A History of Sea Power Part 14

The accession of William III was the signal for England's entry into the war of the League of Augsburg (1688-1697) against France, and the effort of the French king to put James II back again upon the English throne. By this time the French navy had been so greatly strengthened that at the outset it outnumbered the combined fleets of the English and the Dutch. It boasted the only notable admiral of this period, Tourville, but it missed every opportunity to do something decisive. It failed to keep William from landing in England with an army; it failed also to keep the English from landing and supplying an army in Ireland, where they raised the siege of Londonderry and won the decisive victory of the Boyne. On the other hand the British navy was handled with equal irresolution and blindness in strategy.

It accomplished what it did in keeping communications open with Ireland through the mistakes of the French, and its leaders seemed to be equally unaware of the importance of winning definitely the control of the sea.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THREE-DECKED SHIP OF THE LINE, 18TH CENTURY]

If the naval strategy on both sides was feeble the tactics were equally so. The contrast between the fighting of Blake, Monk, Tromp and de Ruyter and that of the admirals of this period is striking.

For example, on May 1, 1689, the English admiral Herbert and the French admiral Chateaurenault fought an indecisive action in Bantry Bay, Ireland. After considerable powder had been shot away without the loss of a ship on either side, the French went back to protect their transports in the bay; Herbert also withdrew, and was made Earl of Torrington for his "victory." This same officer commanding a Dutch and English fleet encountered the French under Tourville off Beachy Head on the south coast of England (July 10, 1690).

It is true that Tourville's force was stronger, but Torrington acted with no enterprise and was thoroughly beaten. At the same time the French admiral showed lack of push in following up his victory, which might have been crushing. By this time the line ahead order of fighting had become a fetich on both sides. The most noted naval battle of this war is that of La Hogue (May 29, 1692), which has been celebrated as a great British victory. In this action an allied fleet of 99 were opposed to a French fleet of 44 under Tourville. Tourville offered battle under such odds only because he had imperative orders from his king to fight the enemy. During the action the French did not lose a single ship, but in the four days' retreat the vessels became separated in trying to find shelter and fifteen were destroyed or taken. This was a severe blow to the the French navy but by no means decisive. The subsequent inactivity of the fleet was due to the demands of the war on land.

As the war became more and more a continental affair, Louis was compelled to utilize all his resources for his military campaigns.

For this reason the splendid fleet with which he had begun the war gradually disappeared from the sea. Some of these men of war were lent to great privateersmen like Jean Bart and Du Guay Trouin, who took out powerful squadrons of from five to ten ships of the line, strong enough to overcome the naval escorts of a British convoy, and ravaged English commerce. In this matter of protecting shipping the naval strategy was as vacillating and blind as in everything else. Nevertheless no mere commerce destroying will serve to win the control of the sea, and despite the losses in trade and the low ebb to which English naval efficiency had sunk, the British flag still dominated the ocean routes while the greater part of the French fleet rotted in port.

In this war of the League of Augsburg, Louis XIV was fighting practically all Europe, and the strain was too great for a nation already weakened by a long series of wars. By the terms of peace which he found himself obliged to accept, he lost nearly everything that he had gained by conquest during his long reign.

_Wars of the Spanish and the Austrian Succession_

After a brief interval of peace war blazed out again over the question whether a French Bourbon should be king of Spain,--the War of the Spanish Succession, 1702-1713. England's aim in this war was to acquire some of the Spanish colonies in America and to prevent any loss of trading privileges. .h.i.therto enjoyed by the English and the Dutch. But as it turned out nothing of importance was accomplished in the western hemisphere except by the terms of peace.

The French and Spanish attempted no major operations by sea. But the English navy captured Minorca, with its important harbor of Port Mahon, and Rooke, with more initiative than he had ever shown before in his career, took Gibraltar (August 4, 1704). These two prizes made Great Britain for the first time a Mediterranean power, and the fact that she held the gateway to the inland sea was of great importance in subsequent naval history.

