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THE INFLUENCE OF SEA POWER UPON HISTORY 1660-1783
by
A. T. MAHAN, D.C.L., LL.D.
Author of "The Influence of Sea Power upon the French
Revolution and Empire, 1793-1812," etc.
Twelfth Edition
[Illustration]
Boston
Little, Brown and Company
Copyright, 1890,
by Captain A. T. Mahan.
Copyright, 1918,
by Ellen Lyle Mahan.
Printed in the United States of America
PREFACE.
The definite object proposed in this work is an examination of the
general history of Europe and America with particular reference to the
effect of sea power upon the course of that history. Historians
generally have been unfamiliar with the conditions of the sea, having
as to it neither special interest nor special knowledge; and the
profound determining influence of maritime strength upon great issues
has consequently been overlooked. This is even more true of particular
occasions than of the general tendency of sea power. It is easy to say
in a general way, that the use and control of the sea is and has been
a great factor in the history of the world; it is more troublesome to
seek out and show its exact bearing at a particular juncture. Yet,
unless this be done, the acknowledgment of general importance remains
vague and unsubstantial; not resting, as it should, upon a collection
of special instances in which the precise effect has been made clear,
by an analysis of the conditions at the given moments.
A curious exemplification of this tendency to slight the bearing of
maritime power upon events may be drawn from two writers of that
English nation which more than any other has owed its greatness to the
sea. "Twice," says Arnold in his History of Rome, "Has there been
witnessed the struggle of the highest individual genius against the
resources and institutions of a great nation, and in both cases the
nation was victorious. For seventeen years Hannibal strove against
Rome, for sixteen years Napoleon strove against England; the efforts
of the first ended in Zama, those of the second in Waterloo." Sir
Edward Creasy, quoting this, adds: "One point, however, of the
similitude between the two wars has scarcely been adequately dwelt on;
that is, the remarkable parallel between the Roman general who finally
defeated the great Carthaginian, and the English general who gave the
last deadly overthrow to the French emperor. Scipio and Wellington
both held for many years commands of high importance, but distant from
the main theatres of warfare. The same country was the scene of the
principal military career of each. It was in Spain that Scipio, like
Wellington, successively encountered and overthrew nearly all the
subordinate generals of the enemy before being opposed to the chief
champion and conqueror himself. Both Scipio and Wellington restored
their countrymen's confidence in arms when shaken by a series of
reverses, and each of them closed a long and perilous war by a
complete and overwhelming defeat of the chosen leader and the chosen
veterans of the foe."
Neither of these Englishmen mentions the yet more striking
coincidence, that in both cases the mastery of the sea rested with the
victor. The Roman control of the water forced Hannibal to that long,
perilous march through Gaul in which more than half his veteran troops
wasted away; it enabled the elder Scipio, while sending his army from
the Rhone on to Spain, to intercept Hannibal's communications, to
return in person and face the invader at the Trebia. Throughout the
war the legions passed by water, unmolested and unwearied, between
Spain, which was Hannibal's base, and Italy, while the issue of the
decisive battle of the Metaurus, hinging as it did upon the interior
position of the Roman armies with reference to the forces of Hasdrubal
and Hannibal, was ultimately due to the fact that the younger brother
could not bring his succoring reinforcements by sea, but only by the
land route through Gaul. Hence at the critical moment the two
Carthaginian armies were separated by the length of Italy, and one was
destroyed by the combined action of the Roman generals.
On the other hand, naval historians have troubled themselves little
about the connection between general history and their own particular
topic, limiting themselves generally to the duty of simple chroniclers
of naval occurrences. This is less true of the French than of the
English; the genius and training of the former people leading them to
more careful inquiry into the causes of particular results and the
mutual relation of events.
There is not, however, within the knowledge of the author any work
that professes the particular object here sought; namely, an estimate
of the effect of sea power upon the course of history and the
prosperity of nations. As other histories deal with the wars,
politics, social and economical conditions of countries, touching upon
maritime matters only incidentally and generally unsympathetically, so
the present work aims at putting maritime interests in the foreground,
without divorcing them, however, from their surroundings of cause and
effect in general history, but seeking to show how they modified the
latter, and were modified by them.
The period embraced is from 1660, when the sailing-ship era, with its
distinctive features, had fairly begun, to 1783, the end of the
American Revolution. While the thread of general history upon which
the successive maritime events is strung is intentionally slight, the
effort has been to present a clear as well as accurate outline.
Writing as a naval officer in full sympathy with his profession, the
author has not hesitated to digress freely on questions of naval
policy, strategy, and tactics; but as technical language has been
avoided, it is hoped that these matters, simply presented, will be
found of interest to the unprofessional reader.
A. T. MAHAN
DECEMBER, 1889.
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTORY.
History of Sea Power one of contest between nations, therefore
largely military 1
Permanence of the teachings of history 2
Unsettled condition of modern naval opinion 2
Contrasts between historical classes of war-ships 2
Essential distinction between weather and lee gage 5
Analogous to other offensive and defensive positions 6
Consequent effect upon naval policy 6
Lessons of history apply especially to strategy 7
Less obviously to tactics, but still applicable 9
ILLUSTRATIONS:
The battle of the Nile, A.D. 1798 10
Trafalgar, A.D. 1805 11
Siege of Gibraltar, A.D. 1779-1782 12
Actium, B.C. 31, and Lepanto, A.D. 1571 13
Second Punic War, B.C. 218-201 14
Naval strategic combinations surer now than formerly 22
Wide scope of naval strategy 22
CHAPTER I.
DISCUSSION OF THE ELEMENTS OF SEA POWER.
The sea a great common 25
Advantages of water-carriage over that by land 25
Navies exist for the protection of commerce 26
Dependence of commerce upon secure seaports 27
Development of colonies and colonial posts 28
Links in the chain of Sea Power: production, shipping, colonies 28
General conditions affecting Sea Power:
I. Geographical position 29
II. Physical conformation 35
III. Extent of territory 42
IV. Number of population 44
V. National character 50
VI. Character and policy of governments 58
England 59
Holland 67
France 69
Influence of colonies on Sea Power 82
The United States:
Its weakness in Sea Power 83
Its chief interest in internal development 84
Danger from blockades 85
Dependence of the navy upon the shipping interest 87
Conclusion of the discussion of the elements of Sea Power 88
Purpose of the historical narrative 89
CHAPTER II.
STATE OF EUROPE IN 1660.--SECOND ANGLO-DUTCH WAR, 1665-1667.--SEA
BATTLES OF LOWESTOFT AND OF THE FOUR DAYS
Accession of Charles II. and Louis XIV. 90
Followed shortly by general wars 91
French policy formulated by Henry IV. and Richelieu 92
Condition of France in 1660 93
Condition of Spain 94
Condition of the Dutch United Provinces 96
Their commerce and colonies 97
Character of their government 98
Parties in the State 99
Condition of England in 1660 99
Characteristics of French, English, and Dutch ships 101
Conditions of other European States 102
Louis XIV. the leading personality in Europe 103
His policy 104
Colbert's administrative acts 105
Second Anglo-Dutch War, 1665 107
Battle of Lowestoft, 1665 108
Fire-ships, compared with torpedo-cruisers 109
The group formation 112
The order of battle for sailing-ships 115
The Four Days' Battle, 1666 117
Military merits of the opposing fleets 126
Soldiers commanding fleets, discussion 127
Ruyter in the Thames, 1667 132
Peace of Breda, 1667 132
Military value of commerce-destroying 132
CHAPTER III.
WAR OF ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN ALLIANCE AGAINST THE UNITED
PROVINCES, 1672-1674.--FINALLY, OF FRANCE AGAINST COMBINED
EUROPE, 1674-1678.--SEA BATTLES OF SOLEBAY, THE TEXEL, AND
STROMBOLI.
Aggressions of Louis XIV. on Spanish Netherlands 139
Policy of the United Provinces 139
Triple alliance between England, Holland, and Sweden 140
Anger of Louis XIV. 140
Leibnitz proposes to Louis to seize Egypt 141
His memorial 142
Bargaining between Louis XIV. and Charles II. 143
The two kings declare war against the United Provinces 144
Military character of this war 144
Naval strategy of the Dutch 144
Tactical combinations of De Ruyter 145
Inefficiency of Dutch naval administration 145
Battle of Solebay, 1672 146
Tactical comments 147
Effect of the battle on the course of the war 148
Land campaign of the French in Holland 149
Murder of John De Witt, Grand Pensionary of Holland 150
Accession to power of William of Orange 150
Uneasiness among European States 150
Naval battles off Schoneveldt, 1673 151
Naval battle of the Texel, 1673 152
Effect upon the general war 154
Equivocal action of the French fleet 155
General ineffectiveness of maritime coalitions 156
Military character of De Ruyter 157
Coalition against France 158
Peace between England and the United Provinces 158
Sicilian revolt against Spain 159
Battle of Stromboli, 1676 161
Illustration of Clerk's naval tactics 163
De Ruyter killed off Agosta 165
England becomes hostile to France 166
Sufferings of the United Provinces 167
Peace of Nimeguen, 1678 168
Effects of the war on France and Holland 169
Notice of Comte d'Estrées 170
CHAPTER IV.
ENGLISH REVOLUTION.--WAR OF THE LEAGUE OF AUGSBURG,
1688-1697.--SEA BATTLES OF BEACHY HEAD AND LA HOUGUE.
Aggressive policy of Louis XIV. 173
State of French, English, and Dutch navies 174
Accession of James II. 175
Formation of the League of Augsburg 176
Louis declares war against the Emperor of Germany 177
Revolution in England 178
Louis declares war against the United Provinces 178
William and Mary crowned 178
James II. lands in Ireland 179
Misdirection of French naval forces 180
William III. lands in Ireland 181
Naval battle of Beachy Head, 1690 182
Tourville's military character 184
Battle of the Boyne, 1690 186
End of the struggle in Ireland 186
Naval battle of La Hougue, 1692 189
Destruction of French ships 190
Influence of Sea Power in this war 191
Attack and defence of commerce 193
Peculiar characteristics of French privateering 195
Peace of Ryswick, 1697 197
Exhaustion of France: its causes 198
CHAPTER V.
WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION, 1702-1713.--SEA BATTLE OF MALAGA.
Failure of the Spanish line of the House of Austria 201
King of Spain wills the succession to the Duke of Anjou 202
Death of the King of Spain 202
Louis XIV. accepts the bequests 203
He seizes towns in Spanish Netherlands 203
Offensive alliance between England, Holland, and Austria 204
Declarations of war 205
The allies proclaim Carlos III. King of Spain 206
Affair of the Vigo galleons 207
Portugal joins the allies 208
Character of the naval warfare 209
Capture of Gibraltar by the English 210
Naval battle of Malaga, 1704 211
Decay of the French navy 212
Progress of the land war 213
Allies seize Sardinia and Minorca 215
Disgrace of Marlborough 216
England offers terms of peace 217
Peace of Utrecht, 1713 218
Terms of the peace 219
Results of the war to the different belligerents 219
Commanding position of Great Britain 224
Sea Power dependent upon both commerce and naval strength 225
Peculiar position of France as regards Sea Power 226
Depressed condition of France 227
Commercial prosperity of England 228
Ineffectiveness of commerce-destroying 229
Duguay-Trouin's expedition against Rio de Janeiro, 1711 230
War between Russia and Sweden 231
CHAPTER VI.
THE REGENCY IN FRANCE.--ALBERONI IN SPAIN.--POLICIES OF WALPOLE
AND FLEURI.--WAR OF THE POLISH SUCCESSION.--ENGLISH CONTRABAND
TRADE IN SPANISH AMERICA.--GREAT BRITAIN DECLARES WAR AGAINST
SPAIN.--1715-1739.
Death of Queen Anne and Louis XIV. 232
Accession of George I. 232
Regency of Philip of Orleans 233
Administration of Alberoni in Spain 234
Spaniards invade Sardinia 235
Alliance of Austria, England, Holland, and France 235
Spaniards invade Sicily 236
Destruction of Spanish navy off Cape Passaro, 1718 237
Failure and dismissal of Alberoni 239
Spain accepts terms 239
Great Britain interferes in the Baltic 239
Death of Philip of Orleans 241
Administration of Fleuri in France 241
Growth of French commerce 242
France in the East Indies 243
Troubles between England and Spain 244
English contraband trade in Spanish America 245
Illegal search of English ships 246
Walpole's struggles to preserve peace 247
War of the Polish Succession 247
Creation of the Bourbon kingdom of the Two Sicilies 248
Bourbon family compact 248
France acquires Bar and Lorraine 249
England declares war against Spain 250
Morality of the English action toward Spain 250
Decay of the French navy 252
Death of Walpole and of Fleuri 253
CHAPTER VII.
WAR BETWEEN GREAT BRITAIN AND SPAIN, 1739.--WAR OF THE AUSTRIAN
SUCCESSION, 1740.--FRANCE JOINS SPAIN AGAINST GREAT BRITAIN,
1744.--SEA BATTLES OF MATTHEWS, ANSON, AND HAWKE.--PEACE OF
AIX-LA-CHAPELLE, 1748.
Characteristics of the wars from 1739 to 1783 254
Neglect of the navy by French government 254
Colonial possessions of the French, English, and Spaniards 255
Dupleix and La Bourdonnais in India 258
Condition of the contending navies 259
Expeditions of Vernon and Anson 261
Outbreak of the War of the Austrian Succession 262
England allies herself to Austria 262
Naval affairs in the Mediterranean 263
Influence of Sea Power on the war 264
Naval battle off Toulon, 1744 265
Causes of English failure 267
Courts-martial following the action 268
Inefficient action of English navy 269
Capture of Louisburg by New England colonists, 1745 269
Causes which concurred to neutralize England's Sea Power 269
France overruns Belgium and invades Holland 270
Naval actions of Anson and Hawke 271
Brilliant defence of Commodore l'Étenduère 272
Projects of Dupleix and La Bourdonnais in the East Indies 273
Influence of Sea Power in Indian affairs 275
La Bourdonnais reduces Madras 276
Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748 277
Madras exchanged for Louisburg 277
Results of the war 278
Effect of Sea Power on the issue 279
CHAPTER VIII.
SEVEN YEARS' WAR, 1756-1763.--ENGLAND'S OVERWHELMING POWER AND
CONQUESTS ON THE SEAS, IN NORTH AMERICA, EUROPE, AND EAST AND WEST
INDIES.--SEA BATTLES: BYNG OFF MINORCA; HAWKE AND CONFLANS; POCOCK
AND D'ACHÉ IN EAST INDIES.
Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle leaves many questions unsettled 281
Dupleix pursues his aggressive policy 281
He is recalled from India 282
His policy abandoned by the French 282
Agitation in North America 283
Braddock's expedition, 1755 284
Seizure of French ships by the English, while at peace 285
French expedition against Port Mahon, 1756 285
Byng sails to relieve the place 286
Byng's action off Port Mahon, 1756 286
Characteristics of the French naval policy 287
Byng returns to Gibraltar 290
He is relieved, tried by court-martial, and shot 290
Formal declarations of war by England and France 291
England's appreciation of the maritime character of the war 291
France is drawn into a continental struggle 292
The Seven Years' War (1756-1763) begins 293
Pitt becomes Prime Minister of England 293
Operations in North America 293
Fall of Louisburg, 1758 294
Fall of Quebec, 1759, and of Montreal, 1760 294
Influence of Sea Power on the continental war 295
English plans for the general naval operations 296
Choiseul becomes Minister in France 297
He plans an invasion of England 297
Sailing of the Toulon fleet, 1759 298
Its disastrous encounter with Boscawen 299
Consequent frustration of the invasion of England 300
Project to invade Scotland 300
Sailing of the Brest fleet 300
Hawke falls in with it and disperses it, 1759 302
Accession of Charles III. to Spanish throne 304
Death of George II. 304
Clive in India 305
Battle of Plassey, 1757 306
Decisive influence of Sea Power upon the issues in India 307
Naval actions between Pocock and D'Aché, 1758, 1759 307
Destitute condition of French naval stations in India 309
The French fleet abandons the struggle 310
Final fall of the French power in India 310
Ruined condition of the French navy 311
Alliance between France and Spain 313
England declares war against Spain 313
Rapid conquest of French and Spanish colonies 314
French and Spaniards invade Portugal 316
The invasion repelled by England 316
Severe reverses of the Spaniards in all quarters 316
Spain sues for peace 317
Losses of British mercantile shipping 317
Increase of British commerce 318
Commanding position of Great Britain 319
Relations of England and Portugal 320
Terms of the Treaty of Paris 321
Opposition to the treaty in Great Britain 322
Results of the maritime war 323
Results of the continental war 324
Influence of Sea Power in countries politically unstable 324
Interest of the United States in the Central American Isthmus 325
Effects of the Seven Years' War on the later history of
Great Britain 326
Subsequent acquisitions of Great Britain 327
British success due to maritime superiority 328
Mutual dependence of seaports and fleets 329
CHAPTER IX.
COURSE OF EVENTS FROM THE PEACE OF PARIS TO 1778.--MARITIME WAR
CONSEQUENT UPON THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.--SEA BATTLE OFF USHANT.
French discontent with the Treaty of Paris 330
Revival of the French navy 331
Discipline among French naval officers of the time 332
Choiseul's foreign policy 333
Domestic troubles in Great Britain 334
Controversies with the North American colonies 334
Genoa cedes Corsica to France 334
Dispute between England and Spain about the Falkland Islands 335
Choiseul dismissed 336
Death of Louis XV. 336
Naval policy of Louis XVI. 337
Characteristics of the maritime war of 1778 338
Instructions of Louis XVI. to the French admirals 339
Strength of English navy 341
Characteristics of the military situation in America 341
The line of the Hudson 342
Burgoyne's expedition from Canada 343
Howe carries his army from New York to the Chesapeake 343
Surrender of Burgoyne, 1777 343
American privateering 344
Clandestine support of the Americans by France 345
Treaty between France and the Americans 346
Vital importance of the French fleet to the Americans 347
The military situation in the different quarters of the globe 347
Breach between France and England 350
Sailing of the British and French fleets 350
Battle of Ushant, 1778 351
Position of a naval commander-in-chief in battle 353
CHAPTER X.
MARITIME WAR IN NORTH AMERICA AND WEST INDIES, 1778-1781.--ITS
INFLUENCE UPON THE COURSE OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.--FLEET
ACTIONS OFF GRENADA, DOMINICA, AND CHESAPEAKE BAY.
D'Estaing sails from Toulon for Delaware Bay, 1778 359
British ordered to evacuate Philadelphia 359
Rapidity of Lord Howe's movements 360
D'Estaing arrives too late 360
Follows Howe to New York 360
Fails to attack there and sails for Newport 361
Howe follows him there 362
Both fleets dispersed by a storm 362
D'Estaing takes his fleet to Boston 363
Howe's activity foils D'Estaing at all points 363
D'Estaing sails for the West Indies 365
The English seize Sta. Lucia 365
Ineffectual attempts of D'Estaing to dislodge them 366
D'Estaing captures Grenada 367
Naval battle of Grenada, 1779; English ships crippled 367
D'Estaing fails to improve his advantages 370
Reasons for his neglect 371
French naval policy 372
English operations in the Southern States 375
D'Estaing takes his fleet to Savannah 375
His fruitless assault on Savannah 376
D'Estaing returns to France 376
Fall of Charleston 376
De Guichen takes command in the West Indies 376
Rodney arrives to command English fleet 377
His military character 377
First action between Rodney and De Guichen, 1780 378
Breaking the line 380
Subsequent movements of Rodney and De Guichen 381
Rodney divides his fleet 381
Goes in person to New York 381
De Guichen returns to France 381
Arrival of French forces in Newport 382
Rodney returns to the West Indies 382
War between England and Holland 382
Disasters to the United States in 1780 382
De Grasse sails from Brest for the West Indies, 1781 383
Engagement with English fleet off Martinique 383
Cornwallis overruns the Southern States 384
He retires upon Wilmington, N.C., and thence to Virginia 385
Arnold on the James River 385
The French fleet leaves Newport to intercept Arnold 385
Meets the English fleet off the Chesapeake, 1781 386
French fleet returns to Newport 387
Cornwallis occupies Yorktown 387
De Grasse sails from Hayti for the Chesapeake 388
Action with the British fleet, 1781 389
Surrender of Cornwallis, 1781 390
Criticism of the British naval operations 390
Energy and address shown by De Grasse 392
Difficulties of Great Britain's position in the war of 1778 392
The military policy best fitted to cope with them 393
Position of the French squadron in Newport, R.I., 1780 394
Great Britain's defensive position and inferior numbers 396
Consequent necessity for a vigorous initiative 396
Washington's opinions as to the influence of Sea Power on the
American contest 397
CHAPTER XI.
MARITIME WAR IN EUROPE, 1779-1782.
Objectives of the allied operations in Europe 401
Spain declares war against England 401
Allied fleets enter the English Channel, 1779 402
Abortive issue of the cruise 403
Rodney sails with supplies for Gibraltar 403
Defeats the Spanish squadron of Langara and relieves the place 404
The allies capture a great British convoy 404
The armed neutrality of the Baltic powers, 1780 405
England declares war against Holland 406
Gibraltar is revictualled by Admiral Derby 407
The allied fleets again in the Channel, 1781 408
They retire without effecting any damage to England 408
Destruction of a French convoy for the West Indies 408
Fall of Port Mahon, 1782 409
The allied fleets assemble at Algesiras 409
Grand attack of the allies on Gibraltar, which fails, 1782 410
Lord Howe succeeds in revictualling Gibraltar 412
Action between his fleet and that of the allies 412
Conduct of the war of 1778 by the English government 412
Influence of Sea Power 416
Proper use of the naval forces 416
CHAPTER XII.
EVENTS IN THE EAST INDIES, 1778-1781.--SUFFREN SAILS FROM BREST
FOR INDIA, 1781.--HIS BRILLIANT NAVAL CAMPAIGN IN THE INDIAN SEAS,
1782, 1783.
Neglect of India by the French government 419
England at war with Mysore and with the Mahrattas 420
Arrival of the French squadron under Comte d'Orves 420
It effects nothing and returns to the Isle of France 420
Suffren sails from Brest with five ships-of-the-line, 1781 421
Attacks an English squadron in the Cape Verde Islands, 1781 422
Conduct and results of this attack 424
Distinguishing merits of Suffren as a naval leader 425
Suffren saves the Cape Colony from the English 427
He reaches the Isle of France 427
Succeeds to the chief command of the French fleet 427
Meets the British squadron under Hughes at Madras 427
Analysis of the naval strategic situation in India 428
The first battle between Suffren and Hughes, Feb. 17, 1782 430
Suffren's views of the naval situation in India 433
Tactical oversights made by Suffren 434
Inadequate support received by him from his captains 435
Suffren goes to Pondicherry, Hughes to Trincomalee 436
The second battle between Suffren and Hughes, April 12, 1782 437
Suffren's tactics in the action 439
Relative injuries received by the opposing fleets 441
Contemporaneous English criticisms upon Hughes's conduct 442
Destitute condition of Suffren's fleet 443
His activity and success in supplying wants 443
He communicates with Hyder Ali, Sultan of Mysore 443
Firmness and insight shown by Suffren 445
His refusal to obey orders from home to leave the Indian Coast 446
The third battle between Suffren and Hughes, July 6, 1782 447
Qualities shown by Hughes 449
Stubborn fighting by the British admiral and captains 449
Suffren deprives three captains of their commands 449
Dilatory conduct of Admiral Hughes 450
Suffren attacks and takes Trincomalee 450
Strategic importance of this success 451
Comparative condition of the two fleets in material for repairs 451
The English government despatches powerful reinforcements 452
The French court fails to support Suffren 452
The fourth battle between Suffren and Hughes, Sept. 3, 1782 453
Mismanagement and injuries of the French 455
Contrast between the captains in the opposing fleets 456
Two ships of Suffren's fleet grounded and lost 457
Arrival of British reinforcements under Admiral Bickerton 458
Approach of bad-weather season; Hughes goes to Bombay 458
Military situation of French and English in India 459
Delays of the French reinforcements under Bussy 460
Suffren takes his fleet to Achem, in Sumatra 460
He returns to the Indian coast 461
Arrival of Bussy 461
Decline of the French power on shore 461
The English besiege Bussy in Cuddalore by land and sea 462
Suffren relieves the place 462
The fifth battle between Suffren and Hughes, June 20, 1783 463
Decisive character of Suffren's action 463
News of the peace received at Madras 463
Suffren sails for France 464
His flattering reception everywhere 464
His distinguishing military qualities 465
His later career and death 466
CHAPTER XIII.
EVENTS IN THE WEST INDIES AFTER THE SURRENDER OF YORKTOWN.--
ENCOUNTERS OF DE GRASSE WITH HOOD.--THE SEA BATTLE OF THE
SAINTS.--1781-1782.
Maritime struggle transferred from the continent to West Indies 468
De Grasse sails for the islands 469
French expedition against the island of St. Christopher,
January, 1782 469
Hood attempts to relieve the garrison 470
Manoeuvres of the two fleets 471
Action between De Grasse and Hood 472
Hood seizes the anchorage left by De Grasse 473
De Grasse attacks Hood at his anchorage 474
Hood maintains his position 475
Surrender of the garrison and island 475
Merits of Hood's action 476
Criticism upon De Grasse's conduct 477
Rodney arrives in West Indies from England 479
Junction of Rodney and Hood at Antigua 479
De Grasse returns to Martinique 479
Allied plans to capture Jamaica 479
Rodney takes his station at Sta. Lucia 480
The French fleet sails and is pursued by Rodney 480
Action of April 9, 1782 481
Criticism upon the action 483
The chase continued; accidents to French ships 484
The naval battle of the Saints, April 12, 1782 485
Rodney breaks the French line 488
Capture of the French commander-in-chief and five
ships-of-the-line 489
Details of the action 489
Analysis of the effects of Rodney's manoeuvre 491
Tactical bearing of improvements in naval equipment 493
Lessons of this short naval campaign 495
Rodney's failure to pursue the French fleet 496
Examination of his reasons and of the actual conditions 497
Probable effect of this failure upon the conditions of peace 498
Rodney's opinions upon the battle of April 12 499
Successes achieved by Rodney during his command 500
He is recalled by a new ministry 500
Exaggerated view of the effects of this battle upon the war 500
Subsequent career of De Grasse 501
Court-martial ordered upon the officers of the French fleet 502
Findings of the court 502
De Grasse appeals against the finding 503
He is severely rebuked by the king 503
Deaths of De Grasse, Rodney, and Hood 504
CHAPTER XIV.
CRITICAL DISCUSSION OF THE MARITIME WAR OF 1778.
The war of 1778 purely maritime 505
Peculiar interest therefore attaching to it 506
Successive steps in the critical study of a war 507
Distinction between "object" and "objective" 507
Parties to the war of 1778 507
Objects of the different belligerents 508
Foundations of the British Empire of the seas 510
Threatened by the revolt of the colonies 510
The British fleet inferior in numbers to the allies 511
Choice of objectives 511
The fleets indicated as the keys of the situation everywhere 513
Elements essential to an active naval war 514
The bases of operations in the war of 1778:--
In Europe 515
On the American continent 515
In the West Indies 516
In the East Indies 518
Strategic bearing of the trade-winds and monsoons 518
The bases abroad generally deficient in resources 519
Consequent increased importance of the communications 519
The navies the guardians of the communications 520
Need of intermediate ports between Europe and India 520
Inquiry into the disposition of the naval forces 521
Difficulty of obtaining information at sea 521
Perplexity as to the destination of a naval expedition 522
Disadvantages of the defensive 523
England upon the defensive in 1778 523
Consequent necessity for wise and vigorous action 524
The key of the situation 525
British naval policy in the Napoleonic wars 525
British naval policy in the Seven Years' War 527
Difficulties attending this policy 527
Disposition of the British navy in the war of 1778 528
Resulting inferiority on many critical occasions 528
Effect on the navy of the failure to fortify naval bases 529
The distribution of the British navy exposes it to being
out-numbered at many points 531
The British naval policy in 1778 and in other wars compared 532
Naval policy of the allies 535
Divergent counsels of the coalition 536
"Ulterior objects" 537
The allied navies systematically assume a defensive attitude 538
Dangers of this line of action 538
Glamour of commerce-destroying 539
The conditions of peace, 1783 540
INDEX 543
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
LIST OF MAPS.
I. Mediterranean Sea 15
II. English Channel and North Sea 107
III. Indian Peninsula and Ceylon 257
IV. North Atlantic Ocean 532
PLANS OF NAVAL BATTLES.
_In these plans, when the capital letters A, B, C, and D are used, all
positions marked by the same capital are simultaneous._
I. Four Days' Battle, 1666 119
II. Four Days' Battle, 1666 124
III. Battle of Solebay, 1672 146
IV. Battle of the Texel, 1673 153
V. Battle of Stromboli, 1676 161
V a. Pocock and D'Aché, 1758 161
VI. Battle of Beachy Head, 1690 183
VI a. Battle of La Hougue, 1692 183
VII. Matthews's Action off Toulon, 1744 265
VII a. Byng's Action off Minorca, 1756 265
VIII. Hawke and Conflans, 1759 303
IX. Battle of Ushant, 1778 351
X. D'Estaing and Byron, 1779 368
XI. Rodney and De Guichen, April 17, 1780 378
XII. Arbuthnot and Destouches, 1781 386
XIII. Suffren at Porto Praya, 1781 423
XIV. Suffren and Hughes, February 17, 1782 431
XV. Suffren and Hughes, April 12, 1782 438
XVI. Suffren and Hughes, July 6, 1782 447
XVII. Suffren and Hughes, September 3, 1782 454
XVIII. Hood and De Grasse, January, 1782 470
XIX. Hood and De Grasse, January, 1782 472
XX. Rodney and De Grasse, April 9, 1782 482
XXI. Rodney's Victory, April 12, 1782 486
INFLUENCE
OF
SEA POWER UPON HISTORY.
INTRODUCTORY.
The history of Sea Power is largely, though by no means solely, a
narrative of contests between nations, of mutual rivalries, of
violence frequently culminating in war. The profound influence of sea
commerce upon the wealth and strength of countries was clearly seen
long before the true principles which governed its growth and
prosperity were detected. To secure to one's own people a
disproportionate share of such benefits, every effort was made to
exclude others, either by the peaceful legislative methods of monopoly
or prohibitory regulations, or, when these failed, by direct violence.
The clash of interests, the angry feelings roused by conflicting
attempts thus to appropriate the larger share, if not the whole, of
the advantages of commerce, and of distant unsettled commercial
regions, led to wars. On the other hand, wars arising from other
causes have been greatly modified in their conduct and issue by the
control of the sea. Therefore the history of sea power, while
embracing in its broad sweep all that tends to make a people great
upon the sea or by the sea, is largely a military history; and it is
in this aspect that it will be mainly, though not exclusively,
regarded in the following pages.
