"In addition to these means," it was further said in the report, "the Departmental Councils should each arm one steam-frigate, commanded by an officer of the navy born in the department. The prizes captured by each should in this case be at the disposal of the Departmental Councils, a portion being devoted to defraying the expenses of the vessel, and the remainder applied to the execution of public works within the department." "As regards the defence of French ports, this may be best effected by flat-bottomed hulks, armed with long-range guns adapted to horizontal firing. The chances against invasion are greatly in favour of France, on account of the superiority of her land force, and the facility of transporting troops by railway to the locality attacked." "A great point will be the perfect training of the French squadron by annual evolutions, and with double or treble the requisite number of officers. If these suggestions are carried out, France will establish at sea what Russia has done on land, to the injury and restriction of British commerce, which must be seriously damaged, without material harm being done to ourselves. This loss of commerce will especially affect the working classes of England, and thus bring about a democratic inundation which will compel her to a speedy submission."
Those were the chief proposals of the secret memoir which, falling into the hands of the British Government, so far alarmed it as to lead it to call upon the Earl of Dundonald for his opinions as to the best way of meeting the threatened danger. "This document," he wrote in his reply to Lord Auckland, "describes a plan of maritime operations undoubtedly more injurious to the interests of England than that pursued by France in former wars. There is nothing new, however, in the opinions promulgated. They have long been familiar to British naval officers, whose wonder has been that the wide-spread colonial commerce of England has never yet been effectually assailed. It is true that the advice given in the memoir derives more importance now from the fact that the application of steam-power to a system of predatory warfare constitutes every harbour a port of naval equipment, requiring to be watched, not in the passive manner of former blockades, but effectively by steam-vessels having their fires kindled at least during the obscurity of night. The cost and number of such blockades need not be dwelt on, nor the indefinite period to which prudence on the part of the enemy, and vigilance on that of the blockading force, might prolong a war. One hundred millions sterling added to our national debt would solve a doubt whether the most successful depredation on British commerce could produce consequences more extensive and permanently injurious. The memoir obviously anticipates that 'l'usage des canons bombes, dont les atteintes ont un si prodigieux effet,' will prevent our blockading ships from approaching the shores of France, and that thus their steam-vessels might escape unobserved during night, even with sailing-vessels in tow. This is no vague conjecture, but a consequence which assuredly will follow any hesitation on our part to counteract the system extensively adopted, and now under the consideration of the National Assembly, of arming all batteries with projectiles, whereby to burn or blow up our ships of war—a fate which even the precaution of keeping out of range could not avert, by reason of the incendiary and explosive missiles whereby 'les petits bâtiments à vapeur pouront attaquer les plus gros vaisseaux.' It is impossible to retaliate by using similar weapons. Forts and batteries are incombustible. Recourse must therefore be had to other means, whereby to overcome fortifications protecting expeditionary forces and piratical equipments."
The means recommended by Lord Dundonald, it need hardly be said, were the secret war-plans which he had developed nearly forty years before, and the efficacy of which had recently been again admitted by the committee appointed to investigate them in 1846. It is not allowable, of course, to quote the paragraphs in which Lord Dundonald once more explained them and urged their adoption in case of need. The only objection offered to them was that they were too terrible for use by a civilized community. "These means," he replied, "all powerful, are nevertheless humane when contrasted with the use of shells and carcases by ships at sea, and most merciful, as competent to avert the bloodshed that would attend the contemplated 'descente en Angleterre ou en Ireland,' and other hostile schemes recommended in the memoir."
That letter was forwarded to Lord Auckland from Halifax, where Lord Dundonald then was, in the beginning of August. "Assuredly the reasons which you give for the use of the means suggested are such as it is difficult to controvert," wrote Lord Auckland on the 18th; "but I would at least defer my assent or dissent to the time when the question may be more pressing than it is at present." "I would postpone my own reflections on the 'secret plans,'" he wrote again on the 1st of September, "and would fain hope that events will allow the Government long to postpone all decision upon them. I agree with you, however, in much that you say upon their principle, and am well satisfied that to no hands better than yours could the execution of any vigorous plans be entrusted."
