RODNEY AND THE SAINTES
The Royal Navy had reformers other than Howe and Kempenfelt. One of the most curious and contradictory was George Brydges Rodney. He had a good and innovative tactical mind and was a tenacious fighter, having distinguished himself in the Seven Years War, but he was also somewhat elderly (61 at the time of his first command in the American War, 1779), and afflicted with "gout and gravel", which required him to spend the entirety of his night action with the Spanish in bed, relaying instructions to the fleet through his flag captain.
In combat he tended to be unsteady, issuing commands and then countermanding them shortly thereafter. He also had a testy temper, and preferred to adopt an authoritarian manner with his subordinates, rather than unbending to the point of trying to make them understand what his tactical innovations were and how he intended them to be carried out. These attitudinal problems were somewhat smoothed out during most of the period of his command by his brilliant flag captain, Walter Young, who unfortunately died before the decisive action off the Saintes.
Rodney was also hugely in debt, and during the early part of the war was living in Paris to escape his creditors. it was only by virtue of a large loan from the chivalrous French marshal Biron that he managed to return to England and assume his new command.
Rodney either was not aware of, or was not interested in, the various experiments in signalling that Howe and Kempenfelt were engaged in his Fighting Instructions are set up so as to use the old signal system. An apparent disciple of Morogues, Rodney showed himself a believer in the single decisive stroke. He also gave some further thought to Morogues' idea of concentrating superior force against a part of the enemy fleet though he came to different conclusions from Morogues.
Rather than using larger ships (which weren't available in any case), Rodney attempted to deliver his decisive attack by devising a signal for attacking a part of the enemy fleet by drawing his own ships closer together, from two cables (200 fathoms, or 400 yards) to one cable (200 yards).
Rodney, uniquely among latter-day British admirals, pronounced himself in favor of the lee position in battle. He is recorded as having told George III that he "would always take the lee gage: because it prevented the enemy's retreat; secondly [because disabled ships could retire behind the line]."
In any case, Rodney would have difficulty fighting from the lee gage in a war in which the French were usually trying to run: in order to fight a battle the British usually had to be to windward in order to catch the French.
The attempted use of Rodney's closed-line tactics failed in a battle against de Guichen in April of 1780, and Rodney never used it again. The failure was partially due to confusion among signals, but the responsibility lies chiefly with Rodney himself, who failed utterly to explain to his captains ahead of time what he wanted of them, and who then blamed his officers for their failure to interpret his tactics correctly.
In any case, Rodney's tactics would not have worked against a disciplined French line, which could have responded easily by tightening their own formation and matching the British ship-for-ship.
De Guichen afterwards refused battle, and Rodney occupied his time with the capture of the Dutch island of St. Eustatius, the plundering of which he prolonged past any sensible point, apparently intending on declaring the entire contents of the island as prize money with the intention of relieving his debt.
Battle of the Saintes
Rodney's claim to greatness rests on his last battle, that of the Saintes, fought on 12 April, 1782. It was the final naval battle in the Americas during the war, and because it was a British victory it resulted in a somewhat more favorable peace for Britain than would otherwise have been the case. It brought to an end the brief naval renaissance of the French, who seem forever after to have ceded the initiative to the British. It is probably the most famous naval battle after Trafalgar, and is the subject of more myth, gossip, and exagerated claims of success than any other.
Rodney was aided somewhat by his opposite, de Grasse, who was determined to pursue plans to invade Jamaica despite British naval superiority in the Caribbean. These plans had been created over a year before in Versailles, where Louis XVI had decided Jamaica would make a fine reward for the loyalty of his Spanish ally, and had little chance of success under the new circumstances prevailing since Rodney's reinforcement.
Rodney was also aided by the captain of the French Zele, who in the days before the battle managed to ram two other French ships, putting one of them, and his own, out of action. De Grasse thus went into battle with 30 ships versus Rodney's 36.
The fleets had skirmished earlier, but cle Grasse had always managed to keep the weather gage and avoid committing his fleet to a general action. In the end the battle was brought about by the Zele, which was disabled and under tow by a frigate far to leeward of the French and threatened by the British. De Grasse was forced to commit his force to battle in order to cover his crippled ship.
Rodney's van squadron kept as close to the wind as possible, but failed to seize the weather gage - if, considering Rodney's avowed preference for the lee gage, it was ever their intention in the first place. The lead British ship struck the French line between the eighth and ninth ship, and then turned slightly downwind so as to pass along the French line. The French lead ships also altered course slightly to bring themselves into action, and thus both lines had a slight kink in them.
The British were in close order, a cable apart as per Rodney's preference. The French had formed line late and in a hurry, and their rear was somewhat disordered. The French had the weather gage, the wind coming more or less off their port beam. Both were advancing under easy sail, allowing each ship to get two or three broadsides into each enemy as they passed.
