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!

1. Mrs. Neeld.
2. Miss Diana Neeld.
3. The Princess Victoria.
4. Lady Fisher.
5. Queen Alexandra.
6. Miss Kitty Fullerton.
7. Sir John Fisher.
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