Read Ebook: Sea-Power and Other Studies by Bridge Cyprian Sir

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 274 lines and 80792 words, and 6 pages

At the beginning of the Franco-German war of 1870, the widespread anticipation of French victories was clearly shown by the unanimity with which the journalists of various nationalities illustrated their papers with maps giving the country between the French frontier and Berlin, and omitting the part of France extending to Paris. In less than five weeks from the opening of hostilities events had made it certain that a map of the country to the eastward of Lorraine would be practically useless to a student of the campaign, unless it were to follow the route of the hundreds of thousands of French soldiers who were conveyed to Germany as prisoners of war.

Professional military writers--an expression which, as before explained, includes naval--do not help us much in the prosecution of the search which is so eminently desirable. As a rule, they have contrived rather to hide than to bring to light the object sought for. It would be doing them injustice to assume that this has been done with deliberate intention. It is much more likely due to professional bias, which exercises over the minds of members of definitely limited professions incessant and potent domination. When alluding to occurrences included in the enumeration given above, they exhibit signs of a resolve to defend their profession against possible imputations of inefficiency, much more than a desire to get to the root of the matter. This explains the unremitting eagerness of military writers to extol the special qualities developed by long-continued service habits and methods. They are always apprehensive of the possibility of credit being given to fighting bodies more loosely organised and less precisely trained in peace time than the body to which they themselves belong.

This sensitiveness as to the merits of their particular profession, and impatience of even indirect criticism, are unnecessary. There is nothing in the history of war to show that an untrained force is better than a trained force. On the contrary, all historical evidence is on the other side. In quite as many instances as are presented by the opposite, the forces which put an unexpected end to the military supremacy long possessed by their antagonists were themselves, in the strictest sense of the word, 'regulars.' The Thebans whom Epaminondas led to victory over the Spartans at Leuctra no more resembled a hasty levy of armed peasants or men imperfectly trained as soldiers than did Napoleon's army which overthrew the Prussians at Jena, or the Germans who defeated the French at Gravelotte and Sedan. Nothing could have been less like an 'irregular' force than the fleet with which La Galissonni?re beat Byng off Minorca, or the French fleets which, in the war of American Independence, so often disappointed the hopes of the British. The records of war on land and by sea--especially the extracts from them included in the enumeration already given--lend no support to the silly suggestion that efficient defence can be provided for a country by 'an untrained man with a rifle behind a hedge.' The truth is that it was not the absence of organisation or training on one side which enabled it to defeat the other. If the beaten side had been elaborately organised and carefully trained, there must have been something bad in its organisation or its methods.

Now this 'something bad,' this defect--wherever it has disclosed itself--has been enough to neutralise the most splendid courage and the most unselfish devotion. It has been seen that armies and navies the valour of which has never been questioned have been defeated by antagonists sometimes as highly organised as they were, and sometimes much less so. This ought to put us on the track of the cause which has produced an effect so little anticipated. A 'regular' permanently embodied or maintained service of fighting men is always likely to develop a spirit of intense professional self-satisfaction. The more highly organised it is, and the more sharply its official frontiers are defined, the more intense is this spirit likely to become. A 'close' service of the kind grows restive at outside criticism, and yields more and more to the conviction that no advance in efficiency is possible unless it be the result of suggestions emanating from its own ranks. Its view of things becomes narrower and narrower, whereas efficiency in war demands the very widest view. Ignorant critics call the spirit thus engendered 'professional conservatism'; the fact being that change is not objected to--is even welcomed, however frequent it may be, provided only that it is suggested from inside. An immediate result is 'unreality and formalism of peace training'--to quote a recent thoughtful military critic.

As the formalism becomes more pronounced, so the unreality increases. The proposer or introducer of a system of organisation of training or of exercises is often, perhaps usually, capable of distinguishing between the true and the false, the real and the unreal. His successors, the men who continue the execution of his plans, can hardly bring to their work the open mind possessed by the originator; they cannot escape from the influence of the methods which have been provided for them ready made, and which they are incessantly engaged in practising. This is not a peculiarity of the military profession in either branch--it extends to nearly every calling; but in the profession specified, which is a service rather than a freely exercised profession, it is more prominent. Human thought always has a tendency to run in grooves, and in military institutions the grooves are purposely made deep, and departure from them rigorously forbidden. All exercises, even those designed to have the widest scope, tend to become mere drill. Each performance produces, and bequeaths for use on the next occasion, a set of customary methods of execution which are readily adopted by the subsequent performers. There grows up in time a kind of body of customary law governing the execution of peace operations--the principles being peace-operation principles wholly and solely--which law few dare to disobey, and which eventually obtains the sanction of official written regulations. As Scharnhorst, quoted by Baron von der Goltz, said, 'We have begun to place the art of war higher than military virtues.' The eminent authority who thus expressed himself wrote the words before the great catastrophe of Jena; and, with prophetic insight sharpened by his fear of the menacing tendency of peace-training formalism and unreality, added his conviction that 'this has been the ruin of nations from time immemorial.'

Independently of the evidence of history already adduced, it would be reasonable to conclude that the tendency is strengthened and made more menacing when the service in which it prevails becomes more highly specialised. If custom and regulation leave little freedom of action to the individual members of an armed force, the difficulty--sure to be experienced by them--of shaking themselves clear of their fetters when the need for doing so arises is increased. To realise--when peace is broken--the practical conditions of war demands an effort of which the unfettered intelligence alone seems capable. The great majority of successful leaders in war on both elements have not been considerably, or at all, superior in intellectual acuteness to numbers of their fellows; but they have had strength of character, and their minds were not squeezed in a mould into a commonplace and uniform pattern.