When, however, as will be seen on a latter page, an opportunity did arise for enforcing those plans against another power than France, their execution was not permitted to Lord Dundonald.
Strongly as he himself was impressed with their importance, they formed only a part of a complete system of opinions respecting the defence of England at which he arrived by close study and long experience. These have already been partially indicated. He did not wish that his plans should be lightly made use of; but, believing that they would ultimately become a recognised means of warfare, and that even without them a great revolution would soon take place in ways of fighting, he deprecated as useless and wasteful the elaborate fortifications which were in his time beginning to be extensively set up at Dover, Portsmouth, and other possible points of attack upon England, and urged, with no less energy, that vast improvements ought to be made in the construction and employment of ships of war.
Fortifications, he considered, were only desirable for the protection of the special ports and depôts around which they were set up; and even for that purpose they ought to be so compact as to need no more than a few troops and local garrisons for their occupation. To have them so complicated and numerous as to require the exclusive attention of all or nearly all the military force of England, appeared to him only a source of national weakness. His own achievements at Valdivia and elsewhere showed him that skilful seamanship on the part of an invader would render them much less sufficient for the defence of the country than was generally supposed. If all our soldiers were scattered along various parts of the coast, it would not be difficult for the enemy, by a bold and sudden onslaught, or still more by a feint of the sort in which he himself was master, to take possession of one, and then there would be no concentrated army available to prevent the onward march of the assailant. Much wiser would it be to leave the seaboard comparatively unprotected from the land, and to have a powerful army so arranged as to be ready for prompt resistance of the enemy, if, by any means, he had gained a footing on the shore.
To prevent that footing being gained, however, Lord Dundonald was quite as eager as any champion of monster fortifications could be; but this prevention, he urged, must be by means of moveable ships, and not by immoveable land-works. A strong fleet of gunboats, stationed all along the coast, and with carefully-devised arrangements for mutual communication, so that at any time their force could be speedily concentrated in one or more important positions, would be far more efficacious and far more economical than the more popular expedients for the military defence of England. He heartily believed, in fact, in the old and often-proved maxim that the sea was England's wall, and he desired to have that wall guarded by a force able to watch its whole extent and pass at ease from one point to another as occasion required.
Desiring that thus the coast should be immediately protected by efficient gunboats, he desired no less to augment the naval strength of the country by means of improved war-ships as much like gunboats as possible. To large ships, if constructed in moderation and applied to special purposes, he was not averse; but he set a far higher value upon small and well-armed vessels, able to pass rapidly from place to place and to navigate shallow seas. "Give me," he often said, "a fast small steamer, with a heavy long-range gun in the bow, and another in the hold to fall back upon, and I would not hesitate to attack the largest ship afloat." His opinion on this point also was confirmed by his own experience—most notably in the exploits of his little Speedy in the Mediterranean— and by the whole history of English naval triumphs. Since the time when the so-called Invincible Armada of Spain entered the British Channel, designed to conquer England by means of its huge armaments, and when the bulky galleons and galeasses of Philip's haughty sailors were chased and worried by the smaller barks and pinnaces of Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher, and the other sea-captains of Elizabeth, who sailed round and round their foe, and darted in and out of his unwieldy mass of shipping, never failing to inflict great injury, while his volleys of artillery passed harmlessly over their decks to sink into the sea, there had been abundant proof of the constant superiority of small warships over large. A "mosquito fleet," as he called it, was what Lord Dundonald wished to see developed; a swarm of active little vessels, just large enough to carry one or two powerful guns, which could go anywhere and do anything, to which the larger crafts of the enemy would afford convenient targets, but which, small and nimble, would be much less likely to be themselves attacked, and, even if attacked and sunk, would entail far less loss than would ensue from the destruction of a large war-ship. "As large a gun as possible, in a vessel as small and swift as possible, and as many of them as you can put upon the sea," was Lord Dundonald's ideal. For this he argued during half a century; for this he laboured hard and long in the exercise of his inventive powers. In 1826, the plan of the war-steamers which he was to have taken to Greece was explained to Lord Exmouth—no slight authority on naval matters. "Why, it's not only the Turkish fleet," exclaimed the veteran, "but all the navies in the world, that you will be able to conquer with such craft as these."