War was formally declared shortly after the fall of Minorca. No events of much moment marked the rest of the year 1756, but early in the following year, Calcutta, which had fallen to the natives, was recaptured by Clive, assisted by a naval force.

In 1758, the Navy consisted of 156 of the line and 164 lesser vessels. The personnel was 60,000.

The situation at this time was that in North America the French colonies were being hotly pressed, Louisbourg being invested. The French had a species of double plan—to relieve Louisbourg directly, and also the usual invasion of England.

The relief of Louisbourg came to nought; a Toulon squadron which came out being driven back by Osborne, while Hawke destroyed the convoys in the Basque Roads. Louisbourg finally fell, four ships of the line that were lying there being burned, and one other captured, together with some smaller craft.

Nearer home, combined naval and military attacks were pressed upon the French coast, Anson wrecking havoc on St. Malo, while Howe destroyed practically everything at Cherbourg.

The invasion of England project remained, however. In 1759, the French had somewhere about twenty ships of the line, under De Conflans, at Brest, twelve at Toulon, under De la Clue, five with a fleet of transports at Quiberon, five frigates at Dunkirk with transports, a division of small craft and flat-bottomed boats at Havre, and a squadron of nine ships of the line with auxiliaries in the West Indies.

These were watched or blockaded by superior British squadrons in every case—the maintenance of blockades being mainly possible owing to the improved ventilation of the ships. Provisions were still bad and scurvy plentiful, but the blockade maintained was better and closer than anything that the French can have anticipated. This war, indeed, saw the birth of scientific blockade in place of the somewhat haphazard methods which had previously existed. In part, it arose from a better perception of naval warfare, the study of history and the growth of definite objectives. But since side by side with these improvements tactical ideas were nearly non-existent and ships in fighting kept a line of the barrack-ground type regardless of all circumstances,33 improvements in naval architecture may claim at least as big a part as the wit of man. Ideas of blockading and watching were as old as the Peloponnesian War, but means to carry them into effect had hitherto been sadly lacking.

To resume, the French fleets being cornered by superior forces, had no option but to wait for lucky opportunity to effect the usual attempted junctions. This opportunity was long in coming, and meanwhile Rodney made an attack on the invading flotilla at Havre, bombarded it for fifty-two hours, and utterly destroyed the flat-bottomed boats which had been collected.

In July, 1759, Boscawen, having run short of water and provisions, had to withdraw from Toulon to Gibraltar, where he began to refit his ships, and De la Clue, learning of this, came out of Toulon in August, slipping through the straits at midnight, with the English fleet in pursuit shortly afterwards.

De la Clue had intended to rendezvous at Cadiz, but having altered his mind, made the almost inevitable failure of getting all his ships to comprehend it.34 So it came about that daylight found him near Cape St. Vincent, with only six sail, and eight of Boscawen’s ships (which he at first took to be his own stragglers) coming up. In the action that followed, three of the French ships were captured, two burned and one escaped. The stragglers of the French fleet got into Cadiz as originally directed, and a few months later escaped back to Toulon.

Thurot, with a small squadron, slipped out from Dunkirk, in October, merely to intern himself in a Swedish harbour.

Hawke continued his blockade of Brest, being now and then driven off by gales, and during one of these absences, Bempart, with his nine West Indian ships, got into Brest. The Brest fleet was apparently very short-handed, or else the West Indian squadron in a very bad way; in any case the crews of the latter were distributed among the former, and De Conflans sailed with only twenty-one ships on November 14th.

The expeditionary force which he proposed to convoy lay at Quiberon, which place owing to weather he did not make till the 20th. There he sighted and gave chase to the blockading English frigates, and in doing so met Hawke’s fleet of twenty-three ships of the line.

In the battle of Quiberon which followed, the French lost six ships of the line. Eleven, by throwing their guns overboard, escaped into shallow water, the remainder reached safety at Rochefort. Two English ships ran aground, otherwise little damage was sustained.35

Out of these happenings the French fleet—which, in this year alone, lost thirty-one ships of the line—ceased to have any importance; while to the general naval activity of the English must be attributed the capture of Quebec, by Wolfe.

In 1760, the British ships of the line had sunk to 120 in number, though the personnel rose to 73,000. Naval operations were mainly confined to the relief of Quebec and the consequent capture of the whole of Canada, and the suppression of privateering—over a hundred French corsairs being captured in 1760 alone.

