III. ATTACK, DEFENCE, AND SUPPORT OF MILITARY EXPEDITIONS
The attack and defence of oversea expeditions are governed in a large measure by the principles of attack and defence of trade. In both cases it is a question of control of communications, and in a general way it may be said, if we control them for the one purpose, we control them for the other. But with combined expeditions freedom of passage is not the only consideration. The duties of the fleet do not end with the protection of the troops during transit, as in the case of convoys, unless indeed, as with convoys, the destination is a friendly country. In the normal case of a hostile destination, where resistance is to be expected from the commencement of the operations, the fleet is charged with further duties of a most exacting kind. They may be described generally as duties of support, and it is the intrusion of these duties which distinguish the naval arrangements for combined operations most sharply from those for the protection of trade. Except for this consideration there need be no difference in the method of defence. In each case the strength required would be measured by the dangers of interference in transit. But as it is, that standard will not serve for combined expeditions; for however small those risks, the protective arrangements must be sufficiently extensive to include arrangements for support.
Before dealing with this, the most complex aspect of the question, it will be well to dismiss attack. From the strategical point of view its principles differ not at all from those already laid down for active resistance of invasion. Whether the expedition that threatens us be small or of invasion strength, the cardinal rule has always been that the transports and not the escort must be the primary objective of the fleet. The escort, according to the old practice, must be turned or contained, but never treated as a primary objective unless both turning and containing prove to be impracticable. It is needless to repeat the words of the old masters in which this principle lies embalmed. It is seldom that we find a rule of naval strategy laid down in precise technical terms, but this one is an exception. In the old squadronal instructions, "The transports of the enemy are to be your principal object," became something like a common form.
Nor did this rule apply only to cases where the transports were protected by a mere escort. It held good even in the exceptional cases where the military force was accompanied or guarded by the whole available battle strength of the enemy. We have seen how in 1744 Norris was prepared to follow the French transports if necessary with his whole force, and how in 1798 Nelson organised his fleet in such a way as to contain rather than destroy the enemy's battle-squadron, so that he might provide for an overwhelming attack upon the transports.
Exceptions to this as to all strategical rules may be conceived. Conditions might exist in which, if the enemy's battle-fleet accompanied his transports, it would be worth our while, for ulterior objects of our own, to risk the escape of the transports in order to seize the opportunity of destroying the fleet. But even in such a case the distinction would be little more than academical; for our best chance of securing a decisive tactical advantage against the enemy's fleet would usually be to compel it to conform to our movements by threatening an attack on the transports. It is well known that it is in the embarrassment arising from the presence of transports that lies the special weakness of a fleet in charge of them.
There is, however, one condition which radically differentiates comparatively small expeditions from great invasions and that is the power of evasion. Our experience has proved beyond dispute that the navy alone cannot guarantee defence against such expeditions. It cannot be sure of preventing their sailing or of attacking them in transit, and this is especially the case where an open sea gives them a free choice of route, as in the case of the French expeditions against Ireland. It is for this reason that, although an adequate navy has always proved sufficient to prevent an invasion, for defence against expeditions it must be supplemented by a home army. To perfect our defence, or, in other words, our power of attack, such an army must be adequate to ensure that all expeditions small enough to evade the fleet shall do no effective harm when they land. If in numbers, training, organisation, and distribution it is adequate for this purpose, an enemy cannot hope to affect the issue of the war except by raising his expeditions to invasion strength, and so finding himself involved in a problem that no one has ever yet solved for an uncommanded sea.
Still, even for expeditions below invasion strength the navy will only regard the army as a second line, and its strategy must provide in the event of evasion for co-operation with that line. By means of a just distribution of its coastal flotilla it will provide for getting contact with the expedition at the earliest moment after its destination is declared. It will press the principle of making the army its objective to the utmost limit by the most powerful and energetic cruiser pursuit, and with wireless and the increased ratio of cruiser speed, such pursuit is far more formidable than it ever was. No expedition nowadays, however successful its evasion, can be guaranteed against naval interruption in the process of landing. Still less can it be guaranteed against naval interference in its rear or flanks while it is securing its front against the home army. It may seek by using large transports to reduce their number and secure higher speed, but while that will raise its chance of evasion, it will prolong the critical period of landing. If it seek by using smaller transports to quicken disembarkation, that will decrease its chances of evasion by lowering its speed and widening the sea area it will occupy in transit. All the modern developments in fact which make for defence in case of invasion over an uncommanded sea also go to facilitate timely contact with an expedition seeking to operate by evasion. Nor must it be forgotten, since the problem is a combined one, that the corresponding developments ashore tell with little less force in favour of the defending army. Such appear to be the broad principles which govern an enemy's attempts to act with combined expeditions in our own waters, where by hypothesis we are in sufficient naval strength to deny him permanent local command. We may now turn to the larger and more complex question of the conduct of such expeditions where the naval conditions are reversed.
