THE DIFFERENTIATION OF NAVAL FORCE
A warship, considered in the abstract, may be defined as a vessel
employed, and generally constructed, for the purpose of conveying across
the seas to the place of conflict, the weapons that are to be used in
conflict, the men who are to use them, and all such stores, whether of
food or other supplies, as will give to the vessel as large a measure of
enduring mobility as is compatible with her displacement. If we confine
our attention to the period posterior to the employment of the gun on
shipboard as the principal weapon of offence, and if we regard the
torpedo as a particular kind of projectile, and the tube from which it
is discharged as a particular kind of gun, we may condense this
definition into the modern formula that a warship is a floating
gun-carriage. With the methods and implements of sea warfare anterior to
the introduction of the gun we need not concern ourselves. They belong
to the archaeology of the subject. It suffices to point out that in all
periods of naval warfare the nature of the principal weapon employed,
and to some extent that of the motive power available, have not only
governed the structure of the ship and determined the practicable limit
of its displacement, but have also exercised a dominant influence over
the ordering of fleets and their disposition in action. Sea tactics have
never been more elaborate than they were in the last days of the galley
period which came to an end with the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, less
than a score of years before the defeat of the Armada in 1588. But the
substitution of sails for oars as the motive power of the warship and
the more general employment of the gun as the principal weapon of
offence necessarily entailed radical changes in the tactical methods
which had been slowly evolved during the galley period. At first all was
confusion and a sea-fight was reduced for a time to a very disorderly
and tumultuous affair. "We went down in no order," wrote an officer who
was present at Trafalgar, "but every man to take his bird." This is a
very inaccurate and even more unintelligent account of the tactics
pursued at Trafalgar; but it might very well stand for a picturesque
summary of the tactical confusion which prevailed at the period of the
Armada and for half a century afterwards.
Gradually, however, order was again evolved out of the prevailing chaos.
But it was not the old order. It was a new order based on the
predominance of the gun and its disposition on board the ship. To go
down in no order and for each man to take his bird would mean that each
ship, whether large or small, would be free as far as circumstances
permitted to select an adversary not disproportioned in strength to
herself, so that there was no very pressing need for the fleet to
consist of homogeneous units, nor for the elimination of comparatively
small craft from a general engagement. But in the course of the Dutch
Wars the practice was slowly evolved of fighting in a compact or
close-hauled line, the ships being ranged in a line ahead--that is, each
succeeding ship following in the wake of her next ahead--in order to
give free play to the guns disposed mainly on the broadside, and being,
for purposes of mutual support, disposed as closely to each other as was
compatible with individual freedom of evolution and manoeuvre. This
disposition necessarily involved the exclusion from the line of battle
of all vessels below a certain average or standard of fighting strength,
since it was no longer possible for "every man to take his bird" and a
weak ship might find herself in conflict with an adversary of
overpowering strength in the enemy's line. Hence the main fighting
forces of naval belligerents came in time to be composed entirely of
"ships fit to lie in a line," as Torrington phrased it, of "capital
ships," as they were frequently called in former days, of "line of
battle ships" or "ships of the line," as afterwards they were more
commonly called, or of "battleships" as is nowadays the accepted
appellation. Other elements of naval force not "fit to lie in a line"
were also required, as I am about to show, and took different forms at
different times, but the root of the whole evolution lies in the
elimination of the non-capital ship from the main fighting line. In a
very instructive chapter of his _Naval Warfare_, Admiral Colomb has
traced the whole course of this gradual "Differentiation of Naval
Force." But for my purpose it suffices to cite the briefer exposition of
a French writer quoted by Admiral Mahan in his _Influence of Sea Power
upon History_:--
"With the increase of the power of the ship of war, and with the
perfecting of its sea and warlike qualities, there has come an equal
progress in the art of utilizing them.... As naval evolutions become
more skilful, their importance grows from day to day. To these
evolutions there is needed a base, a point from which they depart and to
which they return. A fleet of warships must always be ready to meet an
enemy; logically, therefore, this point of departure for naval
evolutions must be the order of battle. Now since the disappearance of
galleys, almost all the artillery is found upon the sides of a ship of
war. Hence it is the beam that must necessarily and always be turned
toward the enemy. On the other hand it is necessary that the sight of
the latter must never be interrupted by a friendly ship. Only one
formation allows the ships of the same fleet to satisfy fully these
conditions. That formation is the line ahead. The line, therefore, is
imposed as the only order of battle, and consequently as the basis of
all fleet tactics. In order that this line of battle, this long thin
line of guns, may not be injured or broken at some point weaker than the
rest, there is at the same time felt to be the necessity of putting in
it only ships which, if not of equal force, have at least equally strong
sides. Logically it follows, at the same moment in which the line ahead
became definitely the order for battle, there was established the
distinction between the 'ships of the line' alone destined for a place
therein, and the lighter ships meant for other uses."
