Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 Part 33

The leading ship of the weather column will endeavour to pa.s.s through the enemy's line, should the weather be such as to make that practicable, at one fourth from the van, whatever number of ships their line may be composed of. The lee division will pa.s.s through at a ship or two astern of their centre, and whenever a ship has weathered the enemy it will be found necessary to shorten sail as much as possible for her second astern to close with her, and to keep away, steering in a line parallel to the enemy's and engaging them on their weather side.

A movement of this kind may be necessary, but, considering the difficulty of altering the position of the fleet during the time of combat, every endeavour will be made to commence battle with the enemy on the same tack they are; and I have only to recommend and direct that they be fought with at the nearest distance possible, in which getting on board of them may be avoided, which is alway disadvantageous to us, except when they are flying.[1]

_Additional Instruction_.[2]

When the signal No. 43 or 44[3] is made to form the order, the fleet is to form in one line, the rear shortening sail to allow the van to take their station ahead. If such signal should not be made the captains are referred to the general order of 23 March, 1808.

COLLINGWOOD.

Ville de Paris, 4th January, 1810.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The remaining clauses of the memorandum do not relate to tactics.

[2] From the original in the possession of Commander Hope, R.N. It is attached to an order of battle in two columns. See _supra_, p. 323.

[3] Sig. 43: 'Form line of battle in open order.' Sig. 44: 'Form line of battle in close order at about a cable and a half distant'; with a white pennant, 'form on weather column'; with a blue pennant, 'form on lee column.'

_SIR ALEXANDER COCHRANE_, 1805-1814.

[+Printed in Skin's Naval Battles, pp. 394 seq. (First edit.)+]

_Modes of Attack from the Windward, &c._

When an attack is intended to be made upon the enemy's rear, so as to endeavour to cut off a certain number of ships from that part of their fleet, the same will be made known by signal No. 27, and the numeral signal which accompanies it will point out the headmost of the enemy's ships that is to be attacked, counting always from the van, as stated in page 160, Article 31 (Instructions).[1] The signal will afterwards be made for the division intended to make the attack, or the same will be signified by the ship's pennants, and the pennants of the ship in that division which is to begin the attack, with the number of the ship to be first attacked in the enemy's line. Should it be intended that the leading ship in the division is to attack the rear ship of the enemy, she must bear up, so as to get upon the weather quarter of that ship; the ships following her in the line will pa.s.s in succession on her weather quarter, giving their fire to the ship she is engaged with; and so on in succession until they have closed with the headmost ship intended to be attacked.

The ships in reserve, who have no opponents, will break through the enemy's line ahead of this ship, so as to cut off the ships engaged from the rest of the enemy's fleet.

When it is intended that the rear ship of the division shall attack the rear ship of the enemy's line, that ship's pennants will be shown; the rest of the ships in the division will invert their order, shortening sail until they can in succession follow the rear ship, giving their fire to the enemy's ships in like manner as above stated; and the reserve ships will cut through the enemy's line as already mentioned.

When this mode of attack is intended to be put in force, the other divisions of the fleet, whether in order of sailing or battle, will keep to windward just out of gun-shot, so as to be ready to support the rear, and prevent the van and centre of the enemy from doubling upon them. This manoeuvre, if properly executed, may force the enemy to abandon the ships on his rear, or submit to be brought to action on equal terms, which is difficult to be obtained when the attack is made from to-windward.

When the fleet is to leeward, and the commanding officer intends to cut through the enemy's line, the number of the ship in their line where the attempt is to be made will be shown as already stated.

If the ships after pa.s.sing the enemy's line are to tack, and double upon the enemy's ships ahead, the same will be made known by a blue pennant over the Signal 27; if not they are to bear up and run to the enemy's line to windward, engaging the ship they first meet with; each succeeding ship giving her fire, and pa.s.sing on to the next in the rear. The ships destined to attack the enemy's rear will be pointed out by the number of the last ship in the line that is to make this movement, or the pennants of that ship will be shown; but, should no signal be made, it is to be understood that the number of ships to bear up is equal in number to the enemy's ships that have been cut off; the succeeding ships will attack and pursue the van of the enemy, or form, should it be necessary to prevent the enemy's van from pa.s.sing round the rear of the fleet to relieve or join their cut-off ships.

