BOOK DEPARTMENT
Save money by placing your orders for all books, whether professional or not, with the Institute Book Department, which will supply any obtainable naval, professional, or scientific book, and not only save you money but will save the purchaser a great deal of inconvenience by having one source of supply. Address Secretary-Treasurer, U. S. Naval Institute, Annapolis, Maryland.
THE BRITISH NAVY IN ADVERSITY. A STUDY OF THE WAR OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE.
By Captain W. M. James, C.B., R.N., Longmans, Green and Co. $8.50.
Reviewed by Lieutenant Commander T. L. Gatch, U. S. Navy.
A beautiful book, written in the downright, piquant style that becomes a captain of the Royal Navy. To have compressed within 428 pages an account of the naval operations of the War of American Independence would in itself have been admirable: but the book includes also a sufficient account of the events leading up to the war; of the state of the French and the British navies; and gives a continuing history of the political and military background so that the naval events are woven in properly.
The reason the British Navy was in adversity is clearly depicted at the outset in a chapter entitled “The Dissipation of a Legacy”—the legacy, of course, being the navy bequeathed England by the first Pitt and the Seven Years’ War. The retrogression was stayed for four years by Hawke as First Lord, but even Hawke wrote: “The late peace establishment will not keep up four score ships of the line in perfect repair, especially when it is clipped ten or twelve thousand every year by the Minister of the Extraordinary estimates.” Hawke was succeeded in 1771 by Lord Sandwich:
Too infamous to have a friend,
Too bad for bad men to commend.
Thereafter, what with corruption, favoritism, incompetency, and indifference, things soon became pitiful so that when the war broke the British Navy was rotten. So quickly will such things at the top penetrate downwards. Press gangs worked incessantly to keep up with desertions; time after time the best officers declined commands “on account of the strong feeling amongst naval officers that Sandwich would not treat them fairly.”
While such was the state of the English, how were the French? The French Navy was decidedly on the up-grade. They were building rapidly; they kept the ships in good repair; their yards were well stored. Moreover, they were thinking. For instance, in 1775 a plan was submitted recommending: “In each ship should be embarked a table five feet square, on which compass cards should be drawn for the moving of little models of ships made for the purpose, so that young officers can learn tactical maneuvers.” But there was a bad flaw in their thinking, for the book they accepted as authoritative on naval tactics said: “On the sea, the fleet which is the less numerous of the two, being able to maneuver with greater facility, without separating, can often escape by taking advantage of night, or a change of wind. There are no longer decisive actions at sea.” Nevertheless, even bad thinking is better than no thinking at all. Till Rodney broke the line at the Battle of the Saints in 1782 there were no decisive actions at sea. The independence of the American Colonies was assured by a brush off the capes in which scarcely anyone was hurt; the allied French and Spanish fleet sailed up the channel, and again nobody was hurt. Apparently the French theorists were right. But in the Battle of the Saints five French ships of the line—including their finest, with the commander-in-chief—were captured. That battle was decisive, and that notwithstanding the defeated French were not followed up properly, and the capture of the Ville de Paris was made by Hood and almost despite Rodney. A change had come over British tactics.
This brings us to the inexplicable omission of this book—the name of John Clerk is not mentioned. Now John Clerk, Scotchman, civilian, landlubber, filled his pockets with toy ships, used a coffee house table as a game board, and did considerable thinking. He was, we might say, the first war college. The final result was a book published in 1790 that was to have a great effect. However, a manuscript copy of the first part of the book was given to Rodney in 1779 just before he sailed for the West Indies. A mutual friend asked Rodney what he thought of the book. Rodney replied : “I will show you what is my opinion, the first time I meet an enemy fleet.” He did not, because of the ambiguity of the signal book and the resulting failure of his captains to understand Clerk’s radical plan for a concentration on the rear of the enemy instead of the time honored and prescribed ship to ship. Of course, this failure on the part of the captains must finally come home to Rodney for it was certainly his business to indoctrinate his officers. Rodney was lamentably weak in that which contributed so much to Nelson’s greatness—it was utterly beyond his powers to create “a band of brothers.” But the second time Rodney met the French was at the Battle of the Saints. Breaking the enemy’s line in just such a way as Rodney did it, was one of the maneuvers particularly described in Clerk’s manuscript.
