Naval blockade

“ As a matter of fact, inasmuch as a blockade to be really deterrent must be conducted by a blockading force superior to that which is blockaded—for otherwise the latter need not shun an engagement in the open with the former—it can rarely be the interest of the blockader to prevent the exit of his adversary, since by the hypothesis if he could get him out he could beat him. But the blockade must nevertheless be maintained, because, although the blockaded fleet cannot by that means be destroyed, it can, at any rate, be immobilized and wiped off the board so long as it remains where it is. ”

“ Thus a modern blockade will, so far as battle fleets are concerned, be of necessity rather a watching blockade than a masking or sealing up blockade. If the two belligerents are unequal in naval strength it will probably take some such form as the following. The weaker belligerent will at the outset keep his battle fleet in his fortified ports. The stronger may do the same, but he will be under no such paramount inducement to do so. Both sides will, however, send out their torpedo craft and supporting cruisers with intent to do as much harm as they can to [Pg 27] the armed forces of the enemy. ”

“ The important part that blockade plays in naval warfare is a thing hardly recognised outside professional ranks. For the general reader, the grand manœuvres of a great fleet in chase of the enemy and the stirring hours of some decisive action throw into oblivion the tedious months of dull, anxious, and exhausting work with which by far the greater part of the war is taken up. ”

“ Their sole intention is to point out that, if a meagre naval force could produce so great an effect against a country mainly agricultural, a very powerful naval force, blockading effectively the principal ports of a manufacturing country, would have an effect so great that it can hardly be estimated.
It is plainly to be seen that the effect of a blockade against a purely commercial country by a modern navy would be incomparably greater now than it was fifty years ago, for two very important reasons. ”

“ The general conclusion, then, is that however high may be the purely naval and strategical reasons for adopting open blockade as the best means of securing a decision against the enemy's fleet, yet the inevitable intrusion of the ulterior object in the form of trade protection or the security of military expeditions will seldom leave us entirely free to use the open method. We must be prepared, in fact, to find ourselves at least at times faced with the necessity of using a form of blockade as nearly modelled on the old close blockade as changed conditions will permit. ”

“ Blockade, in naval warfare is the shutting up of a port of a country, cutting off communication with the outside world. It is effected by stationing sufficient numbers of ships off the ports to make entrance impracticable. Neutral powers, because the interference with their commerce injures them, must be fully notified of the blockade by the state that attempts it. ”

“ The situation in which a blockade is set up by one belligerent and submitted to by the other is not identical with an effective command of the sea, though in certain circumstances it may approximate very closely to it. The blockaded forces may not be so thoroughly intimidated by the superior forces of the blockaders that they could not or would not, if they could, seek a favourable opportunity for breaking or evading the blockade imposed upon them. ”

“ To reproduce, then, in modern conditions the effect brought about by close blockade in our previous wars, it is necessary to have a naval base at a suitable distance from the enemy’s base. It must be one that is proof against under-water or surface torpedo vessel attack, and it must be so constituted that the force that normally maintains itself there is capable of prompt and rapid sortie, and of pouncing upon any enemy fleet that attempts to break out of the harbour in which it is intended to confine it. ”

“ The object of blockade is to destroy the commerce of the enemy, and cripple his resources by arresting the import of supplies and the export of products. It may be made effectual by batteries ashore as well as by ships afloat. In the case of an inland port, the most effective blockade would be maintained by batteries commanding the river or inlet by which it may be approached, supported by a naval force sufficient to warn off innocent, and capture offending vessels attempting to enter. ”

“ In so far as the United States is short in them, she is at the mercy of an enemy whose naval strength is greater than that of her own available navy. If her navy cannot keep the enemy off the coast, blockade at least is possible. If, in addition, there are no harbor torpedo-boats, blockade is easy. If, further, guns and torpedo lines are deficient, bombardment comes within the range of possibility, and may reach even the point of entire feasibility. There will be no time for preparation after war begins. ”

“ Instead of hopping over the enemy’s shield as does the aeroplane, the submarine dives under it. In the Great War a submarine blockade almost brought the supreme naval power to its knees by starvation—yet Germany never had more than 175 submarines.
The fundamental purpose of a navy is to protect a nation’s sea communications and sever those of the enemy, and as, therefore, blockade is the main offensive rôle of the naval weapon, it behooves us to [58] examine the future of this means to the moral objective. ”

“ Stories of adventure and of desperate pluck and dash abound in the records of the blockade. Both among the officers of the blockading-fleets, and the commanders of the runners, were found great courage and fine seamanship. One fact is particularly noticeable to the student of the blockade: an English captain running the blockade would never dare the dangers that a Confederate would brave without a tremor. A Confederate captain would rush his ship through the hostile fleet, and stick to her until she sunk; while an Englishman would run his ship ashore, and take to the woods. ”

“ It is a species of hostilities easily extemporized by a great maritime nation; it therefore favors one whose policy is not to maintain a large naval establishment. It opens a field for a sea militia force, requiring little antecedent military training. Again, it is a logical military reply to commercial blockade, which is the most systematic, regularized, and extensive form of commerce-destruction known to war. Commercial blockade is not to be confounded with the military measure of confining a body of hostile ships of war to their harbor, by stationing before it a competent force. ”

