Although the distinguished seamen, whose lives and professional
characteristics it is the object of this work to present in brief
summary, belonged to a service now foreign to that of the United States,
they have numerous and varied points of contact with America; most of
them very close, and in some instances of marked historical interest.
The older men, indeed, were during much of their careers our fellow
countrymen in the colonial period, and fought, some side by side with
our own people in this new world, others in distant scenes of the
widespread strife that characterized the middle of the eighteenth
century, the beginnings of "world politics;" when, in a quarrel purely
European in its origin, "black men," to use Macaulay's words, "fought on
the coast of Coromandel, and red men scalped each other by the great
lakes of North America." All, without exception, were actors in the
prolonged conflict that began in 1739 concerning the right of the ships
of Great Britain and her colonies to frequent the seas bordering the
American dominions of Spain; a conflict which, by gradual expansion,
drew in the continent of Europe, from Russia to France, spread thence to
the French possessions in India and North America, involved Spanish
Havana in the western hemisphere and Manila in the eastern, and finally
entailed the expulsion of France from our continent. Thence, by
inevitable sequence, issued the independence of the United States. The
contest, thus completed, covered forty-three years.
The four seniors of our series, Hawke, Rodney, Howe, and Jervis,
witnessed the whole of this momentous period, and served conspicuously,
some more, some less, according to their age and rank, during its
various stages. Hawke, indeed, was at the time of the American
Revolution too old to go to sea, but he did not die until October 16,
1781, three days before the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, which
is commonly accepted as the closing incident of our struggle for
independence. On the other hand, the two younger men, Saumarez and
Pellew, though they had entered the navy before the American Revolution,
saw in it the beginnings of an active service which lasted to the end of
the Napoleonic wars, the most continuous and gigantic strife of modern
times. It was as the enemies of our cause that they first saw gunpowder
burned in anger.
Nor was it only amid the commonplaces of naval warfare that they then
gained their early experiences in America. Pellew in 1776, on Lake
Champlain, bore a brilliant part in one of the most decisive--though
among the least noted--campaigns of the Revolutionary contest; and a
year later, as leader of a small contingent of seamen, he shared the
fate of Burgoyne's army at Saratoga. In 1776 also, Saumarez had his part
in an engagement which ranks among the bloodiest recorded between ships
and forts, being on board the British flag-ship Bristol at the attack
upon Fort Moultrie, the naval analogue of Bunker Hill; for, in the one
of these actions as in the other, the great military lesson was the
resistant power against frontal attack of resolute marksmen, though
untrained to war, when fighting behind entrenchments,--a teaching
renewed at New Orleans, and emphasized in the recent South African War.
The well-earned honors of the comparatively raw colonials received
generous recognition at the time from their opponents, even in the midst
of the bitterness proverbially attendant upon family quarrels; but it is
only just to allow that their endurance found its counterpart in the
resolute and persistent valor of the assailants. In these two battles,
with which the War of Independence may be said fairly to have begun, by
land and by water, in the far North and in the far South, the men of the
same stock, whose ancestors there met face to face as foes, have now in
peace a common heritage of glory. If little of bitterness remains in the
recollections which those who are now fellow-citizens retain of the
struggle between the North and the South, within the American Republic,
we of two different nations, who yet share a common tongue and a common
tradition of liberty and law, may well forget the wrongs of the earlier
strife, and look only to the common steadfast courage with which each
side then bore its share in a civil conflict.
The professional lives of these men, therefore, touch history in many
points; not merely history generally, but American history specifically.
