I.

THE BIRTH OF BRITISH NAVAL POWER.

The birth of British naval power is involved in considerable obscurity and a good deal of legend. The Phœnicians and the Romans have both been credited with introducing nautical ideas to these islands, but of the Phœnicians there is nothing but legend so far as any “British Navy” is concerned. That the Phœnicians voyaged here we know well enough, and a “British fleet” of the B.C. era _may_ have existed, a fleet due to possible Phœnicians who, having visited these shores, remained in the land. Equally well it may be mythical.

Whatever share the ancient Britons may have had in the supposed commercial relations with Gaul, it is clear that no fleet as we understand a fleet existed in the days of Julius Cæsar. Later, while England was a Roman province, Roman fleets occasionally fought upon British waters against pirates and in connection with Roman revolutions, but they were ships of the ruling power.

Roman power passed away. Saxons invaded and remained; but having landed they became people of the land--not of the sea. Danes and other seafarers pilaged English shores much as they listed till Alfred the Great came to the throne.

Alfred has been called the “Father and Founder of the British Fleet.” It is customary and dramatic to suppose that Alfred was seized with the whole modern theory of “Sea Power” as a sudden inspiration--that “he recognised that invaders could only be kept off by defeating them on the sea.”

This is infinitely more pretty than accurate. To begin with, even at the beginning of the present Twentieth Century it was officially put on record that “while the British fleet could prevent invasion, _it could not guarantee immunity from small raids_ on our great length of coast line.” In Alfred’s day, one mile was more than what twenty are now; messages took as many days to deliver as they now do minutes, and the “raid” was the only kind of over-sea war to be waged. It is altogether chimerical to imagine that Alfred “thought things out” on the lines of a modern naval theorist.

In actual fact,[1] what happened was that Alfred engaged in a naval fight in the year 875, somewhere on the South Coast. There is little or no evidence to show where, though near Wareham is the most likely locality.

In 877 something perhaps happened to the Danes at Swanage, but the account in Asser is an interpolated one, and even so suggests shipwreck rather than a battle.

In 882 (possibly 881) two Danish ships sank: “the rest” (number not recorded) surrendered later on.

[Illustration: WARSHIP OF THE TIME OF KING ALFRED.]

In 884 occurred the battle of the Stour. Here the Saxon fleet secured a preliminary success, in which thirteen Danish ships were captured. This may or may not have been part of an ambush--at any rate the final result was the annihilation of King Alfred’s fleet.

In 896 occurred the alleged naval reform so often alluded to as the “birth of the British Navy”--those ships supposed to have been designed by Alfred, which according to Asser[2] were “full nigh twice as long as the others ... shapen neither like Frisian nor the Danish, but so as it seemed to him that they would be most efficient.”

Around these “early Dreadnoughts” much has been weaved, but there is no evidence acceptable to the best modern historians that Alfred really built any such ships--they tend to reject the entire theory.

The actual facts of that “naval battle of the Solent” in 897 from which the history of our navy is popularly alleged to date, appear to be as follows:

There were nine of King Alfred’s ships, manned by Frisian pirates, who were practically Danes. These nine encountered three Danish vessels in a land-locked harbour--probably Brading--and all of them ran aground, the Danish ships being in the middle between two Saxon divisions. A land fight ensued, till, the tide rising, the Danish ships, which were of lighter draught than the Saxon vessels, floated. The Danes then sailed away, but in doing so two of them were wrecked.

All the rest of the story seems to be purely legendary. Our real “island story”--as events during the next few hundred years following Alfred clearly indicate--is not that of a people born to the sea; but the story of a people forced thereto by circumstances and the need of self-preservation.

It is a very unromantic beginning. There is a strange analogy between it and the beginning in later days of the Sea Power of the other “Island Empire”--Japan. Japan to-day seeks--as we for centuries have sought--for an historical sequence of the “sea spirit” and all such things as an ideal islander should possess. Neither we nor they have ever understood or ever properly realised that it was the Continentals who long ago first saw that it was necessary to command the sea to attack the islanders. The more obvious contrary has always been assumed. It has never been held, or even suggested, that the Little Englander protesting against “bloated naval armaments,” so far from being a modern anachronism, an ultra-Radical or Socialist exotic, may really claim to be the true exponent of “the spirit of the Islanders” for all time. That is one reason why (excluding the mythical Minos of Crete) only two island-groups have ever loomed big in the world’s history.

