Heresies of Sea Power/Part 1/Chapter 2

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In many ways the state of affairs at the outbreak of the first Punic war recalls the situation at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war.

Carthage was the mistress of the Western Mediterranean. Absolute Sea Power was hers. Her ships were many, her crews well trained and practised. Born of the sea, she lived by it.

A Phoenician colony, the Carthaginians preserved to a large extent the Phœnician characteristics. The Phoenicians were ever a peculiar people. National feeling, as possessed by other races of their time, they had none: they cared nothing for politics, and whatever military power was in the ascendent, to that they willingly became tributary so long as they were allowed to retain their existence upon the seas.

Of this sea existence Carthage was a pied à terre; and being the best harbour in Africa, it rapidly rose to great importance.

The pressure of circumstances and the rivalries of trade brought about a consolidated empire, and the nations round about her were enrolled as subjects,

​paying tribute and furnishing troops, the officers of which were Carthaginians.

The system by which in the present age the British have soldiers of Indian, Egyptian and other nationalities, drilled and officered by British, grew at Carthage from similar small beginnings till it became practically the only dependable system. A Carthaginian citizen was regarded as too valuable a man to make a ranker of,^[1] and the world was searched for the best material that Carthage could purchase. From the Balearic Islands came the best slingers, from Liguria the best infantry, African tribes made ideal light cavalry and the pick of all served in the fleet. When any military operations were in progress the commander-in-chief was invested with supreme command for no fixed term; and invested with almost dictatorial powers. But he was carefully subjected to the civil authority,^[2] and always accompanied by a civil commission which had the sole power of making treaties and so forth.

​Carthage, her own citizens being indisposed to military service, had a weak point in her mercenary troops, who, devoid of any national interest in her campaigns, were reliable only while victory and plunder were to be secured upon the Carthaginian side. If defeat were toward, there was no race feeling in the rank and file to compel the continuation of war:^[3] but history shows that the Carthaginians were not ignorant of what might be done to mitigate this peril by means of discipline.

Rome was essentially a military power. Wherever the Roman arms penetrated there a miniature Rome was set up, bound to Rome by ties of self-interest, and gradually all Italy had fallen under her sway. Her ​troops were all Roman citizens or allies cheerfully fighting for her.

Rome is supposed by many to have had no navy whatever when the war began. This is not, however, true. She had a few ships: thus in B.C. 282 ten Roman ships which had broken a treaty under which they might not appear east of the Lacinian promontory, were attacked at Tarentum. She had, therefore, some naval power and a large mercantile marine; though Roman ignorance of the sea was such that her strength in this direction was a negligible quantity.

Carthage, among her many over-sea interests had concern with Sicily, and here she came first into contact with the Romans. In B.C. 264 the war began, the national clash of two powers with conflicting interests: Rome was expanding her interests, and in her way stood Carthage. The precise nominal causes of the war are immaterial; the real cause was that there was no longer room for both. This, it may be remarked, has been the real origin of all life-and-death wars: it was with Rome and Carthage in B.C. 264 as with Japan and Russia in A.D. 1904.

Appius Claudius, the Roman Consul, representative of the nation without Sea Power, crossed the Straits of Messana and invaded Sicily, and for some time had things entirely his own way inshore. On the coast the Carthaginian navy operated after a time. Speaking generally, the operations of the Carthaginians were ​much what they might have been, had some prototype of the present-day 'Blue Water School' been amongst them. Secure in their Sea Power they troubled comparatively little about the Roman invasion and the failure of their army in Sicily. In these years the interior of the island was practically in Roman hands, but the coast towns were all at the mercy of Carthaginian ships—so too the coast towns of Italy, despite the fortified ports specially established against naval raids.