By the conduct, be it remembered, we mean not only their defence but also their support, and for this reason the starting-point of our inquiry is to be found, as above indicated, in the contrast of combined expeditions with convoys. A convoy consists of two elements—a fleet of merchantmen and an escort. But a combined expedition does not consist simply of an army and a squadron. It is an organism at once more complex and more homogeneous. Its constitution is fourfold. There is, firstly, the army; secondly, the transports and landing flotilla—that is, the flotilla of flat-boats and steamboats for towing them, all of which may be carried in the transports or accompany them; thirdly, the "Squadron in charge of transports," as it came to be called, which includes the escort proper and the supporting flotilla of lighter craft for inshore work; and lastly, the "Covering squadron."
Such at least is a combined expedition in logical analysis. But so essentially is it a single organism, that in practice these various elements can seldom be kept sharply distinct. They may be interwoven in the most intricate manner. Indeed to a greater or less extent each will always have to discharge some of the functions of the others. Thus the covering squadron may not only be indistinguishable from the escort and support, but it will often provide the greater part of the landing flotilla and even a portion of the landing force. Similarly, the escort may also serve as transport, and provide in part not only the supporting force, but also the landing flotilla. The fourfold constitution is therefore in a great measure theoretical. Still its use is not merely that it serves to define the varied functions which the fleet will have to discharge. As we proceed it will be seen to have a practical strategical value.
From a naval point of view it is the covering squadron which calls first for consideration, because of the emphasis with which its necessity marks not only the distinction between the conduct of combined expeditions and the conduct of commercial convoys, but also the fact that such expeditions are actually a combined force, and not merely an army escorted by a fleet.
In our system of commerce protection the covering squadron had no place. The battle-fleet, as we have seen, was employed in holding definite terminal areas, and had no organic connection with the convoys. The convoys had no further protection than their own escort and the reinforcements that met them as they approached the terminal areas. But where a convoy of transports forming part of a combined expedition was destined for an enemy's country and would have to overcome resistance by true combined operations, a covering battle-squadron was always provided. In the case of distant objectives it might be that the covering squadron was not attached till the whole expedition assembled in the theatre of operations; during transit to that theatre the transports might have commerce protection escort only. But once the operations began from the point of concentration, a covering squadron was always in touch.
It was only where the destination of the troops was a friendly country, and the line of passage was well protected by our permanent blockades, that a covering squadron could be dispensed with altogether. Thus our various expeditions for the assistance of Portugal were treated exactly like commercial convoys, but in such cases as Wolfe's expedition to Quebec or Amherst's to Louisburg, or indeed any of those which were continually launched against the West Indies, a battle-squadron was always provided as an integral part in the theatre of operations. Our arrangements in the Crimean War illustrate the point exactly. Our troops were sent out at first to land at Gallipoli in a friendly territory, and to act within that territory as an army of observation. It was not a true combined expedition, and the transports were given no covering squadron. Their passage was sufficiently covered by our Channel and Mediterranean fleets occupying the exits of the Baltic and the Black Sea. But so soon as the original war plan proved ineffective and combined offensive operations against Sebastopol were decided on, the Mediterranean fleet lost its independent character, and thenceforth its paramount function was to furnish a covering squadron in touch with the troops.
Seeing how important are the support duties of such a force, the term "Covering squadron" may seem ill-chosen to describe it. But it is adopted for two reasons. In the first place, it was the one employed officially in our service on the last mentioned occasion which was our last great combined expedition. In preparing the descent on the Crimea, Sir Edmund Lyons, who was acting as Chief of the Staff to Sir James Dundas, and had charge of the combined operations, organised the fleet into a "Covering squadron" and a "Squadron in charge of transports." In the second place, the designation serves to emphasise what is its main and primary function. For important as it is to keep in mind its support duties, they must not be permitted to overshadow the fact that its paramount function is to prevent interference with the actual combined operations—that is, the landing, support, and supply of the army. Thus in 1705, when Shovel and Peterborough were operating against Barcelona, Shovel was covering the amphibious siege from the French squadron in Toulon. Peterborough required the assistance of the marines ashore to execute a coup de main, and Shovel only consented to land them on the express understanding that the moment his cruisers passed the signal that the Toulon squadron was putting to sea, they would have to be recalled to the fleet no matter what the state of the land operations. And to this Peterborough agreed. The principle involved, it will be seen, is precisely that which Lyons's term "Covering squadron" embodies.