If it is intended that the ships following those destined to engage the enemy's rear to windward shall bear up, and prevent the part of their rear which has been cut off from escaping to leeward, the same will be made known by a red pennant being hoisted over the Signal 21,[2] and the number of ships so ordered will be shown by numeral signals or pennants. If from the centre division, a white pennant will be hoisted over the signal.

If the rear ships are to perform this service by bearing up, the same will be made known by a red pennant under. The numeral signal or pennants, counting always from the van, will show the headmost ship to proceed on this service.[3] The ships not directed by those signals are to form in close order, to cover the ships engaged from the rest of the enemy's fleet.

When the enemy's ships are to be engaged by both van and centre, the rear will keep their wind, to cover the ships engaged from the enemy to windward, as circ.u.mstances may require.

When the signal shall be made to cut through the enemy's van from to-leeward, the same will be made known by Signal 27, &c. In this case, if the headmost ships are to tack and double upon the enemy's van, engaging their ships in succession as they get up, the blue pennant will be shown as already stated, and the numeral signal pointing out the last ship from the van which is to tack, which in general will be equal in number to the enemy's ships cut through. The rest of the ships will be prepared to act as the occasion may require, either by bearing up and attacking the enemy's centre and rear, or tacking or wearing to cut off the van of the enemy from pa.s.sing round the rear of the fleet to rejoin their centre. And on this service, it is probable, should the enemy's ships bear up, that some of the rear ships will be employed--the signal No. 21 will be made accompanied with the number or pennants of the headmost ship--upon which she, with the ships in her rear, will proceed to the attack of the enemy.

When an attack is likely to be made by an enemy's squadron, by forcing the fleet from to-leeward, Signal 109 will be made with a blue pennant where best seen;[4] upon which each ship will luff up upon the weather quarter of her second ahead, so as to leave no opening for the leading ship of the enemy to pa.s.s through: this movement will expose them to the collected fire of all that part of the fleet they intended to force.[5]

It has been often remarked that Nelson founded no school of tactics, and the instructions which were issued with the new Signal Book immediately after the war entirely endorse the remark. They can be called nothing else but reactionary. Nelson's drastic attempt to break up the old rigid formation into active divisions independently commanded seems to have come to nothing, and the new instructions are based with almost all the old pedantry on the single line of battle. Of anything like mutually supporting movements there is only a single trace. It is in Article XIV., and that is only a resurrection of the time-honoured _corps de reserve_, formed of superfluous ships after your line has been equalised with that of a numerically inferior enemy. The whole doc.u.ment, in fact, is a consecration of the fetters which had been forged in the worst days of the seventeenth century, and which Nelson had so resolutely set himself to break.

The new Signal Book in which the instructions appear was founded on the code elaborated by Sir Home Riggs Popham, but there is nothing to show whether or not he was the author of the instructions. He was an officer of high scientific attainments, but although he had won considerable distinction during the war, his service had been entirely of an amphibious character in connection with military operations ash.o.r.e, and he had never seen a fleet action at sea. He reached flag rank in 1814, and was one of the men who received a K.C.B. on the reconst.i.tution of the order in 1815. Of the naval lords serving with Lord Melville at the time none can show a career or a reputation which would lead us to expect from them anything but the colourless instructions they produced. The controlling influence was undoubtedly Lord Keith. The doyen of the active list, and in command of the Channel Fleet till he retired after the peace of 1815, he was all-powerful as a naval authority, and his flag captain, Sir Graham Moore, had just been given a seat on the board. A devout pupil of St. Vincent and Howe, correct rather than brilliant, Keith represented the old tradition, and notwithstanding the patience with which he had borne Nelson's vagaries and insubordination, the antipathy between the two men was never disguised. However generously Keith appreciated Nelson's genius, he can only have regarded his methods as an evil influence in the service for ordinary men, nor can there be much doubt that his apprehensions had a good deal to justify them.