Then it was that Rome suddenly turned attention to the sea. Stories of the ignorant Romans building a fleet upon the model of a wrecked Carthaginian warship^[4] are probably not fiction, for though they had ample numbers of naval architects in the Greeks^[5] and Etruscans on their own shores, they had not, however any practice in building such efficient warships as were the Carthaginian vessels. Few trained seamen were available, and 'shore establishments' were instituted in which rowing was practised.^[6] The first effort was a sufficiently dismal failure. One hundred quinqueremes and thirty triremes were constructed, and seventeen of these ships—a trial squadron under C. Cornelius Scipio—encountered the Carthaginians under Boodes off Messana in superior force.

The Carthaginians to the number of twenty ships ​blockaded the Roman fleet in harbour, and Scipio surrendered after his crews had landed and fled.^[7]

The Romans in their aspirations for Sea Power recognised as clearly as the Syracusans in the Peloponnesian war, the nature of their limitations and the existence of 'other ways.' As the Syracusans invented a species of battleship for their needs in order to overcome Athenian skill, so the Romans evolved a type of warship designed to let their soldiers fight at sea. They invented the corvi,^[8] a species of drawbridge, each thirty-six feet long by four feet wide, with a hook at the far end, secured to a twenty-four-foot mast and designed to be let down in battle the moment close quarters were reached. Thus, all the accepted naval tactics of the time were made of no account, for over these boarding bridges the Roman soldiers rushed to victory.

Duilius, the Roman Consul, so soon as the corvi were fitted, went to sea to meet the Carthaginians under Hannibal.^[9] These, full of contempt for their unnautical opponents, advanced to the attack in no particular order, with the result that thirty ships alone began the battle. These were destroyed and Hannibal's attempts to repair his error failed. In ​the end he took to flight with the remnant of his fleet.^[10]

He reached Carthage before the news of the battle. According to a French historian,^[11] suppressing the intelligence, he sent an officer who told the Senate that the Romans were at sea with a fleet. 'Their ships,' said he, 'are like merchant ships. It is their first attempt; they have no nautical experience. On the bows of their ships they have certain machines, the use of which we cannot ascertain. Would it be rash to attack them and preserve our sovereignty of the seas, or shall I allow them to ravage our coasts?'

Orders to attack were given: then he announced the defeat, adding, 'Hannibal thought as you. What you have ordered he has attempted: and, if Fortune has not smiled upon his enterprise, does that make him a criminal?'

Thus diplomatically, if the story be true, he avoided the consequences of defeat: but his diplomacy was more than a clever excuse. Negligent as he had shown himself, his assumption of certain victory when he encountered Duilius was at any rate natural. His contempt for his opponents, however unwise, was exactly the contempt that would be felt in any efficient ​navy matched against a notoriously untrained sea force. Yet always in history most danger has come from the despised untrained force—a lesson England learned in her war with the Americans in 1812.

After this victory of Duilius the newly acquired Sea Power of Rome was used to press the Sicilian campaign and for operations against Corsica and Sardinia. Hannibal with what was left of his fleet went from Carthage to Sardinia which was being attacked, and here in a certain harbour the Romans found and blockaded him. His crews fled to the shore and abandoned their ships. He himself escaped only to fall into the hands of some of his own men, who signalised their view of his second failure by crucifying him forthwith.^[12]

The loss of the fleet of Hannibal did not exhaust Carthaginian naval resources, for in the following year (B.C. 256) they had a fleet off Tyndaris^[13] under Hamilcar which, passing in bad order, was sighted by the Roman Atilius who lay at anchor in the harbour. He rushed to the attack with ten triremes leaving the rest of his fleet to follow. These ten were surrounded and nine of them destroyed; when the rest of the Romans arrived and captured or destroyed eighteen Carthaginians.

To the ancient historian this action was an example of Roman temerity and over-confidence that culminated ​in victory only by luck: but it is to be argued that Atilius had a clear tactical design, and did what in all ages since others have done or advocated. Flinging his fast craft upon the enemy he held them with these till his main body arrived and secured the victory.

The following year was marked by great naval efforts; each side putting over 300 ships into commission.^[14] The Romans under Regulus collected at Messana, designing an invasion of Africa, and leaving Messana went south, doubling Cape Pachynum (Cape Passaro) and thence coasted westward.

