Types of Naval Officers | Page 8

defective professional tradition. The
splendid days of the French Navy under Louis XIV. passed away with
him,--he died in 1701; but during the long period of naval lethargy on
the part of the state, which followed, the French naval officers, as a
class, never wholly lost sight of professional ideals. They proved
themselves, on the rare occasions that offered, before 1715 and during
the wars of Hawke and Rodney, not only gallant seamen after the
pattern of Tourville, but also exceedingly capable tacticians, upon a
system good as far as it went, but defective on Tourville's express lines,
in aiming rather at exact dispositions and defensive security than at the
thorough-going initiative and persistence which confounds and
destroys the enemy. "War," to use Napoleon's phrase, "was to be waged
without running risks." The sword was drawn, but the scabbard was
kept ever open for its retreat.
The English, in the period of reaction which succeeded the Dutch wars,
produced their own caricature of systematized tactics. Even under its
influence, up to 1715, it is only just to say they did not construe naval

skill to mean anxious care to keep one's own ships intact. Rooke, off
Malaga, in 1704, illustrated professional fearlessness of consequences
as conspicuously as he had shown personal daring in the boat attack at
La Hougue; but his plans of battle exemplified the particularly British
form of inefficient naval action. There was no great difference in
aggregate force between the French fleet and that of the combined
Anglo-Dutch under his orders. The former, drawing up in the
accustomed line of battle, ship following ship in a single column,
awaited attack. Rooke, having the advantage of the wind, and therefore
the power of engaging at will, formed his command in a similar and
parallel line a few miles off, and thus all stood down together, the ships
maintaining their line parallel to that of the enemy, and coming into
action at practically the same moment, van to van, centre to centre, rear
to rear. This ignored wholly the essential maxim of all intelligent
warfare, which is so to engage as markedly to outnumber the enemy at
a point of main collision. If he be broken there, before the remainder of
his force come up, the chances all are that a decisive superiority will be
established by this alone, not to mention the moral effect of partial
defeat and disorder. Instead of this, the impact at Malaga was so
distributed as to produce a substantial equality from one end to the
other of the opposing fronts. The French, indeed, by strengthening their
centre relatively to the van and rear, to some extent modified this
condition in the particular instance; but the fact does not seem to have
induced any alteration in Rooke's dispositions. Barring mere accident,
nothing conclusive can issue from such arrangements. The result
accordingly was a drawn battle, although Rooke says that the fight,
which was maintained on both sides "with great fury for three hours, ...
was the sharpest day's service that I ever saw;" and he had seen
much,--Beachy Head, La Hougue, Vigo Bay, not to mention his own
great achievement in the capture of Gibraltar.
This method of attack remained the ideal--if such a word is not a
misnomer in such a case--of the British Navy, not merely as a matter of
irreflective professional acceptance, but laid down in the official
"Fighting Instructions." It cannot be said that these err on the side of
lucidity; but their meaning to contemporaries in this particular respect
is ascertained, not only by fair inference from their contents, but by the

practical commentary of numerous actions under commonplace
commanders-in-chief. It further received authoritative formulation in
the specific finding of the Court-Martial upon Admiral Byng, which
was signed by thirteen experienced officers. "Admiral Byng should
have caused his ships to tack together, and should immediately have
borne down upon the enemy; his van steering for the enemy's van, his
rear for its rear, each ship making for the one opposite to her in the
enemy's line, under such sail as would have enabled the worst sailer to
preserve her station in the line of battle." Each phrase of this opinion is
a reflection of an article in the Instructions. The line of battle was the
naval fetich of the day; and, be it remarked, it was the more dangerous
because in itself an admirable and necessary instrument, constructed on
principles essentially accurate. A standard wholly false may have its
error demonstrated with comparative ease; but no servitude is more
hopeless than that of unintelligent submission to an idea formally
correct, yet incomplete. It has all the vicious misleading of a half-truth
unqualified by appreciation of modifying conditions; and so seamen
who disdained theories, and hugged the belief in themselves as
"practical,"