Some Principles of Maritime Strategy by Julian Stafford Corbett

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Is it then possible, however much we may resist the conclusion in loyalty
to the eighteenth-century tradition, that the rise of a new naval Power in
the room of Holland must bring us back to the drastic, if crude, methods of
the Dutch wars, and force us to tread under foot the nicer ingenuity of
Anson's system? Is it this which has tempted us to mistrust any type of
vessel which cannot be flung into the battle? The recurrence of a
formidable rival in the North Sea was certainly not the first cause of the
reaction. It began before that menace arose. Still it has undoubtedly
forced the pace, and even if it be not a cause, it may well be a
justification.

* * * * *

CHAPTER THREE

* * * * *

THEORY OF THE METHOD--
CONCENTRATION AND DISPERSAL OF FORCE

* * * * *

From the point of view of the method by which its ends are obtained,
strategy is often described as the art of assembling the utmost force at
the right time and place; and this method is called "Concentration."

At first sight the term seems simple and expressive enough, but on analysis
it will be found to include several distinct ideas, to all of which the
term is applied indifferently. The result is a source of some confusion,
even to the most lucid writers. "The word concentration," says one of the
most recent of them, "evokes the idea of a grouping of forces. We believe,
in fact, that we cannot make war without grouping ships into squadrons and
squadrons into fleets."[11] Here in one sentence the word hovers between
the formation of fleets and their strategical distribution. Similar
looseness will embarrass the student at every turn. At one time he will
find the word used to express the antithesis of division or dispersal of
force; at another, to express strategic deployment, which implies division
to a greater or less extent. He will find it used of the process of
assembling a force, as well as of the state of a force when the process is
complete. The truth is that the term, which is one of the most common and
most necessary in strategical discussion, has never acquired a very precise
meaning, and this lack of precision is one of the commonest causes of
conflicting opinion and questionable judgments. No strategical term indeed
calls more urgently for a clear determination of the ideas for which it
stands.

[11] Daveluy, _L'Esprit de la Guerre Navale_, vol. i, p. 27, note.

Military phraseology, from which the word is taken, employs "concentration"
in three senses. It is used for assembling the units of an army after they
have been mobilised. In this sense, concentration is mainly an
administrative process; logically, it means the complement of the process
of mobilisation, whereby the army realises its war organisation and becomes
ready to take the field. In a second sense it is used for the process of
moving the army when formed, or in process of formation, to the localities
from which operations can best begin. This is a true strategical stage, and
it culminates in what is known as strategic deployment. Finally, it is used
for the ultimate stage when the army so deployed is closed up upon a
definite line of operations in immediate readiness for tactical
deployment--gathered up, that is, to deal a concentrated blow.

Well as this terminology appears to serve on land, where the processes tend
to overlap, something more exact is required if we try to extend it to the
sea. Such extension magnifies the error at every step, and clear thinking
becomes difficult. Even if we set aside the first meaning, that is, the
final stage of mobilisation, we have still to deal with the two others
which, in a great measure, are mutually contradictory. The essential
distinction of strategic deployment, which contemplates dispersal with a
view to a choice of combinations, is flexibility and free movement. The
characteristic of an army massed for a blow is rigidity and restricted
mobility. In the one sense of concentration we contemplate a disposal of
force which will conceal our intention from the enemy and will permit us to
adapt our movements to the plan of operations he develops. In the other,
strategic concealment is at an end. We have made our choice, and are
committed to a definite operation. Clearly, then, if we would apply the
principles of land concentration to naval warfare it is desirable to settle
which of the two phases of an operation we mean by the term.

Which meaning, then, is most closely connected with the ordinary use of the
word? The dictionaries define concentration as "the state of being brought
to a common point or centre," and this coincides very exactly with the
stage of a war plan which intervenes between the completion of mobilisation
and the final massing or deployment for battle. It is an incomplete and
continuing act. Its ultimate consequence is the mass. It is a method of
securing mass at the right time and place. As we have seen, the essence of
the state of strategic deployment to which it leads is flexibility. In war
the choice of time and place will always be influenced by the enemy's
dispositions and movements, or by our desire to deal him an unexpected
blow. The merit of concentration, then, in this sense, is its power of
permitting us to form our mass in time at one of the greatest number of
different points where mass may be required.

