The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II

"Impressions in favour of so expensive, so despondent, and so inadequate a scheme, can have no better origin than specious reports, emanating from delusive opinions derived from a very limited knowledge of facts. The hasty adoption of such measures, and the voting away the vast sums required to carry them into execution, are evils seriously to be deprecated. It is, therefore, greatly to be desired that those in power should pause before proceeding further in such a course. It behoves them to consider in all its bearings, and in all its consequences, the contemplated system of stationary maritime defence, subject, as that system may become, to the overwhelming influence of the secret plan which I placed in their hands, similar to that which I presented in 1812 to His Royal Highness the Prince Regent, who referred its consideration confidentially to Lord Keith, Lord Exmouth, and the two Congreves, professional and scientific men, by whom it was pronounced to be infallible, under the circumstances detailed in my explanatory statement.

"Thirty-three years is a long time to retain an important secret, especially as I could have used it with effect in defence of my character when cruelly assailed (as I have shown at length in a representation to the Government), and could have practically employed it on various occasions to my private advantage. I have now, however, determined to solicit its well-merited consideration, in the hope, privately, if possible, to prove the comparative inexpedience of an expenditure of some 12,000,000l. or 20,000,000l. sterling for the construction of forts and harbours, instead of applying ample funds at once to remodel and renovate the navy – professionally known to be susceptible of immense improvement – including the removal from its swollen bulk of much that is cumbrous and prejudicial.

"However injudicious it might be thought to divulge my plan, at least until energetically put in execution for an adequate object; yet, if its disclosure is indispensable to enable a just and general estimate to be formed of the merits of the mongrel terraqueous scheme of defence now in contemplation, as compared with the mighty power and protective ubiquity of the floating bulwarks of Britain, I am satisfied that the balance would be greatly in favour of publicity. It would demonstrate that there could be no security in those defences and those asylums, on the construction of which it is proposed to expend so many millions of the public money; it might, therefore, have the effect of preventing such useless expenditure, and of averting the obviously impending danger of future parsimonious naval administration, abandonment of essential measures of nautical improvement, and the national disgrace of maritime degradation – all inseparable from an unnatural hermaphrodite union between a distinguished service, which might still further be immeasurably exalted, and the most extravagant, derogatory, inefficient, and preposterous project that could be devised for the security and protection of an insular, widely-extended, colonial and commercial State."

A few months after that letter had been written, Lord Dundonald's hopes that his secret plans would be accepted by the Government were revived. In 1846, his friend Lord Auckland took office as First Lord of the Admiralty; and by him, with very little delay, it was proposed to submit the plans to the judgment of a competent committee of officers. This was all that Lord Dundonald had asked for, and he gladly accepted the proposal. The officers chosen were Sir Thomas Hastings, then Surveyor General of the Ordnance, Sir J. F. Burgoyne, and Lieutenant-Colonel J. S. Colquhoun. By them the project was carefully considered, and on the 16th of January, 1847, they tendered their official report upon it. "These plans," it was there said, "may be classed under three heads: – 1st. One, on which an opinion may be formed with experiment, for concealing or masking offensive warlike operations; and we consider that, under many particular circumstances, the method of his lordship may be made available as well by land as by sea, and we therefore suggest that a record of this part of Lord Dundonald's plans should be deposited with the Admiralty, to be made use of when, in the judgment of their lordships, the opportunity for employing it may occur. 2nd. One, on which experiments would be required before a satisfactory conclusion could be arrived at. 3rd. Nos. 1 and 2 combined for the purpose of hostile operations. After mature consideration, we have resolved that it is not desirable that any experiment should be made. We assume it to be possible that the plan No. 2 contains power for producing the sweeping destruction the inventor ascribes to it; but it is clear this power could not be retained exclusively by this country, because its first employment would develop both its principle and application. We considered, in the next place, how far the adoption of the proposed secret plans would accord with the feelings and principles of civilized warfare. We are of unanimous opinion that plans Nos. 2 and 3 would not be so. We therefore recommend that, as hitherto, plans Nos. 2 and 3 should remain concealed. We feel that great credit is due to Lord Dundonald for the right feeling which prompted him not to disclose his secret plans, when serving in war as naval commander-in-chief of the forces of other nations, and under many trying circumstances, in the conviction that these plans might eventually be of the highest importance to his own country."

