Early on the morning of April 20th (1657) he sailed in. As he had judged, the fire of the forts did little damage. By eight o'clock the English ships were all at their appointed stations and fighting. During the entire day Blake continued his work of destruction till it was complete, and at dusk drifted out on the ebb. Some writers mention a favoring land breeze that helped to extricate the English, but according to Blake's own words, "the wind blew right into the bay." In spite of this head wind the ships that were crippled were warped or towed out and not one was lost. The English suffered in the entire action only 50 killed and 120 wounded, and repairs were so easily made that Blake returned to his blockading station at once.
This was the greatest of Blake's feats as it also was his last. All who heard of it—friend or enemy—pronounced it as without parallel in the history of ships. A few months later Blake was given leave to return home. He had long been a sick man, but his name alone was worth a fleet and Cromwell had not been able to spare him. As it happened, he did not live long enough to see England again. Cromwell, who knew the worth of his faithful admiral, gave him a funeral of royal dignity and interment in Westminster Abbey.
Blake never showed, perhaps, great strategic insight—Tromp and de Ruyter were his superiors there, as was also Nelson—but he, more than any other, won for England her mastery of the sea, and no other can boast his record of great victories. These he won partly by skill and forethought but chiefly by intrepidity. We can do no better than leave his fame in the words of the Royalist historian, Clarendon—a political enemy—who says: "He quickly made himself signal there (on the sea) and was the first man who declined the old track ... and disproved those rules that had long been in practice, to keep his ships and men out of danger, which had been held in former times a point of great ability and circumspection, as if the principal requisite in the captain of a ship had been to come home safe again. He was the firstman who brought ships to contemn castles on shore, which had been thought ever very formidable.... He was the first that infused that proportion of courage into the seamen by making them see what mighty things they could do if they were resolved, and taught them to fight in fire as well as on water. And though he hath been very well imitated and followed, he was the first that drew the copy of naval courage and bold resolute achievement."
The chaos that followed the death of the Protector resulted in Monk's bringing over the exiled Stuart king—Charles II. Thereafter Round Head and Royalist served together in the British navy. An important effect of the Restoration was organization of a means of training the future officers of the fleet. The Navy as a profession may be said to date from this time, in contrast with the practice of using merchant skippers and army officers, which had prevailed to so great a degree hitherto. Under the new system "young gentlemen" were sent to sea as "King's Letter Boys"—midshipmen—to learn the ways of the navy and to grow up in it as a preparation for command. This was an excellent reform but it resulted in making the navy the property of a social caste from that day to this, and it made promotion, for a century and more, largely subject to family influence.
Another effect of the Restoration was to break down the fighting efficiency of the fleet as it had been in the days of Blake. The veterans of the First Dutch War fought with their old time courage and discipline, but the newer elements did not show the same devotion and initiative. The effect on the material was still worse, for the fleet became a prey to the cynical dishonesty that Charles II inspired in every department of his government.
The Second Dutch War
Five years after Charles II became king, England was involved in another war with the Netherlands. There was still bad feeling between the two peoples, and trading companies in the far east or west kept up a guerilla warfare whichflooded both governments with complaints. The chief cause seems to have been the desire of the English Guinea Company to get rid of their Dutch competitors who persistently undersold them in the slave markets of the West Indies. Before there was any declaration of war an English squadron was sent out to attack the Dutch company's settlement on the West African coast. After this it crossed the Atlantic and took New Amsterdam, which thereafter became New York. The Dutch retaliated by sending out one of their squadrons to retake their African post and threaten the Atlantic colonies. In March, 1665, war was declared.
In this conflict the relative strengths of the two navies were about the same as in the previous war. The Dutch had made improvements in their ships, but they still suffered from the lack of unity in organization and spirit. The first engagement was the battle of Lowestoft, on June 3, 1665. The English fleet was under the personal command of the Duke of York, later James II; the Dutch were led by de Ruyter. The two forces numbered from 80 to 100 ships each, and strung out as they were, must have extended over nearly ten miles of sea. The Duke of York formed his fleet in the pattern that he set by his own "Fighting Instructions," which governed the tactics of all navies thereafter for a hundred years, namely, the entire force drawn up in single line. This line bore down abreast toward the enemy until it reached gunshot, then swung into line ahead and sailed on a course parallel to that of the enemy. De Ruyter arranged his fleet accordingly, and the two long lines passed each other on opposite tacks three times, cannonading furiously at close range. This meant that the force was distributed evenly along the enemy's line and as against an evenly matched force these tactics could result, as a rule, only in mere inconclusive artillery duels which each side would claim as victories. In the battle of Lowestoft, however, several of the captains in the Dutch center flinched at the third passing and bore up to leeward, leaving a wide gap in de Ruyter's line. The English broke through at this point and hammered the weakened Dutch line in the center with a superior force. This was the decisivepoint in the battle and de Ruyter was forced to retreat. The Dutch would have suffered even greater loss than they did had it not been for the masterly fashion in which Cornelius Tromp—son of the famous Martin Tromp—covered the retreat.
The defeat of the Dutch was due to the bad conduct of the captains in the center, four of whom were shot by order of de Ruyter and others dismissed from the service. It is interesting to note that while the first half of the battle was fought on the formal lines that were soon to be the cast iron rule of conduct for the British navy, and led to nothing conclusive; the second half was characterized by the breaking of the enemy's line, in the older style of Blake, and led to a pronounced victory.
At this time Louis XIV had pledged himself to give aid to the Netherlands in case of attack by a third Power. But when the Dutch and his own ministers called on him to make good his promise he offered more promises and no fulfillment. The rumor of an approaching French squadron which was to make junction with de Ruyter, who had now been placed in command of the Dutch fleet, caused the English government to make the grave mistake of detaching Prince Rupert with 20 ships to look for the mythical French force. This division left Monk, who was again in command of the fleet, with only 57 ships. Hearing that de Ruyter was anchored on the Flanders coast, Monk went out to find him. De Ruyter left his anchorage to meet the English, and on June 1, 1666, the two forces met in mid-Channel, between Dunkirk and the Downs. As the Dutch force heavily outnumbered him—nearly two to one—Monk might have been expected to avoid fighting, but he acted in the spirit of Blake. Having the windward position he decided that he could strike the advanced division under Tromp and maul it severely before the rest of the Dutch could succor it. Accordingly he boldly headed for the enemy's van. When Monk attacked he had only about 35 ships in hand, for the rest were straggling behind too far to help. Thus began the famous "Four Days' Battle," characterized by Mahan as "the most remarkable, insome of its aspects that has ever been fought upon the ocean."[1]
[Footnote 1:The Influence of Sea Power upon History, p. 125.]
