BOOKS.
THE ROYAL NAVY IN HISTORY.*
Ma. JOHN LEYLAND's short study of naval influence in the growth of the British Empire demonstrates how early the significance of sea-power was recognized, and how soon the essential principle of strategy was hammered out of experi- ence. Never since the Norman Conquest has any serious invasion of Britain occurred. Ralegh, Drake, and Howard all anticipated Nelsonian strategy when they maintained that an enemy ought to be beaten before he had an opportunity of leaving his own coasts. The right principle, indeed, goes back even further than that, for Alfred the Great's ambitions were the equivalent of our modern idea of "seeking out the enemy wherever he may be." He knew that the ways of the sea could be learned only by men who kept the seas, and for that reason he sent his navigators into the Baltic and the White Sea. He was not content with any ships that were inferior in weatherly qualities and durability to hostile ships. He personally superintended the work at the ports, saw that the wood in the building yards was well seasoned, and insisted that his sailors should be well trained and well fed. In the " long- ships " of Alfred crews kept the seas for longer periods than bad been possible before. The fact that the invader of an island must come by sea was indeed obvious, but the question how best to check him was capable of a wrong as well as of a right answer. The scheme of guarding the coast with small patrolling ships and by means of fortified places was an early anticipation of the heresy which would ask us now to rely upon mosquito warfare instead of on ships capable of meeting the enemy's ships in a general action.
What might have happened to the Norman invaders if Harold's Fleet had not dispersed through some internal failure of spirit or of organization is an interesting subject of specu- lation. Harold had been called to the North of England, and his influence was thus removed just at the time when the men wished to gather in their harvest, for in those days sailoring and farming were mingled in a manner that would have seemed grossly improper to Mr. Kipling's " Captains Courageous." Richard Coeur de Lion was the first English ruler to employ a fleet in a distant enterprise. His long- ship Trenchemer ' (or, as we might say to-day, Shearwater ') was capable at the end of her adventurous voyage of tack- ling a great Saracen dromon off Acre and sinking her. One chronicler said that only Noah's Ark was bigger than this dromon, which carried seven or eight hundred men under seven emirs.
In spite of the smashing of the Armada, Elizabeth, strangely enough, did not grasp the fact that it was within her power to cripple Spain more by sea than by land. She hoped that the Spanish sources of wealth would run dry owing to the war in the Netherlands and France. She did not use her Fleet for what we should call Imperial purposes. She had no notion
• The Royal Navy : its Influence in English History and in the Growth of inspire. By John Leyland. Cambridge: at the University Press. [is. net.]
that a Navy might be exerting a decisive pressure upon an enemy though the pressure were quite undramatic, and, indeed, almost invisible. Her sailors knew that wonderful truth, but she was impatient of their opinions when they could not report ostentatious captures of rich foreign merchantmen.
She regarded her Navy chiefly as an institution for raising a revenue out of Spanish treasure. The reign of James I. is worth remembering in naval history because it marked the emergence from transition. James's Fleet was divided into rates and controlled on a system that still exists. The reign was not distinguished by any brilliant episodes, but the seas belonged to England. Unfortunately she laid up trouble for herself by the inexcusable arrogance with which she exacted a salute as homage from all foreign shipping. Charles I., as might have been expected of a man of his wretchedly weak conduct, let the Navy down. Corruption, waste, and neglect undermined the Service. The irony of it was that he had in the abstract a perfectly correct conception of the importance of maritime ascendancy. The Commonwealth practically doubled the Navy which Charles left. It should never be for- gotten that the statesmen who had fought for liberty against the autocratic Royalist pretensions were convinced that it was not worth while to frame laws for free men if those men might any day become the slaves of a foreign Power. No English Fleet had sailed into the Mediterranean—except in pursuit of pirates— since the days of Richard I. But Penn was sent under the Commonwealth for the definite national purpose of chasing Rupert. The Commonwealth Fleet not only broke up the remaining strength of Royalism, but kept in order the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and French. The brave and accomplished Blake was one of those fine spirits which English Republicanism produced. It is an extraordinary fact that this consummate sailor had never been at sea till he was fifty. He was scholar, merchant, politician, and Colonel before he was a sailor; and he is a standing disproof of the invari- ability of the rule that all good sailors begin young.
