CHAPTER FOUR
METHODS OF EXERCISING COMMAND
I. DEFENCE AGAINST INVASION
In methods of exercising command are included all operations not directly concerned with securing command or with preventing its being secured by the enemy. We engage in exercising command whenever we conduct operations which are directed not against the enemy's battle-fleet, but to using sea communications for our own purposes, or to interfering with the enemy's use of them. Such operations, though logically of secondary importance, have always occupied the larger part of naval warfare. Naval warfare does not begin and end with the destruction of the enemy's battle-fleet, nor even with breaking his cruiser power. Beyond all this there is the actual work of preventing his passing an army across the sea and of protecting the passage of our own military expeditions. There is also the obstruction of his trade and the protection of our own. In all such operations we are concerned with the exercise of command. We are using the sea, or interfering with its use by the enemy; we are not endeavouring to secure the use or to prevent the enemy from securing it. The two categories of operation differ radically in conception and purpose, and strategically they are on wholly different planes.
Logically, of course, operations for exercising command should follow those for securing command; that is to say, that since the attainment of command is the special object of naval warfare, and since that command can only be obtained permanently by the destruction of the enemy's armed forces afloat, it follows that in strictness no other objects should be allowed to interfere with our concentration of effort on the supreme end of securing command by destruction. War, however, is not conducted by logic, and the order of proceeding which logic prescribes cannot always be adhered to in practice. We have seen how, owing to the special conditions of naval warfare, extraneous necessities intrude themselves which make it inevitable that operations for exercising command should accompany as well as follow operations for securing command. War being, as it is, a complex sum of naval, military, political, financial, and moral factors, its actuality can seldom offer to a naval staff a clean slate on which strategical problems can be solved by well-turned syllogisms. The naval factor can never ignore the others. From the outset one or more of them will always call for some act of exercising command which will not wait for its turn in the logical progression. To a greater or less extent in all ordinary cases both categories of operation will have to be put in motion from the beginning.
Hence the importance of realising the distinction between the two generic forms of naval activity. In the hurry and stress of war confusion between them is easy. By keeping a firm grip upon the difference we can see at least what we are doing. We can judge how far any given operation that may be called for is a sacrifice of security to exercise, how far such a sacrifice may be justified, and how far the one end may be made to serve the other. By applying the distinction as a test much error may be avoided. The risk we take may be great, but we shall be able to weigh it accurately against the value of the end, and we shall take it with our eyes open and of set purpose. Above all, it will enable the Staff to settle clearly for each squadronal commander what is to be his primary objective, and what the object or purpose of the operations entrusted to him. It is above all in this last consideration, and particularly in the determination of the objective, that lies the main practical value of the distinction.
This will become clear the moment we begin to consider defence against invasion, which naturally takes the first place amongst operations for the exercise of control. Of all the current assumptions, not one is so confusing for the finer adjustments of strategy as that which affirms that the primary objective of our fleet is always the enemy's fleet. Of the battle-fleet and its attendant units it is of course true, so long at least as the enemy has a battle-fleet in being. It is true, that is, of all operations for securing control, but of operations for exercising control it is not true. In the case we have now to consider-defence against invasion-the objective of the special operations is, and always has been, the enemy's army. On this fundamental postulate our plans for resisting invasion have always been constructed from the year of the Armada to 1805.
In the old service tradition the point was perfectly well established. Admirals' instructions constantly insist on the fact that the transports are the "principal object." The whole disposition of the fleet during Hawke's blockade in 1759 was based on keeping a firm hold on the transports in the Morbihan, and when he sought to extend his operations against the Rochefort squadron, he was sharply reminded by Anson that "the principal object of attention at this time" was, firstly, "the interception of the embarkations of the enemy at Morbihan," and secondly, "the keeping of the ships of war from coming out of Brest." Similarly Commodore Warren in 1796, when he had the permanent frigate guard before Brest, issued orders to his captains that in case of encountering enemy's transports under escort they were "to run them down or destroy them in the most expeditious manner possible previous to attacking the ships of war, but to preserve such a situation as to effect that purpose when directed by signal." Lord Keith's orders when watching Napoleon's flotilla were to the same effect. "Directing your chief attention," they run, "to the destruction of the ships, vessels, or boats having men, horses, or artillery on board (in preference to that of the vessels by which they are protected), and in the strict execution of this important duty losing sight entirely of the possibility of idle censure for avoiding contact with an armed force, because the prevention of debarkation is the object of primary importance to which every other consideration must give way."22
In tactics, then, the idea was the same as in strategy. The army was the primary objective round which all dispositions turned. In the French service the strength and soundness of the British practice was understood at least by the best men. When in 1805 Napoleon consulted Ganteaume as to the possibility of the flotilla of transports effecting its passage by evasion, the admiral told him it was impossible, since no weather could avail to relax the British hold sufficiently. "In former wars," he said, "the English vigilance was miraculous."
