Sailing ship tactics
An explanation of naval tactics in the age of sail, from the early 1600s when sailing ships replaced oared galleys to the 1860s when steam-powered ironclad warships rendered sailing line of battle ships obsolete.
Sailing tactics
Naval tactics in the age of sail were primarily determined by the sailing and fighting qualities of the sailing warships of the time. Three factors, in particular, constrained what a sailing admiral could order his fleet to do.
- The first constraint was that, like all sailing vessels, sailing warships cannot sail directly into the wind. Most could sail not much closer than 70 degrees off the wind. So an admiral, unlike a general of the time, could only manoeuvre his fleet in some directions.
- The second constraint was that the ships of the time carried their guns in two large batteries, one on each broadside, with only a few mounted to fire directly ahead or astern. Attacking head on would give a great advantage to an enemy, whose broadside guns would bear while those of the attacker would not, resulting in raking fire.
- The third constraint was the difficultly of communicating at sea. Written communication was almost impossible in a moving fleet, while hailing was extremely difficult above the noise of wind and weather. So admirals were forced to rely on a pre-arranged set of signal flags hoisted aboard the admiral's flagship. In the smoke of battle, these were often hard or impossible to see.
The development of the line
The 15th century saw the development of the man-of-war, a truly ocean-going warship, carrying square-rigged sails that permitted tacking into the wind, and heavily armed with cannon. The man-of-war eventually rendered the galley obsolete except for operations close to shore in calm weather. With the development of the sailing man-of-war, and the beginning of the great sailing fleets capable of keeping the sea for long periods together, came the need for a new adaptation of old principles of naval tactics.
A ship which depended on the wind for its motive power could not hope to ram. It could still board, and the Spaniards did for long make it their main object to run their bow over an enemy’s sides, and invade his deck. In order to carry out this kind of attack they would naturally try to get to windward and then bear down before the wind in line abreast ship upon ship. But an opponent to leeward could always baffle this attack by edging away, and in the meantime fire with his broadside to cripple his opponent’s spars.
Experience soon showed the more intelligent sea officers of all nations, that a ship which relied on broadside fire, must present her broadside to the enemy; it was also soon seen that in order to give full play to the guns of the fleet, the ships must follow one another. Thus there arose the practice of arranging ships in the line ahead, one behind the other, instead of in line abreast as was common in galley fleets. The line ahead offers the advantage that each ship in the line can fire its broadside without fear of hitting a friendly ship.
For a time sea-officers were inclined to doubt whether order could be maintained among vessels subject to the forces of wind and tide. But in the very first years of the 16th century, a Spanish writer of the name of Alonso de Chaves argued with force that even an approach to order is superior to none – and that, given the accidents of wind and tide and the early means of injuring an enemy at a distance were nil, the advantage would rest with him who took his precautions. The truth was so obvious that it could not but be universally accepted. The line ahead then became the "line of battle".
The line of battle
The line of battle originated with the navy of the Commonwealth of England and perhaps with General at Sea Robert Blake who wrote the Sailing and Fighting Instructions of 1653. The tactic was used by both sides in the Anglo-Dutch Wars with Michiel de Ruyter of the United Provinces being the best early exponent. The excessive number of ships collected in the naval wars of the second half of the 17th century, their variety in size, and the presence in the fleets of a large proportion of pressed or hired merchant ships had led to much bad execution. But in the final battles of the First Anglo-Dutch War (1652-53) between England and the Dutch Republic, the British Parliamentary admirals enforced the formation of the line by strong measures. On the conclusion of the war, they drew up the first published code of fighting instructions. These formed the basis of the whole tactical system of the 17th and 18th centuries in naval warfare.
As the line of battle was adopted, navies began to distinguish between ships that were fit to form parts of the line in action, and the smaller ships that were not. A ship powerful enough to stand in the line of battle came to be known as a "ship of the line". The practice of sorting out ships, so as to class those fit to be in a line of battle apart from others, dates from the second half of the 17th century. Its advantages had been seen before, but the classification was not made universal till then. Sailing tactics were further developed by the treatises of the French tacticians Paul Hoste, Bigot de Morogues and Bourde de Villehuet, which developed the traditional code of practice and were all translated into other languages.
The governing principles were simple and were essentially sound. The ships were arranged in a line, in order that each should have her broadside free to fire into the enemy without running the risk of firing into her own friends.In order to remove the danger that they would collide and allow for a change of course in case of need, a space was left between them. It was fixed at two cables – that is, 200 fathoms, or 400 yards – though less room was occasionally taken.
