THE COMMAND OF THE SEA
We have seen that when two States go to war the primary object of each
is to subdue and if possible to destroy the armed forces of the other.
Until that is done either completely, or to such an extent as to induce
the defeated belligerent to submit, the conflict of wills cannot be
determined, and the two States cannot return to those normal relations,
involving no violence or force, which constitute a state of peace. If
they have a common frontier this circumstance indicates what is, as a
general rule, the best and most efficient way of securing the object to
be attained. The armed forces of both belligerents lie at the outset
within their respective frontiers. If those of either can be constrained
by the superior strategy of the other to keep within their own
territory, the initial advantage lies with the belligerent who has so
constrained them, and the war has in common parlance been carried into
the enemy's country. In other words, the invasion of the enemy's
territory has begun, and pressure has been brought to bear on his will
which, if maintained without intermission and with an intensity duly
proportioned to its growing extent, must in the end subdue it. To this
there is no alternative. To invade the enemy's territory at all is to
inflict a reverse on his armed forces, which would assuredly have
prevented the invasion if they could. The territory in the rear of the
invading army is in greater or less degree brought under the control of
the invader and thereby temporarily lost to the invaded State. If this
process is continued the authority and the resources of the invaded
State are progressively diminished, until at last when the capital is
occupied and the remainder of the invaded country lies open to the
advance of the invader, the defeated State must sue for peace on such
terms as the invader may concede, because it has nothing left to fight
for, and no force wherewithal to fight. This is of course merely an
abstract and generalized description of the course of a war on land, but
I need not consider its concrete details nor analyse any of the
conditions which may, and in the concrete often do, impede or deflect
its course, because my sole purpose is to show how armed force operates
in the abstract to subdue the will of the belligerent who is worsted in
the conflict. It operates by the destruction of his armed forces, by the
occupation of his territory, and by the consequent extinction of his
authority and appropriation of his resources. He can only recover the
latter and liberate his territory by submitting to such terms as the
invader may dictate or concede.
Naval warfare aims at the same primary object, namely, the destruction
of the enemy's armed forces afloat; but it cannot by itself produce the
same decisive effect, because there is no territory which naval force,
as such, can occupy and appropriate. The sea is not territory. It is not
nor can it be made subject to the authority of an enemy in the same
sense that the land can, nor does it possess any resources in itself
such as on the land can be appropriated to the disadvantage and ultimate
discomfiture of a belligerent whose territory has been invaded. The sea
is the common highway of all nations, and the exclusive possession of
none. Apart from its fisheries, which, outside the territorial waters of
any particular State, are open to all nations, it is of no use, except
as a highway, to any State. But its use as a highway is the root of all
sea power, the foundation of all naval warfare. It is only by this
highway that an island State can be invaded, only by this highway that
an island State, or a State having no common frontier with its
adversary, can encounter and subdue the armed forces of the enemy,
whether on sea or on land.
Moreover, the sea as a highway differs in many important respects from
such highways or other lines of communication as serve for the transit
and transport of armed forces and their necessary supplies on land. In
one sense it is all highway, that is, it can be traversed in every
direction by ships, wherever there is water enough for them to float.
For military purposes land transit is confined to such highways as are
suitable to the march of an army accompanied by artillery and heavy
baggage and supply trains, or to such railways as can more expeditiously
serve the same purpose. Hence an army advancing in an enemy's country
cannot advance on a very broad front, nor can it outmarch its baggage
and other supplies except for a very limited time and for some
exceptional purpose. Sea transport is subject to no such limitations.
Ships carry their own supplies with them, and a fleet of ships, whether
of transports or of warships, can move on as broad a front as is
compatible with the exercise of due control over their combined
movements. Moreover, within certain limits and with certain exceptions,
where the waters to be traversed are narrow, ships and fleets can vary
their line of transit and advance to such an extent as to render the
discovery of their whereabouts a matter of some difficulty. The same
conditions affect the transit of such merchant vessels as, carrying the
flag of one belligerent, are liable to capture by the other. Hence the
primary aim of all naval warfare is and must be so to control the lines
of communication which traverse the seas affected, that the enemy
cannot move his warships from one point to another without encountering
a superior force of his adversary, and that his merchant ships cannot
prosecute their voyages without running extreme risk of capture by the
way. This is called, in time-honoured phraseology, securing the command
of the sea, and the true meaning of this phrase is nothing more nor less
than the effective control of all such maritime communications as are or
can be affected by the operations of either belligerent. This control
may extend, according to circumstances, to all the navigable seas of the
globe, or it may be confined, for all practical purposes, to the waters
adjacent to the respective territories of the two belligerents. In
theory, however, its effect is unlimited, and so it must be in practice,
where the territories of one belligerent or the other are widely
scattered over the globe. That is the sense in which "the sea is all
one."