The Carthaginians, meanwhile, under Hamilcar and Hanno, had crossed to Lilybæum and then gone east seeking the Roman fleet, which they encountered off Mount Ecnomus—the Romans being inshore in the formation of an inverted wedge A supported by lines astern of it. The Carthaginians to seaward faced the A with a long line indented on the left to envelop the wedge.^[15] Upon the Roman attack the Carthaginian centre imitated those tactics by which in the past Alcibiades had secured a victory. Feigning retreat, until the pursuing enemy were in disorder, at a signal they turned suddenly upon their pursuers.

This plan very nearly succeeded, but in the end the Carthaginians failed and were defeated with the loss of ​thirty ships sunk and sixty-four captured. The Romans lost twenty-four ships sunk.

Regulus after refitting proceeded to Africa and a landing having been effected and Clypæa taken he was left with forty ships, the remaining vessels being recalled by the Senate. The surviving Carthaginian vessels made no attempt to intercept him, and everything seemed open to Roman victory. The 'Blue Water School' at Carthage had controlled matters to the extent of an entire absence of 'bricks and mortar.' Defence lay entirely with the fleet; and so what was left of the fleet was concentrated at Carthage itself for 'harbour defence.'

Regulus advanced to within ten miles of Carthage, and it was a matter of the purest luck that his army was defeated by Xanthippus, a Spartan mercenary who, when all seemed lost, conceived the idea of using elephants on land in a sense much for the same reason that the Romans had used the corvi at sea. Regulus was captured, his army scattered, and the Carthaginian fleet held the sea off Cape Mercurius in order to cut off the retreat of the few survivors.

Matters were at this stage when a huge Roman fleet of 350 ships made its appearance. ^[16] It destroyed the Carthaginian fleet, and the renewal of the invasion was discussed, but the land upon which they might ​have lived had already been ravaged by Regulus in his advance on Carthage, and the dread that over-sea supplies would be intercepted by Carthaginian ships led to the re-embarkation of the entire Eoman force.

They sailed, therefore, toward Sicily, and all but eighty of the 464 ships, which including transports the fleet numbered, were lost in a storm.^[17]

A new fleet of 200 ships took the Carthaginian port at Panormus in Sicily: but on its way back to Italy, being attacked by the Carthaginians, lost all its transports. In the next year (254 B.C.) this fleet again operated against Africa, but ignorance of navigation got the ships aground and necessitated throwing overboard the spoils of the raid, and subsequently all but sixty ships were wrecked and lost.^[18]

Upon this the anti-Sea Power party in the Senate gained the upper hand: maritime expeditions were decided against, and the fleet reduced to sixty vessels for coast defence.

Carthage got together a new fleet; but the army which it carried to Sicily being defeated, peace overtures were made. Thus encouraged Rome once more made a bid for the mastery of the sea, and equipping 240 ships besieged Lilybamm ^[19] (Marsala) and Drepanum (Trapani)—the only two Carthaginian strongholds left. Here Carthaginian seamanship displayed itself. Another Hannibal took a fleet to the Ægates Islands ​and waiting a favourable wind sailed into Lilybæum and revictualled it right in the faces of the Romans. After remaining a few days he slipped out at night and went to Drepanum.

The Eomans after a futile attempt to block the harbour of Lilybæum, sailed under Claudius for Drepanum. Warned of Claudius' move, the Carthaginian Adherbal stationed his fleet among the rocks at the entrance, fell suddenly upon Claudius and totally defeated him.

The Eoman blockade of Lilybæum was, however, maintained, and a fleet of 120 warships accompanied by 800 transports was despatched to aid in the siege and blockade. This fleet, as usual, collected at Messana, called at Syracuse and thence coasted towards Lilybæum, where it met a Carthaginian squadron off Cape Pachynum, which being in inferior force contented itself with observing the Roman armada.

