Enough has now been said to show that "seeking out the enemy's fleet" is not in itself sufficient to secure such a decision. What the maxim really means is that we should endeavour from the first to secure contact in the best position for bringing about a complete decision in our favour, and as soon as the other parts of our war plan, military or political, will permit. If the main offensive is military, as it was in the Japanese and American cases, then if possible the effort to secure such control must be subordinated to the movement of the army, otherwise we give the defensive precedence of the offensive. If, however, the military offensive cannot be ensured until the naval defensive is perfected, as will be the case if the enemy brings a fleet up to our army's line of passage, then our first move must be to secure naval contact.
The vice of the opposite method of procedure is obvious. If we assume the maxim that the first duty of our fleet is to seek out the enemy wherever he may be, it means in its nakedness that we merely conform to the enemy's dispositions and movements. It is open to him to lead us wherever he likes. It was one of the fallacies that underlay all Napoleon's naval combinations, that he believed that our hard-bitten admirals would behave in this guileless manner. But nothing was further from their cunning. There is a typical order of Cornwallis's which serves well to mark their attitude. It was one he gave to Admiral Cotton, his second in command, in July 1804 on handing over to his charge the Western Squadron off Ushant: "If the French put to sea," he says, "without any of your vessels seeing them, do not follow them, unless you are absolutely sure of the course they have taken. If you leave the entrance of the Channel without protection, the enemy might profit by it, and assist the invasion which threatens His Majesty's dominions, the protection of which is your principal object."
It is indeed a common belief that Nelson never permitted himself but a single purpose, the pursuit of the enemy's fleet, and that, ignoring the caution which Cornwallis impressed upon Cotton, he fell into the simple trap. But it has to be noted that he never suffered himself to be led in pursuit of a fleet away from the position he had been charged to maintain, unless and until he had made that position secure behind him. His famous chase to the West Indies is the case which has led to most misconception on the point from an insufficient regard to the surrounding circumstances. Nelson did not pursue Villeneuve with the sole, or even the primary, object of bringing him to action. His dominant object was to save Jamaica from capture. If it had only been a question of getting contact, he would certainly have felt in a surer position by waiting for Villeneuve's return off St. Vincent or closing in to the strategical centre off Ushant. Further, it must be observed that Nelson by his pursuit did not uncover what it was his duty to defend. The Mediterranean position was rendered quite secure before he ventured on his eccentric movement. Finally, we have the important fact that though the moral effect of Nelson's implacable persistence and rapidity was of priceless value, it is impossible to show that as a mere strategical movement it had any influence on the course of the campaign. His appearance in the West Indies may have saved one or two small islands from ransom and a good deal of trade from capture. It may also have hastened Villeneuve's return by a few days, but that was not to our advantage. Had he returned even a week later there would have been no need to raise the Rochefort blockade. Barham would have had enough ships at his command to preserve the whole of his blockades, as he had intended to do till the Curieux's news of Villeneuve's precipitate return forced his hand before he was ready.
If we desire a typical example of the way the old masters used the doctrine of seeking out, it is to be found, not in Nelson's magnificent chase, but in the restrained boldness of Barham's orders to Cornwallis and Calder. Their instructions for seeking out Villeneuve were to move out on his two possible lines of approach for such a time and such a distance as would make decisive action almost certain, and at the same time, if contact were missed, would ensure the preservation of the vital defensive positions. Barham was far too astute to play into Napoleon's hands, and by blindly following his enemy's lead to be jockeyed into sacrificing the position which his enemy wished to secure. If our maxim be suffered to usurp the place of instructed judgment, the almost inevitable result will be that it will lead us into just the kind of mistake which Barham avoided.
