Naval Warfare: Its Ruling Principles and Practice Historically Treated (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Naval Warfare: Its Ruling Principles and Practice Historically Treated

Historians then had generally neglected to give any attention to the causes of success or failure in naval war; they did not connect the facts or events which were necessary for that purpose. Naval commanders, on the other hand, seem to have been so entirely con vinced of the force of causes beyond their control, and so satisfied of their obviousness, that they seldom alluded to them. Of writers on naval strategy there were absolutely none; writers on naval tac tics were few and far between; they generally wrote as if the tactics of manoeuvring embraced the whole subject; and the elaborate simplicity of Clerk of Eldin got an extensive hearing because he stood almost alone as a writer in applying to the naval battle con siderations which no writer could omit in treating of the battle on land.

I held this condition of the literature of naval war to be mainly responsible for the want of its study, which was common and thus for the existing belief that nothing was to be got from it either in lessons for the present, or guidance for the future.

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