Embarkation

“ However, all naval fighting, as recent events have proved, is not done on the decks of men-of-war; the surprise of camps or posts and the escalade of forts frequently render shore operations necessary, and at such times picked men are sent with the attacking sailors, known as pioneers, while the rest of the marines form a supporting column to cover the retreat and embarkation of the sailors in case the undertaking fails. ”

“ But something worse than the fear of unfriendly weather will overshadow the work of disembarkation, and spur to a haste which can only create confusion—that something, the certainty that the alarm has been given, and that every British battleship and cruiser, every British destroyer, torpedo boat, and submarine that wireless telegraphy can summon, is hurrying towards the east coast, and may, at any moment, come into sight. ”

“ The English called the place ‘Old Fort.’
Next morning at daybreak disembarkation commenced. The infantry of the Light Division had the honour of landing first; and, as it was quite possible their landing might be opposed, they were prepared. Each man had his blanket and greatcoat strapped to his back, a spare pair of boots and socks, three days’ rations, and fifty rounds of ammunition. ”

“ Navy compared with Great Britain's, 18–34, 62; dock-yard statistics, 23; merchantship statistics, 25; personnel of Navy, 28; military force compared with British, 63 et seq.; her soldiers compared with British, 68; Peace Establishment, strength of, 70; Army Corps, strength of, 70, 76; statistics of shipping tonnage, 85; tonnage required to convey invading force, 90; mobilisation difficulties, 98; concentration difficulties, 105; embarkation difficulties, 107; presumable plan of invasion discussed, 113; its choice of a landing-place for its expeditionary force, 113 ”

“ From a rendezvous in the western Atlantic, the various divisions of the main fleet will move to the selected points of attack in accordance with the general plans formulated several years ago as the result of our academic study of the problem of an invasion of the United States. The modifications necessary for the present enterprise will be such as are rendered necessary by the present strength of our fleet, the location and strength of the enemy's forces, and by the imperative demand for secrecy, dispatch, and strict coordination as to time and place. ”

“ The existence and power of the Navy have been as vital to us as the air we breathed and the sun which kept us alive, and the pressure of the British blockade was, perhaps, the dominating element in the victory of the Allies. ”

“ I had not yet seen it, and upon this notice of an intended invasion, I avoided appearing on that side of the coast, for fear of being discovered by some of the enemy's ships, who had received no intelligence of me, all intercourse between the two empires having been strictly forbidden during the war, upon pain of death, and an embargo laid by our emperor upon all vessels whatsoever. I communicated to his majesty a project I had formed, of seizing the enemy's whole fleet: which, as our scouts assured us, lay at anchor in the harbour, ready to sail with the first fair wind. ”

“ As I explained to the House in the middle of June, the stronger our Army at home, the larger must the invading expedition be, and the larger the invading expedition, the less difficult will be the task of the Navy in detecting its assembly and in intercepting and destroying it in passage ”

“ No more heroic and devoted act illumines the long history of naval warfare than the laying of these mines close to the harbor, and under the full fire of the enemy's guns, any one of whose missiles, by exploding the dangerous cargo, might have sent the ship to destruction in a moment. ”

“ Battle and siege are thus in essence complementary modes of war and all military action may roughly be defined as fighting, or some method of postponing fighting, or steps or preparations towards fighting.
SEA WAR
War at sea is carried on, as we have seen, by naval fleets. The immediate object of a fleet is to find, defeat, and destroy the enemy’s fleet. The ultimate or further objective which is gained by such destruction is to monopolize the use of the sea, as the master highway, by retaining51 freedom for the passage of the victor’s ships while denying such passage to those of the defeated. ”

“ Men, when they discussed naval warfare, viewed it with speculative eye as a clash of battleships in one or two terrific, decisive, world-shaking encounters. Few, if any, foresaw that the enemy, declining the great issue, would aim at a slow grinding pressure, adopting a kind of warfare in which the fighting fleets would hardly feel the shock. ”

