The formal tactical systems, combined with the various technical improvements in shipbuilding and the gradual professionalism of the officer corps of the European navies in general and the Royal Navy in particular, did not receive many tests during the middle years of the Eighteenth Century. There was only one large, formal battle during the War of the Austrian Succession, and one other during the Seven Year's War - and each of them produced a very interesting series of courts-martial.
The first of these was the Battle of Toulon, fought on 11 February, 1744, which produced the largest number of courts-martial in Royal Navy history, including those of the admiral commanding the British fleet and another of his second-in-command. Though there were a great many personal factors involved in the extraordinary ill will that this battle generated, there was also involved a difference in philosophy between the two commanders, one a member of the unfettered school, the other of the formal.
The admiral in question was Thomas Matthews, a commander fairly experienced in combat (considering the dearth of wars during the preceding thirty years), but 65 years old, in poor health, and notoriously quarrelsome with his subordinates. His second-in-command was ViceAdmiral Richard Lestock, also an experienced commander, but also elderly (62), also in poor health, and also quarrelsome. The two were on bad terms from the start - Lestock had served under Matthews a few years before, and Matthews made it clear he considered Lestock unfit for high command.
In early 1744 England was at war with Spain, but not yet with France. The Spanish fleet under Navarro, however, was sheltering in the French harbor of Toulon, and the French admiral, de Court, had been given instructions to cooperate with the Spanish fleet, "seek out the British ships... and attack them...". But de Court (who, by the way, was 78 - "an all-time record", as Creswell points out) was also told that he was to act"as auxiliaries to the Spanish" in order to maintain the fiction that France and England were not at war. He was to provoke the British into firing first, at which point the French fleet could legitimately act in self-defense.
In any case, neither side bothered much with formalities. They were both out for a fight, and they got one.
The allied fleet cleared Toulon on the 8th and 9th of February, and the British fleet, anchored about twenty miles away, began to follow them, the fleets sighting one another on the 10th. Matthews was afraid de Court was trying to cover the retreat of Navarro's fleet to a Spanish port, and was determined not to let them get away. Matthews, having the weather gage, made the signal for battle and steered for the enemy, but it was too late in the day and the battle was postponed to till the 11th.
Matthews, on the night of the 8th, also had an encounter with Lestock, his subordinate. Lestock called on Matthews to ask the Admiral if he had any instructions for him - not an unreasonable action, one would think - and Matthews replied that he did not, and wished Lestock a good evening. Apparently this piece of rude incivility was the last straw as far as
In any case, Lestock's rear squadron was tardy during the maneuvers leading up to the battle, and fell behind considerably during the pursuit of the 10th, when (according to Lestock) he kept his squadron under easy sail in order that they more easily sort themselves into the prearranged order of battle. When Matthews called off the pursuit at nightfall of the 11th, he made the signal for the fleet to heave to, assuming Lestock would bring his rear squadron up to the rest of the fleet before obeying the signal.
Lestock had decided, in the face of the rude provocation from his chief, to obey only the letter of the Fighting Instructions, and the letter said that ships to windward would heave-to first. His squadron was to windward, and he hove them to, increasing the separation between himself and Matthews, a separation that was further increased by a shift of wind later in the night, possibly aided by the current. In the morning, the British rear squadron was at least seven miles distant from the main body. The winds were light, and it would be hours before Lestock could rejoin.
Matthews' main object was still to prevent the Spanish fleet from withdrawing, which the Spanish (it appears) had no real intention of doing. He made the signal for attack in "line abreast" (meaning, in reality, line of bearing), intending to match his van squadron against the van of the enemy in the stereotyped manner of the Fighting Instructions, a maneuver that would give Lestock's squadron time to come up and aid him by attacking the enemy rear.
But de Court did not cooperate. Instead of heaving to to await the British attack, he kept his French van and center squadrons sailing onward - perhaps he was being careful not to be in a position in which he'd have to fire the first shot. Matthews became concerned that the allies would escape, or that alternately they would be able to stretch ahead and double his van, and so decided to force the issue by attacking the Spanish flagship, more or less in the center of the rear squadron, with his own and his second ship astern. The result was a situation in which the Spanish rear squadron became stretched out, and became the center of attack for the British center, while the British van had to cope with the overwhelming numbers of the French center and van.
The Battle of Toulon shows very clearly what could happen when the textbook simplicity of formal 18th Century warfare, as epitomised by Rooke's Fighting instructions, encountered the fluid reality of warfare at sea. The British fleet became separated by a combination of circumstance and the pigheadedness of a pair of admirals. Although this created a dangerous situation tailor-made for exploitation by the allies, the decisions of the muddle-headed de Court resulted in further confusion and a disorganization in the Spanish rear. In the end, formal tactics were thrown to the winds by Matthews, who in the bold tradition of the unfettered school substituted instead the tactics of pure aggression.
