a blow at
London in combination with a Jacobite insurrection. It was to be a "bolt
from the blue" before declaration and in mid-winter, when the best ships of
the home fleet were laid up. The operation was planned on dual lines, the
army to start from Dunkirk, the covering fleet from Brest.
The surprise was admirably designed. The port of Dunkirk had been destroyed
under the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, and though the French had been
restoring it secretly for some time, it was still unfit to receive a fleet
of transports. In spite of the warnings of Sir John Norris, the senior
admiral in the service, the assembling of troops in its neighbourhood from
the French army in Flanders could only be taken for a movement into winter
quarters, and that no suspicion might be aroused the necessary transports
were secretly taken up in other ports under false charter-parties, and were
only to assemble off Dunkirk at the last moment. With equal skill the
purpose of the naval mobilisation at Brest was concealed. By false
information cleverly imparted to our spies and by parade of victualling for
a long voyage, the British Government was led to believe that the main
fleet was intended to join the Spaniards in the Mediterranean, while a
detachment, which was designed to escort the transports, was ostensibly
equipped for a raid in the West Indies.
So far as concealment was concerned the arrangement was perfect. Yet it
contained within it the fatal ingredient. The army was to strike in the
Thames at Tilbury; but complete as was the secrecy, Marshal Saxe, who was
to command, could not face the passage without escort. There were too many
privateers and armed merchantmen always in the river, besides cruisers
moving to and fro on commerce-protection duty. The division, therefore,
which we supposed to be for the West Indies was to be detached from the
Brest fleet after it entered the Channel and was to proceed to join the
transports off Dunkirk, while the Marquis de Roquefeuil with the main fleet
held what British ships might be ready in Portsmouth either by battle or
blockade.
Nothing could look simpler or more certain of success. The British
Government seemed quite asleep. The blow was timed for the first week in
January, and it was mid-December before they even began to watch Brest with
cruisers regularly. On these cruisers' reports measures were taken to
prepare an equal squadron for sea by the new year. By this time nearly
twenty of the line were ready or nearly so at the Nore, Portsmouth, and
Plymouth, and a press was ordered to man them. Owing to various causes the
French had now to postpone their venture. Finally it was not till February
6th that Roquefeuil was seen to leave Brest with nineteen of the line. The
news reached London on the 12th, and next day Norris was ordered to hoist
his flag at Spithead. His instructions were "to take the most effectual
measures to prevent the making of any descent upon the kingdoms." It was
nothing but news that the young Pretender had left Rome for France that led
to this precaution. The Government had still no suspicion of what was
brewing at Dunkirk. It was not till the 20th that a Dover smuggler brought
over information which at last opened their eyes.
A day or two later the French transports were seen making for Dunkirk, and
were mistaken for the Brest fleet. Orders were consequently sent down to
Norris to follow them. In vain he protested at the interference. He knew
the French were still to the westward of him, but his orders were repeated,
and he had to go. Tiding it up-Channel against easterly winds, he reached
the Downs and joined the Nore Division there on the 28th. History usually
speaks of this false movement as the happy chance which saved the country
from invasion. But it was not so. Saxe had determined not to face the
Thames ships without escort. They were ample to destroy him had he done so.
In truth the move which the Government forced on Norris spoilt the campaign
and prevented his destroying the Brest fleet as well as stopping the
invasion.
Roquefeuil had just received his final orders off the Start. He was
instructed by all possible means to bring the main British fleet to action,
or at least to prevent further concentration, while he was also to detach
the special division of four of the line under Admiral Barraille to Dunkirk
to escort the transports. It was in fact the inevitable order, caused by
our hold on the army, to divide the fleet. Both officers as usual began to
be upset, and as with Medina-Sidonia, they decided to keep company till
they reached the Isle of Wight and remain there till they could get touch
with Saxe and pilots for the Dover Strait. They were beset with the
nervousness that seems inseparable from this form of operation. Roquefeuil
explained to his Government that it was impossible to tell what ships the
enemy had passed to the Downs, and that Barraille when he arrived off
Dunkirk might well find himself in inferiority. He ended in the usual way
by urging that the whole fleet must move in a body to the line of passage.
On arriving off Portsmouth, however, a reconnaissance in thick weather led
him to believe that the whole of Norris's fleet was still there, and he
therefore detached Barraille, who reached Dunkirk in safety.
Not knowing that Norris was in the Downs, Saxe began immediately to embark
his troops, but bad weather delayed the operation for three days, and so
saved the expedition, exposed as it was in the open roads, from destruction
by an attack which Norris was on the point of delivering with his flotilla
of fireships and bomb vessels.
The Brest squadron had an equally narrow escape. Saxe and his staff having
heard rumours of Norris's movement to the Downs had become seized with the
sea-sickness which always seems to afflict an army as it waits to face the
dangers of an uncommanded passage. They too wanted the whole fleet to
escort them, and orders had been sent to Roquefeuille to do as he had
suggested. All unconscious of Norris's presence in the Downs with a score
of the line more powerful than his own, he came on with the fifteen he had
still with his flag to close on Barraille. Norris was informed of his
approach, and it was now he wrote his admirable appreciation, already
quoted, for dealing with the situation.
"As I think it," he said, "of the greatest consequence to his Majesty's
service to prevent the landing of these troops in any part of the country,
I have ... determined to anchor without the sands of Dunkirk, where we
shall be in the fairest way for keeping them in." That is, he determined to
keep hold of the army regardless of the enemy's fleet, and as Saxe's
objective was not quite certain, he would do it by close blockade. "But
if," he continued, "they should unfortunately get out and pass in the night
and go northward [that is, for Scotland], I intend to detach a superior
force to endeavour to overtake and destroy them, and with the remainder of
my squadron either fight the French fleet now in the Channel, or observe
them and cover the country as our circumstances will admit of; or I shall
pursue the embarkation [that is, follow the transports] with all my
strength." This meant he would treat the enemy's army offensively and their
fleet defensively, and his plan was entirely approved by the King.
As to which of the two plans he would adopt, the inference is that his
choice would depend on the strength of the enemy, for it was reported the
Rochefort squadron had joined Roquefeuille. The doubt was quickly settled.
On the morrow he heard that Roquefeuille was at Dungeness with only fifteen
of the line. In a moment he seized all the advantage of the interior
position which Roquefeuille's necessity to close on the army had given him.
With admirable insight he saw there was time to fling his whole force at
the enemy's fleet without losing his hold on the army's line of passage.
The movement was made immediately. The moment the French were sighted
"General chase" was signalled, and Roquefeuille was within an ace of being
surprised at his anchorage when a calm stopped the attack. The calm was
succeeded by another furious gale, in which the French escaped in a
disastrous _sauve qui peut_, and the fleet of transports was destroyed. The
outcome of it all was not only the failure of the invasion, but that we
secured the command of home waters for the rest of the war.
The whole attempt, it will be seen, with everything in its favour, had
exhibited the normal course of degradation. For all the nicely framed plan
and the perfect deception, the inherent difficulties, when it came to the
point of execution, had as usual forced a clumsy concentration of the
enemy's battle-fleet with his transports, and we on our part were able to
forestall it with every advantage in our favour by the simple expedient of
a central mass on a revealed and certain line of passage.
In the next project, that of 1759, a new and very clever plan was devised
for turning the difficulty. The first idea of Marshal Belleisle, like that
of Napoleon, was to gather the army at Ambleteuse and Boulogne, and to
avoid the assemblage of transports by passing it across the Strait by
stealth in flat boats. But this idea was abandoned before it had gone very
far for something much more subtle. The fallacious advantage of a short
passage was dropped, and the army was to start from three widely separated
points all in more open waters--a diversionary raid from Dunkirk and two
more formidable forces from Havre and the Morbihan in South Brittany. To
secure sufficient control there was to be a concentration on the Brest
fleet from the Mediterranean and the West Indies.
The new feature, it will be observed, was that our covering fleet--that is,
the Western Squadron off Brest--would have two cruiser blockades to secure,
one on either side of it. Difficult as the situation looked, it was solved
on the old lines. The two divisions of the French army at Dunkirk and
Morbihan were held by cruiser squadrons capable of following them over the
open sea if by chance they escaped, while the third division at Havre,
which had nothing but flat boats for transport, was held by a flotilla well
supported. Its case was hopeless. It could not move without a squadron to
release it, and no fortune of weather could possibly bring a squadron from
Brest. Hawke, who had the main blockade, might be blown off, but he could
scarcely fail to bring to action any squadron that attempted to enter the
Channel. With the Morbihan force it was different. Any time that Hawke was
blown off a squadron could reach it from Brest and break the cruiser
blockade. The French Government actually ordered a portion of the fleet to
make the attempt. Conflans however, who was in command, protested his force
was too weak to divide, owing to the failure of the intended concentration.
Boscawen had caught and beaten the Mediterranean squadron off Lagos, and
though the West Indian squadron got in, it proved, as in Napoleon's great
plan of concentration, unfit for further service. The old situation had
arisen, forced by the old method of defence; and in the end there was
nothing for it but for Conflans to take his whole fleet to the Morbihan
transports. Hawke was upon him at once, and the disastrous day of Quiberon
was the result. The Dunkirk division alone got free, but the smallness of
its size, which permitted it to evade the watch, also prevented its doing
any harm. Its escort, after landing its handful of troops in Ireland, was
entirely destroyed; and so again the attempt of the French to invade over
an uncommanded sea produced no effect but the loss of their fleet.
The project of 1779 marked these principles even more strongly, for it
demonstrated them working even when our home fleet was greatly inferior to
that of the enemy. In this case the invader's idea was to form two
expeditionary forces at Cherbourg and Havre, and under cover of an
overwhelming combination of the Spanish and French fleets, to unite them at
sea and seize Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight. It was in the early summer
we got wind of the scheme, and two cruiser squadrons and flotillas were at
once formed at the Downs and Channel Islands to watch the French coasts and
prevent the concentration of transports. Spain had not yet declared war,
but she was suspected, and the main fleet, under the veteran Sir Charles
Hardy, who had been Norris's second in command in 1744, was ordered to
proceed off Brest and prevent any Spanish squadron that might appear from
entering that port. The French, however, outmanoeuvred us by putting to sea
before Hardy could reach his station and forming a junction with the
Spaniards off Finisterre. The combined fleet contained about fifty of the
line, nearly double our own. The army of invasion, with Dumouriez for its
Chief of the Staff, numbered some 50,000 men, a force we were in no
condition to meet ashore. Everything, therefore, was in favour of success,
and yet in the navy, at least, a feeling of confidence prevailed that no
invasion could take place.