The fighting was close and furious and in its unparalleled duration numbers were bound to tell. On the third day Monk retreated to the Thames, but on being joined by Rupert's squadron immediately sallied forth to do battle again. On this day, June 4, the Dutch succeeded in cutting through his formation and putting him between two fires. Indeed Monk escaped destruction only by breaking through his ring of enemies and finding refuge in the Thames. The Dutch had won a great victory, for the English had lost some twenty ships and 5000 in killed and wounded. But Monk was right in feeling a sense of pride in the fight that he had made against great odds. The losses that he had inflicted were out of all proportion to the relative strength of the two forces. Unfortunately the new spirit that was coming into the navy of the Restoration was evidenced by the fact that a number of English captains, finding the action too hot for them, deserted their commander in chief. On the Dutch side de Ruyter's handling of his fleet was complicated by the conduct of Cornelius Tromp. This officer believed that he, not de Ruyter, should have been made commander of the Dutch fleet and in this action as in the next, acted with no regard for his chief's orders.
As a consequence of the Four Days' Battle, Dutchmen again controlled the Channel and closed the mouth of the Thames to trade. The English strained every nerve to create a fleet that should put an end to this humiliating and disastrous situation. The preparations were carried out with such speed that on July 22 (1666), Monk and Rupert anchored off the end of the Gunfleet shoal with a fleet of about 80 ships of the line and frigates. On the 25th the English sighted de Ruyter, with a fleet slightly larger in numbers, in the broad part of the Thames estuary. Monk, forming his fleet in the long line ahead, sailed to the attack. The action that followed is called the "Battle of St. James's Day" or the "Gunfleet."
Whether or not Monk was influenced by his princely colleagueit is impossible to say, but the tactics of this engagement do not suggest the Monk of earlier battles. He followed the "Fighting Instructions" and in spite of them won a victory, but it might have been far more decisive. The English bore down in line abreast, then formed line ahead on reaching gunshot, the van, center, and rear, engaging respectively the Dutch van, center, and rear. In these line ahead attacks the rear usually straggled. Tromp, commanding the Dutch rear, saw his chance to attack Smith, commanding the English rear, before his squadron was in proper formation. Smith retreated, and Tromp, eager to win a victory all by himself, abandoned the rest of the Dutch fleet and pursued Smith. Thus the action broke into two widely separated parts. TheEnglish van and center succeeded in forcing the corresponding Dutch divisions to retreat, and if Monk had turned to the help of Smith he might have taken or destroyed all of the 39 ships in Tromp's division. Instead, he and Rupert went careering on in pursuit of the enemy directly ahead of them. Eventually de Ruyter's ships found refuge in shallow water and then Monk turned to catch Tromp. But the latter proved too clever for his adversaries and slipped between them to an anchorage alongside of de Ruyter.
Although the victory was not nearly so decisive as it should have been with the opportunity offered, nevertheless it served the need of the hour. De Ruyter was no longer able to blockade the Thames and the Straits of Dover. And Monk, following up his success, carried the war to the enemy's coast, where he burned a merchant fleet of 160 vessels in the roadstead of the island of Terschelling, and destroyed one of the towns. Early in 1666 active operations on both sides dwindled down, and Charles, anxious to use naval appropriations for other purposes, allowed the fleet to fall into a condition of unreadiness for service. One of the least scandals in this corrupt age was the unwillingness or inability of the officials to pay the seamen their wages. In consequence large numbers of English prisoners in Holland actually preferred taking service in the Dutch navy rather than accepting exchange, on the ground that the Dutch government paid its men while their own did not.
Early in June, 1667, de Ruyter took advantage of the condition of the English fleet by inflicting perhaps the greatest humiliation on England that she has ever suffered. Entering the Thames unopposed, he was prevented from attacking London only by unfavorable wind and tide. He then turned his attention to the dockyards of Chatham and burnt or captured seven great ships of the line, besides numerous smaller craft, carried off the naval stores at Sheerness, and then for the next six weeks kept a blockade on the Thames and the eastern and southern coasts of England. This mortifying situation continued until the signing of the "Peace of Breda" concluded the war.
The Third Dutch War
Less than five years later Charles again made war on the Netherlands. For this there was not the shadow of excuse, but Louis XIV saw fit to attack the Dutch, and Charles was ever his willing vassal. The English began hostilities without any declaration of war by a piratical attack on a Dutch convoy.
At this juncture Holland was reduced to the last extremity. Attacked on her land frontiers by France, then the dominating military power, and on her sea frontiers by England, the strongest naval power, she seemed to have small chance to survive. But her people responded with a heroism worthy of her splendid history. They opened their dykes to check the armies of invasion and strained every nerve to equip a fleet large enough to cope with the combined navies of France and England. In this Third Dutch War four great naval battles were fought: that of Solebay, May 28, 1672, the two engagements off Schooneveldt, May 28 and June 4, 1673, and that of the Texel, August 11, 1673.
In all of these the honors go to the Dutch and their great admiral, de Ruyter. Since these actions did not restore the Netherlands to their old-time position or check the ascendancy of England, they need not be discussed individually here. The outstanding feature of the whole story is the surpassing skill and courage of de Ruyter in the face of overwhelming odds. In this war he showed the full stature of his genius as never before, and won his title as the greatest seaman of the 17th century. After his death one must wait till the day of Suffren and Nelson to find men worthy to rank with him.
In this campaign de Ruyter showed his powers not only as a tactician but as a strategist. In the words of Mahan, the Dutch "made a strategic use of their dangerous coast and shoals, upon which were based their sea operations. To this they were forced by the desperate odds under which they were fighting; but they did not use their shoals as a mere shelter,—thewarfare they waged was the defensive-offensive. When the wind was fair for the allies to attack, de Ruyter kept under cover of his islands, or at least on ground where the enemy dared not follow; but when the wind served so that he might attack in his own way he turned and fell upon them."[1] That is, instead of accepting the tame rôle of a "fleet in being" and hiding in a safe harbor, de Ruyter took and held the sea, always on the aggressive, always alert to catch his enemy in a position of divided forces or exposed flank and strike hard. His master, Martin Tromp, is regarded as the father of the line ahead formation for battle, but he undoubtedly taught de Ruyter its limitations as well as its advantages, and there is no trace of the stupid formalism of the Duke of York's regulations in de Ruyter's brilliant work.
[Footnote 1:Influence of Sea Power upon History, p. 144.]
At this time he had no worthy opponent. As Monk was dead, the Duke of York had again assumed active command with Rupert as his lieutenant. Although the Duke was honestly devoted to the navy he was dull-witted, and in spite of the advantage of numbers and the dogged courage of officers and men which so often in English history has made up for stupid leadership, he was wholly unable to cope with de Ruyter's genius. As for the French navy, their ships were superb, the best in Europe, but their officers had no experience and apparently small desire for close fighting. At all events, despite the odds against him, de Ruyter defeated the allies in all four battles, prevented their landing an army of invasion, and broke up their attempt to blockade the coast.
