Sea-Power and Other Studies Part 1

Sea-Power and Other Studies.

by Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge.

PREFACE

The essays collected in this volume are republished in the hope that they may be of some use to those who are interested in naval history. The aim has been to direct attention to certain historical occurrences and conditions which the author ventures to think have been often misunderstood. An endeavour has been made to show the continuity of the operation of sea-power throughout history, and the importance of recognising this at the present day.

In some cases specially relating to our navy at different periods a revision of the more commonly accepted conclusions--formed, it is believed, on imperfect knowledge--is asked for.

It is also hoped that the intimate connection between naval history in the strict sense and military history in the strict sense has been made apparent, and likewise the fact that both are in reality branches of the general history of a nation and not something altogether distinct from and outside it.

In a collection of essays on kindred subjects some repet.i.tions are inevitable, but it is believed that they will be found present only to a moderate extent in the following pages.

My nephew, Mr. J. S. C. Bridge, has very kindly seen the book through the press.

_June_ 1910.

I

SEA-POWER[1]

[Footnote 1: Written in 1899. (_Encyclopoedia_Britannica_.)]

Sea-power is a term used to indicate two distinct, though cognate things. The affinity of these two and the indiscriminate manner in which the term has been applied to each have tended to obscure its real significance. The obscurity has been deepened by the frequency with which the term has been confounded with the old phrase, 'Sovereignty of the sea,' and the still current expression, 'Command of the sea.' A discussion--etymological, or even archaeological in character--of the term must be undertaken as an introduction to the explanation of its now generally accepted meaning. It is one of those compound words in which a Teutonic and a Latin (or Romance) element are combined, and which are easily formed and become widely current when the sea is concerned.

Of such are 'sea-coast,' 'sea-forces' (the 'land- and sea-forces'

used to be a common designation of what we now call the 'Army and Navy'), 'sea-service,' 'sea-serpent,' and 'sea-officer' (now superseded by 'naval officer'). The term in one form is as old as the fifteenth century. Edward III, in commemoration of the naval victory of Sluys, coined gold 'n.o.bles' which bore on one side his effigy 'crowned, standing in a large s.h.i.+p, holding in one hand a sword and in the other a s.h.i.+eld.' An anonymous poet, who wrote in the reign of Henry VI, says of this coin:

For four things our n.o.ble showeth to me, King, s.h.i.+p, and sword, and _power_of_the_sea_.

Even in its present form the term is not of very recent date.

Grote [2] speaks of 'the conversion of Athens from a land-power into a sea-power.' In a lecture published in 1883, but probably delivered earlier, the late Sir J. R. Seeley says that 'commerce was swept out of the Mediterranean by the besom of the Turkish sea-power.'[3] The term also occurs in vol. xviii. of the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica,' published in 1885. At p. 574 of that volume (art. Persia) we are told that Themistocles was 'the founder of the Attic sea-power.' The sense in which the term is used differs in these extracts. In the first it means what we generally call a 'naval power'--that is to say, a state having a considerable navy in contradistinction to a 'military power,' a state with a considerable army but only a relatively small navy. In the last two extracts it means all the elements of the naval strength of the state referred to; and this is the meaning that is now generally, and is likely to be exclusively, attached to the term owing to the brilliant way in which it has been elucidated by Captain A. T. Mahan of the United States Navy in a series of remarkable works.[4] The double use of the term is common in German, though in that language both parts of the compound now in use are Teutonic. One instance out of many may be cited from the historian Adolf Holm.[5] He says[6] that Athens, being in possession of a good naval port, could become '_eine_bedeutende_ _Seemacht_,' i.e. an important naval power. He also says[7] that Gelon of Syracuse, besides a large army (_Heer_), had '_eine_ _bedeutende_Seemacht_,' meaning a considerable navy. The term, in the first of the two senses, is old in German, as appears from the following, extracted from Zedler's 'Grosses Universal Lexicon,' vol. x.x.xvi:[8] 'Seemachten, Seepotenzen, Latin. _summae_ _potestates_mari_potentes_.' 'Seepotenzen' is probably quite obsolete now. It is interesting as showing that German no more abhors Teuto-Latin or Teuto-Romance compounds than English. We may note, as a proof of the indeterminate meaning of the expression until his own epoch-making works had appeared, that Mahan himself in his earliest book used it in both senses. He says,[9] 'The Spanish Netherlands ceased to be a sea-power.' He alludes[10]

to the development of a nation as a 'sea-power,' and[11] to the inferiority of the Confederate States 'as a sea-power.' Also,[12]

he remarks of the war of the Spanish Succession that 'before it England was one of the sea-powers, after it she was _the_ sea-power without any second.' In all these pa.s.sages, as appears from the use of the indefinite article, what is meant is a naval power, or a state in possession of a strong navy. The other meaning of the term forms the general subject of his writings above enumerated. In his earlier works Mahan writes 'sea power' as two words; but in a published letter of the 19th February 1897, he joins them with a hyphen, and defends this formation of the term and the sense in which he uses it. We may regard him as the virtual inventor of the term in its more diffused meaning, for--even if it had been employed by earlier writers in that sense--it is he beyond all question who has given it general currency. He has made it impossible for anyone to treat of sea-power without frequent reference to his writings and conclusions.

