SEA POWER

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 59, Issue 4222, 11 December 1939, Page 6

SEA POWER

DOES IT STILL WIN WARS? THE CASE FOR THE NAVY. (By a Naval Correspondent.) A great deal has been heard lately of “sea power.” Britain’s command of the sea has been exalted as the sure and certain weapon which will ultimately break down German resistance and bring victory to the Allies. In the past, historians have dwelt upon the far-reaching effects of sea power, and in modern times the appearanee of a classic work, •The Influence of Sea Power Upon History,” by Captain A. T. Mahan exerted a powerful influence itself. It showed, by illustrations taken from the past, the clear and decisive results flowing from the command of ths sea. It is not necessary to go very far back to see for ourselves what this command of the sea meant and means. , Julius Caesar landed on Britain’s shores, William the Conqueror was enabled to do the same, simply because they both commanded the narrow seas. The Jutes from Jutland harried the Britons for the same reason. King Alfred realised this weakness and took steps to build up some sort of fleet, and was dubbed for this reason the “Father of the British Navy.”

One of the greatest dangers that ever threatened England was the menace of the Spanish Armada. Had that Armada achieved its purpose, England would have become a Roman Catholic appanage of Spain, and the course of history would have been radically changed. Somehow or other the smaller, fewer, and more nimble English ships, aided by the weather, and better commanded and fought, managed to beat off and almost destroy the Spanish fleet. England thus succeeded in retaining the command of the sea.

The Commonwealth of Australia conceivably exists to-day because of the European need and desire for Eastern spices in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. Those spices came overland from the East to the great spice market of Europe—Venice, which reigned as the unrivalled queen of the Mediterranean. That reign was cut short by the skill, courage, and enterprise of certain Portuguese seamen, notably Vasco da Gama and his followers, who pioneered a sea route round the Cape to India. Here they opened up a new spice and textile market, and brought home to Lisbon their rich cargoes, thus eliminating Venice from the scene.

The Portuguese found that the Indian seas were commanded at that time by Arab and Moorish fleets—good seamen, stout fighters. Unfortunately, they knew nothing of gunpowder and artillery, so the Portuguese were able to subdue them and drive them from the seas. The Arabs lost the command of those seas, and the Portuguese gained it. The Dutch were good seamen, too. They also went out in search of these new and rich markets and came into conflict with the Portuguese, who had established their colonies and factories in India. The Dutch went farther afield to the East Indies and maintained a constant warfare with the Portuguese, whom they finally ejected from many of their strongholds, notably Ceylon.

It was in the course of these venturesome voyages by the hardy Dutchmen that the west coast of Australia was, quite by chance, discovered. That west coast does not seem to have made any appeal to the Dutch seamen, accustomed to the tropic riches of the East Indies. But the Dutch were not to be left in possession of their hard-won Eastern domains. Another nation with a sea sense—the English—went out after them in search of the rich Indies. The Dutch and the English came into conflict, and at last one of the great prizes of the East—the rich and spicy Ceylon—passed from Dutch into English hands. The French, too, were > engaged in this struggle for a foothold and for eventual supremacy in India and the East. But to-day, if you look at the map of India, you will find no trace whatever- of the Dutch, and only a few small relics of the Portuguese and the French settlements, which remain as witnesses to the great struggle for sea power in those waters, and which lasted through thre centuries. If we come to more modern times, we se the influence of sea power decisively operating in the last war. It may seem rather far-fetched to suggest that the fate of Australia was decided in the mists of the North Sea —but the facts are there for all to see.

A feature of that struggle was the number and the size of great seaborne expeditionary forces which transported and maintained large armies in Egypt, the Dardanelles, Palestine, Mesopotamia, and farther afield.

These great striking forces were possible only because they could be carried across the seas, free from

attack and destruction by the German fleet. The Anzacs were transported to Gallipoli and maintained there by sea power. Had the Grand Fleet been German, had Jellicoe been von Jellicoe, and had there not been that grey wall of steel battleships cutting off German access to the oceans of the world, German and not British expeditionary forces would have been in operation on all the seas. Japan’s rise to power in the modern world is based upon sea power. The turning point in the modern history of Japan came with her defeat of Russia in 1904-1905. While it is true that the Japanese armies ’ exercised a considerable influence upon that struggle on the mainland, it was the Japanese command of the Eastern seas, which was the decisive factor in the downfall of Russia. The destruction of Admiral RodEstvensky’s fleet, which had gone out to the East to challenge the Japanese fleet’s command of those seas, put an end to Russia’s aspirations and left Japan in absolute control not only of those waters, but 'of the ports and harbours abutting thereon. Sea power is an intangible and yet a most decisive power. In a celebated phrase, Captain Mahan has summed up the influence upon history of Britain’s sea power during the Napoleonic wars. He is referring to the fleets and squadrons led by Nelson and his captains:—

“Those far distant and stormbeaten ships, upon which the Grand Army never looked, stood between it and the dominion of the world.”

In recent years confidence in this old-established belief in the power of navies to dominate the seas has been shaken by the appearance on the scene of th air arm. Within the short space of 20 years the enormous increase in the power, range, and scope of the bombing machine brought a new and unexpected threat to the battleship, and, in fact, to all surface ships—not to mention underwater craft, submarines. Many graphic pictures were drawn of the easy targets which battleships in particular would present to enterprising bombers, and it was confidently predicted that not sea power, but air power would henceforth rule the world.

There appeared to be a great deal to support this conjecture. After all, battleships are costly, slow, and apparently vulnerable to air attack. One of the reasons advanced by the air advocates was the fact that a battleship costs about £8,000,000, and that for this sum a fleet of bombers, variously estimated at from 800 to 1000, could be built. What possible chance could a battleship have when pitted against such overwhelming attack ?

Even if the number were reduced to 400 or even 200 bombers, a great advantage seemed to lie with the bombers. And yet the maritime nations of the world continued to build battleships! The British Government was concerned about this matter of the air menace. It set up an expert com-' mittee to go into the whole subject, a committee consisting of four Cabinet Ministers, assisted by the First Sea Lord (Admiral Chatfield) and the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Marshal Sir Edward Ellington. This committee went into the question, among others, of the cost of a battleship compared with a number of bombers. The Admiralty and the Ail- Ministry gave an agreed figure of 43 twin-engined medium bombers as costing the equivalent of one battleship, taking into account maintenance and replacement to make a fair comparison with the effective life of the battleship. i The principal conclusion at which the committee arrived however, was that the question of relative cost was not the real issue. ‘No other naval Power has ceased to build battleships,” they said ‘Should we be the first to do so? Surely not, unless the question is settled beyond all posible doubt. We do not find that the question is so settled.”

And they concluded:— “It is possible to state the matter in the simplest possible terms. “The advocates of the extreme air view would wish Britain to build nd more battleships (other Powers still continuing to build them). “If their theories turn out well founded, we have wasted money; if ill-founded, we would, in putting them to the test, have lost the Empire.” That was written in July, 1936. To-day the theories have not yet been put fully to the test of real war. But enough has been demonstrated in quite recent air attacks to support the view that sea power is still the supreme consideration, and that air attacks to destroy that power have not yet succeeded.