Julian Stafford Corbett

“ This was probably the broad truth of the matter; it is summed up in the golden signal which was the panacea of British admirals when in doubt: 'Ships to take station for mutual support and engage as they come up;' and it fully explains why, with all the scientific appreciation of tactics that existed in the leading admirals of this time, their battles were usually so confused and haphazard. The truth is that in the British service formal tactics had come to be regarded as a means of getting at your enemy, and not as a substitute for initiative in fighting him. ”

“ The whole impression of the British fleet must be to overpower from two to three ships ahead of their commander-in-chief, supposed to be in the centre, to the rear of their fleet. I will suppose twenty sail of the enemy's line to be untouched; it must be some time before they could perform a manoeuvre to bring their force compact to attack any part of the British fleet engaged, or to succour their own ships; which indeed would be impossible, without mixing with the ships engaged. [6]
Something must be left to chance; nothing is sure in a sea fight beyond all others. ”

“ The moral advantage of pushing home a bold attack before an enemy is formed is of course very great; but in this case the enemy had no intention of avoiding him, as they showed, and he acknowledged, when they boldly lay-to to accept action. The confusion of their line was tactically no weakness: it only resulted in a duplication which was so nicely adapted for meeting Howe's manoeuvre that there was a widespread belief in the British fleet, which Collingwood himself shared, that Villeneuve had adopted it deliberately. ”

“ On the other hand we have the school of Monck and Rupert, which was inclined anarchically to submit all rules to the solvent of hard fighting, and to take tactical risks and unfetter individual initiative to almost any extent rather than miss a chance of overpowering the enemy by a sudden well-timed blow. Knowing as we do the extent to which the principles of the Duke of York's school hampered the development of fleet tactics till men like Hawke and Nelson broke them down, we cannot but sympathise with their opponents. ”

“ II. The chief purposes for which a fleet is formed in line of battle are: that the ships may be able to assist and support each other in action; that they may not be exposed to the fire of the enemy's ships greater in number than themselves; and that every ship may be able to fire on the enemy without risk of firing into the ships of her own fleet. ”

“ Experience shows, on the contrary, that a Frenchman or a Spaniard, working under a system which leans to formality and strict order being maintained in battle, has no feeling for mutual support, and goes into action with hesitation, preoccupied with the anxiety of seeing or hearing the commander-in-chief's signals for such and such manoeuvres.... Thus they can never make up their minds to seize any favourable opportunity that may present itself. ”

“ To such I answer that the same objection binds the enemy, and that with equal arms he who has taken up the best formation and order will be victor, because it is not possible so to break up an order with wind and sea as that he who is more without order shall not be worse broken up and the sooner defeated. For ships at sea are as war-horses on land, since admitting they are not very nimble at turning at any pace, nevertheless a regular formation increases their power. ”

“ While Belleisle, Mars, Bellerophon and Colossus rushed into the fight in the van of Collingwood's line, Orion in the rear of Nelson's held her fire even when she got into action, and cruised about the mêlée, carefully seeking points where she could do most damage to an enemy, or best help an overmatched friend—well-judged piece of service, on which he dwells in his correspondence over and over again with pardonable complacency. ”

“ If the admiral should have the wind of the enemy, when other ships of the fleet are in the wind of the admiral, then upon hoisting up a blue flag at the mizen yard or mizen topmast, every such ship is to bear up into his wake or grain upon pain of severe punishment. ”

“ In studying the long series of Instructions we are able to detach certain attitudes of mind which led to the atrophy of principles essentially good, and others which pushed the system forward on healthy lines and flung off obsolete restraints. In an art so shifting and amorphous as naval tactics, the difference between health and disease must always lie in a certain vitality of mind with which it must be approached and practised. It is only in the history of tactics, under all conditions of weapons, movement and material, that the conditions of that vitality can be studied. ”

“ Thus, taking together the general order of 1798 and the Toulon memorandum of 1803, we can see all the tactical ideas that were involved at Trafalgar already in his mind, and we are in a position to appreciate the process of thought by which he gradually evolved the sublimely simple attack that welded them together, and brought them all into play without complication or risk of mistake. This process, which crowns Nelson's reputation as the greatest naval tactician of all time, we must now follow in detail. ”

“ No man shall board any enemy's ships without special order, but every ship if we be to leeward shall labour to recover the wind. If we be to windward of them, then shall the whole fleet, or so many of them as shall be appointed, follow the leading ship within musket-shot of the enemy, and give them first the chase pieces, then the broadside, afterwards a volley of small shot; and when the headmost ship hath done, the next ship shall observe the same course, and so every ship in order, that the headmost may be ready to renew the fight against such time as the sternmost hath made an end ”

