The 'military revolution' afloat: The era of the Anglo-Dutch wars and the transition to modern warfare at sea

War in History

Volumn 4, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 123-149

  Palmer, M A J ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 37449007028     PISSN: 09683445     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/096834459700400201     Document Type: Article

References (79)

1. See M. Roberts, The Military Revolution, 1560-1660 (Belfast, Marjory Boyd, 1956)
2. G. Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500-1800 (Cambridge, CU Press, 1988), pp. 1-5
3. and C.J. Rogers, ed., The Military Revolution Debate: Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe (Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1995)
4. See also G. Clark, War and Society in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, CUP, 1958), pp. 69-75
5. and J.U. Nef, War and Human Progress: An Essay on the Rise of Industrial Civilization (Cambridge, MA, Harvard UP, 1950), pp. 159-65
6. Notably absent from Roberts's essay, The Military Revolution, is any substantive discussion of the impact of that 'revolution' at sea. Roberts made only a few, passing references to navies. The same is true of Rogers's The Military Revolution Debate
7. William Monson, an early seventeenth-century English commentator, noted that, unlike military formations ashore, formations of ships were restricted in their manoeuvres by the wind, uneven sailing quality, and the problem of collision. Quoted in J.S. Corbett, ed., Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 (London, Navy Records Society, 1905), p. 76. J. Creswell, British Admirals of the Eighteenth Century: Tactics in Battle (Hamden, CT, Archon, 1972), p. 37, noted that fleets, unlike armies, could not take advantage of naturally strong defensive positions or concealment offered by covering terrain or natural obstacles. Nor were fleets susceptible to having their flanks rolled up as were armies
8. Parker, while he notes that there were generals who rejected the notion that there was anything to be learned from the military history of the ancients, stresses the continuity in land warfare; The Military Revolution, pp. 6-7
9. Extracts from Smith's work appear as Appendix A in G. Penn, Memorials of the Professional Life and Times of Sir William Penn, Knt.: Admiral and General of the Fleet, during the Interregnum; Admiral, and Commissioner of the Admiralty and the Navy, after the Restoration, 1644-1670 (2 vols, London, James Duncan, 1833), I, pp. 541-7
10. See also J. Smith, A Sea Grammar, in P.L. Barbour, ed., The Complete Works of Captain John Smith, 1580-1631 (Chapel Hill, NC, and London, Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1986), III, 3: 54-121
11. W.G. Perrin, ed., Boteler's Dialogues (London, Navy Records Society, 1929), p. 307
12. Ships deployed in a close-hauled, single line-ahead formation would be arranged in a single file, with about 300 ft between ships, sailing as close as possible to the wind. Against ships so arranged, an opposing fleet could not gain an upwind position, although it might have begun the battle with one
13. me siècle, De Ruyter à Suffren (Paris, L. Fournier, 1911), pp. 9-28
14. M. Lewis, The Navy of Britain: A Historical Portrait (London, George Allen & Unwin, 1948), pp. 481-2
15. R.F. Weigley, The Age of Battles: The Quest for Decisive Warfare from Breitenfeld to Waterloo (Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana UP, 1991), 221
16. A.T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783, 12th edn (Boston, Little Brown, 1918), p. 116
17. W. Maltby, 'Politics, Professionalism, and the Evolution of Sailing-Ship Tactics, 1650-1714', in John A. Lynn, ed., Tools of War: Instruments, Ideas, and Institutions of Warfare, 1445-1871 (Urbana and Chicago, Univ. of Illinois Press, 1990), p. 69