It is for this stage that the more recent text-books incline to specialise
concentration--qualifying it as "strategic concentration." But even that
term scarcely meets the case, for the succeeding process of gathering up
the army into a position for tactical deployment is also a strategical
concentration. Some further specialisation is required. The analytical
difference between the two processes is that the first is an operation of
major strategy and the other of minor, and if they are to be fully
expressed, we have to weight ourselves with the terms "major and minor
strategic concentration."

Such cumbrous terminology is too forbidding to use. It serves only to mark
that the middle stage differs logically from the third as much as it does
from the first. In practice it comes to this. If we are going to use
concentration in its natural sense, we must regard it as something that
comes after complete mobilisation and stops short of the formation of mass.

In naval warfare at least this distinction between concentration and mass
is essential to clear appreciation. It leads us to conclusions that are of
the first importance. For instance, when once the mass is formed,
concealment and flexibility are at an end. The further, therefore, from the
formation of the ultimate mass we can stop the process of concentration the
better designed it will be. The less we are committed to any particular
mass, and the less we indicate what and where our mass is to be, the more
formidable our concentration. To concentration, therefore, the idea of
division is as essential as the idea of connection. It is this view of the
process which, at least for naval warfare, a weighty critical authority has
most strongly emphasised. "Such," he says, "is concentration reasonably
understood--not huddled together like a drove of sheep, but distributed
with a regard to a common purpose, and linked together by the effectual
energy of a single will."[12] Vessels in a state of concentration he
compares to a fan that opens and shuts. In this view concentration connotes
not a homogeneous body, but a compound organism controlled from a common
centre, and elastic enough to permit it to cover a wide field without
sacrificing the mutual support of its parts.

[12] Mahan, _War of 1812_, i, 316.

If, then, we exclude the meaning of mere assembling and the meaning of the
mass, we have left a signification which expresses coherent disposal about
a strategical centre, and this it will be seen gives for naval warfare just
the working definition that we want as the counterpart of strategic
deployment on land. The object of a naval concentration like that of
strategic deployment will be to cover the widest possible area, and to
preserve at the same time elastic cohesion, so as to secure rapid
condensations of any two or more of the parts of the organism, and in any
part of the area to be covered, at the will of the controlling mind; and
above all, a sure and rapid condensation of the whole at the strategical
centre.

Concentration of this nature, moreover, will be the expression of a war
plan which, while solidly based on an ultimate central mass, still
preserves the faculty of delivering or meeting minor attacks in any
direction. It will permit us to exercise control of the sea while we await
and work for the opportunity of a decision which shall permanently secure
control, and it will permit this without prejudicing our ability of
bringing the utmost force to bear when the moment for the decision arrives.
Concentration, in fact, implies a continual conflict between cohesion and
reach, and for practical purposes it is the right adjustment of those two
tensions--ever shifting in force--which constitutes the greater part of
practical strategy.

In naval warfare this concentration stage has a peculiar significance in
the development of a campaign, and at sea it is more clearly detached than
ashore. Owing to the vast size of modern armies, and the restricted nature
of their lines of movement, no less than their lower intrinsic mobility as
compared with fleets, the processes of assembly, concentration, and forming
the battle mass tend to grade into one another without any demarcation of
practical value. An army frequently reaches the stage of strategic
deployment direct from the mobilisation bases of its units, and on famous
occasions its only real concentration has taken place on the battlefield.
In Continental warfare, then, there is less difficulty in using the term to
cover all three processes. Their tendency is always to overlap. But at sea,
where communications are free and unrestricted by obstacles, and where
mobility is high, they are susceptible of sharper differentiation. The
normal course is for a fleet to assemble at a naval port; thence by a
distinct movement it proceeds to the strategical centre and reaches out in
divisions as required. The concentration about that centre may be very far
from a mass, and the final formation of the mass will bear no resemblance
to either of the previous movements, and will be quite distinct.

