Chapter VII The Essentials of Sea Fighting
Sir William Allan, M.P., with the torso of a Hercules and the voice of a bull and the affectionate heart of Mary Magdalene, did not know Latin, and he asked me what my motto meant:
“Fiat justitia—ruat cœlum.”
I had sent it to him when he was malignantly attacking me because, as Controller of the Navy, I had introduced the water-tube boiler. Sir William Allan was himself a boiler-maker, and he had to scrap most of his plant because of this new type of boiler.
I said the translation was: “Do right, and damn the odds.”
This motto has stood me in good stead, for by attending to it I fought a great battle in a righteous cause with Lord Salisbury, when he was Prime Minister, and conquered. I have related this elsewhere. Years after, Lord Salisbury, in remembrance of this, recalled me from being Commander-in-Chief in America to be British delegate at the First Peace Conference at The Hague in 1899, and from thence I went as Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet.
While I was in command of the Mediterranean Fleet, from 1899 to 1902, when I became Second Sea Lord of the Admiralty, I arranged to have lectures for the officers of the Fleet. I extract now from the notes of my lectures some points which may be of general interest, as illustrating the new strategy and tactics necessitated by the change from wind to steam.
After setting forth a few of the problems which would have to be solved in sea-fighting under the new conditions, the lecturer went on to elaborate the themes from such rough notes as I give here of the principal ideas.
All Officers without exception should be unceasingly occupied in considering the various solutions of these problems, as who can tell who will be in command after the first five minutes of a close engagement, whether in an individual ship or in command of the whole Fleet! Otherwise we may have a stampede like that of riderless horses! The Captain or Admiral is hors de combat, and the next Officer, and, perhaps, the next, and the next don’t know what to do when moments mean victory or defeat!
“The man who hesitates is lost!” and so it will be with the Fleet if decision is wanting!
“Time, Twiss, time is everything!” said Nelson (speaking to General Twiss when he was chasing the French Fleet under Villeneuve to the West Indies); “a quarter of an hour may mean the difference between Victory and Defeat!”
This was in sailing days. Now it will be quarters of a minute, not quarters of an hour!
It is said to have been stated by one of the most eminent of living men, that sudden war becomes daily more probable because public opinion is becoming greater in power, and that popular emotion, once fairly aroused, sweeps away the barriers of calm deliberation, and is deaf to the voice of reason.
Besides cultivating the faculty of Quick Decision and consequent rapid action, we must cultivate Rashness.
Napoleon was asked the secret of victory. He replied, “L’audace, l’audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace!”
There is a rashness which in Peace is Folly, but which in War is Prudence, and there are risks that must be undertaken in War which are Obligatory, but which in peace would be Criminal!
As in War, so in the preparation for War, Rashness must have its place. We must also reflect how apt we are to suppose that the enemy will fit himself into our plans!
The first successful blow on either side will probably determine the final issue in sea-fighting. Sustained physical energy will be the required great attribute at that time for those in command as well as those who administer. Collingwood wrote two years before Trafalgar, when blockading Rochefort—and Nelson then off Toulon, Pellew off Ferrol, and Cornwallis off Brest—that “Admirals needed to be made of iron!” The pressure then will test the endurance of the strongest, and the rank of Admiral confers no immunity from the operation of the natural law of Anno Domini! Nelson was 39 years old at the Battle of the Nile, and died at 47. What is our average age of those actively responsible for the control, mobilisation, and command of our Fleets? As age increases, audacity leaks out and caution comes in.
An instant offensive is obligatory. Mahan truly says:—
“The assumption of a simple defensive in war is ruin. War, once declared, must be waged offensively, aggressively. The enemy must not be fended off, but smitten down. You may then spare him every exaction, relinquish every gain. But till down he must be struck incessantly and remorselessly.”1
All will depend on the instant start, the sudden blow! Napoleon again, “Frappez vite et frappez fort!” That was the whole of his orders.
The question of armament is all-important!
