David Hannay

“ The rigging of the Bellerophon was cut to pieces, and she could not follow. Yet she lost fewer men than the Cæsar. But Admiral Pasley, who lost his leg, was among the wounded. The Leviathan engaged the America to windward to good purpose, pushing her hard, driving her out, following her, and swinging round to leeward of her as she strove to follow her leaders to the eastward. Old habit had fixed the French captains in the faith that a naval battle was to be fought by firing to dismast and then slipping away to form a new line to leeward. ”

“ The British squadron works to windward to secure the power to force on battle, and comes down in line to engage the enemy from end to end. The French wait for the attack, fire to cripple the rigging of those of our vessels which present themselves first to its blows, and then slip away, damaged more or less severely, but never so seriously that they cannot reach the port they are steering for, while our crews are knotting, splicing, and replacing ropes and spars. ”

“ In truth the French admiral was very nervous, constantly expecting the reappearance of the English in superior force, and was only kept from retiring to Toulon by the incessant driving of Richelieu. The honour both of the defence and of the attack in this campaign belongs wholly to the soldiers. When the result of the meeting of the two fleets was known, there burst out a storm of rage of which the echoes can be heard to this day. It is not pleasant to hear a people howling for the life of a man, whether he be the great and terrible Strafford or poor, weak, self-satisfied John Byng. ”

“ And the men knew their superiority—not in valour, the quality which is indispensable to a good force, but will not itself make a good fighting force. The valour and intellectual alertness of the French had never left themselves without witness in their fleets. The Spaniards, less active and intelligent than the French, could at their best fight the batteries of their ships with the same sort of courage they showed in defending Saragossa or Gerona. The superiority lay in the power to strike quick and hard, to repair damage, to use their weapons. ”

“ Remote from the corruption of the dockyards and the fury of political factions on shore, on solitary voyages, in long cruises, in blockades, in battle and storm, the admirals and captains who were trained in the schools of Anson and Hawke, Pocock and Boscawen, and were themselves to train the admirals and captains of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, went on perfecting the seamanship and fighting efficiency of the fleet. ”

“ The French navy, the creation of Louis XIV., has been valiant, ingenious, not seldom successful, but it was neglected, starved, misused by the monarchy, and so torn to pieces by the Revolution that it could never recover. The sound national instinct, the healthy social order, the innate love of good work which have shaped our Navy, are just subjects for pride. But they are also a lesson and a warning. Great navies are forming now, which have thoroughly learned all we have taught. We must not rely on possessing the same superiority we had in the eighteenth century without strenuous effort. ”

“ It was that there was a distinct fall in the purely military spirit, and as a navy is a fighting as well as a navigating force, this was a misfortune. When we speak of a fallen military spirit, it is not meant that there was any sinking in the mere courage of the service, but only that the naval officer as he became at the Revolution and as he remained till far into the eighteenth century, was first and foremost a seaman, and that he had a tendency to discharge the military side of his duty in blind obedience to various rules of thumb. ”

“ Idle attempts were made to belittle these successes by insisting on the size and armament of the American frigates. The navy knew their size and armament before it fought them. It learnt only from experience that the Americans could make full use of these advantages, which they had for the rest procured for themselves and not by accident. The good sense of the navy and the country would not be blinded. Englishmen drew the very sane deduction that they could be beaten at sea if they allowed other people to surpass them in the quality of their armaments and in skill. ”

“ To protect the gains of the Revolution, she strove to secure her “natural limits”—the Pyrenees, the Alps, the line of the Rhine. To guard herself against the hostility which this increase of power was sure to arouse in her neighbours, she had to gain possession of advanced guards and outlying fortresses to cover her new frontier, to subjugate Holland, and keep Spain in a dependence which must also include Portugal. But with the coast of Europe and its resources, from the Texel to the Maritime Alps, in the possession of France, the position of England would have been one of extreme danger. ”

“ It was perhaps the greatest of Nelson’s great qualities, his truest claim to be a consummate leader of men, that he lived in genial harmony with his subordinates, discussing all possible contingencies with them, laying down the principles, and leaving to every man the inspiring freedom to co-operate within the just bounds of his duty, to act as circumstances served in the spirit of his orders, as a free man, and not as one bound to follow the letter like a mere instrument. ”

