Reexamining the Stability of British Naval Mastery 1692-1815 (I)

Marc R. DeVore

MIT Department of Political Science

Presented at the International Commission for Military History
Annual Congress, Madrid, August 26, 2005

Introduction
Britain’s naval dominance between 1692 and 1922 is an aberration in terms of international relations theory. One of the fundamental precepts of realist international relations theory is that states “balance” the power of other states. Faced with a threat to the balance of power, states form alliances, levy resources and develop the military capabilities needed to frustrate a potential hegemon.

Politics in continental Europe tend to correspond to this model. Dominant powers, such as Philip II’s Spain, Louis XIV’s France or Wilhelm II’s Germany, were counter-balanced by coalitions of threatened states. When an expansionist leader relied on new tactics or technologies, such as Frederic the Great and Napoleon did, other powers quickly copied their military innovations, preventing any state from carving out a lasting hegemony based on a military advantage. From one war to another, the relative military power of France, Prussia (later Germany), Austria and Russia shifted dramatically. For example, the Prussian victory at the Battle of Rossbach (1757) had as its successor the French victory at Jena (1806), which in turn was followed by Sedan (1870), another Prussian victory.

This pattern of continental politics has no maritime equivalent. Between 1692 and 1815 Great Britain not only maintained its position as the dominant naval power, but also improved it. By gradually expropriating its rivals’ overseas possessions and periodically defeating their fleets, Britain went from being the world’s foremost naval power in 1697 to being a global naval hegemon in 1815, before eventually accepting parity with the United States in 1922. By historic standards, the duration of Britain’s naval dominance was exceptional. Equally exceptional is the fact that for more than a century, the British Royal Navy won every decisive battle it fought. From Barfleur (1692) to Cape Passaro (1718) Quiberon Bay (1759) the Saints (1782) and finally Trafalgar (1805) British fleets won a series of annihilating victories that its enemies could not match.

The focus of this paper is to identify why Britain’s rivals’ attempts to counterbalance British naval power failed. As foreign policy realists would predict, other maritime states formed alliances, invested resources in their navies and attempted to imitate the practices and technologies of the British Royal Navy. However, these measures failed to contain or roll back British naval sea power. In this paper I argue that four factors help account for the failure of naval-balancing between 1692 and 1815.

First, the sum value of an alliance between naval powers is less than the sum of its parts.

Secondly, it is impossible to improvise a navy because of the substantial sunk costs in infrastructure and the building period necessary to out-build an existing fleet. Third, during the age of sail “vicious” and “virtuous cycles” linked naval power, mercantilist commercial policies and the training of sailors. In this context, the United Kingdom’s early development as a sea power gave it an enduring advantage over France. Fourth and finally, inferior naval powers developed defensive tactics designed to maintain a fleet in being. These tactics proved inflexible when favourable situations presented themselves for the inferior fleet to destroy all or part of their formerly superior enemies.

Theories of Sea Power

Several generations of scholars have attempted to explain the singular duration of British Naval Mastery. However, their explanations, which attribute Britain’s naval longevity to economic, cultural and geographic advantages or to the nature of the international state system, are useful but insufficient. As historian Nicholas Rodger recently observed, “All of these explanations have force, but . . . none of them looks completely persuasive by itself.”

Naval historian Alfred Thayer Mahan made the first systematic attempt to explain the rise of British sea power in his The Influence of Sea Power on History. Mahan emphasized certain specific characteristics of the United Kingdom, including insularity, an abundance of natural harbours, the “natural characteristics” of the population and the firm character and naval policies of British governments.

Leaving aside Mahan’s statements about national character and solid government, which have a distinctly nineteenth-century feel, few would argue that Britain’s island nature did not facilitate its development as a naval power. Clearly, Britain’s not facing a terrestrial threat enabled it to economize on land forces and invest in a powerful navy. However, the United Kingdom was not alone in possessing this advantage.