The war was unpopular in England and as it met with ill success it became more so. After the battle of the Texel, in 1673, active operations died down to practically nothing, and at the beginning of the year England made peace. By this time Holland had managed to find other allies on the Continent—Spain and certain German states—and while she had to continue her struggle against Louis XIV by land she was relieved of the menace of her great enemy on the sea. Fifteen years later, by a curious freak of history, a Dutchprince became King William III of England, and the two old enemies became united in alliance. But the Netherlands had exhausted themselves by their protracted struggle. They had saved their independence, but after the close of the 17th century they ceased to be a world power of any consequence.
The persistent enmity of the French king for the Dutch gained nothing for France but everything for England. Unwittingly he poured out his resources in money and men to the end that England should become the great colonial and maritime rival of France. As a part of her spoils England had gained New York and New Jersey, thus linking her northern and southern American colonies, and she had taken St. Helena as a base for her East Indies merchantmen. She had tightened her hold in India, and by repeatedly chastising the Barbary pirates had won immunity for her traders in the Mediterranean. At the beginning of the Second Dutch War Monk had said with brutal frankness, "What matters this or that reason? What we want is more of the trade which the Dutch have." This, the richest prize of all, fell from the hands of the Dutch into those of the English. During the long drawn war which went on after the English peace of 1674, while Holland with her allies fought against Louis XIV, the great bulk of the Dutch carrying trade passed from the Dutch to the English flag. The close of the 17th century, therefore, found England fairly started on her career as an ocean empire, unified by sea power. Her navy, despite the vices it had caught from the Stuart régime, had become firmly established as a permanent institution with a definite organization. By this time every party recognized its essential importance to England's future.
Nevertheless, whatever satisfaction may be felt by men of English speech in this rapid growth of England's power and prestige as a result of the three wars with the Dutch, one cannot avoid the other side of the picture. A people small in numbers but great in energy and genius was hounded to the point of extinction by the greed of its powerful neighbors.Peace-loving, asking merely to be let alone, the only crime of the Dutch was to excite the envy of the English and the French.
REFERENCES
See next chapter,page 221.
RISE OF ENGLISH SEA POWER [Continued]. WARS WITH FRANCE TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
The effect of the expulsion of James II from the throne of England coupled with the accession of the Dutch prince, William of Orange, was to make England change sides and take the leadership in the coalition opposed to Louis XIV. From this time on, for over 125 years, England was involved in a series of wars with France. They began with the threat of Louis to dominate Europe and ended with the similar threat on the part of Napoleon. In all this conflict the sea power of England was a factor of paramount importance. Even when the fighting was continental rather than naval, the ability of Great Britain to cut France off from her overseas possessions resulted in the transfer of enormous tracts of territory to the British Empire. During the 18th century, the territorial extent of the expire grew by leaps and bounds, with the single important loss of the American colonies. And even this brought no positive advantage to France for it did not weaken her adversary's grip on the sea.
The War of the League of Augsburg
The accession of William III was the signal for England's entry into the war of the League of Augsburg (1688-1697) against France, and the effort of the French king to put James II back again upon the English throne. By this time the French navy had been so greatly strengthened that at the outset it outnumbered the combined fleets of the English and the Dutch. It boasted the only notable admiral of this period,Tourville, but it missed every opportunity to do something decisive. It failed to keep William from landing in England with an army; it failed also to keep the English from landing and supplying an army in Ireland, where they raised the siege of Londonderry and won the decisive victory of the Boyne. On the other hand the British navy was handled with equal irresolution and blindness in strategy. It accomplished what it did in keeping communications open with Ireland through the mistakes of the French, and its leaders seemed to be equally unaware of the importance of winning definitely the control of the sea.
If the naval strategy on both sides was feeble the tactics were equally so. The contrast between the fighting of Blake, Monk, Tromp and de Ruyter and that of the admirals of this period is striking. For example, on May 1, 1689, the English admiral Herbert and the French admiral Châteaurenault fought an indecisive action in Bantry Bay, Ireland. After considerable powder had been shot away without the loss of a ship on either side, the French went back to protect theirtransports in the bay; Herbert also withdrew, and was made Earl of Torrington for his "victory." This same officer commanding a Dutch and English fleet encountered the French under Tourville off Beachy Head on the south coast of England (July 10, 1690). It is true that Tourville's force was stronger, but Torrington acted with no enterprise and was thoroughly beaten. At the same time the French admiral showed lack of push in following up his victory, which might have been crushing. By this time the line ahead order of fighting had become a fetich on both sides. The most noted naval battle of this war is that of La Hogue (May 29, 1692), which has been celebrated as a great British victory. In this action an allied fleet of 99 were opposed to a French fleet of 44 under Tourville. Tourville offered battle under such odds only because he had imperative orders from his king to fight the enemy. During the action the French did not lose a single ship, but in the four days' retreat the vessels became separated in trying to find shelter and fifteen were destroyed or taken. This was a severe blow to the the French navy but by no means decisive. The subsequent inactivity of the fleet was due to the demands of the war on land.
As the war became more and more a continental affair, Louis was compelled to utilize all his resources for his military campaigns. For this reason the splendid fleet with which he had begun the war gradually disappeared from the sea. Some of these men of war were lent to great privateersmen like Jean Bart and Du Guay Trouin, who took out powerful squadrons of from five to ten ships of the line, strong enough to overcome the naval escorts of a British convoy, and ravaged English commerce. In this matter of protecting shipping the naval strategy was as vacillating and blind as in everything else. Nevertheless no mere commerce destroying will serve to win the control of the sea, and despite the losses in trade and the low ebb to which English naval efficiency had sunk, the British flag still dominated the ocean routes while the greater part of the French fleet rotted in port.
In this war of the League of Augsburg, Louis XIV was fighting practically all Europe, and the strain was too greatfor a nation already weakened by a long series of wars. By the terms of peace which he found himself obliged to accept, he lost nearly everything that he had gained by conquest during his long reign.
Wars of the Spanish and the Austrian Succession
After a brief interval of peace war blazed out again over the question whether a French Bourbon should be king of Spain,—the War of the Spanish Succession, 1702-1713. England's aim in this war was to acquire some of the Spanish colonies in America and to prevent any loss of trading privileges hitherto enjoyed by the English and the Dutch. But as it turned out nothing of importance was accomplished in the western hemisphere except by the terms of peace. The French and Spanish attempted no major operations by sea. But the English navy captured Minorca, with its important harbor of Port Mahon, and Rooke, with more initiative than he had ever shown before in his career, took Gibraltar (August 4, 1704). These two prizes made Great Britain for the first time a Mediterranean power, and the fact that she held the gateway to the inland sea was of great importance in subsequent naval history.
