Life of a general-at-sea
Northcote Parkinson
Robert Blake, General-at-Sea J. R. Powell (Collins £5) British Admirals of the Eighteenth Century: Tactics in Battle John Creswell (Allen and Unwin £4.80) When Mr J. R. Powell edited The Letters of Robert Blake for the Navy Records Society in 1937 he sought, as he explained, " to provide the material upon which a definitive life of Robert Blake can be based." Now there comes from the same author, thirty-five years later, the book which is needed; and our gratitude to Mr. Powell is mixed with a little surprise that so great an admiral should have had no full-scale biography until now. This valuable book fairly makes amends to a sea officer whose career can be fairly compared with that of Sir Francis Drake. Blake's first letter in the N.R.S. volume is dated October, 1644, a circumstance which leaves us with all too little information about his earlier life. Born in 1598, he came of a shipowning family in Bridgwater, took his degree at Oxford, served with the Parliamentary forces in the Civil War and was appointed one of the generals-at-sea in 1649. How he came to be chosen is still guesswork but as from this point his career is well documented and Covered, indeed, by his own correspondence.
Blake's reputation was first made by his defeat of the Dutch in September, 1752. A tittle unfortunately for his reputation he was then defeated by Tromp in November off Dungeness. There followed a period of reorganisation, after which Blake put to sea again and fought Tromp, Ruyter and Evertson off Portland. In three days of fighting the Dutch were put to flight but Blake himself came ashore wounded and sick. He recovered just in time to resume command during the Battle of the Gabard (2 June, 1653) at which the Dutch were routed with ten ships destroyed and eleven taken. There followed a further action in which Tromp was killed, leaving England "the supreme naval power in Europe." Blake died at sea after a final victory over the Spanish and was buried in Westminster Abbey, whence his body was removed at the Restoration.
The author of this latest and most complete biography writes, in conclusion that
England was fortunate in having his flexible and adaptable mind to grapple with the new problem which confronted the navy . . The broadside had made obsolete the old tactic of line abreast . . . . The answer, slowly and gradually evolved, was that of line ahead, or, to ,put it more accurately, to come into action on a Thielief 'bearing parallel to the line of the enemy . . . This priceless gift they handed on to future generations of English seamen.
This gift is now fully discussed in John Creswell's book. It is Captain Creswell's object to re-examine some accepted ideas about 18th century sea-battles, and especially the idea, current since the time of Mahan, that the sea officers who inherited Blake's practice of the line ahead adhered to it too rigidly and would have done better to follow some more flexible plan. The author of this latest book concludes that the 17th century tactical theory was perfectly sound and that there would have been no point in amending it. How could there be any progress in theory, he asks, when there was no change in ships or weapons? If this view were accepted we must be left wondering, with the author, "why it was that British fleets so often overcame their French opponents, when the latter were of roughly equal strength . .
Why indeed? As for the novelty of Nelson's tactics at Trafalgar, Captain Creswell fully realises that the same tactics would 'have been quite unjustified against a less demoralised opponent and were never, in fact, made the basis for any future tactical doctrine. At the end of this book, nevertheless, one is left with the feeling that some important questions have still to be answered and that some other questions — perhaps more important — have still to be asked.
It is the sad fact that historians of naval Warfare have been too obsessed from the beginning by tactical diagrams. These afford what may seem an easy explanation of how battles have been won and lost. The truth is, however, that war is not merely a matter of tactics. It is to a far greater extent a matter of fighting; and this is the side of the story which scholars have mostly chosen to ignore. Blake did not owe his victories as much to tactical innovation as to the fact that the Dutch Ships and gunnery were inferior to his. Why? No one troubles to do the needed research. We want to know more about the cannon and how they were mounted, What was the gun-drill and what was the equipment. What was the composition of the gunpowder? What discipline was used to combine accuracy with the high rate of fire? Why did the Dutch tend to fire too high? Mr. Powell gives due credit to George Monck, who certainly deserved it, and adds (p. 226) that Richard Deane was an artillery expert.” If so, we might hope to learn what his contribution was. But this lies in the field of technology, which remains largely unexplored. There are too many problems still unsolved.
Oddly enough, the question which Captam Creswell asks — why did the British so often beat their French opponents? — is the one most easily answered. Until 1793 it does not really arise, the French being More successful than the British history books will usually admit; successful enough, for instance, to establish the independence of what then became the United States. Then came the Revolution in which the French rid themselves of their senior officers and were defeated for want of them. As from that time they were so consistently blockaded that their ships had little chance to gain operational efficiency. A newly-commissioned man-of-war needed, in those days, about three months of training at sea before being regarded as ready for battle. From 1793 to 1815 the French very rarely had time to complete their 'working-up' exercises before they found themselves in action. But even this handicap was only a part of the story, for there were tremendous improvements in British gunnery before the French wars began and more again before they ended. It would be wrong to conclude that the tactics pursued were unimportant, but the British manoeuvres were based on the assumption that any British man-of-war should be able to capture a French ship of equal force. This was the basic fact, known to both sides, and no tactical theory could be of comparable importance. Admirals are often given too much credit for some masterly decision made in the course of the action and far too little credit for the months or years of work which they (or others) had spent in training the fleet beforehand. Battles were often won in this way before the fleets were in sight of each other and won sometimes (who knows?) by officers who were not in the battle at all.
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