The admiral who
had saved his country was forced into retirement. Still, the
principle of the 'fleet in being' lies at the bottom of all sound
strategy.
Admiral Colomb has pointed out a great change of plan in the
later naval campaigns of the seventeenth century. Improvements
in naval architecture, in the methods of preserving food, and
in the arrangements for keeping the crews healthy, permitted
fleets to be employed at a distance from their home ports for
long continuous periods. The Dutch, when allies of the Spaniards,
kept a fleet in the Mediterranean for many months. The great De
Ruyter was mortally wounded in one of the battles there fought.
In the war of the Spanish Succession the Anglo-Dutch fleet found
its principal scene of action eastward of Gibraltar. This, as
it were, set the fashion for future wars. It became a kind of
tacitly accepted rule that the operation of British sea-power
was to be felt in the enemy's rather than in our own waters. The
hostile coast was regarded strategically as the British frontier,
and the sea was looked upon as territory which the enemy must
be prevented from invading. Acceptance of this principle led
in time to the so-called 'blockades' of Brest and Toulon. The
name was misleading. As Nelson took care to explain, there was
no desire to keep the enemy's fleet in; what was desired was to
be near enough to attack it if it came out. The wisdom of the
plan is undoubted.
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