In addition to these captures the terms of peace (the Treaty of Utrecht) yielded to England from the French Newfoundland, the Hudson Bay territory, and Nova Scotia. All that the French had left on the eastern coast of Canada was Cape Breton Island, with Louisburg, which was the key to the St. Lawrence. As for commercial privileges, England had gained from the Portuguese, who had been allies in the war, a practical monopoly of their carrying trade; and from France she had taken the entire monopoly of the slave trade to the Spanish American colonies which had been formerly granted by Spain to France. Holland got nothing out of the war as affecting her interests at sea,—not even a trading post. Her alliance with Great Britain had become as some one has called it, that of "the giant and the dwarf." At the conclusion of the War of the Spanish Succession, to quote the wordsof Mahan, "England wasthesea power; there was no second."
In this war as in the preceding, French privateersmen made great inroads on British commerce, and some of these privateering operations were conducted on a grand scale. For example, Du Guay Trouin took a squadron of six ships of the line and two frigates, together with 2000 troops, across the Atlantic and attacked Rio Janeiro. He had little difficulty in forcing its submission and extorting a ransom of $400,000. The activities of the privateers led to a clause in the treaty of peace requiring the French to destroy the fortifications of the port of Dunkirk, which was notorious as the nest of these corsairs.
The War of the Austrian Succession, 1740-1748, was another of the dynastic quarrels of this age, with France and Spain arrayed against England. It has no naval interest for our purposes here. The peace of 1748, however, leaving things exactly as they were when the war began, settled none of the existing grudge between Great Britain and France. Eight years later, hostilities began again in the Seven Years' War, 1756-1763, in which Great Britain entered on the side of Prussia against a great coalition of Continental powers headed by France.
The Seven Years' War
The naval interest of this war is centered in the year 1759, when France, having lost Louisburg on account of England's control of the sea, decided to concentrate naval and military forces on an invasion of England. Before the plans for this projected thrust were completed, Quebec also had fallen to the British. The attempted invasion of 1759 is not so well known as that of Napoleon in 1805, but it furnished the pattern that Napoleon copied and had a better chance of success than his. In brief, a small squadron under the famous privateer Thurot was to threaten the Scotch and Irish coasts, acting as a diversion to draw off the British fleet. Meanwhile the squadron at Toulon was to dodge the British off that port, pass the Straits and join Conflans, who had the main Frenchfleet at Brest. The united forces were then to cover the crossing of the troops in transports and flatboats to the English coast.
This plan was smashed by Admiral Hawke in one of the most daring feats in British naval annals. Thurot got away but did not divert any of the main force guarding the Channel. The Toulon fleet also eluded the English for a time but went to pieces outside the Straits largely on account of mismanagement on the part of its commander. The remnants were either captured or driven to shelter in neutral ports by the English squadron under Boscawen. On November 9, a heavy gale and the necessities of the fleet compelled Hawke to lift his blockade of Brest and take shelter in Torbay, after leaving four frigates to watch the port. On the 14th, Conflans, discovering that his enemy was gone, came out, with the absurd idea of covering the transportation of the French army before Hawke should appear again. That very day Hawke returned to renew the blockade, and learning that Conflans had been seen heading southeast, decided rightly that the French admiral was bound for Quiberon Bay to make an easy capture of a small British squadron there under Duff before beginning the transportation of the invading army.
For five days pursuer and pursued drifted in calms. On the 19th a stiff westerly gale enabled Hawke to overtake Conflans, who was obliged to shorten sail for fear of arriving at his destination in the darkness. The morning of the 20th found the fleets in sight of each other but scattered. All the forenoon the rival admirals made efforts to gather their units for battle. A frigate leading the British pursuit fired signal guns to warn Duff of the enemy's presence, and the latter, cutting his cables, was barely able to get out in time to escape the French fleet and join Hawke. Conflans then decided that the English were too strong for him, and abandoning his idea of offering battle, signaled a general retreat and led the way into Quiberon Bay.
Hawke instantly ordered pursuit. The importance of this signal can be realized only by taking into account the tremendous gale blowing and the exceedingly dangerous characterof the approach to Quiberon Bay, lined as it was with sunken rocks. Hawke had little knowledge of the channels but he reasoned that where a French ship could go an English one could follow, and the perils of the entry could not outweigh in his mind the importance of crushing the navy of France then and there. The small British superiority of numbers which Conflans feared was greatly aggravated by the conditions of his flight. The slower ships in his rear were crushed by the British in superior force and the English coming alongside the French on their lee side were able to use their heaviest batteries while the French, heeled over by the gale, had to keep their lowest tier of ports closed for fear of being sunk. One of their ships tried the experiment of opening this broadside and promptly foundered.
Darkness fell on a scene of wild confusion. Two of the British vessels were lost on a reef, but daylight revealed the fact that the French had scattered in all directions. Only five of their ships had been destroyed and one taken, but the organization and the morale were completely shattered. The idea of invasion thus came to a sudden end in Quiberon Bay. The daring and initiative of Hawke in defying weather and rocks in his pursuit of Conflans is the admirable and significant fact of this story, for the actual fighting amounted to little. It is the sort of thing that marked the spirit of the Dutch Wars and of Blake at Santa Cruz, and is strikingly different from the tame and stupid work of other admirals, English or French, in his own day.
The Seven Years' War ended in terms of the deepest humiliation for France—a "Carthaginian peace." She was compelled to renounce to England all of Canada with the islands of the St. Lawrence, the Ohio valley and the entire area east of the Mississippi except New Orleans. Spain, which had entered the war on the side of France in 1761, gave up Florida in exchange for Havana, captured by the English, and in the West Indies several of the Lesser Antilles came under the British flag. It is hardly necessary to point out that the loss of these overseas possessions on such a tremendous scale wasdue to the ability of the British navy to cut the communications between them and the mother country.
Naval administration in England at this time was corrupt, and the admirals, with the notable exception of Hawke, were lacking in enterprise; they were still slaves to the "Fighting Instructions." But in all these respects the French were far worse, and the British government never lost sight of the immense importance of sea power. Its strategy was sound.
The War of American Independence
The peace of 1763 was so humiliating that every patriotic Frenchman longed for the opportunity of revenge. This offered itself in the revolt of the American colonies against the North Ministry in 1775. From the outset French neutrality as regards the American rebels was most benevolent; nothing could be more pleasing to France than to see her old enemy involved in difficulties with the richest and most populous of her colonies. For the first two or three years France gave aid surreptitiously, but after the capture of Burgoyne in 1777, she decided to enter the war openly and draw in allies as well. She succeeded in enlisting Spain in 1779 and Holland the year following. The entrance of the latter was of small military value, perhaps, but at all events France so manipulated the rebellion in the colonies as to bring on another great European war. In this conflict for the first time she had no enemies to fight on the Continent; hence she was free to throw her full force upon the sea, attacking British possessions in every quarter of the world. The War of the American Revolution became therefore a maritime war, the first since the conflicts with the Dutch in the 17th century.
