The Price of Victory: A Naval History of Britain 1815-1945

976 pages

Rear Admiral Guy Liardet

This is the last of the three volumes of Professor Rodger’s history. Twenty-seven years ago I was privileged to write the review here for The Safeguard of the Sea 660-1649 (Harper Collins 1997), ending by guessing that there would be two more volumes on the way and hoping it wouldn’t be too long.  Seven years later I reviewed Command of the Ocean 1649-1815 (Allen Lane 2004), wondering how Professor Rodger would deal with the transition from wood and canvas to electricity, engineering and aviation.  “I can’t wait.  Seven years?  I hope I’m spared”.  Well, I’ve been spared 20 years and it remains a privilege to be reviewing this final volume.

The most recent comprehensive history of the Royal Navy is William Laird Clowes’ seven volume Royal Navy: A History from the Earliest Times to 1900 which was published in 1897. Professor Rodger’s subtitle A Naval History of Britain is very significant. He writes: “The ambition is to link naval warfare to the many other aspects of history with which it was involved. As far as the limitations of a single work and a single author will allow, this is meant as a contribution to political, social, economic, diplomatic, administrative, agricultural, medical, religious and other histories which will never be complete until the naval component of them is recognised and understood. It is an attempt to spread the meaning of naval history well beyond the conduct of war at sea and the internal affairs of the Royal Navy and to treat it instead as a national endeavour, involving many, and in some ways, all, aspects of government and society”.

This volume follows its predecessors in being arranged in narratives: policy, strategy and operations: administration and finance, men and officers, logistics including industry: social analysis and the material elements of sea power with, in the 20th century, aircraft. Rodger is famous for his The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy (Collins 1986)majoring on the social aspects and described by an eminent historian as “the best book on shipboard life in the eighteenth century that has ever been written”. So it’s not going to be all about kings and battles, or ‘rum, sodomy and the lash’, is it? Rodger produces many original opinions. But he is by no means a ‘myth-buster’. His arguments are carefully described and supported in fine and accurate language.

Given the monumentality, the time that has elapsed and the historical importance to our Naval community of Rodger’s 2,500 pages, it is essential that the previous two volumes should briefly be recollected here. The Safeguard of the Sea covers the first thousand years from 660 to 1649 when fighting at sea did not involve navies as such and certainly not royal ones. English governments were overthrown by seaborne invasions at least nine times between the Norman Conquest and 1688, to which we should add the 1332 invasion of Scotland and at least nine other successful landings of major forces. Edward I could have done it by seapower, not Welsh castles. The Cinque Ports weren’t always on ‘our side’, whichever ‘side’ ours was. Henry V was the successful maritime monarch, not revisionist downgraded Henry VIII who at least bequeathed a second daughter whose foreign policy instruments, as I have said elsewhere, were valour, virginity and calculated vacillation. 1588 gets a complete chapter. Materially it’s a tale of underfunding, rot, disease, peculation, piracy, gradually getting better. In summary, this is a masterly account of our island’s early maritime story which is not considered as often as are the later centuries but must be valued because of the origins. No need to remind NR readers what happened in 1649.

With Command of the Ocean 1649 –1815 many NR readers will be saying, “Ah, my period” as it covers the War with France from William III’s accession to 1815, the Age of Fighting Sail. Cromwell’s republican experiment was an unqualified political failure but with Blake and others the navy grew enormously in size and became the origin of England’s naval greatness.  It was the navy that made Cromwell feared throughout Europe, a lesson the English would not forget. The navy restored the Stuarts. The three Dutch wars included in 1666 “the greatest naval battle of the age of sail” and were followed by the bloodless Dutch invasion of 1688 which signalled the start of the War with France. Rodger’s expert chapters on administration and social affairs show, against intricate political events, a gradual improvement in efficiency and care of the sailor while introducing a system of government debt that transformed the capacity of the state to make war.  For years the navy dominated government expenditure. The execution of Byng, shot on his quarterdeck, really did “encourage the others”. “It had a profound effect on the moral climate of the Navy, even the most powerful political friends could not save a failure to fight”. “Byng’s death reinforced a culture of aggressive determination which in time gave British officers a steadily mounting psychological ascendancy; opponents expected to be attacked and half expected to be beaten”. The familiar history of the French Wars and the loss of America rolls forward to Trafalgar, Rodger providing innumerable fresh insights. He says that Nelson’s incompetent blundering into the politics of Naples produces the thought that admirals should not be promoted on professional ability alone. His Conclusion contains a fundamental disquisition, that seapower is essentially defensive, the whale versus elephant paradox. “All Britain’s successful wars could not have been won without continental allies”.  Thus, Napoleon’s defeat depended upon the Peninsula, Leipzig and Waterloo.