A study of the military history of the past, such as this, is enjoined
by great military leaders as essential to correct ideas and to the
skilful conduct of war in the future. Napoleon names among the
campaigns to be studied by the aspiring soldier, those of Alexander,
Hannibal, and Cæsar, to whom gunpowder was unknown; and there is a
substantial agreement among professional writers that, while many of
the conditions of war vary from age to age with the progress of
weapons, there are certain teachings in the school of history which
remain constant, and being, therefore, of universal application, can
be elevated to the rank of general principles. For the same reason the
study of the sea history of the past will be found instructive, by its
illustration of the general principles of maritime war,
notwithstanding the great changes that have been brought about in
naval weapons by the scientific advances of the past half century, and
by the introduction of steam as the motive power.
It is doubly necessary thus to study critically the history and
experience of naval warfare in the days of sailing-ships, because
while these will be found to afford lessons of present application and
value, steam navies have as yet made no history which can be quoted as
decisive in its teaching. Of the one we have much experimental
knowledge; of the other, practically none. Hence theories about the
naval warfare of the future are almost wholly presumptive; and
although the attempt has been made to give them a more solid basis by
dwelling upon the resemblance between fleets of steamships and fleets
of galleys moved by oars, which have a long and well-known history, it
will be well not to be carried away by this analogy until it has been
thoroughly tested. The resemblance is indeed far from superficial. The
feature which the steamer and the galley have in common is the ability
to move in any direction independent of the wind. Such a power makes a
radical distinction between those classes of vessels and the
sailing-ship; for the latter can follow only a limited number of
courses when the wind blows, and must remain motionless when it fails.
But while it is wise to observe things that are alike, it is also wise
to look for things that differ; for when the imagination is carried
away by the detection of points of resemblance,--one of the most
pleasing of mental pursuits,--it is apt to be impatient of any
divergence in its new-found parallels, and so may overlook or refuse
to recognize such. Thus the galley and the steamship have in common,
though unequally developed, the important characteristic mentioned,
but in at least two points they differ; and in an appeal to the
history of the galley for lessons as to fighting steamships, the
differences as well as the likeness must be kept steadily in view, or
false deductions may be made. The motive power of the galley when in
use necessarily and rapidly declined, because human strength could not
long maintain such exhausting efforts, and consequently tactical
movements could continue but for a limited time;[1] and again, during
the galley period offensive weapons were not only of short range, but
were almost wholly confined to hand-to-hand encounter. These two
conditions led almost necessarily to a rush upon each other, not,
however, without some dexterous attempts to turn or double on the
enemy, followed by a hand-to-hand _mêlée_. In such a rush and such a
_mêlée_ a great consensus of respectable, even eminent, naval opinion
of the present day finds the necessary outcome of modern naval
weapons,--a kind of Donnybrook Fair, in which, as the history of
_mêlées_ shows, it will be hard to know friend from foe. Whatever may
prove to be the worth of this opinion, it cannot claim an historical
basis in the sole fact that galley and steamship can move at any
moment directly upon the enemy, and carry a beak upon their prow,
regardless of the points in which galley and steamship differ. As yet
this opinion is only a presumption, upon which final judgment may well
be deferred until the trial of battle has given further light. Until
that time there is room for the opposite view,--that a _mêlée_
between numerically equal fleets, in which skill is reduced to a
minimum, is not the best that can be done with the elaborate and
mighty weapons of this age. The surer of himself an admiral is, the
finer the tactical development of his fleet, the better his captains,
the more reluctant must he necessarily be to enter into a _mêlée_ with
equal forces, in which all these advantages will be thrown away,
chance reign supreme, and his fleet be placed on terms of equality
with an assemblage of ships which have never before acted together.[2]
History has lessons as to when _mêlées_ are, or are not, in order.
The galley, then, has one striking resemblance to the steamer, but
differs in other important features which are not so immediately
apparent and are therefore less accounted of. In the sailing-ship, on
the contrary, the striking feature is the difference between it and
the more modern vessel; the points of resemblance, though existing and
easy to find, are not so obvious, and therefore are less heeded. This
impression is enhanced by the sense of utter weakness in the
sailing-ship as compared with the steamer, owing to its dependence
upon the wind; forgetting that, as the former fought with its equals,
the tactical lessons are valid. The galley was never reduced to
impotence by a calm, and hence receives more respect in our day than
the sailing-ship; yet the latter displaced it and remained supreme
until the utilization of steam. The powers to injure an enemy from a
great distance, to manoeuvre for an unlimited length of time without
wearing out the men, to devote the greater part of the crew to the
offensive weapons instead of to the oar, are common to the sailing
vessel and the steamer, and are at least as important, tactically
considered, as the power of the galley to move in a calm or against
the wind.
In tracing resemblances there is a tendency not only to overlook
points of difference, but to exaggerate points of likeness,--to be
fanciful. It may be so considered to point out that as the
sailing-ship had guns of long range, with comparatively great
penetrative power, and carronades, which were of shorter range but
great smashing effect, so the modern steamer has its batteries of
long-range guns and of torpedoes, the latter being effective only
within a limited distance and then injuring by smashing, while the
gun, as of old, aims at penetration. Yet these are distinctly tactical
considerations, which must affect the plans of admirals and captains;
and the analogy is real, not forced. So also both the sailing-ship and
the steamer contemplate direct contact with an enemy's vessel,--the
former to carry her by boarding, the latter to sink her by ramming;
and to both this is the most difficult of their tasks, for to effect
it the ship must be carried to a single point of the field of action,
whereas projectile weapons may be used from many points of a wide
area.
The relative positions of two sailing-ships, or fleets, with reference
to the direction of the wind involved most important tactical
questions, and were perhaps the chief care of the seamen of that age.
To a superficial glance it may appear that since this has become a
matter of such indifference to the steamer, no analogies to it are to
be found in present conditions, and the lessons of history in this
respect are valueless. A more careful consideration of the
distinguishing characteristics of the lee and the weather "gage,"[3]
directed to their essential features and disregarding secondary
details, will show that this is a mistake. The distinguishing feature
of the weather-gage was that it conferred the power of giving or
refusing battle at will, which in turn carries the usual advantage of
an offensive attitude in the choice of the method of attack. This
advantage was accompanied by certain drawbacks, such as irregularity
introduced into the order, exposure to raking or enfilading cannonade,
and the sacrifice of part or all of the artillery-fire of the
assailant,--all which were incurred in approaching the enemy. The
ship, or fleet, with the lee-gage could not attack; if it did not wish
to retreat, its action was confined to the defensive, and to receiving
battle on the enemy's terms. This disadvantage was compensated by the
comparative ease of maintaining the order of battle undisturbed, and
by a sustained artillery-fire to which the enemy for a time was unable
to reply. Historically, these favorable and unfavorable
characteristics have their counterpart and analogy in the offensive
and defensive operations of all ages. The offence undertakes certain
risks and disadvantages in order to reach and destroy the enemy; the
defence, so long as it remains such, refuses the risks of advance,
holds on to a careful, well-ordered position, and avails itself of the
exposure to which the assailant submits himself. These radical
differences between the weather and the lee gage were so clearly
recognized, through the cloud of lesser details accompanying them,
that the former was ordinarily chosen by the English, because their
steady policy was to assail and destroy their enemy; whereas the
French sought the lee-gage, because by so doing they were usually able
to cripple the enemy as he approached, and thus evade decisive
encounters and preserve their ships. The French, with rare exceptions,
subordinated the action of the navy to other military considerations,
grudged the money spent upon it, and therefore sought to economize
their fleet by assuming a defensive position and limiting its efforts
to the repelling of assaults. For this course the lee-gage, skilfully
used, was admirably adapted so long as an enemy displayed more courage
than conduct; but when Rodney showed an intention to use the advantage
of the wind, not merely to attack, but to make a formidable
concentration on a part of the enemy's line, his wary opponent, De
Guichen, changed his tactics. In the first of their three actions the
Frenchman took the lee-gage; but after recognizing Rodney's purpose he
manoeuvred for the advantage of the wind, not to attack, but to refuse
action except on his own terms. The power to assume the offensive, or
to refuse battle, rests no longer with the wind, but with the party
which has the greater speed; which in a fleet will depend not only
upon the speed of the individual ships, but also upon their tactical
uniformity of action. Henceforth the ships which have the greatest
speed will have the weather-gage.
It is not therefore a vain expectation, as many think, to look for
useful lessons in the history of sailing-ships as well as in that of
galleys. Both have their points of resemblance to the modern ship;
both have also points of essential difference, which make it
impossible to cite their experiences or modes of action as tactical
_precedents_ to be followed. But a precedent is different from and
less valuable than a principle. The former may be originally faulty,
or may cease to apply through change of circumstances; the latter has
its root in the essential nature of things, and, however various its
application as conditions change, remains a standard to which action
must conform to attain success. War has such principles; their
existence is detected by the study of the past, which reveals them in
successes and in failures, the same from age to age. Conditions and
weapons change; but to cope with the one or successfully wield the
others, respect must be had to these constant teachings of history in
the tactics of the battlefield, or in those wider operations of war
which are comprised under the name of strategy.
It is however in these wider operations, which embrace a whole theatre
of war, and in a maritime contest may cover a large portion of the
globe, that the teachings of history have a more evident and permanent
value, because the conditions remain more permanent. The theatre of
war may be larger or smaller, its difficulties more or less
pronounced, the contending armies more or less great, the necessary
movements more or less easy, but these are simply differences of
scale, of degree, not of kind. As a wilderness gives place to
civilization, as means of communication multiply, as roads are opened,
rivers bridged, food-resources increased, the operations of war become
easier, more rapid, more extensive; but the principles to which they
must be conformed remain the same. When the march on foot was replaced
by carrying troops in coaches, when the latter in turn gave place to
railroads, the scale of distances was increased, or, if you will, the
scale of time diminished; but the principles which dictated the point
at which the army should be concentrated, the direction in which it
should move, the part of the enemy's position which it should assail,
the protection of communications, were not altered. So, on the sea,
the advance from the galley timidly creeping from port to port to the
sailing-ship launching out boldly to the ends of the earth, and from
the latter to the steamship of our own time, has increased the scope
and the rapidity of naval operations without necessarily changing the
principles which should direct them; and the speech of Hermocrates
twenty-three hundred years ago, before quoted, contained a correct
strategic plan, which is as applicable in its principles now as it was
then. Before hostile armies or fleets are brought into con_tact_ (a
word which perhaps better than any other indicates the dividing line
between tactics and strategy), there are a number of questions to be
decided, covering the whole plan of operations throughout the theatre
of war. Among these are the proper function of the navy in the war;
its true objective; the point or points upon which it should be
concentrated; the establishment of depots of coal and supplies; the
maintenance of communications between these depots and the home base;
the military value of commerce-destroying as a decisive or a secondary
operation of war; the system upon which commerce-destroying can be
most efficiently conducted, whether by scattered cruisers or by
holding in force some vital centre through which commercial shipping
must pass. All these are strategic questions, and upon all these
history has a great deal to say. There has been of late a valuable
discussion in English naval circles as to the comparative merits of
the policies of two great English admirals, Lord Howe and Lord St.
Vincent, in the disposition of the English navy when at war with
France. The question is purely strategic, and is not of mere
historical interest; it is of vital importance now, and the principles
upon which its decision rests are the same now as then. St. Vincent's
policy saved England from invasion, and in the hands of Nelson and his
brother admirals led straight up to Trafalgar.
It is then particularly in the field of naval strategy that the
teachings of the past have a value which is in no degree lessened.
They are there useful not only as illustrative of principles, but also
as precedents, owing to the comparative permanence of the conditions.
This is less obviously true as to tactics, when the fleets come into
collision at the point to which strategic considerations have brought
them. The unresting progress of mankind causes continual change in the
weapons; and with that must come a continual change in the manner of
fighting,--in the handling and disposition of troops or ships on the
battlefield. Hence arises a tendency on the part of many connected
with maritime matters to think that no advantage is to be gained from
the study of former experiences; that time so used is wasted. This
view, though natural, not only leaves wholly out of sight those broad
strategic considerations which lead nations to put fleets afloat,
which direct the sphere of their action, and so have modified and will
continue to modify the history of the world, but is one-sided and
narrow even as to tactics. The battles of the past succeeded or failed
according as they were fought in conformity with the principles of
war; and the seaman who carefully studies the causes of success or
failure will not only detect and gradually assimilate these
principles, but will also acquire increased aptitude in applying them
to the tactical use of the ships and weapons of his own day. He will
observe also that changes of tactics have not only taken place _after_
changes in weapons, which necessarily is the case, but that the
interval between such changes has been unduly long. This doubtless
arises from the fact that an improvement of weapons is due to the
energy of one or two men, while changes in tactics have to overcome
the inertia of a conservative class; but it is a great evil. It can be
remedied only by a candid recognition of each change, by careful study
of the powers and limitations of the new ship or weapon, and by a
consequent adaptation of the method of using it to the qualities it
possesses, which will constitute its tactics. History shows that it is
vain to hope that military men generally will be at the pains to do
this, but that the one who does will go into battle with a great
advantage,--a lesson in itself of no mean value.
We may therefore accept now the words of a French tactician, Morogues,
who wrote a century and a quarter ago: "Naval tactics are based upon
conditions the chief causes of which, namely the arms, may change;
which in turn causes necessarily a change in the construction of
ships, in the manner of handling them, and so finally in the
disposition and handling of fleets." His further statement, that "it
is not a science founded upon principles absolutely invariable," is
more open to criticism. It would be more correct to say that the
application of its principles varies as the weapons change. The
application of the principles doubtless varies also in strategy from
time to time, but the variation is far less; and hence the recognition
of the underlying principle is easier. This statement is of sufficient
importance to our subject to receive some illustrations from
historical events.
The battle of the Nile, in 1798, was not only an overwhelming victory
for the English over the French fleet, but had also the decisive
effect of destroying the communications between France and Napoleon's
army in Egypt. In the battle itself the English admiral, Nelson, gave
a most brilliant example of grand tactics, if that be, as has been
defined, "the art of making good combinations preliminary to battles
as well as during their progress." The particular tactical combination
depended upon a condition now passed away, which was the inability of
the lee ships of a fleet at anchor to come to the help of the weather
ones before the latter were destroyed; but the principles which
underlay the combination, namely, to choose that part of the enemy's
order which can least easily be helped, and to attack it with superior
forces, has not passed away. The action of Admiral Jervis at Cape St.
Vincent, when with fifteen ships he won a victory over twenty-seven,
was dictated by the same principle, though in this case the enemy was
not at anchor, but under way. Yet men's minds are so constituted that
they seem more impressed by the transiency of the conditions than by
the undying principle which coped with them. In the strategic effect
of Nelson's victory upon the course of the war, on the contrary, the
principle involved is not only more easily recognized, but it is at
once seen to be applicable to our own day. The issue of the enterprise
in Egypt depended upon keeping open the communications with France.
The victory of the Nile destroyed the naval force, by which alone the
communications could be assured, and determined the final failure; and
it is at once seen, not only that the blow was struck in accordance
with the principle of striking at the enemy's line of communication,
but also that the same principle is valid now, and would be equally so
in the days of the galley as of the sailing-ship or steamer.
Nevertheless, a vague feeling of contempt for the past, supposed to be
obsolete, combines with natural indolence to blind men even to those
permanent strategic lessons which lie close to the surface of naval
history. For instance, how many look upon the battle of Trafalgar, the
crown of Nelson's glory and the seal of his genius, as other than an
isolated event of exceptional grandeur? How many ask themselves the
strategic question, "How did the ships come to be just there?" How
many realize it to be the final act in a great strategic drama,
extending over a year or more, in which two of the greatest leaders
that ever lived, Napoleon and Nelson, were pitted against each other?
At Trafalgar it was not Villeneuve that failed, but Napoleon that was
vanquished; not Nelson that won, but England that was saved; and why?