But the need for other and lighter ships "meant for other uses" and not
"fit to lie in a line," is equally demonstrable. The function of
battleships is to act in concert. They must therefore be concentrated in
fleets sufficiently strong to give a good account of the enemy's fleets
opposed to them. This does not necessarily mean that all the fleets of a
belligerent must be concentrated in a single position. But it does mean
that if disposed in accordance with the dispositions of the enemy they
must be so disposed and connected, that, moving on interior lines, they
can always bring a superior force to the point of contact with the
enemy. Subject to this paramount condition, that of being able to
concentrate more rapidly than the enemy can, dispersal of naval
force--not of units but of organized fighting fleets--is generally a
better disposition than extreme concentration. But it is a fatal error
in strategy so to disperse your fleets as to expose them to the risk of
being overpowered by the enemy in detail.
The fleets of capital ships thus organized, and disposed as occasion may
require and sound strategy dictate, are not, however, by any means to be
regarded as autonomous and self-sufficing organisms. They are rather to
be regarded as the moving base of a much larger organization, much more
widely dispersed, consisting of lighter vessels not fit to lie in a
line, but specially adapted to discharge functions which capital ships
cannot as such discharge, yet which are indispensable either to the full
efficiency of the latter or to the maintenance of an effective command
of the sea. The first of these functions is the collection and rapid
transmission of intelligence as to the enemy's dispositions and
movements over as wide an area of the waters in dispute as is compatible
with communication rapid enough to allow of counter-movements being made
before it is too late. The development of wireless telegraphy has
largely extended this area, but it is not without limits in practice,
and those limits are already narrower than the extreme range of a single
transmission by wireless telegraphy. For example, a warship in the
Levant might, if the conditions were exceptionally favourable,
communicate by direct wireless with another warship in the Orkneys. But
the information thus transmitted would hardly be likely directly to
influence the movements and dispositions of the latter. If it did it
would probably not be through the immediate initiative of the Admiral
commanding in the North Sea, but through the supreme control of all the
naval forces of the belligerent affected, exercised through the General
Staff of the Navy at the seat of Government. It may here be remarked in
passing that the development of wireless telegraphy will probably be
found in war to strengthen this supreme control and to weaken to that
extent the independent and isolated initiative of individual
Commanders-in-Chief. But that is not necessarily a disadvantage, and
even so far as it is disadvantage at all it is more than balanced by the
immense corresponding advantage of keeping the War Staff at all times in
direct touch with every part of the field of naval operations, and
thereby making it the focus of all available information, and the
directing authority for all the larger strategy of the campaign. Except
in degree, moreover, there is nothing new in this. When Nelson was
returning across the Atlantic, after chasing Villeneuve out of the West
Indies, his only way of informing the Admiralty of the nature of the
situation was to send on Bettesworth in the brig "Curieux" with his
news. Nowadays a modern "Curieux" would be able to send on the news as
soon as she came within fifteen hundred or possibly two thousand miles
from the British Isles, and Nelson at the same distance might have
received his orders direct from the Admiralty. But the special point to
note is that as soon as Bettesworth's information was received at the
Admiralty, Barham, the First Lord of the Admiralty, instantly issued
orders which profoundly modified the dispositions of the fleets engaged
in blockading the French ports and led directly to Calder's action off
Finisterre, and in the sequel to the abandonment by Napoleon of all his
projects of invasion and the destruction of the allied fleets at
Trafalgar. There were giants in those days both afloat and ashore. But
the giants afloat did not resent the interference of the giants ashore,
and, as Mr Corbett has shown, the Trafalgar campaign was conducted with
consummate sagacity by Barham, who embodied in himself the War Staff of
the time.