The 'canker of a long peace,' during recent years at any rate, is not manifested in disuse of arms, but in mistaken methods. For a quarter of a century the civilised world has tended more and more to become a drill-ground, but the spirit dominating it has been that of the pedant. There has been more exercise and less reality. The training, especially of officers, becomes increasingly scholastic. This, and the deterioration consequent on it, are not merely modern phenomena. They appear in all ages. 'The Sword of the Saracens,' says Gibbon, 'became less formidable when their youth was drawn from the camp to the college.' The essence of pedantry is want of originality. It is nourished on imitation. For the pedant to imitate is enough of itself; to him the suitability of the model is immaterial. Thus military bodies have been ruined by mimicry of foreign arrangements quite inapplicable to the conditions of the mimics' country. More than twenty years ago Sir Henry Maine, speaking of the war of American Independence, said, 'Next to their stubborn valour, the chief secret of the colonists' success was the incapacity of the English generals, trained in the stiff Prussian system soon to perish at Jena, to adapt themselves to new conditions of warfare.' He pointed out that the effect of this uncritical imitation of what was foreign was again experienced by men 'full of admiration of a newer German system.' We may not be able to explain what it is, but, all the same, there does exist something which we call national characteristics. The aim of all training should be to utilise these to the full, not to ignore them. The naval methods of a continental state with relatively small oceanic interests, or with but a brief experience of securing these, cannot be very applicable to a great maritime state whose chief interests have been on the seas for many years.

When closely looked at, it is one of the strangest manifestations of the spirit of modern navies that, though the issues of land warfare are rarely thought instructive, the peace methods of land forces are extensively and eagerly copied by the sea-service. The exercises of the parade ground and the barrack square are taken over readily, and so are the parade ground and the barrack square themselves. This may be right. The point is that it is novel, and that a navy into the training of which the innovation has entered must differ considerably from one that was without it and found no need of it during a long course of serious wars. At any rate, no one will deny that parade-ground evolutions and barrack-square drill expressly aim at the elimination of individuality, or just the quality to the possession of which we owe the phenomenon called, in vulgar speech, the 'handy man.' Habits and sentiments based on a great tradition, and the faculties developed by them, are not killed all at once; but innovation in the end annihilates them, and their not having yet entirely disappeared gives no ground for doubting their eventual, and even near, extinction. The aptitudes still universally most prized in the seaman were produced and nourished by practices and under conditions no longer allowed to prevail. Should we lose those aptitudes, are we likely to reach the position in war gained by our predecessors?

For the British Empire the matter is vital: success in maritime war, decisive and overwhelming, is indispensable to our existence. We have to consider the desirability of 'taking stock' of our moral, as well as of our material, naval equipment: to ascertain where the accumulated effect of repeated innovations has carried us. The mere fact of completing the investigation will help us to rate at their true value the changes which have been introduced; will show us what to retain, what to reject, and what to substitute. There is no essential vagueness in these allusions. If they seem vague, it is because the moment for particularising has not yet come. The public opinion of the navy must first be turned in the right direction. It must be led to question the soundness of the basis on which many present methods rest. Having once begun to do this, we shall find no difficulty in settling, in detail and with precision, what the true elements of naval efficiency are.

THE HISTORICAL RELATIONS BETWEEN THE NAVY AND THE MERCHANT SERVICE

The regret, often expressed, that the crews of British merchant ships now include a large proportion of foreigners, is founded chiefly on the apprehension that a well-tested and hitherto secure recruiting ground for the navy is likely to be closed. It has been stated repeatedly, and the statement has been generally accepted without question, that in former days, when a great expansion of our fleet was forced on us by the near approach of danger, we relied upon the ample resources of our merchant service to complete the manning of our ships of war, even in a short time, and that the demands of the navy upon the former were always satisfied. It is assumed that compliance with those demands was as a rule not voluntary, but was enforced by the press-gang. The resources, it is said, existed and were within reach, and the method employed in drawing upon them was a detail of comparatively minor importance; our merchant ships were manned by native-born British seamen, of whom tens of thousands were always at hand, so that if volunteers were not forthcoming the number wanted could be 'pressed' into the Royal service. It is lamented that at the present day the condition of affairs is different, that the presence in it of a large number of foreigners forbids us to regard with any confidence the merchant service as an adequate naval recruiting ground in the event of war, even though we are ready to substitute for the system of 'impressment'--which is now considered both undesirable and impossible--rewards likely to attract volunteers. The importance of the subject need not be dwelt upon. The necessity to a maritime state of a powerful navy, including abundant resources for manning it, is now no more disputed than the law of gravitation. If the proportion of foreigners in our merchant service is too high it is certainly deplorable; and if, being already too high, that proportion is rising, an early remedy is urgently needed. I do not propose to speak here of that matter, which is grave enough to require separate treatment.

We may, nevertheless, feel certain that that element never amounted to, and indeed never nearly approached, three-fourths of the whole number of men employed in our 'foreign-going' vessels. For this, between 50,000 and 60,000 men would have been required, at least in the last of the three wars above mentioned. If all the foreign mercantile marines at the present day, when nearly all have been so largely increased, were to combine, they could not furnish the number required after their own wants had been satisfied. During the period under review some of the leading commercial nations were at war with us; so that few, if any, seamen could have come to us from them. Our custom-house statistics indicate an increase in the shipping trade of the neutral nations sufficient to have rendered it impossible for them to spare us any much larger number of seamen. Therefore, it is extremely difficult to resist the conclusion that during the wars the composition of our merchant service remained nearly what it was during peace. It contained a far from insignificant proportion of foreigners; and that proportion was augmented, though by no means enormously, whilst war was going on. This leads us to the further conclusion that, if our merchant service supplied the navy with many men, it could recover only a small part of the number from foreign countries. In fact, any that it could give it had to replace from our own population almost exclusively.