The results of privateering have been put at 2,500 English merchant vessels being captured in the four years ending 1760; the French merchant-ship loss being little more than one-third. In 1761, when French naval power had practically ceased to exist, 812 English merchant ships were captured. It must, however, be borne in mind that every year saw great increases in English shipping. Heavy as the numerical losses were, they did not exceed ten per cent., and the bulk of vessels captured were coasters.

French mercantile losses were considerably smaller, but simply for the reason that France had fewer and fewer ships to lose, for her trade was being swept from the sea. English trade on the other hand grew and multiplied exceedingly. It may even be argued that so far from really injuring our trade, the guerre de course in this war actually fostered it by the enhanced profits which safe arrival entailed, this attracting the speculative. But for the speculative the loss of larger vessels would have been smaller than it was. These were they, who, on a convoy nearing home waters, sailed on ahead, chancing attack in the hopes of the greatly increased profits to be made by early arrivals. Ships which obeyed the orders of the escorting warships were very rarely captured.

The following years saw the capture of Pondicherry, Dominica, a successful attack on Belle Isle and also a general loss of French colonial possessions. To quote Mahan, “At the end of seven years the Kingdom of Great Britain has become the British Empire.”

In 1762, Spain declared war. She had a fleet consisting nominally of eighty-nine sail, but joined in far too late to be of any assistance to France. No naval battle of importance took place.

Peace was signed early in 1763. By it England secured Canada from France, and Spain lost Florida.

During this war the usual complaints about ships’ bottoms were made, especially from the West Indian Station; and in October, 1761, the Admiralty ordered a frigate to be sheathed with thin sheets of copper as an experiment. This was at first found extremely successful, but after the lapse of a few years it was noted that chemical action had set up between the copper and the iron bolts at the ships’ bottom—most of these bolts being rusted away.

Experiments were, however, continued, since, though the life of a copper bottom was but three to four years, its general advantages were very great. Ultimately iron bolts were abandoned in favour of copper ones. The cost of this came to £2,272 for a ship of the first-rate, and was only relatively satisfactory.

Ever since the Treaty of Paris in 1763, friction had been growing between the Home Country and the North American Colonies. The causes which led to it concern the British Navy only in so far as it was used for the harsh enforcement of the regulations entailed by the Treaty in question—regulations which bore heavily on the Colonists. The rest of the story is merely the tale of political incapacity at home.

The American Colonists, in addition to a few fast sailing frigates which they handled with unexpected aptitude, possessed a so very considerable mercantile fleet that it was estimated that 18,000 of their seamen had served in the English ships in the late war with France. Consequently, the Colonists were in a position to fit our privateers, and with these, in the first eight years of the war, they captured nearly 1,000 English merchant ships. Their own losses were, however, greater, and it is probable that despite all the military blunders which characterised English conduct of the war, the Colonists would eventually have been worn down but for the active intervention of France in 1778, and Spain a little later.

As regards naval operations against the Americans themselves, these were mainly in the nature of sea transport. Where they were otherwise, they were of an inglorious nature, owing to the total inability of the Home Government to appreciate the position. The naval story of the war is, in the main, the story of frigates attempting difficult channels, and going aground in the attempt. It is of interest mainly because in 1776 one David Bushnell made the first submarine ever actually used in war, and attempted to torpedo the English flagship, Eagle (64). He reached his quarry unsuspected, but the difficulties of attaching his “infernal machine” were such that he had to rise to the surface for air and abandon the enterprise. His subsequent fate was undramatic—he and his boat were captured at sea on board a merchant ship, which was carrying him elsewhere for further operations.

France, which had been rendering considerable secret assistance to the revolted Colonists, had, ever since the Treaty of Paris, been steadily building up her Navy, till she had eighty ships of the line and 67,000 men. The efficiency of the personnel had been increased by the enrolment of a special corps of gunners, who practiced weekly. Efforts—which, however, were only moderately successful—had also been made to break down the serious class rivalries between those officers who were of the noblesse and those who were tarpaulin seamen. But the majority of officers were skilled tactically, and special orders were issued that to seek out and attack the enemy was an objective.36 Here, again, another weak point existed: d’Orvilliers, who commanded the main fleet, also received orders to be cautious—orders very similar in tenor to those by which his predecessors in previous wars were hampered.

The fleet of Great Britain, spread over many quarters of the world, including ships being fitted, consisted of about 150 ships of the line, besides auxiliaries; but the actual available force of Home water fleet with which Keppel sailed just before the opening of the war was twenty ships only!