The general failure to grasp the whole of Nelson's tactical principles was not the only trouble. There are signs that during the later years of the war a very dangerous misunderstanding of his teaching had been growing up in the service. In days when there was practically no higher instruction in the theory of tactics, it was easy for officers to forget how much prolonged and patient study had enabled Nelson to handle his fleets with the freedom he did; and the tendency was to believe that his successes could be indefinitely repeated by mere daring and vehemence of attack. The seed was sown immediately after the battle and by Collingwood himself. 'It was a severe action,' he wrote to Admiral Parker on November 1, 'no dodging or manoeuvring.'

And again on December 16, to Admiral Pasley, 'Lord Nelson determined to subst.i.tute for exact order an impetuous attack in two distinct bodies.' Collingwood of course with all his limitations knew well enough it was not a mere absence of manoeuvring that had won the victory. In the same letter he had said that although Nelson succeeded, as it were, by enchantment, it was all the effect of system and nice combination.' Yet such phrases as he and others employed to describe the headlong attack, taken from their context and repeated from mouth to mouth, would soon have raised a false impression that many men were only too ready to receive. So the seed must have grown, till we find the fruit in Lord Dundonald's oft-quoted phrase, 'Never mind manoeuvres: always go at them.' So it was that Nelson's teaching had crystallised in his mind and in the mind perhaps of half the service. The phrase is obviously a degradation of the opening enunciations in Nelson's memoranda, a degradation due to time, to superficial study, and the contemptuous confidence of years of undisputed mastery at sea.

The conditions which brought about this att.i.tude to tactics are clearly seen in the way others saw us. Shortly after Trafalgar a veteran French officer of the war of American Independence wrote some _Reflections_ on the battle, which contain much to the point. 'It is a noteworthy thing,' he says in dealing with the defects of the single-line formation, 'that the English, who formerly used to employ all the resources of tactics against our fleets, now hardly use them at all, since our scientific tacticians have disappeared. It may almost be said that they no longer have any regular order of sailing or battle: they attack our ships of the line just as they used to attack a convoy.'[6] But here the old tactician was not holding up English methods as an example. He was citing them to show to what easy victories a navy exposed itself in which, by neglect of scientific study and alert observation, tactics had sunk into a mere senile formula. 'They know,' he continues, 'that we are in no state to oppose them with well-combined movements so as to profit by the kind of disorder which is the natural result of this kind of attack. They know if they throw their attack on one part of a much extended line, that part is soon destroyed.' Thus he arrives at two fundamental laws: '1. That our system of a long line of battle is worthless in face of an enemy who attacks with his ships formed in groups (_reunis en pelotons_), and told off to engage a small number of ships at different points in our line. 2. That the only tactical system to oppose to theirs is to have at least a double line, with reserve squadrons on the wings stationed in such a manner as to bear down most easily upon the points too vigorously attacked.' The whole of his far-sighted paper is in fact an admirable study of the conditions under which impetuous attacks and elaborate combinations are respectively called for. But from both points of view the single line for a large fleet is emphatically condemned, while in our instructions of 1816 not a hint of its weakness appears. They resume practically the same standpoint which the Duke of York had reached a century and a half before.

Spanish tacticians seem also to have shared the opinion that Trafalgar had really done nothing to dethrone the line. One of the highest reputation, on December 17, 1805, had sent to his government a thoughtful criticism of the action, and his view of Nelson's attack was this: 'Nothing,' he says, 'is more seamanlike or better tactics than for a fleet which is well to windward of another to bear down upon it in separate columns, and deploy at gun-shot from the enemy into a line which, as it comes into action, will inflict at least as much damage upon them as it is likely to suffer. But Admiral Nelson did not deploy his columns at gun-shot from our line, but ran up within pistol-shot and broke through it, so as to reduce the battle to a series of single-ship actions. It was a manoeuvre in which I do not think he will find many imitators. Where two fleets are equally well trained, that which attacks in this manner must be defeated.'[7]

So it was our enemies rightly read the lesson of Trafalgar. The false deductions therefore which grew up in our own service are all the more extraordinary, even as we find them in the new instructions and the current talk of the quarter-deck. But this is not the worst. It is not till we turn to the Signal Book itself that we get a full impression of the extent to which tactical thought had degenerated and Nelson's seed had been choked. The movements and formations for which signals are provided are stubbornly on the old lines of 1799. The influence of Nelson, however, is seen in two places. The first is a group of signals for 'attacking the enemy at anchor by pa.s.sing either outside them or between them and the land,' and for 'anchoring and engaging either within or outside the enemy.' Here we have a rational embodiment of the experience of the Nile. The second is a similar attempt to embody the teaching of Trafalgar, and the way it is done finally confirms the failure to understand what Nelson meant. So extraordinary is the signification of the signal and its explanatory note that it must be given in full.