To reduce the number of men required to handle the sails, and leave them free to fight the guns, the ships fought under reduced canvas. But it was necessary to retain the power to increase the speed of a ship rapidly. This was secured by not sheeting home one of the sails – that is to say, it was left loose, and the wind was "spilt out of it". When the vessel was required to shoot ahead it was easy to sheet the sail home, and "let all draw". The fleets would fight "on the wind" – that is to say, with the wind on the side, because they were then under better control. With the wind blowing from behind they would take the wind out of one another’s sails. When the course had to be altered, the ships turned by tacking – that is, head to wind – or by wearing – that is, stern to wind, either together or in succession.
To tack or wear a large fleet in succession was a very lengthy operation. The second ship did not tack, or wear, till she had reached the place where the first had turned, and so on, down the whole line. By tacking or wearing together the order of a fleet was reversed, the van becoming the rear, and the rear the van. It must be remembered that a fleet was divided into van, centre and rear, which kept their names even when the order was reversed. Orders were given by signals from the flagship, but as they could not always be seen by the ships in a line with her, frigates were stationed on the side of the line opposite to that facing the enemy to repeat signals.
A main object which the admirals who drafted the orders had before them was to obviate the risk that the enemy would double on one end of the line and put it between two fires. It is obvious that if two fleets, Red and Blue, are sailing, both with the wind on the right side, and the leading ship of Red comes into action with the seventh or eighth of Blue, then six or seven leading ships of Blue’s line will be free to turn and surround the head of Red’s line.
This actually happened at the Battle of Beachy Head (1690). Therefore, the orders enjoin on the admiral the strict obligation to come into action in such a way that his leading ship shall steer with the leading ship of the enemy, and his rear with the rear. The familiar expression of the British navy was "to take every man his bird".
Tactical stagnation in the mid-18th century
The regular method of fighting battles was thus set up. In itself it was founded on sound principles. As it was framed when the enemies kept in view were the Dutch, who in seamanship, strategy and tactics and gunnery were fully equal to the British, its authors were justified in prescribing the safe course. Unhappily they added the direction that a British admiral was to keep his fleet, throughout the battle, in the order in which it was begun. Therefore he could take no advantage of any disorder which might occur in the enemy’s lines.
When therefore the conflict came to be between the British and the French in the 18th century, battles between equal or approximately equal forces were for long inconclusive. The French, who had fewer ships than the British, were anxious to fight at the least possible cost, lest their fleet should be worn out by severe action, leaving Britain with an untouched balance. Therefore, they preferred to engage to leeward, a position which left them free to retreat before the wind. They allowed the British fleet to get to windward, and, when it was parallel with them and bore up before the wind to attack, they moved onwards. The attacking fleet had then to advance, not directly before the wind with its ships moving along lines perpendicular to the line attacked, but in slanting or curving lines.
The assailants would be thrown into "a bow and quarter line" – that is to say, with the bow of the second level with the after part of the first and so on from end to end. In the case of a number of ships of various powers of sailing, it was a difficult formation to maintain. The result was that the ships of the assailing line which were steering to attack the enemy’s van came into action first and were liable to be crippled in the rigging. If the same formation was to be maintained, the others were now limited to the speed of the injured vessels, and the enemy to leeward slipped away. At all times a fleet advancing from windward was liable to injury in spars, even if the leeward fleet did not deliberately aim at them. The leeward ships would be leaning away from the wind, and their shot would always have a tendency to fly high. So long as the assailant remained to windward, the ships to leeward could always slip off.
Developments during the American War of Independence
The unsatisfactory character of the accepted method of fighting battles at sea had begun to be obvious to naval officers, both French and English, by the later 18th century and began to be addressed during the numerous battles of the American War of Independence. It was clear that the only way to produce decisive results was to concentrate the attack on part of the enemy’s line.
The great French admiral Suffren condemned naval tactics as being little better than so many excuses for avoiding a real fight. He endeavoured to find a better method, by concentrating superior forces on parts of his opponent’s line in some of his actions with the British fleet in the East Indies in 1782 and 1783, such as the Battle of Sadras where Suffren tried to double the rear of the British line. But his orders were ill obeyed, his opponent Sir Edward Hughes was competent, and the quality of his fleet was not superior to the British.