Nor is this contact professional only, devoid of personal tinge. Hawke
was closely connected by blood with the Maryland family of Bladen; that
having been his mother's maiden name, and Governor Bladen of the then
colony being his first cousin. Very much of his early life was spent
upon the American Station, largely in Boston. But those were the days of
Walpole's peace policy; and when the maritime war, which the national
outcry at last compelled, attained large dimensions, Hawke's already
demonstrated eminence as a naval leader naturally led to his employment
in European waters, where the more immediate dangers, if not the
greatest interests, of Great Britain were then felt to be. The universal
character, as well as the decisive issues of the opening struggle were
as yet but dimly foreseen. Rodney also had family ties with America,
though somewhat more remote. Cæsar Rodney, a signer of the Declaration
of Independence from Delaware, was of the same stock; their
great-grandfathers were brothers. It was from the marriage of his
ancestor with the daughter of a Sir Thomas Cæsar that the American
Rodney derived his otherwise singular name.
Howe, as far as known, had no relations on this side of the water; but
his elder brother, whom he succeeded in the title, was of all British
officers the one who most won from the colonial troops with whom he was
associated a personal affection, the memory of which has been
transmitted to us; while the admiral's own kindly attitude towards the
colonists, and his intimacy with Franklin, no less than his professional
ability, led to his being selected for the North American command at the
time when the home country had not yet lost all hope of a peaceable
solution of difficulties. To this the Howe tradition was doubtless
expected to contribute. Jervis, a man considerably younger than the
other three, by the accidents of his career came little into touch with
either the colonies or the colonists, whether before or during the
Revolutionary epoch; yet even he, by his intimate friendship with Wolfe,
and intercourse with his last days, is brought into close relation with
an event and a name indelibly associated with one of the great
landmarks--crises--in the history of the American Continent. Although
the issue of the strife depended, doubtless, upon deeper and more
far-reaching considerations, it is not too much to say that in the
heights of Quebec, and in the name of Wolfe, is signalized the downfall
of the French power in America. There was prefigured the ultimate
predominance of the traditions of the English-speaking races throughout
this continent, which in our own momentous period stands mediator
between the two ancient and contrasted civilizations of Europe and Asia,
that so long moved apart, but are now brought into close, if not
threatening, contact.
Interesting, however, as are the historical and social environments in
which their personalities played their part, it is as individual men,
and as conspicuous exemplars--types--of the varied characteristics which
go to the completeness of an adequate naval organization, that they are
here brought forward. Like other professions,--and especially like its
sister service, the Army,--the Navy tends to, and for efficiency
requires, specialization. Specialization, in turn, results most
satisfactorily from the free play of natural aptitudes; for aptitudes,
when strongly developed, find expression in inclination, and readily
seek their proper function in the body organic to which they belong.
Each of these distinguished officers, from this point of view, does not
stand for himself alone, but is an eminent exponent of a class; while
the class itself forms a member of a body which has many organs, no one
of which is independent of the other, but all contributive to the body's
welfare. Hence, while the effort has been made to present each in his
full individuality, with copious recourse to anecdote and illustrative
incident as far as available, both as a matter of general interest and
for accurate portrayal, special care has been added to bring out
occurrences and actions which convey the impression of that natural
character which led the man to take the place he did in the naval body,
to develop the professional function with which he is more particularly
identified; for personality underlies official character.
In this sense of the word, types are permanent; for such are not the
exclusive possession of any age or of any service, but are found and are
essential in every period and to every nation. Their functions are part
of the bed-rock of naval organization and of naval strategy, throughout
all time; and the particular instances here selected owe their special
cogency mainly to the fact that they are drawn from a naval era,
1739-1815, of exceptional activity and brilliancy.
There is, however, another sense in which an officer, or a man, may be
accurately called a type; a sense no less significant, but of more
limited and transient application. The tendency of a period,--especially
when one of marked transition,--its activities and its results, not
infrequently find expression in one or more historical characters. Such
types may perhaps more accurately be called personifications; the man or
men embodying, and in action realizing, ideas and processes of thought,
the progress of which is at the time united, but is afterwards
recognized as a general characteristic of the period. Between the
beginning and the end a great change is found to have been effected,
which naturally and conveniently is associated with the names of the
most conspicuous actors; although they are not the sole agents, but
simply the most eminent.
