Abstract
This book accomplishes a task awaiting a naval historian since the Navy Records Society published, a century apart, two volumes covering much of the blockade during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars: in 1899 John Leyland’s Despatches and Letters relating to the Blockade of Brest 1803–1805 and in 2001 Morriss and Saxby’s The Channel Fleet and the Blockade of Brest 1793–1801. Owing to the existence of these volumes of primary sources, Barry’s book gives great attention, 25 of 29 chapters, to the first twelve years of the wars and only three chapters to the remaining ten. Barry is nevertheless a good writer and has an eye for political detail. His volume can thus claim to be a study of the politics of naval service, focussing on the relations of the Admiralty, the Commanders-in-Chief of the Channel Fleet, and the latter’s management of the ships and officers under their command.
The volume has three strengths. Its focus on relationships reveal the personalities of those involved – including those of admirals James Gambier and George Keith Elphinstone, Baron Gambier and Viscount Keith respectively, who filled much of the period in command after 1806. The book can be seen, indeed, as series of linked biographies; for example, Gambier’s predilection for Evangelical religion and caution in naval operations contrasting sharply with the daring activity of Thomas, Lord Cochrane in Basque Roads in 1809. Secondly, it examines the major actions that ensured from the blockade, including the battles of the Glorious First of June and Trafalgar. Here the occasional pithy observation of Julian Corbett adds to the value of the exposition. Thirdly, it reveals the tactics of the Admiralty which was pulling the strings, shaping the blockade, concentrating forces and directing commanders. Barham’s management of the Trafalgar campaign emerges once again as a tactical masterpiece. Here Corbett’s 1910 observation of Napoleon’s ‘failure to grasp the foundations of the game’ provides a wonderful evocation of Edwardian self-confidence: ‘his confident egotism would not recognise that he was playing against past-masters of a game at which he was only an amateur’ (p. 276). Of equivalent interest is a perceptive insight into the role of the Admiralty in the deflation and sad disgrace of Sir Robert Calder who complained bitterly to Barham after his action of 22 July that his despatch had been edited before being released to the press (pp. 269, 274).
On the other hand, the book has some eccentricities and deficiencies. The origins of the strategy of blockading Brest and the ports threatening Britain are only discussed in the conclusion, which seems rather too late. The importance of the maintenance of health to the blockade is only discussed in Chapter 29. Of the vast number of seamen involved, only the Spithead mutineers really get a mention. Likewise ignored is the prodigious administrative infrastructure upon which Britain’s naval capability was built. This book thus has limitations. It is blind to the bulk of British naval society, its vulnerability and humanity, and to the organisation complementary, and indispensable to, the sea-going navy.
This book could thus well be regarded as traditional naval history in its preoccupation with the concerns of the naval elite. Nevertheless, it examines their relationships with empathy; it is written with pace; it is well illustrated and has good maps. Above all, it uses its primary sources with discernment and provides innumerable insights into a vital aspect of the Wars. Needless to say, the book owes a great deal to the volumes of the Navy Records Society. It provides proof that the volumes of the Society remain useful and relevant. Quintin Barry is to be credited for his fulsome acknowledgment of his debt to the NRS. Above all, however, he is to be credited with his very able understanding of the management of Britain’s blockade of France’s Atlantic naval bases. Few other books so well convey the way in which Britain’s naval abilities were honed over the course of 22 years, responsibility being passed from one Admiralty and commander-in-chief to the next. The blockade may have been executed by Far Distant Ships, but those ships, their crews and their commanders were close in shaping the identity with which Britain emerged from the wars. It was in large part the experience and confidence derived from this dull but vital blockade that permitted Britain to dominate maritime Europe in the nineteenth century.