But free as a fleet is from the special fetters of an army, there always
exist at sea peculiar conditions of friction which clog its freedom of
disposition. One source of this friction is commerce protection. However
much our war plan may press for close concentration, the need of commerce
protection will always be calling for dispersal. The other source is the
peculiar freedom and secrecy of movements at sea. As the sea knows no roads
to limit or indicate our own lines of operation, so it tells little about
those of the enemy. The most distant and widely dispersed points must be
kept in view as possible objectives of the enemy. When we add to this that
two or more fleets can act in conjunction from widely separated bases with
far greater certainty than is possible for armies, it is obvious that the
variety of combinations is much higher at sea than on land, and variety of
combination is in constant opposition to the central mass.

It follows that so long as the enemy's fleet is divided, and thereby
retains various possibilities of either concentrated or sporadic action,
our distribution will be dictated by the need of being able to deal with a
variety of combinations and to protect a variety of objectives. Our
concentrations must therefore be kept as open and flexible as possible.
History accordingly shows us that the riper and fresher our experience and
the surer our grip of war, the looser were our concentrations. The idea of
massing, as a virtue in itself, is bred in peace and not in war. It
indicates the debilitating idea that in war we must seek rather to avoid
than to inflict defeat. True, advocates of the mass entrench themselves in
the plausible conception that their aim is to inflict crushing defeats. But
this too is an idea of peace. War has proved to the hilt that victories
have not only to be won, but worked for. They must be worked for by bold
strategical combinations, which as a rule entail at least apparent
dispersal. They can only be achieved by taking risks, and the greatest and
most effective of these is division.

The effect of prolonged peace has been to make "concentration" a kind of
shibboleth, so that the division of a fleet tends almost to be regarded as
a sure mark of bad leadership. Critics have come to lose sight of the old
war experience, that without division no strategical combinations are
possible. In truth they must be founded on division. Division is bad only
when it is pushed beyond the limits of well-knit deployment. It is
theoretically wrong to place a section of the fleet in such a position that
it may be prevented from falling back on its strategical centre when it is
encountered by a superior force. Such retreats of course can never be made
certain; they will always depend in some measure on the skill and resource
of the opposing commanders, and on the chances of weather: but risks must
be taken. If we risk nothing, we shall seldom perform anything. The great
leader is the man who can measure rightly to what breadth of deployment he
can stretch his concentration. This power of bold and sure adjustment
between cohesion and reach is indeed a supreme test of that judgment which
in the conduct of war takes the place of strategical theory.

In British naval history examples of faulty division are hard to find. The
case most commonly cited is an early one. It occurred in 1666 during the
second Dutch war. Monk and Rupert were in command of the main fleet, which
from its mobilisation bases in the Thames and at Spithead had concentrated
in the Downs. There they were awaiting De Ruyter's putting to sea in a
position from which they could deal with him whether his object was an
attack on the Thames or to join hands with the French. In this position a
rumour reached them that the Toulon squadron was on its way to the Channel
to co-operate with the Dutch. Upon this false intelligence the fleet was
divided, and Rupert went back to Portsmouth to cover that position in case
it might be the French objective. De Ruyter at once put to sea with a fleet
greatly superior to Monk's division. Monk, however, taking advantage of
thick weather that had supervened, surprised him at anchor, and believing
he had a sufficient tactical advantage attacked him impetuously. Meanwhile
the real situation became known. There was no French fleet, and Rupert was
recalled. He succeeded in rejoining Monk after his action with De Ruyter
had lasted three days. In the course of it Monk had been very severely
handled and forced to retreat to the Thames, and it was generally believed
that it was only the belated arrival of Rupert that saved us from a real
disaster.