The question now to be considered is, What was the capacity of the merchant service for supplying the demands of the navy? In the year 1770 the number of seamen voted for the navy was 11,713. Owing to a fear of a difficulty with Spain about the Falkland Islands, the number for the following year was suddenly raised to 31,927. Consequently, the increase was 20,214, which, added to the 'waste' on the previous year, made the whole naval demand about 21,000. We have not got statistics of the seamen of the whole British Empire for this period, but we have figures which will enable us to compute the number with sufficient accuracy for the purpose in hand. In England and Wales there were some 59,000 seamen, and those of the rest of the empire amounted to about 21,000. Large as the 'waste' was in the Royal Navy, it was, and still is, much larger in the merchant service. We may safely put it at 8 per cent. at least. Therefore, simply to keep up its numbers--80,000--the merchant service would have had to engage fully 6400 fresh hands. In view of these figures, it is difficult to believe that it could have furnished the navy with 21,000 men, or, indeed, with any number approximating thereto. It could not possibly have done so without restricting its operations, if only for a time. So far were its operations from shrinking that they were positively extended. The English tonnage 'cleared outwards' from our ports was for the years mentioned as follows: 1770, 703,495; 1771, 773,390; 1772 818,108.

Owing to the generally slow rate of sailing when on voyages and to the great length of time taken in unloading and reloading abroad--both being often effected 'in the stream' and with the ship's own boats--the figures for clearances outward much more nearly represented the amount of our 'foreign-going' tonnage a century ago than similar figures would now in these days of rapid movement. After 1771 the navy was reduced and kept at a relatively low standard till 1775. In that year the state of affairs in America rendered an increase of our naval forces necessary. In 1778 we were at war with France; in 1779 with Spain as well; and in December 1780 we had the Dutch for enemies in addition. In September 1783 we were again at peace. The way in which we had to increase the navy will be seen in the following table:--

It cannot be believed that the merchant service, with its then dimensions, could have possibly satisfied these great and repeated demands, besides making up its own 'waste,' unless its size were much reduced. After 1777, indeed, there was a considerable fall in the figures of English tonnage 'outwards.' I give these figures down to the first year of peace.

At first sight it would seem as if there had, indeed, been a shrinkage. We find, however, on further examination that in reality there had been none. 'During the war the ship-yards in every port of Britain were full of employment; and consequently new ship-yards were set up in places where ships had never been built before.' Even the diminution in the statistics of outward clearances indicated no diminution in the number of merchant ships or their crews. The missing tonnage was merely employed elsewhere. 'At this time there were about 1000 vessels of private property employed by the Government as transports and in other branches of the public service.' Of course there had been some diminution due to the transfer of what had been British-American shipping to a new independent flag. This would not have set free any men to join the navy.

When we come to the Revolutionary war we find ourselves confronted with similar conditions. The case of this war has often been quoted as proving that in former days the navy had to rely practically exclusively on the merchant service when expansion was necessary. In giving evidence before a Parliamentary committee about fifty years ago, Admiral Sir T. Byam Martin, referring to the great increase of the fleet in 1793, said, 'It was the merchant service that enabled us to man some sixty ships of the line and double that number of frigates and smaller vessels.' He added that we had been able to bring promptly together 'about 35,000 or 40,000 men of the mercantile marine.' The requirements of the navy amounted, as stated by the admiral, to about 40,000 men; to be exact, 39,045. The number of seamen in the British Empire in 1793 was 118,952. In the next year the number showed no diminution; in fact it increased, though but slightly, to 119,629. How our merchant service could have satisfied the above-mentioned immense demand on it in addition to making good its waste and then have even increased is a thing that baffles comprehension. No such example of elasticity is presented by any other institution. Admiral Byam Martin spoke so positively, and, indeed, with such justly admitted authority, that we should have to give up the problem as insoluble were it not for other passages in the admiral's own evidence. It may be mentioned that all the witnesses did not hold his views. Sir James Stirling, an officer of nearly if not quite equal authority, differed from him. In continuation of his evidence Sir T. Byam Martin stated that afterwards the merchant service could give only a small and occasional supply, as ships arrived from foreign ports or as apprentices grew out of their time. Now, during the remaining years of this war and throughout the Napoleonic war, great as were the demands of the navy, they only in one year, that of the rupture of the Peace of Amiens, equalled the demand at the beginning of the Revolutionary war. From the beginning of hostilities till the final close of the conflict in 1815 the number of merchant seamen fell only once--viz. in 1795, the fall being 3200. In 1795, however, the demand for men for the navy was less than half that of 1794. The utmost, therefore, that Sir T. Byam Martin desired to establish was that, on a single occasion in an unusually protracted continuance of war, the strength of our merchant service enabled it to reinforce the navy up to the latter's requirements; but its doing so prevented it from giving much help afterwards. All the same, men in large numbers had to be found for the navy yearly for a long time. This will appear from the tables which follow:--

REVOLUTIONARY WAR

NAPOLEONIC WAR

It is a reasonable presumption that, except perhaps on a single occasion, the merchant service did not furnish the men required--not from any want of patriotism or of public spirit, but simply because it was impossible. Even as regards the single exception the evidence is not uncontested; and by itself, though undoubtedly strong, it is not convincing, in view of the well-grounded presumptions the other way. The question then that naturally arises is--If the navy did not fill up its complements from the merchant service, how did it fill them up? The answer is easy. Our naval complements were filled up largely with boys, largely with landsmen, largely with fishermen, whose numbers permitted this without inconvenience to their trade in general, and, to a small extent, with merchant seamen. It may be suggested that the men wanted by the navy could have been passed on to it from our merchant vessels, which could then complete their own crews with boys, landsmen, and fishermen. It was the age in which Dr. Price was a great authority on public finance, the age of Mr. Pitt's sinking fund, when borrowed money was repaid with further borrowings; so that a corresponding roundabout method for manning the navy may have had attractions for some people. A conclusive reason why it was not adopted is that its adoption would have been possible only at the cost of disorganising such a great industrial undertaking as our maritime trade. That this disorganisation did not arise is proved by the fact that our merchant service flourished and expanded.