If we have the advantage of speed, which is the first desideratum in every class of fighting vessel (Battleships included), then, and then only, we can choose our distance for fighting. If we can choose our distance for fighting, then we can choose our armament for fighting! But how in the past has the armament been chosen? Do we arrange the armament to meet the proposed mode of fighting? Doesn’t it sometimes look like so many of each sort, as if you were peopling the Ark, and wanted representatives of all calibres?
Whoever hits soonest and oftenest will win!
“The effectiveness of a fighting weapon,” wrote Mahan, “consists more in the method of its use and in the practised skill of the human element that wields it than in the material perfection of the weapon itself. The sequel of a long period of peace is a demoralisation of ideals. Those who rise in peace are men of formality and routine, cautious, inoffensive, safe up to the limits of their capacity, supremely conscientious, punctilious about everything but what is essential, yet void altogether of initiative, impulse and originality.
“This was the difference between Hawke and Matthews. Hawke represented the spirit of war, the ardour, the swift initiative, the readiness of resource, the impatience of prescription and routine, without which no great things are done! Matthews, the spirit of peace, the very reverse of all this!”
Peace brings with it the reign of old men.
The sacred fire never burnt in Collingwood. Nelson, with the instinct of genius, intended the Fleet to anchor, turning the very dangers of the shoals of Trafalgar into a security. Collingwood, simply a naval machine, and never having been his own master all his life, and not being a genius, thought a shoal was a thing to be avoided, and, consequently, wrecked the ships unfitted to cope with a gale, and so to weather these shoals! Collingwood ought to have had the moon given him for his crest, for all his glory was reflected from Nelson, the sun of glory! Collingwood was an old woman!
History is a record of exploded ideas. In what sense? Fighting conditions are all altered. The wind formerly determined the course of action; now it is only the mind of man. One man and the best man is wanted—not a fossil; not a careful man. Fleets were formerly days coming into action, now only minutes.
Two Fleets can now be fighting each other in twenty minutes from first seeing each other’s smoke.
Formerly sea battles were Sailors’ battles, now they are Officers’.
At Trafalgar, Nelson was walking up and down the Quarter-Deck and having a yarn with his Flag Captain, Hardy, at the very zenith of the Action! It was the common sailors only who were then at work. How different now! The Admiral everything!
Now, the different phases of a Naval War are as capable of as exact a demonstration as a proposition in Euclid, because steam has annihilated wind and sea. We are now trained to a higher standard, and the arts of strategy and tactics have accordingly been immensely magnified. Make an initial mistake in strategy or tactics, and then it may be said of them as of women by Congreve:
“Hell has no fury like a woman scorn’d.”
The last place to defend England will be the Shores of England.
The Frontiers of England are the Coasts of the Enemy. We ought to be there five minutes before war breaks out.
Naval Supremacy once destroyed is destroyed for ever. Carthage, Spain, Holland, the great commercial nations of the past, had the sea wrested from them, and then they fell.
A successful Mercantile Marine leads to a successful War Navy.
It is solely owing to our command of the sea that we have been able to build up our magnificent Empire.
Admiral Mahan’s most famous passage is:—
“The world has never seen a more impressive demonstration of the influence of Sea Power upon its history. Those far-distant, storm-beaten ships of Nelson, upon which the Grand Army never looked, stood between it and the dominion of the World.”
“Secrecy and Secretiveness.”
There are three types of Secrecy:—
| I. | The Ostrich. |
| II. | The Red Box. |
| III. | The Real Thing. |
I. The ostrich buries his head in the sand of the desert when pursued by his enemy, and because he can’t see the enemy concludes the enemy can’t see him! Such is the secrecy of the secretive and detestable habit which hides from our own officers what is known to the world in other Navies.
II. The secrecy of the Red Box is that of a distinguished Admiral who, with great pomp, used to have his red despatch box carried before him (like the umbrella of an African King), as containing the most secret plans; but one day, the box being unfortunately capsized and burst open, the only contents that fell out were copies of “La Vie Parisienne”!