While Paul Jones was in Paris waiting for his promised command, he forwarded to the Minister of Marine a plan for a rapid descent in force on the American coast. If his plan had been followed and properly executed the war might have been ended in America at one blow. But this project died in the procrastination and red tape of the Ministry of Marine, and a subsequent proposal for an attack on Liverpooldwindled into the mere commerce-destroying cruise which is memorable only for Jones's unparalleled fight with theSerapis. Eventually the navy of France was thrown into the balance to offset that of Great Britain, and it is largely to this fact that the United States owes its independence; men and munitions came freely from overseas and on one momentous occasion, the Battle of the Virginia Capes, the French navy performed its part decisively in action. But on a score of other occasions it failed pitiably on account of the lack of a comprehensive strategic plan and the want of energy and experience on the part of the commanding officers.
It is true that the French navy had made progress since the Seven Years' War. In 1778, it possessed 80 good line of battle ships. To this force, a year later, Spain was able to contribute nearly sixty. But England began the war with 150. Thus even if the French and Spanish personnel had been as well trained and as energetic as the British they would have had a superior force to contend with, particularly as the allied fleet was divided between the ports of Spain and France, and under dual command. But in efficiency the French and Spanish navies were vastly inferior to the British. Spanish efficiency may be dismissed at the outset as worthless. For the French officer the chief requisite was nobility of birth. The aristocracy of England furnished the officers for its service also, but in the French navy, considerations of social grade outweighed those of naval rank, a condition that never obtained in the British. In consequence, discipline—the principle of subordination animated by the spirit of team work—was conspicuously wanting in the French fleets. Individual captains were more concerned about their own prerogatives than about the success of the whole. This condition is illustrated by the conduct of the captains under Suffren in the Bay of Bengal, where the genius of the commander was always frustrated by the wilfulness of his subordinates. Finally in the matter of tactics the French were brought up on a fatally wrong theory, that of acting on the defensive, of avoiding decisive action, of saving a fleet rather than risking it for the sake of victory. Hence, though they wereskilled in maneuvering, and ahead of the British in signaling, though their ships were as fine as any in the world, this fatal error of principle prevented their taking advantage of great opportunities and sent them to certain defeat in the end.
Thus it is clear that the sea power of France and Spain was not formidable if the English had taken the proper course of strategy. This should have been to bottle up French and Spanish fleets in their own ports from Brest to Cadiz. Such a policy would have left enough ships to attend to the necessities of the army in America and the pursuit of French and American privateers, and accomplished the primary duty of preventing the arrival of French squadrons and French troops on the scene of war. Here the British government made its fatal mistake. Instead of concentrating on the coast of France and Spain, it tried to defend every outlying post where the flag might be threatened. Thus the superior English fleet was scattered all over the world, from Calcutta to Jamaica, while the French fleets came and went at will, sending troops and supplies to America and challenging the British control of the sea. Had the French navy been more efficient and energetic in its leadership France might have made her ancient enemy pay far more dearly for her strategic blunder. As it was, England lost her colonies in America.
Instead of the swift stroke on the American coast which Paul Jones had contemplated, a French fleet under d'Estaing arrived in the Delaware about five months after France had entered the war and after inexcusable delays on the way. In spite of the loss of precious time he had an opportunity to beat an inferior force under Howe at New York and seize that important British base, but his characteristic timidity kept him from doing anything there. From the American coast he went to the West Indies, where he bungled every opportunity of doing his duty. He allowed St. Lucia to fall into British hands and failed to capture Grenada. Turning north again, he made a futile attempt to retake Savannah, which had fallen to the English. Then at the end of 1779, at about the darkest hour of the American cause, he returned to France, leaving the colonists in the lurch. D'Estaing was bytraining an infantry officer, and his appointment to such an important naval command is eloquent of the effect of court influence in demoralizing the navy. "S'il avait été aussi marin que brave," was the generous remark of Suffren on this man. It is true that on shore, where he was at home, d'Estaing was personally fearless, but as commander of a fleet, where he was conscious of inexperience, he showed timidity that should have brought him to court martial.
In March, 1780, the French fleet in the West Indies was put under the command of de Guichen, a far abler man than d'Estaing, but similarly indoctrinated with the policy of staying on the defensive. His rival on the station was Rodney, a British officer of the old school, weakened by years and illness, but destined to make a name for himself by his great victory two years later. In many respects Rodney was a conservative, and in respect to an appetite for prize money he belonged to the 16th century, but his example went a long way to cure the British navy of the paralysis of the Fighting Instructions and bring back the close, decisive fighting methods of Blake and de Ruyter.
In this same year in which Rodney took command of the West Indies station, a Scotch gentleman named Clerk published a pamphlet on naval tactics which attracted much attention. It is a striking commentary on the lack of interest in the theory of the profession that no British naval officer had ever written on the subject. This civilian, who had no military training or experience, worked out an analysis of the Fighting Instructions and came to the conclusion that the whole conception of naval tactics therein contained was wrong, that decisive actions could be fought only by concentrating superior forces on inferior. One can imagine the derision heaped on the landlubber who presumed to teach admirals their business, but there was no dodging the force of his point. Of course the mathematical precision of his paper victories depended on the enemy's being passive while the attack was carried out, but fundamentally he was right. The history of the past hundred years showed the futility of an unbroken line ahead, with van, center, and rear attemptingto engage the corresponding divisions of the enemy. Decisive victories could be won only by close, concentrated fighting. It may be true, as the British naval officers asserted, that they were not influenced by Clerk's ideas, but the year in which his book appeared marks the beginning of the practice of his theory in naval warfare.
At the time of the American Revolution the West Indies represented a debatable ground where British interests clashed with those of her enemies, France, Spain, and Holland. It was very rich in trade importance; in fact, about one fourth of all British commerce was concerned with the Caribbean. Moreover, it contained the rival bases for operations on the American coast. Hence it became the chief theater of naval activity. Rodney's business was to make the area definitely British in control, to protect British possessions and trade and to capture as much as possible of enemy possessions and trade. On arriving at his station in the spring of 1780, he sought de Guichen. The latter had shown small enterprise, having missed one opportunity to capture British transports and another to prevent the junction of Rodney's fleet with that of Parker who was awaiting him. Even when the junction was effected, the British total amounted to only 20 ships of the line to de Guichen's 22, and the French admiral might still have offered battle. Instead he followed the French strategy of his day, by lying at anchor at Fort Royal, Martinique, waiting for the British to sail away and give him an opportunity to capture an island without having to fight for it.
Rodney promptly sought him out and set a watch of frigates off the port. When de Guichen came out on April 15 (1780) to attend to the convoying of troops, Rodney was immediately in pursuit, and on the 17th the two fleets were in contact. Early that morning the British admiral signaled his plan "to attack the enemy's rear," because de Guichen's ships were strung out in extended order with a wide gap between rear and center. De Guichen, seeing his danger, wore together and closed the gap. This done, he again turned northward and the two fleets sailed on parallel courses but out of gunshot.
