Abstract
After 1815 not just the British Navy, but all the leading navies, had to undergo a process of accelerating change that would be more rapid, radical and extensive than anything experienced since the end of the fifteenth century, when sailing ships armed with cannon began to replace galleys rowed by slaves and fought by soldiers. Marder, admittedly, exaggerated when he wrote that ‘Up to the middle of the nineteenth century.… ships, guns and the science of naval warfare were pretty much what they had been in the seventeenth centurv.’3
A modem navy is a totally untried weapon of warfare. It is the resultant of a host of more or less conflicting theories of attack and defence (The Times, 21 September 1889).1
Since the introduction of steam vessels I have never seen a clean deck, or a Captain who, when he calls on me, did not look like a sweep (Admiral of the F1eet Sir George Cockbum).2
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Notes and References
Quoted in Arthur J. Marder, British Naval Policy 1880–1905 (London: Putnam, 1940), p. 8.
Quoted in Michael Lewis, The Navy in Transition 1814–1864 (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1965), p. 203. Cockburn was First Naval Lord from 1841 to 1846.
Daniel A. Baugh, ‘The Eighteenth Century Navy as a National Institution’, in J. R. Hill (ed.), The Oxford Illustrated History of the Royal Navy (Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 124.
David Brown, ‘Wood, Sail and Cannonballs to Steel, Steam, and Shells, 1815–1895’, in J. R. Hill (ed.), The Oxford Illustrated History of the Royal Navy (Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 202–9.
Ibid., pp. 206–9; Kenneth J. Hagan (ed.), In Peace and War (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978), see David F. Long, Chapter 4, p. 65, and Geoffrey S. Smith, Chapter 5, p. 99.
Basil Greenhill and Ann Giffard, The British Assault on Finland 1854–1855 (London: Conway Maritime Press, 1988), pp. 45–6, 52, 107, 110–11, and 117.
See also Basil Greenhill and Ann Giffard, Steam, Politics and Patronage (London: Conway Maritime Press, 1994), pp. 13–23, 216–27, for the role of steam in the Black Sea.
James Cable, Gunboat Diplomacy 1919–1991 (London: Macmillan, 1994), p. 161.
Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (London: Allen Lane, 1976), p. 193.
Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988), p. 151.
Richard Hough, Admirals in Collision (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1959), p. 52.
Lawrence James, The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (London: Little, Brown, 1994), p. 337.
‘There was a time, under the former Monarchy, when the art of naval construction shone so brilliantly in France… that the English adopted as types or models several of the ships they captured from us… since then … our naval architecture seems to be afflicted by an incurable impotence.’ Jean Randier, La Royale: l’éperon el la cuirasse (Paris: Éditions de la Cité, 1972), p. 57.
Rémi Monaque, ‘L’Amiral Aube, Ses Idées, Son Action’, in Hervé Coutau-Bégarie (ed.), L’Évolution de la Pensée Navale IV (Paris: Economica, 1994), p. 142.
‘To destroy England’s fleet would be to humble her pride, but the way to make war on England is to sink the ships that bring the English their bread, meat and cotton and enable their workers to earn their living.’ Quoted in Capitaine de frégate Marie-Raymond Ceiller, ‘Les Idées Stratégiques en France de 1870 à 1914: La Jeune école’, in Hervé Coutau-Bégarie (ed.), L’Évolution de la Pensée Navale (Paris: Fondation pour les Études de Défense Nationale, 1990), passim.
‘To destroy England’s fleet would be to humble her pride, but the way to make war on England is to sink the ships that bring the English their bread, meat and cotton and enable their workers to earn their living.’ Quoted in Capitaine de frégate Marie-Raymond Ceiller, ‘Les Idées Stratégiques en France de 1870 à 1914: La Jeune école’, in Hervé Coutau-Bégarie (ed.), L’Évolution de la Pensée Navale (Paris: Fondation pour les Études de Défense Nationale, 1990), passim.
Frank J. Merli, ‘The Confederate Navy’, in Hagan, In Peace and War, op. cit., pp. 130–31; Dudley W. Knox, A History of the United States Navy (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1936), pp. 285, 295, 318.
Captain A. T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History 1660–1783 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1940) (first edn 1890), pp. v–vi.
Ruddock F. Mackay, Fisher of Kiberstone (Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 216.
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© 1998 James Cable
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Cable, J. (1998). Instrumental Change. In: The Political Influence of Naval Force in History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333995037_7
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