“ So the Government at Paris played with dreams of a great expedition to the East Indies which was to drop a body of French troops in Ireland on its way, and the naval officers at Brest obstructed all other plans. The good sense of Hoche saw that division of aim must be fatal to success, and he at last persuaded his superiors to consent to attempt a vigorous invasion of Ireland. An invasion of England in force would have inflicted the worse blow, but it was rightly judged to be, if not impossible, yet so hazardous that it was not entertained. ”

“ The old feud between the Pen and the Sword—that is, the civil and military branches of the navy—raged furiously. On the ships there was mutual hostility between the officers of the regular corps and the supplementary officers taken in on the outbreak of war, and known as officiers bleus. None of the corporations of the old French monarchy was more aristocratic or more jealous than the Corps de la marine. The so-called despotic King of France had far less power of choosing his officers than the constitutional King of Great Britain. ”

“ There were no great campaigns between equal forces of sufficient interest to be taken by themselves. Throughout all these years the overpowering fleets of the Alliance cruised unchecked on the sea, hemming France in, harassing her coast, annihilating her commerce, and rendering assistance to the armies operating against her. Detached squadrons issued from England year after year to attack the French possessions in the New World and defend our own. In the meantime, the efforts of France on the sea were ever more strictly confined to the cruises of her privateers. ”

“ Public men who had been loud in promoting the expedition began to throw the blame for it on one another. Public excitement and anger were aggravated by the speedy discovery that a new coalition was forming, and that France would again be called upon to fight for her very existence, at least for all she had gained by the Revolution. To recover Napoleon and his army became a leading object with the French. To keep them in Egypt was no less the object of England. ”

“ The French answered, that given the great number of the English warships it was idle to suppose that they would ever be destroyed wholly in battle, and that they themselves would be worn out long before a decisive result could be obtained. Therefore when a French admiral sailed to relieve a colony, or save some particular post from attack, or land men to be used against a British possession, he was to avoid battle as far as he could, and if forced to fight then to engage to leeward, cripple as many as he could of the enemy’s spars, and slip away. ”

“ If Grasse had been joined by even six or eight Spanish ships in an efficient state, and had fought a whole-hearted battle with Darby off the Old Head of Kinsale, it is possible that the entire naval defence of Great Britain might have been ruined, and it is eminently probable that the relief of Gibraltar would have been stopped—in which case the fortress must have fallen for it was at the end of its resources. But the rulers in London and Paris had their eyes on the end of the earth and could not see that victory at home would mean success all over the world. ”

“ So there always will be while men remain men, but a service is to be judged by its general spirit, and by the view it takes of errors and failures. Nobody who looks critically at the history of the British Navy in the eighteenth century can fail to note a vast difference between the years before and those after 1757. And we insult the memory of the seamen of the eighteenth century if we suppose that this is so only because the wrath of the nation drove them to greater exertion, or that they did not think the execution of Byng just. ”

“ If by any chance the cupidity which restrained them from obeying honour and duty was stirred to active malignity by hatred of a comrade or of a superior, if, moreover, they were far away from home and might hope, even foolishly, to escape punishment, such persons would be capable of sinking to well-nigh any excess of baseness. By keeping these conditions in mind, we can understand that most shameful passage in the history of the Royal Navy, the betrayal of Benbow by his captains in August 1702. ”

“ The perfected discipline of the navy was the result of the labours of hundreds of officers, many of whom are completely forgotten, thinking, experimenting, and toiling, each in his own sphere, but all with the same noble love of good work. ”

“ The transports and merchant ships were directly behind Guichen and were therefore uncovered. Haze and fog, with clear intervals, surrounded both fleets and hid the approach of the English, but the French admiral’s disposition was unpardonable. He ought to have kept his convoy to leeward of him. If Kempenfelt had been an unenterprising man he might have hesitated to attack where he was menaced by a superior force, but he was as bold as he was seamanlike, and he did not hesitate to punish his opponent for his error. ”