About eleven 0' clock, some four hours after his first signal, Rodney again signaled his intention to engage the enemy, and shortly before twelve he sent up the order, "for every ship to bear down and steer for her opposite in the enemy's line, agreeable to the 21st article of the Additional Fighting Instructions." Rodney had intended to concentrate his ships against theiractualopposites at the time,—the rear of the French line, which was still considerably drawn out; but the captain of the leading ship interpreted the order to mean thenumericalopposites in the enemy's line, after the style of fighting provided for by the Instructions from time immemorial. Rodney's first signal informing the fleet that he intended to attack the enemy's rear meant nothing to his captain at this time. Accordingly he sailed away to engage the first ship in the French van, followed by the vessels immediately astern of him, and thus wrecked the plan of his commander in chief.
Nothing could illustrate better the hold of the traditional style of fighting on the minds of naval officers than this blunder, though it is only fair to add that there was some excuse in the ambiguity Of the order. Rodney was infuriated and expressed himself with corresponding bitterness. He always regarded this battle as the one on which his fame should rest because of what it might have been if his subordinates had given him proper support. The interesting point lies in the fact that he designed to throw his whole force on an inferior part of the enemy's force—the principle of concentration. In a later and much more famous battle, as we shall see, Rodney departed still further from the traditional tactics by "breaking the line," his own as well as that of the French, and won a great victory.
Meanwhile there occurred another operation not so creditable. Rodney had spent a large part of his life dodging creditors, and it was due to the generous loan of a French gentleman in Paris that he did not drag out the years of this war in the Bastille for debt. When Holland entered the war he saw an opportunity to make a fortune by seizing the island of St. Eustatius, which had been the chief depot in the WestIndies for smuggling contraband into America. To this purpose he subordinated every other consideration. The island was an easy prize, but the quarrels and lawsuits over the distribution of the booty broke him down and sent him back to England at just the time when he was most needed in American waters, leaving Hood in acting command.
In March, 1781, de Grasse sailed from Brest with a fleet of 26 ships of the line and a large convoy. Five of his battleships were detached for service in the East, under Suffren, of whom we shall hear more later. The rest proceeded to the Caribbean. On arriving at Martinique de Grasse had an excellent opportunity to beat Hood, who had an inferior force; but like his predecessors, d'Estaing and de Guichen, he was content to follow a defensive policy, excusing himself on the ground of not exposing his convoy. While at Cape Haitien he received messages from Rochambeau and Washington urging his coöperation with the campaign in America. To his credit be it said that on this occasion he acted promptly and skillfully, and the results were of great moment.
At this time the British had subdued Georgia and South Carolina, and Cornwallis was attempting to carry the conquest through North Carolina. In order to keep in touch with his source of supplies the sea, however, he was compelled to fall back to Wilmington. From there, under orders from General Clinton, he marched north to Yorktown, Virginia, where he was joined by a small force of infantry. Washington and Rochambeau had agreed on the necessity of getting the coöperation of the West Indies fleet in an offensive directed either at Clinton in New York or at Cornwallis at Yorktown. Rochambeau preferred the latter alternative, because it involved fewer difficulties, and the message to de Grasse was accompanied by a private memorandum from him to the effect that he preferred the Chesapeake as the scene of operations. Accordingly de Grasse sent the messenger frigate back with word of his intention to go to Chesapeake Bay. He then made skillful arrangements for the transport of all available troops, and set sail with every shiphe could muster, steering by the less frequented Old Bahama Channel in order to screen his movement.
On August 30 (1781) de Grasse anchored in Lynnhaven Bay, just inside the Chesapeake Capes, with 28 ships of the line. The two British guard frigates were found stupidly at anchor inside the bay; one was taken and the other chased up the York river. De Grasse then landed the troops he had brought with him, and these made a welcome reënforcement to Lafayette, who was then opposing Cornwallis. At the same time Washington was marching south to join Lafayette, and word had been sent to the commander of a small French squadron at Newport to make junction with de Grasse, bringing the siege artillery necessary to the operations before Yorktown. Thus the available farces were converging on Cornwallis in superior strength, and his only route for supplies and reënforcements lay by sea. All depended on whetherthe British could succeed in forcing the entrance to Chesapeake Bay.
Hood, with 14 ships of the line, had followed on the trail of de Grasse, and as it happened looked into Chesapeake Bay just three days before the French admiral arrived. Finding no sign of the French, Hood sailed on to New York and joined Admiral Graves, who being senior, took command of the combined squadrons. As it was an open secret at that time that the allied operations would be directed at Cornwallis, Graves immediately sailed for the Capes, hoping on the way to intercept the Newport squadron which was known to be bound far the same destination. On reaching the Capes, September 5, he found de Grasse guarding the entrance to the bay with 24 ships of the line, the remaining four having been detailed to block the mouths of the James and York rivers. To oppose this force Graves had only 19 ships of the line, but he did not hesitate to offer battle.
In de Grasse's mind there were two things to accomplish: first, to hold the bay, and secondly, to keep the British occupied far enough at sea to allow the Newport squadron to slip in. Of course he could have made sure of both objects and a great deal more by defeating the British fleet in a decisive action, but that was not the French naval doctrine. The entrance to the Chesapeake is ten miles wide but the main channel lies between the southern promontory and a shoal called the Middle Ground three miles north of it. The British stood for the channel during the morning and the French, taking advantage of the ebbing tide at noon, cleared the bay, forming line of battle as they went. As they had to make several tacks to clear Cape Henry, the ships issued in straggling order, offering an opportunity for attack which Graves did not appreciate. Instead he went about, heading east an a course parallel to that of de Grasse, and holding the windward position. When the two lines were nearly opposite each other the British admiral ware down to attack.
Graves's method followed the orthodox tradition exactly, and with the unvarying result. As the attacking fleet bore down in line ahead at an angle, the van of course came intoaction first, unsupported for some time by the rest. As the signal for close action was repeated, this angle was made sharper, and in attempting to close up the line several ships got bunched in such a way as to mask their fire. Meanwhile the rear, the seven ships under Hood, still trailing along in line ahead, never got into the action at all. Graves had signaled for "close action," but Hood chose to believe that the order for line ahead still held until the signal was repeated, whereupon he bore down. As the French turned away at the same time, to keep their distance, Hood contributed nothing to the fighting of the day. At sunset the battle ended. The British had lost 90 killed and 246 wounded; the French, a total of 200. Several of the British ships were badly damaged, one of which was in a sinking condition and had to be burned. The two fleets continued on an easterly course about three miles apart, and for five days more the two maneuvered without fighting. Graves was too much injuredby the first day's encounter to attack again and de Grasse was content to let him alone. Graves still had an opportunity to cut back and enter the bay, taking a position from which it would have been hard to dislodge him and effecting the main object of the expedition by holding the mouth of the Chesapeake. But this apparently did not occur to him. De Grasse, who had imperiled Washington's campaign by cruising so far from the entrance, finally returned on the 11th, and found that the Newport squadron had arrived safely the day before. When Graves saw that the French fleet was now increased to 36 line-of-battle ships, he gave up hope of winning the bay and returned to New York, leaving Cornwallis to his fate. A little over a month later, October 19, the latter surrendered, and with his sword passed the last hope of subduing the American revolution.