It is widely supposed that, wherever the men wanted for the navy may have come from, they were forced into it by the system of 'impressment.' The popular idea of a man-of-war's 'lower deck' of a century ago is that it was inhabited by a ship's company which had been captured by the press-gang and was restrained from revolting by the presence of a detachment of marines. The prevalence of the belief that seamen were 'raised'--'recruited' is not a naval term--for the navy by forcible means can be accounted for without difficulty. The supposed ubiquity of the press-gang and its violent procedure added much picturesque detail, and even romance, to stories of naval life. Stories connected with it, if authentic, though rare, would, indeed, make a deep impression on the public; and what was really the exception would be taken for the rule. There is no evidence to show that even from the middle of the seventeenth century any considerable number of men was raised by forcible impressment. I am not acquainted with a single story of the press-gang which, even when much embellished, professes to narrate the seizure of more than an insignificant body. The allusions to forcible impressment made by naval historians are, with few exceptions, complaints of the utter inefficiency of the plan. In Mr. David, Hannay's excellent 'Short History of the Royal Navy' will be found more than one illustration of its inefficient working in the seventeenth century. Confirmation, if confirmation is needed, can be adduced on the high authority of Mr. M. Oppenheim. We wanted tens of thousands, and forcible impressment was giving us half-dozens, or, at the best, scores. Even of those it provided, but a small proportion was really forced to serve. Mr. Oppenheim tells us of an Act of Parliament legalising forcible impressment, which seems to have been passed to satisfy the sailors. If anyone should think this absurd, he may be referred to the remarkable expression of opinion by some of the older seamen of Sunderland and Shields when the Russian war broke out in 1854. The married sailors, they said, naturally waited for the impressment, for 'we know that has always been and always will be preceded by the proclamation of bounty.'

The foregoing may be summed up as follows:--

For 170 years at least there never has been a time when the British merchant service did not contain an appreciable percentage of foreigners.

During the last three maritime wars in which this country has been involved only a small proportion of the immense number of men required by the navy came, or could have come, from the merchant service.

The number of men raised for the navy by forcible impressment in war time has been enormously exaggerated owing to a confusion of terms. As a matter of fact the number so raised, for quite two centuries, was only an insignificant fraction of the whole.

FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT THE PRESS-GANG

Of late years great attention has been paid to our naval history, and many even of its obscure byways have been explored. A general result of the investigation is that we are enabled to form a high estimate of the merits of our naval administration in former centuries. We find that for a long time the navy has possessed an efficient organisation; that its right position as an element of the national defences was understood ages ago; and that English naval officers of a period which is now very remote showed by their actions that they exactly appreciated and--when necessary--were able to apply the true principles of maritime warfare. If anyone still believes that the country has been saved more than once merely by lucky chances of weather, and that the England of Elizabeth has been converted into the great oceanic and colonial British Empire of Victoria in 'a fit of absence of mind,' it will not be for want of materials with which to form a correct judgment on these points.

It has been accepted generally that the principal method of manning our fleet in the past--especially when war threatened to arise--was to seize and put men on board the ships by force. This has been taken for granted by many, and it seems to have been assumed that, in any case, there is no way of either proving it or disproving it. The truth, however, is that it is possible and--at least as regards the period of our last great naval war--not difficult to make sure if it is true or not. Records covering a long succession of years still exist, and in these can be found the name of nearly every seaman in the navy and a statement of the conditions on which he joined it. The exceptions would not amount to more than a few hundreds out of many tens of thousands of names, and would be due to the disappearance--in itself very infrequent--of some of the documents and to occasional, but also very rare, inaccuracies in the entries.

Impressment of seamen for the navy has been called 'lawless,' and sometimes it has been asserted that it was directly contrary to law. There is, however, no doubt that it was perfectly legal, though its legality was not based upon any direct statutory authority. Indirect confirmations of it by statute are numerous. These appear in the form of exemptions. The law of the land relating to this subject was that all 'sea-faring' men were liable to impressment unless specially protected by custom or statute. A consideration of the long list of exemptions tends to make one believe that in reality very few people were liable to be impressed. Some were 'protected' by local custom, some by statute, and some by administrative order. The number of the last must have been very great. The 'Protection Books' preserved in the Public Record Office form no inconsiderable section of the Admiralty records. For the period specially under notice, viz. that beginning with the year 1803, there are no less than five volumes of 'protections.' Exemptions by custom probably originated at a very remote date: ferrymen, for example, being everywhere privileged from impressment. The crews of colliers seem to have enjoyed the privilege by custom before it was confirmed by Act of Parliament. The naval historian, Burchett, writing of 1691, cites a 'Proclamation forbidding pressing men from colliers.'

Even when the Admiralty decided to suspend all administrative exemptions--or, as the phrase was, 'to press from all protections'--many persons were still exempted. The customary and statutory exemptions, of course, were unaffected. On the 5th November 1803 their Lordships informed officers in charge of rendezvous that it was 'necessary for the speedy manning of H.M. ships to impress all persons of the denominations exprest in the press-warrant which you have received from us, without regard to any protections, excepting, however, all such persons as are protected pursuant to Acts of Parliament, and all others who by the printed instructions which accompanied the said warrant are forbidden to be imprest.' In addition to these a long list of further exemptions was sent. The last in the list included the crews of 'ships and vessels bound to foreign parts which are laden and cleared outwards by the proper officers of H.M. Customs.' It would seem that there was next to no one left liable to impressment; and it is not astonishing that the Admiralty, as shown by its action very shortly afterwards, felt that pressing seamen was a poor way of manning the fleet.