The strategy in this case is usually condemned out of hand and made to bear
the entire blame of the reverse. Monk, who as a soldier had proved himself
one of the finest strategists of the time, is held to have blundered from
sheer ignorance of elementary principles. It is assumed that he should have
kept his fleet massed; but his critics fail to observe that at least in the
opinion of the time this would not have met the case. Had he kept the whole
to deal with De Ruyter, it is probable that De Ruyter would not have put to
sea, and it is certain Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight would have lain
open to the French had they come. If he had moved his mass to deal with the
French, he would have exposed the Thames to De Ruyter. It was a situation
that could not be solved by a simple application of what the French call
the _masse centrale_. The only way to secure both places from attack was to
divide the fleet, just as in 1801 Nelson in the same theatre was compelled
to divide his defence force. In neither case was division a fault, because
it was a necessity. The fault in Monk's and Rupert's case was that they
extended their reach with no proper provision to preserve cohesion. Close
cruiser connection should have been maintained between the two divisions,
and Monk should not have engaged deeply till he felt Rupert at his elbow.
This we are told was the opinion of most of his flag-officers. They held
that he should not have fought when he did. His correct course, on
Kempenfelt's principle, would have been to hang on De Ruyter so as to
prevent his doing anything, and to have slowly fallen back, drawing the
Dutch after him till his loosened concentration was closed up again. If De
Ruyter had refused to follow him through the Straits, there would have been
plenty of time to mass the fleet. If De Ruyter had followed, he could have
been fought in a position from which there would have been no escape. The
fault, in fact, was not strategical, but rather one of tactical judgment.
Monk over-estimated the advantage of his surprise and the relative fighting
values of the two fleets, and believed he saw his way to victory
single-handed. The danger of division is being surprised and forced to
fight in inferiority. This was not Monk's case. He was not surprised, and
he could easily have avoided action had he so desired. To judge such a case
simply by using concentration as a touchstone can only tend to set up such
questionable habits of thought as have condemned the more famous division
which occurred in the crisis of the campaign of 1805, and with which we
must deal later.

Apart from the general danger of using either words or maxims in this way,
it is obviously specially unwise in the case of concentration and division.
The current rule is that it is bad to divide unless you have a great
superiority; yet there have been numerous occasions when, being at war with
an inferior enemy, we have found our chief embarrassment in the fact that
he kept his fleet divided, and was able thereby to set up something like a
deadlock. The main object of our naval operations would then be to break it
down. To force an inferior enemy to concentrate is indeed the almost
necessary preliminary to securing one of those crushing victories at which
we must always aim, but which so seldom are obtained. It is by forcing the
enemy to attempt to concentrate that we get our opportunity by sagacious
dispersal of crushing his divisions in detail. It is by inducing him to
mass that we simplify our problem and compel him to choose between leaving
to us the exercise of command and putting it to the decision of a great
action.

Advocates of close concentration will reply that that is true enough. We do
often seek to force our enemy to concentrate, but that does not show that
concentration is sometimes a disadvantage, for we ourselves must
concentrate closely to force a similar concentration on the enemy. The
maxim, indeed, has become current that concentration begets concentration,
but it is not too much to say that it is a maxim which history flatly
contradicts. If the enemy is willing to hazard all on a battle, it is true.
But if we are too superior, or our concentration too well arranged for him
to hope for victory, then our concentration has almost always had the
effect of forcing him to disperse for sporadic action. So certain was this
result, that in our old wars, in which we were usually superior, we always
adopted the loosest possible concentrations in order to prevent sporadic
action. True, the tendency of the French to adopt this mode of warfare is
usually set down to some constitutional ineptitude that is outside
strategical theory, but this view is due rather to the irritation which the
method caused us, than to sober reasoning. For a comparatively weak
belligerent sporadic action was better than nothing, and the only other
alternative was for him to play into our hands by hazarding the decision
which it was our paramount interest to obtain. Sporadic action alone could
never give our enemy command of the sea, but it could do us injury and
embarrass our plans, and there was always hope it might so much loosen our
concentration as to give him a fair chance of obtaining a series of
successful minor decisions.