A gale was coming up. The experienced Carthaginians ran for shelter; the Romans, suspecting nothing, encountered the full force of the storm and lost many ships, while after the gale the Carthaginians easily captured the dispersed remnants.

Thus Carthage secured once more the control of the sea. Rome crushed under the double disaster abandoned fleets, and relied upon a species of guerre de course in which small Carthaginian detachments and storeships were occasionally overpowered. Carthage, however, had the command of the sea. Rome chiefly ​confined herself to purely military operations, Carthage to naval ones conducted by the famous Hamilcar Barca—father of the still more famous Hannibal. Hamilcar steadily raided the Italian coast, and, of course, easily kept supplied the two strongholds which the Romans vainly besieged in Sicily.

In B.C. 251, the Romans realising that only by defeating the Carthaginian ships could Drepanum and Lilybæum be taken, equipped a fourth fleet by means of private enterprise; the State undertaking to recoup the cost only if success were met with. This fleet of 200 quinqueremes was put under the command of Lutatius and it sailed for Sicily after the Carthaginians had been allowed to command the sea for five years. In the interval these had realised their need of an army, without which, they were equally helpless to raise the sieges. Hamilcar was ashore, conducting military operations in Sicily, and the fleet—the pressing need for it being now passed—had sunk to the status of a secondary arm. Off Sicily, no ships were stationed, and Lutatius reached the neighbourhood of Lilybæum without encountering any opposition. Here he established himself and spent his time in constant evolutions.

The Carthaginians hearing of this blockade of Lilybaeum collected 250 ships which they sent under Hanno to Sicily. The ships were laden with stores, the crews apparently more or less raw, and the old technical skill conspicuously absent. The Romans on ​the other hand exhibited superior tactical qualities, and their victory was of the easiest description. Hanno's fleet was annihilated.

Communications with Sicily cut, her mercenaries almost in a state of revolt, Carthage surrendered Lilybæum and Drepanum and made peace.

Few wars are more interesting and instructive than this—the first Punic War. The bone of contention was an island: but that island was invaded with considerable success by a military power which had practically no fleet at all.

It may be said that the Carthaginians should have been able to stop the invasion by Sea Power; and gross laxity would seem the only explanation of their failure to do so. But on examination it will be found that Carthage did not desire war, and the invasion was of the nature of a political surprise—in some ways not very dissimilar to that invasion of Korea which began the Russo-Japanese War in February 1904. A nation resolved on war can always undertake a military operation to open that war against a nation less eager to fight. A Continental ideal for the defeat of England is the declaration of war by the landing on British shores of the hostile army. Whether practicable or not in these days of telegraphs and steam, the idea is not at all a novel one, and something of the sort is to be found in the Roman invasion of Sicily. Japan's invasion of Korea in 1904 is not on a par with projected invasions of England, since Japan had the conviction ​that her fleet was the better one, and her torpedo attack on the fleet at Port Arthur was planned and expected to produce considerably more results than it actually achieved. Rome apparently had no idea of using such ships as she had for any purpose save as transports.

Let us now, as on a previous occasion, suppose some one conversant with all the theories of Sea Power and deductions therefrom, but entirely ignorant of the actual results of this Roman invasion of Sicily. Let him be given the conditions and requested to forecast the results. In how far would his forecast agree with what actually happened? Would he prove that communications being cut (as they were) the Roman army would accomplish nothing? Would he foresee the 'silent steady pressure of Sea Power' driving the Romans inland till, recognising the inevitable, they surrendered at discretion? Would he foresee, the actual result, the over-running of Sicily by the Roman soldiers; Carthaginian Sea Power doing no more than rendering insecure Roman tenure of coast captures, and permitting raids on the Italian coast—wearying Rome it is true, but achieving nothing towards defeating her? Or would he predict Carthage, having complete command of the sea, pouring troops into Sicily till the Romans, however superior in individual courage, were annihilated by force of numbers?