Because Napoleon's combinations failed, and Nelson's intuitions and
activity kept the English fleet ever on the track of the enemy, and
brought it up in time at the decisive moment.[4] The tactics at
Trafalgar, while open to criticism in detail, were in their main
features conformable to the principles of war, and their audacity was
justified as well by the urgency of the case as by the results; but
the great lessons of efficiency in preparation, of activity and energy
in execution, and of thought and insight on the part of the English
leader during the previous months, are strategic lessons, and as such
they still remain good.
In these two cases events were worked out to their natural and
decisive end. A third may be cited, in which, as no such definite end
was reached, an opinion as to what should have been done may be open
to dispute. In the war of the American Revolution, France and Spain
became allies against England in 1779. The united fleets thrice
appeared in the English Channel, once to the number of sixty-six sail
of the line, driving the English fleet to seek refuge in its ports
because far inferior in numbers. Now, the great aim of Spain was to
recover Gibraltar and Jamaica; and to the former end immense efforts
both by land and sea were put forth by the allies against that nearly
impregnable fortress. They were fruitless. The question suggested--and
it is purely one of naval strategy--is this: Would not Gibraltar have
been more surely recovered by controlling the English Channel,
attacking the British fleet even in its harbors, and threatening
England with annihilation of commerce and invasion at home, than by
far greater efforts directed against a distant and very strong outpost
of her empire? The English people, from long immunity, were
particularly sensitive to fears of invasion, and their great
confidence in their fleets, if rudely shaken, would have left them
proportionately disheartened. However decided, the question as a point
of strategy is fair; and it is proposed in another form by a French
officer of the period, who favored directing the great effort on a
West India island which might be exchanged against Gibraltar. It is
not, however, likely that England would have given up the key of the
Mediterranean for any other foreign possession, though she might have
yielded it to save her firesides and her capital. Napoleon once said
that he would reconquer Pondicherry on the banks of the Vistula. Could
he have controlled the English Channel, as the allied fleet did for a
moment in 1779, can it be doubted that he would have conquered
Gibraltar on the shores of England?
To impress more strongly the truth that history both suggests
strategic study and illustrates the principles of war by the facts
which it transmits, two more instances will be taken, which are more
remote in time than the period specially considered in this work. How
did it happen that, in two great contests between the powers of the
East and of the West in the Mediterranean, in one of which the empire
of the known world was at stake, the opposing fleets met on spots so
near each other as Actium and Lepanto? Was this a mere coincidence, or
was it due to conditions that recurred, and may recur again?[5] If the
latter, it is worth while to study out the reason; for if there should
again arise a great eastern power of the sea like that of Antony or of
Turkey, the strategic questions would be similar. At present, indeed,
it seems that the centre of sea power, resting mainly with England and
France, is overwhelmingly in the West; but should any chance add to
the control of the Black Sea basin, which Russia now has, the
possession of the entrance to the Mediterranean, the existing
strategic conditions affecting sea power would all be modified. Now,
were the West arrayed against the East, England and France would go at
once unopposed to the Levant, as they did in 1854, and as England
alone went in 1878; in case of the change suggested, the East, as
twice before, would meet the West half-way.
At a very conspicuous and momentous period of the world's history, Sea
Power had a strategic bearing and weight which has received scant
recognition. There cannot now be had the full knowledge necessary for
tracing in detail its influence upon the issue of the second Punic
War; but the indications which remain are sufficient to warrant the
assertion that it was a determining factor. An accurate judgment upon
this point cannot be formed by mastering only such facts of the
particular contest as have been clearly transmitted, for as usual the
naval transactions have been slightingly passed over; there is needed
also familiarity with the details of general naval history in order to
draw, from slight indications, correct inferences based upon a
knowledge of what has been possible at periods whose history is well
known. The control of the sea, however real, does not imply that an
enemy's single ships or small squadrons cannot steal out of port,
cannot cross more or less frequented tracts of ocean, make harassing
descents upon unprotected points of a long coast-line, enter blockaded
harbors. On the contrary, history has shown that such evasions are
always possible, to some extent, to the weaker party, however great
the inequality of naval strength. It is not therefore inconsistent
with the general control of the sea, or of a decisive part of it, by
the Roman fleets, that the Carthaginian admiral Bomilcar in the fourth
year of the war, after the stunning defeat of Cannæ, landed four
thousand men and a body of elephants in south Italy; nor that in the
seventh year, flying from the Roman fleet off Syracuse, he again
appeared at Tarentum, then in Hannibal's hands; nor that Hannibal sent
despatch vessels to Carthage; nor even that, at last, he withdrew in
safety to Africa with his wasted army. None of these things prove that
the government in Carthage could, if it wished, have sent Hannibal the
constant support which, as a matter of fact, he did not receive; but
they do tend to create a natural impression that such help could have
been given. Therefore the statement, that the Roman preponderance at
sea had a decisive effect upon the course of the war, needs to be made
good by an examination of ascertained facts. Thus the kind and degree
of its influence may be fairly estimated.
[Illustration: MEDITERRANEAN SEA]
At the beginning of the war, Mommsen says, Rome controlled the seas.
To whatever cause, or combination of causes, it be attributed, this
essentially non-maritime state had in the first Punic War established
over its sea-faring rival a naval supremacy, which still lasted. In
the second war there was no naval battle of importance,--a
circumstance which in itself, and still more in connection with other
well-ascertained facts, indicates a superiority analogous to that
which at other epochs has been marked by the same feature.
As Hannibal left no memoirs, the motives are unknown which determined
him to the perilous and almost ruinous march through Gaul and across
the Alps. It is certain, however, that his fleet on the coast of Spain
was not strong enough to contend with that of Rome. Had it been, he
might still have followed the road he actually did, for reasons that
weighed with him; but had he gone by the sea, he would not have lost
thirty-three thousand out of the sixty thousand veteran soldiers with
whom he started.
While Hannibal was making this dangerous march, the Romans were
sending to Spain, under the two elder Scipios, one part of their
fleet, carrying a consular army. This made the voyage without serious
loss, and the army established itself successfully north of the Ebro,
on Hannibal's line of communications. At the same time another
squadron, with an army commanded by the other consul, was sent to
Sicily. The two together numbered two hundred and twenty ships. On its
station each met and defeated a Carthaginian squadron with an ease
which may be inferred from the slight mention made of the actions, and
which indicates the actual superiority of the Roman fleet.
After the second year the war assumed the following shape: Hannibal,
having entered Italy by the north, after a series of successes had
passed southward around Rome and fixed himself in southern Italy,
living off the country,--a condition which tended to alienate the
people, and was especially precarious when in contact with the mighty
political and military system of control which Rome had there
established. It was therefore from the first urgently necessary that
he should establish, between himself and some reliable base, that
stream of supplies and reinforcements which in terms of modern war is
called "communications." There were three friendly regions which
might, each or all, serve as such a base,--Carthage itself, Macedonia,
and Spain. With the first two, communication could be had only by sea.
From Spain, where his firmest support was found, he could be reached
by both land and sea, unless an enemy barred the passage; but the sea
route was the shorter and easier.
In the first years of the war, Rome, by her sea power, controlled
absolutely the basin between Italy, Sicily, and Spain, known as the
Tyrrhenian and Sardinian Seas. The sea-coast from the Ebro to the
Tiber was mostly friendly to her. In the fourth year, after the battle
of Cannæ, Syracuse forsook the Roman alliance, the revolt spread
through Sicily, and Macedonia also entered into an offensive league
with Hannibal. These changes extended the necessary operations of the
Roman fleet, and taxed its strength. What disposition was made of it,
and how did it thereafter influence the struggle?
The indications are clear that Rome at no time ceased to control the
Tyrrhenian Sea, for her squadrons passed unmolested from Italy to
Spain. On the Spanish coast also she had full sway till the younger
Scipio saw fit to lay up the fleet. In the Adriatic, a squadron and
naval station were established at Brindisi to check Macedonia, which
performed their task so well that not a soldier of the phalanxes ever
set foot in Italy. "The want of a war fleet," says Mommsen, "paralyzed
Philip in all his movements." Here the effect of Sea Power is not even
a matter of inference.
In Sicily, the struggle centred about Syracuse. The fleets of Carthage
and Rome met there, but the superiority evidently lay with the latter;
for though the Carthaginians at times succeeded in throwing supplies
into the city, they avoided meeting the Roman fleet in battle. With
Lilybæum, Palermo, and Messina in its hands, the latter was well based
in the north coast of the island. Access by the south was left open
to the Carthaginians, and they were thus able to maintain the
insurrection.
Putting these facts together, it is a reasonable inference, and
supported by the whole tenor of the history, that the Roman sea power
controlled the sea north of a line drawn from Tarragona in Spain to
Lilybæum (the modern Marsala), at the west end of Sicily, thence round
by the north side of the island through the straits of Messina down to
Syracuse, and from there to Brindisi in the Adriatic. This control
lasted, unshaken, throughout the war. It did not exclude maritime
raids, large or small, such as have been spoken of; but it did forbid
the sustained and secure communications of which Hannibal was in
deadly need.
On the other hand, it seems equally plain that for the first ten years
of the war the Roman fleet was not strong enough for sustained
operations in the sea between Sicily and Carthage, nor indeed much to
the south of the line indicated. When Hannibal started, he assigned
such ships as he had to maintaining the communications between Spain
and Africa, which the Romans did not then attempt to disturb.
The Roman sea power, therefore, threw Macedonia wholly out of the war.
It did not keep Carthage from maintaining a useful and most harassing
diversion in Sicily; but it did prevent her sending troops, when they
would have been most useful, to her great general in Italy. How was it
as to Spain?
Spain was the region upon which the father of Hannibal and Hannibal
himself had based their intended invasion of Italy. For eighteen years
before this began they had occupied the country, extending and
consolidating their power, both political and military, with rare
sagacity. They had raised, and trained in local wars, a large and now
veteran army. Upon his own departure, Hannibal intrusted the
government to his younger brother, Hasdrubal, who preserved toward him
to the end a loyalty and devotion which he had no reason to hope from
the faction-cursed mother-city in Africa.
At the time of his starting, the Carthaginian power in Spain was
secured from Cadiz to the river Ebro. The region between this river
and the Pyrenees was inhabited by tribes friendly to the Romans, but
unable, in the absence of the latter, to oppose a successful
resistance to Hannibal. He put them down, leaving eleven thousand
soldiers under Hanno to keep military possession of the country, lest
the Romans should establish themselves there, and thus disturb his
communications with his base.
Cnæus Scipio, however, arrived on the spot by sea the same year with
twenty thousand men, defeated Hanno, and occupied both the coast and
interior north of the Ebro. The Romans thus held ground by which they
entirely closed the road between Hannibal and reinforcements from
Hasdrubal, and whence they could attack the Carthaginian power in
Spain; while their own communications with Italy, being by water, were
secured by their naval supremacy. They made a naval base at Tarragona,
confronting that of Hasdrubal at Cartagena, and then invaded the
Carthaginian dominions. The war in Spain went on under the elder
Scipios, seemingly a side issue, with varying fortune for seven years;
at the end of which time Hasdrubal inflicted upon them a crushing
defeat, the two brothers were killed, and the Carthaginians nearly
succeeded in breaking through to the Pyrenees with reinforcements for
Hannibal. The attempt, however, was checked for the moment; and before
it could be renewed, the fall of Capua released twelve thousand
veteran Romans, who were sent to Spain under Claudius Nero, a man of
exceptional ability, to whom was due later the most decisive military
movement made by any Roman general during the Second Punic War. This
seasonable reinforcement, which again assured the shaken grip on
Hasdrubal's line of march, came by sea,--a way which, though most
rapid and easy, was closed to the Carthaginians by the Roman navy.
Two years later the younger Publius Scipio, celebrated afterward as
Africanus, received the command in Spain, and captured Cartagena by a
combined military and naval attack; after which he took the most
extraordinary step of breaking up his fleet and transferring the
seamen to the army. Not contented to act merely as the "containing"[6]
force against Hasdrubal by closing the passes of the Pyrenees, Scipio
pushed forward into southern Spain, and fought a severe but indecisive
battle on the Guadalquivir; after which Hasdrubal slipped away from
him, hurried north, crossed the Pyrenees at their extreme west, and
pressed on to Italy, where Hannibal's position was daily growing
weaker, the natural waste of his army not being replaced.
The war had lasted ten years, when Hasdrubal, having met little loss
on the way, entered Italy at the north. The troops he brought, could
they be safely united with those under the command of the unrivalled
Hannibal, might give a decisive turn to the war, for Rome herself was
nearly exhausted; the iron links which bound her own colonies and the
allied States to her were strained to the utmost, and some had already
snapped. But the military position of the two brothers was also
perilous in the extreme. One being at the river Metaurus, the other in
Apulia, two hundred miles apart, each was confronted by a superior
enemy, and both these Roman armies were between their separated
opponents. This false situation, as well as the long delay of
Hasdrubal's coming, was due to the Roman control of the sea, which
throughout the war limited the mutual support of the Carthaginian
brothers to the route through Gaul. At the very time that Hasdrubal
was making his long and dangerous circuit by land, Scipio had sent
eleven thousand men from Spain by sea to reinforce the army opposed to
him. The upshot was that messengers from Hasdrubal to Hannibal, having
to pass over so wide a belt of hostile country, fell into the hands of
Claudius Nero, commanding the southern Roman army, who thus learned
the route which Hasdrubal intended to take. Nero correctly appreciated
the situation, and, escaping the vigilance of Hannibal, made a rapid
march with eight thousand of his best troops to join the forces in the
north. The junction being effected, the two consuls fell upon
Hasdrubal in overwhelming numbers and destroyed his army; the
Carthaginian leader himself falling in the battle. Hannibal's first
news of the disaster was by the head of his brother being thrown into
his camp. He is said to have exclaimed that Rome would now be mistress
of the world; and the battle of Metaurus is generally accepted as
decisive of the struggle between the two States.
The military situation which finally resulted in the battle of the
Metaurus and the triumph of Rome may be summed up as follows: To
overthrow Rome it was necessary to attack her in Italy at the heart of
her power, and shatter the strongly linked confederacy of which she
was the head. This was the objective. To reach it, the Carthaginians
needed a solid base of operations and a secure line of communications.
The former was established in Spain by the genius of the great Barca
family; the latter was never achieved. There were two lines
possible,--the one direct by sea, the other circuitous through Gaul.
The first was blocked by the Roman sea power, the second imperilled
and finally intercepted through the occupation of northern Spain by
the Roman army. This occupation was made possible through the control
of the sea, which the Carthaginians never endangered. With respect to
Hannibal and his base, therefore, Rome occupied two central positions,
Rome itself and northern Spain, joined by an easy interior line of
communications, the sea; by which mutual support was continually
given.
Had the Mediterranean been a level desert of land, in which the Romans
held strong mountain ranges in Corsica and Sardinia, fortified posts
at Tarragona, Lilybæum, and Messina, the Italian coast-line nearly to
Genoa, and allied fortresses in Marseilles and other points; had they
also possessed an armed force capable by its character of traversing
that desert at will, but in which their opponents were very inferior
and therefore compelled to a great circuit in order to concentrate
their troops, the military situation would have been at once
recognized, and no words would have been too strong to express the
value and effect of that peculiar force. It would have been perceived,
also, that the enemy's force of the same kind might, however inferior
in strength, make an inroad, or raid, upon the territory thus held,
might burn a village or waste a few miles of borderland, might even
cut off a convoy at times, without, in a military sense, endangering
the communications. Such predatory operations have been carried on in
all ages by the weaker maritime belligerent, but they by no means
warrant the inference, irreconcilable with the known facts, "that
neither Rome nor Carthage could be said to have undisputed mastery of
the sea," because "Roman fleets sometimes visited the coasts of
Africa, and Carthaginian fleets in the same way appeared off the coast
of Italy." In the case under consideration, the navy played the part
of such a force upon the supposed desert; but as it acts on an element
strange to most writers, as its members have been from time immemorial
a strange race apart, without prophets of their own, neither
themselves nor their calling understood, its immense determining
influence upon the history of that era, and consequently upon the
history of the world, has been overlooked. If the preceding argument
is sound, it is as defective to omit sea power from the list of
principal factors in the result, as it would be absurd to claim for it
an exclusive influence.