It is in this sense more particularly that Hawke and Rodney are
presented as types. It might even be said that they complement each
other and constitute together a single type; for, while both were men of
unusually strong personality, private as well as professional, and with
very marked traits of character, their great relation to naval advance
is that of men who by natural faculty detect and seize upon incipient
ideas, for which the time is ripe, and upon the practical realization of
which the healthful development of the profession depends. With these
two, and with them not so much contemporaneously as in close historical
sequence, is associated the distinctive evolution of naval warfare in
the eighteenth century; in their combined names is summed up the
improvement of system to which Nelson and his contemporaries fell heirs,
and to which Nelson, under the peculiar and exceptional circumstances
which made his opportunity, gave an extension that immortalized him. Of
Hawke and Rodney, therefore, it may be said that they are in their
profession types of that element of change, in virtue of which the
profession grows; whereas the other four, eminent as they were,
exemplify rather the conservative forces, the permanent features, in the
strength of which it exists, and in the absence of any one of which it
droops or succumbs. It does not, however, follow that the one of these
great men is the simple continuator of the other's work; rather it is
true that each contributed, in due succession of orderly development,
the factor of progress which his day demanded, and his personality
embodied.
It was not in the forecast of the writer, but in the process of
treatment he came to recognize that, like Hawke and Rodney, the four
others also by natural characteristics range themselves in
pairs,--presenting points of contrast, in deficiencies and in
excellencies, which group them together, not by similarity chiefly, but
as complementary. Howe and Jervis were both admirable general officers;
but the strength of the one lay in his tactical acquirements, that of
the other in strategic insight and breadth of outlook. The one was
easy-going and indulgent as a superior; the other conspicuous for
severity, and for the searchingness with which he carried the exactions
of discipline into the minute details of daily naval life. Saumarez and
Pellew, less fortunate, did not reach high command until the great days
of naval warfare in their period had yielded to the comparatively
uneventful occupation of girdling the enemy's coast with a system of
blockades, aimed primarily at the restriction of his commerce, and
incidentally at the repression of his navy, which made no effort to take
the sea on a large scale. Under these circumstances the functions of an
admiral were mainly administrative; and if Saumarez and Pellew
possessed eminent capacity as general officers on the battle-field, they
had not opportunity to prove it. The distinction of their careers
coincides with their tenure of subordinate positions in the organisms of
great fleets. With this in common, and differentiating them from Howe
and Jervis, the points of contrast are marked. Saumarez preferred the
ship-of-the-line, Pellew the frigate. The choice of the one led to the
duties of a division commander, that of the other to the comparative
independence of detached service, of the partisan officer. In the one,
love of the military side of his calling predominated; the other was,
before all, the seaman. The union of the two perfects professional
character.
The question may naturally be asked,--Why, among types of naval
officers, is there no mention, other than casual, of the name of Nelson?
The answer is simple. Among general officers, land and sea, the group to
which Nelson belongs defies exposition by a type, both because it is
small in aggregate numbers, and because the peculiar eminence of the
several members,--the eminence of genius,--so differentiates each from
his fellows that no one among them can be said to represent the others.
Each, in the supremacy of his achievement, stands alone,--alone, not
only regarded as towering above a brilliant surrounding of distinguished
followers, but alone even as contrasted with the other great ones who in
their own day had a like supremacy. Such do not in fact form a class,
because, though a certain community of ideas and principles may be
traced in their actions, their personalities and methods bear each the
stamp of originality in performance; and where originality is found,
classification ceases to apply. There is a company, it may be, but not a
class.
The last four biographies first appeared as contributions to the
"Atlantic Monthly," in 1893 and 1894. I desire to return to the
proprietors my thanks for their permission to republish. The original
treatment has been here considerably modified, as well as enlarged. I am
also under special obligation to Mr. Fleetwood Hugo Pellew, who gave me
the photograph of Lord Exmouth, with permission also to reproduce it. It
represents that great officer at the age most characteristic of his
particular professional distinction, as by me understood.
A T. MAHAN.
OCTOBER, 1901.