Nelson's Battles. Nicholas Tracy
to support with limited success the independence of the smaller nations of Europe. It was only because of the economic pressure which a naval power could exert that the British Government was able to avoid a strategic stalemate. Napoleon was scathing about British subsidies which were paid to continental states to support their belligerence against France, but armaments cost vast amounts of money. Without the wealth Britain earned from overseas trade, it is doubtful whether Austria, Russia or Prussia would have been able to support the expense of resisting French power, or been induced to make the attempt. In 1804 the annual revenue of the British treasury was £40 million from which a subsidy was agreed with Austria and Russia of £1.25 million for every 100,000 soldiers put in the field against Napoleon.
Wealth earned in trade, and paid as customs dues and income taxes, was also vital to the capacity of the British Government to keep its own fleet at sea. Timber merchants, victuallers, and all the commercial concerns that were needed to sustain the navy were willing to supply their goods on the credit of Navy Board bills, but their faith in eventual repayment was based on the responsibility of government, and on their belief that the navy would hold its own.
Despite the growth of the idea in the last half of the eighteenth century that free trade was in the general interest, ‘mercantilism’, the use of tariffs and other controls to restrict the profitability of rivals’ access to international markets, was still a prevailing economic doctrine. Mercantilism had an obvious strategic role in wartime when the relative wealth of nations, not their absolute wealth, was all-important. Britain, because of her commanding leadership in the industrial revolution, had products that could hold their own in any market. In effect, a successful campaign against enemy trade by Royal Navy cruisers and by British privateers served to funnel money into the pockets of the British merchants and British insurers. The English were all the more successful at this game in the eighteenth century because the London insurance market had learnt how to make a good profit out of insuring ships and cargoes in wartime, even extending their services to enemy merchants who paid the large premiums made necessary by the activity of British privateers and the Royal Navy. British interpretation of the laws of war permitted the arrest of neutral merchant ships if they were carrying enemy-owned cargoes, or cargoes that in peacetime the enemy would only permit their own nationals to carry.
The 1793 statute ‘more effectively to prevent, during the War, all Traitorous Correspondence with, or Aid or Assistance being given to, His Majesty’s Enemies’ cut off enemy access to British insurance.48 This reduced the war profits made in the City of London, but also strengthened the ability of the Navy to deny the enemy strategic cargoes.
The Baltic states might have had little reason to wish French arms to triumph, but neither did they wish Britain to have the ability to determine to whom and at what price they could sell their commodities. British mercantilism was in conflict with that of the Baltic states, which had very deep roots. British merchants had established strong connections with the primary producers, which tended to foil any attempts by the suppliers to push prices up to a level which could affect the ability of the British navy to keep the sea in sufficient numbers. However, there was a long history of Baltic states exploiting their geography and naval forces to profit from wars fought by their neighbours. For nearly three centuries Denmark had collected a toll on trade passing the fortress of Elsinore to or from the North Sea.
To be able to profit from the wars of their neighbours, the Balts needed to be able to confront force with force. In the American Revolutionary War, under the leadership of Tsarina Catherine the Great, a League of Armed Neutrality was brought together to resist British naval and mercantile control. The objectives of the League were those of self-interest. The new idea of free trade was used as justification for a strictly mercantilist purpose.
So great had been the threat, that the British Government declared war on the Netherlands in 1780 to pre-empt their intended joining of the League. The Netherlands suffered severely in consequence, but Britain was at such a disadvantage during the American War that the Royal Navy had not possessed the power to make effective the strategy of sea control in the face of Baltic resistance. Prussia had also joined the neutral League, Austria and Russia had concluded an alliance, and Britain had had to accept on face value the ‘naturalization’ of Dutch ships under Prussian and Austrian flags. In 1780, only 671 Prussian ships passed the Sound, but in 1781 the number rose to 1,507. The measure of Britain’s failure is that between 1778 and September 1782 Riga exported 996 masts to Britain, 868 to France (with an additional twenty-nine sent via Genoa), 405 to Spain, and 1,855 to the Netherlands, only 600 of which were on the account of the Dutch navy.49 The rest were probably reshipped to French ports.
In the war against the French Revolution and Bonapartism, London was determined not to let the Baltic situation again get out of hand. Britain could not afford to let France have free access to naval stores, and had to ensure that her own supply was safe, and that her trade was profitable. Royal Navy enforcement of the blockade of supplies to the French dockyards led to a clash with a Swedish convoy in January 1798, and when in December 1799 a Danish frigate tried to prevent the search of a Danish convoy, shots were fired. This was followed by a more serious action in July 1800 when a Danish frigate and her convoy were captured after a violent exchange.50 The Danish Government, dominated by Count Bernstorff, demanded satisfaction, and the British Government sent a fleet to the Sound to underline its determination to enforce its sea control. The Danish court appealed to the mad Tsar Paul for support. It was to crush this threat that a British fleet was sent to Copenhagen, in 1801. Nelson commanded the detachment that destroyed the navy of Denmark.
Tsar Alexander I tried to stipulate in 1803 that the British surrender their concept of maritime law before Russia would join the coalition against Napoleon, but Pitt refused to concede the point. In 1812, American resentment at British arrest of neutral shipping to manipulate trade was to lead to the United States declaring war on Britain. The strategic reality, however, was that it was only because of Britain’s successful pursuit of mercantilism that Napoleon’s conquest of Europe was eventually reversed. Free trade was the growing economic policy of peace, but mercantilism was the necessary strategy for naval war.
Britain’s naval strategy could not concentrate entirely on European waters. The French empire at the end of the eighteenth century was a small remnant of what it had been when Nelson was born during the Seven Years War. Accordingly, the wars of the French Revolution and Empire were largely fought in European waters. The importance of overseas trade to Britain’s war effort remained considerable, however. Sugar from the West Indies, furs from Canada, tea, spices, silk and porcelain from Asia all provided British merchants with stock in trade which ultimately provided the taxes that supported the war effort. Accordingly, the British navy, as well as guarding Britain’s shores against invasion, and dominating the naval affairs of the Mediterranean and Baltic, had to ensure the safe passage of trade convoys from across the Atlantic, and from Asia. Fortunately, the same deployments that contained French and Spanish naval threats to home waters also served to minimise the scale of threat overseas.
Operational Strategy
The operational strategy of the Royal Navy to guard against invasion, to protect her allies from invasion, and to control trade, had been developed over the century. The hinge of the entire strategy was the Channel Fleet based on the anchorage at Spithead, off Portsmouth, with a detachment based on Plymouth and known as the Western Squadron. Unless the French were able to concentrate a decisively superior force, no French admiral could take the risk of entering the Channel before the prevailing southwesterly winds and with an undefeated Western Squadron behind them. Until the establishment of a permanent blockade force off Brest in 1800 the usual practice was to hold the Channel Fleet ready at anchor in a safe harbour where it would not be subjected to damage from weather, and its crews would be less subject to ill health brought on by poor food and water. The danger of the French sailing had to be accepted, and in any case no close blockade could prevent them getting out of Brest in the immediate aftermath of a westerly or southwesterly gale during which a blockading force would have to seek sea room. The admirals who commanded the Channel Fleet during the early years of the Revolutionary War, Howe and Bridport, favoured keeping the fleet as far east as Spithead where it could be supplied easily.
The disadvantage of Spithead was that it could be very difficult to take the