'_Signal_.--Cut the enemy's line in the order of sailing in two columns.

_'Explanatory Note_.--The admiral will make known what number of ships from the van ship of the enemy the weather division is to break through the enemy's line, and the same from the rear at which the lee division is to break through their line.

'To execute this signal the fleet is to form in the order of sailing in two columns, should it not be so formed already; the leader of each column steering down for the position pointed out where he is to cut through the enemy's line.

'If the admiral wishes any particular conduct to be pursued by the leader of the division, in which he happens not to be, after the line is broken, he will of course point it out. If he does not it is to be considered that the lee division after breaking through the line is left to its commander.

'In performing this evolution the second astern of the leader in each column is to pa.s.s through the line astern of the ship next ahead [_sic_] of where her leader broke through, and so on in succession, breaking through all parts of the enemy's line ahead [_sic_] of their leaders as described in the plate.'

The plate represents the two columns bearing down to attack in a strictly formed line ahead, and the ships, after the leaders have cut through, altering course each for its proper interval in the enemy's line, and the whole then engaging from to-leeward. The note proceeds:

'By this arrangement no ship will have to pa.s.s the whole of the enemy's line. If however, in consequence of any circ.u.mstance, the rear ships should not be able to cut through in their a.s.signed places, the captains of those ships, as well as of the ships that are deprived of opponents in the enemy's line by this mode of attack, are to act to the best of their judgment for the destruction of the enemy, unless a disposition to the contrary has been previously made.

'It will be seen that by breaking the line in this order the enemy's van ships will not be able to a.s.sist either their centre or rear without tacking or wearing for that purpose.'

This from cover to cover of the Signal Book is the sole trace to be found of the great principles for which Nelson had lived and died. That Lord Keith or anyone else could have believed that it adequately represented the teaching of Trafalgar is almost incredible.

To begin with, the wording of the note contains an inexplicable blunder. The last paragraph shows clearly that the idea of the signal is an attack on the rear and centre, as at Trafalgar; yet the ships of each column as they come successively into action are told to engage the enemy's ship _ahead_ of the point where their leaders broke through, a movement which would resolve itself into an attack on their centre and van, and leave the rear free to come into immediate action with an overwhelming concentration on the lee division.

That so grave an error should have been permitted to pa.s.s into the Signal Book is bad enough, but that such a signal even if it had been correctly worded should stand for Nelson's last word to the service is almost beyond belief. The final outcome of Nelson's genius for tactics lay of course in his memorandum, and not in the form of attack he actually adopted. Yet this remarkable signal ignores the whole principle of the memorandum. The fundamental ideas of concentration and containing by independent squadrons are wholly missed; and not only this. It distorts Nelson's lee attack into a weather attack, and holds up for imitation every vice of the reckless movement in spite of which Nelson had triumphed. Not a word is said of its dangers, not a word of the exceptional circ.u.mstances that alone could justify it, not a word of how easily the tables could be turned upon a man who a second time dared to fling to the winds every principle of his art. It is the last word of British sailing tactics, and surely nothing in their whole history, not even in the worst days of the old Fighting Instructions, so staggers us with its lack of tactical sense.[8]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _I.e._ the Instructions of 1799, _supra_, p. 278. For Signal 27 see p. 255.

[2] 'To attack on bearing indicated.'

[3] In Ekin's text the punctuation of this sentence is obviously wrong and destroys the sense. It should accord, as I have ventured to amend it, with that of the previous paragraph.

[4] Signal 109, 'To close nearer the ship or ships indicated.'

[5] Sir Charles Elkin adds, 'In the same work he has also a signal (No. 785) under the head "Enemy" to "Lay on board," with the following observation:--

'"N.B.--This signal is not meant that your people should board the enemy unless you should find advantage by so doing; but it is that you should run your ship on board the enemy, so as to disable her from getting away."'