SEA-POWER[1]
[Footnote 1: Written in 1899. (_Encyclopoedia_Britannica_.)]
Sea-power is a term used to indicate two distinct, though cognate
things. The affinity of these two and the indiscriminate manner
in which the term has been applied to each have tended to obscure
its real significance. The obscurity has been deepened by the
frequency with which the term has been confounded with the old
phrase, 'Sovereignty of the sea,' and the still current expression,
'Command of the sea.' A discussion—etymological, or even
archæological in character—of the term must be undertaken as
an introduction to the explanation of its now generally accepted
meaning. It is one of those compound words in which a Teutonic
and a Latin (or Romance) element are combined, and which are
easily formed and become widely current when the sea is concerned.
Of such are 'sea-coast,' 'sea-forces' (the 'land- and sea-forces'
used to be a common designation of what we now call the 'Army
and Navy'), 'sea-service,' 'sea-serpent,' and 'sea-officer' (now
superseded by 'naval officer'). The term in one form is as old
as the fifteenth century. Edward III, in commemoration of the
naval victory of Sluys, coined gold 'nobles' which bore on one
side his effigy 'crowned, standing in a large ship, holding in
one hand a sword and in the other a shield.' An anonymous poet,
who wrote in the reign of Henry VI, says of this coin:
For four things our noble showeth to me,
King, ship, and sword, and _power_of_the_sea_.
Even in its present form the term is not of very recent date.
Grote [2] speaks of 'the conversion of Athens from a land-power
into a sea-power.' In a lecture published in 1883, but probably
delivered earlier, the late Sir J. R. Seeley says that 'commerce
was swept out of the Mediterranean by the besom of the Turkish
sea-power.'[3] The term also occurs in vol. xviii. of the
'Encyclopædia Britannica,' published in 1885. At p. 574 of that
volume (art. Persia) we are told that Themistocles was 'the founder
of the Attic sea-power.' The sense in which the term is used differs
in these extracts. In the first it means what we generally call
a 'naval power'—that is to say, a state having a considerable
navy in contradistinction to a 'military power,' a state with a
considerable army but only a relatively small navy. In the last
two extracts it means all the elements of the naval strength
of the state referred to; and this is the meaning that is now
generally, and is likely to be exclusively, attached to the term
owing to the brilliant way in which it has been elucidated by
Captain A. T. Mahan of the United States Navy in a series of
remarkable works.[4] The double use of the term is common in
German, though in that language both parts of the compound now
in use are Teutonic. One instance out of many may be cited from
the historian Adolf Holm.[5] He says[6] that Athens, being in
possession of a good naval port, could become '_eine_bedeutende_
Seemacht,' i.e. an important naval power. He also says[7] that
Gelon of Syracuse, besides a large army (Heer), had 'eine
_bedeutende_Seemacht_,' meaning a considerable navy. The term,
in the first of the two senses, is old in German, as appears
from the following, extracted from Zedler's 'Grosses Universal
Lexicon,' vol. xxxvi:[8] 'Seemachten, Seepotenzen, Latin. summae
_potestates_mari_potentes_.' 'Seepotenzen' is probably quite
obsolete now. It is interesting as showing that German no more
abhors Teuto-Latin or Teuto-Romance compounds than English. We may
note, as a proof of the indeterminate meaning of the expression
until his own epoch-making works had appeared, that Mahan himself
in his earliest book used it in both senses. He says,[9] 'The
Spanish Netherlands ceased to be a sea-power.' He alludes[10]
to the development of a nation as a 'sea-power,' and[11] to the
inferiority of the Confederate States 'as a sea-power.' Also,[12]
he remarks of the war of the Spanish Succession that 'before
it England was one of the sea-powers, after it she was the
sea-power without any second.' In all these passages, as appears
from the use of the indefinite article, what is meant is a naval
power, or a state in possession of a strong navy. The other meaning
of the term forms the general subject of his writings above
enumerated. In his earlier works Mahan writes 'sea power' as
two words; but in a published letter of the 19th February 1897,
he joins them with a hyphen, and defends this formation of the
term and the sense in which he uses it. We may regard him as
the virtual inventor of the term in its more diffused meaning,
for—even if it had been employed by earlier writers in that
sense—it is he beyond all question who has given it general
currency. He has made it impossible for anyone to treat of sea-power
without frequent reference to his writings and conclusions.
[Footnote 2: _Hist._of_Greece_, v. p. 67, published in 1849, but
with preface dated 1848.]
[Footnote 3: _Expansion_of_England_, p. 89.]
[Footnote 4: _Influence_of_Sea-power_on_History_, published 1890;
_Influence_of_Sea-power_on_the_French_Revolution_and_Empire_,
2 vols. 1892; _Nelson:_the_Embodiment_of_the_Sea-power_of_Great_
Britain, 2 vols. 1897.]
[Footnote 5: _Griechische_Geschichte_. Berlin, 1889.]
[Footnote 6: Ibid. ii. p. 37.]
[Footnote 7: Ibid. ii. p. 91.]
[Footnote 8: Leipzig und Halle, 1743.]
[Footnote 9: _Influence_of_Sea-power_on_History_, p. 35.]
[Footnote 10: Ibid. p. 42.]
[Footnote 11: Ibid. p. 43.]
[Footnote 12: Ibid. p. 225.]
There is something more than mere literary interest in the fact that
the term in another language was used more than two thousand years
ago. Before Mahan no historian—not even one of those who specially
devoted themselves to the narration of naval occurrences—had
evinced a more correct appreciation of the general principles
of naval warfare than Thucydides. He alludes several times to
the importance of getting command of the sea. This country would
have been saved some disasters and been less often in peril had
British writers—taken as guides by the public—possessed the same
grasp of the true principles of defence as Thucydides exhibited.
One passage in his history is worth quoting. Brief as it is, it
shows that on the subject of sea-power he was a predecessor of
Mahan. In a speech in favour of prosecuting the war, which he
puts into the mouth of Pericles, these words occur:— _oi_meu_
_gar_ouch_exousiu_allaeu_autilabeiu_amachei_aemiu_de_esti_
_gae_pollae_kai_eu_uaesois_kai_kat_aepeirou_mega_gar_
_to_tes_thalassaes_kratos_. The last part of this extract,
though often translated 'command of the sea,' or 'dominion of
the sea,' really has the wider meaning of sea-power, the 'power
of the sea' of the old English poet above quoted. This wider
meaning should be attached to certain passages in Herodotus,[13]
which have been generally interpreted 'commanding the sea,' or
by the mere titular and honorific 'having the dominion of the
sea.' One editor of Herodotus, Ch. F. Baehr, did, however, see
exactly what was meant, for, with reference to the allusion to
Polycrates, he says, _classe_maximum_valuit_. This is perhaps as
exact a definition of sea-power as could be given in a sentence.
[Footnote 13: Herodotus, iii. 122 in two places; v.83.]
It is, however, impossible to give a definition which would be at
the same time succinct and satisfactory. To say that 'sea-power'
means the sum-total of the various elements that go to make up
the naval strength of a state would be in reality to beg the
question. Mahan lays down the 'principal conditions affecting
the sea-power of nations,' but he does not attempt to give a
concise definition of it. Yet no one who has studied his works
will find it difficult to understand what it indicates.
Our present task is to put readers in possession of the means
of doing this. The best, indeed—as Mahan has made us see—the
only effective way of attaining this object is to treat the matter
historically. Whatever date we may agree to assign to the formation
of the term itself, the idea—as we have seen—is as old as history.
It is not intended to give a condensed history of sea-power, but
rather an analysis of the idea and what it contains, illustrating
this analysis with examples from history ancient and modern. It
is important to know that it is not something which originated
in the middle of the seventeenth century, and having seriously
affected history in the eighteenth, ceased to have weight till
Captain Mahan appeared to comment on it in the last decade of
the nineteenth. With a few masterly touches Mahan, in his brief
allusion to the second Punic war, has illustrated its importance
in the struggle between Rome and Carthage. What has to be shown
is that the principles which he has laid down in that case, and
in cases much more modern, are true and have been true always and
everywhere. Until this is perceived there is much history which
cannot be understood, and yet it is essential to our welfare as a
maritime people that we should understand it thoroughly. Our
failure to understand it has more than once brought us, if not
to the verge of destruction, at any rate within a short distance
of serious disaster.
The high antiquity of decisive naval campaigns is amongst the most
interesting features of international conflicts. Notwithstanding
the much greater frequency of land wars, the course of history
has been profoundly changed more often by contests on the water.
That this has not received the notice it deserved is true, and
Mahan tells us why. 'Historians generally,' he says, 'have been
unfamiliar with the conditions of the sea, having as to it neither
special interest nor special knowledge; and the profound determining
influence of maritime strength on great issues has consequently been
overlooked.' Moralising on that which might have been is admittedly
a sterile process; but it is sometimes necessary to point, if
only by way of illustration, to a possible alternative. As in
modern times the fate of India and the fate of North America were
determined by sea-power, so also at a very remote epoch sea-power
decided whether or not Hellenic colonisation was to take root in,
and Hellenic culture to dominate, Central and Northern Italy as
it dominated Southern Italy, where traces of it are extant to this
day. A moment's consideration will enable us to see how different
the history of the world would have been had a Hellenised city
grown and prospered on the Seven Hills. Before the Tarquins were
driven out of Rome a Phocoean fleet was encountered (537 B.C.) off
Corsica by a combined force of Etruscans and Phoenicians, and
was so handled that the Phocoeans abandoned the island and settled
on the coast of Lucania.[14] The enterprise of their navigators
had built up for the Phoenician cities and their great off-shoot
Carthage, a sea-power which enabled them to gain the practical
sovereignty of the sea to the west of Sardinia and Sicily. The
control of these waters was the object of prolonged and memorable
struggles, for on it—as the result showed—depended the empire of
the world. From very remote times the consolidation and expansion,
from within outwards, of great continental states have had serious
consequences for mankind when they were accompanied by the
acquisition of a coast-line and the absorption of a maritime
population. We shall find that the process loses none of its
importance in recent years. 'The ancient empires,' says the historian
of Greece, Ernst Curtius, 'as long as no foreign elements had
intruded into them, had an invincible horror of the water.' When
the condition, which Curtius notices in parenthesis, arose, the
'horror' disappeared. There is something highly significant in
the uniformity of the efforts of Assyria, Egypt, Babylon, and
Persia to get possession of the maritime resources of Phoenicia.
Our own immediate posterity will, perhaps, have to reckon with
the results of similar efforts in our own day. It is this which
gives a living interest to even the very ancient history of
sea-power, and makes the study of it of great practical importance
to us now. We shall see, as we go on, how the phenomena connected
with it reappear with striking regularity in successive periods.
Looked at in this light, the great conflicts of former ages are
full of useful, indeed necessary, instruction.
[Footnote 14: Mommsen, _Hist.Rome, English trans., i. p. 153.]
In the first and greatest of the contests waged by the nations
of the East against Europe—the Persian wars—sea-power was the
governing factor. Until Persia had expanded to the shores of the
Levant the European Greeks had little to fear from the ambition
of the great king. The conquest of Egypt by Cambyses had shown how
formidable that ambition could be when supported by an efficient
navy. With the aid of the naval forces of the Phoenician cities
the Persian invasion of Greece was rendered comparatively easy.