When Wilhelm II of Germany said: “_Unsere Zukunft liegt auf dem Wasser_,” he uttered a far more profound truth than has ever been fully realised. Fleets came into being to attack Islanders with.

The Islanders saw the sea primarily as a protection existing between them and the enemy. To the Continental the sea was a road to, or obstacle between him and the enemy, only if the enemy filled it with ships. The Islanders have ever tended to trust to the existence of the sea itself as a defence, except in so far as they have been taught otherwise by individuals who realised the value of shipping. Those millions of British citizens who to-day are more or less torpid on the subject of naval defence are every whit as normal as those Germans who, in season and out, preach naval expansion.

The explanation of all this is probably to be found in the fact that the earliest warfare known either to Continentals or to Islanders was _military warfare_. The ship as at first employed was used entirely as a means of transport for reaching the enemy--first, presumably, against outlying islands near the coast, later for more over-sea expeditions.

Ideas of attack are earlier than ideas of defence, and the primary idea of defence went no further than the passive defensive. King Alfred, merely in realising the offensive defensive, did a far greater thing than any of the legendary exploits associated with his history. The idea was submerged many a time in the years that followed, but from time to time it appeared and found its ultimate fruition in the Royal Navy.

Yet still, the wonder is not that only two Island Empires have ever come into existence, but that any should have come into existence at all. The real history of King Alfred’s times is that the Continental Danes did much as they listed against the insular Saxons of England, till the need was demonstrated for an endeavour to meet the enemy on his own element.

In the subsequent reigns of Athelstan and Edmund, some naval expeditions took place. Under Edgar, the fleet reached its largest. Although the reputed number of 3,600 vessels is, of course, an exaggerated one, there was enough naval power at that time to secure peace.

This “navy” had, however, a very transient existence, because in the reign of Ethelred, who succeeded to the throne, it had practically ceased to exist, and an attempt was made to revive it. This attempt was so little successful that Danish ships had to be hired for naval purposes.

A charter of the time of Ethelred II exists which is considered by many to be the origin of that Ship Money which, hundreds of years later, was to cause so much trouble to England. Under this, the maintenance of the Navy was made a State charge on landowners, the whole of whom were assessed at the rate of producing one galley for every three hundred and ten hides of land that they possessed.

This view is disputed by some historians, who maintain that the charter is possibly a forgery, and that it is not very clear in any case. However, it does not appear to have produced any useful naval power.

That naval power was insufficient is abundantly clear from the ever increasing number of Danish settlements. In the St. Bride’s Day massacre, which was an attempt to kill off the leading Danes amongst the recent arrivals, further trouble arose; and in the year 1013, Swain, King of Denmark, made a large invasion of England, and in the year 1017, his son Canute ascended to the throne.

Under Canute, the need of a navy to protect the coast against Danish raids passed away. The bulk of the Danish ships were sent back to Denmark, forty vessels only being retained.

Once or twice during the reign of Canute successful naval expeditions were undertaken, but at the time of the King’s death the regular fleet consisted of only sixteen ships. Five years later, an establishment was fixed at thirty-two, and remained more or less at about that figure, till, in the reign of Edward the Confessor trouble was caused by Earl Godwin, who had created a species of fleet of his own. With a view to suppressing these a number of King’s ships were fitted out; but as the King and Godwin came to terms the fleet was not made use of.

Close following upon this came the Norman invasion, which of all the foolhardy enterprises ever embarked on by man was theoretically one of the most foolish. William’s intentions were perfectly well known. A certain “English fleet” existed, and there was nothing to prevent its expansion into a force easily able to annihilate the heterogeneous Norman flotilla.

How many ships and men William actually got together is a matter upon which the old chroniclers vary considerably. But he is supposed to have had with him some 696 ships[3]; and since his largest ships were not over twenty tons and most of them a great deal smaller, it is clear that they must have been crowded to excess and in poor condition to give battle against anything of the nature of a determined attack from an organised fleet.

No English fleet put in appearance, however. Harold had collected a large fleet at Sandwich, but after a while, for some unknown reason, it was dispersed, probably owing to the lateness of the season. The strength of the fleet collected, or why it was dispersed, are, however, immaterial issues; the fact of importance is that the fleet was “inadequate” because it failed to prevent the invasion. A neglected fleet entailed the destruction of the Saxon dominion.