In this he was seconded by Rear-Admiral Rowley, commanding the British van. Rowley was faced with the problem of facing eighteen French and Spanish ships with ten British ones, and decided to emulate his chief by attacking de Court's flagship, fortunately a smaller vessel than his own. It was lucky that not all of the British van chose to engage - the leading three ships were so outnumbered they hung back in a curve off to windward, luckily situated so as to best prevent doubling. These three captains were later court-martialled and cashiered for not being aggressive enough; but the Admiralty later realized its mistake and reinstated them.
The battle (Fig. 1) as such was muddled, some of the British captains proving gu nshy. Only one Spanish ship surrendered, and only the leading ships of Lestock's rear squadron fired on the enemy, all at long range. Eventually de Court realized his rear squadron was in difficulty and tacked his fleet together to bring all the French ships into combat. The English conformed and the fleets drew apart, the English having to abandon their prize.
Due to the reversal of the British order Lestock was now in the lead. His behavior reversed as well, and he began to behave aggressively, intending to renew the action. It was Matthews who called off the pursuit, on the 13th.
Eventually there were 11 courts-martial, mostly of subordinate captains accused of not doing their utmost to "take, burn, sink or otherwise destroy" the enemy. Lestock showed himself willing to alter ships' logs in his defense, and to suborn witnesses; he was eventually acquitted by a jury composed of friends who shared his political views, and who furthermore could not bring themselves to condemn a man for disobeying the letter of his written instructions.
It was two years before Matthews himself was brought to trial. Among the accusations were that he did not obey his own Fighting Instructions, in that his van did not engage the enemy van; but the court-martial agreed that since the French did not wait for the English a van-to-van attack was impossible. He was acquitted also on the charge that his mode of attack, contrary to the Fighting Instructions, exposed his van squadron unnecessarily. But he was found guilty of recklessness in his single-handed attack on the enemy flagship, in that such an action constituted an abnegation of his duty to retain control over his squadron and fleet. He was also convicted of not pursuing an enemy aggressively enough in the days following the battle, and was dismissed from the service.
The results of the court-martial are interesting from a number of points of view. They show that the nineteen officers on the court-martial, all admirals or senior post-captains, did not accept the Fighting Instructions as an absolute model to be followed rigidly in all cases. They understood that, due to de Court's refusal to wait for the British attack, an irregular battle was inevitable. As far as interpretations of the Fighting Instructions went, the officers showed themselves flexible.
Furthermore, Matthews was not, as has often been alleged, tried for failure to obey the "Permanent Fighting Instructions" as issued by the Admiralty-as we have seen, there was no such thing- but for failure to obey his own Fighting Instructions which he had issued to his fleet as a model for their conduct - quite a different thing altogether.
Aside from the odor resulting from Lestock's manner of conducting his defense, there were some unusual repercussions from the courts-martial resulting from the Battle of Toulon. This was because one of the officers serving on Matthews' court-martial board was a British officer named John Byng.
Byng was the son of a successful and well-regarded British admiral of the Dutch Wars. He was plump, pleasant, brave in battle, and the worst kind of muddle-headed fool. He was to be shot by a firing squad on the quarterdeck of his own flagship in 1757, as a result of his actions at the Battle of Minorca on 20 May, 1756.
Byng was sent with 13 sail of the line to relieve the garrison of Port Mahon on the Balearic Islands, which had been driven into St. Philip's Castle by a large French army. Byng, on the 19th, was in the process of arranging to land reinforcements at the Castle when a French fleet of 12 sail of the line appeared, and Byng shaped his course in pursuit.
As at Toulon, the pursuit was called off on account of darkness, and resumed the next day. Byng and the French both formed close-hauled lines, and were approaching each other on opposite tacks, Byng on the starboard tack, and the French on the port tack, each trying to gain the weather gage. Byng in the end succeeded, aided by a shift in the wind.
Apparently one of the principles that the muddled Byng had absorbed somewhere in his career was the fact that lines of battle, before engaging, should be equal in length. He therefore ordered one of his smallest 50-gun ships to haul out of line so that he could engage 12 ships to 12. This was the formal school carried to the point of absurdity, and turned upside down to boot - Byng never realized that it was the admiral with the inferior force who was supposed to equalize the line by stretching it, and not the admiral with the superior force, who was only playing into the hands of the enemy by keeping one of his ships out of the fight.
Byng then proceeded from foolishness to blunder. The two fleets were both close-hauled on opposite tacks, about six points from the wind. According to the tactics of the formal school as given in the Fighting Instructions, the windward fleet (in this case the British) would first take a parallel course to the enemy, tack together when "our rear is abreast of the enemy's van", and then descend as a body on the enemy.