Such is the transcendent importance of intelligence, and of its
collection, transmission, collation, interpretation, and translation
into supreme executive orders. Its collection and transmission is mainly
the function of cruising ships disposed either individually or in small
groups for the purpose, and at such a distance from the main body of
battleships as is not incompatible with the movements of the latter
being controlled and directed, either by their immediate commanders, or
by the War Staff at the centre, according to the information received
from the outlying cruisers. Such cruising vessels may vary in size and
strength from the modern battle-cruiser, so heavily armed and armoured
as to be not incapable of taking a place, on occasion, in the line of
battle, down to the smallest torpedo craft which is endowed with
sufficient enduring mobility to enable her to keep the sea and to cruise
as near as may be to the enemy's ports. I have already indicated the
other collateral functions which will have to be discharged by torpedo
craft in case of a blockade and pointed out the vital distinction which
differentiates them from the small craft of the past in that in certain
circumstances they are capable of taking a formidable part in a fleet
action even as against the most powerful battleships. But we are here
considering them solely from the point of view of their cruising
functions, whether as guarding their own shores or watching those of the
enemy with a view to fighting on occasion and to observation at all
times. Their supports will be cruisers of larger size, disposed at
suitable distances in the rear, and themselves supported in like manner
by successive cordons or patrols of cruisers increasing in size and
power, until we come to the battle fleet as the concentrated nucleus of
the whole organization. This is merely an abstract or diagrammatic
exposition of such an organization, and it is of course liable to almost
infinite variation in the infinite variety of warlike operations at sea,
but it serves to exhibit the _rationale_ of the differentiation of naval
force into battleships, cruisers, and small craft.
It has sometimes been argued that, inasmuch as the torpedo craft is, or
may be, in certain conditions, more than a match for even the biggest
battleship, battleships together with all intermediate ships between the
battleship and the torpedo vessel, are not unlikely to be some day
regarded as superfluous and in consequence to be discarded altogether
from the naval armament of even a first-class maritime Power. It is true
that the range and accuracy of the torpedo have latterly undergone an
immense development, so that a range of even ten thousand yards or five
sea-miles is no longer beyond its powers. It is true that the
development of the submarine vessel has vastly intensified the menace of
the torpedo and it may soon be true that the development of aircraft
will add a new and very formidable menace to the supremacy of the
battleship. But except for this last consideration, which is at present
exceedingly speculative, a little reflection will disclose the
underlying fallacy of arguments of this kind. The enduring mobility of
the torpedo craft is necessarily limited. It is incapable of that wide
range of action which is required of warships if they are to establish
and maintain any effective command of the sea. It is exceedingly
vulnerable to ships of a larger size, and of more ample enduring
mobility. These again will be vulnerable in their turn to ships of a
still larger size and thus the logic of the situation brings us back to
the battleship once more with its characteristic functions. It may
perhaps be urged that this chain of argument takes too little account of
the submarine vessel which is at present singularly invulnerable because
for the most part invisible to any vessels, whether big or little, which
operate only on the surface and even if discovered betimes by the
latter, is not very readily assailable by them. But of two things one.
Either the submarine vessel will remain small and therefore weak, and
lacking in enduring mobility, in which case it can never establish and
maintain an effective command of the sea. Or it will grow indefinitely
in size, in which case it will fall under the inexorable stress of the
logic which brings us back once more to the battleship. It may be that
the battleship of the still distant future will be a submersible
battleship. But many exceedingly complex problems of construction and
stability will have to be solved before that consummation is reached.
Lastly, the specific function of the so-called battle-cruiser would seem
to need some further elucidation. At first sight this hybrid type of
vessel might seem to be an anomalous intrusion into the time-honoured
hierarchy of battleship, cruiser, and small craft, which the ripe
experience of many wars, battles, and campaigns had finally established
in the last golden days of the sailing ship period. It is indeed held by
some high authorities that the battle-cruiser is in very truth a hybrid
and an anomaly, and that no adequate reason for its existence can be
given. In face of these opinions I cannot presume to dogmatize on the
subject. But some not wholly irrelevant considerations may be advanced.
The battle-cruiser is, as its name implies, a vessel not only fitted by
the nature of its armour and armament "to lie in a line," whenever
occasion may require, but also exceedingly well qualified by its armour
and armament, and still more by its speed, to discharge many of the
functions of a cruiser either alone or in company with other cruisers.
In this latter capacity, it can overhaul nearly every merchant ship
afloat, it can scout far and wide, it can push home a vital
reconnaissance in cases where a weaker and slower cruiser would have to
run away if she could, it can serve as a rallying point to a squadron of
smaller cruisers engaged in the defence of this or that vital line of
communication, and alone or in company with a consort of the same type
it can hold the terminal and focal points of any such line against
almost any number of hostile cruisers inferior in defensive and
offensive powers to itself. Such are its powers and capacities when
acting as a cruiser proper. But it may be thought that in the stress of
conflict it will have very little opportunity of displaying these very
exceptional powers because an admiral in command of a fighting fleet
will never, when anticipating an engagement with the enemy, consent to
weaken his fighting line by detaching so powerful a unit for scouting or
other cruising purposes. That is as it may be. It will depend on many
circumstances of the moment not to be clearly anticipated or defined
beforehand; on the strength of the enemy's force, on the personality,
sagacity, and fortitude of the admiral--whether he is or is not a man of
the mettle and temper ascribed to Nelson by Admiral Mahan in a passage
already quoted--on the comparative need as determined by the
circumstances of the moment of scouting for information, of cruising
for the defence of trade, or of strengthening the battle line for a
decisive conflict to the uttermost extent of the nation's resources. It
is unbecoming to assume that in the crisis of his country's fate an
admiral will act either as a fool or as a poltroon. It is the country's
fault if a man capable of so acting is placed in supreme command, and
for that there is no remedy. But it is sounder to assume that the
admiral selected for command is a man not incapable of disposing his
force to the best advantage. "We must," said Lord Goschen, on one
occasion, "put our trust in Providence and a good admiral." If a nation
cannot find a good admiral in its need it is idle to trust in
Providence.