Capturing two French frigates and learning from them that thirty-two ships were at Brest, Keppel got reinforcements of ten ships, and on the 27th of July, 1778, met d’Orvilliers, also with thirty ships, off Ushant. The battle lasted three hours, when the fleets drew apart without any material result having been achieved. The tactical ability lay with the French, and but for the inefficiency of the leader of one French division, the Duc de Chartres (the future “Phillipe Egalité”), would have done so still more. Yet, though Keppel had obviously done his best, public opinion in England had expected a great naval victory, and Keppel was the subject of a most violent controversy, which soon developed on political lines.

At and about the time of the battle of Ushant, D’Estaing, with twelve ships of the line and five frigates, reached the Delaware. The English fleet under Howe, which consisted of only nine inferior ships of the line, took refuge inside Sandy Hook. D’Estaing came outside and remained ten days in July, but then sailed away.

His failure to operate has been put down to the advice of pilots, but more probably, as pointed out by Admiral Mahan, he had secret instructions not to assist the Colonists too actively. The destruction of Hood’s fleet would have meant the capture of New York, peace between England and America, and a considerable force released for operations against France. Most of the subsequent movements of the year seem to have been coloured by a similar policy. In 1779, the West Indian islands of St. Vincent and Grenada fell into the hands of the French. Subsequently D’Estaing returned to the North American Coast, but no important operations took place there. Finally he returned with some ships to France, sending the others to the West Indies.

Spain declared war against England in 1780. Her fleet then consisted of nearly sixty ships of the line, which—like the French—were in a more efficient state than in previous wars. Her prime object was the recovery of Gibraltar.

A combined Franco-Spanish fleet of sixty-four ships of the line appeared in the Channel, causing an immense panic in England. The only available English fleet consisted of thirty-seven sail of the line, under Sir Charles Hardy, and this wandered away to the westward, leaving the Channel quite open to the allies, who, however, also wandered about without accomplishing anything. As usual with allies, there were divided councils, and in addition the French fleet, having had to wait long for the unwilling Spaniards, was badly incapacitated from sickness. Thus, and thus only, is their failure to invade to be explained: they had 40,000 men ready to be transported over, also a naval force ample to defeat any available English fleet, and able to cover landing operations as well.

When the war first began, there was in France an English admiral—that same Rodney who had destroyed the invading flotilla at Havre in the previous war—who by reason of his debts was unable to return to his own country. In private life he was a merry old soul of sixty or so, and at a dinner one night boasted that if he could pay his debts and go back to England, he would get a command and easily smash the French fleet. Hearing this, a French nobleman promptly paid his debts for him, and sarcastically told Rodney to go back and prove his words.

Rodney, who had the reputation of being an able officer, but nothing more, got home in 1779. In 1780, having secured a command for the West Indies, he left Portsmouth with twenty sail of the line and a convoy for the relief of Gibraltar. Off Finisterre, he captured a Spanish convoy carrying provisions to the besiegers. Off Cape St. Vincent he fell in with eleven Spanish ships and attacked them at night, in a gale, blowing up one, and capturing six. Thence he proceeded to Gibraltar, relieved it from all immediate danger, Minorca also; and then sailed for the West Indies. Here, on April 17th, some three weeks after arrival, he met the French under Guichen, and made the first attempt at that “breaking the line” associated with his name. The attempt was not a success, as his orders were misunderstood by several of his own captains and his intentions realised and foiled by his opponents.37

This action was indecisive; as also were two more that followed.

In this year (1780), Captain Horatio Nelson, then only twenty-two years old, made his first appearance in the Hinchinbrook (28), in an attack on San Juan, Nicaragua. He succeeded, after terrible loss of personnel from disease.

A Spanish squadron then joined the French, but an epidemic—that most fruitful of all sources for the upsetting of naval plans—overtook it. The Spaniards were incapacitated and the French returned home. Rodney went to New York, where his operations delayed the cause of the Colonists; then returning to the West Indies, operated against the Dutch, who had by now joined the French and Spaniards.

The general position of Great Britain, in 1781 and 1782, was well nigh desperate. Gibraltar was only held by a remarkable combination of luck and resolution. To quote Mahan, “England stood everywhere on the defensive.” She fought with her back to the wall. In the East Indies, Suffren kept the French flag flying: and things were generally at a very low ebb, when in 1782 Rodney “broke the line” in the victory of the Battle of the Saints.