[Footnote 2: _Hist._of_Greece_, v. p. 67, published in 1849, but with preface dated 1848.]

[Footnote 3: _Expansion_of_England_, p. 89.]

[Footnote 4: _Influence_of_Sea-power_on_History_, published 1890; _Influence_of_Sea-power_on_the_French_Revolution_and_Empire_, 2 vols. 1892; _Nelson:_the_Embodiment_of_the_Sea-power_of_Great_ _Britain_, 2 vols. 1897.]

[Footnote 5: _Griechische_Geschichte_. Berlin, 1889.]

[Footnote 6: _Ibid_. ii. p. 37.]

[Footnote 7: _Ibid_. ii. p. 91.]

[Footnote 8: Leipzig und Halle, 1743.]

[Footnote 9: _Influence_of_Sea-power_on_History_, p. 35.]

[Footnote 10: _Ibid_. p. 42.]

[Footnote 11: _Ibid_. p. 43.]

[Footnote 12: _Ibid_. p. 225.]

There is something more than mere literary interest in the fact that the term in another language was used more than two thousand years ago. Before Mahan no historian--not even one of those who specially devoted themselves to the narration of naval occurrences--had evinced a more correct appreciation of the general principles of naval warfare than Thucydides. He alludes several times to the importance of getting command of the sea. This country would have been saved some disasters and been less often in peril had British writers--taken as guides by the public--possessed the same grasp of the true principles of defence as Thucydides exhibited.

One pa.s.sage in his history is worth quoting. Brief as it is, it shows that on the subject of sea-power he was a predecessor of Mahan. In a speech in favour of prosecuting the war, which he puts into the mouth of Pericles, these words occur:-- _oi_meu_ _gar_ouch_exousiu_allaeu_autilabeiu_amachei_aemiu_de_esti_ _gae_pollae_kai_eu_uaesois_kai_kat_aepeirou_mega_gar_ _to_tes_thala.s.saes_kratos_. The last part of this extract, though often translated 'command of the sea,' or 'dominion of the sea,' really has the wider meaning of sea-power, the 'power of the sea' of the old English poet above quoted. This wider meaning should be attached to certain pa.s.sages in Herodotus,[13]

which have been generally interpreted 'commanding the sea,' or by the mere t.i.tular and honorific 'having the dominion of the sea.' One editor of Herodotus, Ch. F. Baehr, did, however, see exactly what was meant, for, with reference to the allusion to Polycrates, he says, _cla.s.se_maximum_valuit_. This is perhaps as exact a definition of sea-power as could be given in a sentence.

[Footnote 13: _Herodotus_, iii. 122 in two places; v.83.]

It is, however, impossible to give a definition which would be at the same time succinct and satisfactory. To say that 'sea-power'

means the sum-total of the various elements that go to make up the naval strength of a state would be in reality to beg the question. Mahan lays down the 'princ.i.p.al conditions affecting the sea-power of nations,' but he does not attempt to give a concise definition of it. Yet no one who has studied his works will find it difficult to understand what it indicates.

Our present task is to put readers in possession of the means of doing this. The best, indeed--as Mahan has made us see--the only effective way of attaining this object is to treat the matter historically. Whatever date we may agree to a.s.sign to the formation of the term itself, the idea--as we have seen--is as old as history.

It is not intended to give a condensed history of sea-power, but rather an a.n.a.lysis of the idea and what it contains, ill.u.s.trating this a.n.a.lysis with examples from history ancient and modern. It is important to know that it is not something which originated in the middle of the seventeenth century, and having seriously affected history in the eighteenth, ceased to have weight till Captain Mahan appeared to comment on it in the last decade of the nineteenth. With a few masterly touches Mahan, in his brief allusion to the second Punic war, has ill.u.s.trated its importance in the struggle between Rome and Carthage. What has to be shown is that the principles which he has laid down in that case, and in cases much more modern, are true and have been true always and everywhere. Until this is perceived there is much history which cannot be understood, and yet it is essential to our welfare as a maritime people that we should understand it thoroughly. Our failure to understand it has more than once brought us, if not to the verge of destruction, at any rate within a short distance of serious disaster.

SEA-POWER IN ANCIENT TIMES

The high antiquity of decisive naval campaigns is amongst the most interesting features of international conflicts. Notwithstanding the much greater frequency of land wars, the course of history has been profoundly changed more often by contests on the water.

