Naval Power and British Culture, 1760–1850

Public Trust and Government Ideology

Roger Morriss

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780754630319
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351915588
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Recent work on the growth of British naval power during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has emphasised developments in the political, constitutional and financial infrastructure of the British state. Naval Power and British Culture, 1760-1850 takes these considerations one step further, and examines the relationship of administrative culture within government bureaucracy to contemporary perceptions of efficiency in the period 1760-1850. By administrative culture is meant the ideas, attitudes, structures, practices and mores of public employees. Inevitably these changed over time and this shift is examined as the naval departments passed through times of crisis and peace. Focusing on the transition in the culture of government employees in the naval establishments in London - in the Navy and Victualling Offices - as well as the victualling yard towns along the Thames and Medway, Naval Power and British Culture, 1760-1850 concerns itself with attitudes at all levels of the organisation. Yet it is concerned above all with those whose views and conduct are seldom reported, the clerks, artificers, secretaries and commissioners; those employees of government who lived in local communities and took their work experience back home with them. As such, this book illuminates not only the employees of government, but also the society which surrounded and impinged upon naval establishments, and the reciprocal nature of their attitudes and influences.

Part I
The Eighteenth Century

Chapter 1
The Growth of British Naval Power

At the end of the eighteenth century, British naval power depended on ways of thinking that can be traced back to the seventeenth century. At that time, naval power developed in response to two principal demands: the necessity to defend Britain's constitution and territories within Europe, and the need to defend Britain's trade and colonies throughout the world. These two demands were to shape naval thinking, and provide a global dimension to the evolution of British culture.

Despite her insularity, Britain's security largely depended on the politics of continental Europe.¹ Defence of the British constitution dated back at least as far as the Reformation, but was actively renewed after the execution of Charles I. Indeed, during the second half of the seventeenth century, the demands of defence reshaped the structure of Tudor and Stuart government.² With the establishment of a limited monarchy in 1688-9, the powers of the Crown were restricted but the monarch still remained at the centre of government with interests in Europe that British ministers felt committed to defend. William III brought Britain into hostilities with France under Louis XIV. George I brought a connection with Hanover. By the reign of George III, the principality had come to matter less to the monarch, but it still involved British interests sufficiently to form one of the motives for hostilities in the Baltic in 1801 and 1806.³

If by the reign of George III the continental interests of the British monarchy and people were closely intertwined, so too were their interests outside Europe. During the second half of the seventeenth century, the periodic presence of British squadrons in the Mediterranean not only benefitted Britain's trade but made her a diplomatic force in the region.⁴ In 1694 William III's insistence on the British fleet remaining in the Mediterranean over the ensuing winter demanded funding which came through the establishment of the Bank of England.⁵ Following the War of Spanish Succession, from 1715 a naval squadron was based permanently in the Mediterranean where Britain was henceforth regarded virtually as a local power.

However, it was the expansion of Britain's colonies in North America and the West Indies that demanded the largest number of naval vessels. From 1700 the most marked growth in British overseas trade and shipping was found within the Atlantic basin; by the 1770s, at least half of Britain's foreign-going shipping was in these trades.⁶ Routes shared with the Bourbon powers demanded that British shipping in wartime received protection. The coordination of trade, shipping and the navy were linked in 1696 by the establishment of the Board of Trade.⁷ The War of Spanish Succession saw an enlargement in the proportion of the British fleet dedicated to trade protection. The acquisition of the Spanish asiento in 1713 permitted British merchants to funnel trade into Spanish America⁸ and gave added reason for the peacetime stationing of squadrons in the West Indies. One, based at Jamaica, continuously policed the western Caribbean from 1712; another, supported from Antigua, operated off the Leeward Islands from 1744. Further north, a squadron based at Halifax was permenantly maintained off Newfoundland from 1730; another, supported from New York, operated further south from 1745. A squadron was also maintained in the Indian Ocean from 1722.⁹

Of course, these overseas forces had continuously to be balanced against those needed in home waters. Deployment in peace and in war, logistics, command and control, became part of naval expertise. They were central to the maintenance of Britain's place in the world, to her trade, economic development and government revenues. Yet naval thought was, of necessity, a compromise with resources. The navy could be no more effective than its ability to mobilise resources. To improve its effectiveness, obstacles in the way of mobilisation had to be removed.

Strategy and Empire

British naval strategy evolved over the course of a century after 1650.¹⁰ At its heart lay a 'western squadron', operating in the western approaches to the English Channel. In the wars against France, the western squadron has been described as the lynch-pin of British naval strategy.¹¹ The squadron was first mooted during the War of William III when France became Britain's principal enemy. The establishment of France's principal Atlantic naval base at the port of Brest demanded a British force which would both defend England and Ireland from invasion, and permit offensive operations against the French fleet, should it emerge.¹² During the War of Spanish Succession Admiral Sir Cloudisley Shovell claimed that the most appropriate station for a squadron of battleships should be '20 to 40 leagues S.W. to W.S.W. from Ushant'.¹³ The geographical determinants of this location were better explained by Admiral Edward Vernon in 1745. He pointed out that a fleet 'posted within the Channel between the Lizard and the coast of France' would 'leave all Ireland, the western coasts of this island and even the Bristol Channel and all our East and West Indian trade expected home, open to them [the French] to do what they please'. 'Whereas,' he argued, 'a western squadron formed as strong as we can make it ... and got speedily out into the Soundings, might face their united force, cover both Great Britain and Ireland and be in condition to pursue them wherever they went and be at hand to secure the safe return of our homeward bound trade from the East and West Indies'.¹⁴