From the conclusion of the Anglo-French alliance in 1731 until it declared war on Revolutionary France in 1793, Spain faced no continental adversary. As historian Charles Esdaile put it, “With the Pyrenean frontier secured by France’s friendship, the only tasks that faced the Spanish army were the defence of Spain’s coasts against British raids, the blockade of Gibraltar, and the occasional punitive expedition against the Moors and the Portuguese.”

Moreover, the narrowness of the Straits of Dover and the English Channel dictate that the United Kingdom cannot defend itself with a purely “blue water” naval strategy. Napoleon and other would-be invaders of Britain recognized that they only needed a narrow window of opportunity to cross the Straits of Dover. Therefore, although insularity doubtlessly favoured British naval mastery, Britain could not entirely neglect investing in land forces or fortifications.

Re-examining British naval mastery in the 1970s, historian Paul Kennedy attributed the longevity of British naval power to the strength of the British economy. For Kennedy,“Britain’s naval rise and fall has been so closely bound up with her economic rise and fall that it is impossible to understand the former without a close examination of the latter.”  Britain was Europe’s principle sea power as long as it possessed the world’s most advanced economy.
Although Britain’s precocious economic development and sophisticated financial markets were a necessary prerequisite for British naval power, this advantage mattered more during the conflicts in the middle of the eighteenth century than those before or after. Under King Louis XIV, France invested more in its navy than Great Britain between 1661 and 1692. Later, following the French Revolution, France again mustered substantial resources for its naval struggle with Britain.

Even during the mid-eighteenth century naval wars, Britain’s financial advantage assured Britain of nothing more than parity or a narrow margin of superiority over the next two largest navies, the French and Spanish. At the beginning of the War of Jenkin’s Ear in 1739, the United Kingdom could muster 80 ships of the line against Spain’s 41 and France’s approximately 50. By 1780, when France and Spain once again faced Britain in the War for American Independence, they could muster a combined fleet of 126 ships of the line to Britain’s 117. Although the British economy enabled the United Kingdom to sustain itself as Europe’s primary naval power, Britain could not maintain larger numbers of warships than all of its potential enemies combined.

Most recently, political scientist John Mearsheimer argued that British sea power endured as long as it did because other powers never invested the resources necessary to challenge it. Mearsheimer claims that states are obsessed with their own security and view land power as more threatening than sea power. Extrapolating from these premises, Mearsheimer contends that Europe’s great powers were overwhelmingly concerned about the relative balance of land power. From their perspective “the most powerful states possess[ed] the most formidable armies. ” Because continental European states did not feel threatened by British sea power, they neither invested resources nor formed coalitions to challenge it.

Although logical, Mearsheimer’s argument is contradicted by the actions of French, Spanish and occasionally Dutch statesmen, which clearly indicate that they felt threatened by British naval dominance. Writing in 1765, the onetime French Minister of War and the Navy, the Duke of Choiseul, identified the Britain as France’s principal enemy and Spain as its essential ally. According to Choiseul, “England is and will always be the declared enemy of your [Louis XV’s] power and your state . . . . you must realize that it will take centuries before wewill be able to conclude a lasting peace with this state, which aims to conquer the four corners of the globe.”

To counter British power, Choiseul counselled his king that, “You must attach yourself more and more to your natural ally, Spain . . . and if the His Catholic Majesty [of Spain] is obliged or determined to go to war with England . . . I dare say that you must, no matter the state of your Kingdom, go to war for Spain. ”

Spanish statesmen likewise saw Britain as their primary enemy. Being a scattered empire, with possessions on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Oceans, secure lines of communication were vital to Spain’s survival as a great power.  Throughout the eighteenth century, British sea power constituted the chief threat to Spain’s empire. This premise guided the actions of Spanish statesmen, including Cardinal Julio Alberoni and King Carlos III, who invested heavily in the Spanish Navy, defences for Spanish possessions in the Americas and Spain’s diplomatic alliance with France.