Though the war which broke out in 1803 was not formally declared until May, active preparations were begun earlier. The navy had been greatly reduced since the Peace of Amiens, and as late as the 2nd December 1802 the House of Commons had voted that '50,000 seamen be employed for the service of the year 1803, including 12,000 marines.' On the 14th March an additional number was voted. It amounted to 10,000 men, of whom 2400 were to be marines. Much larger additions were voted a few weeks later. The total increase was 50,000 men; viz. 39,600 seamen and 10,400 marines. It never occurred to anyone that forcible recruiting would be necessary in the case of the marines, though the establishment of the corps was to be nearly doubled, as it had to be brought up to 22,400 from 12,000. Attention may be specially directed to this point. The marine formed an integral part of a man-of-war's crew just as the seamen did. He received no better treatment than the latter; and as regards pecuniary remuneration, prospects of advancement, and hope of attaining to the position of warrant officer, was, on the whole, in a less favourable position. It seems to have been universally accepted that voluntary enlistment would prove--as, in fact, it did prove--sufficient in the case of the marines. What we have got to see is how far it failed in the case of the seamen, and how far its deficiencies were made up by compulsion.

We shall find that the 600 reported as impressed had to be considerably reduced before long. The reporter afterwards wisely kept himself from giving figures, except in a single instance when he states that 'about forty' were taken out of the flotilla of Plymouth trawlers. Reporting on 11th March he says that 'Last Thursday and yesterday'--the day of the sensational report above given--'several useful hands were picked up, mostly seamen, who were concealed in the different lodgings and were discovered by their girls.' He adds, 'Several prime seamen were yesterday taken disguised as labourers in the different marble quarries round the town.' On 14th October the report is that 'the different press-gangs, with their officers, literally scoured the country on the eastern roads and picked up several fine young fellows.' Here, again, no distinction is drawn between men really impressed and men who were arrested for being absent beyond the duration of their leave. We are told next that 'upon a survey of all impressed men before three captains and three surgeons of the Royal Navy, such as were deemed unfit for His Majesty's service, as well as all apprentices, were immediately discharged,' which, no doubt, greatly diminished the above-mentioned 600.

The reporter at Portsmouth begins his account of the 'press' at that place by saying, 'They indiscriminately took every man on board the colliers.' In view of what we know of the heavy penalties to which officers who pressed more than a certain proportion of a collier's crew were liable, we may take it that this statement was made in error. On 14th March it was reported that 'the constables and gangs from the ships continue very alert in obtaining seamen, many of whom have been sent on board different ships in the harbour this day.' We do not hear again from Portsmouth till May, on the 7th of which month it was reported that 'about 700 men were obtained.' On the 8th the report was that 'on Saturday afternoon the gates of the town were shut and soldiers placed at every avenue. Tradesmen were taken from their shops and sent on board the ships in the harbour or placed in the guard-house for the night, till they could be examined. If fit for His Majesty's service they were kept, if in trade set at liberty.' The 'tradesmen,' then, if really taken, were taken simply to be set free again. As far as the reports first quoted convey any trustworthy information, it appears that at Portsmouth and Plymouth during March, April, and the first week of May, 1340 men were 'picked up,' and that of these many were immediately discharged. How many of the 1340 were not really impressed, but were what in the navy are called 'stragglers,' i.e. men over-staying their leave of absence, is not indicated.

Before going farther, attention may be called to one or two points in connection with the above reports. The increase in the number of seamen voted by Parliament in March was 7600. The reports of the impressment operations only came down to May. It was not till the 11th June that Parliament voted a further addition to the navy of 32,000 seamen. Yet whilst the latter great increase was being obtained--for obtained it was--the reporters are virtually silent as to the action of the press-gang. We must ask ourselves, if we could get 32,000 additional seamen with so little recourse to impressment that the operations called for no special notice, how was it that compulsion was necessary when only 7600 men were wanted? The question is all the more pertinent when we recall the state of affairs in the early part of 1803.

The navy had been greatly reduced in the year before, the men voted having diminished from 100,000 to 56,000. What became of the 44,000 men not required, of whom about 35,000 must have been of the seaman class and have been discharged from the service? There was a further reduction of 6000, to take effect in the beginning of 1803. Sir Sydney Smith, at that time a Member of Parliament, in the debate of the 2nd December 1802, 'expressed considerable regret at the great reductions which were suddenly made, both in the King's dockyards and in the navy in general. A prodigious number of men,' he said, 'had been thus reduced to the utmost poverty and distress.' He stated that he 'knew, from his own experience, that what was called an ordinary seaman could hardly find employment at present, either in the King's or in the merchants' service.' The increase of the fleet in March must have seemed a godsend to thousands of men-of-war's men. If there was any holding back on their part, it was due, no doubt, to an expectation--which the sequel showed to be well founded--that a bounty would be given to men joining the navy.

The muster-book of a man-of-war is the official list of her crew. It contains the name of every officer and man in the complement. Primarily it was an account-book, as it contains entries of the payments made to each person whose name appears in it. At the beginning of the nineteenth century it was usual to make out a fresh muster-book every two months, though that period was not always exactly adhered to. Each new book was a copy of the preceding one, with the addition of the names of persons who had joined the ship since the closing of the latter. Until the ship was paid off and thus put out of commission--or, in the case of a very long commission, until 'new books' were ordered to be opened so as to escape the inconveniences due to the repetition of large numbers of entries--the name of every man that had belonged to her remained on the list, his disposal--if no longer in the ship--being noted in the proper column. One column was headed 'Whence, and whether prest or not?' In this was noted his former ship, or the fact of his being entered direct from the shore, which answered to the question 'Whence?' There is reason to believe that the muster-book being, as above said, primarily an account-book, the words 'whether prest or not' were originally placed at the head of the column so that it might be noted against each man entered whether he had been paid 'prest-money' or not. However this may be, the column at the beginning of the nineteenth century was used for a record of the circumstances of the man's entering the ship, whether he had been transferred from another, had joined as a volunteer from the shore, or had been impressed.