With a 'western squadron' at its heart, British strategy gave rise to a succession of naval victories, most notably that of Quiberon Bay in November 1759. This defeat of a French fleet, intended as an escort to an invasion force, demonstrated the efficacy of catching the French soon after they emerged from Brest. However, the Quiberon campaign also demonstrated the difficulty with which ships kept station off Ushant. Twice during the autumn of 1759 Sir Edward Hawke had been driven by westerly gales back to the English coast to take shelter first in Plymouth Sound and then in Torbay. The westerly winds which kept the British battle fleet on the English coast also kept the French in Brest. Yet the easterly wind upon which Hawke sailed from Torbay on 14 November also permitted the French to leave their base.¹⁵ The blockade of Brest thus demanded the existence of a British fleet that, even if not capable of keeping the sea in the worst weather, was able to get back off Ushant when that weather abated, and in such numbers that the French were still intimidated.

The 'western squadron' bore fruit in Britain's colonial conquests. Before 1713 naval resources were too limited to provide strong expeditions overseas.¹⁶ Experience in preparation, planning and the arrangement of local support was also wanting.¹⁷ Yet great losses and disappointments duing the war with Spain and France (1739-48) conferred valuable lessons in managing overseas expeditions in the tropics.¹⁸ Subsequently between 1756 and 1763, with an ally in Europe to drain France of military resources, the 'western squadron' shielded a succession of colonial conquests: French Senegal and Goree in West Africa; Louisburg, Quebec and Montreal in North America; Guadaloupe, Dominica, Martinique, Grenada, St Lucia and St Vincent in the West Indies; followed by perhaps the most demonstrative exhibition of Britain's growing experience in amphibious warfare, the capture of Spanish Havana.¹⁹

The colonial war and absence of an ally on the Continent denied Britain the resources to pursue such expeditions during the American War of Independence. However, at the beginning of the French Revolutionary War, political administrators looked back to the Seven Years War for the strategic model of the policy they were to pursue. William, Lord Grenville, Foreign Secretary from April 1791, maintained the necessity for Britain to be involved on the Continent, building and funding a succession of continental coalitions.²⁰ But Henry Dundas, Secretary for War from July 1794, was for pursuing British interests overseas. Thus, as early as July 1793, he opposed involvement in western France because it 'would interfere with the objects which naturally present themselves either in the West or East Indies'. Successes in those quarters, he argued, were 'of infinite moment, both in the view of humbling the power of France, and with the view of enlarging our national wealth and security'. In the opinion of Dundas, the West Indies were 'the first point to make perfectly certain'.²¹

The influence of Dundas with William Pitt, First Lord of the Treasury and Prime Minister, resulted in the largest overseas expeditions Britain had ever mounted, the capture of French Tobago, St Lucia and Martinique, and the long maintenance of footholds on French St Domingue. Spanish Trinidad was taken in 1797. But territorial gains were also made in the east. From 1795 the Dutch colonies, including the Cape of Good Hope, Trincomalee, Malacca, Amboyna and Banda, were occupied.²² Expansion in India was not unconnected. In 1798, when the French expedition to Egypt appeared to threaten India, Henry Dundas 'trembled' at the thought of losing British controlled territories in the sub-continent²³ The apparent conspiracies of native sultans sympathetic to the French prompted Dundas to direct that they should be treated 'in the only way such conduct merits', encouragement that contributed to diplomatic and military campaigns against them by the new Governor-General of India, Richard Wellesley, Earl of Mornington.²⁴

British territorial gains during the French Revolutionary War came to exceed even those of the Seven Years War. Economically the strategy succeeded in both weakening France and increasing the capacity of Britain to wage war. In the 1780s France had obtained almost a third of her foreign trade from the West Indies. By 1800 her imports of sugar and coffee were virtually annihilated. As 70 per cent of the sugar and 90 per cent of the coffee had been re-exported in Europe, the loss of these commodities represented major losses of revenue from trade. By contrast, British control of the seas permitted British trade revenues to swell. Between 1790 and 1800 the value of British imports increased by nearly 59 per cent; the export of domestic products increased by almost the same amount; and the re-export of colonial products increased by a remarkable 187 per cent. More than half the increase in Britain's re-exports was on account of West Indian products; sugar imports nearly doubled, coffee imports increased ninefold. To carry these and other commodities, British maritime resources increased in a corresponding fashion. From 14 334 ships amounting to 1 437 000 tons in 1792, the British merchant navy expanded to 16 552 ships of 1 79...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• PART I THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
• PART II THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index