That report was, in the main, highly gratifying to Lord Dundonald. It recognized the efficacy of his plans, and recommended their partial use, at any rate, in time of need. "Permit me to express, as far as I am able," he wrote to Lord Auckland on the 27th of January, "my deep sense of obligation to your lordship in causing my plans of war to be thoroughly investigated by the most competent authorities, and for the extremely kind terms in which you have informed me of the satisfactory result. With regard to their disposal, I submit that it would be advisable to retain them inviolate until a period shall arrive when the use of them may be deemed beneficial to the interests of the country, I have to observe, as to the opinions of the commission, that plans Nos. 2 and 3 would not accord with the principles and feeling of civilized warfare, that the new method resorted to by the French, of firing horizontal shells and carcases, is stated by a commission of scientific and practical men appointed by the French Government to ascertain their effects, to be so formidable that 'it would render impossible the success of any enterprise attempted against their vessels in harbour,' and that, 'for the defence of roadsteads, or for the attack of line-of-battle ships, becalmed or embayed, its effect would be infallible,' – namely, by blowing up or burning our ships, to the probable destruction of the lives of all their crews. I submit that, against such batteries as these, the adoption of my plans Nos. 2 and 3 would be perfectly justifiable."

That the French, not yet forgetful of the injuries inflicted on them in the last great war, and in the frequent wars of previous centuries, were still hoping and planning for an opportunity of retaliation, and that their plans needed to be carefully watched and counteracted, were convictions strongly impressed upon Lord Dundonald in these years; and in 1848 he had a singular verification of them. "I enclose a paper of some consequence," wrote Lord Auckland to him on the 30th of June. "It contains the plan which, in contemplation of war, has been submitted to the French Provisional Government for naval operations. It is, perhaps, little more than the pamphlet of the Prince de Joinville, carried out methodically and in detail, and the writer seems to me to anticipate a far more exclusive playing of the game only on one side than we should allow to be the case; but, nevertheless, such a mode of warfare would be embarrassing and mischievous, and I should like to have from you your views of a counter project to it, and your criticisms upon it."

The report here forwarded to Lord Dundonald by Lord Auckland, entitled "La Puissance Maritime de la France," and designed to show that "une guerre maritime est plus à redouter pour l'Angleterre que pour la France," besides affording curious confirmation of Lord Dundonald's opinions, is a document very memorable in itself. Its main idea was that in naval warfare victory is to be obtained, not by mere numbers, but by superiority in ships and guns. "In the present condition of our marine," said its author, "we must give up fleet-fighting. The English can arm more fleets than we can, and we cannot maintain a war of fleets with England without exposing ourselves to losses as great as those we experienced under the First Empire. Though during twenty years, however, our warfare, as carried on by fleets, was disastrous, that of our cruisers was nearly always successful. By again sending these forth, with instructions not to compromise themselves with an enemy superior to them in numbers, we shall inflict great loss on English commerce. To attack that commerce is to attack the vital principle of England – to strike her to the heart."

That was the view advanced under Louis Philippe's reign by the Prince de Joinville; but it was much more elaborately worked out by the advocate of naval energy in days immediately preceding Prince Louis Napoleon's accession to power. "What I propose," he said, "is a war founded on this principle of striking at English commerce. In a naval war between two nations, one of which has a very large commerce, and the other very little, military forces are of small consequence. In the end, peace must become a necessity to the power which has much to lose and little to gain. Let us see what took place in America during the disputes on the Oregon question. Despite the immense superiority of the English navy, the Americans maintained their pretensions. England found out that their well-equipped frigates and countless privateers were sufficient to carry on a war against her commerce in all parts of the globe; whilst all the damage she could do to America was the destruction of a few coast-towns, by which she could gain neither honour nor profit; and so she decided to preserve peace by yielding the question. It is this American system that we in France must adopt. Renouncing the glory of fleet victories, we must make active war on the commercial shipping of Great Britain. If America with her small means could gain such an advantage over England, what results may we not expect to obtain with a hundred and fifty ships of war and three hundred corsairs armed with long-range guns?"