It was the naval contingents from Phoenicia which crushed the
Ionian revolt. The expedition of Mardonius, and still more that
of Datis and Artaphernes, had indicated the danger threatening
Greece when the master of a great army was likewise the master
of a great navy. Their defeat at Marathon was not likely to,
and as a matter of fact did not, discourage the Persians from
further attempts at aggression. As the advance of Cambyses into
Egypt had been flanked by a fleet, so also was that of Xerxes
into Greece. By the good fortune sometimes vouch-safed to a people
which, owing to its obstinate opposition to, or neglect of, a
wise policy, scarcely deserves it, there appeared at Athens an
influential citizen who understood all that was meant by the
term sea-power. Themistocles saw more clearly than any of his
contemporaries that, to enable Athens to play a leading part in
the Hellenic world, she needed above all things a strong navy.
'He had already in his eye the battle-field of the future.' He
felt sure that the Persians would come back, and come with such
forces that resistance in the open field would be out of the
question. One scene of action remained—the sea. Persuaded by him
the Athenians increased their navy, so that of the 271 vessels
comprising the Greek fleet at Artemisium, 147 had been provided
by Athens, which also sent a large reinforcement after the first
action. Though no one has ever surpassed Themistocles in the
faculty of correctly estimating the importance of sea-power,
it was understood by Xerxes as clearly as by him that the issue
of the war depended upon naval operations. The arrangements made
under the Persian monarch's direction, and his very personal
movements, show that this was his view. He felt, and probably
expressed the feeling, exactly as—in the war of Arnerican
Independence—Washington did in the words, 'whatever efforts are
made by the land armies, the navy must have the casting vote in
the present contest.' The decisive event was the naval action of
Salamis. To have made certain of success, the Persians should have
first obtained a command of the Ægean, as complete for all practical
purposes as the French and English had of the sea generally in
the war against Russia of 1854-56. The Persian sea-power was not
equal to the task. The fleet of the great king was numerically
stronger than that of the Greek allies; but it has been proved
many times that naval efficiency does not depend on numerical
superiority alone. The choice sections of the Persian fleet were
the contingents of the Ionians and Phoenicians. The former were
half-hearted or disaffected; whilst the latter were, at best, not
superior in skill, experience, and valour to the Greek sailors. At
Salamis Greece was saved not only from the ambition and vengeance
of Xerxes, but also and for many centuries from oppression by an
Oriental conqueror. Persia did not succeed against the Greeks,
not because she had no sea-power, but because her sea-power,
artificially built up, was inferior to that which was a natural
element of the vitality of her foes. Ionia was lost and Greece
in the end enslaved, because the quarrels of Greeks with Greeks
led to the ruin of their naval states.
The Peloponnesian was largely a naval war. The confidence of
the Athenians in their sea-power had a great deal to do with its
outbreak. The immediate occasion of the hostilities, which in
time involved so many states, was the opportunity offered by the
conflict between Corinth and Corcyra of increasing the sea-power of
Athens. Hitherto the Athenian naval predominance had been virtually
confined to the Ægean Sea. The Corcyræan envoy, who pleaded for
help at Athens, dwelt upon the advantage to be derived by the
Athenians from alliance with a naval state occupying an important
situation 'with respect to the western regions towards which the
views of the Athenians had for some time been directed.'[15]
It was the 'weapon of her sea-power,' to adopt Mahan's phrase,
that enabled Athens to maintain the great conflict in which she
was engaged. Repeated invasions of her territory, the ravages
of disease amongst her people, and the rising disaffection of
her allies had been more than made up for by her predominance
on the water. The scale of the subsequent Syracusan expedition
showed how vigorous Athens still was down to the interruption
of the war by the peace of Nicias. The great expedition just
mentioned over-taxed her strength. Its failure brought about
the ruin of the state. It was held by contemporaries, and has
been held in our own day, that the Athenian defeat at Syracuse
was due to the omission of the government at home to keep the
force in Sicily properly supplied and reinforced. This explanation
of failure is given in all ages, and should always be suspected.
The friends of unsuccessful generals and admirals always offer
it, being sure of the support of the political opponents of the
administration. After the despatch of the supporting expedition
under Demosthenes and Eurymedon, no further great reinforcement,
as Nicias admitted, was possible. The weakness of Athens was in
the character of the men who swayed the popular assemblies and
held high commands. A people which remembered the administration of
a Pericles, and yet allowed a Cleon or an Alcibiades to direct its
naval and military policy, courted defeat. Nicias, notwithstanding
the possession of high qualities, lacked the supreme virtue of
a commander—firm resolution. He dared not face the obloquy
consequent on withdrawal from an enterprise on which the popular
hopes had been fixed; and therefore he allowed a reverse to be
converted into an overwhelming disaster. 'The complete ruin of
Athens had appeared, both to her enemies and to herself, impending
and irreparable. But so astonishing, so rapid, and so energetic
had been her rally, that [a year after Syracuse] she was found
again carrying on a terrible struggle.'[16] Nevertheless her
sea-power had indeed been ruined at Syracuse. Now she could wage
war only 'with impaired resources and on a purely defensive system.'
Even before Arginusæ it was seen that 'superiority of nautical
skill had passed to the Peloponnesians and their allies.'[17]
[Footnote 15: Thirwall, _Hist.Greece, iii. p. 96.]
[Footnote 16: Grote, _Hist.Greece, v. p. 354.]
[Footnote 17: Ibid. p. 503.]
The great, occasionally interrupted, and prolonged contest between
Rome and Carthage was a sustained effort on the part of one to
gain and of the other to keep the control of the Western
Mediterranean. So completely had that control been exercised
by Carthage, that she had anticipated the Spanish commercial
policy in America. The Romans were precluded by treaties from
trading with the Carthaginian territories in Hispania, Africa,
and Sardinia. Rome, as Mommsen tells us, 'was from the first a
maritime city and, in the period of its vigour, never was so
foolish or so untrue to its ancient traditions as wholly to neglect
its war marine and to desire to be a mere continental power.' It
may be that it was lust of wealth rather than lust of dominion
that first prompted a trial of strength with Carthage. The vision
of universal empire could hardly as yet have formed itself in the
imagination of a single Roman. The area of Phoenician maritime
commerce was vast enough both to excite jealousy and to offer
vulnerable points to the cupidity of rivals. It is probable that
the modern estimate of the sea-power of Carthage is much exaggerated.
It was great by comparison, and of course overwhelmingly great
when there were none but insignificant competitors to challenge
it. Mommsen holds that, in the fourth and fifth centuries after
the foundation of Rome, 'the two main competitors for the dominion
of the Western waters' were Carthage and Syracuse. 'Carthage,'
he says, 'had the preponderance, and Syracuse sank more and more
into a second-rate naval power. The maritime importance of the
Etruscans was wholly gone…. Rome itself was not exempt from
the same fate; its own waters were likewise commanded by foreign
fleets.' The Romans were for a long time too much occupied at
home to take much interest in Mediterranean matters. The position
of the Carthaginians in the western basin of the Mediterranean
was very like that of the Portuguese long afterwards in India.
The latter kept within reach of the sea; 'nor did their rule ever
extend a day's march from their ships.'[18] 'The Carthaginians
in Spain,' says Mommsen, 'made no effort to acquire the interior
from the warlike native nations; they were content with the
possession of the mines and of stations for traffic and for shell
and other fisheries.' Allowance being made for the numbers of the
classes engaged in administration, commerce, and supervision,
it is nearly certain that Carthage could not furnish the crews
required by both a great war-navy and a great mercantile marine.
No one is surprised on finding that the land-forces of Carthage
were composed largely of alien mercenaries. We have several examples
from which we can infer a parallel, if not an identical, condition
of her maritime resources. How, then, was the great Carthaginian
carrying-trade provided for? The experience of more than one
country will enable us to answer this question. The ocean trade
of those off-shoots or dependencies of the United Kingdom, viz.
the United States, Australasia, and India, is largely or chiefly
conducted by shipping of the old country. So that of Carthage was
largely conducted by old Phoenicians. These may have obtained a
'Carthaginian Register,' or the contemporary equivalent; but they
could not all have been purely Carthaginian or Liby-Phoenician.
This must have been the case even more with the war-navy. British
India for a considerable time possessed a real and indeed highly
efficient navy; but it was officered entirely and manned almost
entirely by men from the 'old country.' Moreover, it was small. The
wealth of India would have sufficed to furnish a larger material
element; but, as the country could not supply the personnel,
it would have been absurd to speak of the sea-power of India
apart from that of England. As soon as the Romans chose to make
the most of their natural resources the maritime predominance
of Carthage was doomed. The artificial basis of the latter's
sea-power would not enable it to hold out against serious and
persistent assaults. Unless this is perceived it is impossible to
understand the story of the Punic wars. Judged by every visible
sign of strength, Carthage, the richer, the more enterprising,
ethnically the more predominant amongst her neighbours, and
apparently the more nautical, seemed sure to win in the great
struggle with Rome which, by the conditions of the case, was to be
waged largely on the water. Yet those who had watched the struggles
of the Punic city with the Sicilian Greeks, and especially that
with Agathocles, must have seen reason to cherish doubts concerning
her naval strength. It was an anticipation of the case of Spain in
the age of Philip II. As the great Elizabethan seamen discerned
the defects of the Spanish naval establishment, so men at Rome
discerned those of the Carthaginian. Dates in connection with
this are of great significance. A comprehensive measure, with the
object of 'rescuing their marine from its condition of impotence,'
was taken by the Romans in the year 267 B.C. Four quoestores
classici—in modern naval English we may perhaps call them
port-admirals—were nominated, and one was stationed at each
of four ports. The objects of the Roman Senate, so Mommsen tells
us, were very obvious. They were 'to recover their independence
by sea, to cut off the maritime communications of Tarentum, to
close the Adriatic against fleets coming from Epirus, and to
emancipate themselves from Carthaginian supremacy.' Four years
afterwards the first Punic war began. It was, and had to be,
largely a naval contest. The Romans waged it with varying fortune,
but in the end triumphed by means of their sea-power. 'The sea
was the place where all great destinies were decided.'[19] The
victory of Catulus over the Carthaginian fleet off the Ægatian
Islands decided the war and left to the Romans the possession
of Sicily and the power of possessing themselves of Sardinia
and Corsica. It would be an interesting and perhaps not a barren
investigation to inquire to what extent the decline of the mother
states of Phoenicia, consequent on the campaigns of Alexander
the Great, had helped to enfeeble the naval efficiency of the
Carthaginian defences. One thing was certain. Carthage had now
met with a rival endowed with natural maritime resources greater
than her own. That rival also contained citizens who understood
the true importance of sea-power. 'With a statesmanlike sagacity
from which succeeding generations might have drawn a lesson, the
leading men of the Roman Commonwealth perceived that all their
coast-fortifications and coast-garrisons would prove inadequate
unless the war-marine of the state were again placed on a footing
that should command respect.'[20] It is a gloomy reflection that
the leading men of our own great maritime country could not see
this in 1860. A thorough comprehension of the events of the first
Punic war enables us to solve what, until Mahan wrote, had been
one of the standing enigmas of history, viz. Hannibal's invasion
of Italy by land instead of by sea in the second Punic war. Mahan's
masterly examination of this question has set at rest all doubts
as to the reason of Hannibal's action.[21] The naval predominance
in the western basin of the Mediterranean acquired by Rome had
never been lost. Though modern historians, even those belonging
to a maritime country, may have failed to perceive it, the
Carthaginians knew well enough that the Romans were too strong
for them on the sea. Though other forces co-operated to bring
about the defeat of Carthage in the second Punic war, the Roman
navy, as Mahan demonstrates, was the most important. As a navy, he
tells us in words like those already quoted, 'acts on an element
strange to most writers, as its members have been from time
immemorial a strange race apart, without prophets of their own,
neither themselves nor their calling understood, its immense
determining influence on the history of that era, and consequently
upon the history of the world, has been overlooked.'