II. BLOCKADE
Under the term blockade we include operations which vary widely in character and in strategical intention. In the first place, blockade may be either naval or commercial. By naval blockade we seek either to prevent an enemy's armed force leaving port, or to make certain it shall be brought to action before it can carry out the ulterior purpose for which it puts to sea. That armed force may be purely naval, or it may consist wholly or in part of a military expedition. If it be purely naval, then our blockade is a method of securing command. If it be purely military, it is a method of exercising command, and as such will be dealt with when we come to consider defence against invasion. But in so far as military expeditions are normally accompanied by a naval escort, operations to prevent their sailing are not purely concerned with the exercise of command. Naval blockade, therefore, may be regarded for practical purposes as a method of securing command and as a function of battle-squadrons. Commercial blockade, on the other hand, is essentially a method of exercising command, and is mainly an affair of cruisers. Its immediate object is to stop the flow of the enemy's sea-borne trade, whether carried in his own or neutral bottoms, by denying him the use of trade communications.
From the point of view of the conduct of war, therefore, we have two well-defined categories of blockade, naval and commercial. But our classification must go further; for naval blockade itself is equally varied in intention, and must be subdivided. Strictly speaking, the term implies a desire to close the blockaded port and to prevent the enemy putting to sea. But this was not always the intention. As often as not our wish was that he should put to sea that we might bring him to action, and in order to do this, before he could effect his purpose, we had to watch the port with a fleet more or less closely. For this operation there was no special name. Widely as it differed in object from the other, it was also usually called blockade, and Nelson's protest against the consequent confusion of thought is well known. "It is not my intention," he said, "to close-watch Toulon"; and again, "My system is the very contrary of blockading. Every opportunity has been offered the enemy to put to sea." It is desirable, therefore, to adopt terms to distinguish the two forms. "Close" and "open" express the antithesis suggested by Nelson's letter, and the two terms serve well enough to mark the characteristic feature of each operation. Close blockade, it is true, as formerly conceived, is generally regarded as no longer practicable; but the antithetical ideas, which the two forms of blockade connote, can never be eliminated from strategical consideration. It must always be with the relations of these two forms, whatever shape they may take in future, that the strategy of naval blockade is chiefly concerned.
With regard to commercial blockade, in strict analysis it should be eliminated from an inquiry that concerns methods of securing command and postponed to that section of exercising command which deals with the attack and defence of trade. It is, however, necessary to treat certain of its aspects in conjunction with naval blockade for two reasons: one, that as a rule naval blockade is indissolubly united to a subordinate commercial blockade; and the other, that the commercial form, though its immediate object is the exercise of control, has almost invariably an ulterior object which is concerned with securing control; that is to say, while its immediate object was to keep the enemy's commercial ports closed, its ulterior object was to force his fleet to sea.
Commercial blockade, therefore, has an intimate relation with naval blockade in its open form. We adopt that form when we wish his fleet to put to sea, and commercial blockade is usually the most effective means we have of forcing upon him the movement we leave him free to attempt. By closing his commercial ports we exercise the highest power of injuring him which the command of the sea can give us. We choke the flow of his national activity afloat in the same way that military occupation of his territory chokes it ashore. He must, therefore, either tamely submit to the worst which a naval defeat can inflict upon him, or he must fight to release himself. He may see fit to choose the one course or the other, but in any case we can do no more by naval means alone to force our will upon him.
In the long run a rigorous and uninterrupted blockade is almost sure to exhaust him before it exhausts us, but the end will be far and costly. As a rule, therefore, we have found that where we had a substantial predominance our enemy preferred to submit to commercial blockade in hope that by the chances of war or the development of fresh force he might later on be in a better position to come out into the open. That he should come out and stake the issue in battle was nearly always our wish, and it was obvious that too rigorous a naval blockade was not the way to achieve the desired end, or to reap the strategical result which we might expect from paralysing his commerce. Consequently where the desire for a decision at sea was not crossed by higher military considerations, as in the case of imminent invasion, or where we ourselves had an important expedition in hand, it was to our interest to incline the enemy's mind towards the bolder choice.