Byng gave the order to tack without first altering course to parallel the enemy. (Fig. 2) This resulted in the British bearing down on the enemy in line ahead, rather than in line of bearing - in other words, one ship following the other, rather than all together. The van would engage long before the center or rear, and unless the British altered their head-to-tail formation the center and rear would not engage at all.
French actions contributed to the confusion. Admiral La Galissoniere saw the British bearing down on him at a strange angle relative to his own formation, and thought the British were trying to concentrate on his rear. He threw his sails aback and stopped dead in the water. This made the British line overshoot. Byng ordered a steeper angle of approach and hoisted the signal for battle in line ahead.
The first five ships engaged the French smartly and succeeded in roughly handling the enemy van, but the rear ships never got close. The sixth ship, Intrepid, had its foretopmast shot away. This unbalanced the delicate relationship between the various sails and Intrepid swung uncontrollably up into the wind, where it hung more or less in irons for the rest of the battle. Intrepid's next astern hauled into the wind to pass Intrepid to windward. This was a major error, for to pass to leeward, between Intrepid and the enemy, would have brought the ships of the rear into action sooner or later. As it was, the next astern found it didn't have enough room to pass Intrepid and also hung itself in irons, unable to advance. The rest of the British line followed suit and hove themselves to until they could figure out what was going on.
Now was the moment for Byng to lead by personal example and lead his flagship down toward the enemy. The British line was already severely disordered and there was very little Byng could do to sort things out - if he was to prevent his van from being crushed by the whole French fleet he would have to act quickly.
Unfortunately the example of Admiral Matthews seems to have sprung to his mind. He apparently thought Matthews had been dismissed for disordering his line in the attack - which was not the case - and so kept the signal for attack in line ahead flying throughout the battle. Attack in line ahead was by now impossible, and none of his captains had enough initiative to attack on their own.
The British rear never engaged, though they did fire off a lot of ammunition at long range and to no effect. Byng's van was saved in the end by the French, whose admiral, satisfied with a drawn battle, ordered a retreat.
Byng could now have retrieved things somewhat by ordering a pursuit - he would have been justified by the Fighting Instructions, which authorized a general chase once the enemy fleet had been driven off - but Byng apparently considered he did not have sufficient superiority over the enemy to conduct a pursuit and failed to give the order.
Since the Articles of War did not authorize admirals being punished for stupidity, Byng was court-martialled for not doing his utmost to sink or destroy the enemy, was found guilty in an atmosphere much charged with politics, and was shot when George II failed to recommend clemency, as apparently the court-martial board intended. He has thus gone down in history as the admiral "shot to encourage the others".
The battles of Toulon and Minorca were the two major formal actions of the mid-18th Century, and provided two contrary examples for British officers to consider. Matthews had been dismissed for being overly aggressive and disregarding at least some of the prescriptions of his own Fighting Instructions; and Byng was shot for not being aggressive enough and for using the Fighting Instructions in a stereotyped and unimaginative way. just what, the officers must have wondered, did the Admiralty want?
Conservative officers would also have noticed that both courts-martial were charged with politics, and concluded that the best lesson herein learned was not to attack at all unless one's back was already covered at Whitehall. The more imaginative officers may have concluded that what was lacking was a better system for beating the enemy, as opposed to not being beaten. With both the British and their opponents having adopted the line of battle, and with the heavy emphasis being given to the defensive by the stress placed on maintaining one's own line, both sides were in effect surrendering initiative to the enemy, and doing so simultaneously. The British were no longer sole possessors of the superior system they had used with such success against the Dutch, and now that everyone was using it the tactics seemed to cancel one another out. The results were a number of inconclusive, and hence unsatisfactory, battles.
It was clear that there were a number of things needed. First, a swifter and more decisive manner of bringing the enemy into action. The system of bringing large fleets into battle in regular order was too time-consuming, and could all too often go wrong. Second, something had to be done about the matter of pursuing the enemy. With the formal system now in use, even if the enemy was beaten and ordered a retirement, he usually got away with all his ships. Some manner of taking a more decisive advantage of a beaten foe had to be devised. Thirdly, what was clearly needed were some senior officers with better tactical brains than such admirals as Byng and Matthews, and who could imaginatively use and improve upon such systems as now existed.
The solutions to the first two problems would take some time. Fortunately the answer to the third was already at hand.
A History of Sailing Tactics in the Age of Fighting Sail Part II
- Battle of Toulon and Minorca
Additional Instructions, Anson, and Hawke
Morogues, Villehuet, and Ushant
Signal Reform
DeGrasse and Suffern
A History of Sailing Tactics in the Age of Fighting Sail Part I
A History of Sailing Tactics in the Age of Fighting Sail Part III
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