“ So far as the Navy is concerned, we cannot fight while the enemy remains in port. We hope a decision at sea will be a feature of this war. Our men, who are spending a tireless vigil, hope they will have a chance to settle the question with the German Fleet, and if they do not come out and fight they will be dug out like rats in a hole. [Cheers.] Under the shield of our Navy you can raise an army in this country which will settle the war within six or seven months. ”

“ On the coasts and on the ocean the war has been as successful as circumstances inseparable from its early stages could promise. Our public ships and private cruisers, by their activity, and, where there was occasion, by their intrepidity, have made the enemy sensible of the difference between a reciprocity of captures and the long confinement of them to their side. ”

“ It was a nerve-racking and tantalizing experience—the troop ships sailing in echelon formation, preceded, followed, and flanked by destroyers; at night every glimmer of light eclipsed, the ships speeding ahead in perfect blackness, each inch of the sea swept by watchful eyes to discover the telltale ripple of a periscope or the trail of a torpedo, gun crews on the alert, depth bombs ready. ”

“ The roar of the navy’s Four-Point-Sevens, their crash, their rush as they passed, the shrill whine of the shrapnel, the barking of the howitzers, and the mechanical, regular rattle of the quick-firing Maxims, which sounded like the clicking of many mowing-machines on a hot summer’s day, tore the air with such hideous noises that one’s skull ached from the concussion, and one could only be heard by shouting. ”

“ An almost hysterical shout whirled the General back to the plotting board.
"Sir, our fleet is attacking—attacking!"
"What? Where?" asked the General, his eyes darting over the board in a frantic effort to orient himself.
"Here, Sir, see. The positions are changing gradually in an unusual pattern. A patrol ship, a destroyer, and a cruiser have all gone right into the enemy vortex field," analyzed the Major. ”

“ The first boat melts; and a second keel Is blent with the foliaged shade— Their midnight rounds have the rebel officers made?
Unspied as yet. A third—a fourth— Gunboat and transport in Indian file Upon the war-path, smooth from the North; But the watch may they hope to beguile? The manned river-batteries stretch far mile on mile.
A flame leaps out; they are seen; Another and another gun roars; We tell the course of the boats through the screen By each further fort that pours, And we guess how they jump from their beds on those shrouded shores. ”

“ From the interior there were clamours for troops to be massed on the Northern frontier, and from the seaboard cities there came a cry for ships that were worthy to be called men-of-war,—ships to defend the harbours and bays, ships to repel an invasion by sea. ”

“ Under cover of a few bomb vessels and gun-brigs, the small craft advanced with great regularity, till within a short distance of the landing place, when a general cry of, "Devil take the hindmost," ran from right to left. The landing of troops in face of an enemy, being at all times a hazardous operation, considerable anxiety was apparent in every countenance, till the friends who had preceded us in the road to honour, had obtained a footing on the enemy's soil. ”

“ I am sorry to state the loss of the enemy must have been great, as their boats being small, and overloaded with men, arms, and ammunition, many were capsized, and most of the men in them, as well as those that jumped overboard, drowned; the scene I understand was truly piteous, as the officers commanding our boats were prevented from affording that relief which humanity would have dictated, from having to launch two of the feluccas off the beach, in the face of a brisk fire of small arms, from the men who had escaped and fled into the jungle. ”

“ What Fleets of Convoys must be engaged for our Defence, which might otherwise be employed to the Annoyance of the Enemy? What aggravated [Pg 17] Indignities we must receive from the most contemptible Powers in the Mediterranean, who will look upon this Defeat as the certain Token of the Ruin of our once invincible Navy.
Whoever considers this sad Concurrence of Misfortunes, and at the same time the Enormity of the Disgrace we have sustained, will blush to find so black a Period as this recorded in the Annals of Great Britain. ”

“ For example, behind the invasion forces in North Africa, the invasion forces that went out of North Africa, were thousands of ships and planes guarding the long, perilous sea lanes, carrying the men, carrying the equipment and the supplies to the point of attack. ”