18. Op. cit
19. Weigley, The Age of Battles, 145-7
20. Lewis, The Navy of Britain, p. 450
21. Maltby, 'Politics, Professionalism, and the Evolution of Sailing-Ship Tactics', p. 59
22. Op. cit., 68. Maltby also wrote: 'the Dutch Wars offered no incontrovertible support to any tactical doctrine'; op. cit., p. 59
23. M. Howard, 'Afterword', in Lynn, Tools of War, p. 240
24. This was not so evident in the Third Anglo-Dutch War. See below
25. Corbett, Fighting Instructions, pp. 96-7, notes: 'In both official and unofficial reports of the actions of this time an almost superstitious reverence is shown in avoiding tactical details.' I would suggest that the problem may have been more an inability, rather than an unwillingness, to recount details
26. The Dutch generally had more divisions than did the English. These divisions usually reflected Dutch battle doctrine, but at times they reflected the divided political landscape of Holland. See R.E.J. Weber, "The Introduction of the Single Line-ahead as a Battle Formation by the Dutch, 1665-1666', Mariner's Mirror LXXIII (Feb. 1987), pp. 7-8
27. The English fleet was, of course, commanded by army officers who are often referred to by their army ranks, e.g. General Monck. They are also sometimes listed as generals-at-sea, or by equivalent naval rank, e.g. admiral. The rank associated with the squadron organization above is thus idealized
28. S.R. Gardiner and C.T. Atkinson, eds, Letters and Papers Relating to the First Dutch War (6 vols, London, Navy Records Society, 1899-1930) I, p. 321
29. Op. cit., v, pp. 73-75
30. W.L. Clowes, The Royal Navy: A History from the Earliest Times to the Present (7 vols, London; Sampson Low, Marston, 1897-1903) II, pp. 151-2
31. and J.R. Bruijn, The Dutch Navy of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Columbia, SC, Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1993), pp. 70-1
32. Even dreadnoughts, in fact, had to fire their guns broadside to maximize their firepower. Only the development of effective surface-to-surface missiles beginning in the 1960s solved the problem of movement and combat in naval warfare
33. Weber, 'The Single Line-ahead Battle Formation', 7-8
34. C.R. Boxer, trans. and ed., The Journal of Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp, Anno 1639 (Cambridge, CUP, 1930), p. 209. According to another account, the Dutch fought in a line-ahead: 'that in following each other they were but two Ships length a sunder, and then they looft [luffed] up to give their broad sides, one was cleere of the other'; op. cit., p. 39. Weber, 'The Single Line-ahead Battle Formation', pp. 5-6, points out that Tromp's ships were too close together for his formation to be considered a workable line-ahead battle formation. Under normal circumstances, the risk of collision would be so great as to preclude any type of manoeuvre, short of sailing on ahead. The Dutch resorted to similar tactics on other occasions, but always with very small groups of ships, and generally as a purely defensive measure, as at Dunkirk, or as an initial phase to a battle intended to weaken an opponent before the Dutch resorted to group mêlée tactics to finish off an enemy
35. Boxer, The Journal of Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp, pp. 60-8. Parker, The Military Revolution, p. 100, citing Boxer, states that it was at the Downs that the line-ahead was first used in European waters. But Boxer is clear on the matter. The Dutch used the line at Dunkirk. The Downs was a chaotic, pell-mell affair fought in a heavy fog, during which many of the Spanish crews abandoned their ships after driving them aground
36. B. Tunstall, Naval Warfare in the Age of Sail: The Evolution of Fighting Tactics, 1650-1815, ed. N. Tracy (Annapolis, MD, Naval Institute Press, 1990), pp. 18-19, 19n.