“ But, in the case of a blockade established by a naval officer, acting upon his own discretion, without governmental proclamation, neutrals are not visited with implied notice of the existence of such a blockade, and they may rightfully sail for such a blockaded port, and if, when approaching it, armed vessels are seen to be in its immediate neighborhood, they may apply to such vessels for information and for leave to enter, without subjecting themselves to capture. The duty of the blockading squadron, if objection exists to permitting neutral vessels to enter, is to warn them off. ”

“ To-day, however, the world is awakening to a new idea of sea-power, to a new conception that will have a far-reaching influence on the future development of naval machinery.
Sir Cyprian Bridge has stated that one of the functions of a fleet is the defense of commerce. There is no more important function for a fleet than this. A nation may be subjugated by direct invasion, or it may be isolated from the world by blockade. If the blockade be sufficiently long, and effectively maintained, it will ruin the nation as effectually as direct invasion. ”

“ The extensive blockade has been constantly increasing in efficiency as the Navy has expanded, yet on so long a line it has so far been impossible to entirely suppress illicit trade. From returns received at the Navy Department it appears that more than 1,000 vessels have been captured since the blockade was instituted, and that the value of prizes already sent in for adjudication amounts to over $13,000,000.
The naval force of the United States consists at this time of 588 vessels completed and in the course of completion, and of these 75 are ironclad or armored steamers. ”

“ That is to say, until the nation proclaiming the blockade can put a sufficient naval force at the mouth of each blockaded harbor to prevent the entry of ships, no foreign shipmasters are bound to respect the proclamation of blockade, and their blockade-running263 ships are not subject to seizure in the attempt to pass the paper barriers erected. ”

“ The blockading force is entitled to treat such a ship in all respects as an enemy, and to use any means recognised in civilised warfare to drive off, capture, or destroy her. A crew so captured may be treated as prisoners of war, and their vessel carried into the captor's port, where after condemnation by an Admiralty court she becomes his prize. Nor is any resistance to capture permitted, and a single blow or shot in his own defence turns the blockade-runner into a pirate. ”

“ The International Law which regulates its conditions as between neutrals and belligerents is shortly this. A belligerent, if strong enough at sea to close one or more ports of his enemy, may give notice to Neutral Powers that such port or ports are blockaded, and thereafter if any neutral vessel attempts to enter or leave them, the belligerent may treat it as an enemy, and may destroy or capture and condemn it as an ordinary prize. To run a blockade then is an operation attended with all the risks of war. ”

“ A blockade, it is well to keep in mind, is a procedure which aims at completely closing the blockaded country from all commercial intercourse with the world. A blockading navy, if the blockade is [pg II-57] successful, or "effective," converts the whole country into a beleaguered fortress, just as an army, surrounding a single town, prevents goods and people from entering or leaving it. Precisely as it is the purpose of a besieging army to starve a particular city or territory into submission, so it is the aim of a blockading fleet to enforce the same treatment on the nation as a whole. ”

“ The British fleets blockading Germany of course seized and kept for the Government, as spoils of war, whatever warlike stores (guns, shells, and so on) they could lay their hands on. But all the other goods the Navy stopped the Government bought, paying fair market prices. So the American and other neutrals trying to trade with the enemy had really nothing to complain of; for a blockade at sea is very like a siege on land, and nobody has ever pretended that a besieging army has not a perfect right to stop any supplies of any kind from reaching the besieged. ”

“ While it is true that an absolute blockade of any port might be practically impossible at the present day, while it is true that submarines and torpedo-boats might compel blockading ships to keep at such distance from ports that many loopholes of escape would be open to blockade runners, yet it may be pointed out that even a partial blockade, even a blockade that made it risky for vessels to try to break it, would have a very deleterious effect upon the prosperity of the country and of every man, woman, and child within it. ”

“ As in relation to want, if the enemy, on one part, is in want of stores, the want to intercept them on the other is equal. And in relation to [473] blockades, every port of the enemy is blocked relative to a neutral vessel loaded with stores, which is seized, and, by consequence, blocked, or hindered to go there. It imports little, that whether the blockade be made across the narrows at Dover, or off the harbor at Brest, or L'Orient. If you are taken, you are blocked. Great Britain, by her insular situation, blocks naturally all the ports of Spain and France. ”

“ To avoid such blockades there must be a military force afloat that will at all times so endanger a blockading fleet that it can by no means keep its place. Then neutral ships, except those laden with contraband of war, can come and go freely, and maintain the commercial relations of the country with the world outside.
It may be urged that, with the extensive sea-coast of the United States, a blockade of the whole line cannot be effectively kept up. No one will more readily concede this than officers who remember how the blockade of the Southern coast alone was maintained. ”

“ True, the proposition that a belligerent might seize a neutral ship for attempted breach of blockade thousands of miles away from the blockaded coast was one that would have been condemned by the old school of International lawyers as nothing less than monstrous, and by none more energetically than the great publicists who have so richly adorned the American bench. ”

“ If the Americans were stretching the theory of blockade, it was only because we were extending its practice. It was not to be argued that, if we were building a whole fleet of steamers for the express purpose of defying their cruisers, they were not justified in trying to intercept them at any point they chose. From the very outset the voyages of these vessels showed them to be guilty, and the most barefaced advocate could hardly have maintained without shame that they were protected by their ostensibly neutral destination, when that destination was a notorious nest of offence like Nassau. ”