“ If we examine, my lords, the influence of our European armaments, we shall find that their ships of war are shut up in the harbour of France, and that the fleets of both nations are happily blocked up together, so that they can neither extricate each other by concerted motions, in which our attention might be distracted, and our force divided, nor by their united force break through the bars by which they are shut up from the use of the ocean. ”

“ In a convoy the troop or merchant vessels sailed in echelon formation with destroyers or cruisers steaming in front and at the rear while a destroyer ranged in zig-zag course along each side. Naval gun crews manned each ship and on each one, in addition to the watches kept on board the escorting vessels, keen eyes constantly swept the surrounding waters, every moment of the day and night. ”

“ A fleet of twenty vessels of war came out to meet him and conduct him into port; and, as he touched the shores of his new dominions, the air was rent with acclamations of the people, and with the thunders of artillery from the fortresses, which crowned the heights of the city, and from the gallant navy which rode in her waters. ”

“ When the wind is strong, a ship is sure to drift several miles further to the offing. Such being the case, we can well imagine the difficulty and anxiety those in charge of our debarkation experienced. ”

“ If attack were made by land, the marching force was confronted by impassable rivers and swamps; if by boats, the invaders pressing up a channel which seemed to promise success, would find themselves suddenly in a blind alley, with nothing to do save to retrace their course. ”

“ For days the ships chased one another round the planet and between the moons, throwing down a continual shower of wreckage and shot on to the ground below. Far in the rear the admirals of both fleets watched the progress of the fight, directing the movements of the vessels and carefully devising combinations of force which might lead their own ships to victory. For hour after hour the perspiring and weary gunners stood at their guns until they were relieved by others and enabled to retire to rest. ”

“ Each had determined that if discovered, he would make an effort to escape in the nearest of the aircraft. Each knew that there was little hope of such an escape, but, realizing what was in store for them should they be discovered and captured, they had decided it would be better to die fighting than to be stood up against a wall and shot, or, possibly, hanged. ”

“ High up in the sky, slipping and gliding among the transparent clouds, a war plane swoops over the French warships, passes along them, and drops bombs that only our skillful dodging makes harmless; they burst opposite our ships. On the surface of the water one of the cruisers perceives the furrow of a periscope! ”

“ On one side we had to reflect upon the mortification of capture, with an increased severity, and, what to us seemed infinitely worse, a prolonged duration of confinement; whilst, on the other, should success crown our determined efforts, our hearts thrilled with the thoughts of once more walking the deck of a British ship-of-war, in all the elation of a confidence that we were serving our king and our country in a righteous cause. ”

“ Ships, however, can anchor about 1 1⁄2 miles below the fortified walls of the city, which, though impregnable to the attack of a native force, would probably be found powerless to repel a European force attacking from seaward. ”

“ Ancient history, for these reasons, gives us examples of more extensive debarkations than modern times.
Who does not recall to mind the immense forces transported by the Persians upon the Black Sea, the Bosporus, and the Archipelago,—the innumerable hosts landed in Greece by Xerxes and Darius,—the great expeditions of the Carthaginians and Romans to Spain and Sicily, that of Alexander into Asia [Pg 249] Minor, those of Cæsar to England and Africa, that of Germanicus to the mouths of the Elbe,—the Crusades,—the expeditions of the Northmen to England, to France, and even to Italy? ”

“ For a moment it appeared that the attacking force must be hurled back by the very weight of the numbers against them. But they rallied after one brief moment in which it seemed that they must yield, and hurled themselves forward again. ”

“ Even during this desperate crisis the cities of western Greece, counting themselves reasonably safe from invasion, declined to send a ship or a man for the common cause.
[Footnote 1: "'Interior Lines' conveys the meaning that from a central position one can assemble more rapidly on either of two opposite fronts than the enemy can, and therefore utilize force more effectively." NAVAL STRATEGY, A. T. Mahan, p. 32.] ”