That this has not received the notice it deserved is true, and Mahan tells us why. 'Historians generally,' he says, 'have been unfamiliar with the conditions of the sea, having as to it neither special interest nor special knowledge; and the profound determining influence of maritime strength on great issues has consequently been overlooked.' Moralising on that which might have been is admittedly a sterile process; but it is sometimes necessary to point, if only by way of ill.u.s.tration, to a possible alternative. As in modern times the fate of India and the fate of North America were determined by sea-power, so also at a very remote epoch sea-power decided whether or not h.e.l.lenic colonisation was to take root in, and h.e.l.lenic culture to dominate, Central and Northern Italy as it dominated Southern Italy, where traces of it are extant to this day. A moment's consideration will enable us to see how different the history of the world would have been had a h.e.l.lenised city grown and prospered on the Seven Hills. Before the Tarquins were driven out of Rome a Phocoean fleet was encountered (537 B.C.) off Corsica by a combined force of Etruscans and Phoenicians, and was so handled that the Phocoeans abandoned the island and settled on the coast of Lucania.[14] The enterprise of their navigators had built up for the Phoenician cities and their great off-shoot Carthage, a sea-power which enabled them to gain the practical sovereignty of the sea to the west of Sardinia and Sicily. The control of these waters was the object of prolonged and memorable struggles, for on it--as the result showed--depended the empire of the world. From very remote times the consolidation and expansion, from within outwards, of great continental states have had serious consequences for mankind when they were accompanied by the acquisition of a coast-line and the absorption of a maritime population. We shall find that the process loses none of its importance in recent years. 'The ancient empires,' says the historian of Greece, Ernst Curtius, 'as long as no foreign elements had intruded into them, had an invincible horror of the water.' When the condition, which Curtius notices in parenthesis, arose, the 'horror' disappeared. There is something highly significant in the uniformity of the efforts of a.s.syria, Egypt, Babylon, and Persia to get possession of the maritime resources of Phoenicia.

Our own immediate posterity will, perhaps, have to reckon with the results of similar efforts in our own day. It is this which gives a living interest to even the very ancient history of sea-power, and makes the study of it of great practical importance to us now. We shall see, as we go on, how the phenomena connected with it reappear with striking regularity in successive periods.

Looked at in this light, the great conflicts of former ages are full of useful, indeed necessary, instruction.

[Footnote 14: Mommsen, _Hist._Rome_, English trans., i. p. 153.]

In the first and greatest of the contests waged by the nations of the East against Europe--the Persian wars--sea-power was the governing factor. Until Persia had expanded to the sh.o.r.es of the Levant the European Greeks had little to fear from the ambition of the great king. The conquest of Egypt by Cambyses had shown how formidable that ambition could be when supported by an efficient navy. With the aid of the naval forces of the Phoenician cities the Persian invasion of Greece was rendered comparatively easy.

It was the naval contingents from Phoenicia which crushed the Ionian revolt. The expedition of Mardonius, and still more that of Datis and Artaphernes, had indicated the danger threatening Greece when the master of a great army was likewise the master of a great navy. Their defeat at Marathon was not likely to, and as a matter of fact did not, discourage the Persians from further attempts at aggression. As the advance of Cambyses into Egypt had been flanked by a fleet, so also was that of Xerxes into Greece. By the good fortune sometimes vouch-safed to a people which, owing to its obstinate opposition to, or neglect of, a wise policy, scarcely deserves it, there appeared at Athens an influential citizen who understood all that was meant by the term sea-power. Themistocles saw more clearly than any of his contemporaries that, to enable Athens to play a leading part in the h.e.l.lenic world, she needed above all things a strong navy.

'He had already in his eye the battle-field of the future.' He felt sure that the Persians would come back, and come with such forces that resistance in the open field would be out of the question. One scene of action remained--the sea. Persuaded by him the Athenians increased their navy, so that of the 271 vessels comprising the Greek fleet at Artemisium, 147 had been provided by Athens, which also sent a large reinforcement after the first action. Though no one has ever surpa.s.sed Themistocles in the faculty of correctly estimating the importance of sea-power, it was understood by Xerxes as clearly as by him that the issue of the war depended upon naval operations. The arrangements made under the Persian monarch's direction, and his very personal movements, show that this was his view. He felt, and probably expressed the feeling, exactly as--in the war of Arnerican Independence--Was.h.i.+ngton did in the words, 'whatever efforts are made by the land armies, the navy must have the casting vote in the present contest.' The decisive event was the naval action of Salamis. To have made certain of success, the Persians should have first obtained a command of the aegean, as complete for all practical purposes as the French and English had of the sea generally in the war against Russia of 1854-56. The Persian sea-power was not equal to the task. The fleet of the great king was numerically stronger than that of the Greek allies; but it has been proved many times that naval efficiency does not depend on numerical superiority alone. The choice sections of the Persian fleet were the contingents of the Ionians and Phoenicians. The former were half-hearted or disaffected; whilst the latter were, at best, not superior in skill, experience, and valour to the Greek sailors. At Salamis Greece was saved not only from the ambition and vengeance of Xerxes, but also and for many centuries from oppression by an Oriental conqueror. Persia did not succeed against the Greeks, not because she had no sea-power, but because her sea-power, artificially built up, was inferior to that which was a natural element of the vitality of her foes. Ionia was lost and Greece in the end enslaved, because the quarrels of Greeks with Greeks led to the ruin of their naval states.

