CHAPTER XVI
THE COMMAND OF THE SEA
Authorities.—In addition to the books named above, the reader may consult the earlier letters of Sir Charles Napier in the collection named The Navy, its Past and Present; The Past and Future of the British Navy, by the Hon. G. Plunkett (Lord Dunsany); Impressment Fully Considered, by Captain A. J. Griffiths; Captain Mahan’s War of 1812; Captain Robinson’s British Tar and Nelson’s Signals, published by the Admiralty, and written by Mr. Perrin.
The phrase “The Command of the Sea” may be so used as to be rhetorical and misleading. It is so used when it is meant to assert or imply that the power exercising the command can exclude an opponent from access to the sea, or can be secured against all loss and defeat on the water. If “command” means solitary possession, then it was never enjoyed by England throughout the whole of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Her navy suffered more small defeats, and her trade was more harassed in 1813 than in any year of the war. In 1810, six years after Trafalgar, three French frigates sailed to the Indian Ocean. Two of them were lost in action, but the third, the Clorinde, made her way home, and, though she was chased by a line-of-battle ship, got safe into Brest. In that year four English frigates were destroyed at a blow at Grand Port in Mauritius. When “command” is used with exaggeration it has not much more meaning than the figurative expression which speaks of the ocean as covered by the sails of a naval power. There have been men who took these words as intended to state a fact. General Lauriston, who accompanied Villeneuve to the West Indies, says in one of his letters that they had all heard of the English ships as covering the ocean, and yet they had only seen two at anchor in the Antilles. If, however, we are content to employ the words as meaning the power to send fleets to and fro, to conduct trade, to effect conquests, and carry on wars oversea—then England had the command from the beginning, and had it because she fought an enemy crippled by revolutionary anarchy. The use she made of her superiority was often governed by considerations wholly unconnected with the strength of the navy. If she did not conquer Java till 1811 it was not for want of naval strength. It was because a large army could not be sent from India while Mysore was unconquered and the Mahrattas were not subdued. But if we are to discuss all these aspects of a multiform war, a short history of the Royal Navy would be lost in a long history of more than twenty years of warfare on land, of diplomacy, and of finance. We must be content to keep to the forces with which England exercised the command of the sea, the purposes for which she used them, and the methods which she employed. The forces were the material strength and quality of the navy. Her purposes were the protection of trade, and the prosecution of wars over sea. The methods were, first, the destruction of the enemies’ main fleets, which I have already endeavoured to deal with, and then blockades, patrol by vessels cruising on the ocean routes, the transport of, and co-operation with, the armies.
| Sea-going Ships. | Harbour Ships etc. | In Ordinary. | Harbour, in Ordinary. | Building. | Officers. | Men. | |
| 1794 | 279 | 32 | 49 | 60 | 37 | 2207 | 85,000 |
| 1795 | 326 | 69 | 37 | 51 | 27 | 2727 | 100,000 |
| 1796 | 376 | 70 | 29 | 59 | 58 | 3094 | 110,000 |
| 1797 | 401 | 80 | 34 | 72 | 46 | 3351 | 120,000 |
| 1798 | 451 | 85 | 51 | 73 | 36 | 3482 | 120,000 |
| 1799 | 469 | 115 | 48 | 62 | 28 | 3744 | 120,000 |
| 1800 | 468 | 131 | 42 | 88 | 28 | 3658 | 120,000 |
| 1801 | 472 | 134 | 39 | 90 | 36 | 3693 | 120,000 |
| 1802 | 451 | 128 | 54 | 113 | 35 | 3950 | 130,000 |
| 1803 | 232 | 10 | 210 | 156 | 55 | 4220 | 50,000 |
| 1804 | 395 | 45 | 79 | 103 | 80 | 4203 | 100,000 |
| 1805 | 508 | 45 | 69 | 104 | 81 | 4228 | 120,000 |
| 1806 | 579 | 55 | 46 | 108 | 131 | 4172 | 120,000 |
| 1807 | 636 | 58 | 54 | 117 | 108 | 4511 | 120,000 |
| 1808 | 642 | 53 | 59 | 167 | 111 | 4823 | 130,000 |
| 1809 | 709 | 64 | 46 | 160 | 82 | 4955 | 130,000 |
| 1810 | 692 | 72 | 37 | 175 | 72 | 5118 | 145,000 |
| 1811 | 658 | 69 | 38 | 195 | 59 | 5107 | 145,000 |
| 1812 | 621 | 71 | 40 | 166 | 80 | 5260 | 145,000 |
| 1813 | 613 | 72 | 40 | 174 | 110 | 5502 | 140,000 |
| 1814 | 644 | 69 | 43 | 180 | 72 | 5594 | 140,000 |
| 1815 | 485 | 35 | 115 | 206 | 43 | 5682 | 70,000 |
When the war began in 1793 the Royal Navy had in commission for sea-service:—26 ships of the line from 60 guns and upwards, 7 of 50, and 3 of 44 guns, and 199 vessels, from 38-gun frigates down to the cutter of 4 guns. In commission for harbour duty were 3 ships of the line and 11 of other classes. She had 169 vessels, including 87 of the line, 5 of 50 and 15 of 44 guns; “in ordinary,” that is to say, not in commission but fit, when repaired, for active service; 72, of which 25 were of the line, 7 were of 50, and 3 of 44 guns, only fit for harbour duty but not in commission; 21, of which 12 were of the line, were building or ordered to be built—in all, 411 vessels. The officers on the active list were 2378 in number, and 45,000 men were voted by Parliament.