The brains of the naval defence were Lord Barham (then Sir Charles
Middleton) at the Admiralty and Kempenfelt as Chief of the Staff in the
fleet; and it is to their correspondence at this time that we owe some of
the most valuable strategical appreciations we possess. The idea of the
French was to come into the Channel in their overwhelming force, and while
they destroyed or held Hardy, to detach a sufficient squadron to break the
cruiser blockade and escort the troops across. Kempenfelt was confident
that it could not be done. He was sure that the unwieldy combined mass
could be rendered powerless by his comparatively homogeneous and mobile
fleet, inferior as it was, so long as he could keep it at sea and to the
westward. The appreciation of the power of a nimble inferior fleet which he
wrote at this time has already been given.[23] When the worst of the
position was fully known, and the enemy was reported off the mouth of the
Channel, he wrote another to Middleton. His only doubt was whether his
fleet had the necessary cohesion and mobility. "We don't seem," he said,
"to have considered sufficiently a certain fact that the comparative force
of two fleets depends much upon their sailing. The fleet that sails fastest
has much the advantage, as they can engage or not as they please, and so
have always in their power to choose the favourable opportunity to attack.
I think I may safely hazard an opinion that twenty-five sail of the line
coppered would be sufficient to harass and tease this great unwieldy
combined Armada so as to prevent their effecting anything, hanging
continually upon them, ready to catch at any opportunity of a separation
from night, gale or fog, to dart upon the separated, to cut off convoys of
provisions coming to them, and if they attempted an invasion, to oblige
their whole fleet to escort the transports, and even then it would be
impossible to protect them entirely from so active and nimble a fleet."
[23] _Supra_, p. 222.
Here we have from the pen of one of the greatest masters the real key of
the solution--the power, that is, of forcing the mass of the enemy's fleet
to escort the transports. Hardy, of course, knew it well from his
experience of 1744, and acted accordingly. This case is the more striking,
since defence against the threatened invasion was not the whole of the
problem he had to solve. It was complicated by instructions that he must
also prevent a possible descent on Ireland, and cover the arrival of the
great convoys. In reply, on August 1st, he announced his intention of
taking station ten to twenty leagues W.S.W. of Scilly, "which I am of
opinion," he said, "is the most proper station for the security of the
trade expected from the East and West Indies, and for the meeting of the
fleets of the enemy _should they attempt to come into the Channel_." He
underlined the last words, indicating, apparently, his belief that they
would not venture to do so so long as he could keep his fleet to the
westward and undefeated. This at least he did, till a month later he found
it necessary to come in for supplies. Then, still avoiding the enemy, he
ran not to Plymouth, but right up to St. Helen's. The movement is always
regarded as an unworthy retreat, and it caused much dissatisfaction in the
fleet at the time. But it is to be observed that his conduct was strictly
in accordance with the principle which makes the invading army the primary
objective. If Hardy's fleet was no longer fit to keep the sea without
replenishment, then the proper place to seek replenishment was on the
invader's line of passage. So long as he was there, invasion could not take
place till he was defeated. The allies, it was true, were now free to join
their transports, but the prospect of such a movement gave the admiral no
uneasiness, for it would bring him the chance of serving his enemy as the
Spaniards were served in 1588. "I shall do my utmost," he said, "to drive
them up the Channel." It is the old principle. If the worst comes to the
worst, so long as you are able to force the covering fleet upon the
transports, and especially in narrow waters, invasion becomes an operation
beyond the endurable risks of war.
So it proved. On August 14th Count d'Orvilliers, the allied
commander-in-chief, had made the Lizard, and for a fortnight had striven to
bring Hardy to decisive action. Until he had done so he dared neither enter
the Channel with his fleet nor detach a squadron to break the cruiser
blockades at the invasion bases. His ineffectual efforts exhausted his
fleet's endurance, which the distant concentration at Finisterre had
already severely sapped, and he was forced to return impotent to Brest
before anything had been accomplished. The allies were not able to take the
sea again that campaign, but even had it been in their power to do so,
Hardy and Kempenfelt could have played their defensive game indefinitely,
and with ever-increasing chances, as the winter drew near, of dealing a
paralysing blow.
There was never any real chance of success, though it is true Dumouriez
thought otherwise. He believed the enterprise might have gone through if a
diversion had been made by the bulk of the fleet against Ireland, and under
cover of it a _coup de main_ delivered upon the Isle of Wight, "for which,"
he said, "six or eight of the line would have been enough." But it is
inconceivable that old hands like Hardy and Kempenfelt would have been so
easily beguiled of their hold on the line of passage. Had such a division
been detached up the Channel from the allied fleet they would surely,
according to tradition, have followed it with either a superior force or
their whole squadron.
The well-known projects of the Great War followed the same course. Under
Napoleon's directions they ran the whole gamut of every scheme that ever
raised delusive hope before. Beginning from the beginning with the idea of
stealing his army across in flat-boats, he was met with the usual flotilla
defence. Then came his only new idea, which was to arm his transport
flotilla to the point of giving it power to force a passage for itself. We
replied by strengthening our flotilla. Convinced by experiment that his
scheme was now impracticable, he set his mind on breaking the blockade by
the sudden intrusion of a flying squadron from a distance. To this end
various plausible schemes were worked out, but plan after plan melted in
his hand, till he was forced to face the inevitable necessity of bringing
an overwhelming battle force up to his transports. The experience of two
centuries had taught him nothing. By a more distant concentration than had
ever been attempted before he believed he could break the fatal hold of his
enemy. The only result was so severely to exhaust his fleet that it never
could get within reach of the real difficulties of its task, a task which
every admiral in his service knew to be beyond the strength of the Imperial
Navy. Nor did Napoleon even approach a solution of the problem he had set
himself--invasion over an uncommanded sea. With our impregnable flotilla
hold covered by an automatic concentration of battle-squadrons off Ushant,
his army could never even have put forth, unless he had inflicted upon our
covering fleet such a defeat as would have given him command of the sea,
and with absolute control of the sea the passage of an army presents no
difficulties.
Of the working of these principles under modern conditions we have no
example. The acquisition of free movement must necessarily modify their
application, and since the advent of steam there have been only two
invasions over uncommanded seas--that of the Crimea in 1854, and that of
Manchuria in 1904--and neither of these cases is in point, for in neither
was there any attempt at naval defence. Still there seems no reason to
believe that such defence applied in the old manner would be less effective
than formerly. The flotilla was its basis, and since the introduction of
the torpedo the power of the flotilla has greatly increased. Its real and
moral effect against transports must certainly be greater than ever, and
the power of squadrons to break a flotilla blockade is more restricted.
Mines, again, tell almost entirely in favour of defence, so much so indeed
as to render a rapid _coup de main_ against any important port almost an
impossibility. In the absence of all experience it is to such theoretical
considerations we must turn for light.
Theoretically stated, the success of our old system of defence depended on
four relations. Firstly, there is the relation between the rapidity with
which an invasion force could be mobilised and embarked, and the rapidity
with which restlessness in foreign ports and _places d'armes_ could be
reported; that is to say, the chance of surprise and evasion are as the
speed of preparation to the speed of intelligence.
Secondly, there is the relation of the speed of convoys to the speed of
cruisers and flotilla; that is to say, our ability to get contact with a
convoy after it has put to sea and before the expedition can be disembarked
is as the speed of our cruisers and flotilla to the speed of the convoy.
Thirdly, there is the relation between the destructive power of modern
cruisers and flotillas against a convoy unescorted or weakly escorted and
the corresponding power in sailing days.
Fourthly, there is the relation between the speed of convoys and the speed
of battle-squadrons, which is of importance where the enemy's transports
are likely to be strongly escorted. On this relation depends the facility
with which the battle-squadron covering our mobile defence can secure an
interior position from which it may strike either the enemy's
battle-squadron if it moves or his convoy before it can complete its
passage and effect the landing.
All these relations appear to have been modified by modern developments in
favour of the defence. In the first ratio, that of speed of mobilisation to
speed of intelligence, it is obviously so. Although military mobilisation
may be still relatively as rapid as the mobilisation of fleets, yet
intelligence has outstripped both. This is true both for gaining and for
conveying intelligence. Preparations for oversea invasion were never easy
to conceal, owing to the disturbance of the flow of shipping that they
caused. Elaborate precautions were taken to prevent commercial leakage of
intelligence, but they never entirely succeeded. Yet formerly, in the
condition of comparative crudeness with which international trade was then
organised, concealment was relatively easy, at least for a time. But the
ever-growing sensitiveness of world-wide commerce, when market movements
are reported from hour to hour instead of from week to week, has greatly
increased the difficulty. And apart from the rapidity with which
information may be gathered through this alert and intimate sympathy
between Exchanges, there is the still more important fact that with
wireless the speed of conveying naval intelligence has increased in a far
higher ratio than the speed of sea transit.
As regards the ratio between cruiser and convoy speeds, on which evasion so
much depends, it is the same. In frigate days the ratio appears to have
been not more than seven to five. Now in the case at any rate of large
convoys it would be nearly double.
Of the destructive power of the flotilla, growing as it does from year to
year, enough has been said already. With the advent of the torpedo and
submarine it has probably increased tenfold. In a lesser degree the same is
true of cruisers. In former days the physical power of a cruiser to injure
a dispersing convoy was comparatively low, owing to her relatively low
excess of speed and the restricted range and destructive power of her guns.
With higher speed and higher energy and range in gun power the ability of
cruisers to cut up a convoy renders its practical annihilation almost
certain if once it be caught, and consequently affords a moral deterrent
against trusting to evasion beyond anything that was known before.
The increased ratio of battle-fleet speed to that of large convoys is
equally indisputable and no less important, for the facility of finding
interior positions which it implies goes to the root of the old system. So
long as our battle-fleet is in a position whence it can cover our flotilla
blockade or strike the enemy's convoy in transit, it forces his
battle-fleet in the last resort to close up on the convoy, and that, as
Kempenfelt pointed out, is practically fatal to the success of invasion.
From whatever point of view, then, we regard the future chances of
successful invasion over an uncommanded sea, it would seem that not only
does the old system hold good, but that all modern developments which touch
the question bid fair to intensify the results which our sea service at
least used so confidently to expect, and which it never failed to secure.