In addition to these captures the terms of peace (the Treaty of Utrecht) yielded to England from the French Newfoundland, the Hudson Bay territory, and Nova Scotia. All that the French had left on the eastern coast of Canada was Cape Breton Island, with Louisburg, which was the key to the St. Lawrence. As for commercial privileges, England had gained from the Portuguese, who had been allies in the war, a practical monopoly of their carrying trade; and from France she had taken the entire monopoly of the slave trade to the Spanish American colonies which had been formerly granted by Spain to France. Holland got nothing out of the war as affecting her interests at sea,--not even a trading post. Her alliance with Great Britain had become as some one has called it, that of "the giant and the dwarf." At the conclusion of the War of the Spanish Succession, to quote the words of Mahan, "England was _the_ sea power; there was no second."

In this war as in the preceding, French privateersmen made great inroads on British commerce, and some of these privateering operations were conducted on a grand scale. For example, Du Guay Trouin took a squadron of six ships of the line and two frigates, together with 2000 troops, across the Atlantic and attacked Rio Janeiro.

He had little difficulty in forcing its submission and extorting a ransom of $400,000. The activities of the privateers led to a clause in the treaty of peace requiring the French to destroy the fortifications of the port of Dunkirk, which was notorious as the nest of these corsairs.

The War of the Austrian Succession, 1740-1748, was another of the dynastic quarrels of this age, with France and Spain arrayed against England. It has no naval interest for our purposes here. The peace of 1748, however, leaving things exactly as they were when the war began, settled none of the existing grudge between Great Britain and France. Eight years later, hostilities began again in the Seven Years' War, 1756-1763, in which Great Britain entered on the side of Prussia against a great coalition of Continental powers headed by France.

_The Seven Years' War_

The naval interest of this war is centered in the year 1759, when France, having lost Louisburg on account of England's control of the sea, decided to concentrate naval and military forces on an invasion of England. Before the plans for this projected thrust were completed, Quebec also had fallen to the British. The attempted invasion of 1759 is not so well known as that of Napoleon in 1805, but it furnished the pattern that Napoleon copied and had a better chance of success than his. In brief, a small squadron under the famous privateer Thurot was to threaten the Scotch and Irish coasts, acting as a diversion to draw off the British fleet. Meanwhile the squadron at Toulon was to dodge the British off that port, pa.s.s the Straits and join Conflans, who had the main French fleet at Brest. The united forces were then to cover the crossing of the troops in transports and flatboats to the English coast.

This plan was smashed by Admiral Hawke in one of the most daring feats in British naval annals. Thurot got away but did not divert any of the main force guarding the Channel. The Toulon fleet also eluded the English for a time but went to pieces outside the Straits largely on account of mismanagement on the part of its commander.

The remnants were either captured or driven to shelter in neutral ports by the English squadron under Boscawen. On November 9, a heavy gale and the necessities of the fleet compelled Hawke to lift his blockade of Brest and take shelter in Torbay, after leaving four frigates to watch the port. On the 14th, Conflans, discovering that his enemy was gone, came out, with the absurd idea of covering the transportation of the French army before Hawke should appear again. That very day Hawke returned to renew the blockade, and learning that Conflans had been seen heading southeast, decided rightly that the French admiral was bound for Quiberon Bay to make an easy capture of a small British squadron there under Duff before beginning the transportation of the invading army.

For five days pursuer and pursued drifted in calms. On the 19th a stiff westerly gale enabled Hawke to overtake Conflans, who was obliged to shorten sail for fear of arriving at his destination in the darkness. The morning of the 20th found the fleets in sight of each other but scattered. All the forenoon the rival admirals made efforts to gather their units for battle. A frigate leading the British pursuit fired signal guns to warn Duff of the enemy's presence, and the latter, cutting his cables, was barely able to get out in time to escape the French fleet and join Hawke. Conflans then decided that the English were too strong for him, and abandoning his idea of offering battle, signaled a general retreat and led the way into Quiberon Bay.

