Naval History - The History Files

After Trafalgar II

***An action during the British fleet’s blockade of the French port of Toulon between 1810 and 1814, depicted by Thomas Luny***

Fog could cover French movements, as when the Brest fleet sailed in April 1799. Once it had sailed, the British were unsure whether the French would head for Ireland or the Mediterranean. Concern about the safety of Minorca handicapped the subsequent British pursuit in the Mediterranean, and the French were able to sail to Toulon, and eventually back to Brest, without being intercepted. In January 1808 the French Rochefort squadron evaded the British blockaders in bad weather and poor visibility and sailed to Toulon. Fog was also a hazard to British warships. The 74-gun Venerable, part of the squadron covering Brest, sank on the Devon coast in 1804 after running ashore in a thick fog.

British Naval strength Late 18th-Early 19th Centuries

British naval hegemony rested on a sophisticated and well-financed administrative structure, a large fleet drawing on the manpower resources of a substantial mercantile marine, although there was never enough sailors, and an ability to win engagements that reflected widely diffused qualities of seamanship and gunnery, a skilled and determined corps of captains, and able leadership. This was true not only of command at sea, as with Nelson’s innovative tactics and ability to inspire his captains, his “band of brothers”, but also of effective leadership of the navy as an institution. Thus Jervis, created Earl St. Vincent after his great victory, was an energetic First Lord of the Admiralty in 1801-4, although his hostility to naval contractors and his campaign for economy in the naval dockyards limited the rate of construction and repair, placing the navy in a difficult position in 1804.

The Bombardment of Sebastopol by John Wilson Carmichael. The allied bombardment of Sevastopol in the Crimean War, a misguided effort that showed clearly the fragility of wooden ships against shore batteries.

The use of plate iron in ship construction was not new in 1855. As early as 1822 a commercial steamship, the Aaron Manby, was launched with an iron-plate hull. Design improved rapidly. By 1832, a British merchant ship with an iron hull, the Alburkah, was able to complete an ocean voyage; in 1838, Britain also launched the transatlantic liner Great Britain. The Nemesis, the first iron warship, was put into service for the British East India Company in 1839. Nemesis was used with great success in the First China War (1841-43) on the Canton River, where it joined in the bombardment of Whampoa. The Royal Navy went on to order three shallow-draught iron ships in 1840 for work on the Niger River.

A Russian Galley of 1719 Campaign: these big beasts were 40m (130ft) in length, 7m (23ft) abreast and 1.5m (5ft) deep, and included 25 pairs of oars, 2-4 guns, 90 crew and 200 soldiers. They could make five knots by oar.

With its brackish waters, indented shoreline and lack of tides, the Baltic is more of a vast inland lake than a real ocean, making for difficult sailing and navigation conditions. A semi-Arctic climate imposes yet further restrictions upon sailing fleets and their use. It took all the iron will and determination of Tsar Peter the Great to found the Russian Navy in 1705 with the naval base at Kronstadt, on the Gulf of Finland. To outflank Swedish defences in Finland, Peter built a powerful galley fleet to combine with his new Europeanized army in amphibious operations.

In early 1943, Takao supported evacuation of Guadalcanal. The force consisted of the carriers Zuikaku, Zuiho- and Jun’yo-, the battleships Kongo- and Haruna, heavy cruisers Atago, Takao, Myoko and Haguro, the light cruisers Nagara and Agano, and 11 destroyers. The Japanese transports were successful in evacuating 11,700 troops from the island.

Under the command of Inoguchi Toshihira, Takao operated in the central Pacific from her base at Truk. She returned to Yokosuka Naval Arsenal on 26 July for the installation of additional anti-aircraft guns. After returning to Truk on 23 August, she continued on to Rabaul on 27 August, disembarking army troops and supplies.

All the hard work proved a worthwhile investment. By the end of September some eighty-three inward convoys had arrived, totalling 1,306 merchantmen. Only eighteen ships had been sunk, eight of which had been lost after dropping out of their convoys. Similarly just two ships were sunk in the fifty-five outward-bound convoys.

It was time for MacArthur to take the initiative once again in New Guinea. On 1 September 1943 the US VII Amphibious Force under the command of Rear-Admiral Daniel Barbey left Milne Bay on the extreme southeast coast with three brigades of Australian troops in a convoy of ninety-seven vessels escorted by nine destroyers. He successfully landed these 8,000 troops in two batches east of the port of Lae during the nights of 3-4 and 5-6 September respectively. Skilful use of radar by the escort’s picket destroyer Reid and the ability to call on US fighter planes to assist in breaking up incoming Japanese bombing formations, helped to keep losses of landing craft to a bare minimum.

During the Norwegian campaign there was one brilliantly successful but now almost forgotten exploit by the Fleet Air Arm. On 10th April 1940 Skua dive-bombers flying from the Orkneys sank the German cruiser Konigsberg in Bergen harbour. Although this was the first time a major warship had been sunk by air attack, the word appeared to fall on stony ground in the Admiralty. Skuas were withdrawn from operations in early 1941 and thereafter the Fleet Air Arm had no specialist dive-bomber until the unsatisfactory Barracuda in 1943. But for the Germans and the Japanese the attack on Konigsberg was a textbook demonstration and later in the war both showed that they had read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested the lessen of.

In significant measure the Royal Navy’s inability to secure the initiative in the North Sea reflected the failure of the Royal Air Force to prepare for maritime war. The experience of 1914-18 had demonstrated that aircraft had a major role in naval warfare, in reconnaissance, anti-surface, anti-submarine strike, and fleet air defence, but the Royal Air Force did not develop effective aircraft or weapons between the wars. This was most significant in the field of ASW, where the standard patrol aircraft of 1939, the Anson, was less effective, in range and weapons, than the 1918 Kangaroo.

An action during the British fleet’s blockade of the French port of Toulon between 1810 and 1814, depicted by Thomas Luny.

Having beaten the Russians and the Austrians, Napoleon would have liked to resume the invasion of England he had planned for 1805. Yet Napoleon’s expansion of the French army after 1804 had been at the expense of the French navy, which in 1805 could muster just ninety-six battleships to Britain’s 136. As would be the case until 1945, Great Britain took pains to maintain a bigger navy than any European adversary. In 1805 the Royal Navy counted 1,000 ships and 142,000 sailors, making the Napoleonic Wars that proverbial contest between the (British) `whale’ and the (French) `elephant’. The Grande Armée indisputably ruled Europe, but the Royal Navy ruled the waves, and was able to impose a crippling embargo on French trade, supplies and movements (Kennedy 1976: 123-47). Furthermore, in terms of naval training, the British were far ahead of the French, who had purged most of their naval officers during the Revolution. Between 1789 and 1792, the French navy had lost twenty-two of twenty-seven admirals and 128 of 170 captains; most had sensibly chosen exile over death when threatened by their sans-culotte crews (Blanning 1996: 196-9; Griffith 1998: 131-2; R. Harding 1999: 273-7). With attrition like this in the skilled cadres, it was no wonder that the French failed to win a single major sea battle with the British in all of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.

After Trafalgar II

British Naval strength Late 18th-Early 19th Centuries

The Naval Lessons of the Crimean War

Russia and Sweden’s Struggle for Supremacy: 1705–90

Late-1943 in the Pacific II

Crisis of the Submarine War, 1917 Part II

Late-1943 in the Pacific I

The Failure of Royal Navy Air Power 1939-40

The Napoleonic Wars at Sea