II. ATTACK AND DEFENCE OF TRADE
The base idea of the attack and defence of trade may be summed up in the
old adage, "Where the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered
together." The most fertile areas always attracted the strongest attack,
and therefore required the strongest defence; and between the fertile and
the infertile areas it was possible to draw a line which for strategical
purposes was definite and constant. The fertile areas were the terminals of
departure and destination where trade tends to be crowded, and in a
secondary degree the focal points where, owing to the conformation of the
land, trade tends to converge. The infertile areas were the great routes
which passed through the focal points and connected the terminal areas.
Consequently attack on commerce tends to take one of two forms. It may be
terminal or it may be pelagic, terminal attack being the more profitable,
but demanding the greater force and risk, and pelagic attack being the more
uncertain, but involving less force and risk.
These considerations lead us directly to the paradox which underlies the
unbroken failure of our enemies to exercise decisive pressure upon us by
operations against our trade. It is that where attack is most to be feared,
there defence is easiest. A plan of war which has the destruction of trade
for its primary object implies in the party using it an inferiority at sea.
Had he superiority, his object would be to convert that superiority to a
working command by battle or blockade. Except, therefore, in the rare cases
where the opposed forces are equal, we must assume that the belligerent who
makes commerce destruction his primary object will have to deal with a
superior fleet. Now, it is true that the difficulty of defending trade lies
mainly in the extent of sea it covers. But, on the other hand, the areas in
which it tends to congregate, and in which alone it is seriously
vulnerable, are few and narrow, and can be easily occupied if we are in
superior force. Beyond those areas effective occupation is impossible, but
so also is effective attack. Hence the controlling fact of war on commerce,
that facility of attack means facility of defence.
Beside this fundamental principle we must place another that is scarcely
less important. Owing to the general common nature of sea communications,
attack and defence of trade are so intimately connected that the one
operation is almost indistinguishable from the other. Both ideas are
satisfied by occupying the common communications. The strongest form of
attack is the occupation of the enemy's terminals, and the establishment of
a commercial blockade of the ports they contain. But as this operation
usually requires the blockade of an adjacent naval port, it also
constitutes, as a rule, a defensive disposition for our own trade, even
when the enemy's terminal area does not overlap one of our own. In the
occupation of focal areas the two ideas are even more inseparable, since
most, if not all, such areas are on lines of communication that are common.
It will suffice, therefore, to deal with the general aspect of the subject
from the point of view of defence.
It was in conformity with the distinction between fertile and infertile
areas that our old system of trade defence was developed. Broadly speaking,
that system was to hold the terminals in strength, and in important cases
the focal points as well. By means of a battle-squadron with a full
complement of cruisers they were constituted defended areas, or "tracts" as
the old term was, and the trade was regarded as safe when it entered them.
The intervening trade-routes were left as a rule undefended. Thus our home
terminals were held by two battle-squadrons, the Western Squadron at the
mouth of the Channel, and the North Sea or Eastern Squadron with its
headquarters usually in the Downs. To these was added a cruiser squadron on
the Irish station based at Cork, which was sometimes subordinate to the
Western Squadron and sometimes an independent organisation. The area of the
Western Squadron in the French wars extended, as we have seen, over the
whole Bay of Biscay, with the double function, so far as commerce was
concerned, of preventing the issue of raiding squadrons from the enemy's
ports, and acting offensively against his Atlantic trade. That of the North
Sea squadron extended to the mouth of the Baltic and the north-about
passage. Its main function during the great naval coalitions against us was
to check the operations of Dutch squadrons or to prevent the intrusion of
French ones north-about against our Baltic trade. Like the Western
Squadron, it threw out divisions usually located at Yarmouth and Leith for
the protection of our coastwise trade from privateers and sporadic cruisers
acting from ports within the defended area. Similarly, between the Downs
and the Western Squadron was usually one or more smaller squadrons, mainly
cruisers, and generally located about Havre and the Channel Islands, which
served the same purpose for the Norman and North Breton ports. To complete
the system there were flotilla patrols acting under the port admirals and
doing their best to police the routes of the coastwise and local traffic,
which then had an importance long since lost. The home system of course
differed at different times, but it was always on these general lines. The
naval defence was supplemented by defended ports of refuge, the principal
ones being on the coast of Ireland to shelter the ocean trade, but others
in great numbers were provided within the defended areas against the
operations of privateers, and the ruins of batteries all round the British
shores testify how complete was the organisation.
A similar system prevailed in the colonial areas, but there the naval
defence consisted normally of cruiser squadrons stiffened with one or two
ships-of-the-line mainly for the purpose of carrying the flag. They were
only occupied by battle-squadrons when the enemy threatened operations with
a similar force. The minor or interior defence against local privateers was
to a large extent local; that is, the great part of the flotilla was
furnished by sloops built or hired on the spot, as being best adapted for
the service.
Focal points were not then so numerous as they have become since the
development of the Far Eastern trade. The most important of them, the
Straits of Gibraltar, was treated as a defended area. From the point of
view of commerce-protection it was held by the Mediterranean squadron. By
keeping watch on Toulon that squadron covered not only the Straits, but
also the focal points within the sea. It too had its extended divisions,
sometimes as many as four, one about the approaches to Leghorn, one in the
Adriatic, a third at Malta, and the fourth at Gibraltar. In cases of war
with Spain the latter was very strong, so as to secure the focal area
against Cartagena and Cadiz. On one occasion indeed, in 1804-5, as we have
seen, it was constituted for a short time an independent area with a
special squadron. But in any case the Gibraltar area had its own internal
flotilla guard under the direction of the port admiral as a defence against
local privateers and pirates.
The general theory of these defended terminal and focal areas, it will be
seen, was to hold in force those waters which converging trade made most
fertile, and which therefore furnished an adequate field for the operations
of raiding squadrons. In spite of the elaborate defensive system, such
squadrons might, and sometimes did, intrude by surprise or stealth, and
were then able to set at defiance both convoy escorts and the cruiser
outposts. But, as experience proved, the system of terminal defence by
battle-squadrons made it impossible for such raiding squadrons to remain
long enough on the ground to cause any serious interruption or to do
serious harm. It was only by a regular fleet of superior strength that the
system could be broken down. In other words, the defence could only fall
when our means of local control was destroyed by battle.
So much for the defended areas. With regard to the great routes that
connected them, it has been said they were left undefended. By this is
meant that the security of ships passing along them was provided for, not
by patrols but by escort. The convoy system was adopted, and the theory of
that system is that while vessels are on the great routes they are normally
liable only to sporadic attack, and they are consequently collected into
fleets and furnished with an escort sufficient to repel sporadic attack. In
theory, cruiser escort is sufficient, but in practice it was found
convenient and economical to assign the duty in part to ships-of-the-line
which were going out to join the distant terminal squadron or returning
from it for a refit or some other reason; in other words, the system of
foreign reliefs was made to work in with the supplementary escort system.
Where no such ships were available and the convoys were of great value, or
enemy's ships-of-the-line were known to be out, similar units were
specially detailed for convoy duty to go and return, but this use of battle
units was exceptional.
Such a method of dealing with the great routes is the corollary of the idea
of defended areas. As those areas were fertile and likely to attract
raiding squadrons, so the great routes were infertile, and no enemy could
afford to spend squadrons upon them. It is obvious, however, that the
system had its weak side, for the mere fact that a convoy was upon a great
route tended to attract a squadron, and the comparative immunity of those
routes was lost. The danger was provided for to a great extent by the fact
that the enemy's ports from which a squadron could issue were all within
defended areas and watched by our own squadrons. Still, the guard could not
be made impenetrable. There was always the chance of a squadron escaping,
and if it escaped towards a critical trade-route, it must be followed.
Hence there were times when the convoy system seriously disturbed our
dispositions, as, for instance, in the crisis of the Trafalgar campaign,
when for a short time our chain of defended areas was broken down by the
escape of the Toulon squadron. That escape eventually forced a close
concentration on the Western Squadron, but all other considerations apart,
it was felt to be impossible to retain the mass for more than two days
owing to the fact that the great East and West Indies convoys were
approaching, and Villeneuve's return to Ferrol from Martinique exposed them
to squadronal attack. It was, in fact, impossible to tell whether the mass
had not been forced upon us with this special end in view.
In the liability to deflection of this kind lay the most serious
strategical objection to the convoy system. It was sought to minimise it by
giving the convoys a secret route when there was apprehension of squadronal
interference. It was done in the case just cited, but the precaution seemed
in no way to lessen the anxiety. It may have been because in those days of
slow communication there could be no such certainty that the secret route
had been received as there would be now.
Modern developments and changes in shipping and naval material have indeed
so profoundly modified the whole conditions of commerce protection, that
there is no part of strategy where historical deduction is more difficult
or more liable to error. To avoid such error as far as possible, it is
essential to keep those developments in mind at every step. The more
important of them are three in number. Firstly, the abolition of
privateering; secondly, the reduced range of action for all warships; and
thirdly, the development of wireless telegraphy. There are others which
must be dealt with in their place, but these three go to the root of the
whole problem.
Difficult as it is to arrive at exact statistics of commerce destruction in
the old wars, one thing seems certain--that the bulk of captures, which
were reckoned in hundreds and sometimes even in thousands, were due to the
action of privateers. Further, it seems certain that, reckoning at least by
numbers, the greater part of the damage was done by small privateers
operating close to their bases, either home or colonial, against coastwise
and local traffic. The complaints of merchants, so far as they are known,
relate mainly to this kind of work in the West Indies and home waters,
while accounts of serious captures by large privateers on the high seas are
comparatively rare. The actual damage done by the swarm of small vessels
may not have been great, but its moral effects were very serious. It was
impossible for the strongest Governments to ignore them, and the
consequence was a chronic disturbance of the larger strategical
dispositions. While these dispositions were adequate to check the
operations of large privateers acting in the same way as regular cruisers,
the smaller ones found very free play amidst the ribwork of the protective
system, and they could only be dealt with by filling up the spaces with a
swarm of small cruisers to the serious detriment of the larger
arrangements. Even so, the proximity of the enemy's ports made escape so
easy, that the work of repression was very ineffective. The state of the
case was indeed almost identical with a people's war. The ordinary devices
of strategy failed to deal with it, as completely as Napoleon's broadly
planned methods failed to deal with the _guerilleros_ in Spain, or as our
own failed for so long in South Africa.
