The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire: 1793-1812. Alfred Thayer Mahan
to grow greater. Spars carried away, rigging parted, sails tore. Some ships had no spare sails. This, too, was a mid-winter expedition, the squadron having sailed in December. In 1798 the preparation of Bonaparte's Egyptian expedition at Toulon met with the greatest difficulty. The naval commissioner showed much zeal and activity, and was fearless in taking upon himself responsibility; but the fleet sailed for an unknown destination almost without spare spars and rigging, and three of the thirteen were not fit for sea. Two had been condemned the year before, and on one they did not dare to put her regular battery. In January, 1801, a squadron of seven sail-of-the-line left Brest under Admiral Ganteaume, having the all-important mission of carrying a reinforcement of five thousand troops to the army in Egypt. Becoming discouraged, whether rightly or wrongly, after entering the Mediterranean, the admiral bore up for Toulon, where he anchored after being at sea twenty-six days. Here is his report of his fleet during and after this short cruise: "The 'Indivisible' had lost two topmasts and had no spare one left. The trestle-trees of the mainmast were sprung and could not support the new topmast. The 'Desaix' had sprung her bowsprit. The 'Constitution' and the 'Jean-Bart' were in the same condition as the 'Indivisible,' neither having a spare main-topmast after carrying away the others. Both the 'Formidable' and the 'Indomptable,' on the night we got under way, had an anchor break adrift. They had to cut the cable; but both had their sides stove in at the water-line, and could not be repaired at sea. Finally, all the ships, without exception, were short of rope to a disquieting extent, not having had, on leaving Brest, a single spare coil; and the rigging in place was all bad, and in a state to risk every moment the speed and safety of the ships." [49] It will be unnecessary to quote more of these mishaps, in which lack of skill and bad equipment each bore its part; nor need we try to disentangle the one cause from the other.
Enough has now been said to show the general state of the French navy in the last ten years of the eighteenth century. The time and space thus used have not been wasted, for these conditions, which continued under the empire, were as surely the chief cause of the continuous and overwhelming overthrow of that navy, as the ruin of the French and Spanish sea-power, culminating at Trafalgar, was a principal factor in the final result sealed at Waterloo. Great Britain will be seen to enter the war allied with many of the nations of Europe against France. One by one the allies drop away, until the island kingdom, with two-fifths the population of France and a disaffected Ireland, stands alone face to face with the mighty onset of the Revolution. Again and again she knits the coalitions, which are as often cut asunder by the victorious sword of the French army. Still she stands alone on the defensive, until the destruction of the combined fleets at Trafalgar, and the ascendency of her own navy, due to the immense physical loss and yet more to the moral annihilation of that of the enemy, enable her to assume the offensive in the peninsula after the Spanish uprising—an offensive based absolutely upon her control of the sea. Her presence in Portugal and Spain keeps festering that Spanish ulcer which drained the strength of Napoleon's empire. As often before, France, contending with Germany, had Spain again upon her back.
There still remains to consider briefly the state of the other navies which bore a part in the great struggle; and after that, the strategic conditions of the sea war, in its length and breadth, at the time it began.
The British navy was far from being in perfect condition; and it had no such administrative prescription upon which to fall back as France always had in the regulations and practice of Colbert and his son. In the admiralty and the dockyards, at home and abroad, there was confusion and waste, if not fraud. As is usual in representative governments, the military establishments had drooped during ten years of peace. But, although administration lacked system, and agents were neglectful or dishonest, the navy itself, though costing more than it should, remained vigorous; the possessor of actual, and yet more of reserved, strength in the genius and pursuits of the people—in a continuous tradition, which struck its roots far back in a great past—and above all, in a body of officers, veterans of the last, and some of yet earlier wars, still in the prime of life for the purposes of command, and steeped to the core in those professional habits and feelings which, when so found in the chief, transmit themselves quickly to the juniors. As the eye of the student familiar with naval history glances down the lists of admirals and captains in 1793, it recognizes at once the names of those who fought under Keppel, Rodney, and Howe, linked with those who were yet to win fame as the companions of Hood, Jervis, Nelson, and Collingwood.
To this corps of officers is to be added, doubtless, a large number of trained seamen, who, by choice, remained in the navy under the reduced peace complement; a nucleus round which could be rapidly gathered and organized all the sea-faring population fit for active service. The strength of Great Britain, however, lay in her great body of merchant seamen; and the absence of so many of these on distant voyages was always a source of embarrassment when manning a fleet in the beginning of a war. The naval service was also generally unpopular with the sailor; to whom, as to his officer, the rigid yoke of discipline was hard to bear until the neck was used to it. Hence, in the lack of any system similar to the French maritime inscription, Great Britain resorted to the press; a method which, though legally authorized, was stained in execution by a lawlessness and violence strange in a people that so loved both law and freedom. Even so, with both press-gang and free enlistment, the navy, as a whole, was always shorthanded in a great war, so that men of all nations were received and welcomed; much very bad native material was also accepted. "Consider," wrote Collingwood, "with such a fleet as we have now, how large a proportion of the crews of the ships are miscreants of every description, and capable of every crime. And when those predominate what evils may we not dread from the demoniac councils and influence of such a mass of mischief." [50]
The condition of the seamen on board left much to be desired. The pay had not been increased since the days of Charles II., although the prices of all the necessaries of life had risen thirty per cent. The exigencies of the service, combined with the fear of desertion, led to very close enforced confinement to the ship, even in home ports; men were long unable to see their families. The discipline, depending upon the character of the captain, too little defined and limited by law, varied greatly in different ships; while some were disorganized by undue leniency, in others punishment was harsh and tyrannical. On the other hand, there was a large and growing class of officers, both among the sterner and the laxer disciplinarians, who looked upon the health and well-being of the crew as the first of their duties and interests; and better sanitary results have perhaps never been reached, certainly never in proportion to the science of the day, than under Jervis, Nelson, Collingwood, and their contemporaries, in fleets engaged in the hardest, most continuous service, under conditions of monotony and isolation generally unfavorable to health. Nelson, during a cruise in which he passed two years without leaving his ship even for another, often speaks with pride, almost with exultation, of the health of his crews. After his pursuit of Villeneuve's fleet to the West Indies, he writes: "We have lost neither officer nor man by sickness since we left the Mediterranean," a period of ten weeks. The number of men in his ships must have been near seven thousand. Both French and Spaniards of the fleet he pursued were very sickly. "They landed a thousand sick at Martinique, and buried full that number during their stay." [51] Collingwood writes: "I have not let go an anchor for fifteen months, and on the first day of the year had not a sick-list in the ship—not one man." [52] And again a year later: "Yet, with all this sea-work, never getting fresh beef nor a vegetable, I have not one sick man in my ship. Tell that to Doctor——." "His flag-ship had usually eight hundred men; was, on one occasion, more than a year and a half without going into port, and during the whole of that time never had more than six, and generally only four, on her sick-list." [53] Such results show beyond dispute that the crews were well clothed, well fed, and well cared for.
Amid ship's companies of such mixed character, and suffering during the early years of the war from real and severe grievances, it was to be expected that acts of mutiny should occur. Such there were, rivalling, if not surpassing, in extent, those which have been told of the French navy. They also received intelligent guidance at the hands of a class of men, of higher educational acquirements than the average seaman, who, through drunkenness, crime, or simple good-for-nothingness,