Types of Naval Officers, Drawn from the History of the British Navy

by A. T. Mahan

In his official report Rodney gave much credit to his officers for the St. Vincent affair. "The gallant behaviour of the admirals, captains, officers and men, I had the honour to command, was conspicuous; they seemed animated with the same spirit, and were eager to exert themselves with the utmost zeal." Here also, however, he was biding his time for obvious reasons; for to his wife he writes, "I have done them all like honour, but it is because I would not have the world believe that there were officers slack in their duty. Without a thorough change in naval affairs, the discipline of our navy will be lost. I could say much, but will not. You will hear of it from themselves;" that is, probably, by their mutual recriminations. Such indulgent envelopment of good and bad alike in a common mantle of commendation is far from unexampled; but it rarely fails to return to plague its authors, as has been seen in instances more recent than that of Rodney. He clearly had told Sandwich the same in private letters, for the First Lord writes him, "I fear the picture you give of the faction in your fleet is too well drawn. Time and moderation will by degrees get the better of this bane of discipline. I exceedingly applaud your resolution to shut your ears against the illiberal language of your officers, who are inclined to arraign each other's conduct." In this two things are to be remarked: first, the evident and undeniable existence of serious cause of complaint, which was preparing Rodney for the stern self-assertion soon to be shown; and, second, that such imputations are frequent with him, while he seems in turn to have had a capacity for eliciting insubordination of feeling, though he can repress the act. It is a question of personal temperament, which explains more than his relations with other men. Hawke and Nelson find rare fault with those beneath them; for their own spirit takes possession of their subordinates. Such difference of spirit reveals itself in more ways than one in the active life of a military community.

If there was joy in England over Rodney's achievement, still more and more sympathetic was the exultation of those who in the isolation of Gibraltar's Rock, rarely seeing their country's flag save on their own flagstaff, witnessed and shared the triumph of his entrance there with his train of prizes. The ships of war and transports forming the convoy did not indeed appear in one body, but in groups, being dispersed by the light airs, and swept eastward by the in-drag of the current from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean; but the presence of the great fleet, and the prestige of its recent victory, secured the practical immunity of merchant vessels during its stay. Of the first to come in, on January 15th, an eye-witness wrote, "A ship with the British flag entering the Bay was so uncommon a sight that almost the whole garrison were assembled at the southward to welcome her in; but words are insufficient to describe their transports on being informed that she was one of a large convoy which had sailed the latter end of the preceding month for our relief." The admiral himself had been carried beyond and gone into Tetuan, in Morocco, whence he finally arrived on January 26th, having sent on a supply fleet to Minorca, the garrison of which was undergoing a severance from the outer world more extreme even than that of Gibraltar. Upon the return thence of the convoying ships he again put to sea, February 13th, with the entire fleet, which accompanied him three days sail to the westward, when it parted company for England; he with only four ships-of-the-line pursuing his way to his station. On March 27th he reached Santa Lucia, where he found seventeen of-the-line, composing his command. Three weeks later he met the enemy; barely three months, almost to a day, after the affair at St. Vincent.

The antecedent circumstances of the war, and the recent history of the French navy, gave a singular opportuneness of occasion, and of personal fitness, to Rodney's arrival at this moment. The humiliations of the Seven Years War, with the loss of so much of the French colonial empire, traceable in chief measure to naval decadence, had impressed the French government with the need of reviving their navy, which had consequently received a material development in quality, as well as in quantity, unparalleled since the days of Colbert and Seignelay, near a century before. Concomitant with this had been a singular progress in the theory of naval evolutions, and of their handmaid, naval signalling, among French officers; an advance to which the lucid, speculative, character of the national genius greatly contributed. Although they as yet lacked practice, and were numerically too few, the French officers were well equipped by mental resources, by instruction and reflection, to handle large fleets; and they now had large fleets to handle. No such conjunction had occurred since Tourville; none such recurred during the Revolution.