“ Let none presume to shoot off a piece of ordnance but in discovery of a ship or fleet by night, or by being in danger of an enemy, or in danger of fire, or in danger of sinking, that it may be unto us all a most certain intelligence of some matter of importance. ”

“ That if any ship shall be necessitated to bear away from the enemy to stop a leak or mend what else is amiss, which cannot otherwise be repaired, he is to put out a pennant on the mizen yard-arm or on the ensign staff, whereby the rest of the ship's squadron may have notice what it is for—and if it should be that the admiral or any flagships should do so, the ships of the fleet or of the respective squadrons are to endeavour to get up as close in a line between him and the enemy as they can, having always an eye to defend him in case the enemy should come to annoy him in that condition. ”

“ In case of an engagement the commander of every ship is to have a special regard to the common good, and if any flagship shall, by any accident whatsoever, stay behind or [be] likely to lose company, or be out of his place, then all and every ship or ships belonging to such flag is to make all the way possible to keep up with the admiral of the fleet and to endeavour the utmost that may be the destruction of the enemy, which is always to be made the chiefest care. ”

“ Monck before the late cruise had never been to sea at all, since as a boy he sailed in the disastrous Cadiz expedition of 1625; but he was the typical and leading scientific soldier of his time, with an unmatched power of organisation and an infallible eye for both tactics and strategy, at least so far as it had then been tried. Penn, the vice-admiral of the fleet, was a professional naval officer of considerable experience, and it was he who by a bold and skilful movement had saved the action off Portland from being a severe defeat for Blake and Deane. ”

“ That we must fight in line, whereas we fight promiscuously, to our utter demonstrable ruin: the Dutch fighting otherwise, and we whenever we beat them. 2. We must not desert ships of our own in distress, as we did, for that makes a captain desperate, and he will fling away his ship when there are no hopes left him of succour. 3. That ships when they are a little shattered must not take the liberty to come in of themselves, but refit themselves the best they can and stay out, many of our ships coming in with very little disableness. ”

“ If you discover any sail at sea, either to windward or to leeward of the admiral, or if any two or three of our fleet shall discover any such like sail which the admiral cannot discern, if she be a great ship and but one, you shall strike your main topsail and hoist it again so often as you judge the ship to be hundred tons of burthen ”

“ In case the enemy have the wind of us and we have sea-room enough, then we are to keep the wind as close as we can lie until such time as we see an opportunity by gaining their wakes to divide their fleet ”

“ In case a powerful squadron of ships falls with our fleet, and will fight us, and we see it most convenient to fight before the wind, and the enemy follow us, I would have every commander place his ships in this order of sailing prescribed as followeth, and so continue sailing and fighting, doing his utmost to annoy the enemy, so long as shall be required for defence of himself and whole fleet. ”

“ By all means he should do his best that his fleet shall have the weather-gage; for if there was no other advantage he will always keep free from being blinded by the smoke of the guns, so as to be able to see one to another; and for the enemy it will be the contrary, because the smoke and fire of our fleet and of their own will keep driving upon them, and blinding them in such a manner that they will not be able to see one another, and they will fight among themselves from not being able to recognise each other. ”

“ It has been often remarked that Nelson founded no school of tactics, and the instructions which were issued with the new Signal Book immediately after the war entirely endorse the remark. They can be called nothing else but reactionary. Nelson's drastic attempt to break up the old rigid formation into active divisions independently commanded seems to have come to nothing, and the new instructions are based with almost all the old pedantry on the single line of battle. Of anything like mutually supporting movements there is only a single trace. ”

“ Then the flagship shall bid a trumpet sound, and at that signal all shall move in their aforesaid order; and as they come into range they shall commence to play their most powerful artillery, taking care that the first shots do not miss, for, as I have said, when the first shots hit, inasmuch as they are the largest, they strike great dread and terror into the enemy; for seeing how great hurt they suffer, they think how much greater it will be at close range and so mayhap they will not want to fight, but strike and surrender or fly, so as not to come to close quarters. ”

“ Thus, as in an army, the men-at-arms form by themselves in one quarter to make and meet charges, and the light horse in another quarter to support, pursue, and harass [3] so in a fleet, the captain-general ought to order the strongest and largest ships to form in one quarter to attack, grapple, board and break-up the enemy, and the lesser and weaker ships in another quarter apart, with their artillery and munitions to harass, pursue, and give chase to the enemy if he flies, and to come to the rescue wherever there is most need. ”

“ Thinking it almost impossible to bring a fleet of forty sail of the line into line of battle in variable winds, thick weather, and other circumstances which must occur, without such a loss of time that the opportunity would probably be lost of bringing the enemy to battle in such a manner as to make the business decisive ”