Naval strategy

Torrington and the fleet in being

The British Admiral the Earl of Torrington allegedly originated the expression fleet in being. Faced with a clearly superior French fleet in the summer of 1690 during the War of the Grand Alliance, Torrington proposed avoiding battle, except under very favourable conditions, until the arrival of reinforcements. By maintaining his fleet in being, he would prevent the French from gaining command of the sea, which would allow them to invade England. Although Torrington was forced to fight at the Battle of Beachy Head (June 1690), the French victory there gave Paris control of the English Channel for only a few weeks.

Introduction of the guerre de course

By the mid-1690s, privateers from French Atlantic ports, particularly St. Malo and Dunkirk, were a major threat to Anglo-Dutch commerce. The threat forced the English government to divert warships to the defence of trade, as convoy escorts and cruisers to hunt down the privateers. In France, the success of privateers against the Anglo-Dutch war effort stimulated a gradual shift from the employment of the Royal warships as battlefleets (guerre d’escadre) towards supporting the war on trade (guerre de course). The allied convoys presented large targets for commerce raiding squadrons. The most dramatic result of this shift was the Comte de Tourville’s attack upon the allies’ Smyrna convoy on 17 June 1693.

The disadvantage of the guerre de course when pursued as a battlefleet strategy, rather than just by smaller vessels, is that it leaves a country’s own trade defenceless. Individual raiding squadrons are also vulnerable to defeat in detail if the enemy sends larger squadrons in pursuit, as happened to Leissegues at the Battle of San Domingo in 1806 and Von Spee at the Battle of the Falkland Islands in 1914.

Hawke, St Vincent and the close blockade

Until after the end of the 17th century it was thought impossible, or at least very rash, to keep the great ships out of port between September and May or June. Therefore, continuous watch on an enemy by blockading his ports was beyond the power of any navy. Therefore, too, as an enemy fleet might be at sea before it could be stopped, the movements of fleets were much subordinated to the need for providing convoy to the trade.

It was not until the middle of the 18th century that the continuous blockade first carried out by Sir Edward Hawke in 1758–59, and then brought to perfection by Earl St Vincent and other British admirals between 1793 and 1815, became possible.

Mahan's influence on strategy

Captain, later Rear-Admiral, Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840–1914) was an American naval officer and historian.

Influenced by Jomini's principles of strategy, he argued that in the coming wars, control of the sea would grant the power to control the trade and resources needed to wage war. Mahan's premise was that in the contests between France and Britain in the 18th century, domination of the sea through naval power was the deciding factor in the outcome, and therefore, that control of seaborne commerce was secondary to domination in war. In Mahan’s view, a country obtained "command of the sea" by concentrating its naval forces at the decisive point to destroy or master the enemy’s battle fleet; blockade of enemy ports and disruption of the enemy's maritime communications would follow. Mahan believed that the true objective in a naval war was always the enemy fleet.

Mahan's writings were highly influential. His best-known books, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783, and The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793–1812, were published in 1890 and 1892 respectively and his theories contributed to the naval arms race between 1898 and 1914.

Theodore Roosevelt, himself an accomplished historian of the naval history of the War of 1812, closely followed Mahan's ideas. He incorporated them into American naval strategy when he served as assistant secretary of the Navy in 1897–1898. As president, 1901–1909, Roosevelt made building up a world-class fighting fleet of high priority, sending his "white fleet" around the globe in 1908-1909 to make sure all the naval powers understood the United States was now a major player. Building the Panama Canal was designed not just to open Pacific trade to East Coast cities, but also to enable the new Navy to move back and forth across the globe.^[1][2]

The Colomb brothers and naval warfare

In Britain, Captain John H. Colomb (1838–1909) in a series of articles and lectures argued that the navy was the most important component of imperial defence; his brother, Admiral Phillip Colomb (1831–1899), sought to establish from history general rules applicable to modern naval warfare in his Naval Warfare (1891). But their writings achieved nothing like the fame achieved by Mahan.

Corbett’s principles of maritime strategy

Sir Julian Corbett (1854–1922) was a British naval historian who became a lecturer at the Royal Naval War College in Great Britain.

Corbett differed from Mahan in placing much less emphasis on fleet battle. Corbett emphasized the interdependence of naval and land warfare and tended to concentrate on the importance of sea communications rather than battle. Battle at sea was not an end in itself; the primary objective of the fleet was to secure one’s own communications and disrupt those of the enemy, not necessarily to seek out and destroy the enemy’s fleet. To Corbett, command of the sea was a relative and not an absolute which could be categorized as general or local, temporary or permanent. Corbett defined the two fundamental methods of obtaining control of the lines of communication as the actual physical destruction or capture of enemy warships and merchants, and or a naval blockade.

His most famous work, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, remains a classic.