So, what of Volume III? In his Forward, Rodger excuses the 20-year interval by his “serious illness and an exciting episode of brain surgery from which it took me several years to recover”.  This is 934 pages of densely researched information, dealing, of course, with a period of unprecedented technological change and political evolution. The bibliography runs to 70 pages. A mass of statistics accompanies every argument. It’s a huge work, unique in its scope and ambition and one can see it easily taking 20 years.

During the century-long ‘lee of Trafalgar’ the Navy never rested; the battle of Navarino, piracy, slavery, the ‘Russian War’ (not ‘Crimean’ – too far flung), South American wars, opium wars, deterring American annexation of Cuba, bombardment of Acre, full scale invasion of Egypt, the Portugal crisis, the South African war, how to protect the skein of coaling stations, support for Greek identity, the list is never ending. There are disgraceful episodes but also a reluctance to create an ‘empire’; to trade is desirable, to govern is not.

Rodger’s thesis is advanced by his chapters on ‘Government and Administration’ which show in peace and war the extent to which naval affairs affect, are intertwined with and sometimes dominate, national foreign and domestic policies. In the early 19th century “naval officers saw themselves as men of science” involved worldwide in imposing intellectual order on a disorganised world. The Admiralty charted the globe. “The charts were a symbol and an example of what they were doing, imposing a formal grid by which knowledge could be located and classified”. Officers became Fellows of scientific societies, making contributions to geodesy, magnetism, meteorology, polar exploration, botany, tides, astronomy, other peoples.

The chapters through this century about officers and men are outstanding; we can see today where we came from. From about half a dozen types of sailor needed in a warship, a huge proliferation ended with Wireless Operators. The syllabus for naval cadets seems to have been an issue for nearly 200 years.

In his chapters on ‘Ships and Weapons’ to 1914; Rodger shows how applications of metallurgy and scientific discovery developed Victory into a Dreadnought which wasn’t only Fisher, it was teamwork. The big gamble was the choice of large untested steam turbines for propulsion and to take the risk of Middle Eastern oil over domestic coal. He is unhappy about the adulation of Sir John Fisher. Awaiting a “much needed modern biography”, he says “It is necessary to identify the real Fisher and sketch his influence” which he does with fairness. “Few of his wild prophecies came true”.

Prior to 1914, Rodger delves deeply into the multiple national and Admiralty issues among which were Intelligence, absence of a staff system, establishment of the RNAS, the legality of blockade.  When war came, “by early 1915 it was becoming clear to all the belligerents that their strategic assumptions had been badly wrong”. Grand Fleets swung round buoys in “boredom and demoralisation”. The early sinking of three armoured cruisers in an hour by one unopposed U-boat shocked both navies, Rodger’s account of WW1 is full of his insights and supported with a host of statistics. Examples: in 1914 Britain grew only 35% of its own food; of 219 Atlantic convoys in the last quarter of 1917, 39 were sighted by U-boats and only 19 were attacked; the RNAS at the moment of its abolition had 2,000 aircraft.