To this rule there was no exception, not even when circumstances rendered it difficult to distinguish between the enemy's fleet and army as objectives. This situation could occur in two ways. Firstly, when the invading army was designed to sail with the battle-fleet, as in the case of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt; and secondly, when, although the design was that the two should operate on separate lines, our system of defence forced the fleet to come up to the army's line of passage in order to clear it, as happened in the case of the Armada and the French attempt of 1744.
In the latter case the invading army, whose objective was unknown, was at Dunkirk, and a French fleet was coming up the Channel to cover the passage. Sir John Norris, in command of the home fleet, was in the Downs. Though his name is now almost forgotten, he was one of the great founders of our naval tradition, and a strategist of the first order. In informing the Government of his plan of operations, he said he intended to proceed with his whole squadron off Dunkirk to prevent the transports sailing. "But," he says, "if they should unfortunately get out and pass us in the night and go northward, I intend to detach a superior force to endeavour to overtake and destroy them; and with the remainder of my squadron either to fight the French fleet now in the Channel, or observe them and cover the country as our circumstances will admit of; or I shall pursue the embarkation with all my strength." In this case there had been no time to organise a special squadron or flotilla, in the usual way, to bar the line of passage, and the battle-fleet had to be used for the purpose. This being so, Norris was not going to allow the presence of an enemy's battle-fleet to entice him away from his grip on the invading army, and so resolutely did he hold to the principle, that he meant if the transports put to sea to direct his offensive against them, while he merely contained the enemy's battle-fleet by defensive observation.
In the Egyptian case there was no distinction between the two objectives at all. Napoleon's expedition sailed in one mass. Yet in the handling of his fleet Nelson preserved the essential idea. He organised it into three "sub-squadrons," one of six sail and two of four each. "Two of these sub-squadrons," says Berry, his flag-captain, "were to attack the ships of war, while the third was to pursue the transports and to sink and destroy as many as it could"; that is, he intended, in order to make sure of Napoleon's army, to use no more than ten, and possibly only eight, of his own battleships against the eleven of the enemy.
Many other examples could be given of British insistence on making the enemy's army the primary objective and not his fleet in cases of invasion. No point in the old tradition was more firmly established. Its value was of course more strongly marked where the army and the fleet of the enemy endeavoured to act on separate lines of operation; that is, where the army took the real offensive line and the fleet the covering or preventive line, and where consequently for our own fleet there was no confusion between the two objectives. This was the normal case, and the reason it was so is simple enough. It may be stated at once, since it serves to enunciate the general principle upon which our traditional system of defence was based.
An invasion of Great Britain must always be an attempt over an uncommanded sea. It may be that our fleet predominates or it may be that it does not, but the command must always be in dispute. If we have gained complete command, no invasion can take place, nor will it be attempted. If we have lost it completely no invasion will be necessary, since, quite apart from the threat of invasion, we must make peace on the best terms we can get. Now, if the sea be uncommanded, there are obviously two ways in which an invasion may be attempted. Firstly, the enemy may endeavour to force it through our naval defence with transports and fleet in one mass. This was the primitive idea on which the Spanish invasion of Philip the Second was originally planned by his famous admiral, Santa-Cruz. Ripening military science, however, was able to convince him of its weakness. A mass of transports and warships is the most cumbrous and vulnerable engine of war ever known. The weaker the naval defence of the threatened country, the more devoutly will it pray the invader may use this device. Where contact with the enemy's fleet is certain, and particularly in narrow seas, as it was in this case, such a course will give the defender all the chances he could desire, and success for the invader is inconceivable, provided always we resolutely determine to make the army in its transports our main objective, and are not to be induced to break our head against its escort.
Where, however, contact is not certain, the invasion over an uncommanded sea may succeed by evasion of the defender's battle-fleet, as it did in the case of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt. But that operation belongs to an entirely different category from that which we are now considering. None of the factors on which the traditional system of British defence is based were present. It was an operation over an open sea against a distant and undetermined objective that had no naval defence of its own, whereas in our own case the determining factors are permanent naval defence, an approximately determined objective, and a narrow sea where evasion by any force of invasion strength is impossible. Napoleon's exploit was in fact nothing more than the evasion of an open blockade which had no naval defence beyond it. The vital importance of these things will appear as we proceed and note the characteristics which marked every attempt to invade England. From such attempts we of course exclude the various descents upon Ireland, which, not being of invasion strength, fall into another class, to be dealt with hereafter.
