DISPUTED COMMAND IN GENERAL
The condition of disputed command of the sea is the normal condition at
the outbreak of any war in which operations at sea are involved between
two belligerents of approximately equal strength, or indeed between any
two belligerents, the weaker of whom is sufficiently inspired by the
_animus pugnandi_--or it may be by other motives rather political than
strategic in character--to try conclusions with his adversary in the
open. This follows immediately from the nature of command of the sea,
which is, it will be remembered, the effective control over the maritime
communications of the waters in dispute. I must here repeat, that the
phrase command of the sea has no definite meaning in time of peace. No
nation nowadays seeks in time of peace to control maritime
communications, that is, to exercise any authority or constraint over
any ships, whether warships or merchant vessels--other than those flying
its own flag--which traverse the seas on their lawful occasions. There
was, indeed, a time when England claimed what was called the
"sovereignty of the seas," that is, the right to exact at all times
certain marks of deference to her flag, in the form of certain salutes
of ceremony, from all ships traversing the seas surrounding the British
Islands, the narrow seas as they were called. But that is an entirely
different thing from the command of the sea in a strategic sense, and
has in fact no connection with it. It has long been abandoned and it
need only be mentioned here in order to be carefully distinguished from
the latter. Any nation seeking to exercise or secure the command of the
sea in this sense would in so doing engage in an act of war, and would
be regarded as so engaging by any other nation whose rights and
interests were in any way affected by the act. Hence the difference
between the two is plain. The claim to the sovereignty of the seas and
the exaction of the ceremonial observance--the lowering of a flag or a
sail--which symbolized it, was not in itself an act of war, though it
might lead to war if the claim were resisted. An attempt to assert or
secure the command of the sea is, on the other hand, in itself an act of
war and would never be made by any nation not prepared to take the
consequence in the instant outbreak of hostilities.
For what is it that a nation seeks to do when it attempts to exercise or
secure the command of the sea? It seeks to do nothing more and nothing
less than to deny freedom of access to the waters in dispute to the
ships, whether warships or merchant ships, of some other nation. It
denies the common right of highway, which is the essential attribute of
the sea, to that other nation, and seeks to secure the monopoly of that
right for itself. In other words, it seeks to drive its adversary's
warships from the sea, and either by the capture of his merchant vessels
to appropriate the wealth they contain or by destroying them to deprive
the adversary of its enjoyment. This is all that naval warfare as such
can do. If the enemy is not constrained by the destruction of his
warships and the extinction of his maritime commerce to submit to his
victorious adversary's will, other agencies, not exclusively naval in
character, must be employed to bring about that consummation. This means
that military force must be brought into operation, either for the
invasion of the defeated adversary's territory or for the occupation of
some of his possessions lying across the seas, if he has any. If he has
none, or if such as he has are not worth taking or holding--either as a
permanent possession or as what is called a material guarantee to be
used in the subsequent negotiations for peace--then the only alternative
is invasion. But that is a subject which demands a chapter to itself.
It rarely happens, however, that a great naval Power is devoid of
transmarine possessions altogether, or that such as it holds are
esteemed by it to be of so little value or importance that their
seizure by an enemy would leave matters _in statu quo_. Sea power is, as
a rule, the outcome of a flourishing maritime commerce. Maritime
commerce as it expands, tends, even apart from direct colonization, to
bring territorial occupation in its train. The origin and history of the
British rule in India is a signal illustration of this tendency. There
are other causes of territorial expansion across the seas, as Admiral
Mahan has pointed out in his latest work on _Naval Strategy_, but it is
a rule which admits of no exceptions that territorial possessions across
the seas, however they may have been acquired, compel the Power which
holds them to develop a navy which, in the last resort, must be capable
of defending them. It was not, indeed, the needs of maritime commerce
which induced the United States to acquire Puerto Rico and the
Philippines. Their acquisition was, as it were, a by-product of
victorious sea power. But the vast expansion of the United States Navy
which the last dozen years have witnessed is the direct result and the
logical consequence of their acquisition.