The situation, with both fleets passing each other too close to maneuver, was very close to that of the Battle of Ushant, and could easily have been attenuated with similar inconclusive results. That it wasn't was an accident, and for the British a happy one.
The battle was being fought under the lee of Dominica, which would normally have resulted in uncertain winds. The winds had held fairly steadily since dawn, but at approximately 9:30 the wind suddenly veered two points and turned light.
The wind shift was right into the French faces, and the French could not continue their present course. Each French captain was faced suddenly with the choice of tacking to cross the wind or of putting up their helms, turning to starboard and toward the British in order to keep their sails full. The latter course was what most of the French chose, but enough tacked to thoroughly disorder the French line. Those who had turned to starboard began to blunder into the British line.
The Duke, Rodney's next ahead, found a French ship wandering directly into its path and luffed up into the wind, passing clear through the French line. Duke attempted to regain its original place but failed. Formidable, Rodney's flagship, found itself in a similar situation and also passed through the line, followed by five ships. The sixth, Bedford luffed independently of the others and was followed by the entire British line (Fig. 1).
The effect was of cutting the French line into several pieces. Rodney, though he took credit for the maneuver afterward, was probably not very happy at the time -- cutting the French line, he had forsaken the lee gage, which he preferred, and also opened up his own lined and allowed the majority of the French fleet to flee downwind and get away.
Rodney apparently did not know how to exploit his master stroke, if such it was. Now that he had cut the French line, he should have had his fleet concentrate on the French ships he'd isolated -- in fact within range of the Formidable's broadsides there were four French ships surrounded by seven British, each of which had already been battered and which, without a great deal of effort, could have been made prize. But all four of those ships got clean away, partly no doubt because of the confusion of the battle but also because Rodney was far more interested in getting his own fleet back into formation than in exploiting whatever advantage he'd gained over the French.
The French fled carrying all the sail they could stand, and after Rodney reassembled his squadrons he ordered a pursuit under easy sail, thus capturing only five French cripples - including, luckily, the flagship of de Grasse, which had run so low on ammunition that it was forced to use the bronze busts from the admiral's staterooms as ammunition. Hood, Rodney's second in command, believed that with vigorous pursuit no less than 20 ships should have fallen to the British.
French morale was shattered by the defeat, and the attempt to invade Jamaica abandoned. DeGrasse, despite being one of the two best French admirals of the period, was barred from the French court and forced to resign from the navy. One can almost hear the sighs of relief in Versailles at being able to dispose of a threat from someone competent.
Rodney was elevated to the peerage, was liberated from his debt, and spent his remaining ten years in easy circumstances. His victory had improved the state of British morale and ruined that of the French, and for that reason his actions at the Saintes deserve a place in history. But history has also credited Rodney with the invention of a new system of tactics, based on "breaking the enemy's line", a system that Nelson allegedly brought to perfection at Trafalgar, and that credit is misplaced.
Rodney's breaking of the line was a near-accident, and once he'd broken the enemy he'd failed entirely to take advantage of it. His pursuit was lackadaisical and allowed most of the French to get away. The long-held belief that the Saintes are a precurser to the Nelsonian battle of annihilation is entirely unjustified.
Clerk of Eldin and the Vicomte de Grenier
John Clerk was laird of Eldin, a small estate near Edinburgh. He was also an enthusiastic small-boat sailor, the author of several volumes on sailing tactics, and one of those slightly daffy amateur military enthusiasts with which the British isles, through their history, has been so blessed. He is also a figure in British naval mythology, and little that is popularly known of him is supported by fact.
Clerk was convinced that the tactical foundations of naval warfare were unsound, and that he had the answer. He gave his answer freely, carrying small ship models in his pockets in order to demonstrate his theories to any naval officer who would listen. Reading of the battle of Ushant and the courts-martial that followed, Clerk was inspired to publish his theories in a series of books that began appearing in January 1782, with volume I of his Essay on Naval Tactics, devoted to methods of attack from windward, followed in 1792 by the other three volumes, volume II being Attack from the Leeward and the other two being essays on naval history.
Clerk concluded that the standard attack from weather, with each ship leading down toward its opponent in line, was unsound because each ship was subjected to the enemy's fire for a period of time during which it could not reply. Clerk worked out a number of ingenious and very complicated schemes for avoiding this problem, of which his chief was the notion that the British fleet, instead of forming in a single line, should form in three lines sailing abreast of one another, and starting from a position out of range of the enemy and somewhat astern, should lead down together at an angle that would avoid their being raked (although presumably the enemy would get in some non-raking shots).
The British would then chop the enemy's rear into fragments and overwhelm it before the van and center could tack and get into the battle (Fig. 2). Depending on the enemy's response, Clerk had several other tactics for dealing with the enemy's van and center.