To quote anything that happened in the Crimean War as a precedent without such traditional support will scarcely appear convincing. In our British way we have fostered a legend that so far as organisation and staff work were concerned that war was nothing but a collection of deterrent examples. But in truth as a combined operation its opening movement both in conception and organisation was perhaps the most daring, brilliant, and successful thing of the kind we ever did. Designed as the expedition was to assist an ally in his own country, it was suddenly called upon without any previous preparation to undertake a combined operation of the most difficult kind against the territory of a well-warned enemy. It involved a landing late in the year on an open and stormy coast within striking distance of a naval fortress which contained an army of unknown strength, and a fleet not much inferior in battle power and undefeated. It was an operation comparable to the capture of Louisburg and the landing of the Japanese in the Liaotung Peninsula, but the conditions were far more difficult. Both those operations had been rehearsed a few years previously, and they had been long prepared on the fullest knowledge. In the Crimea everything was in the dark; even steam was an unproved element, and everything had to be improvised. The French had practically to demobilise their fleet to supply transport, and so hazardous did the enterprise appear, that they resisted its being undertaken with every military argument. We had in fact, besides all the other difficulties, to carry an unwilling ally upon our backs. Yet it was accomplished, and so far at least as the naval part was concerned, the methods which achieved success mark the culmination of all we had learnt in three centuries of rich experience.
The first of the lessons was that for operations in uncommanded or imperfectly commanded seas there was need of a covering squadron differentiated from the squadron in charge of transports. Its main function was to secure the necessary local command, whether for transit or for the actual operations. But as a rule transit was secured by our regular blockading squadrons, and generally the covering squadron only assembled in the theatre of operations. When therefore the theatre was within a defended terminal area, as in our descents upon the northern and Atlantic coasts of France, then the terminal defence squadron was usually also sufficient to protect the actual operations. It thus formed automatically the covering squadron, and either continued its blockade, or, as in the case of our attack on St. Malo in 1758, took up a position between the enemy's squadron and the expedition's line of operation. If, however, the theatre of operation was not within a terminal area, or lay within a distant one that was weakly held, the expedition was given its own covering squadron, in which the local squadron was more or less completely merged. Whatever, in fact, was necessary to secure the local control was done, though, as we have seen, and must presently consider more fully, this necessity was not always the standard by which the strength of the covering squadron was measured.
The strength of the covering squadron being determined, the next question is the position or "tract" which it should occupy. Like most other strategical problems, it is "an option of difficulties." In so far as the squadron is designed for support—that is, support from its men, boats, and guns—it will be desirable to station it as near as possible to the objective; but as a covering squadron, with the duty of preventing the intrusion of an enemy's force, it should be as far away as possible, so as to engage such a force at the earliest possible moment of its attempt to interfere. There is also the paramount necessity that its position must be such that favourable contact with the enemy is certain if he tries to interrupt. Usually such certainty is only to be found either in touch with the enemy's naval base or in touch with your own landing force. Where the objective is the local naval base of the enemy these two points, of course, tend to be identical strategically, and the position of the covering squadron becomes a tactical rather than a strategical question. But the vital principle of an independent existence holds good, and no matter how great the necessity of support, the covering squadron should never be so deeply engaged with the landing force as to be unable to disentangle itself for action as a purely naval unit in time to discharge its naval function. In other words, it must always be able to act in the same way as a free field army covering a siege.
Where the objective of the expedition is not the local naval base, the choice of a position for the covering squadron will turn mainly on the amount of support which the army is likely to require. If it cannot act by surprise, and serious military resistance is consequently to be expected, or where the coast defences are too strong for the transport squadron to overpower, then the scale will incline to a position close to the army, though the extent to which, under modern conditions, ships at sea can usefully perform the delicate operation of supporting an infantry attack with gun fire, except by enfilading the enemy's position, remains to be proved. A similar choice will be indicated where strong support of men and boats is required, as when a sufficiency of flat-boats and steam towage cannot be provided by the transports and their attendant squadron; or again where the locality is such that amphibious operations beyond the actual landing are likely to be called for, and the assistance of a large number of boats and seamen acting with the army is necessary to give it the amphibious tactical mobility which it would otherwise lack. Such cases occurred at Quebec in 1759, where Saunders took his covering battle-squadron right up the St. Lawrence, although its covering functions could have been discharged even better by a position several hundreds of miles away from the objective; and again in 1800 at Alexandria, where Lord Keith ran the extremest hazard to his covering functions in order to undertake the supply of General Abercromby's army by inland waters and give him the mobility he required.