Hawke instantly ordered pursuit. The importance of this signal can be realized only by taking into account the tremendous gale blowing and the exceedingly dangerous character of the approach to Quiberon Bay, lined as it was with sunken rocks. Hawke had little knowledge of the channels but he reasoned that where a French ship could go an English one could follow, and the perils of the entry could not outweigh in his mind the importance of crushing the navy of France then and there. The small British superiority of numbers which Conflans feared was greatly aggravated by the conditions of his flight. The slower ships in his rear were crushed by the British in superior force and the English coming alongside the French on their lee side were able to use their heaviest batteries while the French, heeled over by the gale, had to keep their lowest tier of ports closed for fear of being sunk. One of their ships tried the experiment of opening this broadside and promptly foundered.

Darkness fell on a scene of wild confusion. Two of the British vessels were lost on a reef, but daylight revealed the fact that the French had scattered in all directions. Only five of their ships had been destroyed and one taken, but the organization and the morale were completely shattered. The idea of invasion thus came to a sudden end in Quiberon Bay. The daring and initiative of Hawke in defying weather and rocks in his pursuit of Conflans is the admirable and significant fact of this story, for the actual fighting amounted to little. It is the sort of thing that marked the spirit of the Dutch Wars and of Blake at Santa Cruz, and is strikingly different from the tame and stupid work of other admirals, English or French, in his own day.

The Seven Years' War ended in terms of the deepest humiliation for France--a "Carthaginian peace." She was compelled to renounce to England all of Canada with the islands of the St. Lawrence, the Ohio valley and the entire area east of the Mississippi except New Orleans. Spain, which had entered the war on the side of France in 1761, gave up Florida in exchange for Havana, captured by the English, and in the West Indies several of the Lesser Antilles came under the British flag. It is hardly necessary to point out that the loss of these overseas possessions on such a tremendous scale was due to the ability of the British navy to cut the communications between them and the mother country.

Naval administration in England at this time was corrupt, and the admirals, with the notable exception of Hawke, were lacking in enterprise; they were still slaves to the "Fighting Instructions."

But in all these respects the French were far worse, and the British government never lost sight of the immense importance of sea power.

Its strategy was sound.

_The War of American Independence_

The peace of 1763 was so humiliating that every patriotic Frenchman longed for the opportunity of revenge. This offered itself in the revolt of the American colonies against the North Ministry in 1775.

From the outset French neutrality as regards the American rebels was most benevolent; nothing could be more pleasing to France than to see her old enemy involved in difficulties with the richest and most populous of her colonies. For the first two or three years France gave aid surrept.i.tiously, but after the capture of Burgoyne in 1777, she decided to enter the war openly and draw in allies as well. She succeeded in enlisting Spain in 1779 and Holland the year following. The entrance of the latter was of small military value, perhaps, but at all events France so manipulated the rebellion in the colonies as to bring on another great European war. In this conflict for the first time she had no enemies to fight on the Continent; hence she was free to throw her full force upon the sea, attacking British possessions in every quarter of the world.

The War of the American Revolution became therefore a maritime war, the first since the conflicts with the Dutch in the 17th century.

While Paul Jones was in Paris waiting for his promised command, he forwarded to the Minister of Marine a plan for a rapid descent in force on the American coast. If his plan had been followed and properly executed the war might have been ended in America at one blow. But this project died in the procrastination and red tape of the Ministry of Marine, and a subsequent proposal for an attack on Liverpool dwindled into the mere commerce-destroying cruise which is memorable only for Jones's unparalleled fight with the _Serapis_. Eventually the navy of France was thrown into the balance to offset that of Great Britain, and it is largely to this fact that the United States owes its independence; men and munitions came freely from overseas and on one momentous occasion, the Battle of the Virginia Capes, the French navy performed its part decisively in action. But on a score of other occasions it failed pitiably on account of the lack of a comprehensive strategic plan and the want of energy and experience on the part of the commanding officers.