[Footnote 18: R. S. Whiteway, _Rise_of_the_Portuguese_Power_
_in_India_ p. 12. Westminster, 1899.]
[Footnote 19: J. H. Burton, _Hist._of_Scotland_, 1873, vol. i.
p. 318.]
[Footnote 20: Mommsen, i. p. 427.]
[Footnote 21: _Inf._on_Hist._, pp. 13-21.]
The attainment of all but universal dominion by Rome was now
only a question of time. 'The annihilation of the Carthaginian
fleet had made the Romans masters of the sea.'[22] A lodgment
had already been gained in Illyricum, and countries farther east
were before long to be reduced to submission. A glance at the
map will show that to effect this the command of the eastern
basin of the Mediterranean, like that of the western, must be
secured by the Romans. The old historic navies of the Greek and
Phoenician states had declined. One considerable naval force
there was which, though it could not have prevented, was strong
enough to have delayed the Roman progress eastwards. This force
belonged to Rhodes, which in the years immediately following
the close of the second Punic war reached its highest point as
a naval power.[23] Far from trying to obstruct the advance of
the Romans the Rhodian fleet helped it. Hannibal, in his exile,
saw the necessity of being strong on the sea if the East was to
be saved from the grasp of his hereditary foe; but the resources
of Antiochus, even with the mighty cooperation of Hannibal, were
insufficient. In a later and more often-quoted struggle between
East and West—that which was decided at Actium—sea-power was
again seen to 'have the casting vote.' When the whole of the
Mediterranean coasts became part of a single state the importance
of the navy was naturally diminished; but in the struggles within
the declining empire it rose again at times. The contest of the
Vandal Genseric with Majorian and the African expedition of
Belisarius—not to mention others—were largely influenced by
the naval operations.[24]
[Footnote 22: Schmitz, _Hist.Rome, p. 256.]
[Footnote 23: C. Torr, _Rhodes_in_Ancient_Times_, p. 40.]
[Footnote 24: Gibbon, _Dec._and_Fall_, chaps. xxxvi. xli]
A decisive event, the Mohammedan conquest of Northern Africa
from Egypt westwards, is unintelligible until it is seen how
great a part sea-power played in effecting it. Purely land
expeditions, or expeditions but slightly supported from the sea,
had ended in failure. The emperor at Constantinople still had at
his disposal a fleet capable of keeping open the communications
with his African province. It took the Saracens half a century
(647-698 A.D.) to win 'their way along the coast of Africa as
far as the Pillars of Hercules';[25] and, as Gibbon tells us,
it was not till the Commander of the Faithful had prepared a
great expedition, this time by sea as well as by land, that the
Saracenic dominion was definitely established. It has been generally
assumed that the Arabian conquerors who, within a few years of his
death, spread the faith of Mohammed over vast regions, belonged
to an essentially non-maritime race; and little or no stress has
been laid on the extent to which they relied on naval support
in prosecuting their conquests. In parts of Arabia, however,
maritime enterprise was far from non-existent; and when the
Mohammedan empire had extended outwards from Mecca and Medina
till it embraced the coasts of various seas, the consequences
to the neighbouring states were as serious as the rule above
mentioned would lead us to expect that they would be. 'With the
conquest of Syria and Egypt a long stretch of sea-board had come
into the Saracenic power; and the creation and maintenance of
a navy for the protection of the maritime ports as well as for
meeting the enemy became a matter of vital importance. Great
attention was paid to the manning and equipment of the fleet.'[26]
At first the fleet was manned by sailors drawn from the Phoenician
towns where nautical energy was not yet quite extinct; and later
the crews were recruited from Syria, Egypt, and the coasts of
Asia Minor. Ships were built at most of the Syrian and Egyptian
ports, and also at Obolla and Bushire on the Persian Gulf,' whilst
the mercantile marine and maritime trade were fostered and
encouraged. The sea-power thus created was largely artificial.
It drooped—as in similar cases—when the special encouragement
was withdrawn. 'In the days of Arabian energy,' says Hallam,
'Constantinople was twice, in 668 and 716, attacked by great
naval armaments.' The same authority believes that the abandonment
of such maritime enterprises by the Saracens may be attributed to
the removal of the capital from Damascus to Bagdad. The removal
indicated a lessened interest in the affairs of the Mediterranean
Sea, which was now left by the administration far behind. 'The
Greeks in their turn determined to dispute the command of the
sea,' with the result that in the middle of the tenth century
their empire was far more secure from its enemies than under the
first successors of Heraclius. Not only was the fall of the empire,
by a rational reliance on sea-power, postponed for centuries,
but also much that had been lost was regained. 'At the close of
the tenth century the emperors of Constantinople possessed the
best and greatest part' of Southern Italy, part of Sicily, the
whole of what is now called the Balkan Peninsula, Asia Minor,
with some parts of Syria and Armenia.[27]
[Footnote 25: Hallam, _Mid.Ages, chap. vi.]
[Footnote 26: Ameer Ali, Syed, _Short_Hist.Saracens, p. 442]
[Footnote 27: Hallam, chap. vi.; Gibbon, chap. li.]
Neglect of sea-power by those who can be reached by sea brings its
own punishment. Whether neglected or not, if it is an artificial
creation it is nearly sure to disappoint those who wield it when
it encounters a rival power of natural growth. How was it possible
for the Crusaders, in their various expeditions, to achieve even
the transient success that occasionally crowned their efforts?
How did the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem contrive to exist
for more than three-quarters of a century? Why did the Crusades
more and more become maritime expeditions? The answer to these
questions is to be found in the decline of the Mohammedan naval
defences and the rising enterprise of the seafaring people of
the West. Venetians, Pisans, and Genoese transported crusading
forces, kept open the communications of the places held by the
Christians, and hampered the operations of the infidels. Even
the great Saladin failed to discern the important alteration
of conditions. This is evident when we look at the efforts of
the Christians to regain the lost kingdom. Saladin 'forgot that
the safety of Phoenicia lay in immunity from naval incursions,
and that no victory on land could ensure him against an influx
from beyond the sea.'[28] Not only were the Crusaders helped by
the fleets of the maritime republics of Italy, they also received
reinforcements by sea from western Europe and England, on the
'arrival of _Malik_Ankiltar_ (Richard Coeur de Lion) with twenty
shiploads of fighting men and munitions of war.'
[Footnote 28: Ameer Ali, Syed, pp. 359, 360.]
Participation in the Crusades was not a solitary proof of the
importance of the naval states of Italy. That they had been able
to act effectively in the Levant may have been in some measure
due to the weakening of the Mohammedans by the disintegration
of the Seljukian power, the movements of the Moguls, and the
confusion consequent on the rise of the Ottomans. However that
may have been, the naval strength of those Italian states was
great absolutely as well as relatively. Sismondi, speaking of
Venice, Pisa, and Genoa, towards the end of the eleventh century,
says 'these three cities had more vessels on the Mediterranean
than the whole of Christendom besides.'[29] Dealing with a period
two centuries later, he declares it 'difficult to comprehend
how two simple cities could put to sea such prodigious fleets
as those of Pisa and Genoa.' The difficulty disappears when we
have Mahan's explanation. The maritime republics of Italy—like
Athens and Rhodes in ancient, Catalonia in mediæval, and England
and the Netherlands in more modern times—were 'peculiarly well
fitted, by situation and resources, for the control of the sea by
both war and commerce.' As far as the western Mediterranean was
concerned, Genoa and Pisa had given early proofs of their maritime
energy, and fixed themselves, in succession to the Saracens, in
the Balearic Isles, Sardinia, and Corsica. Sea-power was the
Themistoclean instrument with which they made a small state into
a great one.
[Footnote 29: _Ital.Republics, English ed., p. 29.]
A fertile source of dispute between states is the acquisition
of territory beyond sea. As others have done before and since,
the maritime republics of Italy quarrelled over this. Sea-power
seemed, like Saturn, to devour its own children. In 1284, in a
great sea-fight off Meloria, the Pisans were defeated by the
Genoese with heavy loss, which, as Sismondi states, 'ruined the
maritime power' of the former. From that time Genoa, transferring
her activity to the Levant, became the rival of Venice, The fleets
of the two cities in 1298 met near Cyprus in an encounter, said
to be accidental, that began 'a terrible war which for seven
years stained the Mediterranean with blood and consumed immense
wealth.' In the next century the two republics, 'irritated by
commercial quarrels'—like the English and Dutch afterwards—were
again at war in the Levant. Sometimes one side, sometimes the
other was victorious; but the contest was exhausting to both,
and especially to Venice. Within a quarter of a century they
were at war again. Hostilities lasted till the Genoese met with
the crushing defeat of Chioggia. 'From this time,' says Hallam,
'Genoa never commanded the ocean with such navies as before; her
commerce gradually went into decay; and the fifteenth century,
the most splendid in the annals of Venice, is till recent times
the most ignominious in those of Genoa.' Venice seemed now to
have no naval rival, and had no fear that anyone could forbid
the ceremony in which the Doge, standing in the bows of the
Bucentaur, cast a ring into the Adriatic with the words,
_Desponsamus_te,_Mare,_in_signum_veri_perpetuique_dominii_.
The result of the combats at Chioggia, though fatal to it in
the long-run, did not at once destroy the naval importance of
Genoa. A remarkable characteristic of sea-power is the delusive
manner in which it appears to revive after a great defeat. The
Persian navy occasionally made a brave show afterwards; but in
reality it had received at Salamis a mortal wound. Athens seemed
strong enough on the sea after the catastrophe of Syracuse; but,
as already stated, her naval power had been given there a check
from which it never completely recovered. The navy of Carthage
had had similar experience; and, in later ages, the power of
the Turks was broken at Lepanto and that of Spain at Gravelines
notwithstanding deceptive appearances afterwards. Venice was
soon confronted on the sea by a new rival. The Turkish naval
historian, Haji Khalifeh,[30] tells us that, 'After the taking of
Constantinople, when they [the Ottomans] spread their conquests
over land and sea, it became necessary to build ships and make
armaments in order to subdue the fortresses and castles on the
Rumelian and Anatolian shores, and in the islands of the
Mediterranean.' Mohammed II established a great naval arsenal at
Constantinople. In 1470 the Turks, 'for the first time, equipped
a fleet with which they drove that of the Venetians out of the
Grecian seas.'[31] The Turkish wars of Venice lasted a long time.