Since the expedient of forcing an invasion by the strength of a powerful battleship escort has always been rejected as an inadmissible operation, the invader has had no choice but to adopt a separate line for his army, and operate with his fleet in such a way as may promise to prevent the enemy controlling that line. That, in short, is the problem of invasion over an uncommanded sea. In spite of an unbroken record of failure scored at times with naval disaster, continental strategists from Parma to Napoleon have clung obstinately to the belief that there is a solution short of a complete fleet decision. They have tried every conceivable expedient again and again. They have tried it by simple surprise evasion and by evasion through diversion or dispersal of our naval defence. They have tried it by seeking local control through a local naval success prepared by surprise, or by attempting to entice our fleet away from home waters to a sufficient extent to give them temporarily local superiority. But the end has always been the same. Try as they would, they were faced ultimately by one of two alternatives—they must either defeat our covering battle-fleet in battle, or they must close their own battle-fleet on the transports, and so set up the very situation which it was their main design to avoid.
The truth is, that all attempts to invade England without command of the sea have moved in a vicious circle, from which no escape was ever found. No matter how ingenious or complex the enemy's design, a determined hold on their army as the primary naval objective has always set up a process of degradation which rendered the enterprise impracticable. Its stages are distinct and recurrent, and may be expressed as it were diagrammatically as follows:—
Two lines of operation having been decided on, the invading army is gathered at a point as close as possible to the coast to be invaded; that is, where the intervening sea is narrowest, and where the army's passage will be exposed to interference for the shortest time. The covering fleet will operate from a point as distant as convenient, so as to entice the enemy as far as possible from the army's line of passage. The defender replies by blockading the army's ports of departure with a flotilla of light vessels capable of dealing with transports, or by establishing a mobile defence of the threatened coasts which transports cannot break unaided, or more probably he will combine both expedients. The first fallacy of the invasion plan is then apparent. The narrower the sea, the easier it is to watch. Pure evasion becomes impossible, and it is necessary to give the transports sufficient armed strength by escort or otherwise to protect them against flotilla attack. The defender at once stiffens his flotilla defence with cruisers and intermediate ships, and the invader has to arrange for breaking the barrier with a battle-squadron. So weak and disturbing a position is then set up that the whole scheme begins to give way, if, that is, the defender has clung stubbornly to the strategy we always used. Our battle-fleet refused to seek out that of the invader. It has always held a position between the invader's fleet and the blockaded invasion base, covering the blockade and flotilla defence. To enable a battle-squadron to break our hold and to reinforce the army escort, the invader must either force this covering position by battle, or disturb it so effectively as to permit the reinforcing squadron to evade it. But since ex hypothesi he is trying to invade without securing the command by battle, he will first try to reinforce his transport escort by evasion. At once he is faced with new difficulty. The reinforcement entails dividing his fleet, and this is an expedient so vicious and disturbing to morale, that no invader has ever been found to risk it. And for this reason. To make evasion possible for the detached squadron, he must bring up the rest of his force and engage the attention of the enemy's fleet, and thus unless he is in very great superiority, and by hypothesis is not—he runs the hazard of having his two divisions beaten in detail. This method has sometimes been urged by Governments, but so loud have been the protests both from the fleet and the army, that it has always been dropped, and the invader finds himself at the end of the vicious circle. Unable to reinforce his transport escort sufficiently without dividing his battle-fleet, he is forced to bring his whole force up to the army or abandon the attempt till command shall have been secured by battle.
Thus the traditional British system has never failed to bring about the deadlock, and it will be observed it is founded on making the invading army the primary objective. We keep a hold on it, firstly, by flotilla blockade and defence stiffened as circumstances may dictate by higher units, and secondly, by battle-fleet cover. It is on the flotilla hold that the whole system is built up. It is the local danger to that hold which determines the amount of stiffening the flotilla demands, and it is the security of that hold which determines the position and action of the battle-fleet.
A few typical examples will serve to show how the system worked in practice under all kinds of conditions. The first scientific attempt to work on two lines of operation, as distinguished from the crude mass methods of the Middle Ages, was the Spanish enterprise of 1588. Though internal support from Catholic malcontents was expected, it was designed as a true invasion, that is, a continuing operation for permanent conquest. Parma, the military commander-in-chief, laid it down that the Spanish fleet would have not only to protect his passage and support his landing, but also "to keep open his communications for the flow of provisions and munition."