There is a trivial error in the book that strikes an American eye strangely: the author states that Andre was shot as a spy. Shades of Nathan Hale!
The volume is illustrated with twenty- eight “diagrammatic sketches” of naval battles, representing important situations in the actions as they would have appeared to an observer in an airplane a mile or so to the southward. These are pleasing and fill a place not occupied by the now more conventional plans. However, the text would be easier to follow in many places were there an inset or separate plan showing the fleet tracks. There are also fifteen maps, but a map of the west coast of Europe is missed. A feature that should certainly become general practice in such works is that of entering dates in the margin throughout.
Captain James’ narrative of the immortal campaign in India waters between Suffren and Hughes is masterly. It is hard to see how this campaign could be covered in fewer words. The author sets a high standard.
FORESTS AND SEA POWER. Harvard Economic Study XXIX.
By Robert G. Albion, Assistant Professor of History, Princeton University.
Harvard University Press. 1926. $5.00.
Reviewed by Rear Admiral Elliot Snow, (CC) U. S. Navy. (Retired)
In 1906 the publication of a series of economic studies was instituted under the direction of the department of economics of Harvard University. Up to the year 1925 twenty-eight of these studies had been published by the press of that university. In 1926 an economic study of unusual import to naval historians and to naval officers interested in logistics was published under the title, Forests and Sea Power. For this contribution its author, Assistant Professor R. G. Albion, Ph.D., of the department of history, Princeton University, was awarded the David A. Wells’ prize of the year 1924-25.
We have had our timber problem related to sea power as late as our entry into the World War in 1917. The effect of forests on sea power was shown then in the hasty and abortive attempts on the part of the U.S.S. Shipping Board, Emergency Fleet Corporation, to build a fleet of wooden vessels out of green timber. Had the researches of Professor Albion been made, results published, read, understood and digested ten years earlier, it is a fair question to ask—“Would the millions and millions of dollars swallowed up in the wooden shipbuilding program have been saved and our present war taxes lessened accordingly ?” Later even than 1917 the relation of forests to sea power to relatively few that the economic effect of the Limitation Treaty was felt even in the forests of British Burmah, and international adjustments had to be made for timber still uncut in those forests which was destined to be worked into the battle cruisers and battleships we scrapped as a result of that treaty.
Even as these words are being set down the relation of forests to the visible emblem of our sea power in 1812—“Old Ironsides” —is manifesting itself. Live oak cut during our Civil War is today being salvaged from old, almost forgotten timber basins at the Air Station, Pensacola, Florida, that the “Nest of Our Navy” may survive the ravages of time. There is live oak timber on Blythe and Blackbeard Islands off the coast of Georgia, purchased by the government shortly after the Revolutionary War; but it is difficult and expensive to get out. Why not set these aside as a national reserve instead of trying to sell them—for which a project is now on foot?
Our lack of mulberry forests may some time mean that the supply of silk for powder bags and parachutes may be cut off!
The “Broad Arrow”—the mark of the British Admiralty—it is said may be dimly deciphered today on the trunks of some of the grand old trees in our Maine forests. The idea of extending this mark to the colonies in America dates back to Elizabethan voyages. The author’s quotation from Hakluyt’s Divers Voyages Touching the Discovery of America shows that near the end of the Sixteenth Century a Virginia gentleman wrote:
If we may enjoy any large Territorie of apt style we might so use the matter as we should not depend on Estlande for flax, pitch, tarre, masts & etc.
Clearly, our over-sea timber trade, then as now, offers material advantages to the countries interested, though the era of wooden ship-building has passed.
The chapter on “England’s Diminishing Woodlands” commences with a description of England’s woodlands and deals with her domestic problems incident upon cutting and transporting timber and then turns “to various economic factors which worked against our adequate supply of naval timber.” Finally, in this chapter “the history of English forest policy and its relation to the oak supply” is traced. Masting in modern parlance was always a strategic material for England ; oak first became a critical material and ultimately developed also into a strategic one just as mercury has with the United States. (A critical material is one of which the supply for war purposes is adequate if carefully watched and conserved; a material is strategic when the needed war supply is dependent upon importations and hence is the last analysis on “the freedom of the seas.”) Studies being made at the Army Industrial College show thirty-one strategic materials for the United States.