37. Gardiner and Atkinson, First Dutch War, iv, pp. 18, 34-8, 262-6
38. Gardiner and Atkinson, First Dutch War, v, pp. 83-4
39. Quoted in Tunstall, Naval Warfare in the Age of Sail, p. 36
40. According to an eyewitness account, the English and Dutch lines at the battle of Lowestoft (June 1665) extended for 5 leagues, about 15 nautical miles. See Penn, Sir William Penn, II, p. 350
41. These same additional instructions directed, as was mentioned above, that in good weather the proper distance between ships in line was a half-cable's length. In the Royal Navy, a cable's length measured 608 ft; in the US Navy 720 ft
42. P.H. Colomb, Naval Warfare: Its Ruling Principles and Practice Historically Treated, 2nd edn (London, W.H. Allen, 1895), p. 91. One of the line-ahead's attributes important to Colomb, but not mentioned by other naval historians, was the ability of fleets so deployed to avoid fireships, vessels filled with incendiaries that the upwind fleet could set loose and allow to drift down on an opposing fleet. Ships deployed in a line could easily avoid these infernos. Colomb, op. cit., pp. 91-2, tracked the decline in the number of Royal Navy fireships into the eighteenth century and contrasts these figures with the rise in heavy line-of-battleships as the line-ahead became the formation of choice. Theodore Ropp, War in the Modern World, rev. edn (New York, Collier, 1962), p. 70, termed the line-ahead 'the most effective formation for delivering broadsides'
43. The Journal of Edward Mountagu, First Earl of Sandwich: Admiral and General at Sea, 1659-1665, ed. R.C. Anderson (London, Navy Records Society, 1929), p. 222
44. Samuel Pepys diary entry, 4July 1666, in R. Latham and W. Matthews, eds, The Diary of Samuel Pepys (9 vols, Berkeley and Los Angeles, Univ. of California Press, 1970-6) VII, pp. 193-5. Latham and Matthews comment in a note that the English did in fact fight in a line at the Four Days Battle and that the Dutch did not. But the Dutch, as will be discussed below, did fight in the line while the English fleet was extremely disordered, so much so that perhaps it seemed to Penn that the fleet had not fought in its usual order
45. For a discussion of Tromp's use of linear tactics, see Gardiner and Atkinson, First Dutch War, p. 20, and Bruijn, The Dutch Navy, pp. 71-2
46. De Guiche's account is quoted in Corbett, Fighting Instructions, pp. 118-19
47. H.H. Rowen, John de Witt, Grand Pensionary of Holland, 1625-1672 (Princeton, NJ, Princeton UP, 1978), pp. 579-80
48. Bruijn, The Dutch Navy, pp. 88-9; Castex, De Ruyter à Suffren, p. 16
49. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power, pp. 70-4
50. C.G. Reynolds, Command of the Sea: The History and Strategy of Maritime Empires (New York, William Morrow, 1974), pp. 177-8
51. I. Murat, Colbert (Charlottesville, Univ. Press of Virginia, 1984), pp. 129-50, 171-96
52. A. Trout, Jean-Baptiste Colbert (Boston, Twayne, 1978), pp. 135-78
53. Jacques Mordal, Vingt-cinq siècles de guerre sur mer (Paris, Robert Laffont, 1959), p. 102
54. For a discussion of French tactics, see Geoffrey Symcox, The Crisis of French Sea Power, 1688-1697: From the Guerre d'Escadre to the Guerre de Course (The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), pp. 55-67
55. Clowes, The Royal Navy, ii, p. 326
56. The full title was, in the fashion of the time, L'Art des armées navales ou Traité des evolutions navales, qui contient des règles utiles aux officiers généraux, et particuliers d'une armée navale; avec des exemples itez de ce qui s'est passé de considérable sur la mer depuis cinquante ans
57. Hoste's work is often cited, e.g. by Mahan and Clowes, as a primary source for accounts of the battles of the Anglo-Dutch Wars
58. For discussion of Hoste's work, see Gorbett, The Fighting Instructions, pp. 179-85
59. and the Robisons, A History of Naval Tactics, pp. 215-24. The Robisons provide fairly extensive excerpts from Hoste's book, but Tunstall's discussion is the more pertinent. Castex, De Rvyter à Suffren, 23-8, is exceedingly critical of Hoste's work and views the naval chaplain as a principal villain in the chain of events that crippled the development of effective naval tactics. From a French perspective, Castex may be right. For there is irony in the fact that the French, who were so much more scientific and thoughtful in their approach to things naval - ship construction, tactics, professional study for their officers - nevertheless lost a disproportionate share of their battles fought against the seemingly amateurish British
60. C.L. Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenthr Century Philosophers (New Haven, CT, Yale UP, 1932), p. 34