If, on the other hand, the transport squadron is able to furnish all the support necessary, the covering squadron will take station as close as possible to the enemy's naval base, and there it will operate according to the ordinary laws of blockade. If nothing is desired but to prevent interference, its guard will take the form of a close blockade. But if there be a subsidiary purpose of using the expedition as a means of forcing the enemy to sea, the open form will be employed; as, for instance, in Anson's case above cited, when he covered the St. Malo expedition not by closely blockading Brest, but by taking a position to the eastward at the Isle de Batz.
In the Japanese operations against Manchuria and the Kuantung Peninsula these old principles displayed themselves in undiminished vitality. In the surprise descents against Seoul and at Takusan the work of support was left entirely with the transport squadron, while Admiral Togo took up a covering position far away at Port Arthur. The two elements of the fleet were kept separate all through. But in the operations for the isolation and subsequent siege of Port Arthur they were so closely united as to appear frequently indistinguishable. Still, so far as the closeness of the landing place to the objective permitted, the two acted independently. For the actual landing of the Second Army the boats of the covering squadron were used, but it remained a live naval unit all through, and was never organically mingled with the transport squadron. Its operations throughout were, so far as modern conditions permit, on the lines of a close blockade. To prevent interference was its paramount function, undisturbed, so far as we are able to judge, by any subsidiary purpose of bringing the enemy to decisive action.
All through the operations, however, there was a new influence which tended to confuse the precision of the old methods. Needless to say it was the torpedo and the mine. Their deflective pressure was curious and interesting. In our own operations against Sebastopol, to which the Port Arthur case is most closely comparable, the old rules still held good. On the traditional principle, dating from Drake's attack on San Domingo in 1585, a landing place was chosen which gave the mean between facility for a coup de main and freedom from opposition; that is, it was chosen at the nearest practicable point to the objective which was undefended by batteries and out of reach of the enemy's main army.
In the handling of the covering squadron Admiral Dundas, the Commander-in-Chief, gave it its dual function. After explaining the constitution of the transport squadron he says, "The remainder of my force … will act as a covering squadron, and where practicable assist in the general disembarkation." With these two objects in mind he took a station near enough to the landing place to support the army with his guns if it were opposed, but still in sight of his cruisers before Sebastopol, and at such a distance that at the first sign of the Russians moving he would have time to get before the port and engage them before they could get well to sea; that is, he took a position as near to the army as was compatible with preventing interference, or, it may be said, his position was as near to the enemy's base as was compatible with supporting the landing. From either aspect in fact the position was the same, and its choice presented no complexity owing mainly to the fact that for the first time steam simplified the factors of time and distance.
In the Japanese case the application of these principles was not so easy. In selecting the nearest undefended point for a landing, it was not only batteries, or even the army in Port Arthur, or the troops dispersed in the Liaotung Peninsula that had to be considered, but rather, as must always be the case in the future, mines and mobile torpedo defence. The point they chose was the nearest practicable bay that was unmined. It was not strictly out of mobile defence range, but it so happened that it lay behind islands which lent themselves to the creation of fixed defences, and thus it fulfilled all the recognised conditions. But in so far as the defences could be turned by the Russian fleet a covering squadron was necessary, and the difficulty of choosing a position for it was complicated by the fact that the objective of the combined operations was not merely Port Arthur itself, but also the squadron it contained. It was necessary, therefore, not only to hold off that squadron, but to prevent its escape. This indicated a close blockade. But for close blockade a position out of night torpedo range is necessary, and the nearest point where such a position could be secured was behind the defences that covered the disembarkation. Consequently, in spite of what the strategical conditions dictated, the covering squadron was more or less continuously forced back upon the army and its supporting force, even when the support of the battle-squadron was no longer required.
In the conditions that existed nothing was lost. For the lines of the Japanese fixed defences were so near to the enemy's base, that by mining the entrance of the port Admiral Togo ensured that the enemy's exit would be slow enough for him to be certain of getting contact from his defended anchorage before the Russians could get far to sea. What would happen in a case when no such position could be secured is another matter. The landing place and supply base of the army must be secured against torpedo attack, and the principle of concentration of effort would suggest that the means of defence should not be attenuated by providing the covering squadron with a defended anchorage elsewhere. Thus it would appear that unless the geographical conditions permit the covering squadron to use one of its own national bases, the drift of recent developments will be to force it back on the army, and thus tend to confuse its duties with those of the transport squadron. Hence the increased importance of keeping clear the difference in function between the two squadrons.