The condition was unique in naval history of the sail period. To meet it, assuming an approach to equality in contending fleets, was required, first, a commander-in-chief, and then a competent body of officers. The latter the British had only in the sense of fine seamen and gallant men. In courage there is no occasion to institute comparisons between the two nations; in kind there may have been a difference, but certainly not in degree. The practical superiority of seamanship in the British may be taken as a set-off to the more highly trained understanding of military principles and methods on the part of their enemy. For commander-in-chief, there were at this time but two, Howe and Rodney, whose professional equipment, as shown in practice, fitted them to oppose the French methods. Of these Rodney was the better, because possessed of a quicker power of initiative, and also of that personal severity required to enforce strict conformity of action among indifferent or sullen subordinates.

Rodney has therefore a singularly well defined place among British naval chiefs. He was to oppose form to form, theory to theory, evolution to evolution, upon the battle ground of the sea; with purpose throughout tactically offensive, not defensive, and facing an adversary his equal in professional equipment. Had he arrived a year before he would have met no fair match in D'Estaing, a soldier, not a sailor, whose deficiencies as a seaman would have caused a very different result from that which actually followed his encounter with Byron, who in conduct showed an utter absence of ideas and of method inconceivable in Rodney. The French were now commanded by De Guichen, considered the most capable of their officers by Rodney, whose recent abode in Paris had probably familiarized him with professional reputations among the enemy. Everything therefore conspired to make the occasion one eminently fitted to his capacities. Such are the conditions—the man and the hour—that make reputations; though they do not form characters, which are growths of radically different origin.

De Guichen put to sea from Martinique on April 15th, with a convoy for Santo Domingo which he intended to see clear of British interference. Rodney, whose anchorage was but thirty miles away, learned instantly the French sailing and followed without delay. On the evening of April 16th, the two fleets were in sight of each other to leeward of Martinique, the British to windward; an advantage that was diligently maintained during the night. At daylight of the 17th the two enemies were twelve to fifteen miles apart, ranged on nearly parallel lines, the British twenty heading northwest, the French twenty-three southeast. The numerical difference represents sufficiently nearly the actual difference of force, although French vessels averaged more powerful than British of the same rates.

At 6.45 A.M. Rodney signalled that it was his intention to attack the enemy's rear with his whole force. This was never annulled, and the purpose governed his action throughout the day. This combination—on the rear—is the one generally preferable to be attempted when underway, and the relative situations of the fleets at this moment made it particularly opportune; for the British, in good order, two cables interval between the ships, were abreast the rear centre and rear of the enemy, whose line was in comparison greatly extended,—the result probably of inferior practical seamanship. To increase his advantage, Rodney at 7 ordered his vessels to close to one cable, and at 8.30, when the antagonists were still heading as at daybreak, undertook to lead the fleet down by a series of signals directive of its successive movements. In this he was foiled by De Guichen, who by wearing brought what was previously his van into position to support the extreme threatened. "The different movements of the enemy," wrote Rodney, "obliged me to be very attentive and watch every opportunity of attacking them at advantage;" a sentence that concisely sums up his special excellencies, of which the present occasion offers the most complete illustration. It may be fully conceded also that it would have vindicated his high title to fame by conspicuous results, had the intelligence of his officers seconded his dispositions.

The forenoon passed in manoeuvres, skilfully timed, to insure a definite issue. At 11.50 Rodney considered that his opportunity had arrived. Both fleets were then heading in the same direction, on the starboard tack, and he had again succeeded in so placing his own that, by the words of his report, he expected to bring "the whole force of His Majesty's fleet against the enemy's rear, and of course part of their centre, by which means the twenty sail of British ships would have been opposed to only fifteen sail of the enemy's, and must in all probability have totally disabled them before their van could have given them any assistance." It would be difficult to cite a clearer renouncement of the outworn "van to van," ship to ship, dogma; but Rodney is said to have expressed himself in more emphatic terms subsequently, as follows: "During all the commands Lord Rodney has been entrusted with, he made it a rule to bring his whole force against a part of the enemy's, and never was so absurd as to bring ship against ship, when the enemy gave him an opportunity of acting otherwise." Though not distinctly so stated, it would seem that his first movement on the present occasion had failed because of the long distance between the fleets permitting the enemy to succor the part threatened, before he could close. He was now nearer, for at this second attempt only an hour proved to be needed for the first British ship to open fire at long range. It may be for this reason, also, that he at this stage threw himself upon his captains, no longer prescribing the successive movements, but issuing the general signal to bear down, each vessel to "steer," according to the 21st Article of the Additional Fighting Instructions, "for the ship of the enemy which from the disposition of the two squadrons it must be her lot to engage, notwithstanding the signal for the line ahead will be kept flying: making or shortening sail in such proportion as to preserve the distance assigned by the signal for the line, in order that the whole squadron may, as near as possible, come into action at the same time."

