Navies and Conservative Politics
It is a cliché that there is a relationship between seafarers and conservative politics. Like many clichés, there are elements of truth in this one. Navies differ from armies in numerous ways. The most important in establishing their character, I think, is that the price of admission to naval power is huge. Not only do you (from the sovereign’s point of view) have to equip the crew with personal weapons and equipment, but you have to provide a ship to carry them, and in most periods, it must be armed with larger caliber weapons than an individual could use, or even carry.
This situation resembles, in some ways, that of the knights of the Middle Ages. Even if the individual crew members are not wealthy, a substantial concentration of wealth is necessary to field even one ship. Further, as anyone who has owned a pleasure boat can attest, maintaining a ship, even a small one, can be as expensive as buying it in the first place. (I have owned 6 boats in my lifetime, and I can personally testify to this). Taking this line of thought back further in time, the problems of fielding a fleet become even more stark. For King Minos of Crete, who is cited by the early historian Thucydides as the first monarch to benefit from sea power, paying for a fleet would have been a huge challenge. Minos lived before there was coined money, before there was credit, long before paper money, in a time when taxes were collected mainly in kind (around 1500 BC). While it may have been possible to move bars of bullion out of the royal treasury in wheelbarrows, it is more likely that the Minoan fleet had to be funded mainly in kind – by feeding, housing, and clothing the shipyard crews as they built the ships.
To build a fleet requires wealth, but to use it to control the sea lanes requires a lot more – organization, discipline, and foresight. For a ship to keep the sea more than a few hours requires that it be provisioned and stored for the voyage. In turn, this means stuff needs to be not only supplied to the crew as needed, but hoarded and doled out in advance, then rationed so that it lasts out the voyage. In turn, this calls into being a bureaucracy to administer the supply chain. To work a ship requires teamwork. Either a group of oarsmen must pull in unison, calling for months of practice before the art is mastered, or under sail, all the control lines, some of which call for the united efforts of 30 men, must be manipulated with precision to aim the sails to angles with the wind that have optimum values so that a degree or two of difference might measurably reduce a ship’s speed. The ship must also stand up to extremes of weather in an ocean that can become deadly to even the largest ships. All this leads to long term professionalism in the naval crew, as well as a strict hierarchy of command. The bottom line is that navies are very much a weapon of the “haves” and not of the “have nots” of history.
Related to this basic reality is the evolution of tactics in the Age of Sail. In 1514 the first warship was built with its main armament of cannon mounted below decks, firing through gun ports, the British Henry Grace a Dieu. (According to French sources the first such ship was built in France in 1501). While these big ships, the “capital ships” of their age, were not conceptually different from later sailing warships, it took a century for the basic tactics of using them to evolve. It seems to have been a Dutch admiral, van Tromp, who realized in the early 1600’s that ships with cannon mounted in broadside were vulnerable only from the bow or stern. Van Tromp reasoned that the best solution was to line the ships up in a column, each steering in the wake of the one ahead. Then the concentrated broadside fire of all the ships could decimate a target abeam, while the vulnerable ends would be covered by the next ship in the line. These tactics swung the Anglo-Dutch Wars in Holland’s favor for a few years, until the British copied them. Once they became established, navies became even more “aristocratic” than before, because not only was it much harder to win a naval battle if both fleets fought in line, but the tactics created an “aristocracy” among the ships themselves.
A "ship of the line” from 1650 to 1860 was one that could survive a broadside from the biggest ship afloat and remain operational (from the side, not from ahead or astern). Lesser ships, frigates and sloops, were “unfit to lie in the line” and rated a less senior officer to command them. The ship of the line was a big ship (and they grew bigger throughout the period). Requiring fleets of them to maneuver in formation was yet another huge commitment of resources and further raised the bar so that admittance into the ranks of naval powers became more and more expensive and called for more of a national commitment.
The end of the Age of Sail did not materially change things, at least not immediately. The steam-powered, steel battleship was basically the same in function as the ship of the line. The phrase “capital ship” was first used in the Age of Sail, but in the 20th century was applied to battleships. These ships fought in long lines as late as Jutland (1916).
It is therefore a fact that revolutionary regimes do not generally do that well in naval operations. Napoleon's admirals could never quite master the art of naval warfare. Germany, coming late to the game, couldn’t quite get the tactics right even though it had excellent ships, and thereby a British blockade had a lot to do with the course of World War I. Going yet further back, Mohammed’s successors, the caliphs, while they tried hard to field a navy when the Byzantine Navy recaptured Alexandria in 644 and kept it supplied by sea for a while, took centuries before they were able to challenge Byzantine and later Venetian mastery of the Mediterranean.
Navies, therefore, are associated with kings and empires. They are the product of wealth and privilege, not of popular mass movements. Armies have been more of a mass movement, especially since Napoleon. While armies also use teamwork and a command hierarchy to be most successful, they are more open to individual acts of heroism.
Soldiers must inevitably look forward to sleeping on the ground in primitive conditions, perhaps in tents, with the possible payoff of looting the conquered or being quartered in captured buildings. Soldiers are, however, not normally exposed to drowning. Sailors, on the other hand, will be taking their kitchen (“galley”), sleeping, and bathroom (“head”) facilities – appropriate to their era – along with them. They will be enclosed by the ship’s structure, which even if it isn’t heated and cooled as a modern warship is, will offer shelter and some degree of insulation from the elements. The ship will be doing all the transporting, and buoyancy, the force holding the ship up, is free. So, sailors do not have to march from place to place, or carry their possessions in a backpack, although if they fail in their duty they could drown. A navy is also much less exposed to sudden, guerilla-style counterattack, because there is no terrain to hide behind on the high seas, and visibility is usually such that tactical surprise is hard to achieve. This gives the ship’s company a somewhat greater degree of security from the enemy, at least subjectively. A navy is already an elite, although it has an elite within it too, the capital ship.