In sum, while historians and political scientists identified several factors underpinning Britain’s long naval pre-eminence, they have not yet offered a definitive account for why Britain was able to triumph over maritime rivals during seven sharply contested wars between 1688 and 1815. Despite Britain’s advanced economy and insular position, its enemies managed to muster roughly equivalent naval forces on numerous occasions at either the tactical or the strategic level. How Britain overcame these combinations is the subject of this paper.

Alliances

With the exception of the opening years of the War of the League of Augsburg, when the French navy was the world’s largest, only coalitions of maritime powers stood a chance of balancing British naval power. Contrary to Mearsheimer’s expectations, this was frequently attempted. Other powers viewed Britain’s naval superiority and maritime empire as a threat. The core anti-British axis involved France and Spain, who joined forces against Britain during six wars. The Dutch attached themselves to this alliance from 1780 to 1783, at the end of the War for American Revolution and again, somewhat reluctantly, during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Even Russia, which built a substantial navy in the early eighteenth century and rebuilt it towards the end of that century, attempted to balance British power when possible. It spearheaded efforts to create Leagues of Armed Neutrality in 1780 and 1800 to deny Britain essential imports of naval stores from the Baltic, which included timber for masts and hemp for rigging. Later, following the Russo-French Peace of Tilsit in 1807, Russia openly joined an anti-British coalition.

These anti-British coalitions periodically brought overwhelming force to bear either tactically or strategically. In 1740, France and Spain collectively deployed 36 ships of the line to the Caribbean, temporarily giving them a crushing advantage over the British, who only possessed ten ships of the line. In 1779, Spain and France deployed 66 ships of the line in the English Channel to Britain’s 30 to 39. And in 1805, the year of Trafalgar, France and Spain deployed possessed 102 ships of the line to 83 British ships capable of going to sea.

Even after defeat at Trafalger, Napoleon confidently expected that his maritime alliances with Spain and Russia would balance the British Royal Navy. In April 1808, he confidently wrote his naval minister that in addition to 64 French ships of the line, he counted on 25 Spanish, 12 Russian and 10 Dutch warships to give him a total of 110 ships of the line, which would “permit many [strategic] combinations against . . . Ireland, the West Indies, Surinam, Brazil, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt or Sicily. ” Despite the formidable, indeed superior forces, that these coalitions periodically brought to bear, they nevertheless failed to deal a single significant blow to British sea power.

Why were naval coalitions so ineffective? Military coalitions are notoriously prone to friction. Divergent political aims, miscommunications between military commanders and the natural inclination to shoulder the minimum burden, yet reap the maximum benefit of a collective endeavour have bedevilled many a military alliance. However, under the right circumstances and with good military and political leaders, coalitions of land powers can achieve a high degree of efficiency. The joint campaigns of the Austrian, Dutch and British armies under the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Savoy are a case in point. The collaboration of the Duke of Wellington and Field Marshal Blücher during the Waterloo Campaign are another example of successful military cooperation.

Unlike coalition armies, during the age of sail, the combined power of allied navies never equalled the sum value of their parts. The main reason for this was communications, both tactical and strategic. At a tactical level, the inability to admirals to communicate complex instructions to their subordinates put a high premium on admirals and their subordinates understanding how each other thought and fought. This was easier to accomplish in the familiar confines of a national navy than a coalition fleet. At a strategic level, it was immensely difficult for allied fleets link up and operate conjointly before the invention of either telegraph or radio.