In that which ended in 1503 the decline of the Venetians' naval
power was obvious. 'The Mussulmans had made progress in naval
discipline; the Venetian fleet could no longer cope with theirs.'
Henceforward it was as an allied contingent of other navies that
that of Venice was regarded as important. Dyer[32] quotes a striking
passage from a letter of Æneas Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius II,
in which the writer affirms that, if the Venetians are defeated,
Christendom will not control the sea any longer; for neither the
Catalans nor the Genoese, without the Venetians, are equal to
the Turks.
[Footnote 30: _Maritime_Wars_of_the_Turks_, Mitchell's trans.,
p. 12.]
[Footnote 31: Sismondi, p. 256.]
[Footnote 32: _Hist.Europe, i. p. 85.]
The last-named people, indeed, exemplified once more the rule
that a military state expanding to the sea and absorbing older
maritime populations becomes a serious menace to its neighbours.
Even in the fifteenth century Mohammed II had made an attack on
Southern Italy; but his sea-power was not equal to the undertaking.
Suleymân the Magnificent directed the Ottoman forces towards
the West. With admirable strategic insight he conquered Rhodes,
and thus freed himself from the danger of a hostile force on
his flank. 'The centenary of the conquest of Constantinople was
past, and the Turk had developed a great naval power besides
annexing Egypt and Syria.'[33] The Turkish fleets, under such
leaders as Khair-ad-din (Barbarossa), Piale, and Dragut, seemed
to command the Mediterranean including its western basin; but the
repulse at Malta in 1565 was a serious check, and the defeat at
Lepanto in 1571 virtually put an end to the prospect of Turkish
maritime dominion. The predominance of Portugal in the Indian
Ocean in the early part of the sixteenth century had seriously
diminished the Ottoman resources. The wealth derived from the trade
in that ocean, the Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea, had supplied
the Mohammedans with the sinews of war, and had enabled them to
contend with success against the Christians in Europe. 'The main
artery had been cut when the Portuguese took up the challenge
of the Mohammedan merchants of Calicut, and swept their ships
from the ocean.'[34] The sea-power of Portugal wisely employed
had exercised a great, though unperceived, influence. Though
enfeebled and diminishing, the Turkish navy was still able to act
with some effect in the seventeenth century. Nevertheless, the
sea-power of the Turks ceased to count as a factor of importance
in the relations between great states.
[Footnote 33: Seeley, _British_Policy_, i. p. 143.]
[Footnote 34: Whiteway, p. 2.]
In the meantime the state which had a leading share in winning
the victory of Lepanto had been growing up in the West. Before
the union of its crown with that of Castile and the formation of
the Spanish monarchy, Aragon had been expanding till it reached
the sea. It was united with Catalonia in the twelfth century, and
it conquered Valencia in the thirteenth. Its long line of coast
opened the way to an extensive and flourishing commerce; and an
enterprising navy indemnified the nation for the scantiness of its
territory at home by the important foreign conquests of Sardinia,
Sicily, Naples, and the Balearic Isles. Amongst the maritime states
of the Mediterranean Catalonia had been conspicuous. She was to
the Iberian Peninsula much what Phoenicia had been to Syria. The
Catalan navy had disputed the empire of the Mediterranean with
the fleets of Pisa and Genoa. The incorporation of Catalonia
with Aragon added greatly to the strength of that kingdom. The
Aragonese kings were wise enough to understand and liberal enough
to foster the maritime interests of their new possessions.[35]
Their French and Italian neighbours were to feel, before long, the
effect of this policy; and when the Spanish monarchy had been
consolidated, it was felt not only by them, but by others also.
The more Spanish dominion was extended in Italy, the more were the
naval resources at the command of Spain augmented. Genoa became
'Spain's water-gate to Italy…. Henceforth the Spanish crown
found in the Dorias its admirals; their squadron was permanently
hired to the kings of Spain.' Spanish supremacy at sea was
established at the expense of France.[36] The acquisition of a
vast domain in the New World had greatly developed the maritime
activity of Castile, and Spain was as formidable on the ocean as
in the Mediterranean. After Portugal had been annexed the naval
vessels of that country were added to the Spanish, and the great
port of Lisbon became available as a place of equipment and as an
additional base of operations for oceanic campaigns. The fusion
of Spain and Portugal, says Seeley, 'produced a single state of
unlimited maritime dominion…. Henceforth the whole New World
belonged exclusively to Spain.' The story of the tremendous
catastrophe—the defeat of the Armada—by which the decline of
this dominion was heralded is well known. It is memorable, not
only because of the harm it did to Spain, but also because it
revealed the rise of another claimant to maritime pre-eminence—the
English nation. The effects of the catastrophe were not at once
visible. Spain still continued to look like the greatest power
in the world; and, though the English seamen were seen to be
something better than adventurous pirates—a character suggested
by some of their recent exploits—few could have comprehended
that they were engaged in building up what was to be a sea-power
greater than any known to history.
[Footnote 35: Prescott, _Ferdinand_and_Isabella_, Introd. sects.
i. ii.]
[Footnote 36: G. W. Prothero, in M. Hume's Spain, 1479-1788,
p. 65.]
They were carrying forward, not beginning the building of this.
'England,' says Sir J. K. Laughton, 'had always believed in her
naval power, had always claimed the sovereignty of the Narrow
Seas; and more than two hundred years before Elizabeth came to the
throne, Edward III had testified to his sense of its importance
by ordering a gold coinage bearing a device showing the armed
strength and sovereignty of England based on the sea.'[37] It is
impossible to make intelligible the course of the many wars which
the English waged with the French in the Middle Ages unless the
true naval position of the former is rightly appreciated. Why were
Crecy, Poitiers, Agincourt—not to mention other combats—fought,
not on English, but on continental soil? Why during the so-called
'Hundred Years' War' was England in reality the invader and not
the invaded? We of the present generation are at last aware of the
significance of naval defence, and know that, if properly utilised,
it is the best security against invasion that a sea-surrounded
state can enjoy. It is not, however, commonly remembered that
the same condition of security existed and was properly valued
in mediæval times. The battle of Sluys in 1340 rendered invasion
of England as impracticable as did that of La Hogue in 1692,
that of Quiberon Bay in 1759, and that of Trafalgar in 1805; and
it permitted, as did those battles, the transport of troops to
the continent to support our allies in wars which, had we not
been strong at sea, would have been waged on the soil of our own
country. Our early continental wars, therefore, are proofs of the
long-established efficiency of our naval defences. Notwithstanding
the greater attention paid, within the last dozen years or so,
to naval affairs, it is doubtful if the country generally even
yet recognises the extent to which its security depends upon a
good fleet as fully as our ancestors did nearly seven centuries
ago. The narrative of our pre-Elizabethan campaigns is interesting
merely as a story; and, when told—as for instance D. Hannay
has told it in the introductory chapters of his 'Short History
of the Royal Navy'—it will be found instructive and worthy of
careful study at the present day. Each of the principal events
in our early naval campaigns may be taken as an illustration of
the idea conveyed by the term 'sea-power,' and of the accuracy
with which its meaning was apprehended at the time. To take a
very early case, we may cite the defeat of Eustace the Monk by
Hubert de Burgh in 1217. Reinforcements and supplies had been
collected at Calais for conveyance to the army of Prince Louis
of France and the rebel barons who had been defeated at Lincoln.
The reinforcements tried to cross the Channel under the escort of
a fleet commanded by Eustace. Hubert de Burgh, who had stoutly
held Dover for King John, and was faithful to the young Henry
III, heard of the enemy's movements. 'If these people land,'
said he, 'England is lost; let us therefore boldly meet them.' He
reasoned in almost the same words as Raleigh about four centuries
afterwards, and undoubtedly 'had grasped the true principles of
the defence of England.' He put to sea and defeated his opponent.
The fleet on which Prince Louis and the rebellious barons had
counted was destroyed; and with it their enterprise. 'No more
admirably planned, no more fruitful battle has been fought by
Englishmen on water.'[38] As introductory to a long series of
naval operations undertaken with a like object, it has deserved
detailed mention here.
[Footnote 37: Armada, Introd. (Navy Records Society).]
[Footnote 38: Hannay, p. 7.]
The sixteenth century was marked by a decided advance in both
the development and the application of sea-power. Previously
its operation had been confined to the Mediterranean or to coast
waters outside it. Spanish or Basque seamen—by their proceedings
in the English Channel—had proved the practicability of, rather
than been engaged in, ocean warfare. The English, who withstood
them, were accustomed to seas so rough, to seasons so uncertain,
and to weather so boisterous, that the ocean had few terrors for
them. All that was wanting was a sufficient inducement to seek
distant fields of action and a development of the naval art that
would permit them to be reached. The discovery of the New World
supplied the first; the consequently increased length of voyages
and of absence from the coast led to the second. The world had
been moving onwards in other things as well as in navigation.
Intercommunication was becoming more and more frequent. What was
done by one people was soon known to others. It is a mistake to
suppose that, because the English had been behindhand in the
exploration of remote regions, they were wanting in maritime
enterprise. The career of the Cabots would of itself suffice to
render such a supposition doubtful. The English had two good
reasons for postponing voyages to and settlement in far-off lands.
They had their hands full nearer home; and they thoroughly, and as
it were by instinct, understood the conditions on which permanent
expansion must rest. They wanted to make sure of the line of
communication first. To effect this a sea-going marine of both
war and commerce and, for further expansion, stations on the
way were essential. The chart of the world furnishes evidence of
the wisdom and the thoroughness of their procedure. Taught by the
experience of the Spaniards and the Portuguese, when unimpeded by
the political circumstances of the time, and provided with suitable
equipment, the English displayed their energy in distant seas. It
now became simply a question of the efficiency of sea-power. If
this was not a quality of that of the English, then their efforts
were bound to fail; and, more than this, the position of their
country, challenging as it did what was believed to be the greatest
of maritime states, would have been altogether precarious. The
principal expeditions now undertaken were distinguished by a
characteristic peculiar to the people, and not to be found in
connection with the exploring or colonising activity of most
other great nations even down to our own time. They were really
unofficial speculations in which, if the Government took part at
all, it was for the sake of the profit expected and almost, if
not exactly, like any private adventurer. The participation of
the Government, nevertheless, had an aspect which it is worth
while to note. It conveyed a hint—and quite consciously—to all
whom it might concern that the speculations were 'under-written'
by the whole sea-power of England. The forces of more than one state
had been used to protect its maritime trade from the assaults of
enemies in the Mediterranean or in the Narrow Seas. They had
been used to ward off invasion and to keep open communications
across not very extensive areas of water. In the sixteenth century
they were first relied upon to support distant commerce, whether
carried on in a peaceful fashion or under aggressive forms. This,
naturally enough, led to collisions. The contention waxed hot,
and was virtually decided when the Armada shaped course to the
northward after the fight off Gravelines.
