In the Cornwall-Glasgow-Leipzig action, fire was opened at about 4 o’clock, and it was not till about 7:8 that the enemy was beaten. An hour afterwards he sent up signals of distress and surrendered. Here there were eleven 6-inch guns in the two British broadsides, and five 4-inch, against a handful of 4.25. The disparity in force was perhaps not quite so great as in the battle-cruiser action, but these things are difficult to compare, and from all accounts 6-inch lyddite, once the hitting begins, does not take long to put a light cruiser of the Leipzig class completely out of action.
Captain Allen’s action against Nürnberg is in very sharp contrast to this. He opened fire at 5 o’clock, some few minutes after the enemy had attacked him. The range was about 11,000 yards, and for some time no apparent damage was done. At 5:45, however, though Nürnberg seemed still undamaged, the range was reduced by 4,000 yards, owing to Nürnberg’s sudden loss of speed. There then followed twenty minutes of action at ranges between 6,000 and 3,000, and these sufficed to finish the enemy off altogether. It may be objected to Captain Allen’s tactics that he received twice as many hits as the Cornwall and had twelve men wounded and four killed. But as Admiral Sturdee points out in his despatch these casualties were almost entirely caused by a single chance shell that burst in a gun position, right amongst the crew. No one in any of the very exposed positions—control tops, rangefinder positions, etc.—was even touched. Too much, therefore, must not be made of the casualties, for in this matter chance enters too largely for safe deductions to be made. Invincible, for instance, received twenty-two hits without a single casualty, Inflexible three hits and three casualties. Cornwall and Kent were sister ships, and if the gun shields of Kent were unable to protect one crew, any one of the eighteen shells that hit Cornwall might have done equal damage to that suffered by Kent. The value, as it seems to me, of the Kent-Nürnberg example lies in this, that for all practical purposes exactly the same result was obtained, at the same cost, in one hour—of which twenty minutes was at almost point-blank range—in this action, as was got by two ships in three hours in the Leipzig action, and by two battle-cruisers in five hours in the battle cruiser action.
It would be a mistake to assume that we see a new contrast in methods in these engagements. Kent certainly followed the Nelsonian tradition. He closed with his enemy at top speed, and got not only the full artillery value of his attack, by making hitting easier and therefore more certain, but won what is hardly less valuable, the vast moral advantage of giving his enemy no breathing time at all. There are fifty parallels to this, of which Trafalgar is in fact only the supreme example. Given a superior force of guns—obtained by Nelson by the concentration of the whole of his fleet on the centre and rear of the enemy—the tactical plan is to be found in the method of bringing these guns to do their work in the shortest possible time.
We can find many exact parallels to Admiral Sturdee’s tactics in the war of 1812, for the Americans employed them against us with the utmost success on several occasions. Indeed, it was these victories that led first to a practical revival of gunnery skill—brought about with such effect by Broke—and later to Sir Howard Douglas’s effort to create a scientific study of gunnery in the British Navy. It is now nearly a hundred years since his historic work on naval gunnery was published. His father had been one of Howe’s captains and had invented an important improvement in naval guns. The son entered the Artillery, and his education, no less than his family tradition, made him both an interested observer and a very competent critic of the naval gunnery of the period. He had, in his own words, witnessed “the triumphant and undisputed domination of the British marine,” after the victories of Nelson had swept continental fleets from the sea, and then, seven years after Trafalgar, he had seen this triumphant navy utterly humiliated by the Americans in the war of 1812. He analyzed the causes both of the triumph and the humiliation, and was, perhaps, the first to lay down the most important of all maxims of naval doctrine—then and still also the most neglected.
He pointed out how, in the later years of the Republic, practical gunnery amongst French seamen was so wretched that strongly manned ships were seen “employing batteries of twenty or thirty guns against our vessels without more effect than might easily have been produced by one or two well-directed pieces. Indeed in some cases, heavy frigates used powerful batteries against our vessels for a considerable time without producing any effect at all.” Thus, the victories of the Nelsonian era were made possible because of the great disparity between the two forces in gunnery skill, and it was this disparity that made it possible to adopt the tactics by which the victors got their great successes. Victory was won by superior skill and tactics founded upon its employment. And in the hour of victory we forgot its conditioning cause.
“We became,” says Douglas, “too confident by being feebly opposed, and then slack in warlike exercises, by not being opposed at all. And, lastly, in many cases inexpert for want of even drill practice. And herein consisted the great disadvantage in which, without suspecting it, we entered, with too great confidence, into a war with a marine much more expert than that of any of our European enemies. Comparative views of warlike skill, as well as of bulk and force ... are necessary to correct analysis of naval actions.”