The strength of the navy at the beginning of the succeeding years of the war was as given in the table on the preceding page.
In 1800, 120,000 men were voted for the first two months of the year, and 110,000 for the rest of the year. In 1801, 120,000 were voted for the first three months, and 135,000 for the rest of the year. In 1802, the year of the peace, 130,000, 88,000, and 70,000 were successively voted. In 1803, the year of the renewal of the war, the votes were for 50,000, 60,000, 100,000 men successively. In 1807 the numbers were 120,000 for the first month, and then 135,000. In 1814 they were 140,000 for seven, and 90,000 for six months. The vote was by the month of twenty-eight days and thirteen to the year.
During the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars the use of the carronade in the navy was considerably extended. This piece, invented by General Melville, and first cast in the Carron foundry in Scotland, was introduced into the navy in 1779. It was a short piece with a large bore, and a powder chamber, light, easily handled and destructive to timber when fired at short range. The shot was large in proportion to the size of the piece, and because of its destructive effect on wood it was to have been named the “Smasher.” At first the carronades were only placed where there was no room for long guns. But its effect at close quarters proved so tempting that in some cases the long guns were replaced by carronades. In 1782 the Rainbow, 44, was so rearmed. The change made in the weight of her broadside added—or seemed to add—immensely to her strength. Her forty-four long guns gave a broadside weight of 318 lbs. The forty-eight carronades she received in lieu of long guns, gave her a broadside of 1238 lbs. The Rainbow made an easy capture of a beautiful French frigate, the Hébé. But then she was able to come close to the French ship before opening fire. When this advantage could not be secured the carronade was of no value, for it had only a short range. Its weakness was fully demonstrated in the action between the Phœbe and the American frigate Essex. The American ship was armed with carronades on her gun deck. The Phœbe was to windward, and her captain, Hillyar, who knew the inferiority of his opponent’s armament, kept his distance, and battered the American into ruin. As the carronade was never counted officially in the armament of a ship, its introduction led to confusion, and some dishonesty in estimating the strength of our ships and our enemies. We counted all the pieces of ordnance of our opponent but only our own “guns.” The carronade was adopted by foreign navies after 1783. During the wars which began in 1793 the navy had the benefit of a much improved system of signalling. The old system was one by which particular combinations of flags, or the place of flags in the rigging, conveyed a certain order. The new or numerary system was elaborated by Lord Howe in combination with Kempenfelt, and was largely developed by Sir Home Popham.
It will be seen from this list that the navy attained to its maximum of numbers of ship’s officers and men in the years following Trafalgar. The increase was most marked after 1808, the year of the beginning of the war in Spain, and the largest numbers were reached from 1810 to 1814. There is a very general agreement among the best authority that the augmented size of the fleet was not accompanied by a growth in real power. It is maintained that, on the contrary, the efficiency of the fleet fell off. Its gunnery was neglected for mere “polish,” and the crews deteriorated in quality. Many explanations of the decline have been given. The disappearance of French fleets from the sea is said to have rendered our officers somewhat careless of their gunnery. The unwillingness of the Admiralty to authorise expenditure of powder in practice has been rendered responsible for the decline of skill. The hardships of life in the navy aggravated by the brutality of some officers are held to have deterred men from entering the service, and to have made them eager to desert when they were in it. The large proportion of foreigners employed is given as another cause of the loss of efficiency. There are elements of truth in all this criticism and apology. When seven hundred vessels more or less were in commission, only a small minority had an opportunity to see service. Some officers of known zeal and capacity passed years without once being under fire. If the heart of a captain was intent on seamanship and smartness he might be tempted, by the small chance of meeting a foe, to neglect the gun drill of his crew. If he feared to be blamed by the Admiralty for expending too much powder, he would not venture to avail himself of the device employed by some of his colleagues, who obtained practice for their men by pretending to see suspicious strangers, and who did not hesitate to make fictitious entries in their logs. After the loss of several English vessels, captured in rapid succession by the Americans in the war of 1812, the decline of our gunnery became a commonplace. So did the cruelty of certain captains of “crack” ships, who sacrificed everything, including humanity, to “overpolish.” We hear of crews driven to mutinous explosions by officers who would send their men aloft ten or twelve times to finish off some mere detail of the set or stowing of sails. Such men enforced attention to their pedantry and foppery by the lash. Mere declamation can be neglected, but we cannot reject the testimony of Codrington given in the very midst of the American war, in a private letter written from the station, and supported by examples. “I have heard,” he said, “many shocking stories of cruelty and misconduct witnessed by the relators, officers now in this ship.” If there is any truth in the statement that the number of floggings inflicted in English ships diminished by a half when the Admiralty ordered quarterly returns of punishments to be made, it is manifest that there must have been a gross abuse of the power to flog. It is certain that we employed many foreigners, and one of the English vessels lost in the war of 1812, the Epervier, had foreigners in her crew.