Some people may be astonished because the practice of impressment, which had proved to be so utterly inefficient, was not at once and formally given up. No astonishment will be felt by those who are conversant with the habits of Government Departments. In every country public officials evince great and, indeed, almost invincible reluctance to give up anything, whether it be a material object or an administrative process, which they have once possessed or conducted. One has only to stroll through the arsenals of the world, or glance at the mooring-grounds of the maritime states, to see to what an extent the passion for retaining the obsolete and useless holds dominion over the official mind. A thing may be known to be valueless--its retention may be proved to be mischievous--yet proposals to abandon it will be opposed and defeated. It is doubtful if any male human being over forty was ever converted to a new faith of any kind. The public has to wait until the generation of administrative Conservatives has either passed away or been outnumbered by those acquainted only with newer methods. Then the change is made; the certainty, nevertheless, being that the new men in their turn will resist improvements as obstinately and in exactly the same way as their predecessors.

We may suspect that there was some discussion at Whitehall as to the wisdom of retaining a plan which caused so much inconvenience and had such poor results. The conclusion seems to have been to submit it to a searching test. The coasts of the United Kingdom were studded with stations--thirty-seven generally, but the number varied--for the entry of seamen. The ordinary official description of these--as shown by entries in the muster-books--was 'rendezvous'; but other terms were used. It has often been thought that they were simply impressment offices. The fact is that many more men were raised at these places by volunteering than by impressment. The rendezvous, as a rule, were in charge of captains or commanders, some few being entrusted to lieutenants. The men attached to each were styled its 'gang,' a word which conveys no discredit in nautical language. On 5th November 1803 the Admiralty sent to the officers in charge of rendezvous the communication already mentioned--to press men 'without regard to any protections,'--the exceptions, indeed, being so many that the officers must have wondered who could legitimately be taken.

The order at first sight appeared sweeping enough. It contained the following words: 'Whereas we think fit that a general press from all protections as above mentioned shall commence at London and in the neighbourhood thereof on the night of Monday next, the 7th instant, you are therefore hereby required to impress and to give orders to the lieutenants under your command to impress all persons of the above-mentioned denominations and continue to do so until you receive orders from us to the contrary.' As it was addressed to officers in all parts of the United Kingdom, the 'general press' was not confined to London and its neighbourhood, though it was to begin in the capital.

Though returns of the numbers impressed have not been discovered, we have strong evidence that this 'general press,' notwithstanding the secrecy with which it had been arranged, was a failure. On the 6th December 1803, just a month after it had been tried, the Admiralty formulated the following conclusion: 'On a consideration of the expense attending the service of raising men on shore for His Majesty's Fleet comparatively with the number procured, as well as from other circumstances, there is reason to believe that either proper exertions have not been made by some of the officers employed on that service, or that there have been great abuses and mismanagement in the expenditure of the public money.' This means that it was now seen that impressment, though of little use in obtaining men for the navy, was a very costly arrangement. The Lords of the Admiralty accordingly ordered that 'the several places of rendezvous should be visited and the conduct of the officers employed in carrying out the above-mentioned service should be inquired into on the spot.' Rear-Admiral Arthur Phillip, the celebrated first Governor of New South Wales, was ordered to make the inquiry. This was the last duty in which that distinguished officer was employed, and his having been selected for it appears to have been unknown to all his biographers.

It is not surprising that after this the proceedings of the press-gang occupy scarcely any space in our naval history. Such references to them as there are will be found in the writings of the novelist and the dramatist. Probably individual cases of impressment occurred till nearly the end of the Great War; but they could not have been many. Compulsory service most unnecessarily caused--not much, but still some--unjustifiable personal hardship. It tended to stir up a feeling hostile to the navy. It required to work it machinery costly out of all proportion to the results obtained. Indeed, it failed completely to effect what had been expected of it. In the great days of old our fleet, after all, was manned, not by impressed men, but by volunteers. It was largely due to that that we became masters of the sea.

PROJECTED INVASIONS OF THE BRITISH ISLES

The practice to which we have become accustomed of late, of publishing original documents relating to naval and military history, has been amply justified by the results. These meet the requirements of two classes of readers. The publications satisfy, or at any rate go far towards satisfying, the wishes of those who want to be entertained, and also of those whose higher motive is a desire to discover the truth about notable historical occurrences. Putting the public in possession of the materials, previously hidden in more or less inaccessible muniment-rooms and record offices, with which the narratives of professed historians have been constructed, has had advantages likely to become more and more apparent as time goes on. It acts as a check upon the imaginative tendencies which even eminent writers have not always been able, by themselves, to keep under proper control. The certainty, nay the mere probability, that you will be confronted with the witnesses on whose evidence you profess to have relied--the 'sources' from which your story is derived--will suggest the necessity of sobriety of statement and the advisability of subordinating rhetoric to veracity. Had the contemporary documents been available for an immediate appeal to them by the reading public, we should long ago have rid ourselves of some dangerous superstitions. We should have abandoned our belief in the fictions that the Armada of 1588 was defeated by the weather, and that the great Herbert of Torrington was a lubber, a traitor, and a coward. It is not easy to calculate the benefit that we should have secured, had the presentation of some important events in the history of our national defence been as accurate as it was effective. Enormous sums of money have been wasted in trying to make our defensive arrangements square with a conception of history based upon misunderstanding or misinterpretation of facts. Pecuniary extravagance is bad enough; but there is a greater evil still. We have been taught to cherish, and we have been reluctant to abandon, a false standard of defence, though adherence to such a standard can be shown to have brought the country within measurable distance of grievous peril. Captain Duro, of the Spanish Navy, in his 'Armada Invencible,' placed within our reach contemporary evidence from the side of the assailants, thereby assisting us to form a judgment on a momentous episode in naval history. The evidence was completed; some being adduced from the other side, by our fellow-countryman Sir J. K. Laughton, in his 'Defeat of the Spanish Armada,' published by the Navy Records Society. Others have worked on similar lines; and a healthier view of our strategic conditions and needs is more widely held than it was; though it cannot be said to be, even yet, universally prevalent. Superstition, even the grossest, dies hard.