In ‘The Peace to End War’ chapter, while battleships remained important counters in the argumentative arms control negotiations in Washington, Geneva and elsewhere, it was apparent that submarines, torpedoes, and aircraft had confused strategic thinking, akin to today’s step-change dilemmas caused by missiles, drones, data and surveillance. “Disgust at battlefleets for somehow causing the war was added to disgust at them for failing to win it”.

I select here just two domestic aspects of particular interest in this ‘between the wars’ period. Firstly, the Admiralty’s continuing “failure to understand or apply decent standards of management (for officers) …. the service records were too primitive to provide the information necessary”. Manpower planning was dire; Geddes’s Axe was unsuccessful on its aims and resonates today (with golden bowler and wet and dry lists?). In its announcements “the Admiralty repeatedly used evasive and misleading language…….encouraged the ablest young officers to quit the navy yet refused the less distinguished who applied to leave”. Rodger is scathing about the Invergordon mutiny: “By this time the men of the Atlantic Fleet understood that the silent Admiralty was going to betray them, and that their own officers were sympathetic but powerless”.

Secondly, Rodger deals severely with the RAF who, he believes, had “an amateurish mindset, hostile to free enquiry”. “By 1933 the relationship to the other services….was a running sore which broke out in a series of crises”, “The Air Staff was visibly determined to keep the Fleet Air Arm as small and as obsolete as possible”. In 1934 the Under Secretary for Air claimed a right of veto over the Admiralty decision to build a new fleet carrier (Ark Royal).  The ‘Inskip Award’ in July 1937 came as a shock to both staffs and was three years too late. Controversy over who was to run Coastal Command continued; the RAF had provided only the useless Anson aircraft until the Lockheed Hudson (rejected in 1937) arrived. This writer recalls that the Consolidated salesman (later Lt Cdr John Millar RNVR) had the RAF’s only long-range maritime aircraft, one amphibious Catalina, and had his passport removed by the Treasury for buying the forgotten launch trolley with his commission dollars). Later, Rodger says that the RAF clung to the long-range bomber on emotional rather than rational grounds, deploring ‘Bomber’ Harris’s refusal to assign Lancasters to fill the ‘air gap’ in the Atlantic to the cost of many vessels, “While the war had amply demonstrated the value of aircraft …. the actual aircraft the RAF had committed to, used in the way it knew, stood condemned as a bloody catastrophe. It was trench warfare with wings”.

Rodger says, “Two great wars were now beginning in Europe and the Far East and at the start neither was a naval war……..and the first question to be answered is how and how far the Second World War ever became a naval war. We must be clear that in some respects it never did”. His superb account of the Second World War runs to about 350 pages and covers, as usual, social history, policy and operations, government and administration and an entire chapter on ‘Aircraft 1920-1942’. Astonishingly comprehensive, we have room here for no more than a few points of interest.

Arriving at the French coast, the German generals were astonished at their success, the war was obviously won and they were considering demobilisation; the British would wake up to their defeat. To the German army and navy, an invasion was clearly impossible; hardly any warships were fit for service; the army had no landing craft and no knowledge of amphibious operations. Rodger doesn’t mention the ‘battle of the barges’, but a large force of Home Fleet destroyers versus barges towed at four knots with low freeboards would be suicidal. Later, when Britain wouldn’t play ball, Hitler lost his temper and unleashed the Luftwaffe. But it was the Navy not the RAF that won the Battle of Britain.

Anti-submarine operations are expertly covered in all their complexity. Rodger is strong on electronic warfare, the tactical effects of short wave radio, Huff-Duff, the cavity magnetron, the encryption battle from Room 40 to Bletchley which surprises with the extent that the Germans were reading our messages. Landmark convoy HG76 was escorted by a certain Commander Johnnie Walker and had the first air cover, a simple diesel merchantman fitted with a flight deck, HMS Audacity, carrying six American Martlet fighters, the best aircraft owned by the Fleet Air Arm which shot down Condor long range bombers and attacked and reported surfaced U-boats. Five were sunk, as was the Audacity, but both Doenitz and the Admiralty were impressed. Incidentally, this sinking wetted world-famous test pilot Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown who features later in this history when (in Rodger’s post 1945 ‘Epilogue’) he demonstrates the steam catapult to the Americans by a launch from Perseus when alongside in harbour. We should never forget that fast jet aviation at sea was only made possible by three British inventions; the angled deck, steam catapult and the mirror landing aid. Was Doenitz a ‘worthy enemy’? Roger paints a hard brutal fascist, prone to strategic error, fanatically supporting the Fuhrer to the end.