In advising the dual line of operation, Parma's original intention was to get his army across by surprise. As always, however, it proved impossible to conceal the design, and long before he was ready he found himself securely blockaded by a Dutch flotilla supported by an English squadron. So firm indeed was the English hold on the army, that for a time it was overdone. The bulk of the English fleet was kept on the line of passage under Howard, while Drake alone was sent to the westward. It was only under the great sailor's importunity that the disposition, which was to become traditional, was perfected, and the whole fleet, with the exception of the squadron supporting the flotilla blockade, was massed in a covering position to the westward. The normal situation was then set up, and it could only have one result. Surprise was out of the question. Parma could not move till the blockade was broken, nor in face of the covering fleet could the Spanish fleet hope to break it by a sudden intrusion. The vague prospects the Spaniards had conceived of keeping the English fleet away from the line of passage by threatening a descent in the West Country or blockading it in a western port would no longer do. No such expedient would release Parma, and the Duke of Medina-Sidonia was ordered to proceed direct to Dunkirk if possible without fighting, there to break the blockade and secure the passage.
There was some idea in the King's mind that he would be able to do this without a battle, but Parma and every seasoned Spanish sailor knew that the English fleet would have to be totally defeated before the transports could venture out of port. Such a battle was indeed inevitable, and the English dispositions secured that the Spaniards would have to fight it under every disadvantage which was inherent in the plan of dual lines of operation. The English would secure certain contact at such a distance from the line of passage as would permit prolonged harassing attacks in waters unfamiliar to the enemy and close to their own sources of support and supply. No battle to the death would be necessary until the Spaniards were herded into the confined and narrow waters which the army's passage demanded, and where both sections of the British fleet would be massed for the final struggle. They must arrive there dispirited with indecisive actions and with the terrors of unknown and difficult seas at the highest point. All this was no matter of chance. It was inherent in the strategical and geographical conditions. The English dispositions had taken every advantage of them, and the result was that not only was the Spanish army unable even to move, but the English advantages in the final battle were so great, that it was only a lucky shift of wind that saved the Armada from being driven to total destruction upon the Dutch banks.
In this case, of course, there had been ample time to make the necessary dispositions. It will be well to follow it with an example in which surprise came as near to being complete as it is possible to conceive, and where the arrangements for defence had to be improvised on the spur of the moment.
A case in point was the French attempt of 1744. In that year everything was in favour of the invader. England was undermined with Jacobite sedition; Scotland was restless and threatening; the navy had sunk to what is universally regarded as its worst for spirit, organisation, and command; and the government was in the hands of the notorious "Drunken Administration." For three years we had been making unsuccessful war with Spain, and had been supporting Maria Theresa on the Continent against France, with the result that our home defence was reduced to its lowest ebb. The navy then numbered 183 sail—about equal to that of France and Spain combined—but owing to the strain of the war in the Mediterranean and Transatlantic stations only forty-three, including eighteen of the line, were available for home waters. Even counting all cruising ships "within call," as the phrase then was, the Government had barely one-fourth of the fleet at hand to meet the crisis. With the land forces it was little better. Considerably more than half the home army was abroad with the King, who was assisting the Empress-Queen as Elector of Hanover. Between France and England, however, there was no war. In the summer the King won the battle of Dettingen; a formal alliance with Maria Theresa followed in the autumn; France responded with a secret alliance with Spain; and to prevent further British action on the Continent, she resolved to strike a blow at London in combination with a Jacobite insurrection. It was to be a "bolt from the blue" before declaration and in mid-winter, when the best ships of the home fleet were laid up. The operation was planned on dual lines, the army to start from Dunkirk, the covering fleet from Brest.
The surprise was admirably designed. The port of Dunkirk had been destroyed under the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, and though the French had been restoring it secretly for some time, it was still unfit to receive a fleet of transports. In spite of the warnings of Sir John Norris, the senior admiral in the service, the assembling of troops in its neighbourhood from the French army in Flanders could only be taken for a movement into winter quarters, and that no suspicion might be aroused the necessary transports were secretly taken up in other ports under false charter-parties, and were only to assemble off Dunkirk at the last moment. With equal skill the purpose of the naval mobilisation at Brest was concealed. By false information cleverly imparted to our spies and by parade of victualling for a long voyage, the British Government was led to believe that the main fleet was intended to join the Spaniards in the Mediterranean, while a detachment, which was designed to escort the transports, was ostensibly equipped for a raid in the West Indies.