Applying these principles to the defence of the British Empire we see at
once that the command of the sea, in the sense already defined, is
essential to its successful prosecution. The case is not merely
exceptional, it is absolutely unique. The British Isles might recover
from the effects of a successful invasion, as other countries have done
in like case. But the destruction of their maritime commerce would ruin
them irretrievably, even if no invasion were undertaken. Half the
maritime commerce of the world is carried on under the British flag. The
whole of that commerce would be suppressed if an enemy once secured the
command of the sea. The British Isles would be starved out in a few
weeks. Whether an enemy so situated would decide to invade or
invest--that is, so to impede our commerce that only an insignificant
fraction of it could by evasion reach our ports--is a question not so
much of strategy as of the economics of warfare. But really it hardly
matters a pin which he decided to do. We should have to submit in either
case. What would happen to our Dominions, Dependencies, and Colonies is
plain. Those which are defenceless the enemy would seize if he thought
it worth his while. In the case supposed they could obtain no military
assistance from the mother-country. But those which could defend
themselves he would have to overcome, if he could, by fighting. The
great Dominions of the Empire would not fall into an enemy's lap merely
because he had compelled the United Kingdom to sue for peace. To subdue
them by force of arms would be a very formidable undertaking.
Such are the tremendous effects of an adverse command of the sea on an
insular kingdom and an oceanic empire, which carries on--not by virtue
of any artificial monopoly, but solely by virtue of its hardly won
ascendency in the economic struggle for existence--half the maritime
commerce of the world. On the other hand, its effects on any nation
which does not depend on the sea for its existence can never be so
overwhelming and may even be insignificant. Germany was very little
affected by the command of the sea enjoyed by France in the War of 1870.
But in view of the enormous growth of German maritime commerce in recent
years, a superiority of France at sea equal to that which she enjoyed in
1870 would now be a much more serious menace to Germany. In all such
cases the issue must be decided by military operations suitable to the
circumstances and the occasion--operations in which naval force may take
an indispensable part even though it may not directly decide the issue.
It was, for example, the United States army that captured Santiago and
secured the deliverance of Cuba; but it was the United States Navy alone
that enabled the troops to be in Cuba at all and to do what they did
there. Again, in the war between Russia and Japan it was the capture of
Port Arthur and the final overthrow at Tsu-Shima of all that remained of
Russia's effective naval forces that induced Russia to entertain
overtures for peace. But the reduction of Port Arthur was mainly the
work of the military arm and the continued successes of the Japanese
armies in Manchuria must have contributed largely to Russia's surrender.
These successes were, it is true, rendered possible by the Japanese Navy
alone. It cannot be said that the Japanese ever held the undisputed
command of the sea until after Tsu-Shima had been fought and won. But at
the very outset of the war they established such an ascendency over the
Russian naval forces in Far Eastern waters that the latter were in the
end reduced to something less than even a "fortress fleet." At Port
Arthur, writes Admiral Mahan, the fleet was "neither a fortress fleet,
for except the guns mounted from it, the fleet contributed nothing to
the defence of the place; nor yet a fleet in being, for it was never
used as such." Its _animus pugnandi_ was fatally depressed on the first
night of the war, and finally extinguished after the action of August
10.
The truth is, that in all the larger achievements of sea power--those,
that is, to which a combination of naval and military force is
indispensable--it is impossible to disengage the influence of one of
these factors on the final issue from that of the other, and perhaps
idle to attempt do to so. They act, as it were, like a chemical
combination, not like the resultant of two separate but correlated
mechanical forces, and their joint effect may be just as different from
what might be the effect of either acting separately as water is
different from the oxygen and hydrogen of which it is composed. But
their operation in this wise can only begin after the command of the sea
has been secured, or at least has been so far established as to reduce
to a negligible quantity the risk of conducting military operations
across seas of which the command is still nominally in dispute. Now
there are several phases or stages in the enterprise of securing the
command of the sea; but they all depend on the power and the will to
fight for it. There is no absolute command of the sea, except in the
case of hostilities between two belligerents, separated by the sea, one
of whom has no naval force at all. The solitary case in history of this
situation is that of the War in South Africa. A similar situation would
arise if one of two belligerents had completely destroyed all the
effective naval force of the other. But that is a situation of which
history affords few, if any, examples. Between these two extremes lies
the whole history of naval warfare.