Take, now, the leading case of 1805. In that campaign our distribution was
very wide, and was based on several concentrations. The first had its
centre in the Downs, and extended not only athwart the invading army's line
of passage, but also over the whole North Sea, so as to prevent
interference with our trade or our system of coast defence either from the
Dutch in the Texel or from French squadrons arriving north-about. The
second, which was known as the Western Squadron, had its centre off Ushant,
and was spread over the whole Bay of Biscay by means of advanced squadrons
before Ferrol and Rochefort. With a further squadron off the coast of
Ireland, it was able also to reach far out into the Atlantic in order to
receive our trade. It kept guard, in fact, not only over the French naval
ports, but over the approaches to the Channel, where were the home
terminals of the great southern and western trade-routes. A third
concentration was in the Mediterranean, whose centre under Nelson was at
Sardinia. It had outlying sub-centres at Malta and Gibraltar, and covered
the whole ground from Cape St. Vincent outside the Straits to Toulon,
Trieste, and the Dardanelles. When war broke out with Spain in 1804, it was
considered advisable to divide this command, and Spanish waters outside the
Straits were held by a fourth concentration, whose centre was off Cadiz,
and whose northern limit was Cape Finisterre, where it joined the Ushant
concentration. For reasons which were personal rather than strategical this
arrangement was not continued long, nor indeed after a few months was there
the same need for it, for the Toulon squadron had changed its base to
Cadiz. By this comprehensive system the whole of the European seas were
controlled both for military and trade purposes. In the distant terminal
areas, like the East and West Indies, there were nucleus concentrations
with the necessary connective machinery permanently established, and to
render them effective, provision was made by which the various European
squadrons could throw off detachments to bring up their force to any
strength which the movements of the enemy might render necessary.

Wide as was this distribution, and great as its reach, a high degree of
cohesion was maintained not only between the parts of each concentration,
but between the several concentrations themselves. By means of a minor
cruiser centre at the Channel Islands, the Downs and Ushant concentrations
could rapidly cohere. Similarly the Cadiz concentration was linked up with
that of Ushant at Finisterre, and but for personal friction and repulsion,
the cohesion between the Mediterranean and Cadiz concentrations would have
been equally strong. Finally, there was a masterly provision made for all
the concentrations to condense into one great mass at the crucial point off
Ushant before by any calculable chance a hostile mass could gather there.

For Napoleon's best admirals, "who knew the craft of the sea," the British
fleet thus disposed was in a state of concentration that nothing but a
stroke of luck beyond the limit of sober calculation could break. Decres
and Bruix had no doubt of it, and the knowledge overpowered Villeneuve when
the crisis came. After he had carried the concentration which Napoleon had
planned so far as to have united three divisions in Ferrol, he knew that
the outlying sections of our Western Squadron had disappeared from before
Ferrol and Rochefort. In his eyes, as well as those of the British
Admiralty, this squadron, in spite of its dispersal in the Bay of Biscay,
had always been in a state of concentration. It was not this which caused
his heart to fail. It was the news that Nelson had reappeared at Gibraltar,
and had been seen steering northward. It meant for him that the whole of
his enemy's European fleet was in a state of concentration. "Their
concentration of force," he afterwards wrote, "was at the moment more
serious than in any previous disposition, and such that they were in a
position to meet in superiority the combined forces of Brest and Ferrol,"
and for that reason, he explained, he had given up the game as lost. But to
Napoleon's unpractised eye it was impossible to see what it was he had to
deal with. Measuring the elasticity of the British naval distribution by
the comparatively cumbrous and restricted mobility of armies, he saw it as
a rash and unwarlike dispersal. Its looseness seemed to indicate so great a
tenderness for the distant objectives that lay open to his scattered
squadrons, that he believed by a show of sporadic action he could further
disperse our fleet, and then by a close concentration crush the essential
part in detail. It was a clear case of the enemy's dispersal forcing us to
adopt the loosest concentration, and of our comparative dispersal tempting
the enemy to concentrate and hazard a decision. It cannot be said we forced
the fatal move upon him intentionally. It was rather the operation of
strategical law set in motion by our bold distribution. We were determined
that his threat of invasion, formidable as it was, should not force upon us
so close a concentration as to leave our widespread interests open to his
attack. Neither can it be said that our first aim was to prevent his
attempting to concentrate. Every one of his naval ports was watched by a
squadron, but it was recognised that this would not prevent concentration.
The escape of one division might well break the chain. But that
consideration made no difference. The distribution of our squadrons before
his naval ports was essential for preventing sporadic action. Their
distribution was dictated sufficiently by the defence of commerce and of
colonial and allied territory, by our need, that is, to exercise a general
command even if we could not destroy the enemy's force.

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