By the abolition of privateering, then, it would seem that the most
disturbing part of the problem has been eliminated. It is, of course,
uncertain how far the Declaration of Paris will hold good in practice. It
is still open even to the parties to it to evade its restrictions to a
greater or less extent by taking up and commissioning merchantmen as
regular ships of war. But it is unlikely that such methods will extend
beyond the larger privately owned vessels. Any attempt to revive in this
way the old _picaresque_ methods could only amount to a virtual repudiation
of statutory international law, which would bring its own retribution.
Moreover, for home waters at least, the conditions which favoured this
_picaresque_ warfare no longer exist. In the old wars the bulk of our trade
came into the Thames, and thence the greater part of it was distributed in
small coasting vessels. It was against this coastwise traffic that the
small, short-range privateers found their opportunity and their richest
harvest. But, now that so many other great centres of distribution have
established themselves, and that the bulk of the distribution is done by
internal lines of communication, the Channel is no longer the sole artery,
and the old troublesome disturbance can be avoided without a vital
dislocation of our commercial system.
The probability, then, is that in the future the whole problem will be
found to be simplified, and that the work of commerce protection will lie
much more within the scope of large strategical treatment than it ever did
before, with the result that the change should be found to tell
substantially in favour of defence and against attack.
The reduction of range of action is scarcely less important. In the old
days a cruising ship could be stored for six months, and so long as she
could occasionally renew her fuel and water, she was free to range the sea
outside the defended areas for the whole of the period with unimpaired
vitality. For such pelagic operations her movement was practically
unrestricted. She could run for two or three days from a superior enemy or
chase for as long without loss of energy, and she could wait indefinitely
at a likely spot, or change her ground, as danger or hope of plunder
dictated. So long as she had men left to man her prizes, her power of
mischief was almost unlimited. All this is now changed. The capacity of
each cruise of a ship to-day is very small. She is confined to short dashes
within a strategically defended area, or if she is bent on pelagic
operations, is compelled to proceed so far to find undefended waters that
her coal will scarcely permit of more than a few days' actual cruising. A
couple of chases at high speed during that period may force her to return
at once, subject only to the precarious possibility of renewing her coal
from a prize. She has, further, to face the fact that manning prizes must
necessarily reduce her capacity for speed, which depends so much on a fully
manned engine-room. This will tend to jeopardise her chances of return
through or near defended areas. The only escape from this difficulty is to
sink the captured ship. But this course has objections scarcely less
weighty than the other. No Power will incur the odium of sinking a prize
with all hands, and their removal to the captor's ship takes time,
especially in bad weather, and the presence of such prisoners in a cruiser
in any number soon becomes a serious check on her fighting power. In the
case of large ships, moreover, the work of destruction is no easy matter.
In the most favourable circumstances it takes a considerable time, and thus
not only eats into the cruiser's endurance, but decreases her chances of
evasion.
From these and similar considerations it is obvious that the possibilities
of operations on the great trade-routes are much less extensive than they
were formerly, while to speak of cruisers "infesting" those routes is sheer
hyperbole. Under modern conditions it is scarcely more feasible than it
would be to keep up a permanent blockade of the British Islands. It would
require a flow of ships in such numbers as no country but our own can
contemplate possessing, and such as could not be maintained without having
first secured a very decided preponderance at sea. The loss of radius of
action therefore, though it does not increase the power of defence,
sensibly lessens that of attack by pelagic operations.
For the great increase in the powers of defence we must turn to the
extraordinary development in the means of distant communication. Under
former conditions it was possible for a cruising ship to remain for days
upon a fertile spot and make a number of captures before her presence was
known. But since most large merchantmen have been fitted with wireless
installations, she cannot now attack a single one of them without fear of
calling down upon her an adversary. Moreover, when she is once located,
every ship within wireless reach can be warned of her presence and avoid
her. She must widely and constantly shift her position, thereby still
further reducing her staying power. On the whole, then, it would appear
that in so far as modern developments affect the problem, they certainly
render pelagic operations far more difficult and uncertain than they used
to be. Upon the great routes the power of attack has been reduced and the
means of evasion has increased to such an extent as to demand entire
reconsideration of the defence of trade between terminal areas. The whole
basis of the old system would seem to be involved. That basis was the
convoy system, and it now becomes doubtful whether the additional security
which convoys afforded is sufficient to outweigh their economical drawbacks
and their liability to cause strategical disturbance.
Over and above the considerations already noticed, there are three others,
all of which favour the security of our trade by permitting a much more
extended choice of route. The first is, that steam vessels are not forced
by prevailing winds to keep to particular courses. The second is, that the
improvements in the art of navigation no longer render it so necessary to
make well-known landfalls during transit. The third is, that the
multiplication of our great ports of distribution have divided the old main
flow of trade to the Channel into a number of minor streams that cover a
much wider area and demand a greater distribution of force for effective
attack. It will be obvious that the combined effect of these considerations
is to increase still further the chances of individual vessels evading the
enemy's cruisers and to lessen the risk of dispensing with escort.
Nor are the new practical difficulties of sporadic operations on the great
routes the only arguments that minimise the value of convoys. We have also
to remember that while the number of vessels trading across the ocean has
enormously increased since 1815, it is scarcely possible, even if the
abolition of privateering prove abortive, that the number of cruisers
available for pelagic attack could exceed, or even equal, the number
employed in sailing days. This consideration, then, must also be thrown
into the scale against convoys; for it is certain that the amount of
serious operative damage which an enemy can do to our trade by pelagic
operation is mainly determined by the ratio which his available cruiser
strength bears to the volume of that trade. This aspect of the question is,
however, part of a much wider one, which concerns the relation which the
volume of our trade bears to the difficulty of its defence, and this must
be considered later.
It remains, first, to deal with the final link in the old system of
defence. The statement that the great routes were left undefended will seem
to be in opposition to a prevailing impression derived from the fact that
frigates are constantly mentioned as being "on a cruise." The assumption is
that they in effect patrolled the great routes. But this was not so, nor
did they rove the sea at will. They constituted a definite and necessary
part of the system. Though that system was founded on a distinction between
defended terminals and undefended routes, which was a real strategical
distinction, it was impossible to draw an actual line where the one sphere
began and the other ended. Outside the regularly defended areas lay a
region which, as the routes began to converge, was comparatively fertile.
In this region enemies' cruisers and their larger privateers found the mean
between risk and profit. Here too convoys, as they entered the zone, were
in their greatest danger for fear of their escorts being overpowered by
raiding squadrons. Consequently it was the practice, when the approach of
convoys was expected, to throw forward from the defended area groups of
powerful cruisers, and even battleship divisions, to meet them and
reinforce their escorts. Outward-bound convoys had their escorts similarly
strengthened till they were clear of the danger zone. The system was in
regular use both for home and colonial areas. In no sense did it constitute
a patrol of the routes. It was in practice and conception a system of
outposts, which at seasons of special risk amounted to an extension of the
defended areas combining with a reinforcement of the convoy escorts. Focal
points of lesser importance, such as Capes Finisterre and St. Vincent, were
similarly held by one or two powerful cruisers, and if necessary by a
squadron.
As has been already explained, owing to the peculiar conditions of the sea
and the common nature of maritime communications, these dispositions were
adopted as well for attack as defence, and the fertile areas, for the
defence of which a frigate captain was sent "on a cruise," were always
liable to bring him rich reward. His mission of defence carried with it the
best opportunities for attack.
In the full development of the system patrol lines did exist, but not for
the great routes. They were established to link up adjacent defended areas
and as a more scientific organisation of the cruiser outposts. In 1805 the
Gibraltar and the home areas were thus connected by a patrol line which
stretched from Cape St. Vincent through the Finisterre focal area to Cape
Clear, with a branch extending to the strategical centre off Ushant. The
new system was introduced at a time when we had reason to expect that the
French and Spanish fleets were to be devoted entirely to operations in
small raiding squadrons against our trade and colonies. Special provision
was therefore necessary to locate any such squadrons that might elude the
regular blockades, and to ensure that they should be adequately pursued.
The new lines were in fact intelligence patrols primarily, though they were
also regarded as the only means of protecting efficiently the southern
trade-route where it was flanked by French and Spanish ports.[24]
[24] It should be said that Cornwallis did not regard this system as new
except for the extension from Finisterre to St. Vincent, which Nelson
advised. In acknowledging the order from Ushant he wrote, "The
instructions ... are nearly the same as have generally been given. I can
therefore only guess why a copy of the order was sent to
me."--_Admiralty, In-Letters_, 129, 28 September 1805.
The whole system, it will be observed, though not conflicting with the main
object of bringing the enemy's fleets to action, did entail an expenditure
of force and deflecting preoccupations such as are unknown in land warfare.
Large numbers of cruisers had to be employed otherwise than as the eyes of
the battle-squadrons, while the coming and going of convoys produced
periodical oscillations in the general distribution.
Embarrassing as was this commercial deflection in the old wars, an
impression appears to prevail that in the future it must be much more
serious. It is argued plausibly enough not only that our trade is far
larger and richer than it was, but also that, owing to certain well-known
economic changes, it is far more a matter of life and death to the nation
than in the days when food and raw material did not constitute the bulk of
our imports. In view of the new conditions it is held that we are more
vulnerable through our trade now than formerly, and that, consequently, we
must devote relatively more attention and force to its defence.
If this were true, it is obvious that war with a strong naval combination
would present difficulties of the most formidable kind, greater indeed than
we have ever experienced; for since with modern developments the demand for
fleet cruisers is much greater than formerly, the power of devoting
cruisers to trade defence is relatively much less.
It cannot be denied that at first sight the conclusion looks
irreproachable. But on analysis it will be found to involve two
assumptions, both of which are highly questionable. The first is, that the
vulnerability of a sea Power through its maritime trade is as the volume of
that trade. The second is, that the difficulty of defending sea-borne trade
is also as its volume--that is to say, the larger the amount of the trade,
the larger must be the force devoted to its protection. This idea indeed is
carried so far, that we are frequently invited to fix the standard of our
naval strength by comparing it with the proportion which the naval strength
of other Powers bears to their sea-borne trade.