There is, moreover, one characteristic of naval warfare which has no
exact counterpart in the conduct of military enterprises on land. This
is the power which a naval belligerent has of withdrawing his sea-going
force out of the reach of the sea-going force of the enemy by placing it
in sheltered harbours too strongly fortified for the enemy to reduce by
naval power alone. The only effective answer to this which the superior
belligerent can make is, as has already been shown, to establish a
blockade of the ports in question. This procedure is analogous to, but
not identical with, the investment by military forces of a fortress in
which an army has found shelter in the interior of the enemy's country.
But the essential difference is that the land fortress can be completely
invested so that no food or other supplies can reach it, whereas a sea
fortress cannot, unless it is situated on a small island, be completely
invested by naval force alone. In the one case, even if no assault is
attempted, starvation must sooner or later bring about the surrender of
the fortress together with any military force it contains, whereas in
the other the blockaded port being, as a rule, in open communication
with its own national territory, cannot be reduced by starvation.
Moreover, for reasons already explained, a maritime fortress cannot
nowadays be so closely blockaded as to prevent the exit of small craft
almost at all times or even to prevent the exit of squadrons of
battleships in circumstances favourable to the enterprise. Now the exit
of small craft equipped for torpedo attack is a much more serious threat
to the blockader than the exit of small craft, not so equipped, was in
the old days of close blockade. In those days small craft could do no
harm to ships of the line or even to frigates, whereas a torpedo craft
is nowadays in certain circumstances the equal and more than the equal
of a battleship. For these reasons the escape from a blockaded port of a
squadron of battleships might easily be regarded by the blockading enemy
as a less serious and even much more welcome incident of the campaign
than the frequent issue of swarms of torpedo craft skilfully handled,
daringly navigated, and sternly resolved to do or die in the attempt to
reduce the battle superiority of the enemy.
It follows from these premisses that a naval blockade--or a connected
series of blockades--can never be regarded as equivalent to an
established command of the sea. At its best it can only achieve a
temporary command of the sea in a state of unstable and easily disturbed
equilibrium. At its worst, that is when it is least close and least
effective, and when the _animus pugnandi_ of the enemy is unimpaired and
not to be intimidated, and is therefore ready at all times to take
advantage of "an opportunity too tempting to be resisted," it amounts to
a state of things in which the "fleet in being" becomes the dominant
factor of the situation. It is mainly a psychological problem and
scarcely a strategic problem at all to determine when the actual
situation approximates to either of these extremes, and the principle
embodied in the words _bene ausus vana contemnere_ is the key to the
solution of this problem. If the blockaded fleet is merely a fortress
fleet, or not even that, as was the Russian fleet at Port Arthur for
some time after the first night of the war, and even more after the
critical but indecisive conflict of August 10, then it is legitimate, as
Togo triumphantly showed, to regard the situation so established as so
far equivalent to a temporary command of the sea that military
operations, involving the security of oversea transit and the continuity
of oversea supply, might be undertaken with no greater risk than is
always inseparable from a vigorous initiative in war. But had the
Russian naval commanders been inspired--as, perhaps, the ill-fated
Makaroff alone was--with a genuine _animus pugnandi_, they might have
perceived that their one chance of bringing all the Japanese
enterprises, naval and military, to nought, was by fighting Togo's fleet
"to a frazzle," even if their own fleet perished in the conflict. Then
the Baltic Fleet, if it had any fight in it at all, must have made short
work of what remained of Togo's fleet, and the Japanese communications
with Manchuria being thereby severed, Russia might have dictated her own
terms of peace. The real lesson of that war is not that a true fleet in
being can ever be safely neglected, but that a fleet which can be
neglected with impunity is no true fleet in being. It should never be
forgotten that the problems of naval warfare are essentially
psychological and not mechanical in their nature. Their ultimate
determining factors are not material and ponderable forces operating
with measurable certainty, but those immaterial and imponderable forces
of the human mind and will which can be measured by no standard other
than the result. By the material standard so popular in these days, and
withal so full of fallacy, Nelson should have been defeated at Trafalgar
and Rozhdestvensky should have been victorious at Tsu-Shima.
