Some Principles of Maritime Strategy

by Julian Stafford Corbett

NAVAL STRATEGY DEFINED

By "Naval Strategy" we mean the art of conducting the major operations of the fleet. Such operations have for their object "passage and communication"; that is, the fleet is mainly occupied in guarding our own communications and seizing those of the enemy.

We say the aim of Naval Strategy is to get command of the sea. This means something quite different from the military idea of occupying territory, for the sea cannot be the subject of political dominion or ownership. We cannot subsist upon it (like an army on conquered territory), nor can we exclude neutrals from it. The value of the sea in the political system of the world is as a means of communication between States and parts of States. Therefore the "command of the sea" means the control of communications in which the belligerents are adversely concerned. The command of the sea can never be, like the conquest of territory, the ulterior object of a war, unless it be a purely maritime war, as were approximately our wars with the Dutch in the 17th century, but it may be a primary or immediate object, and even the ulterior object of particular operations.

History shows that the actual functions of the fleet (except in purely maritime wars) have been threefold:—

1. The furtherance or hindrance of military operations ashore.

2. The protection or destruction of commerce.

3. The prevention or securing of alliances (i.e., deterring or persuading neutrals as to participating in the war).

EXAMPLES.—The operations of Rooke in the first years of the War of the Spanish Succession, 1702-04, to secure the adhesion of Savoy and Portugal to the Grand Alliance. Operations of Nelson to maintain the alliance of the Kingdom of Naples.

In the first case, there came a crisis when it was more important to demonstrate to Savoy and Portugal what they stood to lose by

joining Louis XIV, than to act immediately against the Toulon Fleet. In the second, the Neapolitan Alliance was essential to our operations in the Eastern Mediterranean; the destruction of the Toulon Fleet was not.