Instances such as have been cited, drawn from widely separated periods
of time, both before and after that specially treated in this work,
serve to illustrate the intrinsic interest of the subject, and the
character of the lessons which history has to teach. As before
observed, these come more often under the head of strategy than of
tactics; they bear rather upon the conduct of campaigns than of
battles, and hence are fraught with more lasting value. To quote a
great authority in this connection, Jomini says: "Happening to be in
Paris near the end of 1851, a distinguished person did me the honor to
ask my opinion as to whether recent improvements in firearms would
cause any great modifications in the way of making war. I replied that
they would probably have an influence upon the details of tactics, but
that in great strategic operations and the grand combinations of
battles, victory would, now as ever, result from the application of
the principles which had led to the success of great generals in all
ages; of Alexander and Cæsar, as well as of Frederick and Napoleon."
This study has become more than ever important now to navies, because
of the great and steady power of movement possessed by the modern
steamer. The best-planned schemes might fail through stress of weather
in the days of the galley and the sailing-ship; but this difficulty
has almost disappeared. The principles which should direct great naval
combinations have been applicable to all ages, and are deducible from
history; but the power to carry them out with little regard to the
weather is a recent gain.
The definitions usually given of the word "strategy" confine it to
military combinations embracing one or more fields of operations,
either wholly distinct or mutually dependent, but always regarded as
actual or immediate scenes of war. However this may be on shore, a
recent French author is quite right in pointing out that such a
definition is too narrow for naval strategy. "This," he says, "differs
from military strategy in that it is as necessary in peace as in war.
Indeed, in peace it may gain its most decisive victories by occupying
in a country, either by purchase or treaty, excellent positions which
would perhaps hardly be got by war. It learns to profit by all
opportunities of settling on some chosen point of a coast, and to
render definitive an occupation which at first was only transient." A
generation that has seen England within ten years occupy successively
Cyprus and Egypt, under terms and conditions on their face transient,
but which have not yet led to the abandonment of the positions taken,
can readily agree with this remark; which indeed receives constant
illustration from the quiet persistency with which all the great sea
powers are seeking position after position, less noted and less
noteworthy than Cyprus and Egypt, in the different seas to which their
people and their ships penetrate. "Naval strategy has indeed for its
end to found, support, and increase, as well in peace as in war, the
sea power of a country;" and therefore its study has an interest and
value for all citizens of a free country, but especially for those who
are charged with its foreign and military relations.
The general conditions that either are essential to or powerfully
affect the greatness of a nation upon the sea will now be examined;
after which a more particular consideration of the various maritime
nations of Europe at the middle of the seventeenth century, where the
historical survey begins, will serve at once to illustrate and give
precision to the conclusions upon the general subject.
* * * * *
NOTE.--The brilliancy of Nelson's fame, dimming as it does that
of all his contemporaries, and the implicit trust felt by
England in him as the one man able to save her from the schemes
of Napoleon, should not of course obscure the fact that only one
portion of the field was, or could be, occupied by him.
Napoleon's aim, in the campaign which ended at Trafalgar, was to
unite in the West Indies the French fleets of Brest, Toulon, and
Rochefort, together with a strong body of Spanish ships, thus
forming an overwhelming force which he intended should return
together to the English Channel and cover the crossing of the
French army. He naturally expected that, with England's
interests scattered all over the world, confusion and
distraction would arise from ignorance of the destination of the
French squadrons, and the English navy be drawn away from his
objective point. The portion of the field committed to Nelson
was the Mediterranean, where he watched the great arsenal of
Toulon and the highways alike to the East and to the Atlantic.
This was inferior in consequence to no other, and assumed
additional importance in the eyes of Nelson from his conviction
that the former attempts on Egypt would be renewed. Owing to
this persuasion he took at first a false step, which delayed his
pursuit of the Toulon fleet when it sailed under the command of
Villeneuve; and the latter was further favored by a long
continuance of fair winds, while the English had head winds. But
while all this is true, while the failure of Napoleon's
combinations must be attributed to the tenacious grip of the
English blockade off Brest, _as well as_ to Nelson's energetic
pursuit of the Toulon fleet when it escaped to the West Indies
and again on its hasty return to Europe, the latter is fairly
entitled to the eminent distinction which history has accorded
it, and which is asserted in the text. Nelson did not, indeed,
fathom the intentions of Napoleon. This may have been owing, as
some have said, to lack of insight; but it may be more simply
laid to the usual disadvantage under which the defence lies
before the blow has fallen, of ignorance as to the point
threatened by the offence. It is insight enough to fasten on the
key of a situation; and this Nelson rightly saw was the fleet,
not the station. Consequently, his action has afforded a
striking instance of how tenacity of purpose and untiring energy
in execution can repair a first mistake and baffle deeply laid
plans. His Mediterranean command embraced many duties and cares;
but amid and dominating them all, he saw clearly the Toulon
fleet as the controlling factor there, and an important factor
in any naval combination of the Emperor. Hence his attention was
unwaveringly fixed upon it; so much so that he called it "his
fleet," a phrase which has somewhat vexed the sensibilities of
French critics. This simple and accurate view of the military
situation strengthened him in taking the fearless resolution and
bearing the immense responsibility of abandoning his station in
order to follow "his fleet." Determined thus on a pursuit the
undeniable wisdom of which should not obscure the greatness of
mind that undertook it, he followed so vigorously as to reach
Cadiz on his return a week before Villeneuve entered Ferrol,
despite unavoidable delays arising from false information and
uncertainty as to the enemy's movements. The same untiring ardor
enabled him to bring up his own ships from Cadiz to Brest in
time to make the fleet there superior to Villeneuve's, had the
latter persisted in his attempt to reach the neighborhood. The
English, very inferior in aggregate number of vessels to the
allied fleets, were by this seasonable reinforcement of eight
veteran ships put into the best possible position strategically,
as will be pointed out in dealing with similar conditions in the
war of the American Revolution. Their forces were united in one
great fleet in the Bay of Biscay, interposed between the two
divisions of the enemy in Brest and Ferrol, superior in number
to either singly, and with a strong probability of being able to
deal with one before the other could come up. This was due to
able action all round on the part of the English authorities;
but above all other factors in the result stands Nelson's
single-minded pursuit of "his fleet."
This interesting series of strategic movements ended on the 14th
of August, when Villeneuve, in despair of reaching Brest, headed
for Cadiz, where he anchored on the 20th. As soon as Napoleon
heard of this, after an outburst of rage against the admiral, he
at once dictated the series of movements which resulted in Ulm
and Austerlitz, abandoning his purposes against England. The
battle of Trafalgar, fought October 21, was therefore separated
by a space of two months from the extensive movements of which
it was nevertheless the outcome. Isolated from them in point of
time, it was none the less the seal of Nelson's genius, affixed
later to the record he had made in the near past. With equal
truth it is said that England was saved at Trafalgar, though the
Emperor had then given up his intended invasion; the destruction
there emphasized and sealed the strategic triumph which had
noiselessly foiled Napoleon's plans.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Thus Hermocrates of Syracuse, advocating the policy of thwarting
the Athenian expedition against his city (B.C. 413) by going boldly to
meet it, and keeping on the flank of its line of advance, said: "As
their advance must be slow, we shall have a thousand opportunities to
attack them; but if they clear their ships for action and in a body
bear down expeditiously upon us, they must ply hard at their oars, and
_when spent with toil_ we can fall upon them."
[2] The writer must guard himself from appearing to advocate elaborate
tactical movements issuing in barren demonstrations. He believes that
a fleet seeking a decisive result must close with its enemy, but not
until some advantage has been obtained for the collision, which will
usually be gained by manoeuvring, and will fall to the best drilled
and managed fleet. In truth, barren results have as often followed
upon headlong, close encounters as upon the most timid tactical
trifling.
[3] A ship was said to have the weather-gage, or "the advantage of the
wind," or "to be to windward," when the wind allowed her to steer for
her opponent, and did not let the latter head straight for her. The
extreme case was when the wind blew direct from one to the other; but
there was a large space on either side of this line to which the term
"weather-gage" applied. If the lee ship be taken as the centre of a
circle, there were nearly three eighths of its area in which the other
might be and still keep the advantage of the wind to a greater or less
degree. Lee is the opposite of weather.
[4] See note at end of Introductory Chapter, page 23.
[5] The battle of Navarino (1827) between Turkey and the Western
Powers was fought in this neighborhood.
[6] A "containing" force is one to which, in a military combination,
is assigned the duty of stopping, or delaying the advance of a portion
of the enemy, while the main effort of the army or armies is being
exerted in a different quarter.
CHAPTER I.
DISCUSSION OF THE ELEMENTS OF SEA POWER.
The first and most obvious light in which the sea presents itself from
the political and social point of view is that of a great highway; or
better, perhaps, of a wide common, over which men may pass in all
directions, but on which some well-worn paths show that controlling
reasons have led them to choose certain lines of travel rather than
others. These lines of travel are called trade routes; and the reasons
which have determined them are to be sought in the history of the
world.
Notwithstanding all the familiar and unfamiliar dangers of the sea,
both travel and traffic by water have always been easier and cheaper
than by land. The commercial greatness of Holland was due not only to
her shipping at sea, but also to the numerous tranquil water-ways
which gave such cheap and easy access to her own interior and to that
of Germany. This advantage of carriage by water over that by land was
yet more marked in a period when roads were few and very bad, wars
frequent and society unsettled, as was the case two hundred years ago.
Sea traffic then went in peril of robbers, but was nevertheless safer
and quicker than that by land. A Dutch writer of that time, estimating
the chances of his country in a war with England, notices among other
things that the water-ways of England failed to penetrate the country
sufficiently; therefore, the roads being bad, goods from one part of
the kingdom to the other must go by sea, and be exposed to capture by
the way. As regards purely internal trade, this danger has generally
disappeared at the present day. In most civilized countries, now, the
destruction or disappearance of the coasting trade would only be an
inconvenience, although water transit is still the cheaper.
Nevertheless, as late as the wars of the French Republic and the First
Empire, those who are familiar with the history of the period, and the
light naval literature that has grown up around it, know how constant
is the mention of convoys stealing from point to point along the
French coast, although the sea swarmed with English cruisers and there
were good inland roads.
Under modern conditions, however, home trade is but a part of the
business of a country bordering on the sea. Foreign necessaries or
luxuries must be brought to its ports, either in its own or in foreign
ships, which will return, bearing in exchange the products of the
country, whether they be the fruits of the earth or the works of men's
hands; and it is the wish of every nation that this shipping business
should be done by its own vessels. The ships that thus sail to and fro
must have secure ports to which to return, and must, as far as
possible, be followed by the protection of their country throughout
the voyage.
This protection in time of war must be extended by armed shipping. The
necessity of a navy, in the restricted sense of the word, springs,
therefore, from the existence of a peaceful shipping, and disappears
with it, except in the case of a nation which has aggressive
tendencies, and keeps up a navy merely as a branch of the military
establishment. As the United States has at present no aggressive
purposes, and as its merchant service has disappeared, the dwindling
of the armed fleet and general lack of interest in it are strictly
logical consequences. When for any reason sea trade is again found to
pay, a large enough shipping interest will reappear to compel the
revival of the war fleet. It is possible that when a canal route
through the Central-American Isthmus is seen to be a near certainty,
the aggressive impulse may be strong enough to lead to the same
result. This is doubtful, however, because a peaceful, gain-loving
nation is not far-sighted, and far-sightedness is needed for adequate
military preparation, especially in these days.
As a nation, with its unarmed and armed shipping, launches forth from
its own shores, the need is soon felt of points upon which the ships
can rely for peaceful trading, for refuge and supplies. In the present
day friendly, though foreign, ports are to be found all over the
world; and their shelter is enough while peace prevails. It was not
always so, nor does peace always endure, though the United States have
been favored by so long a continuance of it. In earlier times the
merchant seaman, seeking for trade in new and unexplored regions, made
his gains at risk of life and liberty from suspicious or hostile
nations, and was under great delays in collecting a full and
profitable freight. He therefore intuitively sought at the far end of
his trade route one or more stations, to be given to him by force or
favor, where he could fix himself or his agents in reasonable
security, where his ships could lie in safety, and where the
merchantable products of the land could be continually collecting,
awaiting the arrival of the home fleet, which should carry them to the
mother-country. As there was immense gain, as well as much risk, in
these early voyages, such establishments naturally multiplied and grew
until they became colonies; whose ultimate development and success
depended upon the genius and policy of the nation from which they
sprang, and form a very great part of the history, and particularly of
the sea history, of the world. All colonies had not the simple and
natural birth and growth above described. Many were more formal, and
purely political, in their conception and founding, the act of the
rulers of the people rather than of private individuals; but the
trading-station with its after expansion, the work simply of the
adventurer seeking gain, was in its reasons and essence the same as
the elaborately organized and chartered colony. In both cases the
mother-country had won a foothold in a foreign land, seeking a new
outlet for what it had to sell, a new sphere for its shipping, more
employment for its people, more comfort and wealth for itself.
The needs of commerce, however, were not all provided for when safety
had been secured at the far end of the road. The voyages were long
and dangerous, the seas often beset with enemies. In the most active
days of colonizing there prevailed on the sea a lawlessness the very
memory of which is now almost lost, and the days of settled peace
between maritime nations were few and far between. Thus arose the
demand for stations along the road, like the Cape of Good Hope, St.
Helena, and Mauritius, not primarily for trade, but for defence and
war; the demand for the possession of posts like Gibraltar, Malta,
Louisburg, at the entrance of the Gulf of St. Lawrence,--posts whose
value was chiefly strategic, though not necessarily wholly so.
Colonies and colonial posts were sometimes commercial, sometimes
military in their character; and it was exceptional that the same
position was equally important in both points of view, as New York
was.
In these three things--production, with the necessity of exchanging
products, shipping, whereby the exchange is carried on, and colonies,
which facilitate and enlarge the operations of shipping and tend to
protect it by multiplying points of safety--is to be found the key to
much of the history, as well as of the policy, of nations bordering
upon the sea. The policy has varied both with the spirit of the age
and with the character and clear-sightedness of the rulers; but the
history of the seaboard nations has been less determined by the
shrewdness and foresight of governments than by conditions of
position, extent, configuration, number and character of their
people,--by what are called, in a word, natural conditions. It must
however be admitted, and will be seen, that the wise or unwise action
of individual men has at certain periods had a great modifying
influence upon the growth of sea power in the broad sense, which
includes not only the military strength afloat, that rules the sea or
any part of it by force of arms, but also the peaceful commerce and
shipping from which alone a military fleet naturally and healthfully
springs, and on which it securely rests.
The principal conditions affecting the sea power of nations may be
enumerated as follows: I. Geographical Position. II. Physical
Conformation, including, as connected therewith, natural productions
and climate. III. Extent of Territory. IV. Number of Population. V.
Character of the People. VI. Character of the Government, including
therein the national institutions.