The expeditions against the Spanish Indies and, still more, those
against Philip II's peninsular territory, had helped to define
the limitations of sea-power. It became evident, and it was made
still more evident in the next century, that for a great country
to be strong it must not rely upon a navy alone. It must also have
an adequate and properly organised mobile army. Notwithstanding
the number of times that this lesson has been repeated, we have
been slow to learn it. It is doubtful if we have learned it even
yet. English seamen in all ages seem to have mastered it fully;
for they have always demanded—at any rate for upwards of three
centuries—that expeditions against foreign territory over-sea
should be accompanied by a proper number of land-troops. On the
other hand, the necessity of organising the army of a maritime
insular state, and of training it with the object of rendering
effective aid in operations of the kind in question, has rarely
been perceived and acted upon by others. The result has been a
long series of inglorious or disastrous affairs like the West
Indies voyage of 1595-96, the Cadiz expedition of 1625, and that
to the Ile de Ré of 1627. Additions might be made to the list.
The failures of joint expeditions have often been explained by
alleging differences or quarrels between the naval and the military
commanders. This way of explaining them, however, is nothing but
the inveterate critical method of the streets by which cause
is taken for effect and effect for cause. The differences and
quarrels arose, no doubt; but they generally sprang out of the
recriminations consequent on, not producing, the want of success.
Another manifestation of the way in which sea-power works was first
observed in the seventeenth century. It suggested the adoption
of, and furnished the instrument for carrying out a distinct
maritime policy. What was practically a standing navy had come
into existence. As regards England this phenomenon was now of
respectable age. Long voyages and cruises of several ships in
company had been frequent during the latter half of the sixteenth
century and the early part of the seventeenth. Even the grandfathers
of the men who sailed with Blake and Penn in 1652 could not have
known a time when ships had never crossed the ocean, and squadrons
kept together for months had never cruised. However imperfect
it may have been, a system of provisioning ships and supplying
them with stores, and of preserving discipline amongst their
crews, had been developed, and had proved fairly satisfactory.
The Parliament and the Protector in turn found it necessary to
keep a considerable number of ships in commission, and make them
cruise and operate in company. It was not till well on in the
reign of Queen Victoria that the man-of-war's man was finally
differentiated from the merchant seaman; but two centuries before
some of the distinctive marks of the former had already begun to
be noticeable. There were seamen in the time of the Commonwealth
who rarely, perhaps some who never, served afloat except in a
man-of-war. Some of the interesting naval families which were
settled at Portsmouth and the eastern ports, and which—from
father to son—helped to recruit the ranks of our bluejackets
till a date later than that of the launch of the first ironclad,
could carry back their professional genealogy to at least the
days of Charles II, when, in all probability, it did not first
start. Though landsmen continued even after the civil war to be
given naval appointments, and though a permanent corps, through
the ranks of which everyone must pass, had not been formally
established, a body of real naval officers—men who could handle
their ships, supervise the working of the armament, and exercise
military command—had been formed. A navy, accordingly, was now
a weapon of undoubted keenness, capable of very effective use
by anyone who knew how to wield it. Having tasted the sweets
of intercourse with the Indies, whether in the occupation of
Portugal or of Spain, both English and Dutch were desirous of
getting a larger share of them. English maritime commerce had
increased and needed naval protection. If England was to maintain
the international position to which, as no one denied, she was
entitled, that commerce must be permitted to expand. The minds
of men in western Europe, moreover, were set upon obtaining for
their country territories in the New World, the amenities of
which were now known. From the reign of James I the Dutch had
shown great jealousy of English maritime enterprise. Where it was
possible, as in the East Indian Archipelago, they had destroyed
it. Their naval resources were great enough to let them hold
English shipping at their mercy, unless a vigorous effort were
made to protect it. The Dutch conducted the carrying trade of
a great part of the world, and the monopoly of this they were
resolved to keep, while the English were resolved to share in
it. The exclusion of the English from every trade-route, except
such as ran by their own coast or crossed the Narrow Seas, seemed
a by no means impossible contingency. There seemed also to be
but one way of preventing it, viz. by war. The supposed
unfriendliness of the Dutch, or at least of an important party
amongst them, to the regicide Government in England helped to
force the conflict. The Navigation Act of 1651 was passed and
regarded as a covert declaration of hostilities. So the first
Dutch war began. It established our claim to compete for the
position of a great maritime commercial power.
The rise of the sea-power of the Dutch, and the magnitude which
it attained in a short time and in the most adverse circumstances,
have no parallel in history. The case of Athens was different,
because the Athenian power had not so much been unconsciously
developed out of a great maritime trade, as based on a military
marine deliberately and persistently fostered during many years.
Thirlwall believes that it was Solon who 'laid the foundations
of the Attic navy,'[39] a century before Salamis. The great
achievement of Themistocles was to convince his fellow-citizens
that their navy ought to be increased. Perhaps the nearest parallel
with the power of the Dutch was presented by that of Rhodes, which
rested largely on a carrying trade. The Rhodian undertakings,
however, were by comparison small and restricted in extent. Motley
declares of the Seven United Provinces that they 'commanded the
ocean,'[40] and that it would be difficult to exaggerate the
naval power of the young Commonwealth. Even in the days of Spain's
greatness English seamen positively declined to admit that she
was stronger than England on the sea; and the story of the Armada
justified their view. Our first two Dutch wars were, therefore,
contests between the two foremost naval states of the world for
what was primarily a maritime object. The identity of the cause
of the first and of the second war will be discerned by anyone
who compares what has been said about the circumstances leading
to the former, with Monk's remark as to the latter. He said that
the English wanted a larger share of the trade enjoyed by the
Dutch. It was quite in accordance with the spirit of the age
that the Dutch should try to prevent, by force, this want from
being satisfied. Anything like free and open competition was
repugnant to the general feeling. The high road to both individual
wealth and national prosperity was believed to lie in securing a
monopoly. Merchants or manufacturers who called for the abolition
of monopolies granted to particular courtiers and favourites had
not the smallest intention, on gaining their object, of throwing
open to the enterprise of all what had been monopolised. It was to
be kept for the exclusive benefit of some privileged or chartered
company. It was the same in greater affairs. As Mahan says, 'To
secure to one's own people a disproportionate share of the benefits
of sea commerce every effort was made to exclude others, either
by the peaceful legislative methods of monopoly or prohibitory
regulations, or, when these failed, by direct violence.' The
apparent wealth of Spain was believed to be due to the rigorous
manner in which foreigners were excluded from trading with the
Spanish over-sea territories. The skill and enterprise of the
Dutch having enabled them to force themselves into this trade,
they were determined to keep it to themselves. The Dutch East India
Company was a powerful body, and largely dictated the maritime
policy of the country. We have thus come to an interesting point
in the historical consideration of sea-power. The Elizabethan
conflict with Spain had practically settled the question whether
or not the expanding nations were to be allowed to extend their
activities to territories in the New World. The first two Dutch
wars were to settle the question whether or not the ocean trade
of the world was to be open to any people qualified to engage
in it. We can see how largely these were maritime questions,
how much depended on the solution found for them, and how plain
it was that they must be settled by naval means.
[Footnote 39: _Hist.Greece, ii. p. 52.]
[Footnote 40: _United_Netherlands_, ii. p. 132.]
Mahan's great survey of sea-power opens in 1660, midway between
the first and second Dutch wars. 'The sailing-ship era, with its
distinctive features,' he tells us, 'had fairly begun.' The art
of war by sea, in its more important details, had been settled
by the first war. From the beginning of the second the general
features of ship design, the classification of ships, the armament
of ships, and the handling of fleets, were to remain without
essential alteration until the date of Navarino. Even the tactical
methods, except where improved on occasions by individual genius,
altered little. The great thing was to bring the whole broadside
force to bear on an enemy. Whether this was to be impartially
distributed throughout the hostile line or concentrated on one
part of it depended on the character of particular admirals.
It would have been strange if a period so long and so rich in
incidents had afforded no materials for forming a judgment on
the real significance of sea-power. The text, so to speak, chosen
by Mahan is that, notwithstanding the changes wrought in naval
matériel during the last half-century, we can find in the history
of the past instructive illustrations of the general principles
of maritime war. These illustrations will prove of value not
only 'in those wider operations which embrace a whole theatre of
war,' but also, if rightly applied, 'in the tactical use of the
ships and weapons' of our own day. By a remarkable coincidence
the same doctrine was being preached at the same time and quite
independently by the late Vice-Admiral Philip Colomb in his work
on 'Naval Warfare.' As a prelude to the second Dutch war we find
a repetition of a process which had been adopted somewhat earlier.
That was the permanent conquest of trans-oceanic territory. Until
the seventeenth century had well begun, naval, or combined naval
and military, operations against the distant possessions of an
enemy had been practically restricted to raiding or plundering
attacks on commercial centres. The Portuguese territory in South
America having come under Spanish dominion in consequence of the
annexation of Portugal to Spain, the Dutch—as the power of the
latter country declined—attempted to reduce part of that territory
into permanent possession. This improvement on the practice of
Drake and others was soon seen to be a game at which more than
one could play. An expedition sent by Cromwell to the West Indies
seized the Spanish island of Jamaica, which has remained in the
hands of its conquerors to this day. In 1664 an English force
occupied the Dutch North American settlements on the Hudson. Though
the dispossessed rulers were not quite in a position to throw stones
at sinners, this was rather a raid than an operation of recognised
warfare, because it preceded the formal outbreak of hostilities.
The conquered territory remained in English hands for more than
a century, and thus testified to the efficacy of a sea-power
which Europe had scarcely begun to recognise. Neither the second
nor the third Dutch war can be counted amongst the occurrences to
which Englishmen may look back with unalloyed satisfaction; but
they, unquestionably, disclosed some interesting manifestations
of sea-power. Much indignation has been expressed concerning the
corruption and inefficiency of the English Government of the
day, and its failure to take proper measures for keeping up the
navy as it should have been kept up. Some, perhaps a good deal, of
this indignation was deserved; but it would have been nearly as
well deserved by every other government of the day. Even in those
homes of political virtue where the administrative machinery was
worked by or in the interest of speculating capitalists and
privileged companies, the accumulating evidence of late years
has proved that everything was not considered to be, and as a
matter of fact was not, exactly as it ought to have been. Charles
II and his brother, the Duke of York, have been held up to obloquy
because they thought that the coast of England could be defended
against a naval enemy better by fortifications than by a good
fleet and, as Pepys noted, were 'not ashamed of it.' The truth
is that neither the king nor the duke believed in the power of
a navy to ward off attack from an island. This may have been
due to want of intellectual capacity; but it would be going a
long way to put it down to personal wickedness. They have had
many imitators, some in our own day. The huge forts which stud
the coast of the United Kingdom, and have been erected within
the memory of the present generation, are monuments, likely to
last for many years, of the inability of people, whom no one
could accuse of being vicious, to rate sea-power at its proper
value. It is much more likely that it was owing to a reluctance
to study questions of naval defence as industriously as they
deserved, and to that moral timidity which so often tempts even
men of proved physical courage to undertake the impossible task
of making themselves absolutely safe against hostile efforts
at every point.
Charles II has also been charged with indifference to the interests
of his country, or worse, because during a great naval war he
adopted the plan of trying to weaken the enemy by destroying
his commerce. The king 'took a fatal resolution of laying up
his great ships and keeping only a few frigates on the cruise.'