Tetchy Anglo-American relations are a theme, the Americans believing they were being used to preserve the British Empire. “To win support in the teeth of American suspicion and hostility, it was urgently necessary to demonstrate a ruthless determination to fight”. This was the reality behind the sinking of a fellow-colonialist’s fleet at Mers-el-Kebir to keep it out of German hands. Favoured by Roosevelt, the USN’s CNO, Admiral Ernest King harboured an intense hatred of the British, refusing intelligence cooperation and exciting British astonishment and anger by refusing to establish convoys as recommended in the US sector. The consequent massacre “was one of the heaviest and most shameful defeats suffered by the Allies”. Later King lost his temper at the Octagon conference while bitterly resisting the introduction of the British navy into the Pacific, but his extreme unpopularity with many Americans helped our case.

Rodger’s description of the war in the Pacific is very perceptive and well-informed. As an example. his account of the immensely important Midway victory, “sometimes presented as the US Navy’s Trafalgar”, is revealed as rather a lucky shambles with a lack of coordination between admirals, mismanaged air groups and the probably unnecessary loss of Yorktown. Kamikaze statistics are horrifying. The British Pacific contribution enabled a better political position after the war… With a prospect of a Japanese invasion, “US leaders thought they might need as much help as they could get”. So, we earned our place in Tokyo Bay and Sir Bruce Fraser’s signature.

General MacArthur gets a pasting for his vanity. Twice wounded and the most decorated US officer of WW1, MacArthur is described by Sir Basil Liddell Hart and Field Marshal Lord Alanbrook, as “outshining all the other American and British generals…… a class above them in any theatre”. Rodger underplays his strategy of encirclement versus frontal assault, his approach to the Japanese mainland requiring 87 amphibious landings, all successful. As Supreme Commander Allied Powers he re-constituted Japan, giving the people land tenure and other rights they had never had before, cleverly retaining Hirohito and laying the basis for a democratic, demilitarised, industrial wirtschaftswunder rivalling Germany’s.

Rodger’s Epilogue takes the history out to today. Discussed is the way that American assistance had deliberately undermined the British economy, the burden of Lend Lease debt and, demonstrating the ‘price of victory’, how war had impoverished Britain. The Marshall Plan, breaking of nuclear research agreements, possible American isolationism and the Mountbatten/Rickover nuclear submarine agreements are swiftly discussed. The “complex and exceptionally bloody” Korean War suddenly broke out in June 1950. Hosted by the new Western-friendly Japan, the Royal Navy provided substantial cruiser/destroyer forces and a continuous light fleet carrier to the west coast for four years. The “bold and dangerous landing at Inchon” was another MacArthur stroke. British ‘defence’ expenditure had been as high as 46% of GDP in WWII and reached 11% during the Korean War. “Forgotten today because they were successful” the Malayan Emergency and Borneo continued an East of Suez presence still extant in the Persian Gulf.  Today’s issues are mustered.

The Appendices include a useful Chronology right up to the Houthis, tables of British and other naval strengths at various times, the strength of British fleets at various engagements, a large Glossary and a graph of manpower, bumbling along at about 80,000 for a century until 781,000 in 1945, rather small today. Illustrations? Of course, we have reached the photographic age now – they are well selected and interesting.

“The question is sometimes asked whether Britain is still a naval power.  It seems more and more likely that our only real question will be whether to fight for ourselves and our friends or to yield”.

So that’s the portrait of your institution. I couldn’t put it down. Has Professor Rodger achieved his ambition? I think so. We are an island nation.