I. _Geographical Position._--It may be pointed out, in the first
place, that if a nation be so situated that it is neither forced to
defend itself by land nor induced to seek extension of its territory
by way of the land, it has, by the very unity of its aim directed upon
the sea, an advantage as compared with a people one of whose
boundaries is continental. This has been a great advantage to England
over both France and Holland as a sea power. The strength of the
latter was early exhausted by the necessity of keeping up a large army
and carrying on expensive wars to preserve her independence; while the
policy of France was constantly diverted, sometimes wisely and
sometimes most foolishly, from the sea to projects of continental
extension. These military efforts expended wealth; whereas a wiser and
consistent use of her geographical position would have added to it.
The geographical position may be such as of itself to promote a
concentration, or to necessitate a dispersion, of the naval forces.
Here again the British Islands have an advantage over France. The
position of the latter, touching the Mediterranean as well as the
ocean, while it has its advantages, is on the whole a source of
military weakness at sea. The eastern and western French fleets have
only been able to unite after passing through the Straits of
Gibraltar, in attempting which they have often risked and sometimes
suffered loss. The position of the United States upon the two oceans
would be either a source of great weakness or a cause of enormous
expense, had it a large sea commerce on both coasts.
England, by her immense colonial empire, has sacrificed much of this
advantage of concentration of force around her own shores; but the
sacrifice was wisely made, for the gain was greater than the loss, as
the event proved. With the growth of her colonial system her war
fleets also grew, but her merchant shipping and wealth grew yet
faster. Still, in the wars of the American Revolution, and of the
French Republic and Empire, to use the strong expression of a French
author, "England, despite the immense development of her navy, seemed
ever, in the midst of riches, to feel all the embarrassment of
poverty." The might of England was sufficient to keep alive the heart
and the members; whereas the equally extensive colonial empire of
Spain, through her maritime weakness, but offered so many points for
insult and injury.
The geographical position of a country may not only favor the
concentration of its forces, but give the further strategic advantage
of a central position and a good base for hostile operations against
its probable enemies. This again is the case with England; on the one
hand she faces Holland and the northern powers, on the other France
and the Atlantic. When threatened with a coalition between France and
the naval powers of the North Sea and the Baltic, as she at times was,
her fleets in the Downs and in the Channel, and even that off Brest,
occupied interior positions, and thus were readily able to interpose
their united force against either one of the enemies which should seek
to pass through the Channel to effect a junction with its ally. On
either side, also, Nature gave her better ports and a safer coast to
approach. Formerly this was a very serious element in the passage
through the Channel; but of late, steam and the improvement of her
harbors have lessened the disadvantage under which France once
labored. In the days of sailing-ships, the English fleet operated
against Brest making its base at Torbay and Plymouth. The plan was
simply this: in easterly or moderate weather the blockading fleet kept
its position without difficulty; but in westerly gales, when too
severe, they bore up for English ports, knowing that the French fleet
could not get out till the wind shifted, which equally served to bring
them back to their station.
The advantage of geographical nearness to an enemy, or to the object
of attack, is nowhere more apparent than in that form of warfare
which has lately received the name of commerce-destroying, which the
French call _guerre de course_. This operation of war, being directed
against peaceful merchant vessels which are usually defenceless, calls
for ships of small military force. Such ships, having little power to
defend themselves, need a refuge or point of support near at hand;
which will be found either in certain parts of the sea controlled by
the fighting ships of their country, or in friendly harbors. The
latter give the strongest support, because they are always in the same
place, and the approaches to them are more familiar to the
commerce-destroyer than to his enemy. The nearness of France to
England has thus greatly facilitated her _guerre de course_ directed
against the latter. Having ports on the North Sea, on the Channel, and
on the Atlantic, her cruisers started from points near the focus of
English trade, both coming and going. The distance of these ports from
each other, disadvantageous for regular military combinations, is an
advantage for this irregular secondary operation; for the essence of
the one is concentration of effort, whereas for commerce-destroying
diffusion of effort is the rule. Commerce-destroyers scatter, that
they may see and seize more prey. These truths receive illustration
from the history of the great French privateers, whose bases and
scenes of action were largely on the Channel and North Sea, or else
were found in distant colonial regions, where islands like Guadaloupe
and Martinique afforded similar near refuge. The necessity of renewing
coal makes the cruiser of the present day even more dependent than of
old on his port. Public opinion in the United States has great faith
in war directed against an enemy's commerce; but it must be remembered
that the Republic has no ports very near the great centres of trade
abroad. Her geographical position is therefore singularly
disadvantageous for carrying on successful commerce-destroying, unless
she find bases in the ports of an ally.
If, in addition to facility for offence, Nature has so placed a
country that it has easy access to the high sea itself, while at the
same time it controls one of the great thoroughfares of the world's
traffic, it is evident that the strategic value of its position is
very high. Such again is, and to a greater degree was, the position of
England. The trade of Holland, Sweden, Russia, Denmark, and that which
went up the great rivers to the interior of Germany, had to pass
through the Channel close by her doors; for sailing-ships hugged the
English coast. This northern trade had, moreover, a peculiar bearing
upon sea power; for naval stores, as they are commonly called, were
mainly drawn from the Baltic countries.
But for the loss of Gibraltar, the position of Spain would have been
closely analogous to that of England. Looking at once upon the
Atlantic and the Mediterranean, with Cadiz on the one side and
Cartagena on the other, the trade to the Levant must have passed under
her hands, and that round the Cape of Good Hope not far from her
doors. But Gibraltar not only deprived her of the control of the
Straits, it also imposed an obstacle to the easy junction of the two
divisions of her fleet.
At the present day, looking only at the geographical position of
Italy, and not at the other conditions affecting her sea power, it
would seem that with her extensive sea-coast and good ports she is
very well placed for exerting a decisive influence on the trade route
to the Levant and by the Isthmus of Suez. This is true in a degree,
and would be much more so did Italy now hold all the islands naturally
Italian; but with Malta in the hands of England, and Corsica in those
of France, the advantages of her geographical position are largely
neutralized. From race affinities and situation those two islands are
as legitimately objects of desire to Italy as Gibraltar is to Spain.
If the Adriatic were a great highway of commerce, Italy's position
would be still more influential. These defects in her geographical
completeness, combined with other causes injurious to a full and
secure development of sea power, make it more than doubtful whether
Italy can for some time be in the front rank among the sea nations.
As the aim here is not an exhaustive discussion, but merely an
attempt to show, by illustration, how vitally the situation of a
country may affect its career upon the sea, this division of the
subject may be dismissed for the present; the more so as instances
which will further bring out its importance will continually recur in
the historical treatment. Two remarks, however, are here appropriate.
Circumstances have caused the Mediterranean Sea to play a greater part
in the history of the world, both in a commercial and a military point
of view, than any other sheet of water of the same size. Nation after
nation has striven to control it, and the strife still goes on.
Therefore a study of the conditions upon which preponderance in its
waters has rested, and now rests, and of the relative military values
of different points upon its coasts, will be more instructive than the
same amount of effort expended in another field. Furthermore, it has
at the present time a very marked analogy in many respects to the
Caribbean Sea,--an analogy which will be still closer if a Panama
canal-route ever be completed. A study of the strategic conditions of
the Mediterranean, which have received ample illustration, will be an
excellent prelude to a similar study of the Caribbean, which has
comparatively little history.
The second remark bears upon the geographical position of the United
States relatively to a Central-American canal. If one be made, and
fulfil the hopes of its builders, the Caribbean will be changed from a
terminus, and place of local traffic, or at best a broken and
imperfect line of travel, as it now is, into one of the great highways
of the world. Along this path a great commerce will travel, bringing
the interests of the other great nations, the European nations, close
along our shores, as they have never been before. With this it will
not be so easy as heretofore to stand aloof from international
complications. The position of the United States with reference to
this route will resemble that of England to the Channel, and of the
Mediterranean countries to the Suez route. As regards influence and
control over it, depending upon geographical position, it is of course
plain that the centre of the national power, the permanent base,[7]
is much nearer than that of other great nations. The positions now or
hereafter occupied by them on island or mainland, however strong, will
be but outposts of their power; while in all the raw materials of
military strength no nation is superior to the United States. She is,
however, weak in a confessed unpreparedness for war; and her
geographical nearness to the point of contention loses some of its
value by the character of the Gulf coast, which is deficient in ports
combining security from an enemy with facility for repairing war-ships
of the first class, without which ships no country can pretend to
control any part of the sea. In case of a contest for supremacy in the
Caribbean, it seems evident from the depth of the South Pass of the
Mississippi, the nearness of New Orleans, and the advantages of the
Mississippi Valley for water transit, that the main effort of the
country must pour down that valley, and its permanent base of
operations be found there. The defence of the entrance to the
Mississippi, however, presents peculiar difficulties; while the only
two rival ports, Key West and Pensacola, have too little depth of
water, and are much less advantageously placed with reference to the
resources of the country. To get the full benefit of superior
geographical position, these defects must be overcome. Furthermore, as
her distance from the Isthmus, though relatively less, is still
considerable, the United States will have to obtain in the Caribbean
stations fit for contingent, or secondary, bases of operations; which
by their natural advantages, susceptibility of defence, and nearness
to the central strategic issue, will enable her fleets to remain as
near the scene as any opponent. With ingress and egress from the
Mississippi sufficiently protected, with such outposts in her hands,
and with the communications between them and the home base secured, in
short, with proper military preparation, for which she has all
necessary means, the preponderance of the United States on this field
follows, from her geographical position and her power, with
mathematical certainty.
II. _Physical Conformation._--The peculiar features of the Gulf coast,
just alluded to, come properly under the head of Physical Conformation
of a country, which is placed second for discussion among the
conditions which affect the development of sea power.
The seaboard of a country is one of its frontiers; and the easier the
access offered by the frontier to the region beyond, in this case the
sea, the greater will be the tendency of a people toward intercourse
with the rest of the world by it. If a country be imagined having a
long seaboard, but entirely without a harbor, such a country can have
no sea trade of its own, no shipping, no navy. This was practically
the case with Belgium when it was a Spanish and an Austrian province.
The Dutch, in 1648, as a condition of peace after a successful war,
exacted that the Scheldt should be closed to sea commerce. This closed
the harbor of Antwerp and transferred the sea trade of Belgium to
Holland. The Spanish Netherlands ceased to be a sea power.
Numerous and deep harbors are a source of strength and wealth, and
doubly so if they are the outlets of navigable streams, which
facilitate the concentration in them of a country's internal trade;
but by their very accessibility they become a source of weakness in
war, if not properly defended. The Dutch in 1667 found little
difficulty in ascending the Thames and burning a large fraction of the
English navy within sight of London; whereas a few years later the
combined fleets of England and France, when attempting a landing in
Holland, were foiled by the difficulties of the coast as much as by
the valor of the Dutch fleet. In 1778 the harbor of New York, and with
it undisputed control of the Hudson River, would have been lost to the
English, who were caught at disadvantage, but for the hesitancy of the
French admiral. With that control, New England would have been
restored to close and safe communication with New York, New Jersey,
and Pennsylvania; and this blow, following so closely on Burgoyne's
disaster of the year before, would probably have led the English to
make an earlier peace. The Mississippi is a mighty source of wealth
and strength to the United States; but the feeble defences of its
mouth and the number of its subsidiary streams penetrating the country
made it a weakness and source of disaster to the Southern Confederacy.
And lastly, in 1814, the occupation of the Chesapeake and the
destruction of Washington gave a sharp lesson of the dangers incurred
through the noblest water-ways, if their approaches be undefended; a
lesson recent enough to be easily recalled, but which, from the
present appearance of the coast defences, seems to be yet more easily
forgotten. Nor should it be thought that conditions have changed;
circumstances and details of offence and defence have been modified,
in these days as before, but the great conditions remain the same.
Before and during the great Napoleonic wars, France had no port for
ships-of-the-line east of Brest. How great the advantage to England,
which in the same stretch has two great arsenals, at Plymouth and at
Portsmouth, besides other harbors of refuge and supply. This defect of
conformation has since been remedied by the works at Cherbourg.
Besides the contour of the coast, involving easy access to the sea,
there are other physical conditions which lead people to the sea or
turn them from it. Although France was deficient in military ports on
the Channel, she had both there and on the ocean, as well as in the
Mediterranean, excellent harbors, favorably situated for trade abroad,
and at the outlet of large rivers, which would foster internal
traffic. But when Richelieu had put an end to civil war, Frenchmen did
not take to the sea with the eagerness and success of the English and
Dutch. A principal reason for this has been plausibly found in the
physical conditions which have made France a pleasant land, with a
delightful climate, producing within itself more than its people
needed. England, on the other hand, received from Nature but little,
and, until her manufactures were developed, had little to export.
Their many wants, combined with their restless activity and other
conditions that favored maritime enterprise, led her people abroad;
and they there found lands more pleasant and richer than their own.
Their needs and genius made them merchants and colonists, then
manufacturers and producers; and between products and colonies
shipping is the inevitable link. So their sea power grew. But if
England was drawn to the sea, Holland was driven to it; without the
sea England languished, but Holland died. In the height of her
greatness, when she was one of the chief factors in European politics,
a competent native authority estimated that the soil of Holland could
not support more than one eighth of her inhabitants. The manufactures
of the country were then numerous and important, but they had been
much later in their growth than the shipping interest. The poverty of
the soil and the exposed nature of the coast drove the Dutch first to
fishing. Then the discovery of the process of curing the fish gave
them material for export as well as home consumption, and so laid the
corner-stone of their wealth. Thus they had become traders at the time
that the Italian republics, under the pressure of Turkish power and
the discovery of the passage round the Cape of Good Hope, were
beginning to decline, and they fell heirs to the great Italian trade
of the Levant. Further favored by their geographical position,
intermediate between the Baltic, France, and the Mediterranean, and at
the mouth of the German rivers, they quickly absorbed nearly all the
carrying-trade of Europe. The wheat and naval stores of the Baltic,
the trade of Spain with her colonies in the New World, the wines of
France, and the French coasting-trade were, little more than two
hundred years ago, transported in Dutch shipping. Much of the
carrying-trade of England, even, was then done in Dutch bottoms. It
will not be pretended that all this prosperity proceeded only from the
poverty of Holland's natural resources. Something does not grow from
nothing. What is true, is, that by the necessitous condition of her
people they were driven to the sea, and were, from their mastery of
the shipping business and the size of their fleets, in a position to
profit by the sudden expansion of commerce and the spirit of
exploration which followed on the discovery of America and of the
passage round the Cape. Other causes concurred, but their whole
prosperity stood on the sea power to which their poverty gave birth.
Their food, their clothing, the raw material for their manufactures,
the very timber and hemp with which they built and rigged their ships
(and they built nearly as many as all Europe besides), were imported;
and when a disastrous war with England in 1653 and 1654 had lasted
eighteen months, and their shipping business was stopped, it is said
"the sources of revenue which had always maintained the riches of the
State, such as fisheries and commerce, were almost dry. Workshops were
closed, work was suspended. The Zuyder Zee became a forest of masts;
the country was full of beggars; grass grew in the streets, and in
Amsterdam fifteen hundred houses were untenanted." A humiliating peace
alone saved them from ruin.
