This would have been sufficient to repel a raiding
attack made in some strength. By the beginning of 1805 our East
Indies force had been increased; and in the year 1805 itself we
raised it to a strength of forty-one ships in all, of which nine
were of the line and seventeen were frigates. Had, therefore, any
of the hostile ships managed to get to the East Indies from the
Atlantic or the Mediterranean ports, in which they were being
watched by our navy, their chances of succeeding in their object
would have been small indeed.
When we enter the domain of tactics strictly so-called, that is
to say, when we discuss the proceedings of naval forces--whether
single ships, squadrons, or fleets--in hostile contact with one
another, we find the time of Trafalgar full of instructive episodes.
Even with the most recent experience of naval warfare vividly
present to our minds, we can still regard Nelson as the greatest
of tacticians. Naval tactics may be roughly divided into two great
classes or sections, viz. the tactics of groups of ships, that
is to say, fleet actions; and the tactics of what the historian
James calls 'single ship actions,' that is to say, fights between
two individual ships. In the former the achievements of Nelson
stand out with incomparable brilliancy. It would be impossible
to describe his method fully in such a paper as this. We may,
however, say that Nelson was an innovator, and that his tactical
principles and methods have been generally misunderstood down
to this very day.
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