The report recommended that the naval force of France should be organized in twenty "corsair-divisions." These were to have Cherbourg for their head-quarters; one to look after the merchant-shipping in the British Channel; another to watch the mouth of the Thames; and a third to cruise along the Dutch and German coasts, so as to intercept our Baltic trade; and all these were to be aided by a line of telegraphs from Brest to Dunkirk, in correspondence with a line of scouts ranged along the French coast, with orders to communicate to the central station at Cherbourg every movement of British merchantmen. Three similar divisions were to be formed at Brest, charged respectively with the oversight of the East and West Indian shipping as it passed Cape Clear, of the Azores, and of the Irish Coast. A seventh division, stationed at Rochefort, was to watch for a favourable opportunity of co-operating with the other six, if desirable, in transporting an army to Ireland. An eighth division was to watch the neighbourhood of Gibraltar, and four others were to be stationed in various parts of the Mediterranean. Three other divisions were to cruise along the North American coast, to harass our commerce with the United States, to intercept the trade of Canada and the neighbouring colonies, and, in spring time, to capture the produce of the Newfoundland fisheries. Three smaller divisions were to be charged with the annoyance of our West Indian Islands and the destruction of their commerce; and the remaining two were to scour the coasts of South America. A separate and formidable establishment of screw-frigates was to have for its head-quarters a port of refuge to be constructed in Madagascar, whence operations were to be directed in all quarters against our East Indian possessions and their extensive trade.

"In addition to these means," it was further said in the report, "the Departmental Councils should each arm one steam-frigate, commanded by an officer of the navy born in the department. The prizes captured by each should in this case be at the disposal of the Departmental Councils, a portion being devoted to defraying the expenses of the vessel, and the remainder applied to the execution of public works within the department." "As regards the defence of French ports, this may be best effected by flat-bottomed hulks, armed with long-range guns adapted to horizontal firing. The chances against invasion are greatly in favour of France, on account of the superiority of her land force, and the facility of transporting troops by railway to the locality attacked." "A great point will be the perfect training of the French squadron by annual evolutions, and with double or treble the requisite number of officers. If these suggestions are carried out, France will establish at sea what Russia has done on land, to the injury and restriction of British commerce, which must be seriously damaged, without material harm being done to ourselves. This loss of commerce will especially affect the working classes of England, and thus bring about a democratic inundation which will compel her to a speedy submission."

Those were the chief proposals of the secret memoir which, falling into the hands of the British Government, so far alarmed it as to lead it to call upon the Earl of Dundonald for his opinions as to the best way of meeting the threatened danger. "This document," he wrote in his reply to Lord Auckland, "describes a plan of maritime operations undoubtedly more injurious to the interests of England than that pursued by France in former wars. There is nothing new, however, in the opinions promulgated. They have long been familiar to British naval officers, whose wonder has been that the wide-spread colonial commerce of England has never yet been effectually assailed. It is true that the advice given in the memoir derives more importance now from the fact that the application of steam-power to a system of predatory warfare constitutes every harbour a port of naval equipment, requiring to be watched, not in the passive manner of former blockades, but effectively by steam-vessels having their fires kindled at least during the obscurity of night. The cost and number of such blockades need not be dwelt on, nor the indefinite period to which prudence on the part of the enemy, and vigilance on that of the blockading force, might prolong a war. One hundred millions sterling added to our national debt would solve a doubt whether the most successful depredation on British commerce could produce consequences more extensive and permanently injurious. The memoir obviously anticipates that 'l'usage des canons bombes, dont les atteintes ont un si prodigieux effet,' will prevent our blockading ships from approaching the shores of France, and that thus their steam-vessels might escape unobserved during night, even with sailing-vessels in tow. This is no vague conjecture, but a consequence which assuredly will follow any hesitation on our part to counteract the system extensively adopted, and now under the consideration of the National Assembly, of arming all batteries with projectiles, whereby to burn or blow up our ships of war – a fate which even the precaution of keeping out of range could not avert, by reason of the incendiary and explosive missiles whereby 'les petits bailments à vapeur pouront attaquer les plus gros vaisseaux.' It is impossible to retaliate by using similar weapons. Forts and batteries are incombustible. Recourse must therefore be had to other means, whereby to overcome fortifications protecting expeditionary forces and piratical equipments."

The means recommended by Lord Dundonald, it need hardly be said, were the secret war-plans which he had developed nearly forty years before, and the efficacy of which had recently been again admitted by the committee appointed to investigate them in 1846. It is not allowable, of course, to quote the paragraphs in which Lord Dundonald once more explained them and urged their adoption in case of need. The only objection offered to them was that they were too terrible for use by a civilized community. "These means," he replied, "all powerful, are nevertheless humane when contrasted with the use of shells and carcases by ships at sea, and most merciful, as competent to avert the bloodshed that would attend the contemplated 'descente en Angleterre ou en Ireland,' and other hostile schemes recommended in the memoir."

