First Salute - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [75]
Which side was the victor in the unfixed territory of a sea battle was usually decided, even by historians, on the basis of the relative number of killed and wounded suffered by either combatant. The numbers, often 700 or 800 killed in some pointless “piff poff,” were large. The only person to express any concern that appears in the records was curiously enough the King of France, Louis XVI, not known for his popular sympathies. In a speech to his Council he asked, “But who shall restore the brave sailors who have sacrificed their lives in my service?” This was a greater degree of interest than expressed by any official who received the count of losses or by any admiral who saw the bodies pile up on his decks.
The ultimate objective of any war is the gaining of political and material power, which at this period was considered to depend on colonies and commerce. Since these in turn depended upon free communication through control of the sea with bases for supply along the way—but not too many, as Mahan cautiously advises—and since holding the bases depended on their protection by the navy, therefore the objective of sea war was to prevail over the enemy’s navy and find occasion to meet and destroy his fleets. To take this argument to its logical end meant that the best result would be had by staying out of battle altogether. The French, being a logical people, had reached this conclusion and followed it when they could.
The battle of fighting sail as practiced in the 18th century troubles the rational mind. Clearly, line ahead depended on the enemy presenting himself in an equivalent line as target or opponent. But suppose he did not, refused to form a line, maneuvered for the weather gauge and, if successful, sailed away to a friendly base or home port. The French often did just that, or did not come out to meet the enemy at all, leaving the English with the frustration of empty claws.
A paradox of the 18th century, so admired for reason and enlightenment, is the senselessness it often exhibits, as in the case of the futile shore batteries on the islands and the unchanging tactics of line ahead, a maneuver which everyone on the ocean knew as well as he knew his own name, an old story that could have no surprises, although surprise is the sharpest weapon in the military arsenal.
Since medieval days of the sixty-pound suit of armor, in which, for the sake of combat, men roasted and could not arise if they fell, no contrivance for fighting has matched in discomfort and inconvenience and use contrary to nature the floating castle called a ship of the line in the age of fighting sail. With its motor power dependent on the caprice of heaven and direction-finding on the distant stars, and its central piece of equipment—the mast—dependent on seasoned timber that was rarely obtainable, and control of locomotion dependent on rigging and ropes of a complexity to defy philosophers of the Sorbonne, much less the homeless untutored poor off the streets who made up the crews, and communication from commander to his squadron dependent on signal flags easily obscured by distance or smoke from the guns or by pitching of the ship,