On April 9th, the fleets had come into contact without much result on either side. On the 12th, De Grasse, being then in some disorder, with thirty-four ships, encountered the English with thirty-six in good order. Rodney and Hood broke the line in two places. Admiral Mahan has been at pains to show us that this result was much a matter of luck and change of wind, and that the victory was by no means followed up as it might have been. One French ship was sunk and five were taken, including De Grasse himself, whose losses in his flagship, the Ville de Paris, were greater than those in the entire English fleet.

To the nation at this juncture, however, anything savouring of victory was a thing to be made the utmost of, and Rodney has probably received more than his meed of merit over what was mainly a matter of luck.

Two features of special interest in connection with this battle are that, though up to it, British ships had recently, owing to coppering, proved better sailers than the French; in the sequel to this fight, the French proved equal to sail away. The rapid deterioration of coppering, already mentioned, may account for some of this, but in this battle there is also reason to believe that the French fleet instituted firing at the rigging. Contemporary statements exist as to the French having made a wonderful number of holes in English hulls without much material result, but these may be dismissed as pardonable temporary bluster. More germane is the fact that the English ships were supplied with carronades38—harmless at long range and deadly at short—for which reason the French tried to keep them at a distance, so that altogether superior efficiency with men and weapons would seem to have played a greater part than any tactical genius on the part of Rodney, in whom a dogged insistence to get at the enemy was ever the main characteristic rather than “thinking things out.” The Mahan estimate of him sorts better with known facts than the estimate of his accomplishment at the time.

As regards Rodney himself, it is interesting to record that Navy and Party were so synonymous at the time that he, being a strong Tory, had already been superseded by political influence when he won the battle that broke French power in the West Indies. It lies to the credit of the Whigs that both he and Hood, his second in command, received peerages; but the most difficult thing of all to understand to-day is, that in a life and death struggle such as this war was, the personal political element should have managed to find expression.

In 1782, Gibraltar, which had been twice relieved, was once more in grievous straits. The French had evolved floating batteries for the attack, similar in principle to those which, some seventy years later, were to figure so prominently in the Crimea.

Being merely armoured with heavy wood planks, however, they were easily set on fire with red-hot shot, and the great bombardment failed long before the relieving force, under Howe, arrived. The garrison, however, were in great straits for supplies, and their real relief was Howe’s fleet, which the combined Franco-Spanish squadrons did not dare to attack.

The Treaty of Versailles, in 1783, followed soon afterwards. By it the United States of America were recognised, Minorca was given up, but most of the captured West Indian islands restored to Great Britain.

Just before the close of the war, the relative naval strengths were assessed as follows:—39

In this list it is interesting to note the British inability to maintain even a Two-Power Standard in ships of the line, whereas in sloops and such like, an enormous preponderance prevailed. For the suppression of privateering on the coastal trade, these small craft proved very useful. Also worthy of note is the decline of the fire-ship as a naval arm.40

The figures as a whole suggest with much clarity that had the Allies been able to act together, Great Britain would never have emerged from the war so well as she did.

The ten years’ peace that followed was little more than a breathing space. War was constantly apprehended, and known improvement in French ships were such that they had to be carefully watched. The frigates built in England were made longer than before, with a view to keeping pace with French sailing qualities.

Considerable interest was taken in how far the country was self-supporting in the matter of timber for shipbuilding, a certain reliance on foreign supplies having previously existed. At, and about 1775, the cost of shipbuilding for the East India Company had exactly doubled in a few years. The home supply trouble arose, partly from the increased size of shipping, partly from the tendency of owners to fell trees as early as possible. Out of which special oak plantations were set up in the New Forest and elsewhere, though oak happened to cease to be of value for shipbuilding long before they had grown large enough for the larger timbers.

The question of repairs also came in for consideration, an average of twenty-five years’ repair totalling the cost of a new ship. At and about this time also, the building of ships by contract in peace time was first recommended on the grounds that thus the private yards would be better available in case of war.

Regular stores for ships in the dockyards were also instituted, with a view to the speedy equipment of ships in reserve.41 It was mainly owing to this last provision, introduced by Lord Barham in 1783, that, though when the war of the French Revolution broke out in 1793 but twelve ships of the line and thirty lesser vessels were in commission, a few months later seventy-one ships of the line and 104 smaller craft were in service. The number of men voted in 1793 was 45,000.