It is expressly related that this was not Charles's own idea,
but that it was urged upon him by advisers whose opinion probably
seemed at the time as well worth listening to as that of others.
Anyhow, if the king erred, as he undoubtedly did, he erred in
good company. Fourteen hundred years earlier the statesmen who
conducted the great war against Carthage, and whose astuteness
has been the theme of innumerable panegyrics since, took the same
'fatal resolution.' In the midst of the great struggle they 'did
away with the fleet. At the most they encouraged privateering; and
with that view placed the war-vessels of the State at the disposal
of captains who were ready to undertake a corsair warfare on
their own account.'[41] In much later times this method has had
many and respectable defenders. Mahan's works are, in a sense, a
formal warning to his fellow-citizens not to adopt it. In France,
within the last years of the nineteenth century, it found, and
appears still to find, adherents enough to form a school. The
reappearance of belief in demonstrated impossibilities is a
recognised incident in human history; but it is usually confined
to the emotional or the vulgar. It is serious and filled with
menaces of disaster when it is held by men thought fit to administer
the affairs of a nation or advise concerning its defence. The
third Dutch war may not have settled directly the position of
England in the maritime world; but it helped to place that country
above all other maritime states,—in the position, in fact, which
Great Britain, the United Kingdom, the British Empire, whichever
name may be given it, has retained up to the present. It also
manifested in a very striking form the efficacy of sea-power.
The United Provinces, though attacked by two of the greatest
monarchies in the world, France and England, were not destroyed.
Indeed, they preserved much of their political importance in
the State system of Europe. The Republic 'owed this astonishing
result partly to the skill of one or two men, but mainly to its
sea-power.' The effort, however, had undermined its strength
and helped forward its decline.
[Footnote 41: Mommsen, ii. p. 52.]
The war which was ended by the Peace of Ryswick in 1697 presents
two features of exceptional interest: one was the havoc wrought on
English commerce by the enemy; the other was Torrington's conduct
at and after the engagement off Beachy Head. Mahan discusses
the former with his usual lucidity. At no time has war against
commerce been conducted on a larger scale and with greater results
than during this period. We suffered 'infinitely more than in
any former war.' Many of our merchants were ruined; and it is
affirmed that the English shipping was reduced to the necessity
of sailing under the Swedish and Danish flags. The explanation is
that Louis XIV made great efforts to keep up powerful fleets. Our
navy was so fully occupied in watching these that no ships could
be spared to protect our maritime trade. This is only another way
of saying that our commerce had increased so largely that the
navy was not strong enough to look after it as well as oppose
the enemy's main force. Notwithstanding our losses we were on
the winning side in the conflict. Much misery and ruin had been
caused, but not enough to affect the issue of the war.
Torrington's proceedings in July 1690 were at the time the subject
of much angry debate. The debate, still meriting the epithet
angry, has been renewed within the last few years. The matter
has to be noticed here, because it involves the consideration of
a question of naval strategy which must be understood by those
who wish to know the real meaning of the term sea-power, and who
ought to learn that it is not a thing to be idly risked or thrown
away at the bidding of the ignorant and the irresponsible. Arthur
Herbert, Earl of Torrington—the later peerage is a viscounty held
by the Byng family—was in command of the allied English and Dutch
fleet in the Channel. 'The disparity of force,' says Mahan, 'was
still in favour of France in 1690, but it was not so great as
the year before.' We can measure the ability of the then English
Government for conducting a great war, when we know that, in its
wisdom, it had still further weakened our fleet by dividing it
(Vice-Admiral Killigrew having been sent to the Mediterranean with
a squadron), and had neglected, and indeed refused when urged, to
take the necessary steps to repair this error. The Government
having omitted, as even British Governments sometimes do, to
gain any trustworthy intelligence of the strength or movements
of the enemy, Torrington suddenly found himself confronted by a
considerably superior French fleet under Tourville, one of the
greatest of French sea-officers. Of late years the intentions of
the French have been questioned; but it is beyond dispute that
in England at the time Tourville's movements were believed to
be preliminary to invasion. Whether Tourville deliberately meant
his movement to cover an invasion or not, invasion would almost
certainly have followed complete success on his part; otherwise his
victory would have been without any valuable result. Torrington
saw that as long as he could keep his own fleet intact, he could,
though much weaker than his opponent, prevent him from doing
serious harm. Though personally not a believer in the imminence of
invasion, the English admiral knew that 'most men were in fear that
the French would invade.' His own view was, 'that whilst we had a
fleet in being they would not dare to make an attempt.' Of late
years controversy has raged round this phrase, 'a fleet in being,'
and the strategic principle which it expresses. Most seamen were
at the time, have been since, and still are in agreement with
Torrington. This might be supposed enough to settle the question.
It has not been allowed, however, to remain one of purely naval
strategy. It was made at the time a matter of party politics.
This is why it is so necessary that in a notice of sea-power it
should be discussed. Both as a strategist and as a tactician
Torrington was immeasurably ahead of his contemporaries. The
only English admirals who can be placed above him are Hawke and
Nelson. He paid the penalty of his pre-eminence: he could not
make ignorant men and dull men see the meaning or the advantages
of his proceedings. Mahan, who is specially qualified to do him
full justice, does not devote much space in his work to a
consideration of Torrington's case, evidently because he had
no sufficient materials before him on which to form a judgment.
The admiral's character had been taken away already by Macaulay,
who did have ample evidence before him. William III, with all his
fine qualities, did not possess a military genius quite equal
to that of Napoleon; and Napoleon, in naval strategy, was often
wrong. William III understood that subject even less than the
French emperor did; and his favourites were still less capable
of understanding it. Consequently Torrington's action has been
put down to jealousy of the Dutch. There have been people who
accused Nelson of being jealous of the naval reputation of
Caracciolo! The explanation of Torrington's conduct is this:—
He had a fleet so much weaker than Tourville's that he could
not fight a general action with the latter without a practical
certainty of getting a crushing defeat. Such a result would have
laid the kingdom open: a defeat of the allied fleet, says Mahan,
'if sufficiently severe, might involve the fall of William's
throne in England.' Given certain movements of the French fleet,
Torrington might have manoeuvred to slip past it to the westward
and join his force with that under Killigrew, which would make
him strong enough to hazard a battle. This proved impracticable.
There was then one course left. To retire before the French,
but not to keep far from them. He knew that, though not strong
enough to engage their whole otherwise unemployed fleet with any
hope of success, he would be quite strong enough to fight and
most likely beat it, when a part of it was trying either to deal
with our ships to the westward or to cover the disembarkation of
an invading army. He, therefore, proposed to keep his fleet 'in
being' in order to fall on the enemy when the latter would have
two affairs at the same time on his hands. The late Vice-Admiral
Colomb rose to a greater height than was usual even with him in
his criticism of this campaign. What Torrington did was merely
to reproduce on the sea what has been noticed dozens of times on
shore, viz. the menace by the flanking enemy. In land warfare
this is held to give exceptional opportunities for the display of
good generalship, but, to quote Mahan over again, a navy 'acts
on an element strange to most writers, its members have been
from time immemorial a strange race apart, without prophets of
their own, neither themselves nor their calling understood.'
Whilst Torrington has had the support of seamen, his opponents
have been landsmen. For the crime of being a good strategist he
was brought before a court-martial, but acquitted. His sovereign,
who had been given the crowns of three kingdoms to defend our laws,
showed his respect for them by flouting a legally constituted
tribunal and disregarding its solemn finding. The admiral who
had saved his country was forced into retirement. Still, the
principle of the 'fleet in being' lies at the bottom of all sound
strategy.
Admiral Colomb has pointed out a great change of plan in the
later naval campaigns of the seventeenth century. Improvements
in naval architecture, in the methods of preserving food, and
in the arrangements for keeping the crews healthy, permitted
fleets to be employed at a distance from their home ports for
long continuous periods. The Dutch, when allies of the Spaniards,
kept a fleet in the Mediterranean for many months. The great De
Ruyter was mortally wounded in one of the battles there fought.
In the war of the Spanish Succession the Anglo-Dutch fleet found
its principal scene of action eastward of Gibraltar. This, as
it were, set the fashion for future wars. It became a kind of
tacitly accepted rule that the operation of British sea-power
was to be felt in the enemy's rather than in our own waters. The
hostile coast was regarded strategically as the British frontier,
and the sea was looked upon as territory which the enemy must
be prevented from invading. Acceptance of this principle led
in time to the so-called 'blockades' of Brest and Toulon. The
name was misleading. As Nelson took care to explain, there was
no desire to keep the enemy's fleet in; what was desired was to
be near enough to attack it if it came out. The wisdom of the
plan is undoubted. The hostile navy could be more easily watched
and more easily followed if it put to sea. To carry out this
plan a navy stronger in number of ships or in general efficiency
than that of the enemy was necessary to us. With the exception
of that of American Independence, which will therefore require
special notice, our subsequent great wars were conducted in
accordance with the rule.
In the early part of the eighteenth century there was a remarkable
manifestation of sea-power in the Baltic. Peter the Great, having
created an efficient army, drove the Swedes from the coast provinces
south of the Gulf of Finland. Like the earlier monarchies of which
we have spoken, Russia, in the Baltic at least, now became a naval
state. A large fleet was built, and, indeed, a considerable navy
established. It was a purely artificial creation, and showed
the merits and defects of its character. At first, and when under
the eye of its creator, it was strong; when Peter was no more it
dwindled away and, when needed again, had to be created afresh.
It enabled Peter the Great to conquer the neighbouring portion
of Finland, to secure his coast territories, and to dominate
the Baltic. In this he was assisted by the exhaustion of Sweden
consequent on her endeavours to retain, what was no longer possible,
the position of a quasi great power which she had held since
the days of Gustavus Adolphus. Sweden had been further weakened,
especially as a naval state, by almost incessant wars with Denmark,
which prevented all hope of Scandinavian predominance in the
Baltic, the control of which sea has in our own days passed into
the hands of another state possessing a quickly created navy—the
modern German empire.
The war of the Spanish Succession left Great Britain a Mediterranean
power, a position which, in spite of twice losing Minorca, she
still holds. In the war of the Austrian Succession, 'France was
forced to give up her conquests for want of a navy, and England
saved her position by her sea-power, though she had failed to
use it to the best advantage.'[42] This shows, as we shall find
that a later war showed more plainly, that even the Government
of a thoroughly maritime country is not always sure of conducting
its naval affairs wisely. The Seven Years' war included some
brilliant displays of the efficacy of sea-power. It was this
which put the British in possession of Canada, decided which
European race was to rule in India, and led to a British occupation
of Havannah in one hemisphere and of Manila in the other. In
the same war we learned how, by a feeble use of sea-power, a
valuable possession like Minorca may be lost. At the same time
our maritime trade and the general prosperity of the kingdom
increased enormously. The result of the conflict made plain to
all the paramount importance of having in the principal posts
in the Government men capable of understanding what war is and
how it ought to be conducted.
[Footnote 42: Mahan, _Inf._on_Hist._ p. 280.]