It is true that the French navy had made progress since the Seven Years' War. In 1778, it possessed 80 good line of battle ships.

To this force, a year later, Spain was able to contribute nearly sixty. But England began the war with 150. Thus even if the French and Spanish personnel had been as well trained and as energetic as the British they would have had a superior force to contend with, particularly as the allied fleet was divided between the ports of Spain and France, and under dual command. But in efficiency the French and Spanish navies were vastly inferior to the British.

Spanish efficiency may be dismissed at the outset as worthless. For the French officer the chief requisite was n.o.bility of birth. The aristocracy of England furnished the officers for its service also, but in the French navy, considerations of social grade outweighed those of naval rank, a condition that never obtained in the British.

In consequence, discipline--the principle of subordination animated by the spirit of team work--was conspicuously wanting in the French fleets. Individual captains were more concerned about their own prerogatives than about the success of the whole. This condition is ill.u.s.trated by the conduct of the captains under Suffren in the Bay of Bengal, where the genius of the commander was always frustrated by the wilfulness of his subordinates. Finally in the matter of tactics the French were brought up on a fatally wrong theory, that of acting on the defensive, of avoiding decisive action, of saving a fleet rather than risking it for the sake of victory.

Hence, though they were skilled in maneuvering, and ahead of the British in signaling, though their ships were as fine as any in the world, this fatal error of principle prevented their taking advantage of great opportunities and sent them to certain defeat in the end.

Thus it is clear that the sea power of France and Spain was not formidable if the English had taken the proper course of strategy.

This should have been to bottle up French and Spanish fleets in their own ports from Brest to Cadiz. Such a policy would have left enough ships to attend to the necessities of the army in America and the pursuit of French and American privateers, and accomplished the primary duty of preventing the arrival of French squadrons and French troops on the scene of war. Here the British government made its fatal mistake. Instead of concentrating on the coast of France and Spain, it tried to defend every outlying post where the flag might be threatened. Thus the superior English fleet was scattered all over the world, from Calcutta to Jamaica, while the French fleets came and went at will, sending troops and supplies to America and challenging the British control of the sea. Had the French navy been more efficient and energetic in its leadership France might have made her ancient enemy pay far more dearly for her strategic blunder. As it was, England lost her colonies in America.

Instead of the swift stroke on the American coast which Paul Jones had contemplated, a French fleet under d'Estaing arrived in the Delaware about five months after France had entered the war and after inexcusable delays on the way. In spite of the loss of precious time he had an opportunity to beat an inferior force under Howe at New York and seize that important British base, but his characteristic timidity kept him from doing anything there. From the American coast he went to the West Indies, where he bungled every opportunity of doing his duty. He allowed St. Lucia to fall into British hands and failed to capture Grenada. Turning north again, he made a futile attempt to retake Savannah, which had fallen to the English. Then at the end of 1779, at about the darkest hour of the American cause, he returned to France, leaving the colonists in the lurch. D'Estaing was by training an infantry officer, and his appointment to such an important naval command is eloquent of the effect of court influence in demoralizing the navy. "S'il avait ete aussi marin que brave," was the generous remark of Suffren on this man. It is true that on sh.o.r.e, where he was at home, d'Estaing was personally fearless, but as commander of a fleet, where he was conscious of inexperience, he showed timidity that should have brought him to court martial.

In March, 1780, the French fleet in the West Indies was put under the command of de Guichen, a far abler man than d'Estaing, but similarly indoctrinated with the policy of staying on the defensive.

His rival on the station was Rodney, a British officer of the old school, weakened by years and illness, but destined to make a name for himself by his great victory two years later. In many respects Rodney was a conservative, and in respect to an appet.i.te for prize money he belonged to the 16th century, but his example went a long way to cure the British navy of the paralysis of the Fighting Instructions and bring back the close, decisive fighting methods of Blake and de Ruyter.