To emphasise the principle of the covering squadron, these two cases may be contrasted with the Lissa episode at the end of the Austro-Italian War of 1866. In that case it was entirely neglected, with disastrous results. The Austrian admiral, Tegethoff, with an inferior fleet had by higher order been acting throughout on the defensive, and was still in Pola waiting for a chance of a counter-stroke. Persano with the superior Italian fleet was at Ancona, where he practically dominated the Adriatic. In July the Italians, owing to the failure of the army, were confronted with the prospect of being forced to make peace on unfavourable terms. To improve the position Persano was ordered to take possession of the Austrian island of Lissa. Without any attempt to organise his fleet on the orthodox British principle he proceeded to conduct the operation with his entire force. Practically the whole of it became involved in amphibious work, and as soon as Persano was thus committed, Tegethoff put to sea and surprised him. Persano was unable to disentangle a sufficient force in time to meet the attack, and having no compact squadron fit for independent naval action, he was decisively defeated by the inferior enemy. According to British practice, it was clearly a case where, if the operation were to be undertaken at all, an independent covering squadron should have been told off either to hold Tegethoff in Pola or to bring him to timely action, according to whether the island or the Austrian fleet was the primary objective. The reason it was not done may be that Persano was not given a proper landing force, and he seems to have considered that the whole strength of his fleet was needed for the successful seizure of the objective. If so, it is only one more proof of the rule that no matter what fleet support the landing operations may require, it should never be given in an imperfectly commanded sea to an extent which will deny the possibility of a covering squadron being left free for independent naval action.
The length to which the supporting functions of the fleet may be carried will always be a delicate question. The suggestion that its strength must be affected by the need of the army for the men of the fleet or its boats, which imply its men as well, will appear heretical. A battle-squadron, we say, is intended to deal with the enemy's battle-squadron and its men to fight the ships, and the mind revolts at the idea of the strength of a squadron being fixed by any other standard. Theoretically nothing can seem more true, but it is an idea of peace and the study. The atmosphere of war engendered a wider and more practical view. The men of the old wars knew that when a squadron is attached to a combined expedition it is something different from a purely naval unit. They knew, moreover, that an army acting oversea against hostile territory is an incomplete organism incapable of striking its blow in the most effective manner without the assistance of the men of the fleet. It was the office, then, of the naval portion of the force not only to defend the striking part of the organism, but to complete its deficiencies and lend it the power to strike. Alone and unaided the army cannot depend on getting itself ashore, it cannot supply itself, it cannot secure its retreat, nor can it avail itself of the highest advantages of an amphibious force, the sudden shift of base or line of operation. These things the fleet must do for it, and it must do them with its men.25
The authority for this view is abundant. In 1800, for instance, when General Maitland was charged with an expedition against Belleisle, he was invited to state what naval force he would require. He found it difficult to fix with precision. "Speaking loosely, however," he wrote, "three or four sail of the line and four or five active frigates appear to me to be properly adequate to the proposed service. The frigates to blockade." (Meaning, of course, to blockade the objective and prevent reinforcements reaching it from the mainland, always one of the supporting functions of the squadron attached to the transports.) "The line-of-battle ships," he adds, "to furnish us with the number of men necessary for land operations." In this case our permanent blockading squadrons supplied the cover, and what Maitland meant was that the battleships he asked for were to be added to the transport squadron not as being required for escort, but for support. St. Vincent, who was then First Lord, not only endorsed his request, but gave him for disembarkation work one more ship-of-the-line than he had asked for. At this time our general command of the sea had been very fully secured, and we had plenty of naval force to spare for its exercise. It will be well to compare it with a case in which the circumstances were different.
When in 1795 the expedition under Admiral Christian and General Abercromby was being prepared for the West Indies, the admiral in concert with Jervis drew up a memorandum as to the naval force required.26 The force he asked for was considerable. Both he and Jervis considered that the escort and local cover must be very strong, because it was impossible to count on closing either Brest or Toulon effectually by blockade. But this was not the only reason. The plan of operations involved three distinct landings, and each would require at least two of the line, and perhaps three, "not only as protection, but as the means by which flat-boats must be manned, cannon landed, and the other necessary services of fatigue executed." Christian also required the necessary frigates and three or four brigs "to cover [that is, support] the operations of the smaller vessels [that is, the landing flotillas doing inshore work]." The main attack would require at least four of the line and seven frigates, with brigs and schooners in proportion. In all he considered, the ships-of-the-line [the frigates being "otherwise employed"] would have to provide landing parties to the number of 2000 men "for the flat-boats, landing and moving guns, water, and provisions," and this would be their daily task. The military force these landing parties were to serve amounted to about 18,000 men.