This situation resembles, in some ways, that of the knights of the Middle Ages. Even if the individual crew members are not wealthy, a substantial concentration of wealth is necessary to field even one ship. Further, as anyone who has owned a pleasure boat can attest, maintaining a ship, even a small one, can be as expensive as buying it in the first place. (I have owned 6 boats in my lifetime, and I can personally testify to this). Taking this line of thought back further in time, the problems of fielding a fleet become even more stark. For King Minos of Crete, who is cited by the early historian Thucydides as the first monarch to benefit from sea power, paying for a fleet would have been a huge challenge. Minos lived before there was coined money, before there was credit, long before paper money, in a time when taxes were collected mainly in kind (around 1500 BC). While it may have been possible to move bars of bullion out of the royal treasury in wheelbarrows, it is more likely that the Minoan fleet had to be funded mainly in kind – by feeding, housing, and clothing the shipyard crews as they built the ships.
To build a fleet requires wealth, but to use it to control the sea lanes requires a lot more – organization, discipline, and foresight. For a ship to keep the sea more than a few hours requires that it be provisioned and stored for the voyage. In turn, this means stuff needs to be not only supplied to the crew as needed, but hoarded and doled out in advance, then rationed so that it lasts out the voyage. In turn, this calls into being a bureaucracy to administer the supply chain. To work a ship requires teamwork. Either a group of oarsmen must pull in unison, calling for months of practice before the art is mastered, or under sail, all the control lines, some of which call for the united efforts of 30 men, must be manipulated with precision to aim the sails to angles with the wind that have optimum values so that a degree or two of difference might measurably reduce a ship’s speed. The ship must also stand up to extremes of weather in an ocean that can become deadly to even the largest ships. All this leads to long term professionalism in the naval crew, as well as a strict hierarchy of command. The bottom line is that navies are very much a weapon of the “haves” and not of the “have nots” of history.
Related to this basic reality is the evolution of tactics in the Age of Sail. In 1514 the first warship was built with its main armament of cannon mounted below decks, firing through gun ports, the British Henry Grace a Dieu. (According to French sources the first such ship was built in France in 1501). While these big ships, the “capital ships” of their age, were not conceptually different from later sailing warships, it took a century for the basic tactics of using them to evolve. It seems to have been a Dutch admiral, van Tromp, who realized in the early 1600’s that ships with cannon mounted in broadside were vulnerable only from the bow or stern. Van Tromp reasoned that the best solution was to line the ships up in a column, each steering in the wake of the one ahead. Then the concentrated broadside fire of all the ships could decimate a target abeam, while the vulnerable ends would be covered by the next ship in the line. These tactics swung the Anglo-Dutch Wars in Holland’s favor for a few years, until the British copied them. Once they became established, navies became even more “aristocratic” than before, because not only was it much harder to win a naval battle if both fleets fought in line, but the tactics created an “aristocracy” among the ships themselves.
A "ship of the line” from 1650 to 1860 was one that could survive a broadside from the biggest ship afloat and remain operational (from the side, not from ahead or astern). Lesser ships, frigates and sloops, were “unfit to lie in the line” and rated a less senior officer to command them. The ship of the line was a big ship (and they grew bigger throughout the period). Requiring fleets of them to maneuver in formation was yet another huge commitment of resources and further raised the bar so that admittance into the ranks of naval powers became more and more expensive and called for more of a national commitment.
The end of the Age of Sail did not materially change things, at least not immediately. The steam-powered, steel battleship was basically the same in function as the ship of the line. The phrase “capital ship” was first used in the Age of Sail, but in the 20th century was applied to battleships. These ships fought in long lines as late as Jutland (1916).
It is therefore a fact that revolutionary regimes do not generally do that well in naval operations. Napoleon's admirals could never quite master the art of naval warfare. Germany, coming late to the game, couldn’t quite get the tactics right even though it had excellent ships, and thereby a British blockade had a lot to do with the course of World War I. Going yet further back, Mohammed’s successors, the caliphs, while they tried hard to field a navy when the Byzantine Navy recaptured Alexandria in 644 and kept it supplied by sea for a while, took centuries before they were able to challenge Byzantine and later Venetian mastery of the Mediterranean.
Navies, therefore, are associated with kings and empires. They are the product of wealth and privilege, not of popular mass movements. Armies have been more of a mass movement, especially since Napoleon. While armies also use teamwork and a command hierarchy to be most successful, they are more open to individual acts of heroism.
Soldiers must inevitably look forward to sleeping on the ground in primitive conditions, perhaps in tents, with the possible payoff of looting the conquered or being quartered in captured buildings. Soldiers are, however, not normally exposed to drowning. Sailors, on the other hand, will be taking their kitchen (“galley”), sleeping, and bathroom (“head”) facilities – appropriate to their era – along with them. They will be enclosed by the ship’s structure, which even if it isn’t heated and cooled as a modern warship is, will offer shelter and some degree of insulation from the elements. The ship will be doing all the transporting, and buoyancy, the force holding the ship up, is free. So, sailors do not have to march from place to place, or carry their possessions in a backpack, although if they fail in their duty they could drown. A navy is also much less exposed to sudden, guerilla-style counterattack, because there is no terrain to hide behind on the high seas, and visibility is usually such that tactical surprise is hard to achieve. This gives the ship’s company a somewhat greater degree of security from the enemy, at least subjectively. A navy is already an elite, although it has an elite within it too, the capital ship.
posted by SToby at 19:35
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