Sea-Power and Other Studies

by Sir Cyprian Bridge

SEA-POWER IN RECENT TIMES

We have now come to the end of the days of the naval wars of old time. The subsequent period has been illustrated repeatedly by manifestations of sea-power, often of great interest and importance, though rarely understood or even discerned by the nations which they more particularly concerned. The British sea-power, notwithstanding the first year of the war of 1812, had come out of the great European conflict unshaken and indeed more preeminent than ever. The words used, half a century before by a writer in the great French 'Encyclopédie,' seemed more exact than when first written. '_L'empire_des_mers_,' he says, is, 'le plus avantageux de tous les empires; les Phoeniciens le possédoient autre fois et c'est aux Anglois que cette gloire appartient aujourd'hui sur toutes les puissances maritimes.'[47] Vast out-lying territories had been acquired or were more firmly held, and the communications of all the over-sea dominions of the British Crown were secured against all possibility of serious menace for many years to come. Our sea-power was so ubiquitous and all-pervading that, like the atmosphere, we rarely thought of it and rarely remembered its necessity or its existence. It was not till recently that the greater part of the nation—for there were many, and still are some exceptions—perceived that it was the medium apart from which the British Empire could no more live than it could have grown up. Forty years after the fall of Napoleon we found ourselves again at war with a great power. We had as our ally the owner of the greatest navy in the world except our own. Our foe, as regards his naval forces, came the next in order. Yet so overwhelming was the strength of Great Britain and France on the sea that Russia never attempted to employ her navy against them. Not to mention other expeditions, considerable enough in themselves, military operations on the largest scale were undertaken, carried on for many months, and brought to a successful termination on a scene so remote that it was two thousand miles from the country of one, and three thousand from that of the other partner in the alliance. 'The stream of supplies and reinforcements, which in terms of modern war is called "communications,", was kept free from even the threat of molestation, not by visible measures, but by the undisputed efficacy of a real, though imperceptible sea-power. At the close of the Russian war we encountered, and unhappily for us in influential positions, men who, undismayed by the consequences of mimicking in free England the cast-iron methods of the Great Frederick, began to measure British requirements by standards borrowed from abroad and altogether inapplicable to British conditions. Because other countries wisely abstained from relying on that which they did not possess, or had only imperfectly and with elaborate art created, the mistress of the seas was led to proclaim her disbelief in the very force that had made and kept her dominion, and urged to defend herself with fortifications by advisers who, like Charles II and the Duke of York two centuries before, were 'not ashamed of it.' It was long before the peril into which this brought the empire was perceived; but at last, and in no small degree owing to the teachings of Mahan, the people themselves took the matter in hand and insisted that a great maritime empire should have adequate means of defending all that made its existence possible.

[Footnote 47: Encyclopédie, 7th Jan. 1765, art. 'Thalassarchie.']

In forms differing in appearance, but identical in essentials, the efficacy of sea-power was proved again in the American Secession war. If ever there were hostilities in which, to the unobservant or short-sighted, naval operations might at first glance seem destined to count for little, they were these. The sequel, however, made it clear that they constituted one of the leading factors of the success of the victorious side. The belligerents, the Northern or Federal States and the Southern or Confederate States, had a common land frontier of great length. The capital of each section was within easy distance of this frontier, and the two were not far apart. In wealth, population, and resources the Federals were enormously superior. They alone possessed a navy, though at first it was a small one. The one advantage on the Confederate side was the large proportion of military officers which belonged to it and their fine training as soldiers. In physique as well as in morale the army of one side differed little from that of the other; perhaps the Federal army was slightly superior in the first, and the Confederate, as being recruited from a dominant white race, in the second. Outnumbered, less well equipped, and more scantily supplied, the Confederates nevertheless kept up the war, with many brilliant successes on land, for four years. Had they been able to maintain their trade with neutral states they could have carried on the war longer, and—not improbably—have succeeded in the end. The Federal navy, which was largely increased, took away all chance of this. It established effective blockades of the Confederate ports, and severed their communications with the outside world. Indispensable articles of equipment could not be obtained, and the armies, consequently, became less and less able to cope with their abundantly furnished antagonists. By dominating the rivers the Federals cut the Confederacy asunder; and by the power they possessed of moving troops by sea at will, perplexed and harassed the defence, and facilitated the occupation of important points. Meanwhile the Confederates could make no reply on the water except by capturing merchant vessels, by which the contest was embittered, but the course of the war remained absolutely unaffected. The great numbers of men under arms on shore, the terrific slaughter in many battles of a war in which tactical ability, even in a moderate degree, was notably uncommon on both sides, and the varying fortunes of the belligerents, made the land campaigns far more interesting to the ordinary observer than the naval. It is not surprising, therefore, that peace had been re-established for several years before the American people could be made to see the great part taken by the navy in the restoration of the Union; and what the Americans had not seen was hidden from the sight of other nations.