In this same year in which Rodney took command of the West Indies station, a Scotch gentleman named Clerk published a pamphlet on naval tactics which attracted much attention. It is a striking commentary on the lack of interest in the theory of the profession that no British naval officer had ever written on the subject. This civilian, who had no military training or experience, worked out an a.n.a.lysis of the Fighting Instructions and came to the conclusion that the whole conception of naval tactics therein contained was wrong, that decisive actions could be fought only by concentrating superior forces on inferior. One can imagine the derision heaped on the landlubber who presumed to teach admirals their business, but there was no dodging the force of his point. Of course the mathematical precision of his paper victories depended on the enemy's being pa.s.sive while the attack was carried out, but fundamentally he was right. The history of the past hundred years showed the futility of an unbroken line ahead, with van, center, and rear attempting to engage the corresponding divisions of the enemy.

Decisive victories could be won only by close, concentrated fighting.

It may be true, as the British naval officers a.s.serted, that they were not influenced by Clerk's ideas, but the year in which his book appeared marks the beginning of the practice of his theory in naval warfare.

At the time of the American Revolution the West Indies represented a debatable ground where British interests clashed with those of her enemies, France, Spain, and Holland. It was very rich in trade importance; in fact, about one fourth of all British commerce was concerned with the Caribbean. Moreover, it contained the rival bases for operations on the American coast. Hence it became the chief theater of naval activity. Rodney's business was to make the area definitely British in control, to protect British possessions and trade and to capture as much as possible of enemy possessions and trade. On arriving at his station in the spring of 1780, he sought de Guichen. The latter had shown small enterprise, having missed one opportunity to capture British transports and another to prevent the junction of Rodney's fleet with that of Parker who was awaiting him. Even when the junction was effected, the British total amounted to only 20 ships of the line to de Guichen's 22, and the French admiral might still have offered battle. Instead he followed the French strategy of his day, by lying at anchor at Fort Royal, Martinique, waiting for the British to sail away and give him an opportunity to capture an island without having to fight for it.

Rodney promptly sought him out and set a watch of frigates off the port. When de Guichen came out on April 15 (1780) to attend to the convoying of troops, Rodney was immediately in pursuit, and on the 17th the two fleets were in contact. Early that morning the British admiral signaled his plan "to attack the enemy's rear,"

because de Guichen's ships were strung out in extended order with a wide gap between rear and center. De Guichen, seeing his danger, wore together and closed the gap. This done, he again turned northward and the two fleets sailed on parallel courses but out of gunshot.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WEST INDIES]

About eleven 0' clock, some four hours after his first signal, Rodney again signaled his intention to engage the enemy, and shortly before twelve he sent up the order, "for every ship to bear down and steer for her opposite in the enemy's line, agreeable to the 21st article of the Additional Fighting Instructions." Rodney had intended to concentrate his ships against their _actual_ opposites at the time,--the rear of the French line, which was still considerably drawn out; but the captain of the leading ship interpreted the order to mean the _numerical_ opposites in the enemy's line, after the style of fighting provided for by the Instructions from time immemorial. Rodney's first signal informing the fleet that he intended to attack the enemy's rear meant nothing to his captain at this time. Accordingly he sailed away to engage the first ship in the French van, followed by the vessels immediately astern of him, and thus wrecked the plan of his commander in chief.

Nothing could ill.u.s.trate better the hold of the traditional style of fighting on the minds of naval officers than this blunder, though it is only fair to add that there was some excuse in the ambiguity Of the order. Rodney was infuriated and expressed himself with corresponding bitterness. He always regarded this battle as the one on which his fame should rest because of what it might have been if his subordinates had given him proper support. The interesting point lies in the fact that he designed to throw his whole force on an inferior part of the enemy's force--the principle of concentration. In a later and much more famous battle, as we shall see, Rodney departed still further from the traditional tactics by "breaking the line," his own as well as that of the French, and won a great victory.