The Peloponnesian was largely a naval war. The confidence of the Athenians in their sea-power had a great deal to do with its outbreak. The immediate occasion of the hostilities, which in time involved so many states, was the opportunity offered by the conflict between Corinth and Corcyra of increasing the sea-power of Athens. Hitherto the Athenian naval predominance had been virtually confined to the aegean Sea. The Corcyraean envoy, who pleaded for help at Athens, dwelt upon the advantage to be derived by the Athenians from alliance with a naval state occupying an important situation 'with respect to the western regions towards which the views of the Athenians had for some time been directed.'[15]

It was the 'weapon of her sea-power,' to adopt Mahan's phrase, that enabled Athens to maintain the great conflict in which she was engaged. Repeated invasions of her territory, the ravages of disease amongst her people, and the rising disaffection of her allies had been more than made up for by her predominance on the water. The scale of the subsequent Syracusan expedition showed how vigorous Athens still was down to the interruption of the war by the peace of Nicias. The great expedition just mentioned over-taxed her strength. Its failure brought about the ruin of the state. It was held by contemporaries, and has been held in our own day, that the Athenian defeat at Syracuse was due to the omission of the government at home to keep the force in Sicily properly supplied and reinforced. This explanation of failure is given in all ages, and should always be suspected.

The friends of unsuccessful generals and admirals always offer it, being sure of the support of the political opponents of the administration. After the despatch of the supporting expedition under Demosthenes and Eurymedon, no further great reinforcement, as Nicias admitted, was possible. The weakness of Athens was in the character of the men who swayed the popular a.s.semblies and held high commands. A people which remembered the administration of a Pericles, and yet allowed a Cleon or an Alcibiades to direct its naval and military policy, courted defeat. Nicias, notwithstanding the possession of high qualities, lacked the supreme virtue of a commander--firm resolution. He dared not face the obloquy consequent on withdrawal from an enterprise on which the popular hopes had been fixed; and therefore he allowed a reverse to be converted into an overwhelming disaster. 'The complete ruin of Athens had appeared, both to her enemies and to herself, impending and irreparable. But so astonis.h.i.+ng, so rapid, and so energetic had been her rally, that [a year after Syracuse] she was found again carrying on a terrible struggle.'[16] Nevertheless her sea-power had indeed been ruined at Syracuse. Now she could wage war only 'with impaired resources and on a purely defensive system.'

Even before Arginusae it was seen that 'superiority of nautical skill had pa.s.sed to the Peloponnesians and their allies.'[17]

[Footnote 15: Thirwall, _Hist._Greece_, iii. p. 96.]

[Footnote 16: Grote, _Hist._Greece_, v. p. 354.]

[Footnote 17: _Ibid._ p. 503.]

The great, occasionally interrupted, and prolonged contest between Rome and Carthage was a sustained effort on the part of one to gain and of the other to keep the control of the Western Mediterranean. So completely had that control been exercised by Carthage, that she had antic.i.p.ated the Spanish commercial policy in America. The Romans were precluded by treaties from trading with the Carthaginian territories in Hispania, Africa, and Sardinia. Rome, as Mommsen tells us, 'was from the first a maritime city and, in the period of its vigour, never was so foolish or so untrue to its ancient traditions as wholly to neglect its war marine and to desire to be a mere continental power.' It may be that it was l.u.s.t of wealth rather than l.u.s.t of dominion that first prompted a trial of strength with Carthage. The vision of universal empire could hardly as yet have formed itself in the imagination of a single Roman. The area of Phoenician maritime commerce was vast enough both to excite jealousy and to offer vulnerable points to the cupidity of rivals. It is probable that the modern estimate of the sea-power of Carthage is much exaggerated.

It was great by comparison, and of course overwhelmingly great when there were none but insignificant compet.i.tors to challenge it. Mommsen holds that, in the fourth and fifth centuries after the foundation of Rome, 'the two main compet.i.tors for the dominion of the Western waters' were Carthage and Syracuse. 'Carthage,'