It is, of course, idle to press the doctrine of the command of the sea
and the principle of the fleet in being so far as to affirm that no
military enterprise of any kind can be prosecuted across the sea unless
an unassailable command of the sea has first been established. Such a
proposition is disallowed by the whole course of naval history, which
is, in truth, for the most part, the history of the command of the sea
remaining in dispute, often for long periods, between two belligerents,
the balance inclining sometimes to one side and sometimes to the other,
according to the fortune of war. The whole question is in the main one
of degree and of circumstances. Broadly speaking, it may be said that
the larger the military enterprise contemplated the more complete must
be the command of the sea before it can be prosecuted with success and
the more certain the assurance of its continuance in unimpaired
efficiency until the objects of the enterprise are accomplished.
Conversely, the strength, even if inferior, of the fleet in being, its
strategic disposition, its tactical efficiency, and, above all, its
_animus pugnandi_ must all be accurately gauged by a naval commander
before he can safely decide that a military expedition of any magnitude
can be undertaken without fear of interference from an enemy's fleet. It
was the neglect of these principles that ruined the Athenian expedition
to Syracuse. It was equally the neglect of the same principles that
entailed the failure of Napoleon's expedition to Egypt and the ultimate
surrender of the army he had deserted there. It was the politic
recognition of them that, as Admiral Mahan has shown in a brilliant
passage, compelled Hannibal to undertake the arduous passage of the Alps
for the purpose of invading Italy instead of transporting his troops by
sea.
The limits of legitimate enterprise across seas of which the command
although firmly gripped is not unassailably established, are perhaps
best illustrated by the story of Craig's expedition to Malta and Sicily
towards the close of the Trafalgar campaign. This remarkable episode,
which has received less attention than it deserves from most historians,
has been represented by Mr Julian Corbett in his instructive work on
_The Campaign of Trafalgar_ as the masterly offensive stroke by which
Pitt hoped to abate, and, if it might be, to overthrow the military
ascendency which Napoleon had established in Europe. That view has not
been universally accepted by Mr Corbett's critics, but the episode is
entitled to close attention for the light it throws on the central
problem of naval warfare. Pitt had concluded a treaty with Russia, which
involved not merely naval but military co-operation with that Power in
the Mediterranean. Craig's expedition was the shape which the military
co-operation was to take. It consisted of some five thousand troops, and
when it embarked in April 1805 it was convoyed by only two ships of the
line in its transit over seas which, for all the Government which
dispatched it knew, might be infested at the time by more than one fleet
of the enemy.
Here, then, is a case in which the doctrine of the command of the sea
and the principle of the fleet in being might seem to be violated in a
crucial fashion. But the men who directed the arms of England in those
days knew what they were about. Long before they allowed the expedition
to start they had established a close and, as they thought, an effective
blockade of all the Atlantic and Mediterranean ports in which either
French or Spanish warships ready for sea were to be found. Nevertheless
we have here a signal illustration of the essential difference between a
command of the sea which has been made absolute by the destruction of
the enemy's available naval forces--as was practically the case after
Trafalgar--and one which is only virtual and potential, because,
although the enemy's fleets have for the time been masked or sealed up
in their ports, they may, should the fortune of war so determine, resume
at any time the position and functions of a true fleet in being. On the
strength of a command of the sea of this merely contingent and potential
character Pitt and his naval advisers had persuaded themselves that the
way to the Mediterranean was open for the transit of troops. Craig's
transports, accordingly, put to sea on April 19. But a week before
Villeneuve with his fleet had left Toulon for the last time, had evaded
Nelson's watch, and passing rapidly through the Straits, had called off
Cadiz, and picking up such Spanish ships as were there had disappeared
into space, no man knowing whither he had gone. He might have gone to
the East Indies, he might have gone to the West Indies, as in fact he
did, or he might be cruising unmolested in waters where he could hardly
fail to come across Craig's transports with their weak escort of two
ships of the line. It was a situation which no one had foreseen or
regarded as more than a contingency too remote to be guarded against
when Craig's expedition was allowed to start. How Nelson viewed the
situation may be seen from his reply to the Admiralty, written on his
receipt of the first intimation that the expedition was about to start.