Clerk's second volume, on the attack from leeward, was somewhat less cerebral. He simply recommended that in the case of fleets passing each other on opposite tacks, as at Ushant, the leeward fleet should strive to drive through the enemy's line at some point. By the time the book appeared Rodney had already been taking credit for this idea for ten years, and Clerk's ideas were reinforced by his example.
Clerk illustrated his maneuvers with precise diagrams, something no other naval theoretical had heretofore done. Though a fairly commonsense idea, Clerk's illustrations were apparently regarded as presumptuous by many of the naval figures of the day, who were offended by his apparent assumption that they needed picture-books to understand their business.
The precise influence of Clerk on the British naval reformers is in dispute. The work of Howe, Kempenfelt, and Rodney was already well advanced by the time the first volume appeared, and these figures were probably more influenced by l'Hoste and Morogues, whose writings Clerk often follows.
The issue is confused by the claim of Clerk's relatives and supporters, who after Clerk's death credited Clerk with the victories of the Saintes, Camperdown, and Trafalgar, among others. Most of these claims are very easily disposed of. Rodney's cutting of the line at the Saintes was an accident; and although Admiral Duncan of Camperdown, who had been given a copy of Clerk's book in 1782 when he was still a captain, apparently wrote Clerk a courteous note acknowledging he was "indebted for the victor to his Tactics", the actual attack at Camperdown was nearly a pell-mell assault and bore no resemblance to Clerk's orderly diagrams.
The question of Trafalgar is a little more open, though confused by Clerk's published view of Nelson's tactics as "suicidal". Nelson apparently enjoyed having his chaplain read Clerk's works out laud to him, and Clerk's tactics of the attack in three columns bears a conspicuous resemblance to one version of the "Nelson touch". But the actual attack at Trafalgar does not resemble Clerk's theories in anything except gross outline.
It is probably best to say that Clerk's booklets contributed to the intellectual and theoretical fervor among the officers of the British navy, but did not have any direct effect on their tactics. The movement for reform had been well underway before Clerk made his contribution, and would have continued without him.
Another book of naval theory appeared during the same period across the Channel. This was the Vicomte de Grenier's L'Art de la Guerre sur Mer,
appearing in 1787. It was an interesting work, chiefly because it anticipated the "Nelson touch" by stating that the English would soon discard the line and develop a new form of attack concentrating on a part of the line and overwhelming it. His solution, however, was unwieldy -- he suggested the French adopt a three-sided formation composed of three lines of bearing arranged as a lozenge with one side missing, a formation so complicated as to be unworkable in practice (Fig. 3). His recommendation was sufficiently absurd so as to make certain the book would be ignored on both sides of the Channel.
Howe and Duncan
The great reformer and commander of the 1770's and 80's, Howe, had one last great hurrah against the French, the series of skirmishes and battles that ended on the Glorious First of June, 1794. During this battle Howe introduced his greatest contribution to naval tactics, and crowned his career with a triumph.
Howe, commanding the Channel fleet, was up against the Ponant fleet of Revolutionary France, commanded by Louis Thomas Villaret de Joyeuse. In the preceding years the French navy had undergone a radical transformation. Most of the aristocratic "red" officers had been guillotined or driven into exile, along with many of the blues who were insufficiently radical for the guiding lights of the Terror. Villaret was born an aristocrat and apparently had some sympathy for old regime, but he was a proven disciple of Suffren, had long preferred the company of blues, and had enough of the revolutionaries' trust to be promoted suddenly from captain and given the command. He was, however, shadowed by an "intendant" sent from Paris - essentially a political commissar, who lodged on Villaret's flagship and reported to Paris on the new admiral's activities.
The French fleet had received a long-overdue shakeup, but the changes had been sudden and often arbitrary, and although the long-hidden talent of the blues was now free to flourish, their ascendancy had come without proper preparation. Men who had been lieutenants were promoted to captain or even admiral, and not all fit well into their new jobs.
The naval administration was energetic but in disarray, and the ships were filled with new draftees full of revolutionary enthusiasm, but who had not been aboard long enough or drilled long enough to know their new jobs.
But the fleet had to go to sea. The Revolution was suffering from the effects of a bad harvest, and the British had to be kept away from the huge grain fleet that was sailing from the Chesapeake. Villaret set sail to find the British and keep them occupied.
Even with his disadvantages, Villaret's Ponant fleet was probably the best France had sent to sea in a very long time, and Villaret was a competent officer who fared better against the British than any of his successors. Unfortunately for Villaret he was fated to be a competent commander sent to do battle with a genius.
Howe was laboring under handicaps of his own. The British naval administration had not improved much from the days of Sandwich. Corruption was rife in the admiralty and the dockyards, and abuse of the sailors on the part of the officers was on the rise at the same time that some revolutionary sentiment was beginning to trickle onto the lower decks from America and France. Morale in the fleet, and in the rest of England, was poor. The Bounty mutiny had taken place, a warning for any who cared to heed it. But for the time being, old-line officers like Howe and Jervis were able to keep the navy at sea by virtue of their talent and personal prestige.