The chapter devoted to “Contracts, Conservatism, and Corruption” is illuminating. Its revelations show that human nature is ever the same. And, since it has not changed since the history of the human race began to be recorded, who can have the real conviction “There will be no more wars”; who can say truly, “Wars and their corrupting influences are a thing of the past!” When England came to grips with Napoleon and was seriously threatened with invasion, the great “Timber Trusts” were not loathe to squeeze the nation and nearly bring disaster on it by cutting off the entire supply of timber. Lord Kitchener’s tactics with the leaders of a strike projected among some of the biscuit makers of England would have been wholesome treatment for the timber trust magnates. In our own times during the World War it was no uncommon experience for those in a position to know, to find profiteers, large and small, willing to traffic on their country’s needs. In our next war, if it be of sufficient magnitude, the leaders of the nation may be constrained to requisition not only material, but labor and capital as well.
The logging operations made the subject of chapter four, show transportation to have been difficult, long as to time and distance and very expensive. “The voyage,” writes Professor Albion when dealing with the trips down the smaller rivers debouching into the Baltic, “occupied several months and in the case of masts from the Dneiper or oak from Kazan and Bohemia, sometimes two years. These rafts, often formed of over a thousand logs, and sufficient to load several timber ships, were veritable floating islands, sometimes carrying several families with their huts, cattle, horses, poultry, and wagons.” This statement will dispel the notion that Americans “invented” the large log rafts to be seen today in the Pacific Ocean coming from the timber forests bordering on Puget Sound. In the Clark collection of marine prints (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) there is a print of “The Great American Raft,” built at Quebec in 1824 and taken to Liverpool by Captain McKellar of the Royal Navy. The logs composing this raft were then disassembled from their ship form and sold as units. The reason why that exploit occasioned so much comment in its day may be ascribed to the fact that man’s achievements fall quickly into oblivion, unless they are constantly resurrected by such histories as this.
The value of “carrying a big stick” and shaking it at the right time was shown in our own times when President Roosevelt plainly and emphatically told the German Ambassador of his intention to send our fleet to Venezuela to checkmate the Kaiser at the time he was covertly testing the Monroe Doctrine. England, we see from the author’s account, used a similar gesture in 1657 when again drawn into the Baltic question. Sweden, as the author records, threatened by a powerful coalition, asked for an English fleet. Cromwell saw that “if Sweden should be crushed, Denmark would become too powerfully intrenched at the Sound” and might interrupt her naval supply of oak and mastings. “The Protector issued a warrant for the equipment of twenty ships in order to offset the Dutch. The Dutch thereupon decided to keep its fleet at home, the English ships also remained in port.” Let the readers now “intend” their minds on the fuel oil problem of today and find an analogy. “There is no substitute for militant freedom. The issues of the world must be met fairly and squarely.”
The effects of the “hand to mouth” policy which curtailed the personnel and held tight purse strings on material is dealt with in the chapter on “Penury and the Dutch Wars.” The fear of a modern analogy of this is shown today by the comments in official circles, and in the informed press, on the 5-5-3 ratio. The responsible heads of our Navy know better than it is possible for any other body of men to know, what the Limitation of Armament Treaty means, and how best to meet its terms. The author aptly states:
The skill of an admiral or the valor of captains and crews might compensate for the lack of a few ships, but if the difference were too great even a Nelson [and permit the interpolation a Jones, Hull, Farragut, Dewey] with the bravest and ablest men afloat could not secure victory.
A policy not unlike that spoken of by Professor Albion of “getting everything to sea that would float” was experienced by us during the Spanish-American War, when harbor tugs and unseaworthy ferry boats were armed to lull the fears of cities on our Atlantic seaboard. It is not, of course, intended to imply that such craft have no place in the sea power of the United States. They do have a distinct place and value as sea power is not measured alone by naval vessels.
England’s world-wide search for a supply of naval timber because of her exclusion from European markets (due to Napoleon’s influence) is dealt with in Chapter IX. In the succeeding chapter—the last—the author closes the book with a circumstantial and detailed account of the material condition of Lord Nelson’s fleet at Trafalgar. It carries the terse but quite correct caption “Trafalgar and Dry Rot.” The wording used by Professor Albion at the close of this interesting book is typical of his easy style.
