led to a clash with a Swedish convoy in January 1798, and when in December 1799 a Danish frigate tried to prevent the search of a Danish convoy, shots were fired. This was followed by a more serious action in July 1800 when a Danish frigate and her convoy were captured after a violent exchange.50 The Danish Government, dominated by Count Bernstorff, demanded satisfaction, and the British Government sent a fleet to the Sound to underline its determination to enforce its sea control. The Danish court appealed to the mad Tsar Paul for support. It was to crush this threat that a British fleet was sent to Copenhagen, in 1801. Nelson commanded the detachment that destroyed the navy of Denmark.
Tsar Alexander I tried to stipulate in 1803 that the British surrender their concept of maritime law before Russia would join the coalition against Napoleon, but Pitt refused to concede the point. In 1812, American resentment at British arrest of neutral shipping to manipulate trade was to lead to the United States declaring war on Britain. The strategic reality, however, was that it was only because of Britain’s successful pursuit of mercantilism that Napoleon’s conquest of Europe was eventually reversed. Free trade was the growing economic policy of peace, but mercantilism was the necessary strategy for naval war.
Britain’s naval strategy could not concentrate entirely on European waters. The French empire at the end of the eighteenth century was a small remnant of what it had been when Nelson was born during the Seven Years War. Accordingly, the wars of the French Revolution and Empire were largely fought in European waters. The importance of overseas trade to Britain’s war effort remained considerable, however. Sugar from the West Indies, furs from Canada, tea, spices, silk and porcelain from Asia all provided British merchants with stock in trade which ultimately provided the taxes that supported the war effort. Accordingly, the British navy, as well as guarding Britain’s shores against invasion, and dominating the naval affairs of the Mediterranean and Baltic, had to ensure the safe passage of trade convoys from across the Atlantic, and from Asia. Fortunately, the same deployments that contained French and Spanish naval threats to home waters also served to minimise the scale of threat overseas.
Operational Strategy
The operational strategy of the Royal Navy to guard against invasion, to protect her allies from invasion, and to control trade, had been developed over the century. The hinge of the entire strategy was the Channel Fleet based on the anchorage at Spithead, off Portsmouth, with a detachment based on Plymouth and known as the Western Squadron. Unless the French were able to concentrate a decisively superior force, no French admiral could take the risk of entering the Channel before the prevailing southwesterly winds and with an undefeated Western Squadron behind them. Until the establishment of a permanent blockade force off Brest in 1800 the usual practice was to hold the Channel Fleet ready at anchor in a safe harbour where it would not be subjected to damage from weather, and its crews would be less subject to ill health brought on by poor food and water. The danger of the French sailing had to be accepted, and in any case no close blockade could prevent them getting out of Brest in the immediate aftermath of a westerly or southwesterly gale during which a blockading force would have to seek sea room. The admirals who commanded the Channel Fleet during the early years of the Revolutionary War, Howe and Bridport, favoured keeping the fleet as far east as Spithead where it could be supplied easily.
The disadvantage of Spithead was that it could be very difficult to take the squadron down Channel should the Brest fleet move to the westward, as it did in 1796 to support a landing in Ireland, or to the southward to co-operate with the Spaniards, to cross the Atlantic, or to enter the Mediterranean. This difficulty was especially significant as, resources being limited, the Channel Fleet had to be treated as a strategic reserve from which detachments could be made to counter detachments from the French Atlantic Fleet at Brest, or from the other French dockyards in the Bay of Biscay and the Mediterranean. It was, as Admiral Lord Barham, First Lord of the Admiralty put it, ‘the mainspring from which all offensive operations must proceed.’51 During the American Revolutionary War, it had been very difficult to react in a timely manner. The strategic problems in the war against revolutionary and imperial France were less intractable, but still sufficiently demanding.
John Bull, that stout and portly personification of Britain, is depicted in a contemporary cartoon keeping a close eye on the French fleet in Brest.
(Cartoon published by Robert Middlemore)
In consequence, when Admiral the Earl St Vincent was made First Lord of the Admiralty in 1800 he applied the experience he had gained keeping the Mediterranean Squadron on station off the Spanish dockyard at Cadiz to the problem in the Channel, and established a close blockade of Brest. The Channel Fleet was stationed off Ushant with frigates and support units close to the entrances of the Rade and with Plymouth and Torbay available for refuge in heavy weather. Admiral William Cornwallis was in command during the Trafalgar campaign of 1805, operating from Torbay and Plymouth with Portsmouth to leeward for a main supply and repair base.
The French navy was dispersed to four dockyards in metropolitan France, at Brest, Lorient, Rochefort and Toulon, with ships deployed to protect French interests in the West Indies and the Indian Ocean. These squadrons had considerable value in the containment of British resources, and for supporting privateer action against trade, but separately they could not risk action unless the British forces offshore should be reduced by storm or accident. The Spanish navy in European waters depended on Cartagena in the Mediterranean, Cadiz at the southwest corner of Spain, and Ferrol at the northwest, and always had a sizeable detachment in the West Indies and South America. By stationing blockading forces close to these ports, and dominating the maritime communications between, the Royal Navy was able to keep on top of the aggressive use of French and Spanish naval forces.
The Royal Navy’s most important overseas command was the Mediterranean Squadron. The acquisition of Gibraltar had made it possible for British ships to remain in the Mediterranean for extended periods, but Gibraltar was not well placed for supporting a blockade of Toulon because of the prevailing northeasterly and northwesterly winds. Minorca was preferable, and several times during the century Britain held Port Mahon as a forward base. Nelson, however, did not have the use of Port Mahon which had been returned to Spain as part of the peace settlement after the American Revolutionary War. Instead he had to use the undeveloped Magdalena anchorage in northern Sardinia. From this station he maintained a distant watch on Toulon, hoping to entice the French fleet out to sea where he expected to be able to defeat it.
When the Toulon fleet did come out, it was a problem to discover where it had gone. In 1798 it went to Egypt; in 1805 it went to the West Indies. It was standing orders for squadrons deployed outside home waters that, if the forces they were watching managed to escape, they were to concentrate on the Western Squadron, or later on the Channel Fleet off Ushant. In 1798, however, Nelson decided that the French must have gone to Egypt, and took the risk of going there himself. In 1805 he concluded that they had gone to the West Indies and again took the risk of following them. He then had to follow them back, consumed with anxiety that they might get to Ushant ahead of him, join with the Brest squadron, and defeat Admiral Cornwallis commanding the Channel Fleet. In making his judgements, Nelson was able to depend on over a century of collective service experience about the effect of terrestrial geography, meteorological and hydrographic conditions on the potential movement of fleets.
To guard against the threat of invasion during the campaigns of 1804 and 1805, the Royal Navy deployed flotillas along the Channel coast. These ensured that no sudden assault could be attempted without heavy support. They were given close cover by a squadron of frigates and a few ships of the line based on the Downs, the roads to seaward of the white cliffs of Dover, the Nore command in the mouth of the Thames, and Great Yarmouth in Norfolk. Another cruiser squadron was based on the Channel Islands where it was to windward of the embarkation ports during the prevailing southwesterlies. The Channel Fleet off Ushant provided the ultimate muscle.