It is hoped that the foregoing sketch of our traditional system of trade
defence will avail to raise a doubt whether either assumption can be
accepted without very careful consideration. In the history of that system
there is no indication that it was affected by the volume of the trade it
was designed to protect. Nor has any one succeeded in showing that the
pressure which an enemy could exert upon us through our commerce increased
in effect with the volume of our seaborne trade. The broad indications
indeed are the other way--that the greater the volume of our trade, the
less was the effective impression which an enemy could make upon it, even
when he devoted his whole naval energies to that end. It is not too much to
say that in every case where he took this course his own trade dwindled to
nothing, while ours continually increased.
It may be objected that this was because the only periods in which he
devoted his main efforts to trade destruction were when we had dominated
his navy, and being no longer able to dispute the command, he could do no
more than interfere with its exercise. But this must always be so whether
we have positively dominated his navy or not. If he tries to ignore our
battle-fleets, and devotes himself to operations against trade, he cannot
dispute the command. Whatever his strength, he must leave the command to
us. He cannot do both systematically, and unless he attacks our trade
systematically by sustained strategical operation, he cannot hope to make
any real impression.
If, now, we take the two assumptions and test them by the application of
elementary principles, both will appear theoretically unsound. Let us take
first the relation of vulnerability to volume. Since the object of war is
to force our will upon the enemy, the only way in which we can expect war
on commerce to serve our end is to inflict so much damage upon it as will
cause our enemy to prefer peace on our terms to a continuation of the
struggle. The pressure on his trade must be insupportable, not merely
annoying. It must seriously cripple his finance or seriously threaten to
strangle his national life and activities. If his total trade be a hundred
millions, and we succeed in destroying five, he will feel it no more than
he does the ordinary fluctuations to which he is accustomed in time of
peace. If, however, we can destroy fifty millions, his trade equilibrium
will be overthrown, and the issue of the war will be powerfully affected.
In other words, to affect the issue the impression made on trade must be a
percentage or relative impression. The measure of a nation's vulnerability
through its trade is the percentage of destruction that an enemy can
effect.
Now, it is true that the amount of damage which a belligerent can inflict
with a given force on an enemy's commerce will vary to some extent with its
volume; for the greater the volume of commerce, the more fertile will be
the undefended cruising grounds. But no matter how fertile such areas might
be, the destructive power of a cruiser was always limited, and it must be
still more limited in the future. It was limited by the fact that it was
physically impossible to deal with more than a certain number of prizes in
a certain time, and, for the reasons already indicated, this limit has
suffered a very marked restriction. When this limit of capacity in a given
force is passed, the volume of commerce will not affect the issue; and
seeing how low that capacity must be in the future and how enormous is the
volume of our trade, the limit of destructive power, at least as against
ourselves, provided we have a reasonably well-organised system of defence,
must be relatively low. It must, in fact, be passed at a percentage figure
well within what we have easily supported in the past. There is reason,
therefore, to believe that so far from the assumption in question being
true, the effective vulnerability of sea-borne trade is not in direct but
in inverse proportion to its volume. In other words, the greater the
volume, the more difficult it is to make an effective percentage
impression.
Similarly, it will be observed that the strain of trade defence was
proportioned not to the volume of that trade, but to the number and
exposure of its terminals and focal points. Whatever the volume of the
trade these remained the same in number, and the amount of force required
for their defence varied only with the strength that could readily be
brought to bear against them. It varied, that is, with the distribution of
the enemy's bases and the amount of his naval force. Thus in the war of
1812 with the United States, the West Indian and North American areas were
much more exposed than they had been when we were at war with France alone
and when American ports were not open to her as bases. They became
vulnerable not only to the United States fleet, but also in a much higher
degree to that of France, and consequently the force we found necessary to
devote to trade defence in the North Atlantic was out of all proportion to
the naval strength of the new belligerent. Our protective force had to be
increased enormously, while the volume of our trade remained precisely the
same.
This relation of trade defence to terminal and focal areas is of great
importance, for it is in the increase of such areas in the Far East that
lies the only radical change in the problem. The East Indian seas were
always of course to some extent treated as a defended area, but the problem
was simplified by the partial survival in those regions of the old method
of defence. Till about the end of the seventeenth century long-range trade
was expected to defend itself, at least outside the home area, and the
retention of their armament by East Indiamen was the last survival of the
practice. Beyond the important focal area of St. Helena they relied mainly
on their own power of resistance or to such escort as could be provided by
the relief ships of the East Indian station. As a rule, their escort proper
went no farther outward-bound than St. Helena, whence it returned with the
homeward-bound vessels that gathered there from India, China, and the South
Sea whaling grounds. The idea of the system was to provide escort for that
part of the great route which was exposed to attack from French or Spanish
colonial bases on the African coasts and in the adjacent islands.
For obvious reasons this system would have to be reconsidered in the
future. The expansion of the great European Powers have changed the
conditions for which it sufficed, and in a war with any one of them the
system of defended terminal and focal areas would require a great extension
eastward, absorbing an appreciable section of our force, and entailing a
comparatively weak prolongation of our chain of concentrations. Here, then,
we must mark a point where trade defence has increased in difficulty, and
there is one other.
Although minor hostile bases within a defended area have lost most of their
menace to trade, they have acquired as torpedo bases a power of disturbing
the defence itself. So long as such bases exist with a potent flotilla
within them, it is obvious that the actual provision for defence cannot be
so simple a matter as it was formerly. Other and more complex arrangements
may have to be made. Still, the principle of defended areas seems to remain
unshaken, and if it is to work with its old effectiveness, the means and
the disposition for securing those areas will have to be adapted to the new
tactical possibilities. The old strategical conditions, so far as can be
seen, are unaltered except in so far as the reactions of modern material
make them tell in favour of defence rather than of attack.
If we desire to formulate the principles on which this conclusion rests we
shall find them in the two broad rules, firstly, that the vulnerability of
trade is in inverse ratio to its volume, and secondly, that facility of
attack means facility of defence. The latter, which was always true,
receives special emphasis from modern developments. Facility of attack
means the power of exercising control. For exercise of control we require
not only numbers, but also speed and endurance, qualities which can only be
obtained in two ways: it must be at the cost of armour and armament, or at
the cost of increased size. By increasing size we at once lose numbers. If
by sacrificing armament and armour we seek to maintain numbers and so
facilitate attack, we at the same time facilitate defence. Vessels of low
fighting power indeed cannot hope to operate in fertile areas without
support to overpower the defence. Every powerful unit detached for such
support sets free a unit on the other side, and when this process is once
begun, there is no halting-place. Supporting units to be effective must
multiply into squadrons, and sooner or later the inferior Power seeking to
substitute commerce destruction for the clash of squadrons will have
squadronal warfare thrust upon him, provided again the superior Power
adopts a reasonably sound system of defence. It was always so, and, so far
as it is possible to penetrate the mists which veil the future, it would
seem that with higher mobility and better means of communication the
squadronal stage must be reached long before any adequate percentage
impression can have been made by the sporadic action of commerce
destroyers. Ineffectual as such warfare has always been in the past, until
a general command has been established, its prospects in the future, judged
by the old established principles, are less promising than ever.
Finally, in approaching the problem of trade protection, and especially for
the actual determination of the force and distribution it requires, there
is a dominant limitation to be kept in mind. By no conceivable means is it
possible to give trade absolute protection. We cannot make an omelette
without breaking eggs. We cannot make war without losing ships. To aim at a
standard of naval strength or a strategical distribution which would make
our trade absolutely invulnerable is to march to economic ruin. It is to
cripple our power of sustaining war to a successful issue, and to seek a
position of maritime despotism which, even if it were attainable, would set
every man's hand against us. All these evils would be upon us, and our goal
would still be in the far distance. In 1870 the second naval Power in the
world was at war with an enemy that could not be considered a naval Power
at all, and yet she lost ships by capture. Never in the days of our most
complete domination upon the seas was our trade invulnerable, and it never
can be. To seek invulnerability is to fall into the strategical vice of
trying to be superior everywhere, to forfeit the attainment of the
essential for fear of risking the unessential, to base our plans on an
assumption that war may be waged without loss, that it is, in short,
something that it never has been and never can be. Such peace-bred dreams
must be rigorously abjured. Our standard must be the mean of economic
strength--the line which on the one hand will permit us to nourish our
financial resources for the evil day, and on the other, when that day
comes, will deny to the enemy the possibility of choking our financial
vigour by sufficiently checking the flow of our trade.
III. ATTACK, DEFENCE, AND SUPPORT OF
MILITARY EXPEDITIONS
The attack and defence of oversea expeditions are governed in a large
measure by the principles of attack and defence of trade. In both cases it
is a question of control of communications, and in a general way it may be
said, if we control them for the one purpose, we control them for the
other. But with combined expeditions freedom of passage is not the only
consideration. The duties of the fleet do not end with the protection of
the troops during transit, as in the case of convoys, unless indeed, as
with convoys, the destination is a friendly country. In the normal case of
a hostile destination, where resistance is to be expected from the
commencement of the operations, the fleet is charged with further duties of
a most exacting kind. They may be described generally as duties of support,
and it is the intrusion of these duties which distinguish the naval
arrangements for combined operations most sharply from those for the
protection of trade. Except for this consideration there need be no
difference in the method of defence. In each case the strength required
would be measured by the dangers of interference in transit. But as it is,
that standard will not serve for combined expeditions; for however small
those risks, the protective arrangements must be sufficiently extensive to
include arrangements for support.
Before dealing with this, the most complex aspect of the question, it will
be well to dismiss attack. From the strategical point of view its
principles differ not at all from those already laid down for active
resistance of invasion. Whether the expedition that threatens us be small
or of invasion strength, the cardinal rule has always been that the
transports and not the escort must be the primary objective of the fleet.
The escort, according to the old practice, must be turned or contained, but
never treated as a primary objective unless both turning and containing
prove to be impracticable. It is needless to repeat the words of the old
masters in which this principle lies embalmed. It is seldom that we find a
rule of naval strategy laid down in precise technical terms, but this one
is an exception. In the old squadronal instructions, "The transports of the
enemy are to be your principal object," became something like a common
form.
Nor did this rule apply only to cases where the transports were protected
by a mere escort. It held good even in the exceptional cases where the
military force was accompanied or guarded by the whole available battle
strength of the enemy. We have seen how in 1744 Norris was prepared to
follow the French transports if necessary with his whole force, and how in
1798 Nelson organised his fleet in such a way as to contain rather than
destroy the enemy's battle-squadron, so that he might provide for an
overwhelming attack upon the transports.