That letter was forwarded to Lord Auckland from Halifax, where Lord Dundonald then was, in the beginning of August. "Assuredly the reasons which you give for the use of the means suggested are such as it is difficult to controvert," wrote Lord Auckland on the 18th; "but I would at least defer my assent or dissent to the time when the question may be more pressing than it is at present." "I would postpone my own reflections on the 'secret plans,'" he wrote again on the 1st of September, "and would fain hope that events will allow the Government long to postpone all decision upon them. I agree with you, however, in much that you say upon their principle, and am well satisfied that to no hands better than yours could the execution of any vigorous plans be entrusted."

When, however, as will be seen on a latter page, an opportunity did arise for enforcing those plans against another power than France, their execution was not permitted to Lord Dundonald.

Strongly as he himself was impressed with their importance, they formed only a part of a complete system of opinions respecting the defence of England at which he arrived by close study and long experience. These have already been partially indicated. He did not wish that his plans should be lightly made use of; but, believing that they would ultimately become a recognised means of warfare, and that even without them a great revolution would soon take place in ways of fighting, he deprecated as useless and wasteful the elaborate fortifications which were in his time beginning to be extensively set up at Dover, Portsmouth, and other possible points of attack upon England, and urged, with no less energy, that vast improvements ought to be made in the construction and employment of ships of war.

Fortifications, he considered, were only desirable for the protection of the special ports and depôts around which they were set up; and even for that purpose they ought to be so compact as to need no more than a few troops and local garrisons for their occupation. To have them so complicated and numerous as to require the exclusive attention of all or nearly all the military force of England, appeared to him only a source of national weakness. His own achievements at Valdivia and elsewhere showed him that skilful seamanship on the part of an invader would render them much less sufficient for the defence of the country than was generally supposed. If all our soldiers were scattered along various parts of the coast, it would not be difficult for the enemy, by a bold and sudden onslaught, or still more by a feint of the sort in which he himself was master, to take possession of one, and then there would be no concentrated army available to prevent the onward march of the assailant. Much wiser would it be to leave the seaboard comparatively unprotected from the land, and to have a powerful army so arranged as to be ready for prompt resistance of the enemy, if, by any means, he had gained a footing on the shore.

To prevent that footing being gained, however, Lord Dundonald was quite as eager as any champion of monster fortifications could be; but this prevention, he urged, must be by means of moveable ships, and not by immoveable land-works. A strong fleet of gunboats, stationed all along the coast, and with carefully-devised arrangements for mutual communication, so that at any time their force could be speedily concentrated in one or more important positions, would be far more efficacious and far more economical than the more popular expedients for the military defence of England. He heartily believed, in fact, in the old and often-proved maxim that the sea was England's wall, and he desired to have that wall guarded by a force able to watch its whole extent and pass at ease from one point to another as occasion required.

Desiring that thus the coast should be immediately protected by efficient gunboats, he desired no less to augment the naval strength of the country by means of improved war-ships as much like gunboats as possible. To large ships, if constructed in moderation and applied to special purposes, he was not averse; but he set a far higher value upon small and well-armed vessels, able to pass rapidly from place to place and to navigate shallow seas. "Give me," he often said, "a fast small steamer, with a heavy long-range gun in the bow, and another in the hold to fall back upon, and I would not hesitate to attack the largest ship afloat." His opinion on this point also was confirmed by his own experience – most notably in the exploits of his little Speedy in the Mediterranean – and by the whole history of English naval triumphs. Since the time when the so-called Invincible Armada of Spain entered the British Channel, designed to conquer England by means of its huge armaments, and when the bulky galleons and galeasses of Philip's haughty sailors were chased and worried by the smaller barks and pinnaces of Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher, and the other sea-captains of Elizabeth, who sailed round and round their foe, and darted in and out of his unwieldy mass of shipping, never failing to inflict great injury, while his volleys of artillery passed harmlessly over their decks to sink into the sea, there had been abundant proof of the constant superiority of small warships over large. A "mosquito fleet," as he called it, was what Lord Dundonald wished to see developed; a swarm of active little vessels, just large enough to carry one or two powerful guns, which could go anywhere and do anything, to which the larger crafts of the enemy would afford convenient targets, but which, small and nimble, would be much less likely to be themselves attacked, and, even if attacked and sunk, would entail far less loss than would ensue from the destruction of a large war-ship. "As large a gun as possible, in a vessel as small and swift as possible, and as many of them as you can put upon the sea," was Lord Dundonald's ideal. For this he argued during half a century; for this he laboured hard and long in the exercise of his inventive powers. In 1826, the plan of the war-steamers which he was to have taken to Greece was explained to Lord Exmouth – no slight authority on naval matters. "Why, it's not only the Turkish fleet," exclaimed the veteran, "but all the navies in the world, that you will be able to conquer with such craft as these."