This sorrowful result shows the weakness of a country depending wholly
upon sources external to itself for the part it is playing in the
world. With large deductions, owing to differences of conditions which
need not here be spoken of, the case of Holland then has strong points
of resemblance to that of Great Britain now; and they are true
prophets, though they seem to be having small honor in their own
country, who warn her that the continuance of her prosperity at home
depends primarily upon maintaining her power abroad. Men may be
discontented at the lack of political privilege; they will be yet more
uneasy if they come to lack bread. It is of more interest to Americans
to note that the result to France, regarded as a power of the sea,
caused by the extent, delightfulness, and richness of the land, has
been reproduced in the United States. In the beginning, their
forefathers held a narrow strip of land upon the sea, fertile in parts
though little developed, abounding in harbors and near rich
fishing-grounds. These physical conditions combined with an inborn
love of the sea, the pulse of that English blood which still beat in
their veins, to keep alive all those tendencies and pursuits upon
which a healthy sea power depends. Almost every one of the original
colonies was on the sea or on one of its great tributaries. All export
and import tended toward one coast. Interest in the sea and an
intelligent appreciation of the part it played in the public welfare
were easily and widely spread; and a motive more influential than care
for the public interest was also active, for the abundance of
ship-building materials and a relative fewness of other investments
made shipping a profitable private interest. How changed the present
condition is, all know. The centre of power is no longer on the
seaboard. Books and newspapers vie with one another in describing the
wonderful growth, and the still undeveloped riches, of the interior.
Capital there finds its best investments, labor its largest
opportunities. The frontiers are neglected and politically weak; the
Gulf and Pacific coasts actually so, the Atlantic coast relatively to
the central Mississippi Valley. When the day comes that shipping again
pays, when the three sea frontiers find that they are not only
militarily weak, but poorer for lack of national shipping, their
united efforts may avail to lay again the foundations of our sea
power. Till then, those who follow the limitations which lack of sea
power placed upon the career of France may mourn that their own
country is being led, by a like redundancy of home wealth, into the
same neglect of that great instrument.
Among modifying physical conditions may be noted a form like that of
Italy,--a long peninsula, with a central range of mountains dividing
it into two narrow strips, along which the roads connecting the
different ports necessarily run. Only an absolute control of the sea
can wholly secure such communications, since it is impossible to know
at what point an enemy coming from beyond the visible horizon may
strike; but still, with an adequate naval force centrally posted,
there will be good hope of attacking his fleet, which is at once his
base and line of communications, before serious damage has been done.
The long, narrow peninsula of Florida, with Key West at its
extremity, though flat and thinly populated, presents at first sight
conditions like those of Italy. The resemblance may be only
superficial, but it seems probable that if the chief scene of a naval
war were the Gulf of Mexico, the communications by land to the end of
the peninsula might be a matter of consequence, and open to attack.
When the sea not only borders, or surrounds, but also separates a
country into two or more parts, the control of it becomes not only
desirable, but vitally necessary. Such a physical condition either
gives birth and strength to sea power, or makes the country powerless.
Such is the condition of the present kingdom of Italy, with its
islands of Sardinia and Sicily; and hence in its youth and still
existing financial weakness it is seen to put forth such vigorous and
intelligent efforts to create a military navy. It has even been argued
that, with a navy decidedly superior to her enemy's, Italy could
better base her power upon her islands than upon her mainland; for the
insecurity of the lines of communication in the peninsula, already
pointed out, would most seriously embarrass an invading army
surrounded by a hostile people and threatened from the sea.
The Irish Sea, separating the British Islands, rather resembles an
estuary than an actual division; but history has shown the danger
from it to the United Kingdom. In the days of Louis XIV., when the
French navy nearly equalled the combined English and Dutch, the
gravest complications existed in Ireland, which passed almost wholly
under the control of the natives and the French. Nevertheless, the
Irish Sea was rather a danger to the English--a weak point in their
communications--than an advantage to the French. The latter did not
venture their ships-of-the-line in its narrow waters, and expeditions
intending to land were directed upon the ocean ports in the south and
west. At the supreme moment the great French fleet was sent upon the
south coast of England, where it decisively defeated the allies, and
at the same time twenty-five frigates were sent to St. George's
Channel, against the English communications. In the midst of a
hostile people, the English army in Ireland was seriously imperilled,
but was saved by the battle of the Boyne and the flight of James II.
This movement against the enemy's communications was strictly
strategic, and would be just as dangerous to England now as in 1690.
Spain, in the same century, afforded an impressive lesson of the
weakness caused by such separation when the parts are not knit
together by a strong sea power. She then still retained, as remnants
of her past greatness, the Netherlands (now Belgium), Sicily, and
other Italian possessions, not to speak of her vast colonies in the
New World. Yet so low had the Spanish sea power fallen, that a
well-informed and sober-minded Hollander of the day could claim that
"in Spain all the coast is navigated by a few Dutch ships; and since
the peace of 1648 their ships and seamen are so few that they have
publicly begun to hire our ships to sail to the Indies, whereas they
were formerly careful to exclude all foreigners from there.... It is
manifest," he goes on, "that the West Indies, being as the stomach to
Spain (for from it nearly all the revenue is drawn), must be joined to
the Spanish head by a sea force; and that Naples and the Netherlands,
being like two arms, they cannot lay out their strength for Spain, nor
receive anything thence but by shipping,--all which may easily be done
by our shipping in peace, and by it obstructed in war." Half a century
before, Sully, the great minister of Henry IV., had characterized
Spain "as one of those States whose legs and arms are strong and
powerful, but the heart infinitely weak and feeble." Since his day the
Spanish navy had suffered not only disaster, but annihilation; not
only humiliation, but degradation. The consequences briefly were that
shipping was destroyed; manufactures perished with it. The government
depended for its support, not upon a wide-spread healthy commerce and
industry that could survive many a staggering blow, but upon a narrow
stream of silver trickling through a few treasure-ships from America,
easily and frequently intercepted by an enemy's cruisers. The loss of
half a dozen galleons more than once paralyzed its movements for a
year. While the war in the Netherlands lasted, the Dutch control of
the sea forced Spain to send her troops by a long and costly journey
overland instead of by sea; and the same cause reduced her to such
straits for necessaries that, by a mutual arrangement which seems very
odd to modern ideas, her wants were supplied by Dutch ships, which
thus maintained the enemies of their country, but received in return
specie which was welcome in the Amsterdam exchange. In America, the
Spanish protected themselves as best they might behind masonry,
unaided from home; while in the Mediterranean they escaped insult and
injury mainly through the indifference of the Dutch, for the French
and English had not yet begun to contend for mastery there. In the
course of history the Netherlands, Naples, Sicily, Minorca, Havana,
Manila, and Jamaica were wrenched away, at one time or another, from
this empire without a shipping. In short, while Spain's maritime
impotence may have been primarily a symptom of her general decay, it
became a marked factor in precipitating her into the abyss from which
she has not yet wholly emerged.
Except Alaska, the United States has no outlying possession,--no foot
of ground inaccessible by land. Its contour is such as to present few
points specially weak from their saliency, and all important parts of
the frontiers can be readily attained,--cheaply by water, rapidly by
rail. The weakest frontier, the Pacific, is far removed from the most
dangerous of possible enemies. The internal resources are boundless as
compared with present needs; we can live off ourselves indefinitely in
"our little corner," to use the expression of a French officer to the
author. Yet should that little corner be invaded by a new commercial
route through the Isthmus, the United States in her turn may have the
rude awakening of those who have abandoned their share in the common
birthright of all people, the sea.
III. _Extent of Territory._--The last of the conditions affecting the
development of a nation as a sea power, and touching the country
itself as distinguished from the people who dwell there, is Extent of
Territory. This may be dismissed with comparatively few words.
As regards the development of sea power, it is not the total number of
square miles which a country contains, but the length of its
coast-line and the character of its harbors that are to be considered.
As to these it is to be said that, the geographical and physical
conditions being the same, extent of sea-coast is a source of strength
or weakness according as the population is large or small. A country
is in this like a fortress; the garrison must be proportioned to the
_enceinte_. A recent familiar instance is found in the American War of
Secession. Had the South had a people as numerous as it was warlike,
and a navy commensurate to its other resources as a sea power, the
great extent of its sea-coast and its numerous inlets would have been
elements of great strength. The people of the United States and the
Government of that day justly prided themselves on the effectiveness
of the blockade of the whole Southern coast. It was a great feat, a
very great feat; but it would have been an impossible feat had the
Southerners been more numerous, and a nation of seamen. What was there
shown was not, as has been said, how such a blockade can be
maintained, but that such a blockade is possible in the face of a
population not only unused to the sea, but also scanty in numbers.
Those who recall how the blockade was maintained, and the class of
ships that blockaded during great part of the war, know that the plan,
correct under the circumstances, could not have been carried out in
the face of a real navy. Scattered unsupported along the coast, the
United States ships kept their places, singly or in small detachments,
in face of an extensive network of inland water communications which
favored secret concentration of the enemy. Behind the first line of
water communications were long estuaries, and here and there strong
fortresses, upon either of which the enemy's ships could always fall
back to elude pursuit or to receive protection. Had there been a
Southern navy to profit by such advantages, or by the scattered
condition of the United States ships, the latter could not have been
distributed as they were; and being forced to concentrate for mutual
support, many small but useful approaches would have been left open to
commerce. But as the Southern coast, from its extent and many inlets,
might have been a source of strength, so, from those very
characteristics, it became a fruitful source of injury. The great
story of the opening of the Mississippi is but the most striking
illustration of an action that was going on incessantly all over the
South. At every breach of the sea frontier, war-ships were entering.
The streams that had carried the wealth and supported the trade of the
seceding States turned against them, and admitted their enemies to
their hearts. Dismay, insecurity, paralysis, prevailed in regions that
might, under happier auspices, have kept a nation alive through the
most exhausting war. Never did sea power play a greater or a more
decisive part than in the contest which determined that the course of
the world's history would be modified by the existence of one great
nation, instead of several rival States, in the North American
continent. But while just pride is felt in the well-earned glory of
those days, and the greatness of the results due to naval
preponderance is admitted, Americans who understand the facts should
never fail to remind the over-confidence of their countrymen that the
South not only had no navy, not only was not a seafaring people, but
that also its population was not proportioned to the extent of the
sea-coast which it had to defend.
IV. _Number of Population._--After the consideration of the natural
conditions of a country should follow an examination of the
characteristics of its population as affecting the development of sea
power; and first among these will be taken, because of its relations
to the extent of the territory, which has just been discussed, the
number of the people who live in it. It has been said that in respect
of dimensions it is not merely the number of square miles, but the
extent and character of the sea-coast that is to be considered with
reference to sea power; and so, in point of population, it is not only
the grand total, but the number following the sea, or at least readily
available for employment on ship-board and for the creation of naval
material, that must be counted.
For example, formerly and up to the end of the great wars following
the French Revolution, the population of France was much greater than
that of England; but in respect of sea power in general, peaceful
commerce as well as military efficiency, France was much inferior to
England. In the matter of military efficiency this fact is the more
remarkable because at times, in point of military preparation at the
outbreak of war, France had the advantage; but she was not able to
keep it. Thus in 1778, when war broke out, France, through her
maritime inscription, was able to man at once fifty ships-of-the-line.
England, on the contrary, by reason of the dispersal over the globe of
that very shipping on which her naval strength so securely rested, had
much trouble in manning forty at home; but in 1782 she had one hundred
and twenty in commission or ready for commission, while France had
never been able to exceed seventy-one. Again, as late as 1840, when
the two nations were on the verge of war in the Levant, a most
accomplished French officer of the day, while extolling the high state
of efficiency of the French fleet and the eminent qualities of its
admiral, and expressing confidence in the results of an encounter with
an equal enemy, goes on to say: "Behind the squadron of twenty-one
ships-of-the-line which we could then assemble, there was no reserve;
not another ship could have been commissioned within six months." And
this was due not only to lack of ships and of proper equipments,
though both were wanting. "Our maritime inscription," he continues,
"was so exhausted by what we had done [in manning twenty-one ships],
that the permanent levy established in all quarters did not supply
reliefs for the men, who were already more than three years on
cruise."
A contrast such as this shows a difference in what is called staying
power, or reserve force, which is even greater than appears on the
surface; for a great shipping afloat necessarily employs, besides the
crews, a large number of people engaged in the various handicrafts
which facilitate the making and repairing of naval material, or
following other callings more or less closely connected with the water
and with craft of all kinds. Such kindred callings give an undoubted
aptitude for the sea from the outset. There is an anecdote showing
curious insight into this matter on the part of one of England's
distinguished seamen, Sir Edward Pellew. When the war broke out in
1793, the usual scarceness of seamen was met. Eager to get to sea and
unable to fill his complement otherwise than with landsmen, he
instructed his officers to seek for Cornish miners; reasoning from the
conditions and dangers of their calling, of which he had personal
knowledge, that they would quickly fit into the demands of sea life.
The result showed his sagacity, for, thus escaping an otherwise
unavoidable delay, he was fortunate enough to capture the first
frigate taken in the war in single combat; and what is especially
instructive is, that although but a few weeks in commission, while his
opponent had been over a year, the losses, heavy on both sides, were
nearly equal.
It may be urged that such reserve strength has now nearly lost the
importance it once had, because modern ships and weapons take so long
to make, and because modern States aim at developing the whole power
of their armed force, on the outbreak of war, with such rapidity as to
strike a disabling blow before the enemy can organize an equal effort.
To use a familiar phrase, there will not be time for the whole
resistance of the national fabric to come into play; the blow will
fall on the organized military fleet, and if that yield, the solidity
of the rest of the structure will avail nothing. To a certain extent
this is true; but then it has always been true, though to a less
extent formerly than now. Granted the meeting of two fleets which
represent practically the whole present strength of their two nations,
if one of them be destroyed, while the other remains fit for action,
there will be much less hope now than formerly that the vanquished
can restore his navy for that war; and the result will be disastrous
just in proportion to the dependence of the nation upon her sea power.
A Trafalgar would have been a much more fatal blow to England than it
was to France, had the English fleet then represented, as the allied
fleet did, the bulk of the nation's power. Trafalgar in such a case
would have been to England what Austerlitz was to Austria, and Jena to
Prussia; an empire would have been laid prostrate by the destruction
or disorganization of its military forces, which, it is said, were the
favorite objective of Napoleon.
But does the consideration of such exceptional disasters in the past
justify the putting a low value upon that reserve strength, based upon
the number of inhabitants fitted for a certain kind of military life,
which is here being considered? The blows just mentioned were dealt by
men of exceptional genius, at the head of armed bodies of exceptional
training, _esprit-de-corps_, and prestige, and were, besides,
inflicted upon opponents more or less demoralized by conscious
inferiority and previous defeat. Austerlitz had been closely preceded
by Ulm, where thirty thousand Austrians laid down their arms without a
battle; and the history of the previous years had been one long record
of Austrian reverse and French success. Trafalgar followed closely
upon a cruise, justly called a campaign, of almost constant failure;
and farther back, but still recent, were the memories of St. Vincent
for the Spaniards, and of the Nile for the French, in the allied
fleet. Except the case of Jena, these crushing overthrows were not
single disasters, but final blows; and in the Jena campaign there was
a disparity in numbers, equipment, and general preparation for war,
which makes it less applicable in considering what may result from a
single victory.
England is at the present time the greatest maritime nation in the
world; in steam and iron she has kept the superiority she had in the
days of sail and wood. France and England are the two powers that have
the largest military navies; and it is so far an open question which
of the two is the more powerful, that they may be regarded as
practically of equal strength in material for a sea war. In the case
of a collision can there be assumed such a difference of _personnel_,
or of preparation, as to make it probable that a decisive inequality
will result from one battle or one campaign? If not, the reserve
strength will begin to tell; organized reserve first, then reserve of
seafaring population, reserve of mechanical skill, reserve of wealth.
It seems to have been somewhat forgotten that England's leadership in
mechanical arts gives her a reserve of mechanics, who can easily
familiarize themselves with the appliances of modern iron-clads; and
as her commerce and industries feel the burden of the war, the surplus
of seamen and mechanics will go to the armed shipping.