So far as concealment was concerned the arrangement was perfect. Yet it contained within it the fatal ingredient. The army was to strike in the Thames at Tilbury; but complete as was the secrecy, Marshal Saxe, who was to command, could not face the passage without escort. There were too many privateers and armed merchantmen always in the river, besides cruisers moving to and fro on commerce-protection duty. The division, therefore, which we supposed to be for the West Indies was to be detached from the Brest fleet after it entered the Channel and was to proceed to join the transports off Dunkirk, while the Marquis de Roquefeuil with the main fleet held what British ships might be ready in Portsmouth either by battle or blockade.
Nothing could look simpler or more certain of success. The British Government seemed quite asleep. The blow was timed for the first week in January, and it was mid-December before they even began to watch Brest with cruisers regularly. On these cruisers' reports measures were taken to prepare an equal squadron for sea by the new year. By this time nearly twenty of the line were ready or nearly so at the Nore, Portsmouth, and Plymouth, and a press was ordered to man them. Owing to various causes the French had now to postpone their venture. Finally it was not till February 6th that Roquefeuil was seen to leave Brest with nineteen of the line. The news reached London on the 12th, and next day Norris was ordered to hoist his flag at Spithead. His instructions were "to take the most effectual measures to prevent the making of any descent upon the kingdoms." It was nothing but news that the young Pretender had left Rome for France that led to this precaution. The Government had still no suspicion of what was brewing at Dunkirk. It was not till the 20th that a Dover smuggler brought over information which at last opened their eyes.
A day or two later the French transports were seen making for Dunkirk, and were mistaken for the Brest fleet. Orders were consequently sent down to Norris to follow them. In vain he protested at the interference. He knew the French were still to the westward of him, but his orders were repeated, and he had to go. Tiding it up-Channel against easterly winds, he reached the Downs and joined the Nore Division there on the 28th. History usually speaks of this false movement as the happy chance which saved the country from invasion. But it was not so. Saxe had determined not to face the Thames ships without escort. They were ample to destroy him had he done so. In truth the move which the Government forced on Norris spoilt the campaign and prevented his destroying the Brest fleet as well as stopping the invasion.
Roquefeuil had just received his final orders off the Start. He was instructed by all possible means to bring the main British fleet to action, or at least to prevent further concentration, while he was also to detach the special division of four of the line under Admiral Barraille to Dunkirk to escort the transports. It was in fact the inevitable order, caused by our hold on the army, to divide the fleet. Both officers as usual began to be upset, and as with Medina-Sidonia, they decided to keep company till they reached the Isle of Wight and remain there till they could get touch with Saxe and pilots for the Dover Strait. They were beset with the nervousness that seems inseparable from this form of operation. Roquefeuil explained to his Government that it was impossible to tell what ships the enemy had passed to the Downs, and that Barraille when he arrived off Dunkirk might well find himself in inferiority. He ended in the usual way by urging that the whole fleet must move in a body to the line of passage. On arriving off Portsmouth, however, a reconnaissance in thick weather led him to believe that the whole of Norris's fleet was still there, and he therefore detached Barraille, who reached Dunkirk in safety.
Not knowing that Norris was in the Downs, Saxe began immediately to embark his troops, but bad weather delayed the operation for three days, and so saved the expedition, exposed as it was in the open roads, from destruction by an attack which Norris was on the point of delivering with his flotilla of fireships and bomb vessels.
The Brest squadron had an equally narrow escape. Saxe and his staff having heard rumours of Norris's movement to the Downs had become seized with the sea-sickness which always seems to afflict an army as it waits to face the dangers of an uncommanded passage. They too wanted the whole fleet to escort them, and orders had been sent to Roquefeuille to do as he had suggested. All unconscious of Norris's presence in the Downs with a score of the line more powerful than his own, he came on with the fifteen he had still with his flag to close on Barraille. Norris was informed of his approach, and it was now he wrote his admirable appreciation, already quoted, for dealing with the situation.
"As I think it," he said, "of the greatest consequence to his Majesty's service to prevent the landing of these troops in any part of the country, I have … determined to anchor without the sands of Dunkirk, where we shall be in the fairest way for keeping them in." That is, he determined to keep hold of the army regardless of the enemy's fleet, and as Saxe's objective was not quite certain, he would do it by close blockade. "But if," he continued, "they should unfortunately get out and pass in the night and go northward [that is, for Scotland], I intend to detach a superior force to endeavour to overtake and destroy them, and with the remainder of my squadron either fight the French fleet now in the Channel, or observe them and cover the country as our circumstances will admit of; or I shall pursue the embarkation [that is, follow the transports] with all my strength." This meant he would treat the enemy's army offensively and their fleet defensively, and his plan was entirely approved by the King.