ozens of times on
shore, viz. the menace by the flanking enemy. In land warfare
this is held to give exceptional opportunities for the display of
good generalship, but, to quote Mahan over again, a navy 'acts
on an element strange to most writers, its members have been
from time immemorial a strange race apart, without prophets of
their own, neither themselves nor their calling understood.'
Whilst Torrington has had the support of seamen, his opponents
have been landsmen. For the crime of being a good strategist he
was brought before a court-martial, but acquitted. His sovereign,
who had been given the crowns of three kingdoms to defend our laws,
showed his respect for them by flouting a legally constituted
tribunal and disregarding its solemn finding. 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. The hostile navy could be more easily watched
and more easily followed if it put to sea. To carry out this
plan a navy stronger in number of ships or in general efficiency
than that of the enemy was necessary to us. With the exception
of that of American Independe