This battle of the Capes, or Lynnhaven, has never until recent times been given its true historical perspective, largely because in itself it was a rather tame affair. But as the historian Reich[1] observes, "battles, like men, are important not for their dramatic splendor but for their efficiency and consequences.... The battle off Cape Henry had ultimate effects infinitely more important than Waterloo." Certainly there never was a more striking example of the "influence of sea power" on a campaign. Just at the crisis of the American Revolution the French navy, by denying to the British their communications by sea, struck the decisive blow of the war. This was the Frenchrevanchefor the humiliation of 1763.
[Footnote 1:Foundations of Modern Europe, p. 24.]
The British failure in this action was due to a dull commander in chief carrying out a blundering attack based on the Fighting Instructions. Blame must fall also on his second in command, Hood, who, though a brilliant officer, certainly failed to support his chief properly when there was an obvious thing to do. Perhaps if the personal relations between the two had been more cordial Hood would have taken the initiative. But in those days the initiative of a subordinate was not encouraged, and Hood chose to stand on his dignity.
Although the war was practically settled by the fall ofYorktown, it required another year or so to die out. In this final year a famous naval battle was fought which went far toward establishing British predominance in the West Indies, and which revealed something radically different in naval tactics from the practice of the time.
In the spring of 1782, Rodney was back in command of the West Indian station, succeeding Hood, who continued to serve as commander of a division. The British base was Gros Islet Bay in Santa Lucia. De Grasse was at Fort Royal, Martinique, waiting to transport troops to Santo Domingo, where other troops and ships were collected. There, joining with a force of Spaniards from Cuba, he was to conduct a campaign against Jamaica. It was Rodney's business to break up this plan. During a period of preparation on both sides, reënforcements joined the rival fleets, that of the British amounting to enough to give Rodney a marked superiority in numbers. Moreover his ships were heavier, as he had five 3-deckers to the French one, and about 200 more guns. The superiority of speed, as well, lay with Rodney because more of his ships had copper sheathing. A still further advantage lay in the fact that he was not burdened with the problem of protecting convoys and transports as was de Grasse. Thus, in the event of conflict, the advantages lay heavily with the British.
On the morning of April 8, the English sentry frigate off Fort Royal noted that the French were coming out, and hastened with the news to Rodney at Santa Lucia. The latter put to sea at once. He judged rightly that de Grasse would steer for Santo Domingo, in order to get rid of his transports at their destination as soon as possible, and on the morning of the 9th he sighted the French off the west coast of the island of Dominica. On the approach of the English fleet, de Grasse signaled his transports to run to the northwest, while he took his fleet on a course for the channel between the islands of Dominica and Guadeloupe. As the British would be sure to pursue the fleet, this move would enable the convoy to escape.
The channel toward which de Grasse turned his fleet isknown as the Saints' Passage from a little group of islands, "les isles des Saintes," lying to the north of it. In the course of the pursuit, Hood, with the British van division of nine ships, had got ahead of the rest and offered a tempting opening for attack in superior force. If de Grasse had grasped his opportunity he might have inflicted a crushing blow on Rodney and upset the balance of superiority. But the lack of aggressiveness in the French doctrine was again fatal to French success. De Grasse merely sent his second in command to conduct a skirmish at long range—and thus threw his chance away.
The light winds and baffling calms kept both fleets idle for a day. On the 11th de Grasse tried to work his fleet through the channel on short tacks. Just as he had almost accomplished his purpose he discovered several of his vessels still so far to westward as to be in danger of capture. In order to rescue these he gave up the fruits of laborious beating against the head wind and returned. The following morning, April 12 (1782), discovered the two fleets to the west of the strait and so near that the French could no longer evade battle. The French came down on the port tack and the British stood toward them, with their admiral's signal flying to "engage to leeward." When the two lines converged to close range, the leading British ship shifted her course slightly so as to run parallel with that of the French, and the two fleets sailed past each other firing broadsides. So far the battle had followed traditional line-ahead pattern.
Just as the leading ship of the British came abreast of the rearmost of the French, the wind suddenly veered to the southward, checking the speed of the French ships and swinging their bows over toward the English line. At best a line of battle in the sailing ship days was an uneven straggling formation, and the effect of this flaw of wind, dead ahead, was to break up the French line into irregular groups separated by wide gaps. One of these opened up ahead as Rodney's flagship, theFormidable, forged past the French line. His fleet captain, Douglas, saw the opportunity and pleaded with Rodney to cut through the gap. "No," he replied,"I will not break my line." Douglas insisted. A moment later, as theFormidablecame abreast of the opening, the opportunity proved too tempting and Rodney gave his consent. His battle signal, "engage the enemy to leeward," was still flying, but theFormidableluffed up and swung through the French line followed by five others. The ship immediately ahead of theFormidablealso cut through a gap, and the sixth astern of the flagship went through as well, followed by the entire British rear. As each vessel pierced the broken line she delivered a terrible fire with both broadsides at close range.
The result of this maneuver was that the British fleet founditself to windward of the French in three groups, while the French ships were scattered to leeward and trying to escape before the wind, leaving three dismasted hulks between the lines. An isolated group of six ships in the center, including de Grasse'sVille de Paris, offered a target for attack, but the wind was light and Rodney indolent in pursuit. Of these, one small vessel was overhauled and the French flagship was taken after a heroic defense, that lasted until sunset, against overwhelming odds. De Grasse's efforts to reform his fleet after his line was broken had met with failure, for the van fled to the southwest and the rear to the northwest, apparently making little effort to succor their commander in chief or retrieve the fortunes of the day.
Rodney received a peerage for this day's work but he certainly did not make the most of his victory. Apparently content with the five prizes he had taken, together with the person of de Grasse, he allowed the bulk of the French fleet to escape when he had it in his power to capture practically all. On this point his subordinate, Hood, expressed himself with great emphasis:
"Why he (Rodney) should bring the fleet to because theVille de Pariswas taken, I cannot reconcile. He did not pursue under easy sail, so as never to have lost sight of the enemy, in the night, which would clearly and most undoubtedly have enabled him to have taken almost every ship the next day.... Had I had the honor of commanding his Majesty's noble fleet on the 12th, I may, without much imputation of vanity, say the flag of England should now have graced the sterns ofupwardsof twenty sail of the enemy's ships of the line."[1]
[Footnote 1: Quoted by Mahan,The Royal Navy(Clowes), Vol. III, p. 535.]