“ The rolling of the ships rendered their fire ineffective, and the danger of wreck compelled the captains to think constantly of the safety of their vessels. Sunset, too, came early, and the dark put a stop to all manœuvring. Thus there was neither time nor opportunity to take many prizes. One other French ship, the Superbe, shared the fate of the Thésée, and the Héros, dismasted and riddled by the English fire, hauled down her flag and dropped anchor. But the enemy was none the less completely beaten. Seven of his ships found refuge in the Vilaine by grovelling over the mud bar of the river. ”

“ Have we not all the enemy’s ports blockaded from Toulon to Flushing? Are we not able to cope anywhere with any force the enemy dares to send out against us? And do we not outnumber them at every one of those ports we have blockaded? It would smack a little of egotism, I fear, were I to speak of myself, but as a person lately having the command of six ships, I hope I may be allowed to state to the House how I have been supported in that command. ”

“ Spain had ceased to possess even the show of a fleet. The Scandinavian nations and Russia were confined to the Baltic. Elsewhere there was nothing. In the midst of this general prostration we ruled at sea, not only without an equal, but without a second.
There was a great danger in a supremacy of this nature. In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, and he who is the best because the others are very bad may himself be far from good. The truth concerning the British navy during the earlier eighteenth century is that it owed at least as much to fortune as to its merits. ”

“ The great French fleet had preserved itself, but the King of France had lost an ally who kept up a useful diversion of the resources of England. A fighting force which makes it a principal object to avoid battle is doomed to defeat when it comes across an enemy who makes it a steady rule to fight. But the French never took the view that if you [34] wish to use the sea you must drive your enemy off it, and if you want to do that you must smash him. In the dullest times the English navy has always understood that the beating of the French navy was the preliminary to everything else. ”

“ La Clue, therefore, was absolutely right in making for the open sea. But now was seen the influence of that miserable theory, that war can be waged effectually by hasty runs from one cover to another and by evasion. Five of the French line and all the frigates were at some distance from the flagship. When La Clue and the six vessels so close to him, that they had no shadow of excuse for not seeing what he was doing, steered to the W.N.W., the laggards acted on the supposition that the obvious course was to run for cover, and headed nearly due north for Cadiz. ”

“ The steady fire from our batteries attracted the attention of the French, who were on the ramparts in expectation of an immediate assault, and were keeping up a constant musketry fire. Laforey and Balfour led their boats past the battery at the mouth of the harbour unseen and unheard. They had carefully marked the place of the French ships during the day, and were able to take a sweep out into the harbour and advance through the night and the fog, till the hulks of the Prudent and the Bienfaisant loomed up through the darkness. ”

“ But as the State grew in power and resources, such men found their proper place in the regular forces. The privateer tended more and more to become a mere vulgar plunderer. His competition with the navy for men had made him a nuisance, as far back as the time of the Commonwealth. The private ship with its slovenly discipline, and the greater chances of earning booty it offered, attracted all the restless spirits to whom the order of the navy was grievous. ”

“ The “prime seamen,” impressed for the fleet in 1793, had been largely sent to the Mediterranean or West Indies. There were vessels under his command which counted but a low proportion of men bred to the sea in their complements. No doubt the level of skill was higher in the English than in the French ships. But the superiority of Howe’s force was not what the superiority of the crews of coming years was to be. It was based less on training than on a better spirit of discipline, and the quality of its cadastre of officers—commissioned, warrant, and petty. ”

“ Nothing equal in conduct will be met for twenty-two years, and until we come to Hood’s fine, though unsuccessful effort to save the island of St. Kitts from the Comte de Grasse. Indeed the whole passage of the blockade of Brest and the battle of Quiberon was without precedent in the history of the navy, and without an equal successor for forty years. The tenacity with which the fleet kept its watch into the stormy winter months would have appeared the excess of temerity to the naval officers of former times, who thought it dangerous to leave the great ships at sea after September. ”

“ It was the bad not the good officer who came before a court martial. Pamphlet controversies reveal something, but once more it is the worst. That our navy sailed the sea in such bad ships with comparatively few disasters is proof of its seamanship. That its fighting was on the whole successful, in spite of absurd rules and of defective intelligence in leadership, shows that though the head lay wrong, the heart was right. All the materials were there, they only wanted better handling.
The evils afflicting the navy are easy enough to see. ”