Exceptions to this as to all strategical rules may be conceived. Conditions
might exist in which, if the enemy's battle-fleet accompanied his
transports, it would be worth our while, for ulterior objects of our own,
to risk the escape of the transports in order to seize the opportunity of
destroying the fleet. But even in such a case the distinction would be
little more than academical; for our best chance of securing a decisive
tactical advantage against the enemy's fleet would usually be to compel it
to conform to our movements by threatening an attack on the transports. It
is well known that it is in the embarrassment arising from the presence of
transports that lies the special weakness of a fleet in charge of them.
There is, however, one condition which radically differentiates
comparatively small expeditions from great invasions and that is the power
of evasion. Our experience has proved beyond dispute that the navy alone
cannot guarantee defence against such expeditions. It cannot be sure of
preventing their sailing or of attacking them in transit, and this is
especially the case where an open sea gives them a free choice of route, as
in the case of the French expeditions against Ireland. It is for this
reason that, although an adequate navy has always proved sufficient to
prevent an invasion, for defence against expeditions it must be
supplemented by a home army. To perfect our defence, or, in other words,
our power of attack, such an army must be adequate to ensure that all
expeditions small enough to evade the fleet shall do no effective harm when
they land. If in numbers, training, organisation, and distribution it is
adequate for this purpose, an enemy cannot hope to affect the issue of the
war except by raising his expeditions to invasion strength, and so finding
himself involved in a problem that no one has ever yet solved for an
uncommanded sea.
Still, even for expeditions below invasion strength the navy will only
regard the army as a second line, and its strategy must provide in the
event of evasion for co-operation with that line. By means of a just
distribution of its coastal flotilla it will provide for getting contact
with the expedition at the earliest moment after its destination is
declared. It will press the principle of making the army its objective to
the utmost limit by the most powerful and energetic cruiser pursuit, and
with wireless and the increased ratio of cruiser speed, such pursuit is far
more formidable than it ever was. No expedition nowadays, however
successful its evasion, can be guaranteed against naval interruption in the
process of landing. Still less can it be guaranteed against naval
interference in its rear or flanks while it is securing its front against
the home army. It may seek by using large transports to reduce their number
and secure higher speed, but while that will raise its chance of evasion,
it will prolong the critical period of landing. If it seek by using smaller
transports to quicken disembarkation, that will decrease its chances of
evasion by lowering its speed and widening the sea area it will occupy in
transit. All the modern developments in fact which make for defence in case
of invasion over an uncommanded sea also go to facilitate timely contact
with an expedition seeking to operate by evasion. Nor must it be forgotten,
since the problem is a combined one, that the corresponding developments
ashore tell with little less force in favour of the defending army. Such
appear to be the broad principles which govern an enemy's attempts to act
with combined expeditions in our own waters, where by hypothesis we are in
sufficient naval strength to deny him permanent local command. We may now
turn to the larger and more complex question of the conduct of such
expeditions where the naval conditions are reversed.
By the conduct, be it remembered, we mean not only their defence but also
their support, and for this reason the starting-point of our inquiry is to
be found, as above indicated, in the contrast of combined expeditions with
convoys. A convoy consists of two elements--a fleet of merchantmen and an
escort. But a combined expedition does not consist simply of an army and a
squadron. It is an organism at once more complex and more homogeneous. Its
constitution is fourfold. There is, firstly, the army; secondly, the
transports and landing flotilla--that is, the flotilla of flat-boats and
steamboats for towing them, all of which may be carried in the transports
or accompany them; thirdly, the "Squadron in charge of transports," as it
came to be called, which includes the escort proper and the supporting
flotilla of lighter craft for inshore work; and lastly, the "Covering
squadron."
Such at least is a combined expedition in logical analysis. But so
essentially is it a single organism, that in practice these various
elements can seldom be kept sharply distinct. They may be interwoven in the
most intricate manner. Indeed to a greater or less extent each will always
have to discharge some of the functions of the others. Thus the covering
squadron may not only be indistinguishable from the escort and support, but
it will often provide the greater part of the landing flotilla and even a
portion of the landing force. Similarly, the escort may also serve as
transport, and provide in part not only the supporting force, but also the
landing flotilla. The fourfold constitution is therefore in a great measure
theoretical. Still its use is not merely that it serves to define the
varied functions which the fleet will have to discharge. As we proceed it
will be seen to have a practical strategical value.
From a naval point of view it is the covering squadron which calls first
for consideration, because of the emphasis with which its necessity marks
not only the distinction between the conduct of combined expeditions and
the conduct of commercial convoys, but also the fact that such expeditions
are actually a combined force, and not merely an army escorted by a fleet.
In our system of commerce protection the covering squadron had no place.
The battle-fleet, as we have seen, was employed in holding definite
terminal areas, and had no organic connection with the convoys. The convoys
had no further protection than their own escort and the reinforcements that
met them as they approached the terminal areas. But where a convoy of
transports forming part of a combined expedition was destined for an
enemy's country and would have to overcome resistance by true combined
operations, a covering battle-squadron was always provided. In the case of
distant objectives it might be that the covering squadron was not attached
till the whole expedition assembled in the theatre of operations; during
transit to that theatre the transports might have commerce protection
escort only. But once the operations began from the point of concentration,
a covering squadron was always in touch.
It was only where the destination of the troops was a friendly country, and
the line of passage was well protected by our permanent blockades, that a
covering squadron could be dispensed with altogether. Thus our various
expeditions for the assistance of Portugal were treated exactly like
commercial convoys, but in such cases as Wolfe's expedition to Quebec or
Amherst's to Louisburg, or indeed any of those which were continually
launched against the West Indies, a battle-squadron was always provided as
an integral part in the theatre of operations. Our arrangements in the
Crimean War illustrate the point exactly. Our troops were sent out at first
to land at Gallipoli in a friendly territory, and to act within that
territory as an army of observation. It was not a true combined expedition,
and the transports were given no covering squadron. Their passage was
sufficiently covered by our Channel and Mediterranean fleets occupying the
exits of the Baltic and the Black Sea. But so soon as the original war plan
proved ineffective and combined offensive operations against Sebastopol
were decided on, the Mediterranean fleet lost its independent character,
and thenceforth its paramount function was to furnish a covering squadron
in touch with the troops.
Seeing how important are the support duties of such a force, the term
"Covering squadron" may seem ill-chosen to describe it. But it is adopted
for two reasons. In the first place, it was the one employed officially in
our service on the last mentioned occasion which was our last great
combined expedition. In preparing the descent on the Crimea, Sir Edmund
Lyons, who was acting as Chief of the Staff to Sir James Dundas, and had
charge of the combined operations, organised the fleet into a "Covering
squadron" and a "Squadron in charge of transports." In the second place,
the designation serves to emphasise what is its main and primary function.
For important as it is to keep in mind its support duties, they must not be
permitted to overshadow the fact that its paramount function is to prevent
interference with the actual combined operations--that is, the landing,
support, and supply of the army. Thus in 1705, when Shovel and Peterborough
were operating against Barcelona, Shovel was covering the amphibious siege
from the French squadron in Toulon. Peterborough required the assistance of
the marines ashore to execute a _coup de main_, and Shovel only consented
to land them on the express understanding that the moment his cruisers
passed the signal that the Toulon squadron was putting to sea, they would
have to be recalled to the fleet no matter what the state of the land
operations. And to this Peterborough agreed. The principle involved, it
will be seen, is precisely that which Lyons's term "Covering squadron"
embodies.
To quote anything that happened in the Crimean War as a precedent without
such traditional support will scarcely appear convincing. In our British
way we have fostered a legend that so far as organisation and staff work
were concerned that war was nothing but a collection of deterrent examples.
But in truth as a combined operation its opening movement both in
conception and organisation was perhaps the most daring, brilliant, and
successful thing of the kind we ever did. Designed as the expedition was to
assist an ally in his own country, it was suddenly called upon without any
previous preparation to undertake a combined operation of the most
difficult kind against the territory of a well-warned enemy. It involved a
landing late in the year on an open and stormy coast within striking
distance of a naval fortress which contained an army of unknown strength,
and a fleet not much inferior in battle power and undefeated. It was an
operation comparable to the capture of Louisburg and the landing of the
Japanese in the Liaotung Peninsula, but the conditions were far more
difficult. Both those operations had been rehearsed a few years previously,
and they had been long prepared on the fullest knowledge. In the Crimea
everything was in the dark; even steam was an unproved element, and
everything had to be improvised. The French had practically to demobilise
their fleet to supply transport, and so hazardous did the enterprise
appear, that they resisted its being undertaken with every military
argument. We had in fact, besides all the other difficulties, to carry an
unwilling ally upon our backs. Yet it was accomplished, and so far at least
as the naval part was concerned, the methods which achieved success mark
the culmination of all we had learnt in three centuries of rich experience.
The first of the lessons was that for operations in uncommanded or
imperfectly commanded seas there was need of a covering squadron
differentiated from the squadron in charge of transports. Its main function
was to secure the necessary local command, whether for transit or for the
actual operations. But as a rule transit was secured by our regular
blockading squadrons, and generally the covering squadron only assembled in
the theatre of operations. When therefore the theatre was within a defended
terminal area, as in our descents upon the northern and Atlantic coasts of
France, then the terminal defence squadron was usually also sufficient to
protect the actual operations. It thus formed automatically the covering
squadron, and either continued its blockade, or, as in the case of our
attack on St. Malo in 1758, took up a position between the enemy's squadron
and the expedition's line of operation. If, however, the theatre of
operation was not within a terminal area, or lay within a distant one that
was weakly held, the expedition was given its own covering squadron, in
which the local squadron was more or less completely merged. Whatever, in
fact, was necessary to secure the local control was done, though, as we
have seen, and must presently consider more fully, this necessity was not
always the standard by which the strength of the covering squadron was
measured.