We are informed by Captain Desbri?re that the idea of a hostile descent on England was during a long time much favoured in France. The national archives and those of the Ministries of War and of Marine are filled with proposals for carrying it out, some dating back to 1710. Whether emanating from private persons or formulated in obedience to official direction, there are certain features in all the proposals so marked that we are able to classify the various schemes by grouping together those of a similar character. In one class may be placed all those which aimed at mere annoyance, to be effected by landing small bodies of men, not always soldiers, to do as much damage as possible. The appearance of these at many different points, it was believed, would so harass the English that they would end the war, or at least so divide their forces that their subjection might be looked for with confidence. In another class might be placed proposals to seize outlying, out not distant, British territory--the Channel Islands or the Isle of Wight, for example. A third class might comprise attempts on a greater scale, necessitating the employment of a considerable body of troops and meriting the designation 'Invasion.' Some of these attempts were to be made in Great Britain, some in Ireland. In every proposal for an attempt of this class, whether it was to be made in Great Britain or in Ireland, it was assumed that the invaders would receive assistance from the people of the country invaded. Indeed, generally the bulk of the force to be employed was ultimately to be composed of native sympathisers, who were also to provide--at least at the beginning--all the supplies and transport, both vehicles and animals, required. Every plan, no matter to which class it might belong, was based upon the assumption that the British naval force could be avoided. Until we come to the time when General Bonaparte, as he then was, dissociated himself from the first 'Army of England,' there is no trace, in any of the documents now printed, of a belief in the necessity of obtaining command of the sea before sending across it a considerable military expedition. That there was such a thing as the command of the sea is rarely alluded to; and when it is, it is merely to accentuate the possibility of neutralising it by evading the force holding it. There is something which almost deserves to be styled comical in the absolutely unvarying confidence, alike of amateurs and highly placed military officers, with which it was held that a superior naval force was a thing that might be disregarded. Generals who would have laughed to scorn anyone maintaining that, though there was a powerful Prussian army on the road to one city and an Austrian army on the road to the other, a French army might force its way to either Berlin or Vienna without either fighting or even being prepared to fight, such generals never hesitated to approve expeditions obliged to traverse a region in the occupation of a greatly superior force, the region being pelagic and the force naval. We had seized the little islands of St. Marcoff, a short distance from the coast of Normandy, and held them for years. It was expressly admitted that their recapture was impossible, '? raison de la sup?riorit? des forces navales Anglaises'; but it was not even suspected that a much more difficult operation, requiring longer time and a longer voyage, was likely to be impracticable. We shall see by and by how far this remarkable attitude of mind was supported by the experience of Hoche's expedition to Ireland.

A more promising enterprise was that in which it was decided to obtain the assistance of the Dutch, at the time in possession of a considerable fleet. The Dutch fleet was to put to sea with the object of engaging the English. An army of 15,000 was then to be embarked in the ports of Holland, and was to effect a diversion in favour of another and larger body, which, starting from France, was to land in Ireland, repeating the attempt of Hoche in December 1796, which will be dealt with later on. The enterprise was frustrated by the action of Admiral Duncan, who decisively defeated the Dutch fleet off Camperdown in October. It might have been supposed that this would have driven home the lesson that no considerable military expedition across the water has any chance of success till the country sending it has obtained command of the sea; but it did not. To Bonaparte the event was full of meaning; but no other French soldier seems to have learned it--if we may take Captain Desbri?re's views as representative--even down to the present day. On the 23rd February 1798 Bonaparte wrote: 'Op?rer une descente en Angleterre sans ?tre ma?tre de la mer est l'op?ration la plus hardie et la plus difficile qui ait ?t? faite.' There has been much speculation as to the reasons which induced Bonaparte to quit the command of the 'Army of England' after holding it but a short time, and after having devoted great attention to its organisation and proposed methods of transport across the Channel. The question is less difficult than it has appeared to be to many. One of the foremost men in France, Bonaparte was ready to take the lead in any undertaking which seemed likely to have a satisfactory ending--an ending which would redound to the glory of the chief who conducted it. The most important operation contemplated was the invasion of England; and--now that Hoche was no more--Bonaparte might well claim to lead it. His penetrating insight soon enabled him to see its impracticability until the French had won the command of the Channel. Of that there was not much likelihood; and at the first favourable moment he dissociated himself from all connection with an enterprise which offered so little promise of a successful termination that it was all but certain not to be begun. An essential condition, as already pointed out, of all the projected invasions was the receipt of assistance from sympathisers in the enemy's country. Hoche himself expected this even in Tate's case; but experience proved the expectation to be baseless. When the prisoners taken with Tate were being conducted to their place of confinement, the difficulty was to protect them, 'car la population furieuse contre les Fran?ais voulait les lyncher.' Captain Desbri?re dwells at some length on the mutinies in the British fleet in 1797, and asks regretfully, 'Qu'avait-on fait pour profiter de cette chance unique?' He remarks on the undoubted and really lamentable fact that English historians have usually paid insufficient attention to these occurrences. One, and perhaps the principal reason of their silence, was the difficulty, at all events till quite lately, of getting materials with which to compose a narrative. The result is that the real character of the great mutinies has been altogether misunderstood. Lord Camperdown's recently published life of his great ancestor, Lord Duncan, has done something to put them in their right light. As regards defence against the enemy, the mutinies affected the security of the country very little. The seamen always expressed their determination to do their duty if the enemy put to sea. Even at the Nore they conspicuously displayed their general loyalty; and, as a matter of fact, discipline had regained its sway some time before the expedition preparing in Holland was ready. How effectively the crews of the ships not long before involved in the mutiny could fight, was proved at Camperdown.