Although there bad already been many inklings of the use of the Fleet as a political instrument, the Dutch Wars of the seventeenth century found it being used simply as a weapon for killing rival commerce. The Navigation Act of 1651 struck at the Dutch carrying trade. There was, in fact, no regular instinct for employing the Fleet to advance a.
policy. The political effects of the Dutch Wars, which were considerable, were accidental. To-day we see a reverse process at work; we are fighting Germany for purely political reasons—for what may be called an honest code of inter- nationalism—but we are strangling German commerce, not because we coveted it, but because through it we can exert political compulsion. A decline in the Navy was noticeable in the early eighteenth century, but the personal brilliance of Anson and Hawke heralded a regeneration. Anson, after his return in 1744 from his famous voyages, brought about a fundamental change in the administration of the Admiralty. Himself a great seaman, he was intolerant of poor seamanship, and he chose for high appointments such officers as Hawke, Boscawen, Rodney, Howe, and Keppel. He never hesitated to pass over an incapable officer. He "yellowed" him, as the phrase was—appointed him to an imaginary " yellow squadron," which conferred as much kudos as transference to that notorious spot Stellenbosch in the South African War. Fifteen years later the results were splendidly apparent when the sea victories of Boscawen and Hawke made England once more consciously secure, and both in India and America the French power slipped away under the British naval pressure.
We shall not follow Mr. Leyland's argument into more recent days. These are better remembered and understood, and our purpose has been to show the continuity of naval teaching from early times. Though it is sometimes dim, it is always traceable. We may end with a quotation which is a fair example of Mr. Leyland's brevity and clearness. It is an account of Hawke's masterly action in Quiberon Bay :—
" Captain Duff, with a small squadron, had been watching the [French] transports in Quiberon hay, and only just escaped on the appearance of Conflans, who bad decided to remain in the Bay, with the transports, until another gale should blow Hawke from his station. He did not know what manner of man Hawke was, nor forego° the character of the attack. Quiberon Bay lies about 150 miles south-east from Ushant, protected from the west and south-west by the Quiberon peninsula, Belle Isle, and the rugged Cardinal rocks, with other dangerous rocks and shoals, well known to the French, but little to Englishmen in Hawke's time. It was on the 20th of November, with a gale from the westward blowing, that Hawke sighted Conftans in his flagship, the Soleil Royal, rounding the Cardinals. Darkness was approaching, when Hawke in the Royal George, 100 guns, came swooping from the west,' and Conflans did not suppose that his adversary would venture his fleet in those perilous and uncharted waters, and attack at headlong speed, in a heavy sea, with the wind driving him towards a lee shore. But Hawke knew his ships and men, and what risks he could run. His own sailing-master remonstrated, but the Admiral was not to be held back. ' You have done your duty, Sir,' he said, in showing the danger; you have now to comply with my order and lay me alongside the Soleil Royal.' Thus was the battle gained, one of the most desperate ever fought by a British fleet. The French ships were scattered, many of them shattered by gun-fire, some captured, others driven on shoals, and two sunk. Conflans' flagship went ashore and was burnt, with another. Several other ships ran up the bay, threw their guns overboard, and escaped into the Vilaine river, where they remained for many months. Hawke lost two ships on the rocks, but his victory was glorious and decisive, and, night having fallen, he anchored the fleet, ' being on a part of the coast among islands and shoals of which we were totally ignorant, without a pilot, as was the greatest part of the squadron, and blowing hard on a lee shore.' Hawke's name will ever be immortalized by his magnifi- cent victory over men, the stormy seas and the perilous rocks off Quiberon, whereby invasion was averted once more. The victory was the Trafalg-,ar of the time, without precedent and without a successor for forty years to come."
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