"As the 'Fisgard' sailed from Gibraltar on the 9th instant, two hours
after the enemy's fleet from Toulon had passed the Straits, I have to
hope she would arrive time enough in the Channel to give their Lordships
information of this circumstance _and to prevent the Rear-Admiral and
Troops before mentioned_"--that is Craig's expedition--"_from leaving
Spithead_." In other words, Nelson held quite plainly that had the
Admiralty known that Villeneuve was at sea outside the Straits they
would not have allowed Craig to start. That Nelson was right in this
assumption is proved by the fact that acting on the inspiration of
Barham--perhaps the greatest strategist that ever presided at
Whitehall--the Admiralty, as soon as they had grasped the situation,
sent orders to Calder off Ferrol, that if he came in contact with the
expedition he was to send it back to Plymouth or Cork under cruiser
escort and retain the two ships of the line which had so far escorted it
under his own command. The fact was that if Craig's expedition once
passed Finisterre it would find itself totally without the naval
protection on which the Admiralty relied when it was dispatched.
Villeneuve was outside the Straits no one knew where, and had been
reinforced by the Spanish ships from Cadiz. Nelson, whose exact
whereabouts was equally unknown to the Admiralty, was detained in the
Mediterranean by baffling winds and also by the necessity of making
sure before quitting his station that Villeneuve had not gone to the
Levant. Orde, who had been blockading Cadiz with a weak squadron which
had to retire on Villeneuve's approach, had convinced himself, on
grounds not without cogency, that Villeneuve was making for the
northward, and had, quite correctly on this hypothesis, fallen back on
the fleet blockading Brest, being ignorant of the peril to which Craig
was exposed. Thus Craig's expedition seemed to be going straight to its
doom unless Calder could intercept it and give it orders to return.
However, Craig and Knight, whose flag flew in one of the ships of the
line escorting the expedition, passed Finisterre without communicating
with Calder, and having by this time got wind of their peril, they
hurried into Lisbon, there to await developments in comparative safety,
though their presence caused great embarrassment to the Portuguese
Government and raised a diplomatic storm. It was not until Craig and
Knight had ascertained that Villeneuve was out of the way and that
Nelson had passed the Straits that they put to sea again and met Nelson
off Cape St Vincent. Nelson had by this time satisfied himself, after an
exhaustive survey of the situation, that Villeneuve had gone to the West
Indies, and resolved to follow him there as soon as he had sped the
expedition on its appointed way. But so apprehensive was he of the
Spanish ships remaining at Carthagena, that, inferior to Villeneuve as
he was, he detached the "Royal Sovereign" from his own squadron, and
placed her under Knight's command. It only remains to add that the
expedition reached its destination in safety and that its result was the
Battle of Maida, fought in the following year--the first battle in which
Napoleon's troops crossed bayonets with British infantry and were beaten
by an inferior force. The expedition was also the indirect cause of the
Battle of Trafalgar itself, for it was in order to frustrate the
coalition with Russia of which it was the instrument that Napoleon had
ordered Villeneuve to make for the Mediterranean when he finally left
Cadiz to encounter Nelson on his path. Thus was it, as Mr Corbett says,
"to prove the insidious drop of poison--the little sting--that was to
infect Napoleon's empire with decay and to force his hand with so
tremendous a result."
Yet it very nearly miscarried at the outset. Nelson and Barham--between
them a combination of warlike energy and strategic insight, without a
parallel in the history of naval warfare--both realized the tremendous
risks it ran. It may be argued that had Villeneuve gone to the north he
would have found himself in the thick of British squadrons closing in on
Brest and vastly superior in force. Yet Allemand, who had escaped a few
weeks later from Rochefort, was able to cruise in these very waters for
over five months without being brought to book. It is true that the
destruction or capture of five thousand British troops would not
seriously have affected the larger issues of the naval campaign, but it
would have broken up the coalition with Russia by which Pitt set so much
store, and which Mr Corbett at any rate represents as having exercised a
decisive influence on the ultimate fortunes of Napoleon. The moral of
the whole story seems to be that competent strategists--for the world
has known none more competent and none more intrepid than Nelson and
Barham--will not risk even a minor expedition at sea unless its line of
advance is sufficiently controlled by superior naval force to ensure its
unmolested transit. The principle thus exhibited in the case of a minor
expedition manifestly applies with immensely increased force to those
larger expeditions which assume the dimensions of an invasion. It was
not until long after Trafalgar had been fought, and the command of the
sea had been secured beyond the possibility of challenge, that the
campaigns in the Peninsula were undertaken--campaigns which ended and
were always intended to end, should the fortune of war so decree, in the
invasion of France and the overthrow of Napoleon. This opens up the
whole question of invasion, which will be discussed in the next
chapter.