The strength of the covering squadron being determined, the next question
is the position or "tract" which it should occupy. Like most other
strategical problems, it is "an option of difficulties." In so far as the
squadron is designed for support--that is, support from its men, boats, and
guns--it will be desirable to station it as near as possible to the
objective; but as a covering squadron, with the duty of preventing the
intrusion of an enemy's force, it should be as far away as possible, so as
to engage such a force at the earliest possible moment of its attempt to
interfere. There is also the paramount necessity that its position must be
such that favourable contact with the enemy is certain if he tries to
interrupt. Usually such certainty is only to be found either in touch with
the enemy's naval base or in touch with your own landing force. Where the
objective is the local naval base of the enemy these two points, of course,
tend to be identical strategically, and the position of the covering
squadron becomes a tactical rather than a strategical question. But the
vital principle of an independent existence holds good, and no matter how
great the necessity of support, the covering squadron should never be so
deeply engaged with the landing force as to be unable to disentangle itself
for action as a purely naval unit in time to discharge its naval function.
In other words, it must always be able to act in the same way as a free
field army covering a siege.
Where the objective of the expedition is not the local naval base, the
choice of a position for the covering squadron will turn mainly on the
amount of support which the army is likely to require. If it cannot act by
surprise, and serious military resistance is consequently to be expected,
or where the coast defences are too strong for the transport squadron to
overpower, then the scale will incline to a position close to the army,
though the extent to which, under modern conditions, ships at sea can
usefully perform the delicate operation of supporting an infantry attack
with gun fire, except by enfilading the enemy's position, remains to be
proved. A similar choice will be indicated where strong support of men and
boats is required, as when a sufficiency of flat-boats and steam towage
cannot be provided by the transports and their attendant squadron; or again
where the locality is such that amphibious operations beyond the actual
landing are likely to be called for, and the assistance of a large number
of boats and seamen acting with the army is necessary to give it the
amphibious tactical mobility which it would otherwise lack. Such cases
occurred at Quebec in 1759, where Saunders took his covering
battle-squadron right up the St. Lawrence, although its covering functions
could have been discharged even better by a position several hundreds of
miles away from the objective; and again in 1800 at Alexandria, where Lord
Keith ran the extremest hazard to his covering functions in order to
undertake the supply of General Abercromby's army by inland waters and give
him the mobility he required.
If, on the other hand, the transport squadron is able to furnish all the
support necessary, the covering squadron will take station as close as
possible to the enemy's naval base, and there it will operate according to
the ordinary laws of blockade. If nothing is desired but to prevent
interference, its guard will take the form of a close blockade. But if
there be a subsidiary purpose of using the expedition as a means of forcing
the enemy to sea, the open form will be employed; as, for instance, in
Anson's case above cited, when he covered the St. Malo expedition not by
closely blockading Brest, but by taking a position to the eastward at the
Isle de Batz.
In the Japanese operations against Manchuria and the Kuantung Peninsula
these old principles displayed themselves in undiminished vitality. In the
surprise descents against Seoul and at Takusan the work of support was left
entirely with the transport squadron, while Admiral Togo took up a covering
position far away at Port Arthur. The two elements of the fleet were kept
separate all through. But in the operations for the isolation and
subsequent siege of Port Arthur they were so closely united as to appear
frequently indistinguishable. Still, so far as the closeness of the landing
place to the objective permitted, the two acted independently. For the
actual landing of the Second Army the boats of the covering squadron were
used, but it remained a live naval unit all through, and was never
organically mingled with the transport squadron. Its operations throughout
were, so far as modern conditions permit, on the lines of a close blockade.
To prevent interference was its paramount function, undisturbed, so far as
we are able to judge, by any subsidiary purpose of bringing the enemy to
decisive action.
All through the operations, however, there was a new influence which tended
to confuse the precision of the old methods. Needless to say it was the
torpedo and the mine. Their deflective pressure was curious and
interesting. In our own operations against Sebastopol, to which the Port
Arthur case is most closely comparable, the old rules still held good. On
the traditional principle, dating from Drake's attack on San Domingo in
1585, a landing place was chosen which gave the mean between facility for a
_coup de main_ and freedom from opposition; that is, it was chosen at the
nearest practicable point to the objective which was undefended by
batteries and out of reach of the enemy's main army.
In the handling of the covering squadron Admiral Dundas, the
Commander-in-Chief, gave it its dual function. After explaining the
constitution of the transport squadron he says, "The remainder of my force
... will act as a covering squadron, and where practicable assist in the
general disembarkation." With these two objects in mind he took a station
near enough to the landing place to support the army with his guns if it
were opposed, but still in sight of his cruisers before Sebastopol, and at
such a distance that at the first sign of the Russians moving he would have
time to get before the port and engage them before they could get well to
sea; that is, he took a position as near to the army as was compatible with
preventing interference, or, it may be said, his position was as near to
the enemy's base as was compatible with supporting the landing. From either
aspect in fact the position was the same, and its choice presented no
complexity owing mainly to the fact that for the first time steam
simplified the factors of time and distance.
In the Japanese case the application of these principles was not so easy.
In selecting the nearest undefended point for a landing, it was not only
batteries, or even the army in Port Arthur, or the troops dispersed in the
Liaotung Peninsula that had to be considered, but rather, as must always be
the case in the future, mines and mobile torpedo defence. The point they
chose was the nearest practicable bay that was unmined. It was not strictly
out of mobile defence range, but it so happened that it lay behind islands
which lent themselves to the creation of fixed defences, and thus it
fulfilled all the recognised conditions. But in so far as the defences
could be turned by the Russian fleet a covering squadron was necessary, and
the difficulty of choosing a position for it was complicated by the fact
that the objective of the combined operations was not merely Port Arthur
itself, but also the squadron it contained. It was necessary, therefore,
not only to hold off that squadron, but to prevent its escape. This
indicated a close blockade. But for close blockade a position out of night
torpedo range is necessary, and the nearest point where such a position
could be secured was behind the defences that covered the disembarkation.
Consequently, in spite of what the strategical conditions dictated, the
covering squadron was more or less continuously forced back upon the army
and its supporting force, even when the support of the battle-squadron was
no longer required.
In the conditions that existed nothing was lost. For the lines of the
Japanese fixed defences were so near to the enemy's base, that by mining
the entrance of the port Admiral Togo ensured that the enemy's exit would
be slow enough for him to be certain of getting contact from his defended
anchorage before the Russians could get far to sea. What would happen in a
case when no such position could be secured is another matter. The landing
place and supply base of the army must be secured against torpedo attack,
and the principle of concentration of effort would suggest that the means
of defence should not be attenuated by providing the covering squadron with
a defended anchorage elsewhere. Thus it would appear that unless the
geographical conditions permit the covering squadron to use one of its own
national bases, the drift of recent developments will be to force it back
on the army, and thus tend to confuse its duties with those of the
transport squadron. Hence the increased importance of keeping clear the
difference in function between the two squadrons.
To emphasise the principle of the covering squadron, these two cases may be
contrasted with the Lissa episode at the end of the Austro-Italian War of
1866. In that case it was entirely neglected, with disastrous results. The
Austrian admiral, Tegethoff, with an inferior fleet had by higher order
been acting throughout on the defensive, and was still in Pola waiting for
a chance of a counter-stroke. Persano with the superior Italian fleet was
at Ancona, where he practically dominated the Adriatic. In July the
Italians, owing to the failure of the army, were confronted with the
prospect of being forced to make peace on unfavourable terms. To improve
the position Persano was ordered to take possession of the Austrian island
of Lissa. Without any attempt to organise his fleet on the orthodox British
principle he proceeded to conduct the operation with his entire force.
Practically the whole of it became involved in amphibious work, and as soon
as Persano was thus committed, Tegethoff put to sea and surprised him.
Persano was unable to disentangle a sufficient force in time to meet the
attack, and having no compact squadron fit for independent naval action, he
was decisively defeated by the inferior enemy. According to British
practice, it was clearly a case where, if the operation were to be
undertaken at all, an independent covering squadron should have been told
off either to hold Tegethoff in Pola or to bring him to timely action,
according to whether the island or the Austrian fleet was the primary
objective. The reason it was not done may be that Persano was not given a
proper landing force, and he seems to have considered that the whole
strength of his fleet was needed for the successful seizure of the
objective. If so, it is only one more proof of the rule that no matter what
fleet support the landing operations may require, it should never be given
in an imperfectly commanded sea to an extent which will deny the
possibility of a covering squadron being left free for independent naval
action.
The length to which the supporting functions of the fleet may be carried
will always be a delicate question. The suggestion that its strength must
be affected by the need of the army for the men of the fleet or its boats,
which imply its men as well, will appear heretical. A battle-squadron, we
say, is intended to deal with the enemy's battle-squadron and its men to
fight the ships, and the mind revolts at the idea of the strength of a
squadron being fixed by any other standard. Theoretically nothing can seem
more true, but it is an idea of peace and the study. The atmosphere of war
engendered a wider and more practical view. The men of the old wars knew
that when a squadron is attached to a combined expedition it is something
different from a purely naval unit. They knew, moreover, that an army
acting oversea against hostile territory is an incomplete organism
incapable of striking its blow in the most effective manner without the
assistance of the men of the fleet. It was the office, then, of the naval
portion of the force not only to defend the striking part of the organism,
but to complete its deficiencies and lend it the power to strike. Alone and
unaided the army cannot depend on getting itself ashore, it cannot supply
itself, it cannot secure its retreat, nor can it avail itself of the
highest advantages of an amphibious force, the sudden shift of base or line
of operation. These things the fleet must do for it, and it must do them
with its men.[25]
[25] The Japanese in the late war attempted to do this work by means of a
highly organized Army Disembarkation Staff, but except in perfect
conditions of weather and locality it does not seem to have worked well,
and in almost all cases the assistance of the navy was called in.
The authority for this view is abundant. In 1800, for instance, when
General Maitland was charged with an expedition against Belleisle, he was
invited to state what naval force he would require. He found it difficult
to fix with precision. "Speaking loosely, however," he wrote, "three or
four sail of the line and four or five active frigates appear to me to be
properly adequate to the proposed service. The frigates to blockade."
(Meaning, of course, to blockade the objective and prevent reinforcements
reaching it from the mainland, always one of the supporting functions of
the squadron attached to the transports.) "The line-of-battle ships," he
adds, "to furnish us with the number of men necessary for land operations."
In this case our permanent blockading squadrons supplied the cover, and
what Maitland meant was that the battleships he asked for were to be added
to the transport squadron not as being required for escort, but for
support. St. Vincent, who was then First Lord, not only endorsed his
request, but gave him for disembarkation work one more ship-of-the-line
than he had asked for. At this time our general command of the sea had been
very fully secured, and we had plenty of naval force to spare for its
exercise. It will be well to compare it with a case in which the
circumstances were different.