The whole question of the value of a reserve, developed or
undeveloped, amounts now to this: Have modern conditions of warfare
made it probable that, of two nearly equal adversaries, one will be so
prostrated in a single campaign that a decisive result will be reached
in that time? Sea warfare has given no answer. The crushing successes
of Prussia against Austria, and of Germany against France, appear to
have been those of a stronger over a much weaker nation, whether the
weakness were due to natural causes, or to official incompetency. How
would a delay like that of Plevna have affected the fortune of war,
had Turkey had any reserve of national power upon which to call?
If time be, as is everywhere admitted, a supreme factor in war, it
behooves countries whose genius is essentially not military, whose
people, like all free people, object to pay for large military
establishments, to see to it that they are at least strong enough to
gain the time necessary to turn the spirit and capacity of their
subjects into the new activities which war calls for. If the existing
force by land or sea is strong enough so to hold out, even though at a
disadvantage, the country may rely upon its natural resources and
strength coming into play for whatever they are worth,--its numbers,
its wealth, its capacities of every kind. If, on the other hand, what
force it has can be overthrown and crushed quickly, the most
magnificent possibilities of natural power will not save it from
humiliating conditions, nor, if its foe be wise, from guarantees which
will postpone revenge to a distant future. The story is constantly
repeated on the smaller fields of war: "If so-and-so can hold out a
little longer, this can be saved or that can be done;" as in sickness
it is often said: "If the patient can only hold out so long, the
strength of his constitution may pull him through."
England to some extent is now such a country. Holland was such a
country; she would not pay, and if she escaped, it was but by the skin
of her teeth. "Never in time of peace and from fear of a rupture,"
wrote their great statesman, De Witt, "will they take resolutions
strong enough to lead them to pecuniary sacrifices beforehand. The
character of the Dutch is such that, unless danger stares them in the
face, they are indisposed to lay out money for their own defence. I
have to do with a people who, liberal to profusion where they ought to
economize, are often sparing to avarice where they ought to spend."
That our own country is open to the same reproach, is patent to all
the world. The United States has not that shield of defensive power
behind which time can be gained to develop its reserve of strength. As
for a seafaring population adequate to her possible needs, where is
it? Such a resource, proportionate to her coast-line and population,
is to be found only in a national merchant shipping and its related
industries, which at present scarcely exist. It will matter little
whether the crews of such ships are native or foreign born, provided
they are attached to the flag, and her power at sea is sufficient to
enable the most of them to get back in case of war. When foreigners by
thousands are admitted to the ballot, it is of little moment that they
are given fighting-room on board ship.
Though the treatment of the subject has been somewhat discursive, it
may be admitted that a great population following callings related to
the sea is, now as formerly, a great element of sea power; that the
United States is deficient in that element; and that its foundations
can be laid only in a large commerce under her own flag.
V. _National Character._--The effect of national character and
aptitudes upon the development of sea power will next be considered.
If sea power be really based upon a peaceful and extensive commerce,
aptitude for commercial pursuits must be a distinguishing feature of
the nations that have at one time or another been great upon the sea.
History almost without exception affirms that this is true. Save the
Romans, there is no marked instance to the contrary.
All men seek gain and, more or less, love money; but the way in which
gain is sought will have a marked effect upon the commercial fortunes
and the history of the people inhabiting a country.
If history may be believed, the way in which the Spaniards and their
kindred nation, the Portuguese, sought wealth, not only brought a blot
upon the national character, but was also fatal to the growth of a
healthy commerce; and so to the industries upon which commerce lives,
and ultimately to that national wealth which was sought by mistaken
paths. The desire for gain rose in them to fierce avarice; so they
sought in the new-found worlds which gave such an impetus to the
commercial and maritime development of the countries of Europe, not
new fields of industry, not even the healthy excitement of exploration
and adventure, but gold and silver. They had many great qualities;
they were bold, enterprising, temperate, patient of suffering,
enthusiastic, and gifted with intense national feeling. When to these
qualities are added the advantages of Spain's position and
well-situated ports, the fact that she was first to occupy large and
rich portions of the new worlds and long remained without a
competitor, and that for a hundred years after the discovery of
America she was the leading State in Europe, she might have been
expected to take the foremost place among the sea powers. Exactly the
contrary was the result, as all know. Since the battle of Lepanto in
1571, though engaged in many wars, no sea victory of any consequence
shines on the pages of Spanish history; and the decay of her commerce
sufficiently accounts for the painful and sometimes ludicrous
inaptness shown on the decks of her ships of war. Doubtless such a
result is not to be attributed to one cause only. Doubtless the
government of Spain was in many ways such as to cramp and blight a
free and healthy development of private enterprise; but the character
of a great people breaks through or shapes the character of its
government, and it can hardly be doubted that had the bent of the
people been toward trade, the action of government would have been
drawn into the same current. The great field of the colonies, also,
was remote from the centre of that despotism which blighted the growth
of old Spain. As it was, thousands of Spaniards, of the working as
well as the upper classes, left Spain; and the occupations in which
they engaged abroad sent home little but specie, or merchandise of
small bulk, requiring but small tonnage. The mother-country herself
produced little but wool, fruit, and iron; her manufactures were
naught; her industries suffered; her population steadily decreased.
Both she and her colonies depended upon the Dutch for so many of the
necessaries of life, that the products of their scanty industries
could not suffice to pay for them. "So that Holland merchants," writes
a contemporary, "who carry money to most parts of the world to buy
commodities, must out of this single country of Europe carry home
money, which they receive in payment of their goods." Thus their
eagerly sought emblem of wealth passed quickly from their hands. It
has already been pointed out how weak, from a military point of view,
Spain was from this decay of her shipping. Her wealth being in small
bulk on a few ships, following more or less regular routes, was easily
seized by an enemy, and the sinews of war paralyzed; whereas the
wealth of England and Holland, scattered over thousands of ships in
all parts of the world, received many bitter blows in many exhausting
wars, without checking a growth which, though painful, was steady. The
fortunes of Portugal, united to Spain during a most critical period of
her history, followed the same downward path: although foremost in
the beginning of the race for development by sea, she fell utterly
behind. "The mines of Brazil were the ruin of Portugal, as those of
Mexico and Peru had been of Spain; all manufactures fell into insane
contempt; ere long the English supplied the Portuguese not only with
clothes, but with all merchandise, all commodities, even to salt-fish
and grain. After their gold, the Portuguese abandoned their very soil;
the vineyards of Oporto were finally bought by the English with
Brazilian gold, which had only passed through Portugal to be spread
throughout England." We are assured that in fifty years, five hundred
millions of dollars were extracted from "the mines of Brazil, and that
at the end of the time Portugal had but twenty-five millions in
specie,"--a striking example of the difference between real and
fictitious wealth.
The English and Dutch were no less desirous of gain than the southern
nations. Each in turn has been called "a nation of shopkeepers;" but
the jeer, in so far as it is just, is to the credit of their wisdom
and uprightness. They were no less bold, no less enterprising, no less
patient. Indeed, they were more patient, in that they sought riches
not by the sword but by labor, which is the reproach meant to be
implied by the epithet; for thus they took the longest, instead of
what seemed the shortest, road to wealth. But these two peoples,
radically of the same race, had other qualities, no less important
than those just named, which combined with their surroundings to favor
their development by sea. They were by nature business-men, traders,
producers, negotiators. Therefore both in their native country and
abroad, whether settled in the ports of civilized nations, or of
barbarous eastern rulers, or in colonies of their own foundation, they
everywhere strove to draw out all the resources of the land, to
develop and increase them. The quick instinct of the born trader,
shopkeeper if you will, sought continually new articles to exchange;
and this search, combined with the industrious character evolved
through generations of labor, made them necessarily producers. At home
they became great as manufacturers; abroad, where they controlled, the
land grew richer continually, products multiplied, and the necessary
exchange between home and the settlements called for more ships. Their
shipping therefore increased with these demands of trade, and nations
with less aptitude for maritime enterprise, even France herself, great
as she has been, called for their products and for the service of
their ships. Thus in many ways they advanced to power at sea. This
natural tendency and growth were indeed modified and seriously checked
at times by the interference of other governments, jealous of a
prosperity which their own people could invade only by the aid of
artificial support,--a support which will be considered under the head
of governmental action as affecting sea power.
The tendency to trade, involving of necessity the production of
something to trade with, is the national characteristic most important
to the development of sea power. Granting it and a good seaboard, it
is not likely that the dangers of the sea, or any aversion to it, will
deter a people from seeking wealth by the paths of ocean commerce.
Where wealth is sought by other means, it may be found; but it will
not necessarily lead to sea power. Take France. France has a fine
country, an industrious people, an admirable position. The French navy
has known periods of great glory, and in its lowest estate has never
dishonored the military reputation so dear to the nation. Yet as a
maritime State, securely resting upon a broad basis of sea commerce,
France, as compared with other historical sea-peoples, has never held
more than a respectable position. The chief reason for this, so far as
national character goes, is the way in which wealth is sought. As
Spain and Portugal sought it by digging gold out of the ground, the
temper of the French people leads them to seek it by thrift, economy,
hoarding. It is said to be harder to keep than to make a fortune.
Possibly; but the adventurous temper, which risks what it has to gain
more, has much in common with the adventurous spirit that conquers
worlds for commerce. The tendency to save and put aside, to venture
timidly and on a small scale, may lead to a general diffusion of
wealth on a like small scale, but not to the risks and development of
external trade and shipping interests. To illustrate,--and the
incident is given only for what it is worth,--a French officer,
speaking to the author about the Panama Canal, said: "I have two
shares in it. In France we don't do as you, where a few people take a
great many shares each. With us a large number of people take one
share or a very few. When these were in the market my wife said to me,
'You take two shares, one for you and one for me.'" As regards the
stability of a man's personal fortunes this kind of prudence is
doubtless wise; but when excessive prudence or financial timidity
becomes a national trait, it must tend to hamper the expansion of
commerce and of the nation's shipping. The same caution in money
matters, appearing in another relation of life, has checked the
production of children, and keeps the population of France nearly
stationary.
The noble classes of Europe inherited from the Middle Ages a
supercilious contempt for peaceful trade, which has exercised a
modifying influence upon its growth, according to the national
character of different countries. The pride of the Spaniards fell
easily in with this spirit of contempt, and co-operated with that
disastrous unwillingness to work and wait for wealth which turned them
away from commerce. In France, the vanity which is conceded even by
Frenchmen to be a national trait led in the same direction. The
numbers and brilliancy of the nobility, and the consideration enjoyed
by them, set a seal of inferiority upon an occupation which they
despised. Rich merchants and manufacturers sighed for the honors of
nobility, and upon obtaining them, abandoned their lucrative
professions. Therefore, while the industry of the people and the
fruitfulness of the soil saved commerce from total decay, it was
pursued under a sense of humiliation which caused its best
representatives to escape from it as soon as they could. Louis XIV.,
under the influence of Colbert, put forth an ordinance "authorizing
all noblemen to take an interest in merchant ships, goods and
merchandise, without being considered as having derogated from
nobility, provided they did not sell at retail;" and the reason given
for this action was, "that it imports the good of our subjects and our
own satisfaction, to efface the relic of a public opinion, universally
prevalent, that maritime commerce is incompatible with nobility." But
a prejudice involving conscious and open superiority is not readily
effaced by ordinances, especially when vanity is a conspicuous trait
in national character; and many years later Montesquieu taught that it
is contrary to the spirit of monarchy that the nobility should engage
in trade.
In Holland there was a nobility; but the State was republican in name,
allowed large scope to personal freedom and enterprise, and the
centres of power were in the great cities. The foundation of the
national greatness was money--or rather wealth. Wealth, as a source of
civic distinction, carried with it also power in the State; and with
power there went social position and consideration. In England the
same result obtained. The nobility were proud; but in a representative
government the power of wealth could be neither put down nor
overshadowed. It was patent to the eyes of all; it was honored by all;
and in England, as well as Holland, the occupations which were the
source of wealth shared in the honor given to wealth itself. Thus, in
all the countries named, social sentiment, the outcome of national
characteristics, had a marked influence upon the national attitude
toward trade.
In yet another way does the national genius affect the growth of sea
power in its broadest sense; and that is in so far as it possesses the
capacity for planting healthy colonies. Of colonization, as of all
other growths, it is true that it is most healthy when it is most
natural. Therefore colonies that spring from the felt wants and
natural impulses of a whole people will have the most solid
foundations; and their subsequent growth will be surest when they are
least trammelled from home, if the people have the genius for
independent action. Men of the past three centuries have keenly felt
the value to the mother-country of colonies as outlets for the home
products and as a nursery for commerce and shipping; but efforts at
colonization have not had the same general origin, nor have different
systems all had the same success. The efforts of statesmen, however
far-seeing and careful, have not been able to supply the lack of
strong natural impulse; nor can the most minute regulation from home
produce as good results as a happier neglect, when the germ of
self-development is found in the national character. There has been no
greater display of wisdom in the national administration of successful
colonies than in that of unsuccessful. Perhaps there has been even
less. If elaborate system and supervision, careful adaptation of means
to ends, diligent nursing, could avail for colonial growth, the genius
of England has less of this systematizing faculty than the genius of
France; but England, not France, has been the great colonizer of the
world. Successful colonization, with its consequent effect upon
commerce and sea power, depends essentially upon national character;
because colonies grow best when they grow of themselves, naturally.
The character of the colonist, not the care of the home government, is
the principle of the colony's growth.
This truth stands out the clearer because the general attitude of all
the home governments toward their colonies was entirely selfish.
However founded, as soon as it was recognized to be of consequence,
the colony became to the home country a cow to be milked; to be cared
for, of course, but chiefly as a piece of property valued for the
returns it gave. Legislation was directed toward a monopoly of its
external trade; the places in its government afforded posts of value
for occupants from the mother-country; and the colony was looked upon,
as the sea still so often is, as a fit place for those who were
ungovernable or useless at home. The military administration, however,
so long as it remains a colony, is the proper and necessary attribute
of the home government.
The fact of England's unique and wonderful success as a great
colonizing nation is too evident to be dwelt upon; and the reason for
it appears to lie chiefly in two traits of the national character.
The English colonist naturally and readily settles down in his new
country, identifies his interest with it, and though keeping an
affectionate remembrance of the home from which he came, has no
restless eagerness to return. In the second place, the Englishman at
once and instinctively seeks to develop the resources of the new
country in the broadest sense. In the former particular he differs
from the French, who were ever longingly looking back to the delights
of their pleasant land; in the latter, from the Spaniards, whose range
of interest and ambition was too narrow for the full evolution of the
possibilities of a new country.
The character and the necessities of the Dutch led them naturally to
plant colonies; and by the year 1650 they had in the East Indies, in
Africa, and in America a large number, only to name which would be
tedious. They were then far ahead of England in this matter. But
though the origin of these colonies, purely commercial in its
character, was natural, there seems to have been lacking to them a
principle of growth. "In planting them they never sought an extension
of empire, but merely an acquisition of trade and commerce. They
attempted conquest only when forced by the pressure of circumstances.
Generally they were content to trade under the protection of the
sovereign of the country." This placid satisfaction with gain alone,
unaccompanied by political ambition, tended, like the despotism of
France and Spain, to keep the colonies mere commercial dependencies
upon the mother-country, and so killed the natural principle of
growth.
Before quitting this head of the inquiry, it is well to ask how far
the national character of Americans is fitted to develop a great sea
power, should other circumstances become favorable.
It seems scarcely necessary, however, to do more than appeal to a not
very distant past to prove that, if legislative hindrances be removed,
and more remunerative fields of enterprise filled up, the sea power
will not long delay its appearance. The instinct for commerce, bold
enterprise in the pursuit of gain, and a keen scent for the trails
that lead to it, all exist; and if there be in the future any fields
calling for colonization, it cannot be doubted that Americans will
carry to them all their inherited aptitude for self-government and
independent growth.