an enemy who took the simple and obvious course of closing his
line could baffle the attack, and while the retreat to leeward
remained open could still slip away. On the 12th of April 1782
(battle of Dominica) Rodney was induced, by the disorder in the
French line, to break his own formation and pass through the
enemy. He took the French flag-ship and five other vessels.
The favourable result of this departure from the old practice of
keeping the formation intact throughout the battle ruined the
moral authority of the orthodox system of tactics. In the French
war which began in 1793 Lord Howe (battle of 1st of June)
ordered his fleet to steer through the enemy, and to put themselves
on his line only as a means of bringing his fleet into action,
and then played to produce a mêlée in which the individual
superiority of his vessels would have free play. Throughout the
war, which lasted, with a brief interval of peace, from 1793
to 1815, British admirals grew constantly bolder in the method
they adopted for producing the desired mêlée (battles of St Vincent,
Camperdown, Trafalgar). It has sometimes been argued
that their line of attack was rash and would have proved
disastrous if tried against more skilful opponents. But this
is one of those criticisms which are of value only against those
who think that there can be a magic efficacy in any particular
attack, which makes its success infallible. That the tactics of
British admirals of the great wars of 1793–1815 had in themselves
no such virtue was amply demonstrated at the engagement
off Lissa in 1811. They were justified because the reliance of
admirals on the quality of their fleets was well founded. It
should be borne in mind that a vessel while bearing down on an
enemy’s line could not be exposed to the fire of three enemies
at once when at a less distance than 750 yds., because the guns
could not be trained to converge on a nearer point. The whole
range of effective fire was only a thousand yards or a very little
over. The chance that a ship would be dismasted and stopped
before reaching the enemy’s line was small.
The improvements in the construction of ships, which had so much influence on the development of tactics, had its effect also on strategy. The great aims of a fleet in war must be to keep the coast of its own country free from attack, to secure the freedom of its trade, and to destroy the enemy’s fleet or confine it to port. The first and Influence of improved ship-building. second of these purposes can be attained by the successful achievement of the third—the destruction or paralysis of the hostile fleet. But till after the end of the 17th century it was thought impossible, or at least very rash, to keep the great ships out of port between September and May or June. Therefore continuous watch on an enemy by blockading his ports was beyond the power of any navy. Therefore too, as the opponent might be at sea before he could be stopped, the movements of fleets were much subordinated to the need for providing convoy to the trade. It was not till the middle of the 18th century that the continuous blockade first carried out by Lord Hawke in 1758–59, and then brought to perfection by Earl St Vincent and other British admirals between 1793 and 1815, became possible.
Modern Times.—The interval of ninety years between 1815 and 1904 (the opening of the Russo-Japanese conflict) was marked by no naval war. There was fighting at sea, and there were prolonged blockades, but there were no encounters between large and well appointed navies. During this period an entire revolution took place in the means of propulsion, armament and material of construction of ships. Steam was applied to warships, at first as an auxiliary force, in the second quarter of the 19th century. The Crimean War gave a great stimulus to the development of the guns. It also brought about the application of iron to ships as a cuirass. Very soon metal was adopted as the material out of which ships were made. The extended use of shells, by immensely increasing the danger of fire, rendered so inflammable a substance as wood too dangerous for employment in a war-ship. France has the honour of having set the example of employing iron as a cuirass, while England was the first to take it as the sole material. Changes so sweeping as these could not take place without affecting all the established ideas as to the conduct of war at sea. The time of revolution in means of propulsion, armament and construction was also a time of much speculation. Doubts and obscurities remained unsolved because they had never been brought to the test of actual fighting on an adequate scale. As the 19th century drew to a close, another element of uncertainty was introduced by the development of the torpedo. A weapon which is a floating and moving mine, capable up to a certain point of being directed on its course, invisible or very hard to trace, and able to deliver its blow beneath the water-line, was so complete a novelty that its action was hard indeed to foresee and therefore particularly liable to be exaggerated. From the torpedo sprang too the submarine vessel, which aims at striking below the surface, where it itself is, like its weapon, invisible, or nearly so.
How to solve the problems which science has set has been the task of thoughtful naval officers—and of the governments which the military seaman serves. The questions to be solved may be stated in the following order. What would be the effect: 1st, of the employment of steam, or of any substitute for steam other than the wind or the oar; 2nd, of the development of the gun; 3rd, of the use of metal as a material of construction; 4th, of the use of a weapon and a vessel acting below the surface of the water, and if not wholly invisible at least very much hidden?
The belief that steam had given the lesser fleet an advantage over the greater—that it had, in a phrase once popular among Englishmen, “bridged the Channel,”—need only be touched on for its historical interest. It was an intelligible, perhaps pardonable, example of the confusion produced by a novelty of improved capacity on the minds of those who were not prepared to consider it in all its bearings. A moment’s thought ought to have shown that where both sides had the command of steam, the proportion between them would remain what it was before. The only exception would be that the fleet which was steering in a direction already laid down would have a somewhat greater advantage than of old, over another which was endeavouring to detect its presence and course. Its movements would be more rapid, and it could steam through a fog by which it would be hidden in a way impossible for a sailing ship. On the other hand, such a fleet could be much more rapidly pursued and interrupted when once its course was known. The influence which the freedom and certainty of movement conferred by steam would have on the powers of fleets and ships presented a problem less easy to dispose of. Against the advantage they conferred was to be set the limitation they imposed. The necessity for replacing indispensable fuel was a restriction unknown to the sailing ship, which needed only to renew its provisions and water—stores more easily obtained all the world over than coal. Hence doubts naturally arose as to how far a state which did not possess coaling stations in all parts of the world could conduct extensive operations over great distances. The events of the recent Russo-Japanese War lead to the conclusion that the obligation to obtain coal has not materially limited the freedom of movement of fleets. By carrying store vessels with him, by coaling at sea, and taking advantage of the friendly neutrality of certain ports on his route, the Russian admiral, Rojdesvensky, reached the Far East in 1905 in less time and with less difficulty than he could have done in days when he would have been liable to delay by calms, contrary winds and loss of spars in gales. The amount of skill on the part of the crews required to carry a fleet a long distance would even appear to be less than it was of old. From this it would seem to follow that modern fleets possess no less capacity than the old sailing fleets for the great operations of war at a distance, or for maintaining blockades. Advantage and disadvantage counterbalance one another, and the proportion remains the same. Blockade is only another name for the maintenance of a watch on an enemy’s squadron in port by a force capable of fighting him if he comes out. Admiral Togo blockaded the Russian squadron at Port Arthur in 1904 as effectually as any admiral has done the work in the past. The mobility given to the blockaded fleet by steam has been exactly counterbalanced by the increased mobility of the watch. The proportions remain the same.