Carthage, as already stated, was for purposes of defence and offence managed essentially on 'Blue ​Water School' principles. She had but a comparatively small army of moderate efficiency available for military operations: and even of this she made no great use. She was content to leave things to her navy and trust to the 'silent pressure of Sea Power.' That silent pressure might have stood her in fairly good stead perhaps, had Eome not turned her attention to 'other ways.'

The Syracusan ships and the Roman ships with corvi show, as later, Greek fire, cannon, steam, shells and armour, were to show, how unstable a thing is Sea Power even at its best. On land, once in a way, as with the phalanx, with elephants, possibly (but not certainly) with cannon, new inventions—' other ways ' — have neutralised skill, courage, and practice: but the sea is full of incidents whereby high efficiency has been made a mere cipher through the raw man having some new invention, some new idea, placed in his hands. Given the necessary fitness, Fate seems ever to have supplied the necessary weapon. Yet Sea Power as a definite factor is assessed as though such incidents had never been, and ' Fitness to win ' is never included as one of its factors.

Confident in the corvi, the Romans,—without sea practice be it noted, for they even learned to row in 'shore establishments,'—sallied out and easily defeated the foremost seamen of the age. Is not a true appreciation of this worth a dozen realisations that 'it was the ships of Nelson at Trafalgar which won the battle of Waterloo'?

​In the events that followed, the trained seaman once in a way asserted himself. When Lilybæum and Drepanum were closely beleaguered, the skilled seamen of the Carthaginians succeeded in running through the blockading fleet and overcoming the obstacles placed by the Romans to prevent their ingress. At Drepanum, too, the skill of Adherbal and his sailors made short work of Claudius's 'soldiers at sea,' though even here the folly of Claudius in entering a hostile harbour without any precautions is sufficient to account for his defeat. Storms, too, wreaked upon the Romans disaster such as never befell the more experienced Carthaginians. In the end, however, by virtue of the corvi, or by virtue of being the fitter to win, the Romans gained the victory.

The war was won by Power of some sort—no war was so surely won by Power as this. But, if we examine that Power, what was it? What was behind the corvi, the particular weapon that overthrew the Carthaginian fleets? Nothing assuredly that Carthaginian seamen could not have copied structurally. They apparently made no attempt to do so. This may have been due to the conservatism so inherent with nautical men^[20] who as a class are averse to going either forward or backwards, and also partly due to the fact that behind the corvi were the Roman 'soldiers at sea.' We lack the necessary details to ​show which of these two was the principal reason, but we do know that the Roman was the better man, compared with the Carthaginian fighting man, when it came to a hand-to-hand struggle.^[21] How much better the Roman was we cannot say. On land, however, the Carthaginian forces fought well enough to suggest that the disparity was not insuperable, at any rate, hardly enough to account for the crushing nature of the naval defeats inflicted. All that the Romans with the corvi did was to turn the sea into land for the purposes of the battle, even as the Syracusans did when they defeated the Athenians, and this was simply a reversion to past methods. The ship originally was nothing but a machine whereby soldiers could fight soldiers on the water as well as on land.

We are compelled, therefore, to imagine that over and above the question of fitness between the combatants, there was also the fact that the Carthaginian sailors, either from pure conservatism to the best existing methods when they were trained, or from the numbing effect of being suddenly faced with novel conditions, found their very proficiency in naval war a la mode, fatal to war by unorthodox methods. However, the point of interest is that the Romans, like the Syracusans, despairing of equalling their enemies in a special technical field, reverted to old conditions in which no technical skill was necessary.

​Now, can we condemn the 'Blue Water School' of Carthage? Omitting the corvi, it is difficult to do so. Carthage could only be attacked by sea, and her sea efficiency was superior to that of any other nation. Yet she failed. The cause of that failure was surely her lack of 'Fitness to win.' Had that been hers, she would surely have found the means of retaining her empire. As it was, though by a combination of luck and skill, she succeeded once in recovering her Sea Power, yet her unfitness to win led her into a neglect of efficiency, so great that in the final fight she was proved inferior to the Romans in purely nautical ability. Here at least is a lesson from history to stand throughout all time.