Similarly, the British admiral Rodney, in the Battle of Martinique in the West Indies in 1780, endeavoured to concentrate a superior force on part of his enemy’s line by throwing a greater number of British ships on the rear of the French line. But his directions were misunderstood and not properly executed. Moreover he did not then go beyond trying to place a larger number of ships in action to windward against a smaller number to leeward by arranging them at a less distance than two-cables length. An enemy who took the simple and obvious course of closing his line could baffle the attack, and while the retreat to leeward remained open could still slip away.
Although Suffren and Rodney were great tacticians, they were both difficult men to work with who failed to explain their intentions to their subordinates.
At the Battle of the Saintes on the 12th of April 1782, Rodney was induced, by a change in the wind and the resulting disorder in the French line, to break his own line and pass through the enemy. The effect was decisive. The guns of the British ships were concentrated on a handful of French ships as the British broke through the French line in three places, and the tactical cohesion of the French fleet was destroyed. By the end of the battle, Rodney had taken the French flagship and four other ships. The successful result of this departure from the old practice of keeping the line intact throughout the battle ruined the moral authority of the orthodox system of tactics.
Clerk of Eldin
The inconclusive results of so many battles at sea excited the attentions of a Scottish gentleman, Mr Clerk of Eldin (1728-1812), in the middle of the 18th century. He began a series of speculations and calculations, which he embodied in pamphlets and distributed among naval officers. They were finally published in book form in 1790 and 1797. The hypothesis which governs all Clerk’s demonstrations is that as the British navy was superior in gunnery and seamanship to their enemy, it was in their interest to produce a melee. He advanced various ingenious suggestions for concentrating superior forces on parts of the enemy’s line – by preference on the rear, since the van must lose time in turning to its support.
They are all open to the criticism that an expert opponent could find an answer to each of them. But that must be always the case, and victory is never the fruit of a skilful movement alone, but of that superiority of skill or of moral strength which enables one combatant to forestall or to crush another by more rapid movement or greater force of blow. Clerk’s theories had at least this merit that they must infallibly tend to make battles decisive by throwing the combatants into a furious mingled strife.
Developments during the French Revolutionary & Napoleonic Wars
At the Battle of the First of June in 1794, Lord Howe ordered his fleet to steer through the enemy, and to put themselves on his line only as a means of bringing his fleet into action, and then played to produce a melee in which the individual superiority of his ships would have free play.
Throughout the wars, which lasted, with a brief interval of peace, from 1793 to 1815, British admirals like Jervis, Duncan and particularly Nelson grew constantly bolder in the method they adopted for producing the desired mêlée or pell-mell battle at the battles of Cape St. Vincent, Camperdown and Trafalgar. The most radical tactic was the head-on approach in column used by Nelson at Trafalgar, which invited a raking fire to which his own ships could not reply as they approached, but then produced a devastating raking fire as his own ships passed through the Franco-Spanish line.
It has sometimes been argued that the tactics of these British admirals were rash and would have proved disastrous if tried against more skilful opponents. But this is one of those criticisms which are of value only against those who think that there can be a magic efficacy in any particular attack, which makes its success infallible. That the tactics of British admirals of the great wars of 1793–1815 had in themselves no such virtue was amply demonstrated at the Battle of Lissa in 1811. They were justified because the reliance of admirals on the quality of their fleets was well founded. It should be borne in mind that a vessel while bearing down on an enemy’s line could not be exposed to the fire of three enemies at once when at a less distance than 950 yards, because the guns could not be trained to converge on a nearer point. The whole range of effective fire was only a thousand yards or a very little over. The chance that a ship would be dismasted and stopped before reaching the enemy’s line was small.
Influence of tactics on strategy
The great aims of a fleet in war must be to keep the coast of its own country free from attack, to secure the freedom of its trade (in effect, command of the sea), and to destroy the enemy’s fleet or confine it to port. The first and second of these aims can be attained by the successful achievement of the third – the destruction or paralysis of the hostile fleet. But till after the end of the 17th century it was thought impossible, or at least very rash, to keep the great ships out of port between September and May or June. Therefore continuous watch on an enemy by blockading his ports was beyond the power of any navy. Therefore too, as the opponent might be at sea before he could be stopped, the movements of fleets were much subordinated to the need for providing convoy to the trade. It was not till the middle of the 18th century that the continuous blockade first carried out by Sir Edward Hawke in 1758–59, and then brought to perfection by Earl St Vincent and other British admirals between 1793 and 1815, became possible.
See also
Sources and references
- Tunstall, Brian and Tracy, Nicholas (ed.). Naval Warfare in the Age of Sail. The Evolution of Fighting Tactics, 1650-1815. (London, 1990).
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