In the course of his work he made a very detailed analysis of the actions between the Macedonian and the United States, the Guerriere and the Constitution, the Shannon and the Chesapeake, and the Java and the Constitution. In the three instances in which the Americans were victorious, they owed success to no superiority in the handling of their ships, but to a combination of longer-range guns and a much higher accomplishment in marksmanship and tactics designed to keep outside the range of British effective fire. In none of the three cases could any criticism be based upon the bravery of any of the British officers and crews. All were, in fact, honourably acquitted by court martial. But it was obvious in each case that had the gunnery skill been equal, while the difference in armament might ultimately have been decisive, the enemy would have had to pay very dearly indeed for victory. In each case, in point of fact, the victor’s losses were trivial. Amongst these, the action between Shannon and Chesapeake stands out just as the Kent and Nürnberg action stands out in the Falkland Islands. Broke, in the first very few minutes of the engagement, established a complete fire ascendancy over Chesapeake, and had he chosen, could have hauled off and pounded her into submission without risking the life of a single one of his men. But, as in the first instance, he had relied upon close action, trusting with perfect confidence to the skill and marksmanship of his well-trained crew, so after he had got Chesapeake out of control, he chose the quickest path to victory. He ran straight alongside and boarded her without a moment’s delay. As at Trafalgar, so here we see the British commander pre-occupied with one thought only—to bring the enemy to action as soon as possible and to finish the business quickly and decisively. So long as this is ensured, there is no thought of losses nor any hesitation in risking the ship.
Why was there any other tactical conception? It arose, as we have just seen, in the war of 1812 and was spontaneously reproduced in 1905, and in both cases it was the product of a new skill in long-range gunnery. In 1812 there was the choice in armament, long range and short range that existed in 1905, but with this striking difference. The long-range gun of a century ago might be an eighteen or twenty-four pounder, but it was far heavier for the weight of shell it used than the short-range carronade. There was therefore a distinct temptation to arm ships with a lighter gun that would be more effective at close range, and the mistake was not discovered till the greater skill of the American ships made it clear that the long gun, in a ship rightly handled, could prevent the short-range gun from coming into action at all. But in our own day the pride of length of reach goes with the heavier projectile. Not that the 12-inch guns of Inflexible and Invincible literally outranged the 8.2’s of Von Spee, for the Germans have always mounted their guns, as we have seen, so that they can be elevated far more greatly than our own. It is quite possible therefore, that, speaking literally, Von Spee’s 8.2’s, as they were mounted, might have outranged Sir Doveton Sturdee’s 12-inch. But at the extreme range of the 12-inch, it would be almost impossible for the 8.2’s to hit on account of the extremely steep angle at which the shot falls, and, consequently, the high accuracy in range knowledge required and the improbability of the gun shooting with perfect precision at such extreme distances. But both in 1812 and now, the basic idea behind seeking for a long-range decision is defensive. Captain Glossop opened up the range when Emden closed him and got the advantage of his heavy artillery. Admiral Sturdee kept the range as long as possible to save his ships from being hit. Captain Ellerton did his best to keep Cornwall and Glasgow out of Leipzig’s reach. In all these cases there was a very obvious argument in favour of defensive tactics. Sydney, Glasgow and Cornwall, Inflexible and Invincible were all at very great distances from dockyards and possibilities of repairs. The two battle-cruisers were a considerable percentage of our total Dreadnought force. It was not a question of risking their destruction; it might at any moment be vital for them to be immediately ready for action. If possible, even the shortest period devoted to repairs and docking should be avoided. These considerations do not excuse defensive tactics; they may be said to have imposed them. But this should not blind us to the fact that they were defensive.
And this leads to another interesting question. Von Müller in Emden began the action by trying to close Sydney. Von Spee turned at right angles at one o’clock to shorten the range. Nürnberg finally turned round to bring her broadside to bear on Kent, but she was too late. Leipzig never turned at all. In no case did the German commanders persist in seeking a short-range action. Cradock apparently did nothing to close Von Spee at Coronel. What would have happened if Von Spee and Von Müller had stuck to their resolution to close? In all these cases, as we have seen, the weaker side accepted the stranger’s conditions. But it was not necessary that it should have been so. A resolute effort to close at full speed would no doubt throw a broadside of guns out of action, just as flight did. But would the stronger ships have run away had the weaker persisted in attacking? If they had held their course, there would have been a very considerable change of range, in itself a defensive element favouring the weaker ship. We can take it for granted that no effort to close would ultimately have saved the weaker ship in any case. But—and this seems to me to be the vital point—would not his chance of seriously damaging the stronger have been far higher? And is not this the one thing that should preoccupy the weaker force when compelled to engage?
Finally, two entirely new elements in naval fighting in our own time distinguish it from the fighting of the early days of last century. With ships dependent upon wind, if the chance of engaging was lost, it might never recur.