The means was to tempt him with a prospect of success, either by leading him to believe the blockading force was smaller than it was, or by removing it to such a distance as would induce him to attempt to evade it, or both. A leading case of such an open blockade was Nelson's disposition of his fleet off Cadiz when he was seeking to bring Villeneuve to action in 1805. But merely to leave a port open does not fulfil the idea of open blockade, and in this case to opportunity and temptation Nelson added the pressure of a commercial blockade of the adjacent ports in hope of starving Villeneuve into the necessity of taking to the sea.
Finally, in a general comparison of the two forms, we have to observe that close blockade is characteristically a method of securing local and temporary command. Its dominating purpose will usually be to prevent the enemy's fleet acting in a certain area and for a certain purpose. Whereas open blockade, in that it aims at the destruction of an enemy's naval force, is a definite step towards securing permanent command.
Enough has now been said to show that the question of choice between close and open blockade is one of extreme complexity. Our naval literature, it is true, presents the old masters as divided into two schools on the subject, implying that one was in favour of the close form always, and the other of the open form. We are even led to believe that the choice depended on the military spirit of the officer concerned. If his military spirit was high, he chose the close and more exacting form; if it were low, he was content with the open and less exacting form. True, we are told that men of the latter school based their objections to close blockade on the excessive wear and tear of a fleet that it involved, but it is too often suggested that this attitude was no more than a mask for a defective spirit. Seldom if ever are we invited to compare their decisions with the attendant strategical intention, with the risks which the conditions justified, or with the expenditure of energy which the desired result could legitimately demand. Yet all these considerations must enter into the choice, and on closer examination of the leading cases it will be found that they bear a striking and almost constant relation to the nature of the blockade employed.
In considering open blockade, three postulates must be kept in mind. Firstly, since our object is to get the enemy to sea, our position must be such as will give him an opportunity of doing so. Secondly, since we desire contact for a decisive battle, that position must be no further away from his port than is compatible with bringing him to action before he can effect his purpose. Thirdly, there is the idea of economy—that is, the idea of adopting the method which is least exhausting to our fleet, and which will best preserve its battle fitness. It is on the last point that the greatest difference of opinion has existed. A close blockade always tended to exhaust a fleet, and always must do so. But, on the other hand, it was contended that the exhaustion is compensated by the high temper and moral domination which the maintenance of a close blockade produces in a good fleet, whereas the comparative ease of distant and secure watch tended to deterioration. Before considering these opposed views, one warning is necessary. It is usually assumed that the alternative to close blockade is watching the enemy from one of our own ports, but this is not essential. What is required is an interior and, if possible, a secret position which will render contact certain; and with modern developments in the means of distant communication, such a position is usually better found at sea than in port. A watching position can in fact be obtained free from the strain of dangerous navigation and incessant liability to attack without sacrifice of sea training. With this very practical point in mind, we may proceed to test the merits of the two forms on abstract principles.
It was always obvious that a close naval blockade was one of the weakest and least desirable forms of war. Here again when we say "weakest" we do not mean "least effective," but that it was exhausting, and that it tended to occupy a force greater than that against which it was acting. This was not because a blockading fleet, tempered and toughened by its watch, and with great advantage of tactical position, could not be counted on to engage successfully a raw fleet of equal force issuing from port, but because in order to maintain its active efficiency it required large reserves for its relief. So severe was the wear and tear both to men and ships, that even the most strenuous exponents of the system considered that at least a fifth of the force should always be refitting, and in every case two admirals were employed to relieve one another. In 1794 one of the highest authorities in the service considered that to maintain an effective close blockade of Brest two complete sets of flag-officers were necessary, and that no less than one-fourth of the squadron should always be in port.16
Now these weaknesses, being inherent in close blockade, necessarily affected the appreciation of its value. The weight of the objection tended of course to decrease as seamanship, material, or organisation improved, but it was always a factor. It is true also that it seems to have had more weight with some men than with others, but it will appear equally true, if we endeavour to trace the movement of opinion on the subject, that it was far from being the sole determinant.