Just outside of the dock yard at Portsmouth one can see, at low tide, a few oak logs once cut for ship timber. At high tide the logs are completely hidden from view and the clatter of riveters working on some cruiser in the yard proclaims that the Royal Navy is finally free from the anxiety of the days when forest had a bearing on sea power.
Coming now to a few brief comments before summing up the worth of the book from a military standpoint. The idea entertained by the author that “today battles are won by designers almost as much as by admirals” (meaning of course the entire combatant personnel) is not likely to be accepted by naval experts. There is even greater premium to be placed today on logistics, strategy and tactics, than in the day of Nelson. The Limitation of Armament Treaty has undoubtedly greatly increased the task of the designers but in no greater degree than is the task of handling fleets made up of the complicated combinations of aircraft, surface and submarine units of today.
The loss of the Royal George in 1782, due to the rotten condition of her framing and structure as a whole (“anatomy,” as Professor Albion calls it), is in the main quite correctly described by him. This ill-fated vessel which for long sailed with but a “thin sheet of copper between the souls on board and eternity,” did not capsize nor blow up as shown by more than one contemporary print. The author however in saying “her bottom fell out” must have been writing metaphorically or perhaps paraphrasing someone’s emphatic but loose form of condemnation. (The bottom of any ship, be it steel or wooden, could scarcely fall out against the hydrostatic pressure to which it is subjected.) After the catastrophe in which Admiral Kempenfeldt, several hundred of his officers and crew and some women and children, lost their lives, many were the attempts made by those higher up to evade the responsibility. For years and years Cowper’s poem clouded the facts and saved the Admiralty Board many awkward questions.
The speed of construction of the 74’s accomplished under pressure as recorded by the author is simply astounding and were not the statements based upon recorded data, one might be inclined to doubt the performance. Ten days from the laying of the keel to the launching of a line-of-battle ship is a performance at least comparable with the building of the U. S. Destroyer Ward in twenty-six days. The building performances for frigates look much more reasonable. The Algerine Crescent (36) built at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, (under insistent orders from George Washington) for tribute to Hasan Bashaw in 1796-7 was laid down, erected, and equipped ready for sailing in about nine months. Had a delay not arisen in obtaining her battery, the full time would have been about six months only.
About one hundred and twenty-five vessels are mentioned in one way or another throughout the book and among them are to be found the British frigate America (49) of 1740, and our first line-of-battle ship (74) of 1783, both built at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The latter was built under the supervision of Paul Jones and was designed, I believe, by Joshua Humphreys. The line-of-battle ship America suffered an ignominious fate from dry rot and was broken up a few years after being presented to Louis XVI. Those who read Forests and Sea Power will better understand that after all a twenty-year period for the restoration of “Old Ironsides” is not a short one and does not evidence neglect on the part of those who for several generations past have restored and cared for her.
The almost complete absence of illustrations in Forests and Sea Power will be noted and possibly made the subject of regretful comment by those whose attention is gained more easily through looking at portraits of famous personages, scanning views of sea fights like that at Copenhagen, or examining cuts of ships that have taken part in “making history” as did the Queen Charlotte at Algiers in August, 1819—all mentioned in Professor Albion’s account.
A very complete bibliography preceded by short critical sketches of each source is given; also several statistical tables, the units of which where stated “in loads” can easily be converted into current dry measures of cubic feet on the basis of “fifty cubic feet to a load.” A quotation of “an act for encouraging the Importation of Naval Stores from Her Majesty’s Plantations in America” (3 and 4 Anne, Cap. 10) is among the appendices.
The scope of the book has been summarized in the opening paragraph of this review; comments have been made here and there and some analogies between conditions which confront us now and England in the past; it remains to say a closing word as to the value of Forests and Sea Power. It is worthy of being most carefully read and discussed in the courses at the War and Industrial Colleges of the Army and Navy, and as well by civilians who are or may be charged with governmental administration. It ought to be found in the libraries of the Navy Department which include those aboard ship and at the United States Naval Academy. The reading course for midshipmen at the last named institution might well embrace this book to the end that the future leaders of our Navy and those who hereafter go back from the Navy into civilian pursuits may learn something of the reciprocal effects of industry and sea power. It is hoped the author will some day turn his attention to “The Influence of Sea Power on the Farming Industry.” The author’s present contribution to the economic studies of Harvard University on the far reaching effect of sea power places him in the forerank of naval historians.