This lesson, as the sequel demonstrated, had not been learned
when Great Britain became involved in a war with the insurgent
colonies in North America. Mahan's comment is striking: 'The
magnificence of sea-power and its value had perhaps been more
clearly shown by the uncontrolled sway and consequent exaltation
of one belligerent; but the lesson thus given, if more striking,
is less vividly interesting than the spectacle of that sea-power
meeting a foe worthy of its steel, and excited to exertion by a
strife which endangered not only its most valuable colonies, but
even its own shores.'[43] We were, in fact, drawing too largely
on the prestige acquired during the Seven Years' war; and we
were governed by men who did not understand the first principles
of naval warfare, and would not listen to those who did. They
quite ignored the teaching of the then comparatively recent wars
which has been alluded to already—that we should look upon the
enemy's coast as our frontier. A century and a half earlier the
Dutchman Grotius had written—
Quæ meta Britannis
Litora sunt aliis.
[Footnote 43: _Influence_on_Hist._ p. 338.]
Though ordinary prudence would have suggested ample preparation,
British ministers allowed their country to remain unprepared.
Instead of concentrating their efforts on the main objective,
they frittered away force in attempts to relieve two beleaguered
garrisons under the pretext of yielding to popular pressure, which
is the official term for acting on the advice of irresponsible
and uninstructed busybodies. 'Depuis le début de la crise,' says
Captain Chevalier, 'les ministres de la Grande Bretagne s'étaient
montrés inférieurs à leur tâche.' An impressive result of this was
the repeated appearance of powerful and indeed numerically superior
hostile fleets in the English Channel. The war—notwithstanding
that, perhaps because, land operations constituted an important
part of it, and in the end settled the issue—was essentially
oceanic. Captain Mahan says it was 'purely maritime.' It may
be true that, whatever the belligerent result, the political
result, as regards the status of the insurgent colonies, would
have been the same. It is in the highest degree probable, indeed
it closely approaches to certainty, that a proper use of the
British sea-power would have prevented independence from being
conquered, as it were, at the point of the bayonet. There can be no
surprise in store for the student acquainted with the vagaries of
strategists who are influenced in war by political in preference
to military requirements. Still, it is difficult to repress an
emotion of astonishment on finding that a British Government
intentionally permitted De Grasse's fleet and the French army
in its convoy to cross the Atlantic unmolested, for fear of
postponing for a time the revictualling of the garrison beleaguered
at Gibraltar. Washington's opinion as to the importance of the
naval factor has been quoted already; and Mahan does not put
the case too strongly when he declares that the success of the
Americans was due to 'sea-power being in the hands of the French
and its improper distribution by the English authorities.' Our
navy, misdirected as it was, made a good fight of it, never allowed
itself to be decisively beaten in a considerable battle, and won
at least one great victory. At the point of contact with the
enemy, however, it was not in general so conspicuously successful
as it was in the Seven Years' war, or as it was to be in the
great conflict with the French republic and empire. The truth
is that its opponent, the French navy, was never so thoroughly
a sea-going force as it was in the war of American Independence;
and never so closely approached our own in real sea-experience
as it did during that period. We met antagonists who were very
nearly, but, fortunately for us, not quite as familiar with the
sea as we were ourselves; and we never found it so hard to beat
them, or even to avoid being beaten by them. An Englishman would,
naturally enough, start at the conclusion confronting him, if he
were to speculate as to the result of more than one battle had
the great Suffren's captains and crews been quite up to the level
of those commanded by stout old Sir Edward Hughes. Suffren, it
should be said, before going to the East Indies, had 'thirty-eight
years of almost uninterrupted sea-service.'[44] A glance at a
chart of the world, with the scenes of the general actions of
the war dotted on it, will show how notably oceanic the campaigns
were. The hostile fleets met over and over again on the far side
of the Atlantic and in distant Indian seas. The French navy had
penetrated into the ocean as readily and as far as we could do
ourselves. Besides this, it should be remembered that it was
not until the 12th April 1782. when Rodney in one hemisphere and
Suffren in the other showed them the way, that our officers were
able to escape from the fetters imposed on them by the Fighting
Instructions,—a fact worth remembering in days in which it is
sometimes proposed, by establishing schools of naval tactics
on shore, to revive the pedantry which made a decisive success
in battle nearly impossible.
[Footnote 44: Laughton, _Studies_in_Naval_Hist._ p. 103.]
The mighty conflict which raged between Great Britain on one side
and France and her allies on the other, with little intermission,
for more than twenty years, presents a different aspect from that
of the war last mentioned. The victories which the British fleet
was to gain were generally to be overwhelming; if not, they were
looked upon as almost defeats. Whether the fleet opposed to ours
was, or was not, the more numerous, the result was generally the
same—our enemy was beaten. That there was a reason for this which
can be discovered is certain. A great deal has been made of the
disorganisation in the French navy consequent on the confusion of
the Revolution. That there was disorganisation is undoubted; that
it did impair discipline and, consequently, general efficiency will
not be disputed; but that it was considerable enough to account by
itself for the French naval defeats is altogether inadmissible.
Revolutionary disorder had invaded the land-forces to a greater
degree than it had invaded the sea-forces. The supersession,
flight, or guillotining of army officers had been beyond measure
more frequent than was the case with the naval officers. In spite
of all this the French armies were on the whole—even in the
early days of the Revolution—extraordinarily successful. In
1792 'the most formidable invasion that ever threatened France,'
as Alison calls it, was repelled, though the invaders were the
highly disciplined and veteran armies of Prussia and Austria.
It was nearly two years later that the French and English fleets
came into serious conflict. The first great battle, which we
call 'The Glorious First of June,' though a tactical victory
for us, was a strategical defeat. Villaret-Joyeuse manoeuvred so
as to cover the arrival in France of a fleet of merchant vessels
carrying sorely needed supplies of food, and in this he was
completely successful. His plan involved the probability, almost
the necessity, of fighting a general action which he was not at
all sure of winning. He was beaten, it is true; but the French
made so good a fight of it that their defeat was not nearly so
disastrous as the later defeats of the Nile or Trafalgar, and—at
the most—not more disastrous than that of Dominica. Yet no one
even alleges that there was disorder or disorganisation in the
French fleet at the date of anyone of those affairs. Indeed,
if the French navy was really disorganised in 1794, it would
have been better for France—judging from the events of 1798 and
1805—if the disorganisation had been allowed to continue. In
point of organisation the British Navy was inferior, and in point
of discipline not much superior to the French at the earliest
date; at the later dates, and especially at the latest, owing
to the all-pervading energy of Napoleon, the British was far
behind its rival in organisation, in 'science,' and in every
branch of training that can be imparted without going to sea.
We had the immense advantage of counting amongst our officers
some very able men. Nelson, of course, stands so high that he
holds a place entirely by himself. The other British chiefs,
good as they were, were not conspicuously superior to the Hawkes
and Rodneys of an earlier day. Howe was a great commander, but
he did little more than just appear on the scene in the war.
Almost the same may be said of Hood, of whom Nelson wrote, 'He
is the greatest sea-officer I ever knew.'[45] There must have
been something, therefore, beyond the meritorious qualities of
our principal officers which helped us so consistently to victory.
The many triumphs won could not have been due in every case to
the individual superiority of the British admiral or captain to
his opponent. There must have been bad as well as good amongst
the hundreds on our lists; and we cannot suppose that Providence
had so arranged it that in every action in which a British officer
of inferior ability commanded a still inferior French commander
was opposed to him. The explanation of our nearly unbroken success
is, that the British was a thoroughly sea-going navy, and became
more and more so every month; whilst the French, since the close
of the American war, had lost to a great extent its sea-going
character and, because we shut it up in its ports, became less
and less sea-going as hostilities continued. The war had been
for us, in the words of Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, 'a continuous
course of victory won mainly by seamanship.' Our navy, as regards
sea-experience, especially of the officers, was immensely superior
to the French. This enabled the British Government to carry into
execution sound strategic plans, in accordance with which the coasts
of France and its dependent or allied countries were regarded as
the English frontier to be watched or patrolled by our fleets.
[Footnote 45: Laughton, _Nelson's_Lett._and_Desp._ p. 71.]
Before the long European war had been brought to a formal ending
we received some rude rebuffs from another opponent of unsuspected
vigour. In the quarrel with the United States, the so-called
'War of 1812,' the great sea-power of the British in the end
asserted its influence, and our antagonists suffered much more
severely, even absolutely, than ourselves. At the same time we
might have learned, for the Americans did their best to teach us,
that over-confidence in numerical strength and narrow professional
self-satisfaction are nearly sure to lead to reverses in war, and
not unlikely to end in grave disasters. We had now to meet the
élite of one of the finest communities of seamen ever known.
Even in 1776 the Americans had a great maritime commerce, which,
as Mahan informs us, 'had come to be the wonder of the statesmen
of the mother country.' In the six-and-thirty years which had
elapsed since then this commerce had further increased. There
was no finer nursery of seamen than the then states of the American
Union. Roosevelt says that 'there was no better seaman in the
world' than the American, who 'had been bred to his work from
infancy.' A large proportion of the population 'was engaged in
sea-going pursuits of a nature strongly tending to develop a
resolute and hardy character in the men that followed them.'[46]
Having little or no naval protection, the American seaman had
to defend himself in many circumstances, and was compelled to
familiarise himself with the use of arms. The men who passed
through this practical, and therefore supremely excellent, training
school were numerous. Very many had been trained in English
men-of-war, and some in French ships. The state navy which they
were called on to man was small; and therefore its personnel,
though without any regular or avowed selection, was virtually
and in the highest sense a picked body. The lesson of the war
of 1812 should be learned by Englishmen of the present day, when
a long naval peace has generated a confidence in numerical
superiority, in the mere possession of heavier matériel, and
in the merits of a rigidly uniform system of training, which
confidence, as experience has shown, is too often the forerunner
of misfortune. It is neither patriotic nor intelligent to minimise
the American successes. Certainly they have been exaggerated by
Americans and even by ourselves. To take the frigate actions
alone, as being those which properly attracted most attention,
we see that the captures in action amounted to three on each
side, the proportionate loss to our opponents, considering the
smallness of their fleet, being immensely greater than ours.
We also see that no British frigate was taken after the first
seven months of a war which lasted two and a half years, and that
no British frigate succumbed except to admittedly superior force.
Attempts have been made to spread a belief that our reverses
were due to nothing but the greater size and heavier guns of our
enemy's ships. It is now established that the superiority in
these details, which the Americans certainly enjoyed, was not
great, and not of itself enough to account for their victories.
Of course, if superiority in mere matériel, beyond a certain
well-understood amount, is possessed by one of two combatants,
his antagonist can hardly escape defeat; but it was never alleged
that size of ship or calibre of guns—greater within reasonable
limits than we had—necessarily led to the defeat of British
ships by the French or Spaniards. In the words of Admiral Jurien
de la Gravière, 'The ships of the United States constantly fought
with the chances in their favour.' All this is indisputable.
Nevertheless we ought to see to it that in any future war our
sea-power, great as it may be, does not receive shocks like those
that it unquestionably did receive in 1812.
[Footnote 46: _Naval_War_of_1812_, 3rd ed. pp. 29, 30.]