It was in the Seven Years' War under Anson's administration that continuous and close blockade was first used systematically, but it was Hawke who originated it. In the first three campaigns the old system of watching Brest from a British western port had been in vogue, but it had twice failed to prevent a French concentration in the vital Canadian theatre. In the spring of 1759 Hawke was in command of the Channel Fleet with the usual instructions for watching, but being directed to stand over and look into Brest, he intimated his intention, unless he received orders to the contrary, to remain off the port instead of returning to Torbay. His reason was that he had found there a squadron which he believed was intended for the West Indies, and he considered it better to prevent its sailing than to let it put to sea and try to catch it. In other words, he argued that none of the usual western watching ports afforded a position interior to the usual French route from Brest to the West Indies.
Since rumours of invasion were in the air, it was obviously the better course to deal with the enemy's squadrons in home waters and avoid dispersal of the fleet in seeking them out. In spite of extraordinarily bad weather, therefore, he was permitted to act as he advised. With Boscawen as relief, the new form of blockade was kept up thenceforward, and with entire success. But it must be noted that this success was rather due to the fact that the French made no further effort to cross the Atlantic, than to the fact that the blockade was maintained with sufficient strictness to prevent their doing so. In certain states of weather our fleet was forced to raise the blockade and run to Torbay or Plymouth. Such temporary reversions to the open form nearly always afforded an opportunity for the French to get away to the southward with two or three days' start. Against any attempt, however, to get to the east or the north in order to dispute command of the Channel or other home waters the system was thoroughly efficient, and was unaffected by the intervals of the open form.
It may have been these considerations which in the War of American Independence induced so fine an officer as Howe to be strongly in favour of a reversion to the old system. The vital theatre was then again across the Atlantic, and there was no serious preparation for invasion. It should also be borne in mind in judging Howe against Hawke, that in the Seven Years' War we had such a preponderance at sea as permitted ample reserves to nourish a close blockade, whereas in the latter war we were numerically inferior to the hostile coalition. Since it was impossible to prevent the French reaching the West Indies and North America if they so determined, our policy was to follow them with equal fleets and reduce the home force as low as that policy demanded and as was consistent with a reasonable degree of safety. The force required might well be inferior to the enemy, since it was certain that all attempts upon the Channel would be made with an unwieldy and ill-knit force composed of Spanish and French units.
In Howe's opinion this particular situation was not to be solved by attempting to close Brest, and nothing can be more misleading than to stretch such an opinion beyond the circumstances it was intended to meet. He did not consider it was in his power to close the port. The enemy, he held, could always be in readiness to escape after a gale of wind by which the blockading squadron would be drawn off or dispersed, the ships much damaged, and the enemy enheartened. "An enemy," he said, "is not to be restrained from putting to sea by a station taken off their port with a barely superior squadron." The experience of 1805 appears to contradict him. Then a barely superior squadron did succeed in preventing Ganteaume's exit, but though the squadron actually employed was barely superior, it had ample fleet reserves to sustain its numbers in efficiency. It was, moreover, only for a short time that it had to deal with any real effort to escape. After May 20th, Ganteaume was forbidden to put to sea. There were certainly several occasions during that famous blockade when he could have escaped to the southward had Napoleon wished it.
This case, then, cannot be taken to condemn Howe's judgment. His special function in the war plan was, with a force reduced to defensive strength, to prevent the enemy obtaining command of our home waters. It was certainly not his duty to undertake operations to which his force was not equal. His first duty was to keep it in being for its paramount purpose. To this end he decided on open blockade based on a general reserve at Spithead or St. Helen's, where he could husband the ships and train his recruits, while at the same time he protected our trade and communications and harassed those of the enemy. Kempenfelt, than whom there was no warmer advocate of activity, entirely approved the policy at least for the winter months, and in his case no one will be found to suggest that the idea was prompted by lack of spirit or love of ease. So far as the summer was concerned there was really little difference of opinion as to whether the fleet should be kept at sea or not, for sea-training during summer more than compensated for the exhaustion of material likely to be caused by intermittent spells of bad weather. Even for the winter the two policies came to much the same thing. Thus in Hawke's blockade at the end of 1759, during the critical month from mid-October to mid-November, he was unable to keep his station for nearly half the time, and when he did get contact with Conflans it was from Torbay and not Ushant. Still it may be doubted if without the confidence bred of his stormy vigil the battle of Quiberon would have been fought as it was.