It remains to consider the function of the battle-cruiser in the line of
battle. The lines of battle in former times were often composed of ships
of varying size and power. There was a legitimate prejudice against
ships of excessive size, although their superior power in action was
recognized--we have the unimpeachable testimony on that point of
Nelson's Hardy, a man of unrivalled fighting experience to whom Nelson
himself attributed "an intuitive right judgment"--because they were
unhandy in manoeuvre and slow in sailing as compared with ships of more
moderate dimensions. But except for difficulties of docking--a very
serious consideration from the financial point of view--hardly any
limit can be assigned to the size of the modern warship on these
particular grounds. Quite the contrary. Other things being equal, the
bigger the ship the higher the speed, and it is well known that ships of
the Dreadnought type are as handy to steer as a torpedo boat. For
tactical reasons, moreover, it is not expedient to lengthen the line of
battle unduly. Hence there is a manifest advantage in concentrating
offensive power, as far as may be, in single units. On the other hand,
the experience and practice of the eighteenth century showed
conclusively that there was also a distinct advantage in having in the
line of battle a certain number of ships which, being smaller than their
consorts, were more handy and faster sailing than the latter. The enemy
might not want to fight. Very often he did not, and by crowding all
possible sail he did his best to get away. In this case the only way to
bring him to action was for the pursuing admiral to order "a general
chase"--that is, to direct his ships, disregarding the precise line of
battle, to hurry on with all possible sail after the enemy so that the
fastest ships of the pursuing fleet might bring individually to action
the laggards of the retreating fleet and hold them until the main body
of the pursuing fleet came up. In this case the retreating admiral must
either return to the succour of his ships astern and thereby accept the
general action which he sought to avoid, or abandon his overtaken ships
to the enemy without attempting to rescue them. Hawke's action in
Quiberon Bay and Duncan's action off Camperdown are two of the most
memorable examples of this particular mode of attack, and their
brilliant results are a striking testimony to its efficacy. If ever in
the naval battles of the future it becomes expedient for an admiral to
order a general chase, it stands to reason that ships of the
battle-cruiser type will be invaluable for the purpose. Their speed will
enable them to hold the tail of the enemy's line, and their power will
enable them to crush it unless the retreating admiral who seeks to avoid
a decisive action turns back to succour such of his ships as are
assailed and thereby renders a decisive action inevitable.
There is, moreover, another function to be assigned to the
battle-cruiser in a general action, and that is a function which was
defined once for all by Nelson himself in the immortal memorandum in
which he explained to his captains the mode of attack he proposed to
carry out at Trafalgar. "I have," wrote Nelson, "made up my mind to keep
the fleet in that position of sailing ... that the order of sailing is
to be the order of battle, placing the fleet in two lines of sixteen
ships each, with an advanced squadron of eight _of the fastest sailing
two-decked ships_ which will always make, if wanted, a line of
twenty-four sail, on whichever line the Commander-in-Chief may direct."
Owing to the lack of ships this disposition was not adopted on the day
of Trafalgar, but the principle involved is not affected by that
circumstance. That principle is that a squadron of the fastest sailing
ships in the fleet was to be detached from the two fighting lines
entrusted with the initial attack, and reserved or "refused" until the
development of the main attack had disclosed to the Commander-in-Chief
the point at which the impact of this "advanced squadron" would by
superior concentration on that point secure that the enemy should there
be decisively overpowered. The essence of the matter is that the ships
so employed should by virtue of their superior speed be endowed with a
tactical mobility sufficient to enable them to discharge the function
assigned to them. I need hardly insist on the close analogy which
subsists between Nelson's "advanced squadron" and a modern squadron of
battle-cruisers similarly employed, and although the conflict of modern
warships must needs differ in many essential respects from the conflicts
of sailing ships in Nelson's days, yet I think a clear and authoritative
exposition of one at least of the uses and functions of the
battle-cruiser in a fleet action may still be found in what I have
called elsewhere "the last tactical word of the greatest master of sea
tactics the world has ever known, the final and flawless disposition of
sailing ships marshalled for combat."