for seeking battle was that Britain’s capacity to influence events on the continent depended largely upon the effectiveness of their fleet, both in the defence of trade and in the capacity to provide support for allies. If British forces were contained by Franco-Spanish squadrons maintaining fleets-in-being in defended harbours, few resources would be available for more offensive pursuit of British foreign policy.
Britain’s Naval Strategy
The most important reason for Britain maintaining a navy was to prevent invasion from the continent. The Trafalgar campaign, which ended in Nelson’s last and greatest battle, had started as a classic effort at power projection. Napoleon was frustrated in his conquest of Europe by the continued resistance of Britain and determined to take it off the map by invasion. To do so, he concentrated soldiers in the northern departments of France, built landing craft, and attempted to deploy French, Spanish and Dutch naval forces so that they could support a crossing of the short sea route to southern England. The British Government constructed coastal defences, notably the famous Martello Towers, to make it difficult for the soldiers to get ashore, but the principal defence against invasion was recognised to be the effective counteraction of the Royal Navy.
Chart of the Strait and Bay of Gibraltar. ‘Gibraltar, the Calpe of the Ancients, is situated in the province of Andalusia in Spain, and is the strongest fortification in Europe. It has been in the possession of the English since the year 1704’. From The Naval Chronicle.
Next in importance to the defence of British shores, was the defence of Britain’s allies. The inability of the small British economy to support an army on the scale of that of France, Spain or Austria meant that alliances with one or more continental military powers were an essential defensive requirement. It was necessary to ensure that the French could not concentrate their efforts upon building naval forces. The classic expression of this concern, that ‘France will outdo us at sea, when they have nothing to fear by land’, had been made by the Duke of Newcastle in 1749.44 The armies of her allies were important to Britain’s naval defences.
Over the course of the century it had been learnt that the best way for London to acquire influence in central and eastern Europe, in order to construct alliances which could preoccupy French military planners, was by acquiring a dominant position in the naval affairs of the Mediterranean. In the Mediterranean area, where roads were long and difficult, or non-existant, naval forces possessed the greatest influence through their capacity to convoy troop ships. The acquisition of Gibraltar in 1704 gave the fleet a forward base that made possible year-round deployment into the Mediterranean. The mobility this provided for the small British army, and for the armies of the smaller Mediterranean states with which Britain might be allied, put a significant political lever into British hands. French, Spanish and Austrian interests converged in the area. In the wars at the beginning of the eighteenth century London, by deploying a fleet to the Mediterranean coast of France, had tied down large French armies far away from the decisive theatres in Germany and Flanders. The capacity of the British Mediterranean fleet to provide protection for allies threatened by seaborne attack was even more important.
British governments were aware of the need to support the prestige of the Royal Navy by reacting to any use of naval power by other states that might undermine Britain’s role of naval arbiter. The mobilisation of 1770 in response to a Spanish attack on British interests in the Falkland Islands, which was the occasion for Nelson’s first joining the navy, was primarily motivated by the need to protect the reputation of Britain’s naval power.45 The circumstances of that crisis were as much concerned with the affairs of the Mediterranean as they were with those of the South Atlantic. In 1790 Spain was warned off interference in British interests in Vancouver Island, and for the same reason.
When in 1796, after the defeat of the Royalist uprising in Toulon, the decision was taken to withdraw the British fleet from the Mediterranean, the effect on British affairs in the region was most unfortunate. The defection of Austria from the first coalition against France followed. The damage done to British interests began to be repaired in 1798 when the deployment of a squadron under Nelson defeated the French at the Nile putting an end to Napoleon’s ability to determine events by moving a French army about the Mediterranean. The consequence was that Turkey concluded an understanding with Britain. Turkish and British armies were transported to Egypt, and eventually the army that Napoleon had abandoned there to its fate was defeated. The Kingdom of Naples threw off its restraint, and openly returned to hostilities with France. In December Russia concluded an alliance with Britain, and extended her protection to Naples. In 1799 a joint Turkish and Russian army expelled the French from Corfu and a Russian army of 6,000 was left as a garrison. Austria adhered to this second coalition against France. The ambition of the Russians to acquire their own naval footing in the Mediterranean, however, complicated Anglo-Russian relations in the 1800s, as indeed it had in the 1760s under Catherine the Great.
Gibraltar was an inadequate base for the Royal Navy because of its distance from Toulon, because of the prevailing northerly winds and the current through the Straits into the Mediterranean, and because the harbour was open to attack by Spanish gunboats. A British squadron based on Port Mahon in Minorca had commanded the western Mediterranean in the mid-eighteenth century, but Minorca was lost in the American War, and was not again available for British use until it was captured by Captain John Duckworth in late 1798. It was returned again to Spain at the Peace of Amiens in 1802. Naples provided supplies for the Royal Navy from time to time, but was vulnerable to the French army in northern Italy. The only really secure base which could provide distant support for the ships watching Toulon, and also block French ambitions in the eastern Mediterranean, was Malta. This island with its superbly fortified harbour had been captured by Napoleon on his way to Egypt in 1798, and was subsequently taken from its French garrison after a prolonged siege. The desire of the mad Tsar Paul to obtain Malta was a contributing factor to the Baltic crisis in 1801. The Addington Ministry agreed as part of the 1802 peace treaty with France that Malta should be returned to the Order of St John which Napoleon had driven out, but backed out of the commitment when it became apparent that Napoleon did not intend to honour the spirit of the treaty. Britain declared war on France, and Pitt, who was returned to power, refused to cede Malta to Russia even when Tsar Alexander I made that a condition for accession to the third coalition against Napoleon. Alexander only changed his mind in July 1805 because he was insulted by Napoleon’s proclaiming himself an Emperor, and alarmed by his seizure of Genoa.
The British refusal of the Russian demand was based on a concern that the Russian navy would not be able to contain the French Mediterranean fleet, and was consistent with the long-standing reluctance to share naval power with Russia. Russia and Britain were so far able to cooperate, however, that a joint military force was deployed to Naples at the time of Trafalgar to provide security against a French army that had occupied Taranto.
Naval control of the Baltic was no less important than was a commanding naval position in the Mediterranean, because of the continuing need for naval building materials from the north. Long before the end of the eighteenth century, the domestic British supply of timber had become inadequate. The need to import the great trees which were used to make masts and yards was older still. The best foreign source of supply for timber, masts, and for tar, hemp, canvas, and iron for fastenings, anchors and guns, was from the states around the Baltic. Efforts had been made periodically to develop North American sources of supply, but only in the case of masts had this been successful. France and Spain were very nearly as dependent on Baltic sources for naval stores as was Britain.
The objectives of British naval control of the Baltic trade were to deny to their enemies access to naval building material, and to ensure that British dockyards would be well supplied at a reasonable price. Before the development in the nineteenth century of the idea that neutrals had an obligation to act impartially, and to avoid destabilising the balance of power, these objectives were practically speaking the two sides of the same coin. The