With all this experience fresh in his mind Kempenfelt frankly advocated keeping the fleet in port for the winter. "Suppose," he wrote from Torbay in November 1779, "the enemy should put to sea with their fleet (that is, from Brest)—a thing much to be wished for by us—let us act wisely and keep ours in port. Leave them to the mercy of long nights and hard gales. They will do more in favour of you than your fleet can." Far better he thought to devote the winter to preparing the fleet for the next campaign so as to have "the advantage of being the first in the field." "Let us," he concluded, "keep a stout squadron to the westward ready to attend the motions of the enemy. I don't mean to keep them at sea, disabling themselves in buffeting the winds, but at Torbay ready to act as intelligence may suggest."17 It will be seen, therefore, that the conclusion that close blockade was always the best means of rendering the fleet most efficient for the function it had to perform must not be accepted too hastily. The reasons which induced Howe and Kempenfelt to prefer open blockade were mainly based on this very consideration. Having in mind the whole of the surrounding conditions, in their highly experienced opinion careful preparation in the winter and tactical evolutions in the summer were the surest road to battle fitness in the force available.
On the other hand, we have the fact that during the War of American Independence the open system was not very successful. But before condemning it out of hand, it must be remembered that the causes of failure were not all inherent in the system. In the first place, the need of relieving Gibraltar from time to time prevented the Western Squadron devoting itself entirely to its watch. In the next place, owing to defective administration the winters were not devoted with sufficient energy to preparing the fleet to be first in the field in the spring. Finally, we have to recognise that the lack of success was due not so much to permitting the French to cross the Atlantic, as to the failure to deal faithfully with them when contact was obtained at their destination. Obviously there is nothing to be said for the policy of "seeking out" as against that of preventing exit unless you are determined when you find to destroy or to be destroyed. It was here that Rodney and his fellows were found wanting. The system failed from defective execution quite as much as from defective design.
In the next war Howe was still in the ascendant and in command of the Channel fleet. He retained his system. Leaving Brest open he forced the French by operating against their trade to put to sea, and he was rewarded with the battle of the First of June. No attempt was made to maintain a close blockade during the following winter. The French were allowed to sail, and their disastrous cruise of January 1795 fully justified Kempenfelt's anticipations. So great was the damage done that they abandoned all idea of using their fleet as a whole. Howe's system was continued, but no longer with entirely successful results. In 1796 the French were able to make descents upon Ireland, and Howe in consequence has come in for the severest castigations. His method is contemptuously contrasted with that which St. Vincent adopted four years later, without any regard to the situation each admiral had to meet, and again on the assumption that the closing of Brest would have solved the one problem as well as it did the other.
