Water world

The third and final instalment of N. A. M. Rodger’s erudite, engaging naval history of the British Isles places the Royal Navy at the centre of national and world history, as modern Britain emerged, evolved a functioning democracy and endured the trauma of two global conflicts and the end of imperial power, while remaining culturally distinct and globally engaged. Britain survived seismic shifts in global power, domestic politics and economic activity because it had the wisdom, will and wealth to create and sustain the world’s most effective sea fighting force. Insularity made Britain possible – but the Navy made it real. A naval history of Britain is necessary because the Navy had a critical role in shaping and securing the nation. This book, and the trilogy that it completes, are testimony to the dedication of a great scholar, the support of institutions and individuals, and the many audiences in the academy, and beyond, that have taken it to heart.

Between 1815 and 1945 the Navy was central to Britain’s national security, prosperity and international status. It defined the nation and linked it to other British locations across the globe. In the world wars it prevented invasion and starvation, delivered British and Allied armies that overthrew imperial and Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, supplied the Soviet war effort and helped to defeat Japan by commanding the sea against all challengers. The Navy was directed and administered by the Admiralty, a great department of state, a civil-naval interface, presided over by a cabinet minister and by senior admirals based in a Georgian building close by Trafalgar Square. Admiralty messaging kept the sea and the sea service at the forefront of public awareness, shaping naval historical output. After 1945 the Ministry of Defence left that task to academics.

The Price of Victory is a big book, but not a word has been wasted. It follows the approach adopted in The Safeguard of the Sea (1997) and The Command of the Ocean (2004), texts on a similarly large scale that moved the story to 1649, then 1815. All three run to 900 pages of text, liberally illustrated, accurately mapped and thoroughly referenced. The endnotes are among the glories of this project, a running debate with other scholars, past and present, one that reflects a particular vision of the Royal Navy, and of its central role in the development of the British state and a unique society. The Price of Victory was delayed by a serious illness and by the ever- expanding task – it covers the most densely studied period of naval history in Britain and beyond. Today there are more opportunities to study naval history, and more lively debates in progress, than ever before, reflecting a deepening intellectual synergy between universities, defence colleges and a sophisticated public audience. Naval historians examine operations, strategy, tactics, technology, intelligence, economics, sociology, international law, logistics and much more as they analyse this complex organization, its roles, structures, ships, people and significance.

The Royal Navy is alive and well, providing maritime security, global reach and the national deterrent, while modern warships and submarines bear storied names from past successes, because tradition matters. History also offers insight for the present and future. In the Crimean War (1854–6), Britain and France rolled back a Russian invasion of a neighbouring country by destroying Sevastopol and imposing a devastating economic blockade, one that prevented Russia from exporting grain and other key products. Its economy collapsed in six months, and it still depends on bulky exports by and under seas that it cannot command.

By the late nineteenth century much of the population and the political class understood that Britain’s future security and prosperity, along with basic food supplies and raw materials, depended on naval power. By contrast, as Winston Churchill famously observed, the Imperial German Navy was “a luxury”, intended to deter British intervention in a continental conflict. To retain diplomatic freedom of action British governments launched an arms race, defeating the German challenge with superior financial and industrial resources. This success supports Rodger’s argument that claims of British economic “decline” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are seriously flawed. He contends that the British economy changed from basic industries to more specialized products, many connected with global shipping, including shipbuilding and insurance, along with a dense web of foreign investments in and beyond the Empire, many linked to global trade and communications technologies. Those investments were liquidated to win two world wars.

The book proceeds in a series of chronological chapters examining operations, administration, manpower, ships and aircraft. The small wars, technological and social transformations of the nineteenth century lead into the global wars of the twentieth. Recruiting officers and men proved a headache, as the service expanded and contracted in war and peace without creating an adequate reserve for wartime mobilization. Victorian officer recruitment and education reflected an institution that relied on character and background to generate leaders, wasting time and effort on rote learning at the expense of practical experience and serious science. The twentieth-century Navy would relearn old lessons in wartime, replacing peacetime practices that discouraged initiative and independence of thought with Nelsonic self-confidence and aggression. The star captains of 1914–18 led a more aggressive service in 1939–45. War prompted more practical training and education systems because there was and is no substitute for experience. Volunteers and reservists enabled the Navy to meet the challenge of global war, while the innovative Woman’s Royal Naval Service, or “Wrens”, provided skilled personnel for service everywhere other than on ships – a distinction that has long since been abandoned.

Rodger’s polished, engaging exposition – inflected by wry humour – delivers excoriating judgements of foolish men, flawed institutions and misguided nations, all impeccably referenced and accurately targeted. The malign, mischievous and incompetent are identified and held to account. His targets include the Liberal “Reform” ministry of 1830–4: obsessed with economy and “individual responsibility”, it demolished the tried and tested naval administrative system that had defeated Napoleon, burdening senior officers and politicians at the Admiralty with bureaucratic oversight of the Royal Dockyards, industrial and logistics facilities, manpower and ship design. This administrative burden left little time or space for considered policies to develop war plans, address educational shortcomings or improve recruitment and manpower. This malign legacy hampered policy and decision-making for decades. In 1854 the same ideological and economic obsessions crippled mobilization, sending the main fleet to war in the Crimea without enough sailors to save money. Rodger is similarly critical of the disruptive methods and hasty policies of Admiral Lord Fisher (1841–1920), widely credited with modernizing the service as First Sea Lord before war broke out in 1914. He takes a more positive view than most commentators of Churchill’s interventions as First Lord of the Admiralty (1911–15, 1939–40) and prime minister.