Notwithstanding all this, the greater part of the fleet, and of the troops conveyed by it, did anchor in Bantry Bay without encountering an English man-of-war; and a large proportion continued in the Bay, unmolested by our navy, for more than a fortnight. Is not this, it may be asked, a sufficient refutation of those who hold that command of the sea gives security against invasion? As a matter of fact, command of the sea--even in the case in question--did prevent invasion from being undertaken, still more from being carried through, on a scale likely to be very formidable. The total number of troops embarked was under 14,000, of whom 633 were lost, owing to steps taken to avoid the hostile navy, before the expedition had got fully under way. It is not necessary to rate Hoche's capacity very highly in order to understand that he, who had seen something of war on a grand scale, would not have committed himself to the command of so small a body, without cavalry, without means of transport on land, without supplies, with but an insignificant artillery and that not furnished with horses, and, as was avowed, without hope of subsequent reinforcement or of open communications with its base--that he would not have staked his reputation on the fate of a body so conditioned, if he had been permitted by the naval conditions of the case to lead a larger, more effectually organised, and better supplied army. The commentary supplied by Captain Desbri?re to the volume under notice discloses his opinion that the failure of the expedition to Ireland was due to the inefficiency of the French Navy. He endeavours to be scrupulously fair to his naval fellow-countrymen; but his conviction is apparent. It hardly admits of doubt that this view has generally been, and still is, prevalent in the French Army. Foreign soldiers of talent and experience generalise from this as follows: Let them but have the direction of the naval as well as of the military part of an expedition, and the invasion of England must be successful. The complete direction which they would like is exactly what Hoche did have. He chose the commander of the fleet, and also chose or regulated the choice of the junior flag officers and several of the captains. Admiral Morard de Galles was not, and did not consider himself, equal to the task for which Hoche's favour had selected him. His letter pointing out his own disqualifications has a striking resemblance to the one written by Medina Sidonia in deprecation of his appointment in place of Santa Cruz. Nevertheless, the French naval officers did succeed in conveying the greater part of the expeditionary army to a point at which disembarkation was practicable.

Now we have some lessons to learn from this. The advantages conferred by command of the sea must be utilised intelligently; and it was bad management which permitted an important anchorage to remain for more than a fortnight in the hands of an invading force. We need not impute to our neighbours a burning desire to invade us; but it is a becoming exercise of ordinary strategic precaution to contemplate preparations for repelling what, as a mere military problem, they consider still feasible. No amount of naval superiority will ever ensure every part of our coast against incursions like that of Tate and his gaol-birds. Naval superiority, however, will put in our hands the power of preventing the arrival of an army strong enough to carry out a real invasion. The strength of such an army will largely depend upon the amount of mobile land force of which we can dispose. Consequently, defence against invasion, even of an island, is the duty of a land army as well as of a fleet. The more important part may, in our case, be that of the latter; but the services of the former cannot be dispensed with. The best method of utilising those services calls for much thought. In 1798, when the 'First Army of England' menaced us from the southern coast of the Channel, it was reported to our Government that an examination of the plans formerly adopted for frustrating intended invasions showed the advantage of troubling the enemy in his own home and not waiting till he had come to injure us in ours.

OVER-SEA RAIDS AND RAIDS ON LAND

It has been contended that raids by 'armaments with 1000, 20,000, and 50,000 men on board respectively' have succeeded in evading 'our watching and chasing fleets,' and that consequently invasion of the British Isles on a great scale is not only possible but fairly practicable, British naval predominance notwithstanding. I dispute the accuracy of the history involved in the allusions to the above-stated figures. The number of men comprised in a raiding or invading expedition is the number that is or can be put on shore. The crews of the transports are not included in it. In the cases alluded to, Humbert's expedition was to have numbered 82 officers and 1017 other ranks, and 984 were put on shore in Killala Bay. Though the round number, 1000, represents this figure fairly enough, there was a 10 per cent. shrinkage from the original embarkation strength. In Hoche's expedition the total number of troops embarked was under 14,000, of whom 633 were lost before the expedition had got clear of its port of starting, and of the remainder only a portion reached Ireland. General Bonaparte landed in Egypt not 50,000 men, but about 36,000. In the expeditions of Hoche and Humbert it was not expected that the force to be landed would suffice of itself, the belief being that it would be joined in each case by a large body of adherents in the raided country. Outside the ranks of the 'extremists of the dinghy school'--whose number is unknown and is almost certainly quite insignificant--no one asserts or ever has asserted that raids in moderate strength are not possible even in the face of a strong defending navy. It is a fact that the whole of our defence policy for many generations has been based upon an admission of their possibility. Captain Mahan's statement of the case has never been questioned by anyone of importance. It is as follows: 'The control of the sea, however real, does not imply that an enemy's single ships or small squadrons cannot steal out of port, cannot cross more or less frequented tracts of ocean, make harassing descents upon unprotected points of a long coast-line, enter blockaded harbours.' It is extraordinary that everyone does not perceive that if this were not true the 'dinghy school' would be right. Students of Clausewitz may be expected to remember that the art of war does not consist in making raids that are unsuccessful; that war is waged to gain certain great objects; and that the course of hostilities between two powerful antagonists is affected little one way or the other by raids even on a considerable scale.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet