the Baltic. Fleets based in the British Isles could blockade enemy bases in all these places, as indeed they had during the Napoleonic Wars. Once Britain had Gibraltar, she gained control (at least in theory) of the outlet of the Mediterranean. Any potential enemy with bases outside the area blocked by the British Isles and Gibraltar presented a new and potentially devastating threat, particularly to British trade. At the least it was a much more expensive threat to counter. That was certainly the case with the United States, whose naval policy through most of the nineteenth century was to be prepared to counter Britain, her traditional enemy, with a combination of trade warfare and coast defence. The United States had to be taken seriously as a danger because of its potential threat to Canada, which it had exercised (albeit not successfully) in 1812. Once the United States reached the Pacific, the British also had to deal with threats associated with the US–British Columbia border there.
Russian expansion into East Asia similarly brought them outside European geography. During the Crimean War, the Royal Navy raided the sole Russian Pacific base, Petropavlovsk. It had only limited value, as it was not large and also as it was closed by ice for much of the year. In 1860, however, the Russians set up an ice-free Asian port, Vladivostok, which posed a year-round threat to British Pacific trade.
Once the Suez Canal opened in 1869, the route to India and points east through the Mediterranean became far more important. The opening of the Suez Canal unfortunately roughly coincided with Russian denunciation of the clauses of the Crimean War settlement barring them from recreating a Black Sea Fleet. The two guarantors had been the two wartime allies, Britain and France, and the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) paralysed France. The British alone were unwilling to enforce what the Czar of the time considered a gross humiliation. Grain exports did not figure in the Czar’s comments, and the Russians did not immediately build up the Black Sea Fleet. However, it must have been obvious that once they did they could exert considerably more pressure on the British in the Mediterranean.
The Suez Canal was a Franco-Egyptian venture, but once in office in 1874 Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli saw it as a vital British interest; he bought a controlling share by buying up the Egyptian Government’s holdings. Although nominally part of the Turkish (Ottoman) Empire, Egypt was effectively independent, its government constantly in need of money.
Not too long after Disraeli bought the Canal shares, the Russo-Turkish crisis of 1875-77 threatened to place a Russian satellite state (Bulgaria) on the Mediterranean, within range of the Canal.1 In 1878, with Russian troops threatening Constantinople, a British battle squadron made the dangerous ascent of the Bosporus in a snowstorm. The Russians had no real Black Sea Fleet, but the British ironclads were placing themselves to shell the Russian troops if necessary (the threat forced a Russian withdrawal). This fleet was commanded by Admiral Sir Geoffrey Phipps Hornby, who had commanded the Flying Squadron, and who would be a key figure in the agitation leading to the Naval Defence Act of 1889.
Although the ascent of the Turkish straits was a great success, other aspects of the British response were not. In addition to the standing Mediterranean Fleet, the Admiralty decided to assemble a fleet to penetrate the Baltic. To so do without removing the Channel Fleet (i.e., without presenting the French with the opportunity to invade), it tried to mobilize reserve ships and form them into a Baltic fleet. Mobilization proved difficult and far too slow. Intelligence had been collected, but at the crucial moment it could not be found. It proved impossible to maintain contact with Russian cruisers, which would have preyed on British trade had war broken out.
Ultimately the need to secure the Canal helped draw the British into making Egypt a quasi-colony.2 At this time British colonies (apart from India) were generally fairly distant from anyone else’s, approachable only by sea. Egypt was a very different proposition. It was close to other European colonies in North Africa, and it could be approached through Africa. Britain and France almost went to war in 1898 because French troops probing north met British troops at Fashoda in southern Egypt, suggesting that some larger thrust was planned (war orders were drafted, and one consequence of the war scare was a supplemental naval program). In this sense Egypt was analogous to India; in both cases defence included the defence of land frontiers. In both cases the land frontiers were considerably less approachable than maps suggested to governments in London.
British seizure of Egypt without French involvement made it difficult for the British to resist attempts by other European powers to seize parts of Africa. This scramble for Africa provided colonies the Germans, previously without colonial possessions, hoped to use as bases for cruisers during the First World War. The British found themselves seizing the German colonies not because they had enormous inherent value, but to deny them as bases for use against vital British trade.
The Mediterranean became so vital that the Mediterranean Fleet became the most important British naval formation of the late nineteenth century. With French bases circling much of the Mediterranean, it faced unusual conditions which brought forth special tactical solutions, not least for cruisers. As CinC of the Mediterranean Fleet, Admiral Sir John Fisher conceived many of his key ideas, which led in turn to the revolutions he pushed through at the Admiralty at the close of the period covered by this book.
Through the mid-nineteenth century the Russians drove south into Central Asia towards India. It might not be possible to overthrow British power in India by sea; the country was just too large. However, the British thought that the Russians planned to turn both Persia (Iran) and Afghanistan into vassal states, and it was conceivable that Afghans pouring across the northern frontier of India might have begun its conquest. This land threat was the substance of the ‘Great Game’ celebrated by Kipling and others. The naval aspect was that the best way for the British to counter Russian moves in Central Asia was to apply naval pressure in the one place most vital to the Russians: the Baltic.
HMS Egeria was a Fantome class sloop, the size just below corvettes (which were later rated as cruisers). This class introduced the composite construction which DNC Sir Nathaniel Barnaby later applied to the Satellite class corvettes. Built at Pembroke, Egeria was launched on 1 November 1873. Designed displacement was 894 tons, but the ships displaced 949 as completed; the difference may have been due to miscalculation involving the new type of construction (dimensions: 160ft × 31¼ft × 12½ft). Armament comprised two 7in 90cwt and two 64pdr, all muzzle-loading rifles on slides (these were the largest British warships with an all-traversing armament). One 7in was between funnel and mainmast and one on the quarterdeck, both with ports so that they could fire on the broadside. The only major armament modification was to replace wooden with iron slides after the first commission (Egeria later had her armament reduced as a surveying ship). Ships like this needed sail power for endurance. As a sloop, Egeria was slower than Barnaby’s corvettes: on trial she made 11.303kts on 1011 IHP. The class was rated at 1000nm at 10kts. Machinery comprised three cylindrical boilers and a two-cylinder compound engine (these were the first sloops with compound engines). Ballard described the class as easily handled under sail, free from yaw when running before a heavy sea, buoyant when lying-to, and stiff enough not to require any ballast. They did not hold a good lee, however. They were never faster than 11½kts even when scudding before a high wind. These sailing qualities mattered; like other Victorian sloops, they made their long passages under sail. Complement was 125. Egeria served initially on the China station (1874-81, receiving a relief crew in 1878). She grounded badly off Hainan in a fog in 1879, but was refloated successfully (she lost most of her false keel in the process). On her return she went into reserve for two years, and was then selected as a surveying ship, her 64pdrs and 7in guns replaced by four 20pdrs (to deal with pirates). She was ready in 1886, and she was not brought home until she had to be reboilered (in 1894). She was paid off at Esquimault in 1911.
The next Anglo-Russian crisis after 1878 (1885) was prompted not by a thrust towards the Turkish straits, but by a Russian probe into Afghanistan, which bordered India.3 Without a large standing army, the only response available to the British was naval.