Meanwhile there occurred another operation not so creditable. Rodney had spent a large part of his life dodging creditors, and it was due to the generous loan of a French gentleman in Paris that he did not drag out the years of this war in the Bastille for debt.

When Holland entered the war he saw an opportunity to make a fortune by seizing the island of St. Eustatius, which had been the chief depot in the West Indies for smuggling contraband into America.

To this purpose he subordinated every other consideration. The island was an easy prize, but the quarrels and lawsuits over the distribution of the booty broke him down and sent him back to England at just the time when he was most needed in American waters, leaving Hood in acting command.

In March, 1781, de Gra.s.se sailed from Brest with a fleet of 26 ships of the line and a large convoy. Five of his battleships were detached for service in the East, under Suffren, of whom we shall hear more later. The rest proceeded to the Caribbean. On arriving at Martinique de Gra.s.se had an excellent opportunity to beat Hood, who had an inferior force; but like his predecessors, d'Estaing and de Guichen, he was content to follow a defensive policy, excusing himself on the ground of not exposing his convoy. While at Cape Haitien he received messages from Rochambeau and Washington urging his cooperation with the campaign in America. To his credit be it said that on this occasion he acted promptly and skillfully, and the results were of great moment.

At this time the British had subdued Georgia and South Carolina, and Cornwallis was attempting to carry the conquest through North Carolina. In order to keep in touch with his source of supplies the sea, however, he was compelled to fall back to Wilmington.

From there, under orders from General Clinton, he marched north to Yorktown, Virginia, where he was joined by a small force of infantry. Washington and Rochambeau had agreed on the necessity of getting the cooperation of the West Indies fleet in an offensive directed either at Clinton in New York or at Cornwallis at Yorktown.

Rochambeau preferred the latter alternative, because it involved fewer difficulties, and the message to de Gra.s.se was accompanied by a private memorandum from him to the effect that he preferred the Chesapeake as the scene of operations. Accordingly de Gra.s.se sent the messenger frigate back with word of his intention to go to Chesapeake Bay. He then made skillful arrangements for the transport of all available troops, and set sail with every ship he could muster, steering by the less frequented Old Bahama Channel in order to screen his movement.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SCENE OF THE YORKTOWN CAMPAIGN]

On August 30 (1781) de Gra.s.se anch.o.r.ed in Lynnhaven Bay, just inside the Chesapeake Capes, with 28 ships of the line. The two British guard frigates were found stupidly at anchor inside the bay; one was taken and the other chased up the York river. De Gra.s.se then landed the troops he had brought with him, and these made a welcome reenforcement to Lafayette, who was then opposing Cornwallis. At the same time Washington was marching south to join Lafayette, and word had been sent to the commander of a small French squadron at Newport to make junction with de Gra.s.se, bringing the siege artillery necessary to the operations before Yorktown. Thus the available farces were converging on Cornwallis in superior strength, and his only route for supplies and reenforcements lay by sea.

All depended on whether the British could succeed in forcing the entrance to Chesapeake Bay.

Hood, with 14 ships of the line, had followed on the trail of de Gra.s.se, and as it happened looked into Chesapeake Bay just three days before the French admiral arrived. Finding no sign of the French, Hood sailed on to New York and joined Admiral Graves, who being senior, took command of the combined squadrons. As it was an open secret at that time that the allied operations would be directed at Cornwallis, Graves immediately sailed for the Capes, hoping on the way to intercept the Newport squadron which was known to be bound far the same destination. On reaching the Capes, September 5, he found de Gra.s.se guarding the entrance to the bay with 24 ships of the line, the remaining four having been detailed to block the mouths of the James and York rivers. To oppose this force Graves had only 19 ships of the line, but he did not hesitate to offer battle.