Sir Charles Douglas, who had been responsible for Rodney's breaking the line, warmly agreed with Hood's opinion on this point. Nevertheless, although the victory was not half of what it might have been in younger hands, it proved decisive enough to shatter the naval organization of the French in the West Indies. It stopped the projected campaignagainst Jamaica and served to write better terms for England in the peace treaty of January 20, 1783.
Tactically this battle has become famous for the maneuver of "breaking the line," contrary to the express stipulations of the Fighting Instructions. Certainly the move was not premeditated. Rodney may well be said to have been pushed into making it, and two of his captains made the same move on their own initiative. Indeed it is quite likely that, after the event, too much has been made of this as a piece of deliberate tactics, for the sudden shift of wind had paid off the bows of the French ships so that they were probably heading athwart the course of the British line, and the British move was obviously the only thing to do. But the lesson of the battle was clear,—the decisive effect of close fighting and concentrated fire. In the words of Hannay, "It marked the beginning of that fierce and headlong yet well calculated style of sea fighting which led to Trafalgar and made England undisputed mistress of the sea."[1] It marked, therefore, the end of the Fighting Instructions, which had deadened the spirit as well as the tactics of the British navy for over a hundred years.
[Footnote 1: Rodney (English Men of Action Series), p. 213.]
The tactical value of "breaking the line" is well summarized by Mahan in the following passage:
"The effect of breaking an enemy's line, or order-of-battle, depends upon several conditions. The essential idea is to divide the opposing force by penetrating through an interval found, or made, in it, and then to concentrate upon that one of the fractions which can be least easily helped by the other. In a column of ships this will usually be the rear. The compactness of the order attacked, the number of the ships cut off, the length of time during which they can be isolated and outnumbered, will all affect the results. A very great factor in the issue will be the moral effect, the confusion introduced into a line thus broken. Ships coming up toward the break are stopped, the rear doubles up, while the ships ahead continue their course. Such a moment is critical, and calls for instant action; but the men are rare who in an unforeseen emergency can see, and at once take the right course, especiallyif, being subordinates, they incur responsibility. In such a scene of confusion the English, without presumption, hoped to profit by their better seamanship; for it is not only 'courage and devotion,' but skill, which then tells. All these effects of 'breaking the line' received illustration in Rodney's great battle in 1782."[1]
[Footnote 1:The Influence of Sea Power upon History, pp. 380-381.]
Before we leave the War of American Independence mention should be made of Commodore Suffren who, as we have seen, left de Grasse with five ships of the line to conduct a campaign in the Indian Ocean in the spring of 1781. His purpose was to shake the British hold on India, which had been fastened by the genius of Clive in the Seven Years' War. But the task given to Suffren was exceedingly difficult. His squadron was inadequate—for instance, he had only two frigates for scout and messenger duty—and he had no port that he could use as a base in Indian waters. To conduct any campaign at all he was compelled to live off his enemy and capture a base. These were risky prospects for naval operations several thousand miles from home, and for the faintest hope of success required an energy and initiative which had never before appeared in a French naval commander. In addition to these handicaps of circumstance Suffren soon discovered that he had to deal with incorrigible slackness and insubordination in his captains.
In spite of everything, however, Suffren achieved an amazing degree of success. He succeeded in living off the prizes taken from the British, and he took from them the port of Trincomalee for a base. He fought five battles off the coast of India against the British Vice Admiral Hughes, in only one of which was the latter the assailant, and in all of which Suffren bore off the honors. He was constantly hampered, however, by the inefficiency and insubordination of his captains. On four or five occasions, including an engagement at the Cape Verde Islands on his way to India, it was only this misconduct that saved the British from the crushing attack thatSuffren had planned. Unfortunately for him his victories were barren of result, for the terms of peace gave nothing in India to the French which they had not possessed before. As Trincomalee had belonged to the Dutch before the British captured it, this port was turned back to Holland.
Nevertheless Suffren deserves to be remembered both for what he actually accomplished under grave difficulties and what he might have done had he been served by loyal and efficient subordinates. Among all the commanders of this war he stands preeminent for naval genius, and this eminence is all the more extraordinary when one realizes that his resourcefulness, tenacity, aggressiveness, his contempt of the formal, parade tactics of his day, were notoriously absent in the rest of the French service. Such was the admiration felt for him by his adversaries that after the end of the war, when the French squadron arrived at Cape Town on its way home and found the British squadron anchored there, all the British officers, from Hughes down, went aboard the French flagship to tender their homage.[1]
[Footnote 1: "If ever a man lived who justified Napoleon's maxim that war is an affair not of men but of a man, it was he. It was by his personal merit that his squadron came to the very verge of winning a triumphant success. That he failed was due to the fact that the French Navy... was honeycombed by the intellectual and moral vices which were bringing France to the great Revolution—corruption, self-seeking, acrid class insolence, and skinless, morbid vanity."—The Royal Navy, David Hannay, II, 287.]
Although the War of American Independence was unsuccessfully fought by Great Britain and she was compelled to recognize the independence of her rebellious colonies, she lost comparatively little else by the terms of peace. As we have seen, her hold in India was unchanged. The stubborn defense of Gibraltar throughout the war, aided by occasional timely relief by a British fleet, saved that stronghold for the English flag. To Spain England was forced to surrender Florida and Minorca. France got back all the West Indian islands she had lost, with the exception of Tobago, but gained nothing besides. The war therefore did not restore to France her colonial empire of former days or make any change in the relative overseas strength of the two nations. Despite theblunders of the war no rival sea power challenged that of Great Britain at the conclusion of peace.
Meanwhile, just before the war and during its early years, an English naval officer was laying the foundation for an enormous expansion of the British empire in the east. This was James Cook, a man who owed his commission in the navy and his subsequent fame to nothing in family or political influence, but to sheer genius. Of humble birth, he passed from the merchant service into the navy and rose by his extraordinary abilities to the rank of master. Later he was commissioned lieutenant and finally attained the rank of post captain.[1] Such rank was hardly adequate recognition of his great powers, but it was unusually high for a man who was not born a "gentleman."
[Footnote 1: Full captain's rank, held only by a captain in command of a vessel of at least 20 guns.]
At the end of the Seven Years' War he distinguished himself, by his work in surveying and sounding an the coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland, as a man of science. In consequence, he was detailed to undertake expeditions for observing the transit of Venus and for discovering the southern continent which was supposed to exist in the neighborhood of the Antarctic circle. In the course of this work Cook practically established the geography of the southern half of the globe as we know it to-day. And by his skill and study of the subject he conquered the great enemy of exploring expeditions, scurvy. Thirty years before, another British naval officer, Anson, had taken a squadron into the Pacific and lost about three-fourths of his men from this disease. When the war of the American Revolution broke out, Cook was abroad on one of his expeditions, but the French and American governments issued orders to their captains not to molest him on account of his great service to the cause of scientific knowledge. Unfortunately he was killed by savages at the Sandwich Islands in 1779.