The book discerns a repeating pattern of hostile powers failing to grasp the practical issues of sea control and fleet operations. Imperial Germany built a large battlefleet despite having no obvious outlet from the North Sea, primarily to advance right-wing domestic agendas and satisfy an obsession with “world power” status. Nazi Germany was in many ways even less coherent when it put to sea, blindly repeating the failed U-boat strategy of 1917–18 under the direction of a loyal Nazi, with the same outcome, and far heavier casualties.

Perhaps the most striking element of the book is the emphasis it places on the sustained hostility of the US, as a neutral and as an ally for part of both world wars, the vicious inter-service battles that compromised the effectiveness of both the US Army and the US Navy long after 1945, and the inflated reputations of senior officers. Few Americans emerge with much credit. The Democratic presidents Woodrow Wilson and the “slippery” Franklin D. Roosevelt and their administrations exploited the opportunities created by the world wars to undermine Britain’s economic position, empire and global maritime system. Wilson’s attempt was thwarted by British diplomacy and wider Allied resentment of his overbearing conduct at Versailles in 1919, but his former junior minister Roosevelt used the Second World War to secure control of British colonies in the western hemisphere and dismantle the British global system.

Rodger’s assessment of the wartime leadership of Admiral Ernest J. King and General Douglas MacArthur is equally forthright. The latter used political support to distort Pacific strategy for his personal aggrandizement. The invasion of the Philippines was unnecessary. MacArthur’s blend of bombast, bluster and threat has echoes in contemporary American politics. While there is ample American evidence of King’s unpopularity, Rodger excuses him of the old charge of being an anglophobe. He worked well with senior British officers, but he did not understand the Battle of the Atlantic or the critical role of Ultra intelligence in defeating the enemy attack on shipping. The Battle of the Atlantic, the base of the Allied victory, exposed a clash of cultures that divided the two anglophone navies: Americans pursued tactical victories, the British prioritized the persistence of the convoy system. Fortunately the common understanding of professional seamen helped to paper over some of the more glaring political clashes at the local level.

Rodger’s critique of the arrogant, amateurish incompetence of the Royal Air Force is devastating. Obsessed with status and fixated on strategic bombing, a concept based entirely on abstract theory, and one that failed catastrophically in the Second World War, it resisted the obvious need to command the skies over the Atlantic to win the war’s longest “battle”. The problem was solved in the end by political intervention and American long-range B-24 Liberator aircraft. The Air Ministry prohibited dive bombing and dive bombers, despite their success in German, Japanese and American hands before the war began; opposed aircraft carriers and specialist carrier aircraft. While some senior airmen worked with the Navy, there were nowhere near enough of them. The lesson remains critical: it is impossible for any state to wage war effectively if the armed forces or society are divided, and this is especially relevant when, as in the British case, national strategy must necessarily be maritime. Modern Britain has always depended on seaborne supplies, sea-based strategic power and insularity. That dependence has grown since 1945 and remains under serious threat today, notably in the Gulf and the Red Sea.

As post-Brexit Britain ponders the obvious question of where next, this timely text emphasizes the critical place of the sea and the Navy in the making of the modern state. Rodger has completed a majestic trilogy, one that stretches back to the time when King Alfred first put to sea to stop Viking invaders, with an incisive, compelling assessment of an era that began with Britain at the peak of its relative power, shaping the defeat of Napoleon and a new European system, and ended with the defeat of fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and imperial Japan. The epilogue and chronology continue the argument into the present, addressing the startling changes that followed, including the creation of Nato, which obliged Britain to take a leading role in the land/air defence of western Europe throughout the Cold War, while the oceanic Empire dissolved and the search for a new identity began. Through it all, naval power and maritime identity endured, as the events of 1982 emphasized.

This history reminds us that a nation that relies on global trade for basic imports, and is affected by global events, will always need a powerful navy and a maritime economy. N. A. M. Rodger concludes that the Royal Navy remains essential to maintaining the global order at sea, enabling the people of a small insular state off the coast of Europe to function and connect with the wider world. It would be wise to develop that oceanic impulse and exploit the asymmetric advantages of being small and maritime in a world of continental superpowers. The Navy was once the focal point of national activity, intimately engaged with an economy that prioritized the sea. After 1945 it was treated as merely another armed force within a homogenizing ministry, no longer the dominant political instrument of a seapower state. The upcoming Strategic Defence Review might reflect on the strategic and policy mistakes of the past, and on the opportunities that would flow from a seaward shift of focus. Wisdom does not have to be new.

Andrew Lambert is Laughton Professor of Naval History at King’s College London. His most recent book is The British Way of War: Julian Corbett and the battle for a national strategy, 2021

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