61. F.L. Robertson, The Evolution of Naval Armament (London, Harold T. Storey, 1968), p. 37. The two books were often printed and bound together
62. Becker, The Heavenly City, p. 135
63. Quoted in Castex, De Ruyter à Suffren, p. 23
64. See Parker, The Military Revolution, pp. 1-2, 20-3. In his research in French military records, Geoffrey Symcox discovered several other French naval works written and published in the late seventeenth century, including a short handbook published by Tourville himself in 1693. See Symcox, The Crisis in French Sea Power, p. 66n
65. Azar Gat, The Origins of Military Thought from the Enlightenment to Clausewitz (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1989), p. 26. While it is true that Hoste's was the only such work to deal with naval matters, historians of this era, as well as of the eighteenth century, when there were many more works published on naval subjects, routinely ignore naval authors and, unintentionally to be sure, give the impression that no such treatises existed. For example, Gat's excellent work makes no mention of naval writers. likewise, R.F. Weigley, in his The Age of Battles, commits a generous amount of space to the discussion of naval matters, but fails to mention the work of Hoste or later naval theoreticians, whereas writers on land warfare figure prominently
66. Creswell, British Admirals of the Eighteenth Century, passim, and esp. pp. 253-6
67. R.A. Preston and S.F. Wise, Men in Arms: A History of Warfare and Its Interrelationships with Western Society (New York, Praeger, 1970), pp. 140-1. Ropp, War in the Modern World, p. 70, noted: 'Naval tactics were as stereotyped as those of eighteenth-century armies.'
68. For a discussion of the evolution of European military tactics, see Hans Delbrück, History of the Art of Warfare III: The Dawn of Modern Warfare, trans. W.J. Renfroe, Jr (Lincoln and London, Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1990), pp. 269-85
69. See also D. Chandler, Marlborough as Military Commander, pp. 91-3
70. the same author's The Campaigns of Napoleon (New York: Macmillan, 1966), pp. 344-50
71. and G.E. Rothenberg, The Art of Warfare in the Age of Napoleon (London, Batsford, 1977), pp. 67-70
72. Late in the eighteenth century the French adopted mixed formations that used both column and lines, and enjoyed tactical dominance over most of the other European armies for almost twenty years. The English clung to their linear tactics and, when these were properly handled, demonstrated that they could beat the French. Without a doubt, late-eighteenth-century French tactics gave their field commanders an excellent mix of firepower and mobility. But the manoeuvres of French field commanders were not dependent on the direction of the wind, and well-trained troops could be deployed quickly from column into line and from line into column, or into a square. Until the advent of steam power, men-of-war could not, whatever the state of training or the tactical skill and professionalism of naval officers, achieve similar battlefield dexterity
73. J.A. Lynn, 'En Avant! The Origins of the Revolutionary Attack', in Tools of War, p. 162
74. See e.g. P.M. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (New York: Scribner's, 1976), pp. 78-9
75. Even after the impressive English victory at the Gabbard in the First Anglo-Dutch War, there had been at least some observers who noted that the scale of victory ought to have been greater. An anonymous writer noted: 'If the English fleet had borne up close after the Dutch when they first retired, it's thought they might have endangered to have totally ruined them'; see Gardiner and Atkinson, First Anglo-Dutch War v, p. 101
76. See e.g. Michael Lewis's discussion of 'the rival schools' in The Navy of Britain, pp. 455-533
77. John Jervis to George Jackson, 31 July 1778, in J.S. Tucker, Memoirs of Admiral the Right Honourable the Earl of St. Vincent (London, R. Bentley, 1844) I, pp. 67-8. Creswell, British Admirals of the Eighteenth Century, p. 39n., notes that Tucker 'bowdlerized' Jervis's actual letter. So too did E.L.P. Brenton, Life and Correspondence of John, Earl of St. Vincent (2 vols, London, Henry Colburn, 1838) I, p. 59, who likewise excised the word 'bitches'
78. For a fuller discussion, see M.A.J. Palmer, 'Lord Nelson: Master of Command', Naval War College Review 41 (winter 1988), XLI, pp. 105-16
79. For a discussion of the decline of the French navy during the revolution, see J. Martray, La Destruction de la marine française par la Révolution (Paris, France-Empire, 1988)