It is important to note that the phrase "command of the sea" has no
definite meaning except in war. In time of peace no State claims to
command the sea or to control it in any way. But in any war in which
naval force is engaged each belligerent seeks to secure the command of
the sea for himself and to deny it to his enemy, that is to close the
highway which the sea affords in time of peace to his warships and his
merchant vessels alike. As regards the enemy's warships, moreover, he
seeks to secure his own command by their destruction or capture. This is
not always possible, because if the naval forces of the two belligerents
are very unequally matched, it is always open to the weaker of the two
to decline the conflict by keeping his main fleets in ports unassailable
by naval force alone, and seeking to reduce the superiority of his
adversary by assailing him incessantly with torpedo craft. He may also
attempt the hazardous enterprise of sending out isolated cruisers to
prey upon his adversary's commerce afloat. But in the case supposed,
where the superiority of one side is so great as to compel the main
fleets of the other to seek the protection of their fortified ports,
such an enterprise is, as I shall show in a subsequent chapter, not only
extremely hazardous in itself, but quite incapable of inflicting such
loss on the superior adversary as would be likely to induce him to
abandon the conflict.
Nevertheless the command of the sea is not established, or at best it is
only partially, and it may be only temporarily, established by driving
the main fleets of the enemy into ports which are inaccessible to naval
force alone. They must not only be driven there but compelled to remain
there. This has generally been done in the past, and according to many,
but not all, naval authorities, it will generally have to be done in the
future by the operation known as blockade, whereby the enemy is
prevented from coming out, or is compelled if he does come out to fight
a superior force lying in wait outside. As a matter of fact, inasmuch as
a blockade to be really deterrent must be conducted by a blockading
force superior to that which is blockaded--for otherwise the latter need
not shun an engagement in the open with the former--it can rarely be the
interest of the blockader to prevent the exit of his adversary, since by
the hypothesis if he could get him out he could beat him. But the
blockade must nevertheless be maintained, because, although the
blockaded fleet cannot by that means be destroyed, it can, at any rate,
be immobilized and wiped off the board so long as it remains where it
is.
The situation in which a blockade is set up by one belligerent and
submitted to by the other is not identical with an effective command of
the sea, though in certain circumstances it may approximate very closely
to it. The blockaded forces may not be so thoroughly intimidated by the
superior forces of the blockaders that they could not or would not, if
they could, seek a favourable opportunity for breaking or evading the
blockade imposed upon them. They may merely be waiting in a position
unassailable by naval force alone until the blockading forces are so
weakened through incessant torpedo attack, through the wear and tear
inflicted on them by the nature of the service on which they are
engaged, through stress of weather, through the periodical necessity
which compels even the best found ships to withdraw temporarily from the
blockade for the purposes of repair, refit, and replenishment of their
stores, and through the fatigue imposed on their officers and crews by
the incessant vigilance which a blockade requires as to afford them a
favourable opportunity of challenging a decision in the open. Or, again,
if the forces of the blockaded belligerent are distributed between two
or more of his fortified ports, he may attempt an evasion of the
blockade at two or more of them for the purpose of combining the forces
thus liberated and attacking one or more of the blockading fleets in
superior force before they can re-establish their own superiority by
concentration. Broadly speaking, this was the plan of operations
adopted, or rather attempted, by Napoleon in the memorable campaign
which ended at Trafalgar. It was frustrated by the persistent energy of
Nelson, by the masterly dispositions of Barham at the Admiralty, by the
tenacity with which Cornwallis maintained the blockade at Brest, and by
the instinctive sagacity with which other commanders of the several
blockading and cruising squadrons nearly always did the right thing at
the right moment, divined Barham's purpose, and carried it out almost
automatically. Practically, Napoleon was beaten and his projected
invasion of England was abandoned many weeks before Trafalgar was won.
But the command of the sea was not thereby secured to England. It needed
Trafalgar and the destruction of the French and Spanish Fleets there
accomplished to effect that consummation. England thenceforth remained
in effective and almost undisputed command of the sea, and the
Peninsular campaigns of Wellington were for the first time rendered
possible. The contrasted phases of the conflict before and after
Trafalgar are perhaps the best illustration in history of the vast and
vital difference between a command of the sea in dispute and a command
of the sea established. Trafalgar was the turning-point in the long
conflict between England and Napoleon.