In 1779 the navy retrieved the bad effects of some of its disasters. Its changed fortunes can in part be easily accounted for. The transference of the scene of war to the Southern states late in 1778, removed a part of the British land and sea forces from the North, and thereby gave the Naval Department a freer hand in its operations, and rendered the movements of the fleet less perilous. The Department this year had larger success in manning and equipping its fleet. It was, therefore, able not only to send the armed vessels to sea more frequently, but also to send several of them cruising in company. Such little fleets had a decided advantage over single cruisers, both in defensive and offensive operations. No doubt, too, the experiences and past failures of the navy were now telling in a better understanding of naval tactics, and were bringing about a proper subordination and concert of action between officers and men. Possibly, something should be attributed to the Department’s increased experience in marine affairs.
The reader has probably already drawn parallels, far from fanciful, between the solutions of the naval problems of the Revolution made by the Marine Committee and those of the Spanish-American war made by the Naval Board of Strategy at Washington. The naval problems presented to the two bodies were in certain respects widely different. Equally striking similarities appear. In both wars the United States was fighting a European power with possessions in the West Indies and in the Asiatic seas. The attacks on Nassau and Morris’s proposed expedition against the British West Indies correspond to the movements of the American fleet in the West Indies during the late war. The operations of Wickes, Conyngham, and Jones off the coasts of the British Isles are matched by the proposed descent on the Spanish coast in 1898. The plan made in 1777 to send a fleet of frigates to Mauritius and from thence to operate against the English trade in the Indian seas looks singularly like Admiral Dewey’s movement from Hong Kong against Manila.
The hope is to be cherished that America will never again cross swords with her kin beyond seas, but if moved by some untoward fate she should, it is not too much to say that a Naval Board of Strategy at Washington will devise plans of naval attack and defence quite similar to those of the Marine Committee. The weak spots in a nation’s armor often prove to be its outlying dependencies, especially when they are situated near the enemy’s coast. The principles of naval strategy which led the Marine Committee either to attack, or to plan to attack, Canada, the Newfoundland fisheries, the Bermudas, and the British West Indies, are still operative, notwithstanding the vast changes which the past century and a quarter have witnessed in the methods of naval warfare, and in the distribution of the territory of the Western Hemisphere among nations, new as well as old. In a world of change the fundamental principles of naval strategy remain immutable.
FOOTNOTES:
[206] Marine Committee Letter Book, Committee to Navy Board at Boston, November 16, 1778.
[207] F. M. Caulkins, History of New London, 539-40; Records and Papers of New London Historical Society, Part IV, I, 9.
[208] Journals of Continental Congress, September 14, 1778.
[209] Bancroft, History of United States, V, 319; Marine Committee Letter Book, Committee to Navy Board at Boston, September 28, November 10, 1779.
[210] Marine Committee Letter Book, Committee to Captain Olney, to Captain Harding, and to Navy Board at Boston, February 10, 1779; Committee to Merchants of Baltimore, February 23, 1779; Boston Gazette, April 26, 1779; Publications of Rhode Island Historical Society, VIII, 259.
[211] Marine Committee Letter Book, Committee to Navy Board at Boston, May 4, May 20, 1779; Continental Journal and Weekly Advertiser, August 26, 1779; Boston Gazette, September 20, 1779. “Last Saturday noon this town was alarmed by the Appearance of Seven Topsail Vessels in the Offing, which, however, soon subsided, for between the Hours of Three and Five in the Afternoon were safe anchored in this Harbour the Continental Ships of War, ‘Providence,’ ‘Queen of France’ and ‘Ranger,’ with Four Prize Ships laden with Rum and Sugar, being part of a Jamaica Fleet bound to London captured by the above Vessels.”—Continental Journal and Weekly Advertiser, August 26, 1779, published at Boston.