In 1796 we were not on the defensive as we were in 1800. The French fleet had been practically destroyed. No invasion threatened. With a view to forcing peace our policy was directed to offensive action against French trade and territory in order by general pressure to back our overtures for a settlement. The policy may have been mistaken, but that is not the question. The question is, whether or not the strategy fitted the policy. We were also, it must be remembered, at war with Holland and expecting war with Spain, an eventuality which forced us to keep an eye on the defence of Portugal. In these circumstances nothing was further from our desire than to keep what was left of the Brest fleet in port. Our hope was by our offensive action against French maritime interests to force it to expose itself for their defence. To devote the fleet to the closing of Brest was to cripple it for offensive action and to play the enemy's game. The actual disposition of the home fleet was designed so as to preserve its offensive activity, and at the same time to ensure superiority in any part of the home waters in which the enemy might attempt a counterstroke. It was distributed in three active squadrons, one in the North Sea, one before Brest, and one cruising to the westward, with a strong reserve at Portsmouth. It is the location of the reserve that has been most lightly ridiculed, on the hasty assumption that it was merely the reserve of the squadron before Brest; whereas in truth it was a general reserve designed to act in the North Sea or wherever else it might be needed. At the same time it served as a training and depot squadron for increasing our power at sea in view of the probable addition of the Spanish fleet to Napoleon's naval force. To have exhausted our fleet merely to prevent raids leaving Brest which might equally well leave the Texel or Dunkirk was just what the enemy would have desired. The disposition was in fact a good example of concentration—that is, disposal about a strategical centre to preserve flexibility for offence without risking defensive needs, and yet it is by the most ardent advocates of concentration and the offensive that Howe's dispositions at this time have been most roundly condemned.
In the end the disposition did fail to prevent the landing of part of the force intended for Ireland, but it made the venture so difficult that it had to be deferred till mid-winter, and then the weather which rendered evasion possible broke up the expedition and denied it all chance of serious success. It was, in fact, another example of the working of Kempenfelt's rule concerning winter weather. So far as naval defence can go, the disposition was all that was required. The Irish expedition was seen leaving Brest by our inshore cruiser squadron. It was reported to Colpoys, who had the battle-squadron outside, and it was only a dense fog that enabled it to escape. It was, in fact, nothing more than the evasion of a small raiding force—an eventuality against which no naval defence can provide certain guarantee, especially in winter.
It was under wholly different conditions that at the end of 1800 Hawke's system was revived. St. Vincent's succession to the control of the fleet coincided with Napoleon's definite assumption of the control of the destinies of France. Our great duel with him had begun. The measures he was taking made it obvious we were once more facing the old life and death struggle for naval supremacy; we were openly threatened with invasion, and we had a distinct preponderance at sea. In short, we have to recognize the fact that the methods of the Seven Years' War were revived when the problems and factors of that war were renewed. As those problems grew more intense, as they did after the Peace of Amiens, and the threat of invasion became really formidable, so did the rigour of the close blockade increase. Under Cornwallis and Gardner it was maintained in such a way as to deny, so far as human effort could go, all possibility of exit without fighting. In spite of the importance of dealing with the enemy's squadrons in detail no risks were taken to bring Ganteaume to decisive action. Our first necessity was absolute local command. The acuteness of the invasion crisis demanded that the Brest fleet should be kept in port, and every time Ganteaume showed a foot the British admiral flew at him and drove him back. Once only during the continuation of the crisis was the rigour of this attitude relaxed, and that was to deal with what for the moment was the higher object. It was to meet Villeneuve on his return from the West Indies, but even then so nicely was the relaxation calculated, that Ganteaume was given no time to take advantage of it.
The analogy between the conditions of the blockade which St. Vincent inaugurated and those of the Seven Years' War becomes all the more significant when we note that while Cornwallis and Gardner in home waters were pressing close blockade to its utmost limit of rigour, Nelson in the Mediterranean was not using it at all. Yet with him also the chief concern was to prevent an invasion. His main function, as he and his Government saw it, was to prevent a descent from Southern France upon Neapolitan or Levantine territory. Why, then, did he not employ close blockade? It is usually assumed that it was because of his overpowering desire to bring the Toulon squadron to action. Occasional expressions in his letters give colour to such a view, but his dispositions show clearly that his desire to bring the fleet to action was kept in scientific subordination to the defensive duty with which he was charged. Close blockade was the most effectual means of securing this end, but in his case one of the conditions, which we have found always accompanying successful close blockade, was absent. He had no such preponderance of force as would enable him to nourish it up to the point of perfect continuity. In the circumstances the close form was too weak or exhausting for him to use with the force at his disposal.