We have now come to the end of the days of the naval wars of
old time. The subsequent period has been illustrated repeatedly
by manifestations of sea-power, often of great interest and
importance, though rarely understood or even discerned by the
nations which they more particularly concerned. The British
sea-power, notwithstanding the first year of the war of 1812,
had come out of the great European conflict unshaken and indeed
more preeminent than ever. The words used, half a century before
by a writer in the great French 'Encyclopédie,' seemed more exact
than when first written. '_L'empire_des_mers_,' he says, is,
'le plus avantageux de tous les empires; les Phoeniciens le
possédoient autre fois et c'est aux Anglois que cette gloire
appartient aujourd'hui sur toutes les puissances maritimes.'[47]
Vast out-lying territories had been acquired or were more firmly
held, and the communications of all the over-sea dominions of the
British Crown were secured against all possibility of serious
menace for many years to come. Our sea-power was so ubiquitous
and all-pervading that, like the atmosphere, we rarely thought
of it and rarely remembered its necessity or its existence. It
was not till recently that the greater part of the nation—for
there were many, and still are some exceptions—perceived that
it was the medium apart from which the British Empire could no
more live than it could have grown up. Forty years after the
fall of Napoleon we found ourselves again at war with a great
power. We had as our ally the owner of the greatest navy in the
world except our own. Our foe, as regards his naval forces, came
the next in order. Yet so overwhelming was the strength of Great
Britain and France on the sea that Russia never attempted to
employ her navy against them. Not to mention other expeditions,
considerable enough in themselves, military operations on the
largest scale were undertaken, carried on for many months, and
brought to a successful termination on a scene so remote that
it was two thousand miles from the country of one, and three
thousand from that of the other partner in the alliance. 'The
stream of supplies and reinforcements, which in terms of modern
war is called "communications,", was kept free from even the threat
of molestation, not by visible measures, but by the undisputed
efficacy of a real, though imperceptible sea-power. At the close
of the Russian war we encountered, and unhappily for us in
influential positions, men who, undismayed by the consequences
of mimicking in free England the cast-iron methods of the Great
Frederick, began to measure British requirements by standards
borrowed from abroad and altogether inapplicable to British
conditions. Because other countries wisely abstained from relying
on that which they did not possess, or had only imperfectly and
with elaborate art created, the mistress of the seas was led to
proclaim her disbelief in the very force that had made and kept
her dominion, and urged to defend herself with fortifications by
advisers who, like Charles II and the Duke of York two centuries
before, were 'not ashamed of it.' It was long before the peril
into which this brought the empire was perceived; but at last,
and in no small degree owing to the teachings of Mahan, the people
themselves took the matter in hand and insisted that a great
maritime empire should have adequate means of defending all that
made its existence possible.
[Footnote 47: Encyclopédie, 7th Jan. 1765, art. 'Thalassarchie.']
In forms differing in appearance, but identical in essentials, the
efficacy of sea-power was proved again in the American Secession
war. If ever there were hostilities in which, to the unobservant
or short-sighted, naval operations might at first glance seem
destined to count for little, they were these. The sequel, however,
made it clear that they constituted one of the leading factors
of the success of the victorious side. The belligerents, the
Northern or Federal States and the Southern or Confederate States,
had a common land frontier of great length. The capital of each
section was within easy distance of this frontier, and the two
were not far apart. In wealth, population, and resources the
Federals were enormously superior. They alone possessed a navy,
though at first it was a small one. The one advantage on the
Confederate side was the large proportion of military officers
which belonged to it and their fine training as soldiers. In
physique as well as in morale the army of one side differed
little from that of the other; perhaps the Federal army was slightly
superior in the first, and the Confederate, as being recruited
from a dominant white race, in the second. Outnumbered, less well
equipped, and more scantily supplied, the Confederates nevertheless
kept up the war, with many brilliant successes on land, for four
years. Had they been able to maintain their trade with neutral
states they could have carried on the war longer, and—not
improbably—have succeeded in the end. The Federal navy, which was
largely increased, took away all chance of this. It established
effective blockades of the Confederate ports, and severed their
communications with the outside world. Indispensable articles of
equipment could not be obtained, and the armies, consequently,
became less and less able to cope with their abundantly furnished
antagonists. By dominating the rivers the Federals cut the
Confederacy asunder; and by the power they possessed of moving troops
by sea at will, perplexed and harassed the defence, and facilitated
the occupation of important points. Meanwhile the Confederates
could make no reply on the water except by capturing merchant
vessels, by which the contest was embittered, but the course of
the war remained absolutely unaffected. The great numbers of
men under arms on shore, the terrific slaughter in many battles
of a war in which tactical ability, even in a moderate degree,
was notably uncommon on both sides, and the varying fortunes of
the belligerents, made the land campaigns far more interesting
to the ordinary observer than the naval. It is not surprising,
therefore, that peace had been re-established for several years
before the American people could be made to see the great part
taken by the navy in the restoration of the Union; and what the
Americans had not seen was hidden from the sight of other nations.
In several great wars in Europe waged since France and England
made peace with Russia sea-power manifested itself but little.
In the Russo-Turkish war the great naval superiority of the Turks
in the Black Sea, where the Russians at the time had no fleet,
governed the plans, if not the course, of the campaigns. The
water being denied to them, the Russians were compelled to execute
their plan of invading Turkey by land. An advance to the Bosphorus
through the northern part of Asia Minor was impracticable without
help from a navy on the right flank. Consequently the only route
was a land one across the Danube and the Balkans. The advantages,
though not fully utilised, which the enforcement of this line of
advance put into the hands of the Turks, and the difficulties
and losses which it caused the Russians, exhibited in a striking
manner what sea-power can effect even when its operation is scarcely
observable.
This was more conspicuous in a later series of hostilities. The
civil war in Chili between Congressists and Balmacedists is specially
interesting, because it throws into sharp relief the predominant
influence, when a non-maritime enemy is to be attacked, of a navy
followed up by an adequate land-force. At the beginning of the
dispute the Balmacedists, or President's party, had practically
all the army, and the Congressists, or Opposition party, nearly
all the Chilian navy. Unable to remain in the principal province
of the republic, and expelled from the waters of Valparaiso by the
Balmacedist garrisons of the forts—the only and doubtful service
which those works rendered to their own side—the Congressists
went off with the ships to the northern provinces, where they
counted many adherents. There they formed an army, and having
money at command, and open sea communications, they were able
to import equipment from abroad, and eventually to transport
their land-force, secured from molestation on the voyage by the
sea-power at their disposal, to the neighbourhood of Valparaiso,
where it was landed and triumphantly ended the campaign.
It will have been noticed that, in its main outlines, this story
repeated that of many earlier campaigns. It was itself repeated,
as regards its general features, by the story of the war between
China and Japan in 1894-95. 'Every aspect of the war,' says Colomb,
'is interesting to this country, as Japan is to China in a position
similar to that which the British Islands occupy to the European
continent.'[48] It was additionally interesting because the sea-power
of Japan was a novelty. Though a novelty, it was well known by
English naval men to be superior in all essentials to that of
China, a novelty itself. As is the rule when two belligerents
are contending for something beyond a purely maritime object,
the final decision was to be on land. Korea was the principal
theatre of the land war; and, as far as access to it by sea was
concerned, the chief bases of the two sides were about the same
distance from it. It was possible for the Chinese to march there
by land. The Japanese, coming from an island state, were obliged
to cross the water. It will be seen at once that not only the
success of the Japanese in the struggle, but also the possibility
of its being carried on by them at all, depended on sea-power.
The Japanese proved themselves decisively superior at sea. Their
navy effectually cleared the way for one army which was landed in
Korea, and for another which was landed in the Chinese province
of Shantung. The Chinese land-forces were defeated. The navy of
japan, being superior on the sea, was able to keep its sister
service supplied or reinforced as required. It was, however, not
the navy, but the army, which finally frustrated the Chinese
efforts at defence, and really terminated the war. What the navy
did was what, in accordance with the limitations of sea-power,
may be expected of a navy. It made the transport of the army
across the sea possible; and enabled it to do what of itself
the army could not have done, viz. overcome the last resistance
of the enemy.
[Footnote 48: _Naval_Warfare_, 3rd ed. p. 436.]
The issue of the Spanish-American war, at least as regards the mere
defeat of Spain, was, perhaps, a foregone conclusion. That Spain,
even without a serious insurrection on her hands, was unequal to
the task of meeting so powerful an antagonist as the United States
must have been evident even to Spaniards. Be that as it may, an
early collapse of the Spanish defence was not anticipated, and
however one-sided the war may have been seen to be, it furnished
examples illustrating rules as old as naval warfare. Mahan says of
it that, 'while possessing, as every war does, characteristics of
its own differentiating it from others, nevertheless in its broad
analogies it falls into line with its predecessors, evidencing that
unity of teaching which pervades the art from its beginnings unto
this day.'[49] The Spaniards were defeated by the superiority
of the American sea-power. 'A million of the best soldiers,' says
Mahan, 'would have been powerless in face of hostile control of
the sea.' That control was obtained and kept by the United States
navy, thus permitting the unobstructed despatch of troops—and
their subsequent reinforcement and supply—to Spanish territory,
which was finally conquered, not by the navy, but by the army
on shore. That it was the navy which made this final conquest
possible happened, in this case, to be made specially evident
by the action of the United States Government, which stopped a
military expedition on the point of starting for Cuba until the
sea was cleared of all Spanish naval force worth attention.
[Footnote 49: _Lessons_of_the_War_with_Spain_, p. 16.]
The events of the long period which we have been considering
will have shown how sea-power operates, and what it effects.
What is in it will have appeared from this narrative more clearly
than would have been possible from any mere definition. Like
many other things, sea-power is composed of several elements. To
reach the highest degree of efficacy it should be based upon a
population naturally maritime, and on an ocean commerce naturally
developed rather than artificially enticed to extend itself. Its
outward and visible sign is a navy, strong in the discipline,
skill, and courage of a numerous personnel habituated to the
sea, in the number and quality of its ships, in the excellence
of its matériel, and in the efficiency, scale, security, and
geographical position of its arsenals and bases. History has
demonstrated that sea-power thus conditioned can gain any purely
maritime object, can protect the trade and the communications of a
widely extended empire, and whilst so doing can ward off from its
shores a formidable invader. There are, however, limitations to be
noted. Left to itself its operation is confined to the water, or at
any rate to the inner edge of a narrow zone of coast. It prepares
the way for the advance of an army, the work of which it is not
intended, and is unable to perform. Behind it, in the territory
of which it guards the shores, there must be a land-force adjusted
in organisation, equipment, and numbers to the circumstances
of the country. The possession of a navy does not permit a
sea-surrounded state to dispense with all fixed defences or
fortification; but it does render it unnecessary and indeed absurd
that they should be abundant or gigantic. The danger which always
impends over the sea-power of any country is that, after being
long unused, it may lose touch of the sea. The revolution in
the constructive arts during the last half-century, which has
also been a period of but little-interrupted naval peace, and
the universal adoption of mechanical appliances, both for
ship-propulsion and for many minor services—mere matériel
being thereby raised in the general estimation far above really
more important matters—makes the danger mentioned more menacing
in the present age than it has ever been before.