When in 1795 the expedition under Admiral Christian and General Abercromby
was being prepared for the West Indies, the admiral in concert with Jervis
drew up a memorandum as to the naval force required.[26] The force he asked
for was considerable. Both he and Jervis considered that the escort and
local cover must be very strong, because it was impossible to count on
closing either Brest or Toulon effectually by blockade. But this was not
the only reason. The plan of operations involved three distinct landings,
and each would require at least two of the line, and perhaps three, "not
only as protection, but as the means by which flat-boats must be manned,
cannon landed, and the other necessary services of fatigue executed."
Christian also required the necessary frigates and three or four brigs "to
cover [that is, support] the operations of the smaller vessels [that is,
the landing flotillas doing inshore work]." The main attack would require
at least four of the line and seven frigates, with brigs and schooners in
proportion. In all he considered, the ships-of-the-line [the frigates being
"otherwise employed"] would have to provide landing parties to the number
of 2000 men "for the flat-boats, landing and moving guns, water, and
provisions," and this would be their daily task. The military force these
landing parties were to serve amounted to about 18,000 men.
[26] Sir Hugh Cloberry Christian was an officer of high distinction with
a remarkable record of battle service. He had been serving as Howe's
second captain just before his promotion to flag rank in 1795, and died
as Commander-in-Chief at the Cape at the early age of fifty-one.
Lord Barham, it must be said, who as Sir Charles Middleton was then First
Sea Lord, objected to the requirements as excessive, particularly in the
demand for a strong escort, as he considered that the transit could be
safeguarded by special vigilance on the part of the permanent blockading
squadrons. The need for large shore parties he seems to have ignored. His
opinion, however, is not quite convincing, for from the first he had taken
up an antagonistic attitude to the whole idea of the expedition. He
regarded the policy which dictated it as radically unsound, and was
naturally anxious to restrict the force that was to be spent upon it. His
opposition was based on the broad and far-sighted principles that were
characteristic of his strategy. He believed that in view of the threatening
attitude of Spain the right course was to husband the navy so as to bring
it up to a two-Power standard for the coming struggle, and to keep it
concentrated for decisive naval action the moment Spain showed her hand. In
short, he stoutly condemned a policy which entailed a serious dissipation
of naval force for a secondary object before a working command of the sea
had been secured. It was, in fact, the arrangements for this expedition
which forced him to resign before the preparations were complete. But it is
to be observed that his objections to the plan were really due, not to the
principle of its organisation, but to our having insufficient force to give
it adequate naval support without prejudicing the higher consideration of
our whole position at sea.[27]
[27] On analogous grounds almost every military critic has condemned the
policy of this disastrous expedition as involving a dispersal of our
slender military force at a time when everything called for its
concentration in Europe.
It is obvious that the foregoing considerations, beyond the strategical
reactions already noted, will have another of the first importance, in that
they must influence the choice of a landing place. The interest of the army
will always be to fix it as near to the objective as is compatible with an
unopposed landing. The ideal was one night's march, but this could rarely
be attained except in the case of very small expeditions, which could be
landed rapidly at the close of day and advance in the dark. In larger
expeditions, the aim was to effect the landing far enough from the
objective to prevent the garrison of the place or the enemy's local forces
offering opposition before a footing was secured. The tendency of the navy
will usually be in the opposite direction; for normally the further they
can land the army away from the enemy's strength, the surer are they of
being able to protect it against naval interference. Their ideal will be a
place far enough away to be out of torpedo range, and to enable them to
work the covering and the transport squadron in sound strategical
independence.
To reduce these divergencies to a mean of efficiency some kind of joint
Staff is necessary, and to ensure its smooth working it is no less
desirable to ascertain, so far as possible, the principles and method on
which it should proceed. In the best recent precedents the process has been
for the Army Staff to present the limits of coast-line within which the
landing must take place for the operation to have the desired effect, and
to indicate the known practicable landing points in the order they would
prefer them. It will then be for the Naval Staff to say how nearly in
accordance with the views of the army they are prepared to act. Their
decision will turn on the difficulties of protection and the essentials of
a landing place from the point of view of weather, currents, beach and the
like, and also in a secondary measure upon the extent to which the
conformation of the coast will permit of tactical support by gun-fire and
feints. If the Naval Staff are unwilling to agree to the point or points
their colleagues most desire, a question of balance of risk is set up,
which the higher Joint Staff must adjust. It will be the duty of the Naval
Staff to set out frankly and clearly all the sea risks the proposal of the
army entails, and if possible to suggest an alternative by which the risk
of naval interference can be lessened without laying too heavy a burden on
the army. Balancing these risks against those stated by the army, the
superior Staff must decide which line is to be taken, and each service then
will do its best to minimise the difficulties it has to face. Whether the
superior Staff will incline to the naval or the military view will depend
upon whether the greater danger likely to be incurred is from the sea or on
land.
Where the naval conditions are fairly well known the line of operations can
be fixed in this way with much precision. But if, as usually happens, the
probable action of the enemy at sea cannot be divined with sufficient
approximation, then assuming there is serious possibility of naval
interference, the final choice within the limited area must be left to the
admiral. The practice has been to give him instructions which define in
order of merit the points the army desire, and direct him to select the one
which in the circumstances, as he finds them, he considers within
reasonable risk of war. Similarly, if the danger of naval interference be
small and the local conditions ashore imperfectly known, the final choice
will be with the general, subject only to the practicable possibilities of
the landing place he would choose.
During the best period of our old wars there was seldom any difficulty in
making things work smoothly on these lines. After the first inglorious
failure at Rochefort in 1757 the practice was, where discretion of this
kind had been allowed, for the two commanders-in-chief to make a joint
coast-reconnaissance in the same boat and settle the matter amicably on the
spot.
It was on these lines the conduct of our combined operations was always
arranged thenceforth. Since the elder Pitt's time it has never been our
practice to place combined expeditions under either a naval or a military
commander-in-chief and allow him to decide between naval and military
exigencies. The danger of possible friction between two commanders-in-chief
came to be regarded as small compared with the danger of a single one
making mistakes through unfamiliarity with the limitations of the service
to which he does not belong.
The system has usually worked well even when questions arose which were
essentially questions for a joint superior Staff. The exceptions indeed are
very few. A fine example of how such difficulties can be settled, when the
spirit is willing, occurred in the Crimea. The naval difficulties, as we
have already seen, were as formidable as they could well be short of
rendering the whole attempt madness. When it came to the point of execution
a joint council of war was held, at which sat the allied Staffs of both
services. So great were the differences of opinion between the French and
British Generals, and so imperfectly was the terrain known, that they could
not indicate a landing place with any precision. All the admirals knew was
that it must be on an open coast, which they had not been able to
reconnoitre, where the weather might at any time interrupt communications
with the shore, and where they were liable to be attacked by a force which,
until their own ships were cleared of troops, would not be inferior. All
these objections they laid before the Council General. Lord Raglan then
said the army now perfectly understood the risk, and was prepared to take
it. Whereupon the allied admirals replied that they were ready to proceed
and do their best to set the army ashore and support it at any point that
should be chosen.
There remains a form of support which has not yet been considered, and that
is diversionary movements or feints by the fleet to draw the enemy's
attention away from the landing place. This will naturally be a function of
the covering battle-squadron or its attendant cruisers and flotilla. The
device appears in Drake's attack on San Domingo in 1585, an attack which
may be regarded as our earliest precedent in modern times and as the
pattern to which all subsequent operations of the kind conformed so far as
circumstances allowed. In that case, while Drake landed the troops a
night's march from the place, the bulk of the fleet moved before it, kept
it in alarm all night, and at dawn made a demonstration with the boats of
forcing a direct landing under cover of its guns. The result was the
garrison moved out to meet the threat and were surprised in flank by the
real landing force. Passing from this simple case to the most elaborate in
our annals, we find Saunders doing the same thing at Quebec. In preparation
for Wolfe's night landing he made a show of arrangements for a bombardment
of Montcalm's lines below the city, and in the morning with the boats of
the fleet began a demonstration of landing his marines. By this device he
held Montcalm away from Wolfe's landing place till a secure footing had
been obtained. Similar demonstrations had been made above the city, and the
combined result was that Wolfe was able to penetrate the centre of the
French position unopposed.
Such work belongs of course to the region of tactics rather than of
strategy, but the device has been used with equal effect strategically. So
great is the secrecy as well as the mobility of an amphibious force, that
it is extremely difficult for an enemy to distinguish a real attack from a
feint. Even at the last moment, when a landing is actually in progress, it
is impossible for the defenders to tell that all the troops are being
landed at the one point if a demonstration is going on elsewhere. At Quebec
it was not till Montcalm was face to face with Wolfe that he knew he had to
deal with the whole British force. Still less from a strategical point of
view can we be certain whether a particular landing represents an advance
guard or is a diversionary operation to mask a larger landing elsewhere.
This is a special difficulty when in the case of large operations the
landing army arrives in echelon like the Second Japanese army. In that
instance the naval feint was used strategically, and apparently with
conspicuous effect. The Russians were always apprehensive that the Japanese
would strike for Newchuang at the head of the Gulf of Pe-chi-li, and for
this reason General Stakelberg, who had command of the troops in the
peninsula, was not permitted to concentrate for effective action in its
southern part, where the Japanese had fixed their landing place. Admiral
Togo, in spite of the strain on his fleet in effecting and securing the
disembarkation of the army, detached a cruiser squadron to demonstrate in
the Gulf. The precise effect of this feint upon the Russian Staff cannot be
measured with certainty. All we know is that Stakelberg was held back from
his concentration so long that he was unable to strike the Japanese army
before it was complete for the field and able to deal him a staggering
counter-stroke.
This power of disturbing the enemy with feints is of course inherent in the
peculiar attributes of combined expeditions, in the facility with which
their line of operation can be concealed or changed, and there seems no
reason why in the future it should be less than in the past. Good railway
connections in the theatre of the descent will of course diminish the
effect of feints, but, on the other hand, the means of making them have
increased. In mine-sweeping vessels, for instance, there is a new
instrument which in the Russo-Japanese War proved capable of creating a
very strong impression at small cost to the fleet. Should a flotilla of
such craft appear at any practicable part of a threatened coast and make a
show of clearing it, it will be almost a moral impossibility to ignore the
demonstration.