Tactically, ships at sea could only communicate with one another by flags. Although signalling systems improved constantly, flags conveyed limited amounts information and were frequently obscured by smoke or fog. Given the inability of admirals to communicate with their ships, the capacity of a fleet to manoeuvre and fight depended on the familiarity of an admiral with his ship captains and his willingness to delegate authority to them. As the French naval theorist Captain Audibert Ramatuelle wrote in 1802, “I am convinced they we cannot hope for good results from a naval battle unless [an admiral can count on] all subordinate leaders react the same way when presented with fleeting events. For this, an admiral must have complete confidence in his captains. ” More recently, historian Nicholas Rodger has argued that during the eighteenth century effective naval commanders “recognized that an admiral had very limited possibilities of controlling his squadron, especially once firing began, and much would perforce have to be left to the captains. ”

The degree of mutual understanding that must exist between an admiral and his subordinates so that a fleet to perform effectively was difficult to achieve in a multi-national naval force, where admirals and captains had not served together before. For this reason, multi-national fleets manoeuvred and fought more cumbrously than national fleets.

Oftentimes, the loss of efficiency entailed by combining national squadrons into multi­national fleets outweighed the increase in power gained by the addition of ships. Considerations of this nature were certainly on the mind of French Navy Minister Admiral Decrès when he wrote to Emperor Napoleon before Trafalgar that, “I lay myself at Your feet to implore  You not to associate the Spanish ships with Your Squadrons in their operations . . . . Your majesty desires that with such an assembly an operation should be undertaken which is very difficult in itself and which will become the more so from the elements composing the Fleet. ”

In practice, coalition fleets performed inadequately throughout the period between 1688 and 1815. At the 1690 Battle of Beachy Head, the Dutch and English segments of the Anglo­Dutch combined fleet became separated, enabling the French fleet to maul the Dutch squadron. Later, at the 1744 Battle of Toulon, a gap opened between the Spanish and French squadrons of their combined fleets, permitting the British fleet to concentrate on the Spanish division. Finally, at the Battles of El Ferrol and Trafalgar, the combined Franco-Spanish fleet manoeuvred clumsily in the face of smaller and more homogeneous British fleets.

At a strategic level, multi-national operations were perhaps even more difficult to organize than at the tactical level. Before the advent of instantaneous communications and maritime re­supply, it was extremely difficult to plan for the juncture at sea and joint operations of distinct national fleets. More often than not, fleets failed to rendez-vous or joint operations collapsed due to logistical factors.

For example, in 1740 neutral France planned to annihilate the British fleet in the Caribbean by launching a surprise attack in conjunction with the Spanish Havana Squadron. To this end, Admiral the Marquis d’Antin sailed for the Caribbean with 22 ships of the line and less than six months of victuals. Upon arriving in the Caribbean, he attempted to unite his fleet with Spain’s 14 ships of the line under Admiral Don Rodrigo de Torres to strike a decisive blow against Britain’s 10 ships of the line. However, when d’Antin arrived, Torres’ ships were refitting and re-supplying in Havana and thoroughly unprepared for immediate action. Moreover, Torres had orders to accompany a Spanish treasure fleet through Florida Straits and had not heard of d’Antin’s mission. By the time Torres’ fleet had gone to sea and accompanied the treasure fleet, it was too late for d’Antin and Torres to strike their blow. D’Antin’s provisions ran out, obliging him to return to France in January 1741. Thus, poor coordination cost France and Spain the chance to deal a mortal blow to part of the British Navy.

A similar event occurred in 1779, when Spain joined France in fighting for American independence. France and Spain planned to unite their principal fleets, dominate the English Channel and launch an amphibious assault on Portsmouth, crippling British naval power. Although the Spanish fleet was ready quite early, French dockyards were unable to refit the French fleet until July and even then the fleet remained under supplied and unsanitary, such that by August the operation had to be called off.

In sum, although naval alliances could periodically muster superior forces to their British opponents, the inherent difficulties of planning multinational naval operations in an age when strategic communications were virtually inexistent and tactical communications limited prevented these alliances from ever living up to their potential. Although the United Kingdom frequently found itself alone, confronting an alliance of other maritime states, the structural penalties incurred by combining individual national navies into allied fleets favoured Britain in the long run.

 

To be continued