Such, it is feared, was the secrecy of those wonderful detailed plans for war we hear of in the past as having been secreted in secret drawers, to be brought out “when the time comes,” and when no one has any time to study them, supposing, that is, they ever existed; and, remember, it is detailed attention to minutiæ and the consideration of trifles which spells success.
III. There is the legitimate secrecy and secretiveness of hiding from your dearest friend the moment and the nature of your rush at the enemy, and which of all the variety of operations you have previously practised with the Fleet you will bring into play! But all your Captains will instantly know your mind and intentions, for you will hoist the signal or spark the wireless message, Plan A, or Plan B..., or Plan Z!
“After I have made known my intentions,” began Nelson’s last order; and it expressed the experience of a hundred battles—that the Second in Command (and in these days it may well be amplified into the individual officers in command) are to fulfil the spirit of the peace manœuvre teaching, and assist by the teaching in carrying out the meaning of brief signals to the destruction of the enemy’s Fleet. The secret of success lies in the first part of the sentence: “After I have made known my intentions.”
Confidence is a plant of slow growth. Long and constant association of ships of a Fleet is essential to success. A new-comer is often more dangerous than the enemy.
An Army may be improvised in case of war, but not a Navy.
Immense importance of constant readiness at all times. A Fleet always ready to go to sea at an hour’s notice is a splendid national life preserver! Here comes in the water-tube boiler! Without previous notice or even an inkling, we have been ready to start in one hour with water-tube boiler ships. You can’t exaggerate this! One bucket of water ready on the spot in the shape of an instantly ready Fleet will stop the conflagration of war which all the Fire Brigades of the world won’t stop a little later on! Never forget that from the very nature of sea fighting an initial Naval disaster is irretrievable, irreparable, eternal. Naval Colensos have no Paardebergs!
Suddenness is the secret of success at sea, because suddenness is practicable, and remember that rashness may be the height of prudence. How very rash Nelson was at the Nile to go in after dark to fight the French Fleet with no chart of the shoals of Aboukir!
But you must be sure of your Fleet and they must be sure of you! Every detail previously thought out. Trust no one! (My friend, Maurice Bourke, used to tell a story of the Yankee barber, who put up in his shop: “To trust is to bust, and to bust is hell!” which means “no credit given”). Make the very best of things as they are. Criminal to wait for something better. “We strain at the gnat of perfection and swallow the camel of unreadiness.”
“The Great Silent Navy.”
The usual motto is “Silence” or “Deeds, not words,” which you will see ornamenting some conspicuous place in a ship.2 It has been said by landsmen that the most striking feature to them in a British man-of-war when at sea is the noiseless, ceaseless, sleepless, yet unobtrusive, energy that characterises everyone and everything on board! If so, we sailors don’t notice it, and it is the result of nature! Gales of wind, sudden fogs, immense speeds, the much multiplied dangers of collision and wreck from these terrific speeds, as in Destroyers and even in large ships, all these circumstances automatically react on all on board and are nature’s education by environment. There is no place for the unthinking or the lethargic. He is a positive danger! Every individual in a man-of-war has his work cut out! “Think and act for yourself” is to be the motto of the future, not “Let us wait for orders!”
Such may be said of sea fights! No mountains delay us, and, as Scripture says, the way of a ship is trackless! The enemy will suddenly confront us as an Apparition! At every moment we must be ready! Can this be acquired by grown men? No! it is the force of habit. You must commence early. Our Nelsons and Benbows began the sea life when they first put their breeches on! The brother of the Black Prince (John of Gaunt) joined the Navy and was in a sea fight when he was 10 years of age! Far exceeding anything known in history does our future Trafalgar depend on promptitude and rapid decision, and on every eventuality having been foreseen by those in command. But these attributes cannot be acquired late in life, nor by those who have lived the life of cabbages! So begin early and work continuously. Then if there is war your opportunity must come! Like Kitchener, you will then walk over the cabbages!