Howe's conduct in the days leading up to the battle shows a masterful knowledge of the tactics available to an imaginative commander not afraid to be thought unorthodox. The fleets sighted each other on the 28th, and during the ensuing five days Howe never let go, trying one unconventional tactic after another.
On the 28th he gave his order dating to 1778 -- for the fleet to concentrate on the enemy rear. When this failed due to a French retirement, a general chase was ordered, and a running skirmish against the rearmost French ship was fought.
On the 29th Howe tried to pass his fleet through the enemy from leeward
a la Rodney (though, unlike Rodney, Howe intended the maneuver) but was
frustrated by a shifting wind. Weather forbade engagement on the 30th and
31st. But by the ist, the winds were steady and the British at last to weather of their enemy, 25 ships against 26.
After feeding his crews breakfast, Howe hoisted the signal ordering his newest and most revolutionary tactic- "to pass between the ships in [the enemy's] line for engaging them to leeward". This order was based on the observation that in order to bring a reluctant enemy to battle, the British needed to be to windward of them; but that to prevent them from running away, the British needed to be to leeward. Howe intended for his ships to steer for the enemy as per the strict tactics of the formal school, but instead of hauling up into the wind to engage in the normal way, each captain was to pass under the stern of his opponent, firing raking broadsides into his stern and into the bow of the next astern, then luffing up to engage each enemy from leeward, preventing their escape (Fig. 4).
In the event the tactic had mixed success, only eight ships succeeded in
penetrating the French line. Howe had possibly been deficient in telling his captains exactly how this maneuver was to be performed, and quite possibly the French were able to frustrate several of the other captains by virtue of good station-keeping, refusing to allow gaps to appear in their line for the British to drive through. Howe's own flagship was almost foiled in its attempt to cut the line astern of Villaret's ship due to Villaret's next astern closing the gap, but Howe managed to wedge his way through, damaging Villaret severely with two stern rakes as he did so.
The results were impressive: nine of the French were dismasted and one was sinking. Six of the dismasted ships were taken as prizes, but the rest were allowed to escape when Howe, on the advice of his flag captain, cut short the pursuit. While on this account the victory was less complete than it should have been, it was nevertheless more substantial than any British triumph in the previous war, including the Saintes. The result was a vast increase in morale among the entire British population, Howe's deserved elevation to the peerage, and a great deal of food for thought among naval theoreticians.
The French also had cause to cheer. Though Villaret had been defeated, the grain ships from the Chesapeake arrived unmolested by the British, to much French rejoicing. Villaret was allowed to keep his head, and the Revolution was kept safe from starvation. It might be said that the First of June resulted in giving both sides heart to continue the fight.
Howe's retirement with honors (he was 68) left the field open to a lesser breed of commander. The wholesale abuse of crews by their officers and by the naval administration resulted in the Nore and Spithead mutinies in 1797, as well as the rising of the crew of the frigate Hermione in the Caribbean. Howe was brought back briefly to moderate the Spithead mutiny, which he did mainly by deciding that the mutineers' demands were justified and agreeing to them. The Nore mutiny was bloodier, but only a few weeks after the mutiny most of the mutineers were in action against the Dutch, at the battle of Camperdown.
Once again the British were in the position of being to windward of the enemy. This time there was a definite British superiority, having 14 ships against 11, the British ships also being larger than their opponents. On account of this, and the fact that the Dutch could have avoided action by running downwind into shoal water where the heavier British couldn't follow, Admiral Duncan knew there was no time to lose in making his attack. Accordingly he hoisted Howe's signal for each of his ships to pass through the line and engage the enemy from leeward.
Unfortunately the weather was squally and some of Duncan's ships did not see the signal. Duncan and his second-in-command then decided to lead by personal example and charged the enemy, flying the signal for close action. Most of the ships in each division simply followed their admiral, and the result was that the British attacked in two irregular columns, more or less vertical to their opponents' line. Perhaps to everyone's surprise, this attack worked very well.
The Dutch formation was cut into three parts, and the center and rear overwhelmed by the two British divisions before the van intervened (Fig. 5). The Dutch fought extremely well, no Dutch ship surrendering before it had either been dismasted or run out of ammunition, but their fleet was still in the 17th Century and they had no hope of success. The British captured seven of the eleven sail of the line as well as four smaller ships.
Duncan had won the first of what was to be a series of battles of annihilation against France and her allies, comparing well with Nelson's most devastating victory at Abukir. And in his inadvertent tactic, Duncan had discovered the fundamentals of what was to go down in history as the "Nelson touch".
A History of Sailing Tactics in the Age of Fighting Sail Part III
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
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