Unfortunately for his manoeuvre, the Admiral here ran up against the stolid idea of the old—and still existing—Fighting Instructions concerning the line-of-battle in action, embodied in a typical representative in the senior captain of his fleet. This gentleman, Robert Carkett, had risen from before the mast, and after a lieutenancy of thirteen years had become post in 1758, by succeeding to the command when his captain was killed, in one of the most heroic single-ship fights of the British navy. Unluckily, his seniority gave him the lead of the fleet as it was now formed on the starboard tack, and he considered that the signal for attacking the enemy's rear was annulled by the present situation. "Both fleets," he stated in a letter to the Admiralty, "were at 11.15 parallel to and abreast of each other. As I was then the leading ship, it became my duty to engage the leading ship of the French fleet, as this signal disannulled all former ones relative to the mode of attack." The word "abreast," critically used, would imply that the fleets were abreast, ship to ship, van to van; but there appears no reason to question Rodney's statement of the facts made to Carkett himself: "Forgetting that the signal for the line was only at two cables length distance from each other, the van division was by you led to more than two leagues distance from the centre division, which was thereby exposed to the greatest strength of the enemy, and not properly supported." Rodney, in short, meant by opposite the enemy's ship opposite at the moment the signal was made; and he also expected that the movements of his ships would be further controlled by the words of the 21st Article, "preserve the distance assigned by the signal for the line," which distance was to be taken from the centre; or, as sometimes worded in the Instructions, "the distance shall be that between the admiral and the ships next ahead and astern of him." Carkett conceived that he was to attack the ship opposite him in numerical order, that is, the leader of the enemy, and that the remaining British would take distance from him.

Why the rest of the van should also have been led thus astray can be explained only on the ground that Carkett's general views were shared by the divisional commander, a rear-admiral, who, as was proved a year later, possessed high courage of the pure game-cock order, but was wholly thoughtless of gaining an unfair advantage, two against one, by tactical ingenuity. The result was that the van as a body left the centre to itself, and thereby not only wrecked the concentration at which Rodney aimed, but was out of hand to support his flag and his division, when badly battered by the enemy's fire. This was the great tactical blunder which brought to nought Rodney's patient, wary manoeuvres of the past six hours. To it especially, but not to it alone, he referred in the stinging words of his despatch: "'T is with concern inexpressible, mixt with indignation, that the duty I owe my sovereign and country obliges me to acquaint their Lordships that, during the action with the French fleet on the 17th instant [and] His Majesty's, the British flag was not properly supported." To the specific error of the van was added a widespread disregard of the order for close action, despite the example of the commander-in-chief, who pressed the enemy so hard that towards the end his flag-ship was to leeward of De Guichen's wake. "Perceiving several of our ships engaging at a distance, I repeated the signal for close action. With truth, but sorrow, I must say it was little attended to." It is noticeable that one of the ships thus censured, the Cornwall, next ahead of Rodney, lost as heavily in killed and wounded as did the flag-ship herself; one of many instances showing that distance lessened efficiency without increasing safety. The forwardness of Rodney's flag on this occasion proves clearly enough his consciousness that tactics, to succeed, must be more than a veil for timidity; that hard hitting is as essential as skilful leading.