In several great wars in Europe waged since France and England made peace with Russia sea-power manifested itself but little. In the Russo-Turkish war the great naval superiority of the Turks in the Black Sea, where the Russians at the time had no fleet, governed the plans, if not the course, of the campaigns. The water being denied to them, the Russians were compelled to execute their plan of invading Turkey by land. An advance to the Bosphorus through the northern part of Asia Minor was impracticable without help from a navy on the right flank. Consequently the only route was a land one across the Danube and the Balkans. The advantages, though not fully utilised, which the enforcement of this line of advance put into the hands of the Turks, and the difficulties and losses which it caused the Russians, exhibited in a striking manner what sea-power can effect even when its operation is scarcely observable.

This was more conspicuous in a later series of hostilities. The civil war in Chili between Congressists and Balmacedists is specially interesting, because it throws into sharp relief the predominant influence, when a non-maritime enemy is to be attacked, of a navy followed up by an adequate land-force. At the beginning of the dispute the Balmacedists, or President's party, had practically all the army, and the Congressists, or Opposition party, nearly all the Chilian navy. Unable to remain in the principal province of the republic, and expelled from the waters of Valparaiso by the Balmacedist garrisons of the forts—the only and doubtful service which those works rendered to their own side—the Congressists went off with the ships to the northern provinces, where they counted many adherents. There they formed an army, and having money at command, and open sea communications, they were able to import equipment from abroad, and eventually to transport their land-force, secured from molestation on the voyage by the sea-power at their disposal, to the neighbourhood of Valparaiso, where it was landed and triumphantly ended the campaign.

It will have been noticed that, in its main outlines, this story repeated that of many earlier campaigns. It was itself repeated, as regards its general features, by the story of the war between China and Japan in 1894-95. 'Every aspect of the war,' says Colomb, 'is interesting to this country, as Japan is to China in a position similar to that which the British Islands occupy to the European continent.'[48] It was additionally interesting because the sea-power of Japan was a novelty. Though a novelty, it was well known by English naval men to be superior in all essentials to that of China, a novelty itself. As is the rule when two belligerents are contending for something beyond a purely maritime object, the final decision was to be on land. Korea was the principal theatre of the land war; and, as far as access to it by sea was concerned, the chief bases of the two sides were about the same distance from it. It was possible for the Chinese to march there by land. The Japanese, coming from an island state, were obliged to cross the water. It will be seen at once that not only the success of the Japanese in the struggle, but also the possibility of its being carried on by them at all, depended on sea-power. The Japanese proved themselves decisively superior at sea. Their navy effectually cleared the way for one army which was landed in Korea, and for another which was landed in the Chinese province of Shantung. The Chinese land-forces were defeated. The navy of japan, being superior on the sea, was able to keep its sister service supplied or reinforced as required. It was, however, not the navy, but the army, which finally frustrated the Chinese efforts at defence, and really terminated the war. What the navy did was what, in accordance with the limitations of sea-power, may be expected of a navy. It made the transport of the army across the sea possible; and enabled it to do what of itself the army could not have done, viz. overcome the last resistance of the enemy.

[Footnote 48: _Naval_Warfare_, 3rd ed. p. 436.]

The issue of the Spanish-American war, at least as regards the mere defeat of Spain, was, perhaps, a foregone conclusion. That Spain, even without a serious insurrection on her hands, was unequal to the task of meeting so powerful an antagonist as the United States must have been evident even to Spaniards. Be that as it may, an early collapse of the Spanish defence was not anticipated, and however one-sided the war may have been seen to be, it furnished examples illustrating rules as old as naval warfare. Mahan says of it that, 'while possessing, as every war does, characteristics of its own differentiating it from others, nevertheless in its broad analogies it falls into line with its predecessors, evidencing that unity of teaching which pervades the art from its beginnings unto this day.'[49] The Spaniards were defeated by the superiority of the American sea-power. 'A million of the best soldiers,' says Mahan, 'would have been powerless in face of hostile control of the sea.' That control was obtained and kept by the United States navy, thus permitting the unobstructed despatch of troops—and their subsequent reinforcement and supply—to Spanish territory, which was finally conquered, not by the navy, but by the army on shore. That it was the navy which made this final conquest possible happened, in this case, to be made specially evident by the action of the United States Government, which stopped a military expedition on the point of starting for Cuba until the sea was cleared of all Spanish naval force worth attention.

[Footnote 49: _Lessons_of_the_War_with_Spain_, p. 16.]